8 ms·

Tech workers are organizing and demanding democracy in the workplace

63 points by Futurebot 7y ago

veryworried 7y ago
Unions for tech workers are ridiculous. We’re not coal miners, we are highly skilled white collar professionals that should be more than capable of finding work that suits us without extra regulatory bullshit. I find the people who are clamoring for unions in tech are among the least talented and skilled of employees, and they should probably find a new industry entirely instead of trying to change the one they’re in to be more hospitable to the lowest common denominators. Perhaps we can help the process along by putting these people on hiring blacklists and ensuring they never work in this town again.
- linuxftw 7y ago
  > I find the people who are clamoring for unions in tech are among the least talented and skilled of employees, and they should probably find a new industry entirely instead of trying to change the one they’re in to be more hospitable to the lowest common denominators. That's one perspective, sure. Here's another perspective: There's nothing stopping a company from firing it's junior and 'least talented and skilled' employees in favor of contractors or outsourcing.
  - veryworried 7y ago
    The company has a right to hire contractors or outsource work.
- cworth 7y ago
  Union organizers are fighting power to improve the material conditions of all tech workers. It sounds like you need some class analysis.
mises 7y ago
This trend bothers me. Employees are not shareholders, or if they are, they ought to do this in their capacity as shareholders. If they want to govern the company, they ought to buy in or move to management. Or, they can always move companies. This is always an option. Also, socialism is an awful idea. I can't believe people actually support it. I have a massive moral objection to its core tenets: what right have you to the fruits of my labor?
- kyllo 7y ago
  Your employer is able to bargain with you as one massive, collective organization with all its resources to bear. Why should you have to negotiate with them as a one atomic individual person, when you and your coworkers can instead get together and negotiate from a much stronger position?
  - maxxxxx 7y ago
    The worst is that with the secrecy about compensation you don’t have enough information to negotiate effectively whereas the employer has full information.
  - appleiigs 7y ago
    When you join the union, you lose the atomic individuality. I've been a union member and a manager outside of a union. When I was in the union, they tried to prevent me from getting paid more - they wanted me to fall in line with the collective agreement which specified my hourly rate. If you don't go with mob, they call you a scab. Not pretty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikebreaker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikebreaker
  - mises 7y ago
    There's a difference between unionization and trying to get board representation. Also, in many states, you're stuck dealing with a union in many jobs. You now have to negotiate with the union as one atomic person... The thing I personally hate about unions is their political advocacy. The idea that a worker is stuck supporting a politician he might not agree with is one that makes me very uncomfortable. Also, I think appleiigs summarized it better than I did, with the lack of individuality.
prepend 7y ago
This headline is misleading as it should be “Some tech workers” or maybe “a growing few tech workers.”
ycHatesFreeSpch 7y ago
Socialism aside, the unionization of tech workers is extremely important. Failing this, they will be exploited at every damn job. Unions exist in local governments, so why not at private firms too. It's time to organize. A lot of CEOs and CTOs will hate this idea, of course, and will do anything to make you believe otherwise.
- mc32 7y ago
  Their undoing contract will mean less if it doesn’t have ability to veto any attempt to farm out work to cheaper or less regulated labor markets.
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    Why should they have such ability? If someone else is ready, willing, and able to do the same job for an overall more attractive package to the company, I believe the work should go there, whether or not it's the work that I used to do or wished I would do next year.
    - mc32 7y ago
      Well because it’s one of the main drivers of layoffs—which is part of job security which is one of the main factors in wanting to unionize in the first place.
      - sokoloff 7y ago
        I understand the obvious reason they want that ability. That doesn't extend to explaining why a random American technologist is more deserving of (ie "should have a right to") that job than a random other Earth citizen technologist. (I say this as an American technologist.)
        mc32 7y ago
        Ok then why have these unions at all, if it’s not to add worker rights? A union for the sake of unionizing but not afforded rights to guide how people are hired, fired, furloughed, outsourced, etc., is just a pretense. Can you imagine firefighters’s unions saying, yeah, we don’t care how you reduce costs, you wanna fire us and hire prison labor instead, just do it, we’re good! Besides, if I lose a job to a worker in Romania, China, India or Brazil, I can’t simply waltz on over there and say “Hey youse all, I just landed, I don’t have a work visa, but you all gotta play fair, gimme a job, you took mine!”
maccio92 7y ago
Socialism is a cancer that needs to be stomped out. Not all devs want to unionize. Not all devs want "democracy in the workplace". These devs need to stop hiding behind crowds and learn to stand up for themselves.
- sctb 7y ago
  Could you please pause and review the guidelines? We're here for thoughtful, informative discussion, and another turn on the socialism-is-cancer not-so-merry-go-round is not that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Zak 7y ago
I've noticed this trend here on HN beyond workers organizing for their own benefit. The idea of regulating the internet, for almost any reason was abhorrent to the tech community a decade ago. Now, most people seem to think the likes of Uber and AirBnB need to be regulated. A majority of comments here about GDPR seem to support it, and I regularly see calls for more regulation of the sort. I'm not sure if the same group of people have changed their views, or if a wider range of people have brought new perspectives to the community.
- helen___keller 7y ago
  I think there was a sort of techno-utopianism in the aughts that the hip new startups will solve all the world's problems. People will be educated and not fall for disinformation with wikipedia and google at their fingertips. People will discover the wonders of democracy and free speech with facebook and rise against oppressive governments. These were obviously overly optimistic projections. Also, the rise of outrage porn makes it much easier for people to come to the conclusion that "the system" is horribly broken and needs to be changed (for almost any "system" that we speak of, government or capitalism, or youtube, literally anything)
  - Zak 7y ago
    I think there's a tendency to discount the partial successes, perhaps because they make the failures yet more shocking. I can fact-check most things I read in seconds, yet there's a still-growing anti-vaccine movement. While the mechanisms promised are there and work great at an individual level, that's not always the case at a national, regional, or global scale. And now the popular hope seems to be that the wonders of democracy can temper the excesses that came with these partially successful solutions. It is my fear that this hope is also irrationally optimistic, and that regulation will lead to politicians and bureaucrats deciding what is true at scale for their own benefit.
- okmokmz 7y ago
  Regulating the internet is completely different than regulating Uber and AirBnB's business practices
helen___keller 7y ago
I've never been convinced that unions are necessarily the best approach to resolving the employer/employee power differential, but I do believe that in the coming decades something will be necessary. By luck, the explosive growth of software in the states and relative scarcity of developers has resulted in a lot of wealth and luxury for engineers. There's no reason to believe this trend will continue indefinitely. On the other side of the spectrum, another country that has explosive software growth but a large supply of engineers and STEM workers is China. China's 996 work policy has been getting a lot of attention lately and I think it should highlight the risk we face in a matter of maybe a generation or two if the software industry does eventually cool down.
glvn 7y ago
Unpopular opinion: As a recent graduate (last 5 years), I can't agree with most works desire to unionize for one reason: demand for your skills. When I was looking for my second tech job, I turned on that switch in my LinkedIn that lets recruiters contact me. I was immediately inundated with 10-20 messages a day from recruiters asking if I could speak with them about <Role with my expertice>. For me this was the most insane luxury in the workplace, instead of having to go out and look for jobs, those jobs were coming to me and knocking on my door. What I took from that is tech workers have an incredible choice in where they can go work because their skills are highly in-demand. So why unionize? Don't like where you work? Flip a switch and suddenly you have 10-20 offers a day from other companies looking to hire someone with your skillset. Yes, you have to spend time combing through the messages, on the phone with recruiters and going to interviews but at the end of the day with that level of attention to your skillset, you can basically decide where you want to work. Company A seems great but the culture is toxic, ok great let's see what company B has to offer. Company B has a good culture but their data collection practices you don't agree with, ok let's see what company C has to offer. Company C has a great culture and doesn't do the things you consider unethical with data collection, bam we have a winner. Also on the topic of general democracy in the workplace regarding decisions. As an engineer you don't make those decisions, you just implement them. Don't like the decisions, go somewhere else. Want more/total control over decision making? Start your own company.
- frgtpsswrdlame 7y ago
  Hirschman wrote a book called Exit, Voice, and Loyalty that you may find interesting. What I see in your response is this: 'Exit and Loyalty are enough, so why have Voice?' In your mind it's good enough to just go to another job that has better conditions, but why is it wrong to want to change your current job? I don't see a good argument in your post against the usage of voice or democracy in the workplace, just your perspective that you don't need it. But maybe others do think they need it, so let's give it to them.
- adreamingsoul 7y ago
  Yes, you are popular now but in 10-20 years after you’ve been through the wringer a couple times the concept of a tech union might make more sense. EDIT: changed "ringer" to "wringer".
idlewords 7y ago
As someone who was pretty heavily invested in getting tech workers to organize, I've watched with interest as some version of this article gets written every three or four months. There is always a small group of people actively tilting at this windmill, and they make for a good story. What I am waiting to see is a significant demand being met by any major tech employer. The end of forced arbitration at Google was a promising development, but the failure of the Google walkout organizers to get their key demand—an employee representative on the board—doesn't bode well. I continue to believe that tech workers enjoy a temporary position of immense leverage in the workplace, but turning that into substantive gains has so far proven beyond anyone's capacity. I wish the current crop of organizers the best of luck in trying to make it happen.
- helen___keller 7y ago
  > I continue to believe that tech workers enjoy a temporary position of immense leverage in the workplace, but turning that into substantive gains has so far proven beyond anyone's capacity I agree strongly. My generation (millennials) often look with disdain at how easy the baby boomers had it, often paying off their college tuition by taking on just a summer job. I think my future children (or maybe their children) will look with disdain at how easy software engineers had it. Imagine that you get a degree and train for a job, without a particular position of power, and just like that you have leverage and a growing salary that you can increase 30% every time you switch jobs! Just from the scarcity of your skills!
dawhizkid 7y ago
I always thought it was strange that we live in a democracy but spend most of our time working in corporations, which are more like autocracies than anything remotely resembling that of a democracy.
- donaldknuth123 7y ago
  Why beat around the bush, they are literally Autocracies. Dozens of people in this thread will try to convince you of why you should be grateful to work at one though. Capitalist propaganda has been astonishingly effective since the 1930s.
- return0 7y ago
  Same reason we dont live in shared houses, i suppose
  - helen___keller 7y ago
    Arguably housing is too far on the side of democratic/social control. Sure you can live in a house by yourself, but you can't do what you want with your house or your land without first getting town approval, HOA approval, and so on.
whytaka 7y ago
Unionization is the incorporation and concentration of human capital to gain leverage in negotiations. If that isn't smart capitalism, I don't know what is.
gorpomon 7y ago
A lot of counter arguments here say that this isn't necessary because we can easily find new jobs. Yes that's true, but that's not what I want to always have to do in my career. I don't always want to cut and run. I want to invest in a workplace and have a meaningful say about my circumstances there and the work we do. I don't want to quit or have to suck it up and deal. I don't want to have to go into management and then have dueling loyalties (what comes first, ethics or keeping my team employed?) If I work at a big company like Amazon, I want a say in what our tech does and who uses it. Even if I cut and run from them, I'm not going to catch up to Amazon anytime soon. In a place like that positive change could much more easily come from within than from competition.
- turkeysandwich 7y ago
  I've started businesses. When I start a business, it's mine (and my partner's). Like a car or a house or a website. I'm trying to do something specific with it, with plans that I've drawn up. It's not just to make money. If all I wanted to do was make money, I'd just get a normal job. When I hire people, I'm not giving away my business, in the same way that if I give a friend a ride, I'm not giving away my car. If they don't like where I'm driving, their only option is to find another ride. That's the key difference between starting a business vs getting a job: all the decision making is yours. And this applies at any scale, even Amazon scale. If you have plans and you start a business to execute them, you can execute them even better at a large scale. Getting Amazon big and maintaining control is the reason you start a business. It'd be insulting if my hires started wanting to take away control. When you hire someone, it's with the implicit understanding that they respect that the business is not theirs. They don't own any of it. (Unless they want to buy in.) Violating that understanding is disrespectful. Like your neighbor letting their dog shit on your lawn and not picking it up, because they think "well, he's just going to walk his dog in twenty minutes, he can do them both at the same time." I don't like working (whether for my business or for someone else's business) with disrespectful people. There's a lack of trust.
gorpomon 7y ago
For low-skilled factory workers a union is largely about defending their rights and making sure they're treated fairly. For a tech worker, a union is largely about providing a worker-focused counterbalance to your companies decisions. Who buys the tech we make? What tech do we make? Do we allow ourselves to make tech that evades, impedes or outright destroys a person's rights? I don't want tech employees to quit those facial recognition companies. I want a large group of employees with a seat at the table saying that their work should be used ethically. Those companies can always find employees who for a variety of reasons will do the work. My hope is that there is a group of employees there who want to do the work and for the right reasons. More power to them.
malvosenior 7y ago
This seems like an all or nothing type of thing. I for one would never join a union so if some tech workers started to unionize I would always be available to take their place for the right price. It seems like incomplete attempts to unionize our industry will benefit those that don't want to unionize the most by making them more attractive employees.
MangezBien 7y ago
I think it is time for tech workers to force their companies to pursue an agenda that is in-line with the worker's ethics. We are highly paid, we are also highly valuable to the US economy. If we can effectively unionize - we can use that leverage to pressure the government to act in ways we support with regards to surveillance and climate change.
jeffbax 7y ago
These kinds of articles are laughably tone deaf.

63 points by Futurebot 7y ago

Unions for tech workers are ridiculous. We’re not coal miners, we are highly skilled white collar professionals that should be more than capable of finding work that suits us without extra regulatory bullshit. I find the people who are clamoring for unions in tech are among the least talented and skilled of employees, and they should probably find a new industry entirely instead of trying to change the one they’re in to be more hospitable to the lowest common denominators. Perhaps we can help the process along by putting these people on hiring blacklists and ensuring they never work in this town again.

linuxftw 7y ago
> I find the people who are clamoring for unions in tech are among the least talented and skilled of employees, and they should probably find a new industry entirely instead of trying to change the one they’re in to be more hospitable to the lowest common denominators. That's one perspective, sure. Here's another perspective: There's nothing stopping a company from firing it's junior and 'least talented and skilled' employees in favor of contractors or outsourcing.
- veryworried 7y ago
  The company has a right to hire contractors or outsource work.
cworth 7y ago
Union organizers are fighting power to improve the material conditions of all tech workers. It sounds like you need some class analysis.

mises 7y ago

This trend bothers me. Employees are not shareholders, or if they are, they ought to do this in their capacity as shareholders. If they want to govern the company, they ought to buy in or move to management. Or, they can always move companies. This is always an option. Also, socialism is an awful idea. I can't believe people actually support it. I have a massive moral objection to its core tenets: what right have you to the fruits of my labor?

kyllo 7y ago
Your employer is able to bargain with you as one massive, collective organization with all its resources to bear. Why should you have to negotiate with them as a one atomic individual person, when you and your coworkers can instead get together and negotiate from a much stronger position?
- maxxxxx 7y ago
  The worst is that with the secrecy about compensation you don’t have enough information to negotiate effectively whereas the employer has full information.
- appleiigs 7y ago
  When you join the union, you lose the atomic individuality. I've been a union member and a manager outside of a union. When I was in the union, they tried to prevent me from getting paid more - they wanted me to fall in line with the collective agreement which specified my hourly rate. If you don't go with mob, they call you a scab. Not pretty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikebreaker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikebreaker
- mises 7y ago
  There's a difference between unionization and trying to get board representation. Also, in many states, you're stuck dealing with a union in many jobs. You now have to negotiate with the union as one atomic person... The thing I personally hate about unions is their political advocacy. The idea that a worker is stuck supporting a politician he might not agree with is one that makes me very uncomfortable. Also, I think appleiigs summarized it better than I did, with the lack of individuality.

prepend 7y ago

This headline is misleading as it should be “Some tech workers” or maybe “a growing few tech workers.”

ycHatesFreeSpch 7y ago

Socialism aside, the unionization of tech workers is extremely important. Failing this, they will be exploited at every damn job. Unions exist in local governments, so why not at private firms too. It's time to organize. A lot of CEOs and CTOs will hate this idea, of course, and will do anything to make you believe otherwise.

mc32 7y ago
Their undoing contract will mean less if it doesn’t have ability to veto any attempt to farm out work to cheaper or less regulated labor markets.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  Why should they have such ability? If someone else is ready, willing, and able to do the same job for an overall more attractive package to the company, I believe the work should go there, whether or not it's the work that I used to do or wished I would do next year.
  - mc32 7y ago
    Well because it’s one of the main drivers of layoffs—which is part of job security which is one of the main factors in wanting to unionize in the first place.
    - sokoloff 7y ago
      I understand the obvious reason they want that ability. That doesn't extend to explaining why a random American technologist is more deserving of (ie "should have a right to") that job than a random other Earth citizen technologist. (I say this as an American technologist.)
      - mc32 7y ago
        Ok then why have these unions at all, if it’s not to add worker rights? A union for the sake of unionizing but not afforded rights to guide how people are hired, fired, furloughed, outsourced, etc., is just a pretense. Can you imagine firefighters’s unions saying, yeah, we don’t care how you reduce costs, you wanna fire us and hire prison labor instead, just do it, we’re good! Besides, if I lose a job to a worker in Romania, China, India or Brazil, I can’t simply waltz on over there and say “Hey youse all, I just landed, I don’t have a work visa, but you all gotta play fair, gimme a job, you took mine!”

maccio92 7y ago

Socialism is a cancer that needs to be stomped out. Not all devs want to unionize. Not all devs want "democracy in the workplace". These devs need to stop hiding behind crowds and learn to stand up for themselves.

sctb 7y ago
Could you please pause and review the guidelines? We're here for thoughtful, informative discussion, and another turn on the socialism-is-cancer not-so-merry-go-round is not that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Zak 7y ago

I've noticed this trend here on HN beyond workers organizing for their own benefit. The idea of regulating the internet, for almost any reason was abhorrent to the tech community a decade ago. Now, most people seem to think the likes of Uber and AirBnB need to be regulated. A majority of comments here about GDPR seem to support it, and I regularly see calls for more regulation of the sort. I'm not sure if the same group of people have changed their views, or if a wider range of people have brought new perspectives to the community.

helen___keller 7y ago
I think there was a sort of techno-utopianism in the aughts that the hip new startups will solve all the world's problems. People will be educated and not fall for disinformation with wikipedia and google at their fingertips. People will discover the wonders of democracy and free speech with facebook and rise against oppressive governments. These were obviously overly optimistic projections. Also, the rise of outrage porn makes it much easier for people to come to the conclusion that "the system" is horribly broken and needs to be changed (for almost any "system" that we speak of, government or capitalism, or youtube, literally anything)
- Zak 7y ago
  I think there's a tendency to discount the partial successes, perhaps because they make the failures yet more shocking. I can fact-check most things I read in seconds, yet there's a still-growing anti-vaccine movement. While the mechanisms promised are there and work great at an individual level, that's not always the case at a national, regional, or global scale. And now the popular hope seems to be that the wonders of democracy can temper the excesses that came with these partially successful solutions. It is my fear that this hope is also irrationally optimistic, and that regulation will lead to politicians and bureaucrats deciding what is true at scale for their own benefit.
okmokmz 7y ago
Regulating the internet is completely different than regulating Uber and AirBnB's business practices

helen___keller 7y ago

I've never been convinced that unions are necessarily the best approach to resolving the employer/employee power differential, but I do believe that in the coming decades something will be necessary. By luck, the explosive growth of software in the states and relative scarcity of developers has resulted in a lot of wealth and luxury for engineers. There's no reason to believe this trend will continue indefinitely. On the other side of the spectrum, another country that has explosive software growth but a large supply of engineers and STEM workers is China. China's 996 work policy has been getting a lot of attention lately and I think it should highlight the risk we face in a matter of maybe a generation or two if the software industry does eventually cool down.

glvn 7y ago

Unpopular opinion: As a recent graduate (last 5 years), I can't agree with most works desire to unionize for one reason: demand for your skills. When I was looking for my second tech job, I turned on that switch in my LinkedIn that lets recruiters contact me. I was immediately inundated with 10-20 messages a day from recruiters asking if I could speak with them about <Role with my expertice>. For me this was the most insane luxury in the workplace, instead of having to go out and look for jobs, those jobs were coming to me and knocking on my door. What I took from that is tech workers have an incredible choice in where they can go work because their skills are highly in-demand. So why unionize? Don't like where you work? Flip a switch and suddenly you have 10-20 offers a day from other companies looking to hire someone with your skillset. Yes, you have to spend time combing through the messages, on the phone with recruiters and going to interviews but at the end of the day with that level of attention to your skillset, you can basically decide where you want to work. Company A seems great but the culture is toxic, ok great let's see what company B has to offer. Company B has a good culture but their data collection practices you don't agree with, ok let's see what company C has to offer. Company C has a great culture and doesn't do the things you consider unethical with data collection, bam we have a winner. Also on the topic of general democracy in the workplace regarding decisions. As an engineer you don't make those decisions, you just implement them. Don't like the decisions, go somewhere else. Want more/total control over decision making? Start your own company.

frgtpsswrdlame 7y ago
Hirschman wrote a book called Exit, Voice, and Loyalty that you may find interesting. What I see in your response is this: 'Exit and Loyalty are enough, so why have Voice?' In your mind it's good enough to just go to another job that has better conditions, but why is it wrong to want to change your current job? I don't see a good argument in your post against the usage of voice or democracy in the workplace, just your perspective that you don't need it. But maybe others do think they need it, so let's give it to them.
adreamingsoul 7y ago
Yes, you are popular now but in 10-20 years after you’ve been through the wringer a couple times the concept of a tech union might make more sense. EDIT: changed "ringer" to "wringer".

idlewords 7y ago

As someone who was pretty heavily invested in getting tech workers to organize, I've watched with interest as some version of this article gets written every three or four months. There is always a small group of people actively tilting at this windmill, and they make for a good story. What I am waiting to see is a significant demand being met by any major tech employer. The end of forced arbitration at Google was a promising development, but the failure of the Google walkout organizers to get their key demand—an employee representative on the board—doesn't bode well. I continue to believe that tech workers enjoy a temporary position of immense leverage in the workplace, but turning that into substantive gains has so far proven beyond anyone's capacity. I wish the current crop of organizers the best of luck in trying to make it happen.

helen___keller 7y ago
> I continue to believe that tech workers enjoy a temporary position of immense leverage in the workplace, but turning that into substantive gains has so far proven beyond anyone's capacity I agree strongly. My generation (millennials) often look with disdain at how easy the baby boomers had it, often paying off their college tuition by taking on just a summer job. I think my future children (or maybe their children) will look with disdain at how easy software engineers had it. Imagine that you get a degree and train for a job, without a particular position of power, and just like that you have leverage and a growing salary that you can increase 30% every time you switch jobs! Just from the scarcity of your skills!

dawhizkid 7y ago

I always thought it was strange that we live in a democracy but spend most of our time working in corporations, which are more like autocracies than anything remotely resembling that of a democracy.

donaldknuth123 7y ago
Why beat around the bush, they are literally Autocracies. Dozens of people in this thread will try to convince you of why you should be grateful to work at one though. Capitalist propaganda has been astonishingly effective since the 1930s.
return0 7y ago
Same reason we dont live in shared houses, i suppose
- helen___keller 7y ago
  Arguably housing is too far on the side of democratic/social control. Sure you can live in a house by yourself, but you can't do what you want with your house or your land without first getting town approval, HOA approval, and so on.

whytaka 7y ago

Unionization is the incorporation and concentration of human capital to gain leverage in negotiations. If that isn't smart capitalism, I don't know what is.

gorpomon 7y ago

A lot of counter arguments here say that this isn't necessary because we can easily find new jobs. Yes that's true, but that's not what I want to always have to do in my career. I don't always want to cut and run. I want to invest in a workplace and have a meaningful say about my circumstances there and the work we do. I don't want to quit or have to suck it up and deal. I don't want to have to go into management and then have dueling loyalties (what comes first, ethics or keeping my team employed?) If I work at a big company like Amazon, I want a say in what our tech does and who uses it. Even if I cut and run from them, I'm not going to catch up to Amazon anytime soon. In a place like that positive change could much more easily come from within than from competition.

turkeysandwich 7y ago
I've started businesses. When I start a business, it's mine (and my partner's). Like a car or a house or a website. I'm trying to do something specific with it, with plans that I've drawn up. It's not just to make money. If all I wanted to do was make money, I'd just get a normal job. When I hire people, I'm not giving away my business, in the same way that if I give a friend a ride, I'm not giving away my car. If they don't like where I'm driving, their only option is to find another ride. That's the key difference between starting a business vs getting a job: all the decision making is yours. And this applies at any scale, even Amazon scale. If you have plans and you start a business to execute them, you can execute them even better at a large scale. Getting Amazon big and maintaining control is the reason you start a business. It'd be insulting if my hires started wanting to take away control. When you hire someone, it's with the implicit understanding that they respect that the business is not theirs. They don't own any of it. (Unless they want to buy in.) Violating that understanding is disrespectful. Like your neighbor letting their dog shit on your lawn and not picking it up, because they think "well, he's just going to walk his dog in twenty minutes, he can do them both at the same time." I don't like working (whether for my business or for someone else's business) with disrespectful people. There's a lack of trust.

gorpomon 7y ago

For low-skilled factory workers a union is largely about defending their rights and making sure they're treated fairly. For a tech worker, a union is largely about providing a worker-focused counterbalance to your companies decisions. Who buys the tech we make? What tech do we make? Do we allow ourselves to make tech that evades, impedes or outright destroys a person's rights? I don't want tech employees to quit those facial recognition companies. I want a large group of employees with a seat at the table saying that their work should be used ethically. Those companies can always find employees who for a variety of reasons will do the work. My hope is that there is a group of employees there who want to do the work and for the right reasons. More power to them.

malvosenior 7y ago

This seems like an all or nothing type of thing. I for one would never join a union so if some tech workers started to unionize I would always be available to take their place for the right price. It seems like incomplete attempts to unionize our industry will benefit those that don't want to unionize the most by making them more attractive employees.

MangezBien 7y ago

I think it is time for tech workers to force their companies to pursue an agenda that is in-line with the worker's ethics. We are highly paid, we are also highly valuable to the US economy. If we can effectively unionize - we can use that leverage to pressure the government to act in ways we support with regards to surveillance and climate change.

jeffbax 7y ago

These kinds of articles are laughably tone deaf.