5 ms·
A year after 20k Googlers walked off the job, they’re madder than ever
- situational87 7y agoThis is a pretty long article that just states Googlers are talking about a lot of things while actually doing nothing. This is basically the "thoughts and prayers" equivalent for the tech world.
- briandear 7y agoIf they are so unhappy, why don’t they quit? It isn’t like they don’t have other companies hungry for their skills. I’m not defending Google since I don’t know enough of what’s going on, but if people are that unhappy, then quit. If Google starts to struggle to find workers and they are seeing an exodus, then naturally they’d have to correct course. That’s how markets work. It feels sometimes like Google is a kindergarten for grown ups and now is the part of the day when the kids threaten to hold their breath until they get what they want.
- journalctl 7y agoExcept this has adequately changed labor policies exactly zero times ever. When large companies can exploit labor (by being the ones with all of the money and power), it doesn’t matter how many people quit. Why haven’t the masses left Walmart? Because people need jobs to survive, and realistically some people have no better options. The “free” market for labor isn’t. I recommend reading up about the labor movement in the US at the turn of the 20th century and onward. You might be surprised by a few things, including what it does and doesn’t take to get your employer to change their behavior.
- Cederfjard 7y agoIf you’re an engineer working for Google, I’m certain that there are more options available to you than to the average Walmart worker. That’s something the grandparent comment addressed.
- busterarm 7y agoWhat says they're all engineers?
- anonuser123456 7y agoYou have to live in a complete fantasy world to assert Google has some sort of monopsony power over labor markets. There are literally 100 companies that would hire a Google employee within walking distance of Google's MV HQ.
- perl4ever 7y agoWell, also pretty much every company not within walking distance looking for a software engineer would probably consider hiring a Google employee. Of which there are even more than a hundred.
- Miner49er 7y agoI think a better question is why not unionize? If unionized they can start getting their demands met. It's better then quitting, because you still get to keep your job, and you don't have to risk ending up at another company that's no better. It's a way for the average worker to get some say in the way Google is ran.
- ebg13 7y ago> If unionized they can start getting their demands met. It's better then quitting, because you still get to keep your job The power of any union comes from threats to quit en masse i.e. strike. A union strike isn't better than quitting in absolute; it's better than quitting alone.
- ummonk 7y agoThe power comes from the threat of quitting en masse, not from actually quitting.
- goobynight 7y agoAgreed. Going into a fit every 3-6 months doesn't do anything if quitting isn't on the table. This storyline is just hilarious to me now.
- thorwasdfasdf 7y agodespite what you've heard, it's actually the employer, not the employees who have all the power. this is simply due to the oversupply of labor. when you have 1000s of people line up to take any one person's job, then if that 1 person quits it doesn't make any impact at all.
- nabla9 7y agoHeh. Big Companies have always had these BS slogans from values, community, "we are all big family", workers are our most important resource, we listen, and nobody was supposed to take them seriously. Apparently leadership in Google thought these ideas are genuinely good and created way for the workers to organize and talk freely. They created microsociety with politics outside the company organization and now they are trying to walk it back.