4 ms·
It all depends on what your goal is. Unions take money from R&D and shareholders, and put it in their own pockets. That's totally fine, but it is a tradeoff. Th
by kolbe 6y ago
It all depends on what your goal is. Unions take money from R&D and shareholders, and put it in their own pockets. That's totally fine, but it is a tradeoff. The negative side is it creates opportunities for other companies that aren't unionized to innovate with that capital. Or sometimes it just results in returning capital to shareholders. Tesla is a good example of where paying union members instead of investing in R&D offered Musk an amazing opportunity to outcompete some of the most entrenched and subsidized companies in the US. We are actually quite fortunate that this even happened in the US, because the opportunity was there for any company in any country to seize.
As an aside, I don't get why deng tolerates comments like yours, but will mod an equivalent comment that even moderately right wing. If we want real discussion here, it doesn't start with a reshashed Eugene Debs speech.
- bumby 6y agoI’ll be honest, I’ve never heard that R&D angle before. But I wonder is HN would be so positive on TSLA if it were instead “Musk decided to pay his engineers less so he could innovate instead!”
- kolbe 6y agoEngineers are R&D
- bumby 6y agoNot necessarily and it often depends where you work. Many (most even) are in support roles like maintenance, etc. E.g., I’ve previously worked for an automotive manufacturer on controls software. I was attached to the maintenance team. The design engineers were a subset of the entire engineers population. In other places I’ve worked, R&D was mainly done by scientists and physicists, not by engineers who served to support the R&D effort