9 ms·

Just in terms of salary isn’t an union somewhat contradictory to the engineering ethos of meritocracy? I mean we’d like to think that the good ideas win and imp

by yibg 7y ago

Just in terms of salary isn’t an union somewhat contradictory to the engineering ethos of meritocracy? I mean we’d like to think that the good ideas win and impact and outcome matters. We hold up the 10x engineers and those that make an outsized contribution to the industry / company / product right? Shouldn’t they get higher compensation compared to the rest of the work force? How do we square that with collective bargaining that has set salaries and annual increases?

commandlinefan 7y ago
Actors are unionized (or “guildized”, which is basically the same thing), but their pay varies wildly and seems to be more or less relative to their objective value.
- yibg 7y ago
  That’s a good example. I don’t know much about it, what benefits does the union in this case provide that isn’t achievable without one?
  - wolco 7y ago
    Before the actors union stars were made by a studio and forced to work for that studio for long hours and little pay. If you spoke up you were out. Lucy Ball was smart enough to start her own studio only to see it get sold a few years later. If they didn't have a union movies would look different. Maybe better for the customer because you get to see your favorite star in 10x more movies.
  - wongarsu 7y ago
    Two examples of actor union rules that come to mind are employers paying for journey to location of its more than a couple of miles, and the (very strict) rules about filming nude scenes (only essential people on set, people standing by with bathrobes etc)
  - omegaworks 7y ago
    Actors don't die on set any more, so that's nice. From the SAG-AFTRA site: "SAG-AFTRA members are entitled to a variety of benefits, including contracts/collective bargaining, eligibility for the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan, SAG-Producers Pension Plan, the AFTRA Retirement Fund, the iActor online casting database, and much more." https://www.sagaftra.org/membership-benefits/member-benefits https://www.sagaftra.org/membership-benefits/member-benefits
  - lbotos 7y ago
    I actually think Healthcare. https://www.sagaftra.org/sag-and-aftra-health-plans-merge https://www.sagaftra.org/sag-and-aftra-health-plans-merge
  - Seenso 7y ago
    > That’s a good example. I don’t know much about it, what benefits does the union in this case provide that isn’t achievable without one? This seems like an important benefit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residual_(entertainment_industry) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residual_(entertainment_indust...: > Residuals are royalties that are paid to the actors, film or television directors, and others involved in making TV shows and movies in cases of reruns, syndication, DVD release, or online streaming release. Residuals are calculated and administered by industry trade unions like SAG-AFTRA, the Directors Guild of America, and the Writers Guild of America. Per the wiki page, these rights were won and have been maintained by striking and union-lead contract negotiations.
  - vkou 7y ago
    Here's a brief list: 1. Non-competes. If you're an actor, the studio that you did your first film with doesn't own you for the rest of your life. 2. Getting paid for your time if you're called out for a shoot, and the shoot doesn't happen, because the director's dog ate the script, or some other non-sense that you have no control over. 3. Getting paid for your time if you're called out for a shoot, and told to hang around for 8 hours, so that you can do your 5-minute scene. 4. Getting paid if you're a theatrical understudy, have learned your part, and are sitting on-call, ready to step in if the main actor is sick/vacationing/etc. 5. Getting paid more for understudying more roles. Someone who understudies two principal roles has to be paid more than someone who understudies one other chorus role. Prior to unionization, violations of these were incredibly prevalent across the industry. Studios who took advantage of actors were rewarded by the market, and anyone who tried to push back on these practices was black-balled from the industry. Despite having to pay actors for their work, and not treating actors like chattel, the entertainment industry has not yet fallen apart.
- hinkley 7y ago
  Keeping in mind that an actor's objective value to the movie studio is proportional to their subjective value to the audience.
- quotemstr 7y ago
  That's because the actors' guild has a clause in the union constitution requiring a big supermajority (something like 2/3 of the vote) to impose a pay cap or to remove the supermajority vote requirement. The people who created the SAG understood very well that unions oppose meritocracy and specially crafted the SAG to resist this effect. I have no idea whether Kickstarter's organizers did the same, but I expect that they did not.
realityking 7y ago
It always depends how the union works and what they negotiate for. Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, Scarlett Johansson, Charlize Theron and Tom Hanks are all members of a union (SAG-AFTRA) and it doesn't seem to have prevented them for making 10x the money of an unknown actor. That said, there's a risk - even a high one - that Union Executives, over time, become rent seekers instead of advocates for their members. It's like government, every Union gets the executive it deserves.
eropple 7y ago
> the engineering ethos of meritocracy You know what's pretty inarguably a real "meritocracy"? Professional sports players. And they're all unionized. Tech does not meaningfully or significantly adhere to any ethos of meritocracy; it is exactly as political as anything else. The part that really melts your brain is when you realize that the "meritocracy" myth is peddled so the people who don't realize they're bad at politics are losing.
- scarface74 7y ago
  So do all tech companies have legal monopoly where they share revenues and where you have to enter a draft to get a job? Sports leagues have nothing to do with how most companies operate.
  - eropple 7y ago
    Of course there's no monopoly. But tech companies are pretty happy to collude, both at an executive level (we've had court cases about this) and at the memetic "this is what we think about management" one, in order to work against workers' interests. We, too, are allowed to work together to combat this. Wage suppression, limiting our ability to grow and expand into different areas, and controlling the ability to exert control over what the work we do is used for--these are reasons to unionize.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      There are only 20-35 “companies” that a professional athlete can work at. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of places employing “tech workers”. If companies are colluding, that’s the issue where the government needs to intervene.
      - Apocryphon 7y ago
        The tech collusion case involved most of the industry leaders, and thus presumably the highest payers.
SkyBelow 7y ago
>Just in terms of salary isn’t an union somewhat contradictory to the engineering ethos of meritocracy? Only if one assumes that management pays based on the same ethos of meritocracy. They generally do not, which is why a force to oppose the management 'union' can result in a return to meritocracy. As with any balancing force, it is possible for the reaction to be far too strong and swing in the opposite direction, but that isn't reason to avoid any attempt to balance.
dktoao 7y ago
How does one go about measuring productivity in software? Because you can't have a meritocracy without an objective measure of performance. I think we all know by now that number of features shipped / commits / lines of code are not good measures, just the most visible. Also, I have come to learn that "10x developer", just means "OK developer with a greenfield project". Maybe I am just salty because my productivity is being impacted greatly right now because the software developed by our 10xer of 10 years past breaks every week and I have to fix it to get my job done.
paulddraper 7y ago
Unions can negotiate things other than salary, like health benefits, paid leave, policy issues, etc. (Though in practice you're correct: unions rarely exist for jobs with more individualized pay.)
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- nelsnelson 7y ago
  It is worth mentioning that if the Senate bill version of Medicare for All becomes the law of the land, then previously employer-funded healthcare becomes one less thing for union leaders to have to negotiate with employers.
  - omegaworks 7y ago
    Partially. It will take basic medical care off the table, allowing unions to focus their negotiations on better wages and working conditions. M4A entitles everyone to a common set of benefits, but doesn't preclude extended benefits (medical or otherwise) outside that set.
  - rrobukef 7y ago
    Why? It just raises the bar for the unions: negociating co-pay, dental plan... Plenty of healthcare things will not be covered by Medicare. Unions will negociate about this.
    - hinkley 7y ago
      Would nationalized healthcare cover orthodontics? I could see an awful lot of union members being interested in supplemental family dental from employers.
      - nelsnelson 7y ago
        Yes. "All Americans would have coverage for comprehensive health care services, including hospital stays; emergency room visits; doctor visits; substance use disorder treatment; dental, vision, and mental health services; long-term care; and reproductive health care. Depending upon income, prescription drug cost sharing would be capped at $200 annually." -- https://www.webmd.com/health-insurance/news/20191120/medicare-for-all-faq https://www.webmd.com/health-insurance/news/20191120/medicar...
leto_ii 7y ago
> Just in terms of salary isn’t an union somewhat contradictory to the engineering ethos of meritocracy? I've seen that other commenters have already pointed out that the two are not incompatible. However, with the risk of getting some downvotes, I would like to challenge the primacy of meritocracy itself. I don't mean to say that people shouldn't do a good job at work or that they shouldn't try to continuously improve. But I think that an environment and a mentality of continuous competition between individuals is not necessarily beneficial. For one it can cause tensions, frustration, anger, alienation at an individual level, but I think in the long run it can actually harm the company itself. I'm curious what you guys think about this point of view.
- Seenso 7y ago
  > I don't mean to say that people shouldn't do a good job at work or that they shouldn't try to continuously improve. But I think that an environment and a mentality of continuous competition between individuals is not necessarily beneficial. For one it can cause tensions, frustration, anger, alienation at an individual level, but I think in the long run it can actually harm the company itself. IIRC, the authors of Peopleware [1] (fantastic book, btw) agree with you. They identified some pay for performance ideas for knowledge workers as "teamkillers" (e.g. tempting management ideas that end up destroying the social fabric that makes an effective team stronger than the sum of its parts). https://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-3rd/dp/0321934113/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_0/144-2052478-8412257 https://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-...
  - leto_ii 7y ago
    Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check it out.
Seenso 7y ago
> Just in terms of salary isn’t an union somewhat contradictory to the engineering ethos of meritocracy? I mean we’d like to think that the good ideas win and impact and outcome matters. We hold up the 10x engineers and those that make an outsized contribution to the industry / company / product right? Not necessarily. I'd imagine that a union could negotiate its pay-scales any way it likes, which could take into account "meritocracy" in many different ways. That could include ideas that are totally foreign to existing for-profit company practices, such as a peer-controlled meritocratic bonus implemented via the union itself. > Shouldn’t they get higher compensation compared to the rest of the work force? How do we square that with collective bargaining that has set salaries and annual increases? Here's a hypothetical: In a non-union shop, regular engineers get paid $100k, while 10x engineers get paid 120k. In a union shop all engineers get paid $150k. Should the engineers reject a union so the 10x engineers can get paid more than regular engineers, even though that means everyone makes less? Also: Are the 10x engineers the people management chooses to pay more? Is management good at recognizing merit? When they recognize it, do they choose to compensate it accordingly? Or do they make the good business decision, and pay the meritorious employees the minimum amount of money they'll be happy with. For some 10x engineers, that could be 2x salary. For other 10x engineers, that could be 1.05x salary. For some 10x engineers, that could be 0.75x salary.
- Bedon292 7y ago
  While I agree if the 10x is making 120 and it moves to 150 that is good for everyone. But what if there is a 10x who actually makes 200. Would you ask them to take a pay cut so everyone is on that same 150? I think people will have a hard time with that. I feel people will always want more money for performing better, or get incentivised to perform at the exact right level of that compensation and not more. I am curious what other people think on this. Is there some desire that most people have to be that stellar performer and get that extra compensation, which might make them not want to Unionize so they can try? Would also be curious as to how the breakdown in these votes go. Are the people already better off (well above mean compensation) less likely to vote for Unionization?
  - SolaceQuantum 7y ago
wolco 7y ago
Don't most jobs have a range set by the company? Something like between 80/120k based on experience. A union wouldn't change that. I've never seen someone go in with 10x skills at 150k and make it past the recruitor filter. The number of places that will pay you more than they decided beforehand is very small not matter if you are 10x better or not. You will get top of pay range. Startups wouldn't fall under this because usually you need 20+ people. This would apply to get giants who have systems in place. If you are truly worldclass they invent a position. But for regular developers where there are more than one person sharing the same title this is who the union is for.
- slumdev 7y ago
  > I've never seen someone go in with 10x skills at 150k and make it past the recruitor filter. The real crime is that employers have convinced you that only rockstars should be making $150k.
decebalus1 7y ago
> Just in terms of salary isn’t an union somewhat contradictory to the engineering ethos of meritocracy? Not to sound dismissive, but if you actually believe that working in tech is akin to a meritocracy, you're either fairly young or you haven't spent a lot of time in a corporation. Both of which being ok.
shadowgovt 7y ago
The engineering ethos of meritocracy is a flawed model for management / employee interaction because it assumes a level playing field. If anything, employees who believe their workplace should be a meritocracy can protect and provide force to that belief via a union.
mafuyu 7y ago
Tech work isn't a meritocracy, though. Even putting aside the issue of diversity and bias, there's a large gradient of working conditions and pay across the industry. There are plenty of really smart engineers online who have a popular following, and people are often shocked when it comes out that those people are severely underpaid relative to some college new grad churning out boilerplate for an ad company. Also, do companies really value 10x engineers? Sure, the people who are truly at the top, well known, and know their worth have great negotiating power to work on interesting things and get paid a lot for it. What about everyone else? I'd say that most "10x" engineers aren't getting 10x the compensation. Most people who perform well will get a promotion or something, and that's it. The way tech companies manage workers and handle performance reviews isn't all that different from everyone else. Tech workers are capturing a fraction of the value they generate, and there's no reason for management to admit that.
new_realist 7y ago
The two ideas are not incompatible. You can set a company-wide curve for promotions.
- yibg 7y ago
  What about outside of promotions? I’m not going to get promoted every year and I certainly don’t want to only be able to get a sizable increase tied with promotions. Although I do agree they are not fundamentally incompatible. You can have a large number of hands within a job level and have the ability to jump bands for example. But then this somewhat goes against the typical union (at least in the US) thinking where there is typically a step progression “up”. Fundamentally, at least in terms of compensation, this seems to be about how we view money in general rather than specifics of unions. Ie should everyone be paid more or less the same for the same job or should there be wildly different compensation. For unions I typically see salaries clustered, that every senior engineer for example does more or less the same job. Currently in tech the view isn’t that. It’s more the one senior engineer can dramatically out perform another and should be compensated accordingly.
  - bonzini 7y ago
    If a senior engineer can outperform another dramatically, he will get promoted to principal sooner than the other and is probably getting higher bonuses, even if their base wage is currently the same. If a "10x" senior engineer moves to another company he will probably seek a job as principal engineer and get a higher base wage than older employees that have less technical aptitude than him. Negotiated salary bands do not go against meritocracy.
ken 7y ago
No, your salary depends on how well you negotiate, not how good a worker you are. Whenever I’ve shared salary information with coworkers (at non-union tech jobs) it never correlated with value or quality or productivity. If you really want to go the “meritocracy“ route, drop salaries altogether. Make employees bid on features and maintenance, and pay them for accomplishing these specific tasks. Paying salaries at all (the same amount every month regardless of productivity) is anti-meritocratic. Open source is a fantastic counterexample to this. Lots of people produce huge collective value to the industry for $0 incremental salary.
heavyset_go 7y ago
Movie stars with multi-million dollar contracts exist in the same union as B-list actors you've only ever seen in the backgrounds of infomercials.
ieRei6ae 7y ago
You need to define meritocracy. There's plenty of excellent software engineers paid pennies to work on difficult problems because they live in countries with very low wages. And plenty of people in silicon valley being wildly overpaid to copy paste javascript from stack overflow.

by yibg 7y ago

commandlinefan 7y ago

Actors are unionized (or “guildized”, which is basically the same thing), but their pay varies wildly and seems to be more or less relative to their objective value.

yibg 7y ago
That’s a good example. I don’t know much about it, what benefits does the union in this case provide that isn’t achievable without one?
- wolco 7y ago
  Before the actors union stars were made by a studio and forced to work for that studio for long hours and little pay. If you spoke up you were out. Lucy Ball was smart enough to start her own studio only to see it get sold a few years later. If they didn't have a union movies would look different. Maybe better for the customer because you get to see your favorite star in 10x more movies.
- wongarsu 7y ago
  Two examples of actor union rules that come to mind are employers paying for journey to location of its more than a couple of miles, and the (very strict) rules about filming nude scenes (only essential people on set, people standing by with bathrobes etc)
- omegaworks 7y ago
  Actors don't die on set any more, so that's nice. From the SAG-AFTRA site: "SAG-AFTRA members are entitled to a variety of benefits, including contracts/collective bargaining, eligibility for the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan, SAG-Producers Pension Plan, the AFTRA Retirement Fund, the iActor online casting database, and much more." https://www.sagaftra.org/membership-benefits/member-benefits https://www.sagaftra.org/membership-benefits/member-benefits
- lbotos 7y ago
  I actually think Healthcare. https://www.sagaftra.org/sag-and-aftra-health-plans-merge https://www.sagaftra.org/sag-and-aftra-health-plans-merge
- Seenso 7y ago
  > That’s a good example. I don’t know much about it, what benefits does the union in this case provide that isn’t achievable without one? This seems like an important benefit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residual_(entertainment_industry) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residual_(entertainment_indust...: > Residuals are royalties that are paid to the actors, film or television directors, and others involved in making TV shows and movies in cases of reruns, syndication, DVD release, or online streaming release. Residuals are calculated and administered by industry trade unions like SAG-AFTRA, the Directors Guild of America, and the Writers Guild of America. Per the wiki page, these rights were won and have been maintained by striking and union-lead contract negotiations.
- vkou 7y ago
  Here's a brief list: 1. Non-competes. If you're an actor, the studio that you did your first film with doesn't own you for the rest of your life. 2. Getting paid for your time if you're called out for a shoot, and the shoot doesn't happen, because the director's dog ate the script, or some other non-sense that you have no control over. 3. Getting paid for your time if you're called out for a shoot, and told to hang around for 8 hours, so that you can do your 5-minute scene. 4. Getting paid if you're a theatrical understudy, have learned your part, and are sitting on-call, ready to step in if the main actor is sick/vacationing/etc. 5. Getting paid more for understudying more roles. Someone who understudies two principal roles has to be paid more than someone who understudies one other chorus role. Prior to unionization, violations of these were incredibly prevalent across the industry. Studios who took advantage of actors were rewarded by the market, and anyone who tried to push back on these practices was black-balled from the industry. Despite having to pay actors for their work, and not treating actors like chattel, the entertainment industry has not yet fallen apart.
hinkley 7y ago
Keeping in mind that an actor's objective value to the movie studio is proportional to their subjective value to the audience.
quotemstr 7y ago
That's because the actors' guild has a clause in the union constitution requiring a big supermajority (something like 2/3 of the vote) to impose a pay cap or to remove the supermajority vote requirement. The people who created the SAG understood very well that unions oppose meritocracy and specially crafted the SAG to resist this effect. I have no idea whether Kickstarter's organizers did the same, but I expect that they did not.

realityking 7y ago

It always depends how the union works and what they negotiate for. Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, Scarlett Johansson, Charlize Theron and Tom Hanks are all members of a union (SAG-AFTRA) and it doesn't seem to have prevented them for making 10x the money of an unknown actor. That said, there's a risk - even a high one - that Union Executives, over time, become rent seekers instead of advocates for their members. It's like government, every Union gets the executive it deserves.

eropple 7y ago

> the engineering ethos of meritocracy You know what's pretty inarguably a real "meritocracy"? Professional sports players. And they're all unionized. Tech does not meaningfully or significantly adhere to any ethos of meritocracy; it is exactly as political as anything else. The part that really melts your brain is when you realize that the "meritocracy" myth is peddled so the people who don't realize they're bad at politics are losing.

scarface74 7y ago
So do all tech companies have legal monopoly where they share revenues and where you have to enter a draft to get a job? Sports leagues have nothing to do with how most companies operate.
- eropple 7y ago
  Of course there's no monopoly. But tech companies are pretty happy to collude, both at an executive level (we've had court cases about this) and at the memetic "this is what we think about management" one, in order to work against workers' interests. We, too, are allowed to work together to combat this. Wage suppression, limiting our ability to grow and expand into different areas, and controlling the ability to exert control over what the work we do is used for--these are reasons to unionize.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    There are only 20-35 “companies” that a professional athlete can work at. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of places employing “tech workers”. If companies are colluding, that’s the issue where the government needs to intervene.
    - Apocryphon 7y ago
      The tech collusion case involved most of the industry leaders, and thus presumably the highest payers.

SkyBelow 7y ago

>Just in terms of salary isn’t an union somewhat contradictory to the engineering ethos of meritocracy? Only if one assumes that management pays based on the same ethos of meritocracy. They generally do not, which is why a force to oppose the management 'union' can result in a return to meritocracy. As with any balancing force, it is possible for the reaction to be far too strong and swing in the opposite direction, but that isn't reason to avoid any attempt to balance.

dktoao 7y ago

How does one go about measuring productivity in software? Because you can't have a meritocracy without an objective measure of performance. I think we all know by now that number of features shipped / commits / lines of code are not good measures, just the most visible. Also, I have come to learn that "10x developer", just means "OK developer with a greenfield project". Maybe I am just salty because my productivity is being impacted greatly right now because the software developed by our 10xer of 10 years past breaks every week and I have to fix it to get my job done.

paulddraper 7y ago

Unions can negotiate things other than salary, like health benefits, paid leave, policy issues, etc. (Though in practice you're correct: unions rarely exist for jobs with more individualized pay.)

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
nelsnelson 7y ago
It is worth mentioning that if the Senate bill version of Medicare for All becomes the law of the land, then previously employer-funded healthcare becomes one less thing for union leaders to have to negotiate with employers.
- omegaworks 7y ago
  Partially. It will take basic medical care off the table, allowing unions to focus their negotiations on better wages and working conditions. M4A entitles everyone to a common set of benefits, but doesn't preclude extended benefits (medical or otherwise) outside that set.
- rrobukef 7y ago
  Why? It just raises the bar for the unions: negociating co-pay, dental plan... Plenty of healthcare things will not be covered by Medicare. Unions will negociate about this.
  - hinkley 7y ago
    Would nationalized healthcare cover orthodontics? I could see an awful lot of union members being interested in supplemental family dental from employers.
    - nelsnelson 7y ago
      Yes. "All Americans would have coverage for comprehensive health care services, including hospital stays; emergency room visits; doctor visits; substance use disorder treatment; dental, vision, and mental health services; long-term care; and reproductive health care. Depending upon income, prescription drug cost sharing would be capped at $200 annually." -- https://www.webmd.com/health-insurance/news/20191120/medicare-for-all-faq https://www.webmd.com/health-insurance/news/20191120/medicar...

leto_ii 7y ago

> Just in terms of salary isn’t an union somewhat contradictory to the engineering ethos of meritocracy? I've seen that other commenters have already pointed out that the two are not incompatible. However, with the risk of getting some downvotes, I would like to challenge the primacy of meritocracy itself. I don't mean to say that people shouldn't do a good job at work or that they shouldn't try to continuously improve. But I think that an environment and a mentality of continuous competition between individuals is not necessarily beneficial. For one it can cause tensions, frustration, anger, alienation at an individual level, but I think in the long run it can actually harm the company itself. I'm curious what you guys think about this point of view.

Seenso 7y ago
> I don't mean to say that people shouldn't do a good job at work or that they shouldn't try to continuously improve. But I think that an environment and a mentality of continuous competition between individuals is not necessarily beneficial. For one it can cause tensions, frustration, anger, alienation at an individual level, but I think in the long run it can actually harm the company itself. IIRC, the authors of Peopleware [1] (fantastic book, btw) agree with you. They identified some pay for performance ideas for knowledge workers as "teamkillers" (e.g. tempting management ideas that end up destroying the social fabric that makes an effective team stronger than the sum of its parts). https://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-3rd/dp/0321934113/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_0/144-2052478-8412257 https://www.amazon.com/Peopleware-Productive-Projects-Teams-...
- leto_ii 7y ago
  Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check it out.

Seenso 7y ago

> Just in terms of salary isn’t an union somewhat contradictory to the engineering ethos of meritocracy? I mean we’d like to think that the good ideas win and impact and outcome matters. We hold up the 10x engineers and those that make an outsized contribution to the industry / company / product right? Not necessarily. I'd imagine that a union could negotiate its pay-scales any way it likes, which could take into account "meritocracy" in many different ways. That could include ideas that are totally foreign to existing for-profit company practices, such as a peer-controlled meritocratic bonus implemented via the union itself. > Shouldn’t they get higher compensation compared to the rest of the work force? How do we square that with collective bargaining that has set salaries and annual increases? Here's a hypothetical: In a non-union shop, regular engineers get paid $100k, while 10x engineers get paid 120k. In a union shop all engineers get paid $150k. Should the engineers reject a union so the 10x engineers can get paid more than regular engineers, even though that means everyone makes less? Also: Are the 10x engineers the people management chooses to pay more? Is management good at recognizing merit? When they recognize it, do they choose to compensate it accordingly? Or do they make the good business decision, and pay the meritorious employees the minimum amount of money they'll be happy with. For some 10x engineers, that could be 2x salary. For other 10x engineers, that could be 1.05x salary. For some 10x engineers, that could be 0.75x salary.

Bedon292 7y ago
While I agree if the 10x is making 120 and it moves to 150 that is good for everyone. But what if there is a 10x who actually makes 200. Would you ask them to take a pay cut so everyone is on that same 150? I think people will have a hard time with that. I feel people will always want more money for performing better, or get incentivised to perform at the exact right level of that compensation and not more. I am curious what other people think on this. Is there some desire that most people have to be that stellar performer and get that extra compensation, which might make them not want to Unionize so they can try? Would also be curious as to how the breakdown in these votes go. Are the people already better off (well above mean compensation) less likely to vote for Unionization?
- SolaceQuantum 7y ago

wolco 7y ago

Don't most jobs have a range set by the company? Something like between 80/120k based on experience. A union wouldn't change that. I've never seen someone go in with 10x skills at 150k and make it past the recruitor filter. The number of places that will pay you more than they decided beforehand is very small not matter if you are 10x better or not. You will get top of pay range. Startups wouldn't fall under this because usually you need 20+ people. This would apply to get giants who have systems in place. If you are truly worldclass they invent a position. But for regular developers where there are more than one person sharing the same title this is who the union is for.

slumdev 7y ago
> I've never seen someone go in with 10x skills at 150k and make it past the recruitor filter. The real crime is that employers have convinced you that only rockstars should be making $150k.

decebalus1 7y ago

> Just in terms of salary isn’t an union somewhat contradictory to the engineering ethos of meritocracy? Not to sound dismissive, but if you actually believe that working in tech is akin to a meritocracy, you're either fairly young or you haven't spent a lot of time in a corporation. Both of which being ok.

shadowgovt 7y ago

The engineering ethos of meritocracy is a flawed model for management / employee interaction because it assumes a level playing field. If anything, employees who believe their workplace should be a meritocracy can protect and provide force to that belief via a union.

mafuyu 7y ago

Tech work isn't a meritocracy, though. Even putting aside the issue of diversity and bias, there's a large gradient of working conditions and pay across the industry. There are plenty of really smart engineers online who have a popular following, and people are often shocked when it comes out that those people are severely underpaid relative to some college new grad churning out boilerplate for an ad company. Also, do companies really value 10x engineers? Sure, the people who are truly at the top, well known, and know their worth have great negotiating power to work on interesting things and get paid a lot for it. What about everyone else? I'd say that most "10x" engineers aren't getting 10x the compensation. Most people who perform well will get a promotion or something, and that's it. The way tech companies manage workers and handle performance reviews isn't all that different from everyone else. Tech workers are capturing a fraction of the value they generate, and there's no reason for management to admit that.

new_realist 7y ago

The two ideas are not incompatible. You can set a company-wide curve for promotions.

yibg 7y ago
What about outside of promotions? I’m not going to get promoted every year and I certainly don’t want to only be able to get a sizable increase tied with promotions. Although I do agree they are not fundamentally incompatible. You can have a large number of hands within a job level and have the ability to jump bands for example. But then this somewhat goes against the typical union (at least in the US) thinking where there is typically a step progression “up”. Fundamentally, at least in terms of compensation, this seems to be about how we view money in general rather than specifics of unions. Ie should everyone be paid more or less the same for the same job or should there be wildly different compensation. For unions I typically see salaries clustered, that every senior engineer for example does more or less the same job. Currently in tech the view isn’t that. It’s more the one senior engineer can dramatically out perform another and should be compensated accordingly.
- bonzini 7y ago
  If a senior engineer can outperform another dramatically, he will get promoted to principal sooner than the other and is probably getting higher bonuses, even if their base wage is currently the same. If a "10x" senior engineer moves to another company he will probably seek a job as principal engineer and get a higher base wage than older employees that have less technical aptitude than him. Negotiated salary bands do not go against meritocracy.

ken 7y ago

No, your salary depends on how well you negotiate, not how good a worker you are. Whenever I’ve shared salary information with coworkers (at non-union tech jobs) it never correlated with value or quality or productivity. If you really want to go the “meritocracy“ route, drop salaries altogether. Make employees bid on features and maintenance, and pay them for accomplishing these specific tasks. Paying salaries at all (the same amount every month regardless of productivity) is anti-meritocratic. Open source is a fantastic counterexample to this. Lots of people produce huge collective value to the industry for $0 incremental salary.

heavyset_go 7y ago

Movie stars with multi-million dollar contracts exist in the same union as B-list actors you've only ever seen in the backgrounds of infomercials.

ieRei6ae 7y ago

You need to define meritocracy. There's plenty of excellent software engineers paid pennies to work on difficult problems because they live in countries with very low wages. And plenty of people in silicon valley being wildly overpaid to copy paste javascript from stack overflow.