4 ms·

> And you should talk to some of your fellow workers and ask if they all think they're being fairly compensated. Even aside from the issue of salary, tech worke

by weberc2 10y ago

> And you should talk to some of your fellow workers and ask if they all think they're being fairly compensated. Even aside from the issue of salary, tech workers are rarely given a fair stake in ownership in the company, and their equity grants often come with lots of clauses to deprive them from what little stake they have. Who decides what is fair? You? Tech workers? Speaking about fairness as though it's objective or straight-forward isn't doing anyone any favors. Speaking generally, if employees aren't getting a fair deal, they should look for better jobs. If they can't find better jobs, they're getting a fair deal. There are certainly anti-competitive exceptions, but nothing posted so far suggests we're in such exceptional territory.

knucklesandwich 10y ago
> Who decides what is fair? You? Tech workers? Speaking about fairness as though it's objective or straight-forward isn't doing anyone any favors. The beauty of a union is there doesn't have to be an objective definition. A union gives you a democratic voice to advocate for what you think is fair. Without organized labor power, your voice is completely ignorable. > Speaking generally, if employees aren't getting a fair deal, they should look for better jobs. If they can't find better jobs, they're getting a fair deal. There are certainly anti-competitive exceptions, but nothing posted so far suggests we're in such exceptional territory. This is a completely naive understanding of what finding a job is like. Leaving a job can be a strike against a person in the hiring process, not to mention it consumes a lot of time, leaves someone uncompensated and without benefits during the process, etc. This also assumes engineer competency is something we can effectively gauge in the hiring process or otherwise (just search "hiring" on hacker news to get the general sentiment among engineers about how good we are at this). Imagine if this was the suggestion given to factory workers and coal miners and the early 20th century (not that I think the worker conditions are comparable, but its illustrative of how naive it is to believe that market forces are sufficient for providing fair compensation). This is a marginalist's definition of "fair" that doesn't jive with any real human person's. The real question is why you are so fervantly against having a democratic voice in the workplace.
- smsm42 10y ago
  How is it a beauty? Stupid decision made by 1000 people is better than by one? At least if I make stupid decision I am to blame and I can fix it. If 1000 people make it, I have 1/1000 of infuence (in fact even less if I am not eloquent or persuasive) and can't change anything. Talk about ignorable. I certainly don't need a "democracy" to take my decisions for me. There's a place for it as we can't each personally decide about national defence or building interstate highway, but I can certainly talk to my boss.
  - lostboys67 10y ago
    As an individual you have virtualy zero chance of effecting any change - I have how ever got several thousand people a better pension at British Telecom (I was the secretary for one of the larger BT union branches)
    - smsm42 10y ago
      My experience suggests the opposite - I've successfully effected change of my personal conditions several times, without help of any unions. So did many other people I know personally. Of course, it is natural for union officials to see themselves as benevolent godlike figures distributing goods to the plebes. But this particular plebe is doing just fine without you and would like to continue as long as possible without any unions. And BTW guess what I found as looking up BT pensions on Google? https://www.ft.com/content/5505d45e-ac29-11e6-ba7d-76378e4fef24 https://www.ft.com/content/5505d45e-ac29-11e6-ba7d-76378e4fe... BT has second-worst funded pension scheme in the world Are you sure you've told the members of your union about that? Who would be left holding the bag when this thing blows up? Would it be you, or would it be those thousands of people who got unfunded pension promises? Or would it be UK taxpayers who would be forced to pay for it?
      - Apocryphon 10y ago
        Sounds like unions are a creaky old institution that's ripe for an update. If only there was an industry that goes around innovating things.
solidsnack9000 10y ago
> If they can't find better jobs, they're getting a fair deal. In an idealized market, yes. But given incidents like this, it seems like some employees must be being treated for more fairly than others -- which suggests there's no fairness at all.
- weberc2 10y ago
  I was speaking about fairness across the economy, not fairness within the company. For every Uber there are a dozen companies that actively seek out female employees for diversity purposes. I'm not aware of any data that suggest gender discrimination in the United States (and no, the wage gap is not an example of discrimination, as almost all of it is known to be caused by differing aggregate priorities between the sexes).
  - solidsnack9000 10y ago
    The difference between our points of view seems to be the degree to which we regards Uber as an outlier. I don't; it's one of many companies with this very different "fairness"; so I don't think we can take the market at face value.
    - weberc2 10y ago
      Perhaps. I'd love more data on the subject. The data closest data I'm familiar with pertain to fair compensation between genders (not necessarily sexual harassment); and these data suggest that all but 4% of the wage cap can be explained by differing priorities between the gender (women prefer safer work with more flexibility rather than a high salary); the other 4% could be attributable to discrimination, misogynistic conditions, or other choice-related variables for which the studies didn't control. If so many companies were as bad as this article describes, I would expect that 4% number to be much larger (there are other explanations, but they don't seem very plausible to me). At any rate, we probably need better data (or maybe the data exist, but I'm not aware of them?).
      - 10y ago

by weberc2 10y ago

knucklesandwich 10y ago

> Who decides what is fair? You? Tech workers? Speaking about fairness as though it's objective or straight-forward isn't doing anyone any favors. The beauty of a union is there doesn't have to be an objective definition. A union gives you a democratic voice to advocate for what you think is fair. Without organized labor power, your voice is completely ignorable. > Speaking generally, if employees aren't getting a fair deal, they should look for better jobs. If they can't find better jobs, they're getting a fair deal. There are certainly anti-competitive exceptions, but nothing posted so far suggests we're in such exceptional territory. This is a completely naive understanding of what finding a job is like. Leaving a job can be a strike against a person in the hiring process, not to mention it consumes a lot of time, leaves someone uncompensated and without benefits during the process, etc. This also assumes engineer competency is something we can effectively gauge in the hiring process or otherwise (just search "hiring" on hacker news to get the general sentiment among engineers about how good we are at this). Imagine if this was the suggestion given to factory workers and coal miners and the early 20th century (not that I think the worker conditions are comparable, but its illustrative of how naive it is to believe that market forces are sufficient for providing fair compensation). This is a marginalist's definition of "fair" that doesn't jive with any real human person's. The real question is why you are so fervantly against having a democratic voice in the workplace.

smsm42 10y ago
How is it a beauty? Stupid decision made by 1000 people is better than by one? At least if I make stupid decision I am to blame and I can fix it. If 1000 people make it, I have 1/1000 of infuence (in fact even less if I am not eloquent or persuasive) and can't change anything. Talk about ignorable. I certainly don't need a "democracy" to take my decisions for me. There's a place for it as we can't each personally decide about national defence or building interstate highway, but I can certainly talk to my boss.
- lostboys67 10y ago
  As an individual you have virtualy zero chance of effecting any change - I have how ever got several thousand people a better pension at British Telecom (I was the secretary for one of the larger BT union branches)
  - smsm42 10y ago
    My experience suggests the opposite - I've successfully effected change of my personal conditions several times, without help of any unions. So did many other people I know personally. Of course, it is natural for union officials to see themselves as benevolent godlike figures distributing goods to the plebes. But this particular plebe is doing just fine without you and would like to continue as long as possible without any unions. And BTW guess what I found as looking up BT pensions on Google? https://www.ft.com/content/5505d45e-ac29-11e6-ba7d-76378e4fef24 https://www.ft.com/content/5505d45e-ac29-11e6-ba7d-76378e4fe... BT has second-worst funded pension scheme in the world Are you sure you've told the members of your union about that? Who would be left holding the bag when this thing blows up? Would it be you, or would it be those thousands of people who got unfunded pension promises? Or would it be UK taxpayers who would be forced to pay for it?
    - Apocryphon 10y ago
      Sounds like unions are a creaky old institution that's ripe for an update. If only there was an industry that goes around innovating things.

solidsnack9000 10y ago

> If they can't find better jobs, they're getting a fair deal. In an idealized market, yes. But given incidents like this, it seems like some employees must be being treated for more fairly than others -- which suggests there's no fairness at all.

weberc2 10y ago
I was speaking about fairness across the economy, not fairness within the company. For every Uber there are a dozen companies that actively seek out female employees for diversity purposes. I'm not aware of any data that suggest gender discrimination in the United States (and no, the wage gap is not an example of discrimination, as almost all of it is known to be caused by differing aggregate priorities between the sexes).
- solidsnack9000 10y ago
  The difference between our points of view seems to be the degree to which we regards Uber as an outlier. I don't; it's one of many companies with this very different "fairness"; so I don't think we can take the market at face value.
  - weberc2 10y ago
    Perhaps. I'd love more data on the subject. The data closest data I'm familiar with pertain to fair compensation between genders (not necessarily sexual harassment); and these data suggest that all but 4% of the wage cap can be explained by differing priorities between the gender (women prefer safer work with more flexibility rather than a high salary); the other 4% could be attributable to discrimination, misogynistic conditions, or other choice-related variables for which the studies didn't control. If so many companies were as bad as this article describes, I would expect that 4% number to be much larger (there are other explanations, but they don't seem very plausible to me). At any rate, we probably need better data (or maybe the data exist, but I'm not aware of them?).
    - 10y ago