4 ms·

That's like saying you should've left the country after Trump's election as an effective means of protesting his presidency.

azhenley 8y ago
I think these are two very different things. The cost of changing companies (especially if you are at Google) is fairly low (and often comes with a salary increase). The cost of changing citizenship could be exorbitant. People claim that if you want change in a country, you vote. If you don't believe in a company's values, you join another. Tech employees in this economy do have a lot of power. I think that is a more apt comparison.
- jfk13 8y ago
  > The cost of changing citizenship could be exuberant. That's a rather delightful image! But I think you meant "exorbitant".
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- filmgirlcw 8y ago
  That's not universally true. If you have a family, if a lot of your salary is tied up in stock grants, or you are an immigrant, leaving isn't always so easy. I'm none of those things (well, I'm married but we're child-free by choice and that's not changing), and even if tech employees do have more power than employees in other industries, that doesn't make "quitting" so easy. And my past work in organized labor certainly gives me a bias here, but I'm of the opinion that if you like the place you work and you enjoy your job -- the appropriate response to bad things happening isn't always to quit (sometimes it is. Sometimes things are too egregious and you walk out. I did this once when I worked retail in college and saw blatant racism targeted at an employee by a regional manager and I walked out), the appropriate response is to fight internally to change things to make them better.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  Exactly. Every single engineer at Google could get hired almost anywhere else. And many, who start their own projects could build those things outside Google as startups as well. (One of my favorite services was created by a Xoogler's startup.) In addition to that, while a walk out does not "move the needle" for executives or investors in any significant sense, if any even statistically significant number of engineers were to leave, it would likely force them to reevaluate their executives and whether they should still be employed there. If they want true change, the executives at the very top have to go. As another commenter said, what are they hoping a walk out will accomplish? What are they asking for? Andy Rubin already has his $90 million.
  - filmgirlcw 8y ago
    I don't know what the demands are -- I would hope they were transparency and accountability going forward. I do agree that a walkout without clear demands is meaningless -- except that it can embarrass senior management and that is sometimes the goal. But beyond embarrassment, what these types of walkouts do is signal to management that discontent is brewing and that employees are willing to fight back and stand-up. And as people are arguing upthread, tech workers have a certain amount of power in deciding where they work. Recruiting is competitive as it is -- it certainly doesn't make it any easier if you have employees walking out en mass because of policies that protected senior executives. Do walkouts work without mass buy-in, no -- not usually. The bad publicity/embarrassment factor could force some corporations to make changes, but just as many won't care. This is why unions are typically successful with threats of work stoppage, and also why the hardest part of unionizing is getting enough employees to sign cards (not to mention fighting against the mistruths management usually puts out about the union itself). I've never walked-out, but in my last job (which was union (WGA-E), we did very seriously consider a work stoppage because of changes that undermined our editorial independence, Even then, the walk-out is the last-resort, but to management's credit, once it was clear that we were willing to walk out, our demand (written indemnity protecting us from personal lawsuits based on things we wrote for the publication -- this is almost always provided by major news organizations but isn't always in writing. The circumstances of our company and the reason why we now had new ownership made it crucial that we get written indemnity and not merely a verbal promise that if sued, the company would pay legal bills if we were named personally) was met.
- dawhizkid 8y ago
  I don't think that's true. Given how consolidated "big tech" has become you have a limited number of options for matching liquid compensation, especially from a company that pays near top of market. You would need to heavily discount the value of whatever private shares from the 1000s of startups that would love to convince you that what they're offering you is equivalent or more than what you have (which it's almost definitely not). Also some people would rather try to use their power to change things they don't like about a company from within rather than assume they have no power to affect change and just leave.

azhenley 8y ago

I think these are two very different things. The cost of changing companies (especially if you are at Google) is fairly low (and often comes with a salary increase). The cost of changing citizenship could be exorbitant. People claim that if you want change in a country, you vote. If you don't believe in a company's values, you join another. Tech employees in this economy do have a lot of power. I think that is a more apt comparison.

jfk13 8y ago
> The cost of changing citizenship could be exuberant. That's a rather delightful image! But I think you meant "exorbitant".
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
filmgirlcw 8y ago
That's not universally true. If you have a family, if a lot of your salary is tied up in stock grants, or you are an immigrant, leaving isn't always so easy. I'm none of those things (well, I'm married but we're child-free by choice and that's not changing), and even if tech employees do have more power than employees in other industries, that doesn't make "quitting" so easy. And my past work in organized labor certainly gives me a bias here, but I'm of the opinion that if you like the place you work and you enjoy your job -- the appropriate response to bad things happening isn't always to quit (sometimes it is. Sometimes things are too egregious and you walk out. I did this once when I worked retail in college and saw blatant racism targeted at an employee by a regional manager and I walked out), the appropriate response is to fight internally to change things to make them better.
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
Exactly. Every single engineer at Google could get hired almost anywhere else. And many, who start their own projects could build those things outside Google as startups as well. (One of my favorite services was created by a Xoogler's startup.) In addition to that, while a walk out does not "move the needle" for executives or investors in any significant sense, if any even statistically significant number of engineers were to leave, it would likely force them to reevaluate their executives and whether they should still be employed there. If they want true change, the executives at the very top have to go. As another commenter said, what are they hoping a walk out will accomplish? What are they asking for? Andy Rubin already has his $90 million.
- filmgirlcw 8y ago
  I don't know what the demands are -- I would hope they were transparency and accountability going forward. I do agree that a walkout without clear demands is meaningless -- except that it can embarrass senior management and that is sometimes the goal. But beyond embarrassment, what these types of walkouts do is signal to management that discontent is brewing and that employees are willing to fight back and stand-up. And as people are arguing upthread, tech workers have a certain amount of power in deciding where they work. Recruiting is competitive as it is -- it certainly doesn't make it any easier if you have employees walking out en mass because of policies that protected senior executives. Do walkouts work without mass buy-in, no -- not usually. The bad publicity/embarrassment factor could force some corporations to make changes, but just as many won't care. This is why unions are typically successful with threats of work stoppage, and also why the hardest part of unionizing is getting enough employees to sign cards (not to mention fighting against the mistruths management usually puts out about the union itself). I've never walked-out, but in my last job (which was union (WGA-E), we did very seriously consider a work stoppage because of changes that undermined our editorial independence, Even then, the walk-out is the last-resort, but to management's credit, once it was clear that we were willing to walk out, our demand (written indemnity protecting us from personal lawsuits based on things we wrote for the publication -- this is almost always provided by major news organizations but isn't always in writing. The circumstances of our company and the reason why we now had new ownership made it crucial that we get written indemnity and not merely a verbal promise that if sued, the company would pay legal bills if we were named personally) was met.
dawhizkid 8y ago
I don't think that's true. Given how consolidated "big tech" has become you have a limited number of options for matching liquid compensation, especially from a company that pays near top of market. You would need to heavily discount the value of whatever private shares from the 1000s of startups that would love to convince you that what they're offering you is equivalent or more than what you have (which it's almost definitely not). Also some people would rather try to use their power to change things they don't like about a company from within rather than assume they have no power to affect change and just leave.