Labor Board Backs Startup Engineers Fired for Unionizing
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Re: Labor Board Backs Startup Engineers Fired for Unionizing
#2There was a very small detail that was almost overlooked in the article- it seemed like they were planning on keeping their more senior engineers and fire their junior ones.
> The tipping point came in January, when management offered additional stock to a handful of high-level male engineers, including Westergard. Employees suspected Lanetix planned to fire lower-level female engineers, ...
On the one hand, this sounds to me like they're probably struggling financially, and the unionization efforts would have put them in a worse spot. This is pure speculation, however, because the article kept focusing on the gender of the employees. Maybe that really is the story, but so many details were left out to focus on the narrative that we won't know without better journalism.
Re: Labor Board Backs Startup Engineers Fired for Unionizing
#3There was a very small detail that was almost overlooked in the article- it seemed like they were planning on keeping their more senior engineers and fire their junior ones. > The tipping point came in January, when management offered additional stock to a handful of high-level male engineers, including Westergard. Employees suspected Lanetix planned to fire lower-level female engineers, ... On the one hand, this sou…
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Re: Labor Board Backs Startup Engineers Fired for Unionizing
#4I know I saw some stuff on this in the past... so past articles (oldest to newest) for contexts
Joint Statement of Solidarity with Unjustly Fired Lanetix Workers
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16293823 (3 comments)
https://medium.com/@techworkersco/joint-statement-of-solidar...
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Lanetix engineers bring case to NLRB claiming firings were illegal retaliation
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16469573 (1 comment)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-26/coders-wa...
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Tech company Lanetix fired software engineers seeking to organize, union claims
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16504247 (91 comments)
https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/SF-tech-company...
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Software Engineers Fired for Attempt to Unionize
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16815822 (10 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16817501 (10 comments)
https://jacobinmag.com/2018/04/lanetix-tech-workers-unioniza...
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Labor Board Backs Startup Engineers (at Lanetix) Who Were Fired for Unionizing
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17875865 (no comments)
https://www.wired.com/story/labor-board-backs-startup-engine...
Re: Labor Board Backs Startup Engineers Fired for Unionizing
#5There was a very small detail that was almost overlooked in the article- it seemed like they were planning on keeping their more senior engineers and fire their junior ones. > The tipping point came in January, when management offered additional stock to a handful of high-level male engineers, including Westergard. Employees suspected Lanetix planned to fire lower-level female engineers, ... On the one hand, this sou…
The following quote makes it clear:
> “It became increasingly clear that their strategy was divide and conquer—flatter a handful of us in the hopes that we would go along with their plans, and not put up a fight when they fired half of our co-workers,” Westergard adds.
But seriously, what were they thinking? How could they have been so blatant?
> In mid-January, after most of the unit signed authorization cards to be represented by the union, Lanetix was informed and the union filed papers with the NLRB. Ten days later, the engineers were fired.
Re: Labor Board Backs Startup Engineers Fired for Unionizing
#6There was a very small detail that was almost overlooked in the article- it seemed like they were planning on keeping their more senior engineers and fire their junior ones. > The tipping point came in January, when management offered additional stock to a handful of high-level male engineers, including Westergard. Employees suspected Lanetix planned to fire lower-level female engineers, ... On the one hand, this sou…
>There was a very small detail that was almost overlooked in the article- it seemed like they were planning on keeping their more senior engineers and fire their junior ones.
This seemed pretty clear in the article? They tried to buy off senior male employees with extra stock options last minute.
>Maybe that really is the story, but so many details were left out to focus on the narrative that we won't know without better journalism.
It felt like there was a fair amount of detail to me. If anything, it exposed how much sexism in tech is something management sees as a useful wedge to divide and conquer workers.
Re: Labor Board Backs Startup Engineers Fired for Unionizing
#7There was a very small detail that was almost overlooked in the article- it seemed like they were planning on keeping their more senior engineers and fire their junior ones. > The tipping point came in January, when management offered additional stock to a handful of high-level male engineers, including Westergard. Employees suspected Lanetix planned to fire lower-level female engineers, ... On the one hand, this sou…
Seems like very poor management and people skills. Also it's probably not a good idea to backstop a pre-product startup with bootcamp engineers regardless of gender. The foundation is set early on which is very costly to change. No wants to be changing data models and relationships when there are mission critical features that need to be done.
Re: Labor Board Backs Startup Engineers Fired for Unionizing
#8> Despite their futuristic sheen, tech companies “actually operate like traditional industrialists and will go through old fashioned methods of suppressing workers,” he says.
Spot on.
Re: Labor Board Backs Startup Engineers Fired for Unionizing
#9You've got to be stupid to retaliate against workers unionizing. They're going to get screwed.
I don't think unionizing was going to save their jobs though. Looks like the business wasn't doing too well, and they were trying to jettison their juniormost engineers. The whole thing was probably going to go under.
Re: Labor Board Backs Startup Engineers Fired for Unionizing
#10There was a very small detail that was almost overlooked in the article- it seemed like they were planning on keeping their more senior engineers and fire their junior ones. > The tipping point came in January, when management offered additional stock to a handful of high-level male engineers, including Westergard. Employees suspected Lanetix planned to fire lower-level female engineers, ... On the one hand, this sou…
Seems like very poor management and people skills. Also it's probably not a good idea to backstop a pre-product startup with bootcamp engineers regardless of gender. The foundation is set early on which is very costly to change. No wants to be changing data models and relationships when there are mission critical features that need to be done.
Is the implication that bootcamp engineers will come up with the wrong data models and relationships? I bet Hackbright teaches you more about SQL than my entire CS degree from MIT did. (I took a graduate-level database class for a few weeks before dropping it; apart from that, I can't remember anything else about databases in theory, let alone SQL and ORMs in practice.)