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Kickstarter Senior Staffers Are Pushing Back Against Colleagues' Union Efforts
- HillRat 8y agoJust going to raise an eyebrow at the company’s assertion that people with the titles “senior manager” and “senior editor” aren’t in managerial positions. They’re either being disingenuous or have some serious title inflation going on there.
- sb8244 8y agoYou can be an IC managing a process and not manage people. Sometimes these roles a process managers and not they don't manage people directly.
- ganoushoreilly 8y agoI know a lot of places put Senior as just a way of differentiating from Tier 1,2,3 positions etc. Doesn't always mean they're managers. It's also like how the title VP is used these days in finance.
- shados 8y agoWait until you learn how titles work in big financial firms and how everyone with enough experience is a VP.
- bendbro 8y agoI have worked at companies with “managers” who have no direct reports, but rather gain prioritization for whatever project they are assigned from other “team managers” who have direct reports. To my knowledge this structure is reasonable.
- anoncake 8y agoEither theyre being disingenuous by saying their senior managers arent managers or theyre being disingenuous by calling employees that arent managers managers.
- iancarroll 8y ago> Kickstarter can fail. Our company is looking for funding to secure our financials, as we’ve heard in multiple All Hands communications. Looks like this is also leaking that Kickstarter is raising...
- forgotmysn 8y agoevery start up is raising. they may not be closing a round this week or this month, but fundraising is a continuous process
- drak0n1c 8y agoKickstarter's CEO (and the last of their original founders) also resigned this week: https://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/CEO-and-co-founder-of-crowdfunding-giant-13701180.php https://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/CE...
- cde-v 8y agoWell yeah, they're senior, they got theirs, fuck everyone else.
- thinkingkong 8y agoGenuinely asking: what are you missing out on as a - presumably - non senior titled employee?
- toomuchtodo 8y agoCompensation, vacation time, career advancement opportunities, equity ownership, heath care plan differences, on call/availability requirements, severance in the event of separation, and possibly other benefits I haven't thought of. Perhaps even how performance improvement plans are handled. Senior staff and management don't want the playing field leveled, nor all the cards on the table. If one were so inclined, you'd go digging for the comp and benefits delta between different classes of Kickstarter staff.
- justin66 8y agoNot to mention stock options.
- justin66 8y agoI wrote in response to a parent comment which was subsequently edited.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoI apologize for not putting an edit declaration in. You should not have been downvoted.
- harryh 8y agoYou might want to look at the LinkedIn of the Senior Software Engineer who signed this letter before getting too harsh with your scorn. https://www.linkedin.com/in/nilaratna/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/nilaratna/ We're not talking about a senior executive here. We're talking about someone with ~5 years of experience.
- jeffreybaird 8y ago> Forming a union is a great tool—for marginalized workers. Unions are historically intended to protect vulnerable members of society, and we feel the demographics of this union undermine this important function. We're concerned with the misappropriation of unions for use by privileged workers, some of whom receive compensation more than twice the average income in NYC, in addition to flexible work from home hours, above-and-beyond industry standards for parental leave, 25+ days of paid vacation, a wellness stipend, a bike stipend, an education stipend, a weekly catered lunch, and a great deal of other benefits. We're already a radically thoughtful and ethical company with our PBC, and can do more to lead the way in the tech industry by providing an open environment that's free of hostility. Because a company treats their employees well, they always will. And employees should just take what they are given instead of trying to get a seat at the table. Welcome to the brave new world of woke stools and scabs.
- veritas_veritad 8y agoNot to mention, that's not how/when unions got formed. Unions, as a derivative of trade guilds, formed exactly under the conditions we are seeing today. The capitalists _needing_ in-high-demand skilled laborers. If you consider that unionization requires a large concession from capital, it makes sense that unionization can only form during periods when labor is strong. Yes, of course unions help marginalized workers, but that's only because they have been put into place by powerful workers to help out when that time inevitably comes. Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis.
- newen 8y agoI think you have a good point here. I see a time when programmers become somewhat replaceable and when the industry as a whole reduces benifits for programmers bit by bit. Currently, there is a huge increase in the number of freshmen joining the computer science department in the university I attended and I see it only growing. In the future, a computer science degree might become something like the biology degree and that's when programmers will feel the pain of not being high-demand skilled laborers any more.
- freewilly1040 8y ago
- EliRivers 8y agobefore resorting to something as extreme as a union Either unions in the US are messed up, or they have a terrible terrible press.
- maxxxxx 8y agoIt's probably both to some degree.
- TomMckenny 8y agoUS unions are no different than any place else. There has always been a fierce anti-labor streak in US politics. Even the first red scare in 1920's (before the cold-war!) associated all unions and pro labor moments and even speech as communist. There is a feverish anti-union attitude even among people who have never even met anyone in one. If you ask, you will even find intense dislike of every foreign union without even knowing it's name or where its country is.
- baobrain 8y agoI think it's inaccurate to claim that there are people who aren't enamored with unions simply because people don't like unions. Take police unions for example. It is well documented that many unions are fervently against policies such as always-on body cams that theoretically should protect a (good) cop and the citizen. Fail that, they are against releasing body cam footage.[0] Police unions are also known to protect abusive officers. [1] I'm not trying to claim that there isn't an anti-union attitude, but it is not simply associating them with communism. [0]https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/nyregion/new-york-police-union-body-camera-lawsuit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/nyregion/new-york-police-... [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/how-police-unions-keep-abusive-cops-on-the-street/383258/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/how-pol...
- TomMckenny 8y agoAnd therefore an engineering union is probably going to be bad? Some police unions do these things and need to be stopped. But that does not mean all unions in every field are bad. There are evil corporations too, are all corporations bad? Are the majority? Why does the public precive that differently? Since the cold war, the communism claim has given way to universally negative portal: the sole presentation in fact is negative. Usually by tacitly implying an unusual behavior is typical and inevitable of every possible union. The difference is Exxon runs ads of happy children running through flowery fields and unions don't. And pointing out a union's deficiencies is not going to loose sponsors, possibly the reverse.
- rb808 8y ago> Forming a union is a great tool—for marginalized workers. Unions are historically intended to protect vulnerable members of society, Is this really true? Every union building site I see has mostly white guys. If I see a site with lots of other ethnicities its probably non-union.
- cranky_coder 8y agoI think this is just management cynically reframing some popular “social justice” rhetoric in a way that allows them to paint their opposition as a “progressive” position to take. But maybe that’s a cynical reading of their language too...
- michaelchisari 8y agoIt's both cynical and accurate, it seems.
- tfehring 8y agoI don't have a great intuition for this, so I looked it up. It looks like Black workers are more likely than White workers to be union members, while workers of other racial minorities are less likely [0]: > Among major race and ethnicity groups, Black workers continued to have a higher union membership rate in 2018 (12.5 percent) than workers who were White (10.4 percent), Asian (8.4 percent), or Hispanic (9.1 percent). But it's possible that the story is different for construction workers or for other individual sectors. [0] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.htm
- exolymph 8y agoI'm sure that it varies somewhat by industry. But also, the absolute populations of white and black people in America are pretty different, so it matters how you measure this. A higher proportion of blacks could be union members, and still the absolute number of white union members could be larger.
- 8y ago
- duado 8y agoUnions tend to equalize rewards because of their one worker one vote mechanics. Union representation will probably bring up the compensation of the worst workers and lower the compensation of the top workers, so senior employees are right to fight the unionization effort.
- egypturnash 8y agoSenior employees who are motivated only by personal profit, with absolutely no feeling for their fellow humans are right to fight the unionization effort.
- max76 8y agoThis is black and white thinking. There is a wide range of possible positions between "motivated only by personal profit, with absolutely no feeling for their fellow humans" and wanting to build a union.
- justin66 8y agoParent post was responding to black and white thinking: Union representation will probably bring up the compensation of the worst workers and lower the compensation of the top workers, so senior employees are right to fight the unionization effort.
- shados 8y agoI hope you've never argued for a raise when you could have asked your boss to give someone else a raise instead. It's like, yeah, we should think about others, that's great. But not every and all attempts at raising one's own status completely bad and evil. When I was young and starting my career, there were plenty of fields I could have picked that were almost all unionized (in my home country, unions are the norm almost everywhere). I specifically didn't go those ways because I felt I could do better without. Didn't stop the others to go that route. Now that I'm there, on purpose, if people tried to build a union, I'd probably push back. And if the majority still wanted it (that's their right!), then they can get it, and I'll move somewhere else.
- TomMckenny 8y agoSo long as every one agrees that some sort of organization is desirable, I can't see what's wrong with potential members arguing out the details. That's the point of the democratic component. On the other hand, subterfuge to derail the whole process with a form of concern trolling is not cool.
- TheMagicHorsey 8y agoUnion shops are lowest common denominator places. High performers tend to leave because seniority and politics dominates promotion and wages. Apart from this, senior union reps and management tend to get cosy and form coalitions against workers and shareholders. The people that win are the people that are good at politics, workers that are mediocre, and people that are uncomfortable with fast-paced change. Unions are great at slowing things down and keeping things in slow comfort zone so people don't have to learn new things. Imagine the mediocre 50% of your company gets to determine the processes and procedures used in your team. That's a union shop. Imagine that manager who isn't very good at his job but is good at politics and that union rep getting drinks after work, and making a coalition against the fast rising manager with aggresive new initiatives in mind ... that's a union shop. Long term your company will stagnate and die. Short term, a bunch of mediocre people will feel comfortable. Flavor of the day workers will get hired based on checking boxes ... not based on any objective criteria/merit. That's a union. Ever wonder why 90% of cops are white in the Bay Area, even when the neighborhoods are 90% non-white? That's a union. Unions are the big lie that political animals tell everyone else ... OH JUST GIVE US THE POWER AND WE WILL EMPOWER YOU! It's only true if you are incapable of providing for yourself. If you have the skills, fight against the union as long as you can, and then leave. Best decision my parents ever made was to leave the union-choked midwestern city where I was born, to come west thirty years ago. I probably would have been one of those rust-trapped casualties by now if my parents had stayed.
- djmips 8y agoI feel like most of the bad things you mention happen in places without unions as well.
- RaceWon 8y ago> Union shops are lowest common denominator places. High performers tend to leave because seniority and politics dominates promotion and wages. This is absolutely not true in the trade unions. In an earlier life I was a union plumber (on my way to becoming a master licensed plumber; and to this day I can walk into virtually any commercial or light industrial jobsite, and tell you at a glance, if it is a union or non-union job). I don't just mean the plumbing work either; but also the electrical, and the pipe and/or steam fitting, and I'd be right 90% of the time. Such is the difference between the training and tradition of taking pride in your work. Salaries are also Not carved in stone. I was once paid $300 a week over General Foreman's wage to run a job, and that was in the mid-eighties. They are not perfect, and yes it can be harder to get rid of a real slacker, but nothing is impossible. And FWIW based on what I read on here in terms of the problems a lot of coders have with age, performance reviews and interviewing--you guys should definitely consider forming a union...or for Pete's Code Up App and stick together!
- ummonk 8y ago“Senior” in your title doesn’t really mean much, other than that you aren’t entry level.
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