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> The days where "being in IT" made you a rockstar that could command a premium in individual negotiations are, best I can tell, way in the past. Are you kiddi
by twblalock 6y ago
> The days where "being in IT" made you a rockstar that could command a premium in individual negotiations are, best I can tell, way in the past.
Are you kidding? Salaries have never been higher in tech. Senior engineers make more than $400k (sometimes way more) at Google and other large companies.
It is likely that engineers at FAANG companies would make less money if they join a union, because the union would level people out by negotiating a standard salary for workers at similar levels at all companies. I haven't seen anyone refute this.
- hiddencost 6y agoUh, no. Nope. Google has been suppressing wages progressively for years. They made an illegal no poach agreement with their peers that led to one of the largest settlements in history. Just this past cycle they pushed down compensation for top performers. There was an internal slide deck someone found where they laid out plans to reduce pay by slowing down promo to senior levels. A union would mean the ability to negotiate as a group rather than just taking whatever Google decided to offer us.
- drstewart 6y agoUh, no. Nope. http://levels.fyi http://levels.fyi will prove you wrong.
- bichiliad 6y agoThe fact that google is suppressing wages today won't show up on levels.fyi today. It will show up 5 years from now, and by then it'll be a lot harder to unionize.
- drstewart 6y agoHe says it's been happening for years so it should already be showing up. Care to prove it?
- bichiliad 6y agoThe point is that they've had anti-wage practices for years, but that they recently reduced top-level payout. I'm not able to find a year-by-year comparison for pay bands at Google on levels.fyi, so I'm not sure what your point is with that site. I don't work at Google, so proving that Google specifically is cutting wages isn't something I'm able to do. At the same time, I don't think you need to prove that Google's incentivized to maximize profits. They're a publicly traded company; there will always be motivation for them to reduce costs. If you're in search of proof, the anti-poaching lawsuit[0] is not something to take lightly. And either way, I don't see you bringing up any strong arguments against collective action. Just because Google might not be doing something to reduce compensation right this second doesn't mean they don't have the power to do that in the future. [0]:https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-google-others-settle-anti-poaching-lawsuit-for-415-million/ https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-google-others-settle-anti-po...
- lawnchair_larry 6y ago> A union would mean the ability to negotiate as a group rather than just taking whatever Google decided to offer us. One of the highest salaries on the planet, and they still have several competitors? Yeah, this is very short sighted. The system works, and tech employees need unions for salary negotiations less than nearly everybody. This doesn’t end how you hope, and just reeks of unearned entitlement. If you don’t like the offer, don’t work there. Nobody owes you anything.
- Ericson2314 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_Labor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_Labor how about how you learn some labor history, and how organization efforts spearheaded by the most privileged workers, however odious in some respect, did beget trends good for all.
- drstewart 6y agoHere's some more labor history for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Hoffa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Hoffa
- DangitBobby 6y agoIs this supposed to convince people that unions are bad?
- drstewart 6y agoIt's almost as if single links to Wikipedia don't really prove anything, isn't it?
- lucian1900 6y agoCollective employment agreements mandate minimums, not maximums.
- twblalock 6y ago> Collective employment agreements mandate minimums, not maximums. Collective employment agreements can mandate whatever is negotiated between the union and management, within the bounds of contract law and labor law. Of course they can include maximums. What is likely to happen is that a salary range would be defined for each engineering level. The top of that range is likely to be lower than what many engineers at large companies currently earn, yet higher than what many engineers at startups currently earn. Therein is the leveling effect. Leveling is good if you level up, but bad if you level down. Many engineers at large companies would level down, if they were to join a union. So why should they support unionization?
- lucian1900 6y agoWorkers don’t have an incentive to negotiate a maximum. In practice, it’s minimums that get negotiated. It’s also not like wages come from a fixed budget. They can be increased by lowering profits. This is after all all about class struggle.
- milesvp 6y agoMaybe. This is how I've felt about unions since the grad students tried to unionize at my university, and all the hard science grad students would have lower salaries if the union came to fruition. So it's an effect that I would expect in general if good devs get grouped in with non devs. However, a former roomate's father owned a construction company and I was talked to him about unions once. I took the stance that he must be frustrated about unions as a business owner, and he said "no way". He said he loved the 3 unions he had on site because without them he wouldn't have access to the best talent. Apparently if you're a skilled tradesman you have a much higher earning potential in a union than out of a union, so the most skilled will be in a union. Now that said, that's the current equilibrium in the construction world. I have another anecdote from a former employer that had to deal with unions, and unions were a pain for that company to work with. I think the owner would have happily squashed the union if he could, but this was in a shrinking industry that had a glut of talent. Definitely a different equilibrium there. So you could very well be correct that unions would pull down salaries for high paid devs in the short term, and even in the long term. I'm just not as convinced as I was when I was younger.
- whimsicalism 6y agoUnions have very different relationships with different employers. I was friends with a Teamsters organizer and he told me that in fields like construction and warehousing, they would ask the Teamsters to organize the place because it was better labor discipline.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago>This is how I've felt about unions since the grad students tried to unionize at my university, and all the hard science grad students would have lower salaries if the union came to fruition How would they know what their salaries would be if they chose to unionize?
- marcinzm 6y agoMost likely the union organizers said they'd do X, Y and Z if created. That included a more standardized salary across the board which benefits those making the least but hurts those making the most.
- birdyrooster 6y agoParent comment read like some externalized imposter syndrome, but I agree unions are useful for extracting more value from employers. What isn't to love about that?
- marcinzm 6y agoThe fact that the people who get that value may not be you and that the employer may take value away from you to make up the difference.
- caconym_ 6y agoThose high salaries aren't the result of individual negotiations, though. FAANMG+ companies pay very well, but salaries for the vast majority of engineers are determined by black box formulas, and in cases where blocs of employees think there's something unfair about their compensation (for instance, people in one location being paid more than people in another) there's absolutely nothing they can do about it. The scale of these companies is such that even senior engineers have an essentially nonexistent negotiating position.
- ehsankia 6y agoIs it really a black box though? The majority of these companies have spreadsheets where people share their salaries, and from what I've seen, it's a fairly basic formula based on 3 factors: Level, rating and location. Yes, there's maybe a few % of wiggle in there, but generally it's fairly consistent from what I've seen. You could argue that the way you get a rating, or even the way you get promoted are a black box, but compared to most non-tech companies, it actually tends to be quite a bit better.
- madeofpalk 6y ago> The majority of these companies have spreadsheets where people share their salaries You mean a group of employees collectively organized?
- lawnchair_larry 6y agoIf you call that “collectively organizing”, I guess that proves we don’t need unions. The labor law was all that we needed and it worked as expected. Problem solved!
- caconym_ 6y agoIt's possible I don't understand your point, but it seems fairly obvious to me that doing a little bit of a thing doesn't mean you can't benefit immensely from doing more of it. Hungry? Eat a cracker and you may be less so—and it may even make a material difference to your survival in an extreme situation—but it won't replace a full meal.
- wnevets 6y ago>Are you kidding? Salaries have never been higher in tech. Senior engineers make more than $400k (sometimes way more) at Google and other large companies. and they would be even higher if google and apple didn't conspire to force them lower.
- lawnchair_larry 6y agoNo they wouldn’t. That was over a decade ago.
- wnevets 6y agoThen why did they take such steps to surpess wages, to save a few bucks for a quarter?
- ahelwer 6y agoHere's a refutation: Microsoft spends $250k/employee/year on stock dividends and buybacks. That's quite a large slice of the pie the union could negotiate for.
- twblalock 6y ago> Here's a refutation: Microsoft spends $250k/employee/year on stock dividends and buybacks. That's quite a large slice of the pie the union could negotiate for. Those buybacks increase the stock price, and employees are compensated in stock, so stock buybacks benefit employees already. I find it hard to believe that the company would just give that money as salary instead -- and even if they did, that would mean that employees of some companies are paid way, way more than employees at other companies. That is exactly the situation we have today, without unions! So again, why do employees at large companies need unions, considering they are already paid more than everyone else? Incidentally, I get stock compensation at my job and getting cash instead would have been worse. The stock I was granted has increased in value. Cash is just cash, and loses value to inflation. I would rather have salary plus RSUs than just a large salary. I don't know if a union would see the value in that.
- ahelwer 6y agoAs an employee I might have $100k in MSFT stock after five years. Those buybacks gave me what, a few hundred/thousand bucks at most? Come on. For such a supposed math-literate profession this objection is weirdly common. If you get cash you can turn around and buy company stock. Nobody is stopping you. Unions would also certainly see the value in employee ownership of stock, which broadly aligns with ideas of workers capturing more of the value they produce. A union enables workers, in aggregate, to capture more of the value they produce - value which would otherwise flow to the pockets of shareholders, the overwhelming majority of whom contributed nothing to its creation. Talk about employee salary distribution is orthogonal to this debate.
- vlovich123 6y agoPeople also seem to think that RSU grants somehow appreciate in value before they vest. They do not. If you sign for 400k of RSUs over 4 years with a 1 year cliff and the stock rockets up 2x just before your first vest and then plateaus, you’re still getting only 400k. There’s literally no difference to a regular salary except you get paid out twice and it makes taxes more annoying because you have to pay estimated taxes quarterly instead of doing it once like normal people. Netflix has also proven this obsession with RSUs is unnecessary. You can have strong growth without it and in large public companies, the theory that this somehow incentivizes employees in any meaningful way has a severe lack of any evidence.
- black_puppydog 6y agoI'm sorry, I should have been clearer: the times where simply being IT made you a rockstar are over. These days you have to be employed by FAANG, or in a company in their direct vicinity with sufficient funds to keep up. Many companies, and many places, are not that, but they still need IT.
- avianlyric 6y agoCould you provide some evidence for this rather remarkable claim? > It is likely that engineers at FAANG companies would make less money if they join a union, because the union would level people out by negotiating a standard salary for workers at similar levels at all companies. I haven't seen anyone refute this. More than one union exists in the world, they also compete with each other to offer their members the largest benefits. I don’t see why unionisation would reduce pay competition, if anything it should increase it by ensuring that anti-poaching agreements never happen.
- AshWolfy 6y agoSectoral bargaining is rare, its typically within individual employers or workplaces, even if we decide to do sectoral bargaining unions are democratic, and we could change what we bargain for or refuse to participate in sectoral bargaining