64 ms·

Kickstarter employees vote to unionize

• dangus 7y ago
  > That dynamic doesn’t reflect who we are as a company, how we interact, how we make decisions, or where we need to go. We believe that in many ways it would set us back, and that the us vs. them binary already has. What a shameful statement. Kickstarter has a so-so 3.6 on Glassdoor, and a sub-50% CEO approval rating. A lot of reviews talk about a secretive, insulated management group. You don’t see companies with 4.5+ stars on Glassdoor unionizing. So I’d have to ask their leadership: who made this an “us versus them” situation? Perhaps your local superstore sells handheld mirrors. You don’t want your employees to unionize? Offer highly competitive salaries, benefits, and opportunities to grow. Treat employees like real people you care about and avoid turning the C-level suite into a force of secrecy, discrimination, and exclusion.
  • namdnay 7y ago
    Or even better: your employees are unionizing? Great! It means you have an organized structure to discuss employee satisfaction with!
    • totaldude87 7y ago
      or it could be even worse, the “us versus them” has gone to the next level.. its all up-to the mentality of management , if everyone flexes their muscle nothing good can come out of it.
      • hannasanarion 7y ago
        Better "us vs them" than "me vs them"
  • Nuzzerino 7y ago
    > Kickstarter has a so-so 3.6 on Glassdoor Glassdoor's ratings are not terribly reliable. Here's something I wrote previously about my own experience with using it: ----- I left a poor review for an employer only one time in the 10 years or so I've been on Glassdoor (there were only a couple other reviews). And almost immediately after, there were about 20 or 30 5 star reviews posted in a short amount of time. The company only had about that many employees, which proves that the CEO (or someone at the top) either told everyone to write a good review, or some of them were fake, both clearly 'incentivized' by any sane definition of the term. I reported this to Glassdoor and they refused to do anything about it, and I even had the report escalated and re-reviewed, without any effect.
    • driverdan 7y ago
      One of my past employers did something like this. We had some negative reviews from job candidates that weren't hired. At an all hands our CEO encouraged everyone to leave honest feedback on Glassdoor. A lot of employees did, bumping our score up. It wasn't dishonest or misleading, all of the reviews were real.
      • Nuzzerino 7y ago
        Reviews are supposed to be from people who worked at the company, so if they were from rejected candidates they are fake reviews. If the company wouldn't remove the fake reviews, that further proves my point that the Glassdoor ratings are not reliable.
    • Krasnol 7y ago
      Our HR department spammed with "go to glassdoor and rate us" mails and hinted at giving good ratings because this way we'd be able to get people. At some point people really started to rate them. Ended up with a 3.2 rating.
    • deleted 7y ago
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  • hello_moto 7y ago
    > Offer highly competitive salaries Every time I see this statement, I can't help it but wonder why people don't put some estimate what constitutes "highly competitive". FAANG just shoot everybody expectation to the roof and non-FAANG is having hard time to compete in salary (sure, there are some exception but they are exceptions).
    • kerkeslager 7y ago
      From the workers' perspective, why should we care exactly? That sounds like a you problem. If you aren't able to pay your workers, I'm not sure why you think you shouldn't just go out of business. People aren't obligated to work for substandard wages so you can get rich. I certainly think that there are a lot of ways in which the playing field needs to be evened between small and big companies, so that the playing field is fairer to entrepreneurs and small business owners. But taking it out on workers isn't the answer.
      • deleted 7y ago
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      • hello_moto 7y ago
        I think businesses are able to pay their workers, just not absurd amount of money that FAANG pays their respective workers. We're talking about 85k vs 200k for junior engineers here and probably 150k vs 500k for senior engineers. Are you suggesting that small businesses should just die? > I certainly think that there are a lot of ways in which the playing field needs to be evened between small and big companies, so that the playing field is fairer to entrepreneurs and small business owners. The NBA tried to level small market vs big market. UEFA tried with FFP. So far the result has been... _meh_
        • Apocryphon 7y ago
          Perhaps unionization can come hand-in-hand with breaking up tech monopolies to encourage competitive behavior to allow smaller startups to survive.
  • codingmess 7y ago
    Isn't forming a union creating a "us versus them" situation?
  • naiveprogrammer 7y ago
    Sometimes I wonder if in some instances a low approval rating is endogenous to the company's employee makeup. I work in the HE sector and I can tell you that the lowest levels of student satisfaction comes from departments or disciplines comprising of mostly people complaining about society, yadayadyada
  • ksr_throwaway 7y ago
    > Treat employees like real people you care about and avoid turning the C-level suite into a force of secrecy, discrimination, and exclusion. This was the main driver for unionization. Outrageous incompetence from upper management. Source: I work at Kickstarter
• echelon 7y ago
  I really don't understand this. A career in software is one of the most pampered and lucrative ones I can think of. Due to the shortage of software engineers, we can go anywhere and get a job instantly. The only downside I can think of is ageism, but then again, I have colleagues in their 50s and 60s where I work. But I suppose this isn't universal. (I'm in Atlanta and we have a lot of older workers. Age doesn't seem to be a thing here.) Yes, we're underpaid for the value we provide, but we're paid a hell of a lot more than most people. We have the flexibility to find new work or create our own businesses. Why introduce a new level of politics and collective bargaining? I don't want to pay union dues. If I don't like where I'm working, I'll go somewhere else. Can someone explain why I should want this? (Or why I should empathize with those who do?) I don't understand it at all.
  • dangus 7y ago
    Just look at their employee reviews. The management there seems toxic. I implore you to also think twice about the way in which you are demonizing unions. Sure, some unions aren’t the best, but what you’re saying is 100% discounting the benefits that a union can bring to employees. Union dues can more than pay for themselves in wage negotiation. They can restrict overwork, unpaid overtime (see the special salaried overtime exemptions that IT employees and teachers get enshrined into US law), and unsafe working conditions. Sure, unions have bureaucracy, but they have bureaucracy that is incentivized to increase outcomes for the employee and not the employer. You are directly paying the union to represent and fight for you. The “go work somewhere else” solution isn’t an equitable or realistic solution for many employees. That often equates to “I can go work somewhere else that’s just as shitty.” Sure, life is nice for many tech employees right now, but what happens when the supply/demand situation inverts? Tech employees often also have a very bad habit of pretending that more poorly compensated areas of their own company are enjoying the success in the same way. Ask someone in support or a junior graphic designer about what they think about the prospects of “working somewhere else.”
    • ApolloFortyNine 7y ago
      >junior graphic designer I don't think anyone says tech employee and is referring to graphic designers/anyone in that area. 99% sure anyone who hears tech employee is thinking software development. EDIT: How on Earth can anyone downvote this statement? If you ask 10 people to name 10 tech companies, not one of them is going to pick a game studio.
• baybal2 7y ago
  I'm pretty sure that Microsoft had something akin to a union at least a decade ago. Any Microsofters here?
  • DenisM 7y ago
    I was there a decade ago, nothing of the kind was transpiring within my earshot. I also have plenty of friends there and never heard anything like this.
• danharaj 7y ago
  As a contractor, I'm happy for them. One day we will have one big union.
  • chimeracoder 7y ago
    > One day we will have one big union. The strength of labor unions in Europe is drawn in large part due to the fact that there are a multiplicity of unions representing workers for the same companies, and workers can choose who they want to represent them. That's not the case for labor unions in the US.
    • Someone1234 7y ago
      That's not the case because the US Government and industry has spent the last 150 years crushing unions and weakening them. Anti-union propaganda is rampant. It could be the case in the US. Having a single union is a good place to start.
      • chimeracoder 7y ago
        > That's not the case because the US Government and industry has spent the last 150 years crushing unions and weakening them. Anti-union propaganda is rampant. Well, no, the fact that almost all unions in the US use exclusive representation contracts (compared to Europe, where such contracts are range from "unheard-of in most industries" to "illegal") is not due to anti-union propaganda.
        • claudeganon 7y ago
          You're right. It's because Taft-Hartley was put in place to prevent unions from gaining the same workplace and political power as they have in Europe.
        • Someone1234 7y ago
          Unions being weak in the US is due to anti-union propaganda though, which as you likely know was the point I was making. Very few industries have even a single union let alone competition. Complaining about the lack of competition when union representation has been decimated, seems like pointless bikeshedding. I'll happily talk about the lack of union representation, but "unions bad because of [trivial complaint]" is a distraction.
• jdkee 7y ago
  “ I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.” -Eugene Debs
  • exabrial 7y ago
    Nobody at kickstarter is living a wretched existence.
    • PaulHoule 7y ago
      That is some of the reason they can unionize. Kickstarter produces enough surplus that the workers can get a better deal than they would otherwise. What's much more interesting is the labor status of the people who work on the Kickstarted projects.
      • jamiequint 7y ago
        > Kickstarter produces enough surplus that the workers can get a better deal than they would otherwise. Not really. It may be short-term better for the workers, but not likely long term as they are effectively constraining the growth of the business relative to what it would be if the union did not exist.
        • PaulHoule 7y ago
          Depends. The whole entertainment industry is unionized in L.A. I know an actor from Las Vegas who moved to L.A. and got a role in a TV commercial and was surprised to see somebody else standing in front of the cameras and was surprised to find that every actor has a "stand-in" who is there so they can set up the equipment, then the real actor is fresh when he does his scene. These costs add up, but there are many specialists who are highly productive. For instance, setting up and tearing down sets is a special form of carpentry which the average carpenter would take a change of mindset. Union labor helps maintain a productive and talented workforce that gives L.A. a comparative advantage. Being at times the the documentarian who travels light and feels it is extravagant to have a sidekick that sets up lights it heavyweight but it maintains a world-beating quality standard.
• exabrial 7y ago
  They'd be wise to learn from history: There are many people willing do your job for cheaper, most of them in other countries working for smaller wages.
  • MBCook 7y ago
    If that was true it should have happened years ago, no?
  • pcwalton 7y ago
    There wouldn't be any programmers in the Bay Area—or, for that matter, the US—if price were the only relevant factor in hiring developers.
    • notyourday 7y ago
      That's what Detroit thought.
      • Jweb_Guru 7y ago
        Sorry, so you're saying that Detroit's auto industry went away because they unionized? The thing they did many decades before that?
        • notyourday 7y ago
          SV has the same kind of attitude towards competition Detroit had in 20th century.
          • Jweb_Guru 7y ago
            I agree with you, but that has zero bearing on whether unionizing is a good idea. If anything it makes it more urgent.
  • Someone1234 7y ago
    I hope then you're passing on pay increases and benefit improvements to stay competitive. If not, then you're applying different logic to single employee competitiveness then to group bargaining without any factual basis.
• claudeganon 7y ago
  I hope we can look back on this day as the first in a series of victories in which tech workers rest back control from their workplaces from their executives that have driven them off course. From sex abuse scandals to wage fixing to collaboration with authoritarian regimes, it’s clear that many of these companies have become unmoored from the vision, talent, and ideals of the labor makes that makes them possible.
• Pfhreak 7y ago
  Congrats to the Kickstarter folks. Here's hoping this is the turn towards increased workers rights in the tech sector. Yes, this sector tends to pay fairly well, but that doesn't mean there aren't other areas to improve. From IP restrictions to overtime, oncall to transparency in promotions, there are countless workplace conditions I hear about needing to improve constantly.
  • ancarda 7y ago
    transparency in promotions?
    • Pfhreak 7y ago
      In a lot of companies there's a sense that the promotion process is secret, unfair, or doesn't evaluate everyone equally. Especially at big tech companies (at Amazon, for instance, I often heard a sense that it was 'impossible' to get to L6. Additional transparency can help people understand why they are/are not moving to the next level.)
• kirstenbirgit 7y ago
  What's the benefit of being in a union for highly specialized tech workers that are very in demand?
  • adrr 7y ago
    Maximizing the value of the demand.
  • pcwalton 7y ago
    Same sort of benefits as, say, union electricians receive, who are also specialized workers who are very in demand in certain markets. Or, for that matter, doctors, who are frequently members of professional organizations that are unions in all but name.
  • Someone1234 7y ago
    The same things as any other union? Improved working conditions (e.g. hours), protecting employees from abuses, and maintaining fair pay & benefits. Unions as only a working class institution is mostly a US historic artifact. Other countries have unions in highly specialized and in-demand industries too.
    • dmix 7y ago
      What were the specific concerns of the Kickstarter employees though? Were they being worked extra hours or being abused by management? Or not getting proper market wages? This is quite a heavy hammer to a set of problems, so I'm curious how bad it really was. Were they firing people arbitrarily making it a positive thing that the company will now have to jump through hoops to reprimand or get rid of the worst non-productive workers? Or the countless other limitations now imposed on the company from making decisions which benefit the existence of the company itself (and the fact they can even hire/pay for these workers)? Will it make Kickstarter super cautious about hiring new people with their new extensive protections lowering the amount of people who would benefit from the success of various companies who have unions (and the taxation of these which benefits the wider community)? Turning them into mini-exclusive clubs of workers, while everyone else works p/t or on contract to avoid f/t hires?
• ughitsaaron 7y ago
  Congratulations to everyone at Kickstarter! All workers deserve a voice in their workplace and that's exactly what the solidarity of a union provides.
• nimbius 7y ago
  Speaking as an IAM union member, congratulations! now comes the hard part. You're probably (still) going to hear a lot of FUD from your employer but dont worry, things really do only get better from here. Once you get a union youll get more quarterly insight into your companies profits, losses, and a MUCH better picture of what the company intends to do in the next six to twelve months. Youll also get a direct say in almost anything you think will help the business. Im not just talking about a suggestion box for the snack-o-matic, but real input to people with actual power. the hard part is the election period. Kickstarter is going to pull out ALL the stops to change your mind. youll get harassing phone calls at night, weird letters in email, meetings intended for one thing but that end up as an anti-union rant (EX: Safety meetings that turn into anti-union propaganda immediately) and of course lots, and lots, of direct mail from people and organizations no ones heard of outside a union busters office. Youll also get invited to a ton of after-work "pow wow" or "support" groups that sound like they are union related, but arent. Keep your eyes on the prize, ignore the fliers on your windshield, and vote.
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • makotech222 7y ago
    This is the first post i've ever truly liked on HackerNews
  • crankylinuxuser 7y ago
    I just formed a company back in December. Super easy to set up an LLC, C or S Corp. But I wanted it to be a worker co-op like Mondragon. And there's no real guidance or help. Democracy is cool, until we look at companies. Then it's dictatorships as the norm. And trying to do it right from the ground up is high impossible. As a obligatory comment: are there any other in the HN-sphere that focuses on worker cooperatives?
    • danso 7y ago
      Sure, it's hard/unfeasible for a startup to unionize in its formative years. But Kickstarter was founded in 2009 and is a relatively mature company in the tech sector.
• rolltiide 7y ago
  Opinions aside, you have to see the writing is on the wall.
  • codingmess 7y ago
    Which is? People crave Socialism?
  • commandlinefan 7y ago
    However you feel about unions (and I personally have many reservations), if tech workers unionize, management will have nobody to blame but themselves. They've had decades to listen to us, and they've responded with open offices, JIRA (or the equivalent) ticket quotas, unpaid overtime, whiteboard coding interviews and zero training. We're well paid but besides that, I'd be hard-pressed to think of a way we could collectively be treated with any more contempt than we already are.
    • codingmess 7y ago
      You can always start your own company if you are unhappy about other companies' conduct.
      • erik998 7y ago
        Yes you can be part of a union and create your own loan out company. https://www.wrapbook.com/how-to-set-up-a-loan-out-company/ https://www.wrapbook.com/how-to-set-up-a-loan-out-company/
        • codingmess 7y ago
          For example.
    • rolltiide 7y ago
      > We're well paid but besides that, I'd be hard-pressed to think of a way we could collectively be treated with any more contempt than we already are. Relative to other wage workers yes, but nowhere close to the ratios between wage and housing last seen 30 years ago. There are opportunities to negotiate for that sort of compensation again. As long as annual compensation doesn't let you own a house outright in 5 years in the same area as your place of work, then there is more work to do. Comparing yourself to other trades is not relevant. Wage growth in one not-so-rare trade will benefit many more trades and people. Most of us would not be where we are today if we limited our aspirations to what other people do.
• rolltiide 7y ago
  more shares for everyone! immediate monthly vesting, no 1-year cliffs, refreshers 6 months in woooo! I hear some companies are already like this, but then you have other companies with like only 5% vesting on the first year and no refreshers.
  • busterarm 7y ago
    Kickstarter has had no intention of going public and doesn't issue shares like that to employees at all.
• calimac 7y ago
  what's up with the creepy jacket and upside-down crosses in the group photo
• zchrykng 7y ago
  Is Kickstarter in a right-to-work state? Because if not, 46 people are forcing 37 to support a union that they might not agree with, which is distasteful in the extreme.
  • ughitsaaron 7y ago
    Thankfully, New York is not a right-to-work state.
    • zchrykng 7y ago
      So you are fine with the majority forcing the minority to support something they don't want to support? Never going to get behind that notion myself.
      • throwanem 7y ago
        The short name for that notion is "democracy".
        • chillacy 7y ago
          Tyranny of the majority is considered a pitfall of democracy, or consider how to enforce "the will of the majority while protecting the rights of the minority"
          • throwanem 7y ago
            Until law mandates that all labor unionize - and as closed shops, at that - the rights of the minority are hardly impaired when any one shop does so. Open shops exist, as do shops with no union of any sort, and employees need not remain employees at all, of anyone, if they no longer so choose; they are free to start their own businesses, of whatever sort best suits them. Those who decline to join a union, even at a newly closed shop, are constrained only in that they no longer meet the requirements of the job at hand - and the "right to work", so called, does not extend so far as to establish, regarding any given company with a union or without one, a right to work there. The plea to "tyranny of the majority" thus seems here to conceal a plea for the tyranny of the minority, in that they be allowed to frustrate their colleagues' strongly held and constructively expressed desire to obtain a more equitable balance of power in their workplace by recognizing their shared interest and forming a united bloc to match that which management and ownership present in support of their own shared interest. One wonders on what basis this sort of tyranny merits more favorable consideration than any other.
• deleted 7y ago
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• Ajedi32 7y ago
  Anyone else think the phrasing in the title is a bit weird? Were there other people voting in this election who were not Kickstarter employees? How can a group which makes up 100% of the electorate not "win" an election? The outcome reflects the majority opinion, by definition.
  • zchrykng 7y ago
    Only 46 employees voted for the union, 37 against.
    • Ajedi32 7y ago
      That's kinda my point. A significant percentage of employees were against unionization, so it seems rather odd to treat "Kickerstarter Employees" as a monolithic group who "won" the election. It'd be like announcing the results of a political election with the headline: "U.S. Voters Win Historic Presidential Election."
      • Nuzzerino 7y ago
        It seems odd to imply that the mainstream media is the gold standard on accurate reporting of national political news.
    • ccsnags 7y ago
      It isn’t a win for those people that voted against it. I worked blue collar union jobs throughout my 20s in private and public sector. That experience has made me critical of unions. I will never vote to unionize and I will always buck unionization.
  • SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    When employees vote against joining a union, that's generally called a victory for the company's management, so the phrasing contrasts against that. It's definitely loaded language, but it's common enough I can't get too worked up about it.
  • sp332 7y ago
• arrogantidiot 7y ago
  Sounds like Kickstarter will sell their assets and close soon.
• _sbrk 7y ago
  I worked in a union shop once, as a summer intern. Every day, we were told to be in the break room at 7:59am to begin promptly at the 8am bell. By 4:30 or 4:45pm, everyone was back in there, waiting for the clock to hit 5pm. One day, I needed to connect two PCs together, which was approved by boss as they would be isolated from the network. So, being the diligent type, I went off and found some network cards and a cable to do this. About the time I had one PC opened up and was installing the NIC, one of the local IT guys dropped by and told me "You can't do that." 'Why not?', I asked. "That's not your job.", he replies. Not "you're not qualified", not "you're not taking the proper ESD protection steps" (was wearing a grounding tape strap), etc. This boiled down to the union job classification, which said that I couldn't open up a PC to put in a network card. Unions, in my experience, exist to help keep mediocre, unmotivated employees employed. One has no incentive to excel, as promotions are based on years "served", much like prison. I got my degree, went to work for a start-up where ambition and taking on responsibility are appreciated and rewarded. I never looked back...
  • notkaiho 7y ago
    You worked in a union shop once. Not necessarily a representative unionised workplace, just the one you were in. Yet 'in your experience' they are not optimal.
    • nosefrog 7y ago
      Why don’t you contribute to the conversation by talking about your own experience with unions?
      • notkaiho 7y ago
        Because my experience with unions is along the lines of the other far-downvoted comments in this thread, i.e. positive ;)
      • jdkee 7y ago
        I’ll bite. My colleagues and I ran a IBEW union shop for about a dozen years up through the dot-com bust. We had over 150 union electricians building out data centers, running fiber optics along railroad tracks, installing low-voltage datacom, etc. We had a few electricians from the local pool who: 1. Would not show up on time. 2. Did sloppy work. 3. Lied about their work hours on timesheets. 4. Refused to stay updated on building codes, technology changes, fire protection codes. 5. Were rude to customers. And we would fire them for cause and they would show up in our shop a year later as it was their turn to be rotated through again. That said, the union gave us flexibility to scale up or down our workforce as needed to meet project deadlines. And provided us with trained, skilled and motivated workers. YMMV.
• arrogantidiot 7y ago
  Is it not possible for employees to instead start a copycat of Kickstarter and treat employees fairly? Why is it OK to shit in somebody else's house?
  • kerkeslager 7y ago
    Companies inject themselves into people's lives and exert whatever power they possibly can, so I'm not sure what your objection is to workers doing exactly the same thing.
• codingmess 7y ago
  Condolences
• chairmanwow1 7y ago
  I don’t see this playing out well for Kickstarter in the long-term.
• tempsy 7y ago
  How do unions operate in organizations where voluntary turnover is relatively high? A small % of people in tech stay at one company for more than a couple of years. I guess there's nothing about a union that stops you from voluntarily quitting for something else in that case, other than paying whatever fee you pay for the time you do stay?
  • ilikehurdles 7y ago
    I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that question; but, I believe the fees are usually prorated and split between each pay period. Also a lot of job switches are because that's the best way to get a decent raise, and frankly I haven't seen great benefits outside of the really big tech commpanies. Perhaps collective bargaining would disincentivize some of that turnover.
  • erik998 7y ago
    The model you are asking about is similar to SAG-AFTRA. This how actors work. This is the preferred model. Kickstarter employees should have used this as an opportunity to push for something like that. The reason SAG started was because production companies made an agreement amongst themselves not to bid competitively for talent. (Remember that just ocurred in tech...)
• mc32 7y ago
  I wonder if they’ll be able to do anything about outsourcing jobs? If they gain some advantage by being in a union but practically lose out due to outsourcing, what good would it be? Do they have any options to protect against that scenario? I recall a few years ago one of unis in SF outsourced many of their IT ops overseas. That is a progressive city also ships off jobs. Is there any way to attenuate that?
• shmerl 7y ago
  What exactly does it give the workers, better ways of dealing with management?
  • advisedwang 7y ago
    Leverage. Without a union, you can ask management for stuff, but they can just say no. Your only recourse then is to quit, which wouldn't change anything when it's just one person. With a union, a work stoppage is a possibility. Suddenly management have a reason to come to the negotiation table and make concessions.
    • chrisco255 7y ago
      First of all "asking for stuff" implies a negotiation between two parties. A negotiation implies that either party can walk away from a deal. You're implying management shouldn't be able to say no. Management is not necessarily out to get employees and excessive compensation or regulation around hiring and firing leads to either insolvency or stagnation. It's a balancing act. A union can be just as exploitative as a company can. It's not all sunshine and rainbows. The software industry has been regulated by demand over the last few decades. Demand is still extremely high for software devs. Managers know that employees can make moves because unemployment in our sector is something like 2%. I've worked in many industries in my life and I've never been chased down or marketed to move jobs as much as I have in software development.
      • mdszy 7y ago
        And the company can walk away too, they just don't get to take the workers with them. A corporation is not entitled to anyone's labor.
        • chrisco255 7y ago
          Neither is a union entitled to my labor. I would purposely avoid unions to maintain my agency as an individual and to work at more agile and flexible institutions.
• wellthisisgreat 7y ago
  Wow this really sad, provided Kickstarter is one of the nicest places to work at and their public benefit corporation was not empty words. These people ruined a really nice NYC company for everyone around. Anyone running their company who thought of making the workplace a bit different will expect the kind of crowd from this photo to show up and implode it. One thing is if the conditions were bad, there was insane overtime, the pay was low etc etc., but no, none of that applies to the people on the photo. This is why we cannot have nice things.
  • mempko 7y ago
    Why do you hate people making Kickstarter what it is? The people actually doing the work want a union, how is that ruining the company?
    • wellthisisgreat 7y ago
      The whole thing started as political stunt sort of due to the neo-nazis' outcry over some anti-fascist project. It was a mess (of course not sympathizing with Breitbart at all for the record). And now they just added a whole new overhead of dealing with their initiative. Look at that one-pager of extremely poorly formulated demands. Obviously the company will have to spend resources sorting this out, through lawyers, through hiring MORE managers to deal with these managers. KS is NOT a bad place to work at by large margin it's a GOOD place to work at. I am hearing already around here in NYC that no I don't want to go work there next to these folks, I am a developer not a polit-sci wannabe etc. The spectacular outcome would be if KS fails to raise more funds because of this which is quite a possibility.
  • lexs 7y ago
    What exactly is "ruined" about Kickstarter when the employees unionize?
  • cameronbrown 7y ago
    I'm just annoyed because there are so many people out there working in supermarkets treat like dirt, yet 'software engineers' who are paid huge amounts still want to unionise? Where exactly is the struggle here? I am not anti-unionist by a country mile, but I can't sympathise with this group.
• username90 7y ago
  > a historic win for unionization efforts at tech companies. Kickstarter is a small company which isn't representative at all for other tech companies, so I doubt this will mean much for efforts at other companies. For example, a majority of their staff at every level are women (a quick glance at their linkedin shows that this is likely true for engineering roles as well) but that doesn't say anything about gender equality of the tech industry as a whole. It is very easy to make wins like this at small companies just by having random (or sometimes not so random) perturbations. https://qz.com/923957/kickstarter-is-teaching-the-tech-world-how-to-get-real-about-gender-equity-and-fair-pay/ https://qz.com/923957/kickstarter-is-teaching-the-tech-world...
  • Jweb_Guru 7y ago
    The fact that Kickstarter is unusual for a tech company does not make the fact that it was able to unionize any less historic. Keep in mind that it is far from the first tech company (small or not) to attempt to unionize.
• mc32 7y ago
  I want to know if their union contract does anything from preventing parent co from shipping jobs to places with less regulation and cheaper labor...
  • coldpie 7y ago
    That will kill your company way, way faster than any union will.
    • uerobert 7y ago
      How? In my country for example there is a surge of US companies setting shop here just to hire local devs, and a lot more hiring remote, when their products have presence only in the US. Each year the number keep increasing.
    • mc32 7y ago
      India, Eastern Europe and other places have English speaking devs. Good ones may not be dirt cheap but they may perhaps be cheaper in the eyes of management in the face of unionized devs...
    • AnimalMuppet 7y ago
      Clarify, please. Shipping the jobs will kill the company, or the union contract preventing it will?
  • elicash 7y ago
    Now that there's union recognition, they will finally negotiate a contract. Sometimes, this process can take a very long time. This step hasn't begun yet.
• wellthisisgreat 7y ago
  Is there a list of demands and laws anywhere they want to impose? There is only this: https://kickstarterunited.org/ https://kickstarterunited.org/ Not a word about the standards of performance or expectations from employees who would want to be part of union. A short list of some fairly handwavy statements and a one-page website "join-join-join". Also what kind of positions do people who pushed this occupied? How many engineers have signed this? Are they actually technical workers or ex political studies majors, who lucked out to get a job at Kickstarter and not Starbucks.
  • lexs 7y ago
    Literally taken from your link. > Is there a list of demands and laws anywhere they want to impose? "02) What are the workplace improvements Kickstarter United is seeking?" > Not a word about the standards of performance or expectations from employees who would want to be part of union. "Kickstarter United will be made up of all employees in the bargaining unit."
    • wellthisisgreat 7y ago
      > "Kickstarter United will be made up of all employees in the bargaining unit." So no standards of training etc. for the workers? Just you know, show up for the work, punch in and punch out? Also there is no specific requirement in the list. The only one that is not a blanket statement and has actually some case in it is "when disciplinary action is taken" the rest is just a list of what KS is already doing and has been doing better than many companies.
• logfromblammo 7y ago
  > "inherently adversarial" Given that the employer-employee relationship--or indeed any vendor-customer relationship--is already inherently adversarial, and its power balance is skewed in favor of the employer for everyone but the most highly-skilled of laborers, one might naturally expect that laborers might cartelize to improve their bargaining position. The "us versus them" binary arises as a consequence of typical corporation management structure. One of the best ways to avoid it is by giving the employees an actual stake in the success of the company as a whole. Pay them in stock, or give bonuses based on meeting the company goals. Employees with zero stake are more likely to find any lever they can use to pry more of the value that they provide to the company out of its owners.
• aty268 7y ago
  Absolutely pathetic for both sides. If you don't like your white collar tech job, go somewhere else. It's not factory work where you're paid way less to do the same thing wherever you go. You make yourselves and your company look weak in doing this. This is why the rest of the United States thinks tech is full of a bunch of entitled pricks.
  • ChuckNorris89 7y ago
    Just because you work in tech doesn't mean you can't get exploited. And just "go somewhere else" isn't possible for everyone.
    • aty268 7y ago
      And why would it not be? If I don't like my job, I get another one. It's easier to do this as a software engineer than almost anything else.
      • ChuckNorris89 7y ago
        Countless reasons why. Low job supply in your area and inability to move due to family and other responsibilities tying you down or too busy taking care of your kids to have time to interview and study leetcode or too little time spent on a gig getting you labeled as a job hopper or as a problematic employee by other companies if you don't have enough experience backing you up. I feel you have no idea how complex people's lives can be.
        • aty268 7y ago
          Then that was the employees fault. They took the risk of moving to the middle of nowhere, (which for Kickstarter happens to be New York?), and are getting paid a bit less than industry average because of it. Is that a call to unionize? Absolutely not.
          • wbronitsky 7y ago
• notSupplied 7y ago
  Folks should really read this article to get more context on Kickstarter's history with unionization, it is truly bananas and not what you think: https://slate.com/technology/2019/09/kickstarter-turmoil-union-drive-historic-tech-industry.html https://slate.com/technology/2019/09/kickstarter-turmoil-uni... - The first thing that jumped out at me was that the primary spark of conflict was NOT compensation or working conditions. - The main conflict was around a Kickstarter project "Always Punch Nazis", a project that gathered a few laughs among Kickstarter's largely liberal staff + management. When they faced right-wing political pressure to de-platform this project, since it technically violates their "do not incite violence" ToS, it triggered a ideological schism within the company. - Unionization seems to be largely about placing this kind of decision in the hands of the employees. This is somewhat consistent with Kickstarter's history of activism. - However, it's pretty uncharted territory here: Unionization that is not primarily motivated by distribution of wealth, but for the political soul of the company.
  • ksred 7y ago
    This is exactly it. After scrolling through so many of the comments it's crazy to see the actual reason for unionising so far down the list.
• legohead 7y ago
  good luck to them. I was part of a union and joined the negotiations board. come bargaining time, I was probably the most stressed I have ever been at a company ever. you learn just how little the company actually cares about you and everyone else.
• oh_sigh 7y ago
  So what happens now? Do the 37 nay voters need to join the union or be fired?
• erik998 7y ago
  Will they publish the union agreement? Wow... we will go from job/salary comparison sites to sites comparing transparent union agreements.... That is a step up!
• jaredtn 7y ago
  I would love to understand the dynamic better, so please correct me here or chime in. Tech is has one of the best combinations of (lucrative + meritocratic) I've seen. Fields that pay similarly or better (law, medicine, investment banking) require either significant time-consuming credentials or significant time investment as an underlying (like IB analyst). The interview process does require intensive preparation to land a top spot. However, your compensation package increases proportionately to the preparatory time. From the mind of a top performer, wouldn't you want to seek out the best of the best, rather than settling for median wage? It seems like unionizing will encourage the top workers to leave while the below-average to stay, dragging down the overall talent pool.
  • EliRivers 7y ago
    If your workplace is shit enough that even in the Ayn Rand masturbation fantasy land of the valley, your employees want to unionise, your top talent already left or is charging you triple. Or, in horrible cases, they're part of the reason why others want protection.
  • jbob2000 7y ago
    Just to add to this comment; It's one thing for software developers in the government or a large "essential" corporation like a bank or telecom company to unionize. Those places get toxic because the work has to be done and gets very political because of the sheer number of people's lives they affect. I understand the labour issues around working for those organizations. But kickstarter? You mean the funding apparatus for indie games and gimmicky consumer products? That's where you want to unionize?
    • boomlinde 7y ago
      Workers' unions represent workers, not consumers or society as a whole, so why should they care about whether the workers they represent work at "essential" corporations?
      • jbob2000 7y ago
• lawnchair_larry 7y ago
  What an awful decision by those employees. They’re in for a rude awakening.
• busterarm 7y ago
  I guess they didn't think they could win their vote when there were ~110 employees but they did when there were 86. I guess things were so tense between the two camps that many people moved on.
• mech1234 7y ago
  Kickstarter prints money, so I don't think they'll be hurt too much by this. I think that Kickstarter as a company could exist in its current form with little change for a long time. I wonder how the culture works around there.
• calderarrow 7y ago
  Coming from a public accounting background, I’ve seen a variety of businesses. Somewhat obviously, I’ve seen some be successful with unions and others be successful without, which makes sense, as unions are neither inherently good nor bad. They are a tool which can change the power dynamic and incentive structure of workers and employers throughout an organization, but there is nothing inherent about having a union that guarantees ineffective operations, just as the absence of a union does not indicate that employees are getting shafted. Generally speaking for well run, ethical companies, whose management actively try to do the right thing, unions add unnecessary redundancy and bureaucracy. When there is a sense of trust between employer and employee, communication flows between employees and managers, employee working conditions are safe and healthy, and compensation is reasonably fair. For companies that are shady and treat employees poorly, unions help enforce structured communication and transparency between managers and employees. Usually I look for symptoms of bad management when hearing about employees who want to unionize. In tech, we can generally assume reasonable working conditions and pay, so Kickstarter unionizing screams “toxic management” for me, personally. I haven’t heard management’s defense, but ultimately the burden is on management to convince a majority of its employees that they don’t need a union. Clearly they haven’t, and given how easy it is to appease developers, this is particularly damning.
  • metalliqaz 7y ago
    The (original) article only mentioned one grievance, that Kickstarter removed a "punch nazis" project and the employees revolted. Honestly it sounds like they had it pretty good.
    • anarchodev 7y ago
      Having management that's not sympathetic to Nazis is a pretty low bar IMO, but if that was the only grievance I doubt it would have been possible to convince a majority of the workforce to unionize over this.
      • toasterlovin 7y ago
        Being against advocating violence against a group is not the same thing as agreeing with that group. This is basic logic.
• bluedays 7y ago
  Yeah this discussion appears to have been hijacked by thinly veiled anti-union astroturfing. I would be highly skeptical of all posts in this thread. Many of the posts literally using the exact phrases commonly repeated by anti-union propagandists. This makes me wonder if Silicon Valley is starting to see the writing on the wall and pay for disinformation campaigns in places where engineers regularly read and post. I know that there are people who share similar views to Peter Thiel within the software engineering community, but they are not the majority as you see in this thread. This is pretty shameful that this is what the Internet has become, a new medium to misinform the public. I wouldn't expect any productive conversation here.
  • socalnate1 7y ago
    Or maybe some people just have different opinions than you do? Unions are a charged topic for lots of people.
  • _sbrk 7y ago
    gasp You mean that all comments should be pro-union or neutral, otherwise we're being anti-union? My goodness, I guess you should go find the steward and file a grievance.
  • username90 7y ago
    I am pro European style unions where membership is optional, but anti American style unions where you have to leave your job if you don't like the union. (I live in Europe)
  • erik998 7y ago
    I would not be surprised if there is some low level effort amongst some of the larger companies in silicon valley.... especially after the whole issue of not bidding up talent or stealing talent from each other...
    • bluedays 7y ago
      Yeah all of the language here feels very contrived.
• ksr_throwaway 7y ago
  For those who are curious this union drive was really started by extreme incompetence from upper management. The former CEO hired ineffective status-seekers (including the current CEO) into many positions of power which created a super toxic environment. Accountability for internal problems has been extremely low. The "Always Punch Nazis" controversy was just the straw that broke the camel's back. People in the bay area may not understand that most people working at Kickstarter truly believe in the company's mission. The money is not great and we've been willing to accept that to feel like we're making a positive change in the world. Unfortunately upper management has used this (as well as Kickstarter's reputation) as a bargaining chip to treat employees poorly. Source: I work at Kickstarter
  • qtplatypus 7y ago
    > extreme incompetence from upper management. I don’t think that any unionisation has ever came about due to the management being competent and treating their workers well.
  • password1 7y ago
    But didn't the same management also decided to make the company a PBC instead of becoming billionaires by going public? That always felt to me like a signal that the management believed the mission too.
• cmod 7y ago
  Somewhat tangential but perhaps of interest to anyone here curious about unions — the documentary American Factory [0] chronicles Fuyao Glass' creation of a factory in the US, and the subsequent attempts (and ultimate failure) of those workers to unionize. [0]: https://www.netflix.com/title/81090071 https://www.netflix.com/title/81090071
  • chillacy 7y ago
    It was interesting to see the lengths management went through to prevent a union from forming. The show ends with management getting excited about their now robotic arms. Robots don't unionize and complain about healthcare.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• qwerty456127 7y ago
  How many are there? Kickstater looks like something quite a small team can do and I always imagined a union to mean thousands of employees.
• Waterluvian 7y ago
  I'm excited by this. I hope they utilize this as an opportunity to improve employee well-being and force the employer to treat issues like climate change as an actual hard requirement and not a "nice to have." I think the only concern I have, which I've seen with a lot of unions, is that they can evolve to become an us vs. them mentality, which enables absolutely mediocre people to keep their jobs at the cost of everyone.
• eximius 7y ago
  Professional guilds for maintaining industry-wide standards of competence and unions for corporate bargaining power. Still waiting on the first one.
• vitalus 7y ago
  Is it normal for unionization votes to have this kind of opposition? 56.6% doesn't seem like an overwhelming majority, so I'm curious to see how it plays out for all of the employees there. It would be interesting as well to know how/if the vote was drastically different based on role - it sounds like this was a company-wide vote, which would necessarily include many more roles than just software engineers.
• aty268 7y ago
  Absolutely pathetic for both sides. If you don't like your white collar tech job, go somewhere else. It's not factory work where you're paid way less to do the same thing wherever you go. You make yourselves and your company look weak in doing this. This is why the rest of the United States thinks tech is full of a bunch of entitled pricks.
  • fogetti 7y ago
    I on the other hand think that the comment as yours is why the rest of the United States thinks tech is full of a bunch of entitled pricks.
• vasco 7y ago
  I'm not going to express my opinion on unions because to be honest I don't know where I stand, but it's certainly interesting that the most talked about tech companies seem to be investing heavily in diversity and we hear from boards getting behind the idea that bringing different ideas to the table is positive, but when the new diverse crowd chooses to unionize this is taken as a bad surprise. Insert a surprised pikachu picture here, I guess.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• matrix737 7y ago
  Test
• matrix737 7y ago
  From my work at a major consulting company the way to fix this is to rebuild the offices over ~150miles away (the exact miles is NY law). Rehire all the positions and then let go of the employees in NY.
• B008L355 7y ago
  Where's my Coolest Cooler?
• lasky 7y ago
  It’s all very simple. Corporations are toxic. Unions are good. Punch all managers and rich people. Always Unionize. We’re all Unicorns. The end. Yay!
  • slumdev 7y ago
    Finally, somebody gets it!
• gok 7y ago
  Kickstarter is essentially a microcap stock fraud platform with a slick UI, so this is a good fit.
• angel_j 7y ago
  Hipster Local 153
  • lasky 7y ago
    We hereby declare the following as Scabbing: - drinking starbucks coffee - wearing new clothes that’s not patagonia - owning a car. renting ok. - eating animal products that aren’t wrapped in expensive paper and rope packaging - discussing any views that aren’t first endorsed by a jezebel staff writer or hollywood star.
• tarr11 7y ago
  Does this union cover a global workforce?
• rpiguy 7y ago
  The most fascinating thing to me about tech worker unionization is that it is less about working conditions and more about input on moral decisions made by company management. At Kickstarter the moral divide started with the Punch a Nazi incident. You see this at other technology companies as well, as employees agonize over free speech, what to censor, whether or not to work for China, whether or not to deploy surveillance tech, etc. This is a new era for union organizers. Ideology has become a "workplace condition" that people are organizing to change. It is an interesting concept. I am not for it or against it, I need to think about it more.
  • lasky 7y ago
    agree, this is by far the most interesting part of all this. it’s not about “my working conditions” but about whether or not my employer “agrees with my views.” I think this is partly because people understand the power and influence their organizations have in the world. When many migrant restaurant workers are working 80 hour weeks or don’t keep their tips, it makes it easier to see the radical privilege of tech workers, and their unawareness.
    • rpiguy 7y ago
      I think it is also generational. We now have in the workplace a few generations of workers who grew up being told their opinions mattered and that speaking up is a virtue. I don't think it is necessarily a bad thing. Us old-timers were taught the opposite, your opinions don't matter much, no one will listen to you until you prove yourself, etc. So I think the generational shift has something to do with it. I also think labor organizers are exuberant because they finally have a way to build a wedge between highly-paid employees who were formerly resistant to unionizing and their management.
• elicash 7y ago
  1. Why do tech workers need a union? If you want to improve your workplace, you have additional leverage to fight for changes if you're in a union. There's often very little you can do alone. This might be things like pay, or it might be something else entirely. 2. But aren't tech workers elite coddled rich kids who are lucky to make what they receive? I mean, no. But even if so, high pay doesn't stop athletes from joining a union. Folks who run these companies are even more elite than the person who codes. Why not negotiate for a better workplace? Why be a weak negotiator? Isn't that especially important to do when you have flexibility to go somewhere else? 3. Why don't they just leave their job? Some issues are systemic across an industry. Additionally, some people like to improve their jobs rather than just leave. People are wired differently. Creating lasting change at a company can be rewarding. Some also care about the mission of the company they work for.
  • duxup 7y ago
    Athletic unions are generally there because the top leagues are monolithic, there aren't other places to go with similar compensation. It's sort of a different playing field.
    • onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
      Okay, so you have 2 options to make dollar money as an engineer: Google & Facebook. Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon pay well, but 10-20% less for the same level. There's a handful of others that will pay about 20-40% less. The average startup is paying 40-70% less. And, sure, you'll always run into some startup that's paying one or two engineers a million dollars. Stephon Marbury made more money when he left the NBA to play in China. Doesn't mean the average player can or does. Anyone making league average in the NBA could play in Europe or China for 40-70% less. Not sure what the difference is...
      • duxup 7y ago
        I don't think those options are the only ones and I think your numbers are dramatically far off for everything.
• mdszy 7y ago
  Hot take: If your comment starts with "Why don't they just..." then it's almost certainly something stupid that assumes everyone has the same ability to move jobs/uproot their life that you do. Don't even bother saying it.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• quotemstr 7y ago
  Well, now we have a natural experiment on the effect of unionization on a tech company. I look forward to monitoring the results over the next few months and years.
• pensatoio 7y ago
  Perhaps I’m jaded by my experience working for employers that support change and transparency, but I, for one, would immediately pack up and leave if any part of my firm’s white collar workforce unionized. I have zero interest in participating in collective bargaining. I work hard to stand out, and I capitalize on that influence to negotiate raises and promote change on my own. While I’m sure there are situations that merit such a decision, might I suggest that unionizing < finding another employer that meets your needs. The inability or lack of desire to do so indicates to me either fear of change or aversion to risk, both of which are unwarranted from anyone who is continually working to improve themself.
• marcell 7y ago
  I'm trying to understand what the employees hope to get out of this. The only substantial issue mentioned in the article is a dispute over whether "Always Punch Nazis" should be allowed on the site. Does anyone have insight into what's motivating the Kickstarter employees here?
• alec2dabreen 7y ago
  I'm all for it. Congrats to them!
• sjg007 7y ago
  Hospital doctors are unionized. Professors are unionized. Plumbers are unionized Dirt movers are unionized Police are unionized Figherfighters are unionized Public employees are unionized Teachers are unionized Actors are unionized the NBA is unionized the NFL is unionized the MLB is unionized the NHL is unionized And yet, software engineers should not be ?
  • pro-duct 7y ago
    It being a common practice isn't relevant to whether it is best for this industry and its workers. I'm not saying I disagree, but your reasoning just doesn't support your argument
    • sjg007 7y ago
      What makes software engineering different?
      • chillacy 7y ago
        Many of us make more money writing software today than we could working one of those unionized jobs while having less credentialing (or not being in the top 1% like the sports players). Nothing on that list looks enviable to me.
        • sjg007 7y ago
          You should actually look into those union careees and see how much they make. You’d be surprised.
          • chillacy 7y ago
            There's no question that limiting the supply of labor in a job market increases its price. I just don't think it's worth the price. For unions there's an extra layer of overhead and union dues. For professional societies (like the AMA) there's an extra layer of credentialing and suspiciously low innovation. But that's my assessment and I'm probably abnormal in my situation. I'm happy to be wrong though. If more companies form unions and these companies pay better, reward good performance more fairly, have less intrinsic bias, etc, then I'll be the first to jump ship.
• cartercole 7y ago
  there goes the neighborhood
• bobloblaw45 7y ago
  So Kickstarter will be hiring more contractors then?
• sergiotapia 7y ago
  What's up with the satanic jacket in the picture? https://teespring.com/shop/satanic-no-masters?pid=2&cid=2397 https://teespring.com/shop/satanic-no-masters?pid=2&cid=2397
• MuffinFlavored 7y ago
  What are the cons of unionizing? All of the benefits always seem "too good to be true" to be.
  • manfredo 7y ago
    In a non right-to-work state like NY, it means you have to pay dues to a union that negotiates on your behalf. It can very well end up negotiating for things you don't want, or are even actively against. For instance, a teacher may be in favor of merit-based promotion and compensation while they are obligated to pay dues to a union that pushes for seniority based pay.
• stevespang 7y ago
  TAKE NOTICE, Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg, Ellison, Page & Brin 'cause your monoliths are NEXT.
• 2019-nCoV 7y ago
  The biggest myth about labor unions is that unions are for the workers. Unions are for unions, just as corporations are for corporations and politicians are for politicians.
• knee-cartilage 7y ago
  nearly half of them voted against it? americans are so amazingly propagandized against anything vaguely construed as 'socialism' it's honestly impressive
• L-four 7y ago
  I never understood why employees in America need to vote to join a union. In Australia employees can join/leave unions at will.
• justlexi93 7y ago
  These workers are setting an example for the entire industry. Tech employees deserve job security, strong wages and benefits, and a voice in their companies.
• allsystemsgo 7y ago
  Kickstarter employees vote to be unemployed.
• thulecitizen 7y ago
  I see a beautiful symphony here. The fact that this is discussed is to me a sign that enough people are feeling pressured and stressed, and sharing how the current systems don't work for them. Through sharing we can reveal our hopes and frustrations. Dialogue is step 1. It's a brave, difficult first step. Bravo Hackernews community. What ever pains people have, I'd like to ask them to try and see it as temporary growing pains. That maybe those who disagree with this development can see that others are sharing their unmet needs, as a request to help get help in getting those needs met. Exploring new strategies. I believe we will make it through and come out stronger.
• cynusx 7y ago
  I can't help but think that unions are very similar to code smells, it's when the management of the company isn't able to maintain cooperation and trust with their employees. I would never work for a company with a union
• Miniso 7y ago
  The same ol'shite that is ruining most of the workplaces nowadays. Wtf you want? A job right? You've got it now do it properly and earn your money the right way..