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Don't think we've ever seen Hollywood in the modern era without unions, so not sure how you can claim it's "undeniable" the industry is better off. We basically

by karl11 6y ago

Don't think we've ever seen Hollywood in the modern era without unions, so not sure how you can claim it's "undeniable" the industry is better off. We basically have no clue if it's better off or not. Unions are intended for industries where a worker doesn't have a marketplace of options as there is a single or just a few employers (e.g. Hollywood, teachers, coal mining towns, hospital staff, etc.). Unionizing at Google makes no sense, as there are thousands of tech companies hiring engineers in the valley -- engineers can "collectively bargain" with Google by simply leaving and working somewhere "better". The reality is that Google is an easy place to work relative to how much people get paid. People don't want to leave a cushy job for one where they would have to work harder for their money, so instead, they are trying other means to have their cake and eat it too.

itake 6y ago
Just wondering but what companies are comparable to google to work at (with similar pay and culture)? I can only think of a handful that pay as well and even less if you consider corporate mission and culture.
- karl11 6y ago
  Exactly - people don't want to sacrifice their paycheck for their principles, so instead they are forming a union so they can try and change the company and have it both ways.
  - avianlyric 6y ago
    > so instead they are forming a union so they can try and change the company and have it both ways. Is this a bad thing?
    - ddingus 6y ago
      Nope.
avianlyric 6y ago
> People don't want to leave a cushy job for one where they would have to work harder for their money, so instead, they are trying other means to have their cake and eat it too. You're saying this like it's a bad thing. Why shouldn't employees expect, and get, better working conditions? > engineers can "collectively bargain" with Google by simply leaving and working somewhere "better" How is individuals leaving "collectively bargain", it's the complete opposite, it's individual bargaining, with all the perils that entails. > Unions are intended for industries where a worker doesn't have a marketplace of options as there is a single or just a few employers (e.g. Hollywood, teachers, coal mining towns, hospital staff, etc.). This is just a mis-conception, look at Germany where every industry has unions, regardless of size, and unions has a say in how companies are run, and what direction they head in. They make sure that shareholders and employees get input into the highest levels of leadership, ensuring that shareholders can't force decisions that benefit shareholders at the detriment of employees. Finally Google looks like the perfect place for a union. Any company that rewards senior leadership for sexual harassment clearly doesn't consider it's employees important, and those employees should absolutely make it clear who generates most of the value in a company, and ensure they're treated fairly.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  Aren't most employees also shareholders, in the tech industry? Don't we have representation through that mechanism and why isn't it enough?
  - avianlyric 6y ago
    Not sure who told you that. Most employees with either have options (which can become shares, but aren't) or Restricted Stock Units (RSU's) which are useless till vested. Either way their holding will be miniscule, even in aggregate, compared to other shareholders. Even if it wasn't miniscule, they would still need to organise, maybe form some sort of coalition, or "union", in order to leverage their collective voting power against other large, unified, shareholders.
  - eropple 6y ago
    Google gives out Class C stock options to (most) employees, so even when they vest they can't vote. They're certainly not alone in that. So, no, probably not? Even were they, the voting capability of such a share is ineffectually small; this is the "why you can just not spend money at MegaMart if you care so much" [because singular action doesn't work but we can make it sound just viable enough that you go away] argument tilted a little.
humanrebar 6y ago
> Unions are intended for industries where a worker doesn't have a marketplace of options... I'm not sure the cause and effect work that way, at least not entirely. Unions do restrain roles of workers and structure compensation to particular patterns. It seems plausible to me that those sorts of restrictions are in some ways detrimental to companies that wish to (or need to) disrupt incumbents. It's plausible that they function as a sort of regulatory capture. In some cases, as with unions of government workers, literal regulator capture enters the picture too.
- Mauricebranagh 6y ago
  Not really for M&P managerial and professional, SAG doesn't limit what say George Clooney gets for a film for example.
  - humanrebar 6y ago
    It limits pay scales, how credit is given, and what Clooney can do as a producer to get his film made.
Moosdijk 6y ago
>>engineers can "collectively bargain" with Google by simply leaving and working somewhere "better". This "if you don't like it here, go work somewhere else" kind of reasoning disproportionately balances the power towards the employer. Instead of fixing problems, it leads to removing those that are affected. This is exactly what unions are for.
- huffmsa 6y ago
  The traitorous eight leaving Shockley because they didn't like their boss is foundational to the valley.
  - consp 6y ago
    At that, what is basically a startup, level it is possible but for a company the size of Google it would not put a dent into the system. Totally different power dynamics.
- dls2016 6y ago
  I like that everyone sort of forgets about the time the big tech firms were caught in a wage-fixing cabal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
the_other 6y ago
The idea that leaving equates to collective bargaining is false, and even if it had a ring of truth it would be ineffectual at FAANG companies. Leaving changes nothing, it just accelerates the bad behaviour because the obstacle to the bad behaviour removed itself. A single person, even a team of engineers, leaving a FAANG company will have near-zero impact on the behaviour, functioning or profitability of that company. The action will not change management or ownership's perspectives on anything. They'll simply hire someone else, and promote internally if they need too. Even when you have a celebrity engineer like Tim Brey leave Amazon, publicly explaining why, outright slamming some of their behaviour, nothing will change. Mozilla seems to think it can function exactly the same as it did before (in terms of mindset) having let go of 25% of its staff. In the UK we recently had several politicians leave their senior positions within government or their party over disagreements in policy... and nothing meaningful has changed. Unions are not just for protecting jobs, they're much more about staff having a voice, if not a seat, at the executive table. Unions can help influence senior decision-making. Most of that is about job protection, pay, quality of life issues because in blue-collar jobs those are the key issues. But in white-collar jobs a union can represent the opinion and aims of staff in a way that isn't obvious without them.
- prepend 6y ago
  > Leaving changes nothing Leaving improves conditions for the worker and that’s the biggest thing for me, the worker.
  - alextheparrot 6y ago
    The entire post talks about effects on the company. If we’re trying to be unreasonably obtuse, it doesn’t change conditions for a worker either because a person not working is not a worker.
    - prepend 6y ago
      What I meant is that it does change conditions for the worker as they leave for better conditions. I think working in tech, it’s been a luxury to line up a new job and go to that job with zero down time. I’m not suggesting people do brash stuff like walk out without new employment lined up. This is a huge change, the biggest I think, as I can change all of my conditions by finding a company that gives me what I want. I think to a lesser extent since I’ve frequently seen that smart people leaving for specific reasons changes company policy. I was just trying to show a simple contra to parent’s comment saying that leaving changes nothing as that seems simply false to me.
appleflaxen 6y ago
You list teachers, who in my opinion are the poster children of how problematic unions are. And there are some phenomenal teachers out there. There are teachers that change lives profoundly. But they don't need the unions, and the terrible teachers who should be fired /are/ protected. It's really messed up, most people have first-hand experience with it, and they are a corrosive factor in the end.
- e40 6y ago
  This is the elephant in the room. Unions make it much harder to fire low performers. I think they have great benefits, but this terrible side effect. For another example look at police unions.
  - rzz3 6y ago
    Public unions are a bad idea in general. The citizens collectively employ the government, and that government shouldn’t have a right to organize against the people whom it serves. So in my opinion, these two examples of toxic public unions shouldn’t be applied to private unions.
    - nemo44x 6y ago
      I agree. I’m indifferent to private sector unions. None of my business if it isn’t my workplace. But public sector unions are a path to corruption. Both major parties exploit these so I can’t blame a single party here either. What better way to consolidate power than by aligning with a public service union and “bargain” with them while being incentivized to grow membership in that union to further consolidate power. If anything I’d support public sector unions if members were not allowed to vote for offices that represent their “management” or control their budgets. Could you imagine a private sector union appointing the management of the company they negotiate with?
      - HideousKojima 6y ago
        >Both major parties exploit these so I can’t blame a single party here either. Republicans in Wisconsin abolished public unions back in 2011 (though admittedly they had exemptions for police and firefighters) and there was nationwide outrage from the left about it. There have been recent calls from the left to abolish police unions but those seem almost exclusively about police unions' ability to protect corrupt/brutal/racist cops and not about their ability to bilk taxpayers. So while it's not completely clearcut, the right has a much better record for opposing public unions than the left.
germinalphrase 6y ago
I am a former film industry worker and former member of Local 600 Cinematographers Guild. You have two incorrect assumptions here: 1. Non-union filmmaking is absolutely a common thing. Most crew members start their careers on nonunion shoots. Further, not all filmmaking related unions prevent their members from participating in non-union shoots (though some do and others will encourage you to call the shoot in if the budget is high enough to justify union participation). 2. Most crew on a film are not working for a specific employer on an ongoing basis. Generally, crew are hired on a contract basis for individual projects.
boomlinde 6y ago
> engineers can "collectively bargain" with Google by simply leaving and working somewhere "better". I.e. not collectively bargaining, instead hoping that enough other people will individually decide put their livelihood on the line to give employers the impression that things should change up, after which they will not be able to enjoy the changes because they switched job (which can be a pain in the ass regardless of opportunities). > The reality is that Google is an easy place to work relative to how much people get paid. People don't want to leave a cushy job for one where they would have to work harder for their money, so instead, they are trying other means to have their cake and eat it too. The relationship between an employer and employee is naturally adversarial in that there's a fundamental conflict between their interests. As an employee, I want to be paid as much as possible for my work (indeed as little work as possible), and I want it to be as pleasant as possible. The employer on the other hand will want me to do as much work as possible at as little cost as possible. Of course I want to provide value to my employer, and my employer wants to provide value to me, but that's because we both have my employment as a bargaining chip. That's my only chip, but it's only one of Google's ~100000. In those terms, if you can approach having the cake and eating it, why not? Why should only my employer organize and use their massive resources to achieve their goals to the greatest extent possible, while workers should willfully stay disorganized and never utilize their collective influence like a corporation will? Because having two cakes is bad? There's certainly more than enough cake to go around in FAANG.
- gandutraveler 6y ago
  All unions end up being political. The elected union leaders are voted and the democratic process compels the leaders take decision that helps them stay in power. This is what causes the problem where you have elected union leader whose values don't align with helping companies bottom line. This will be the slow death of Google as the company we know. Can't wait to see right wing and left wing groups forming within Google.
  - boomlinde 6y ago
    The organization of people around common goals and trying to define those goals is inherently political. Organizations without politics are like unicorns without horns, whether they're nation states, corporations or trade unions. Unions come with all that's good and bad about that. I don't believe that you can argue in good faith that unions will somehow be the first to introduce political schisms within Google.
mkr-hn 6y ago
They did a strike to get paid for streaming back when most people thought it wouldn't go anywhere. I think the industry is better off with them getting paid for what is becoming the default way to watch stuff.
inoop 6y ago
> engineers can "collectively bargain" with Google by simply leaving and working somewhere "better" While I generally agree with the sentiment of your comment, I would like to point out that the above is only true for green card holders. There are a lot of H1B/L1B workers stuck at bad teams with high amounts of pressure/stress and incompetent or downright abusive managers. For them, leaving the company isn't an option because it means leaving the country and leaving a life-changing amount of money on the table and denying their children the advantage of growing up in the US. You might argue they can switch teams, which is technically true, but this can complicate and delay the green card process, and vindictive managers often smear engineers with HR because people bailing on them makes them look bad. At Amazon for example, particularly bad managers will PIP an engineer to block them from transferring teams. So while in general engineers are treated well and can choose where they want to work, I think we should also show some solidarity with our friends who don't have the same options that we do.
- Mauricebranagh 6y ago
  Also the previous commentator doesn't understand what collective means here.
- irateswami 6y ago
  Ugh, we really need to reform the H1B. It's basically indentured servitude and helps perpetuate shitty behavior in our industry.
- alchemism 6y ago
  The best way to respond to a frivolous PIP as an employee is a frivolous harassment claim against the manager, sexual or otherwise.
  - zanmat0 6y ago
    Encouraging fraud, nice.
josefx 6y ago
> as there are thousands of tech companies hiring engineers in the valley -- engineers can "collectively bargain" with Google by simply leaving and working somewhere "better". And we have court cases documenting that Google, Apple, etc. will do their worst to collectively reduce job mobility and artificially reduce wages. You can't use a better paying position at Apple to bargain for better wages at Google because they (and dozens others) agreed not to hire each others workers.
JKCalhoun 6y ago
You have merely to look at the animators on Disney's films prior to unionization. I find the analogy very close to the stories I hear about coders in the game industry. Google unionizing might sound odd to your ears, Electronics Arts programmers unionizing sounds like something that should have happened a decade ago.
baq 6y ago
Unionizing doesn’t make sense is a great sentence for an HR person to speak. In truth, it’s about as real as ‘HR doesn’t make sense’. Unions are supposed to be a counterweight for HR in that they should care about employees in the same way HR cares about the company.
14 6y ago
Have you ever been part of a union your comment makes me doubt it?
maeln 6y ago
I have to say, this is a really American view of unions. Here in Europe, I know a lot of people who love their company and are still part of an union. First of, yeah, you could "just go" if you don't like what the company is offering. But it is not a reality for a lot of people, even in the tech industry. Leaving your job is not that easy. And it encourage a race to the bottom. With no union to negotiate, the negotiation will always be unbalanced in the favour of the employee since you are negotiating as an individual vs. a organization. Its way, way easier for company to scare you and keep wage low when their is no union to back you up. Also, union can help you when you have a manager or any higher-up that makes your work life hard. I know a lot of company who try to sweep complain under the rug for one reason or another. But when the union get involved, they just can't, they have to deal with it. Finally, employee are stake holder in a company. A lot feel involved and responsible in the company direction and future. You can't just excluded them because they are not shareholder. I mean, you can, but that will lead to a strong feeling of alienation. Union help with that, and I know some people who are part of a union just for this: They love their job and the company they work for, so they want to have a say in where the company is going.
nooyurrsdey 6y ago
> Unions are intended for industries where a worker doesn't have a marketplace of options as there is a single or just a few employers (e.g. Hollywood, teachers, coal mining towns, hospital staff, etc.) Unions serve a purpose of being able to collectively bargain, regardles off how many "options" there are. Employers and corporations always have bargaining power and are basically collective establishments themselves. Individuals rarely have any negotiating power for better conditions, wages, treatment, etc...
onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
I work at Google, and when I started, I thought the idea of unionizing there is ridiculous. They already have a very well defined leveling system. The promotion and hiring system - people hate - but it is as un-nepotistic as possible and (I think) fairer than pretty much anywhere else. The compensation is already higher than basically everywhere - as you mentioned - ESPECIALLY considering expectations for your work. And, sure, I think no one in America gets enough time off. We could maybe squeeze out 5 weeks of PTO for all employees. Originally, I thought, is that worth unionizing for? I didn't think so. HOWEVER, Googlers have since convinced me that this is more about employees having a voice in corporate decisions than compensation. For example (and I don't really agree with this) - most Googlers are VERY much against Google working with the DoD. They want to be able to use unions to block that. Others want to use unions to force Google to be more transparent about what it's doing with data and so on. Others want a better way for employees to speak up when we do things that seem illegal (breaking GDPR rules) or extremely unethical (hypnotizing babies on YouTube for ad-money). Currently, as with most companies, Google is a company that really cares only about maximizing shareholder value. Most Googlers were hired when the Google slogan was "Do no evil" and they really took that to heart. And for a long time, that WAS true. Now, a lot of them (and current employees) feel differently. And they think unions can bring "Do no evil" back to our main corporate guideline. I'm not sure I'm convinced this is worth it or possible, but (to me) it's DEFINITELY more convincing than the compensation / working conditions argument. If we unionizing and employees get a stronger corporate voice AND 5+ weeks PTO, I'll be very happy. But it seems like a pipe dream to me.
- thu2111 6y ago
  Yes, exactly. There is no "workers rights" argument for a union at Google. It is purely a hard-left power grab, just like at Kickstarter when they unionised for the pure, noble purpose of forcing their employer to allow fundraisers that were threatening violence against conservatives (and thus had been taken down as a ToS violation). As a former Googler myself (not for quite some years), I see this as the inevitable end result of always kowtowing and giving in to ever more radical left extremism. It started with nice but trivial sounding language about how there should be more women in tech, and it ends with hiring endless full time activists like Timnit Gebru. If Google is ever to regain its former glory, it needs a serious purge. There won't be one: instead I suspect it will become a cautionary tale spoken about quietly throughout the world, for many decades to come. The lesson drawn will be: don't hire SJWs or else you might end up like Google did, with managers being deposed by a unionised mob demanding endless and ever-spiralling purity warns.
skywhopper 6y ago
Wow, you are excluding a LOT of workers in your statements here. Most people who work at Google, even the tech-focused ones, are not the type of full-time high-demand engineers who can get a new job at the drop of a hat. But I'm not sure what that has to do with the question anyway. Unions aren't "intended" only for certain industries or market conditions. They are a means of balancing the power difference between workers and employers. And we see evidence every day that Google and most other large tech employers in the area are abusing the power they have over their workers on a regular basis. "Just get a new job" is not a solution for the vast majority of people who work at Google et al.
SerLava 6y ago
Unions are for every single industry.
lawwantsin17 6y ago
We have history books. Scab.
bumby 6y ago
>Unions are intended for industries where a worker doesn't have a marketplace of options... engineers can "collectively bargain" with Google by simply leaving and working somewhere "better". I don’t know that you’ve put forth a convincing argument here. There is no defining union industry in principle, only in past embodiment. The intent of a union is to balance the leverage of workers compared to management via collective bargaining. So a union is valid anywhere there is a real or perceived imbalance of leverage. Claiming one can go get a job anywhere else only balances the leverage when certain assumptions are met (e.g., symmetry of information, no conspiracies to suppress wages or prevent hiring etc.) Considering the tech industry hasn’t always met these assumptions, I don’t know that your claim proves true
SkyBelow 6y ago
>Unions are intended for industries where a worker doesn't have a marketplace of options as there is a single or just a few employers (e.g. Hollywood, teachers, coal mining towns, hospital staff, etc.). Unionizing at Google makes no sense, as there are thousands of tech companies hiring engineers in the valley -- engineers can "collectively bargain" with Google by simply leaving and working somewhere "better". I feel like this is only half of the truth. They also help employees increase negotiating power as a counter to employers working together to increase their negotiating power (colluding on wages). >The reality is that Google is an easy place to work relative to how much people get paid. People don't want to leave a cushy job for one where they would have to work harder for their money, so instead, they are trying other means to have their cake and eat it too. If by taking some action they get a bigger slice of cake, why shouldn't they take that action? Our economy is built off the idea of rational actors acting in their own self interest, so doing something to get you a bigger slice of cake at a lower (or equal) price fits the expected behavior of actors in such a system.
egypturnash 6y ago
I have friends who are in the animation industry (which has been heavily unionized since the 50s) and they tell me the Union is constantly fighting with the studios over the studios trying to get more work out of them for less money. I have friends in the visual effects industry (which has never been unionized) and their lives are full of stuff like effects houses that did work on award-winning films with huge budgets closing up without paying people because the studio skipped out on payments. These are very similar fields in terms of skills. Both are mostly based in the same place. Both involve a lot of long hours working on stuff that flashes by in seconds. One has a union, one doesn’t. One is better off than the other.
- dagmx 6y ago
  Minor nitpick...the animation industry is only really unionized in LA. Outside of LA, the animation union dwindles dramatically and is close to non existent. For example, Titmouse was the first studio in Canada to unionize and that was just in mid 2020. The Bay area studios like Pixar aren't unionized either, even though their sister studio WDAS in LA is unionized.
  - egypturnash 6y ago
    Ooh, good point. I've heard some of the Asian animation industry is super bad about burning people out in just a few years.
tshaddox 6y ago
> Unionizing at Google makes no sense, as there are thousands of tech companies hiring engineers in the valley -- engineers can "collectively bargain" with Google by simply leaving and working somewhere "better". Wouldn’t Google workers collectively bargaining with Google using the threat of leaving to work at another tech company be, like, a union?
Odoia 6y ago
> Don't think we've ever seen Hollywood in the modern era without unions, so not sure how you can claim it's "undeniable" the industry is better off. We basically have no clue if it's better off or not. > Unions are intended for industries where a worker doesn't have a marketplace of options as there is a single or just a few employers (e.g. Hollywood, teachers, coal mining towns, hospital staff, etc.). Unions are for all workers in all industries and sectors. Unions protect workers rights through collective action and ensure the work force isn't marginalized, mismanaged or abused. A worker has a right to a voice. Unions are the body of that voice.
dv_dt 6y ago
We have seen glimpses of what a modern Hollywood equivalent could be without unions in the gaming industry
dagmx 6y ago
Large swaths of film production work is non union btw. Union is the default for on set and pre production but it's not exclusively so. Post production is majority non union
newacct583 6y ago
> engineers can "collectively bargain" with Google by simply leaving and working somewhere "better". That is literally the opposite of what "collective" means. You seem to be trying to argue against unionization by circular logic, by claiming that it doesn't work because market forces do the same thing because unionization isn't necessary. I mean, it's easy to do that in the case of FAANG employers who already pay very high salaries. But they make outrageous profits too. What's the argument that the already-highly-paid engineers shouldn't get a bigger share?
pmoriarty 6y ago
"engineers can "collectively bargain" with Google by simply leaving and working somewhere "better"." That's only collective bargaining if a lot of them leave en masse (ie. collectively), and for the same issue(s). To do that effectively they'd need to organize, coordinate their efforts, and speak as one voice: in other words, they'd need to unionize. Leaving one at a time, for different issues is not collective bargaining, it's individual bargaining, so not at all comparable to a union.
wilde 6y ago
Sure we can. Hollywood without unions = gamedev. Looks pretty shitty to me.
adamsea 6y ago
> Don't think we've ever seen Hollywood in the modern era without unions, so not sure how you can claim it's "undeniable" the industry is better off. We basically have no clue if it's better off or not. Um it's called looking at the past? Making reasonable inferences?
KaiserPro 6y ago
a Union is about rights, they _should_ provide an extra safety net should your employer put you in a bad position. It means that its much harder to divide and conquer employees A moderately well run union is useful for the employer as a way to consult, defuse and get sentiment for changes. Unions have nothing to do with employability, its about making the conditions better for the workers, and not because that's what other companies do. Employees leaving doesn't mean the place changes, especially if there is a limitless supply of keen, naive and cheap labour out there. The VFX industry is a prime example of this.
tehjoker 6y ago
If you want to imagine a non-unionized hollywood, imagine film makers being able to pay people in exposure for nearly everything.
cogman10 6y ago
I agree with you to a point. I'd just say that there are more reasons to unionize than just local monopolies. You unionize whenever there's a major disparity between cooperate profits and worker benefits. You unionize when work conditions are bad and management doesn't care. You unionize when you feel you are being treated unfairly. For example, construction companies are often places where there's both lots of work available and union outfits doing a lot of good.
beerandt 6y ago
We've seen lots of exodus from Hollywood to states that are less union friendly, or at least that don't yet have a strong related union presence (yet). While there maybe isn't yet a definitive "Hollywood East" or "Hollywood South" etc yet, the desire to find/build an alternative to Hollywood proper seems clear.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  Just as workers rights for employees at manufacturing plants improve over time, so will these secondary Hollywoods. https://deadline.com/2020/08/vancouver-production-to-restart-british-columbia-unions-reach-agreements-us-studios-sony-pictures-tv-disney-tv-studios-the-good-doctor-a-million-little-things-mighty-ducks-1203014249/ https://deadline.com/2020/08/vancouver-production-to-restart... https://deadline.com/2020/11/election-2020-entertainment-industrys-unionized-workforce-could-play-decisive-role-in-presidential-battleground-states-1234610012/ https://deadline.com/2020/11/election-2020-entertainment-ind... And as always, there's an HBO's Silicon Valley for everything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDzTKI9a78k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDzTKI9a78k
kenjackson 6y ago
> engineers can "collectively bargain" with Google by simply leaving and working somewhere "better". To do this as a group you will still benefit from an organization to manage it. Its a lot more effective to say, "Stop doing this or we 1500 engineers are all leaving on Feb 1" versus a bunch of engineers seemingly random quitting (although for similar reasons).
yibg 6y ago
Also, unions are about balance of power. Giving more bargaining power (collectively) to people that otherwise don't have much bargaining power. Most people in tech, and especially so at places like google don't feel like they have low bargaining power. So I think the perception is, not only is there not much to be gained by unionizing, there is potentially more to lose by giving up individual bargaining power to the union. So basically losing autonomy and control for some unknown and fuzzy benefit.
dang 6y ago
This comment is a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25630456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25630456 but I've lifted it to the top level in a feeble effort to reduce the steam coming out of our server.
- ma2rten 6y ago
  Thanks for your work keep HN running. I hope that you can find a more sustainable solution soon.
shrimpx 6y ago
> Unionizing at Google makes no sense, as there are thousands of tech companies hiring engineers in the valley > they are trying other means to have their cake and eat it too. I think you're basically correct but are making multiple slightly incorrect assumptions: - That working at Google is comparable to any other tech company in terms of benefits and stability. In reality, only a few companies could compare. (Not everyone can work at a startup, etc.) - That tech companies are wildly different in terms of culture and philosophy. In my experience, tech industry culture is hyper normalized and you see the same problems everywhere. So it's not like a selfish "have their cake and eat it too", but more like they actually can't gain what they want by moving, so the remaining path is change from the inside.

by karl11 6y ago

itake 6y ago

Just wondering but what companies are comparable to google to work at (with similar pay and culture)? I can only think of a handful that pay as well and even less if you consider corporate mission and culture.

karl11 6y ago
Exactly - people don't want to sacrifice their paycheck for their principles, so instead they are forming a union so they can try and change the company and have it both ways.
- avianlyric 6y ago
  > so instead they are forming a union so they can try and change the company and have it both ways. Is this a bad thing?
  - ddingus 6y ago
    Nope.

avianlyric 6y ago

> People don't want to leave a cushy job for one where they would have to work harder for their money, so instead, they are trying other means to have their cake and eat it too. You're saying this like it's a bad thing. Why shouldn't employees expect, and get, better working conditions? > engineers can "collectively bargain" with Google by simply leaving and working somewhere "better" How is individuals leaving "collectively bargain", it's the complete opposite, it's individual bargaining, with all the perils that entails. > Unions are intended for industries where a worker doesn't have a marketplace of options as there is a single or just a few employers (e.g. Hollywood, teachers, coal mining towns, hospital staff, etc.). This is just a mis-conception, look at Germany where every industry has unions, regardless of size, and unions has a say in how companies are run, and what direction they head in. They make sure that shareholders and employees get input into the highest levels of leadership, ensuring that shareholders can't force decisions that benefit shareholders at the detriment of employees. Finally Google looks like the perfect place for a union. Any company that rewards senior leadership for sexual harassment clearly doesn't consider it's employees important, and those employees should absolutely make it clear who generates most of the value in a company, and ensure they're treated fairly.

chrisseaton 6y ago
Aren't most employees also shareholders, in the tech industry? Don't we have representation through that mechanism and why isn't it enough?
- avianlyric 6y ago
  Not sure who told you that. Most employees with either have options (which can become shares, but aren't) or Restricted Stock Units (RSU's) which are useless till vested. Either way their holding will be miniscule, even in aggregate, compared to other shareholders. Even if it wasn't miniscule, they would still need to organise, maybe form some sort of coalition, or "union", in order to leverage their collective voting power against other large, unified, shareholders.
- eropple 6y ago
  Google gives out Class C stock options to (most) employees, so even when they vest they can't vote. They're certainly not alone in that. So, no, probably not? Even were they, the voting capability of such a share is ineffectually small; this is the "why you can just not spend money at MegaMart if you care so much" [because singular action doesn't work but we can make it sound just viable enough that you go away] argument tilted a little.

humanrebar 6y ago

> Unions are intended for industries where a worker doesn't have a marketplace of options... I'm not sure the cause and effect work that way, at least not entirely. Unions do restrain roles of workers and structure compensation to particular patterns. It seems plausible to me that those sorts of restrictions are in some ways detrimental to companies that wish to (or need to) disrupt incumbents. It's plausible that they function as a sort of regulatory capture. In some cases, as with unions of government workers, literal regulator capture enters the picture too.

Mauricebranagh 6y ago
Not really for M&P managerial and professional, SAG doesn't limit what say George Clooney gets for a film for example.
- humanrebar 6y ago
  It limits pay scales, how credit is given, and what Clooney can do as a producer to get his film made.

Moosdijk 6y ago

>>engineers can "collectively bargain" with Google by simply leaving and working somewhere "better". This "if you don't like it here, go work somewhere else" kind of reasoning disproportionately balances the power towards the employer. Instead of fixing problems, it leads to removing those that are affected. This is exactly what unions are for.

huffmsa 6y ago
The traitorous eight leaving Shockley because they didn't like their boss is foundational to the valley.
- consp 6y ago
  At that, what is basically a startup, level it is possible but for a company the size of Google it would not put a dent into the system. Totally different power dynamics.
dls2016 6y ago
I like that everyone sort of forgets about the time the big tech firms were caught in a wage-fixing cabal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

the_other 6y ago

The idea that leaving equates to collective bargaining is false, and even if it had a ring of truth it would be ineffectual at FAANG companies. Leaving changes nothing, it just accelerates the bad behaviour because the obstacle to the bad behaviour removed itself. A single person, even a team of engineers, leaving a FAANG company will have near-zero impact on the behaviour, functioning or profitability of that company. The action will not change management or ownership's perspectives on anything. They'll simply hire someone else, and promote internally if they need too. Even when you have a celebrity engineer like Tim Brey leave Amazon, publicly explaining why, outright slamming some of their behaviour, nothing will change. Mozilla seems to think it can function exactly the same as it did before (in terms of mindset) having let go of 25% of its staff. In the UK we recently had several politicians leave their senior positions within government or their party over disagreements in policy... and nothing meaningful has changed. Unions are not just for protecting jobs, they're much more about staff having a voice, if not a seat, at the executive table. Unions can help influence senior decision-making. Most of that is about job protection, pay, quality of life issues because in blue-collar jobs those are the key issues. But in white-collar jobs a union can represent the opinion and aims of staff in a way that isn't obvious without them.

prepend 6y ago
> Leaving changes nothing Leaving improves conditions for the worker and that’s the biggest thing for me, the worker.
- alextheparrot 6y ago
  The entire post talks about effects on the company. If we’re trying to be unreasonably obtuse, it doesn’t change conditions for a worker either because a person not working is not a worker.
  - prepend 6y ago
    What I meant is that it does change conditions for the worker as they leave for better conditions. I think working in tech, it’s been a luxury to line up a new job and go to that job with zero down time. I’m not suggesting people do brash stuff like walk out without new employment lined up. This is a huge change, the biggest I think, as I can change all of my conditions by finding a company that gives me what I want. I think to a lesser extent since I’ve frequently seen that smart people leaving for specific reasons changes company policy. I was just trying to show a simple contra to parent’s comment saying that leaving changes nothing as that seems simply false to me.

appleflaxen 6y ago

You list teachers, who in my opinion are the poster children of how problematic unions are. And there are some phenomenal teachers out there. There are teachers that change lives profoundly. But they don't need the unions, and the terrible teachers who should be fired /are/ protected. It's really messed up, most people have first-hand experience with it, and they are a corrosive factor in the end.

e40 6y ago
This is the elephant in the room. Unions make it much harder to fire low performers. I think they have great benefits, but this terrible side effect. For another example look at police unions.
- rzz3 6y ago
  Public unions are a bad idea in general. The citizens collectively employ the government, and that government shouldn’t have a right to organize against the people whom it serves. So in my opinion, these two examples of toxic public unions shouldn’t be applied to private unions.
  - nemo44x 6y ago
    I agree. I’m indifferent to private sector unions. None of my business if it isn’t my workplace. But public sector unions are a path to corruption. Both major parties exploit these so I can’t blame a single party here either. What better way to consolidate power than by aligning with a public service union and “bargain” with them while being incentivized to grow membership in that union to further consolidate power. If anything I’d support public sector unions if members were not allowed to vote for offices that represent their “management” or control their budgets. Could you imagine a private sector union appointing the management of the company they negotiate with?
    - HideousKojima 6y ago
      >Both major parties exploit these so I can’t blame a single party here either. Republicans in Wisconsin abolished public unions back in 2011 (though admittedly they had exemptions for police and firefighters) and there was nationwide outrage from the left about it. There have been recent calls from the left to abolish police unions but those seem almost exclusively about police unions' ability to protect corrupt/brutal/racist cops and not about their ability to bilk taxpayers. So while it's not completely clearcut, the right has a much better record for opposing public unions than the left.

germinalphrase 6y ago

I am a former film industry worker and former member of Local 600 Cinematographers Guild. You have two incorrect assumptions here: 1. Non-union filmmaking is absolutely a common thing. Most crew members start their careers on nonunion shoots. Further, not all filmmaking related unions prevent their members from participating in non-union shoots (though some do and others will encourage you to call the shoot in if the budget is high enough to justify union participation). 2. Most crew on a film are not working for a specific employer on an ongoing basis. Generally, crew are hired on a contract basis for individual projects.

boomlinde 6y ago

> engineers can "collectively bargain" with Google by simply leaving and working somewhere "better". I.e. not collectively bargaining, instead hoping that enough other people will individually decide put their livelihood on the line to give employers the impression that things should change up, after which they will not be able to enjoy the changes because they switched job (which can be a pain in the ass regardless of opportunities). > The reality is that Google is an easy place to work relative to how much people get paid. People don't want to leave a cushy job for one where they would have to work harder for their money, so instead, they are trying other means to have their cake and eat it too. The relationship between an employer and employee is naturally adversarial in that there's a fundamental conflict between their interests. As an employee, I want to be paid as much as possible for my work (indeed as little work as possible), and I want it to be as pleasant as possible. The employer on the other hand will want me to do as much work as possible at as little cost as possible. Of course I want to provide value to my employer, and my employer wants to provide value to me, but that's because we both have my employment as a bargaining chip. That's my only chip, but it's only one of Google's ~100000. In those terms, if you can approach having the cake and eating it, why not? Why should only my employer organize and use their massive resources to achieve their goals to the greatest extent possible, while workers should willfully stay disorganized and never utilize their collective influence like a corporation will? Because having two cakes is bad? There's certainly more than enough cake to go around in FAANG.

gandutraveler 6y ago
All unions end up being political. The elected union leaders are voted and the democratic process compels the leaders take decision that helps them stay in power. This is what causes the problem where you have elected union leader whose values don't align with helping companies bottom line. This will be the slow death of Google as the company we know. Can't wait to see right wing and left wing groups forming within Google.
- boomlinde 6y ago
  The organization of people around common goals and trying to define those goals is inherently political. Organizations without politics are like unicorns without horns, whether they're nation states, corporations or trade unions. Unions come with all that's good and bad about that. I don't believe that you can argue in good faith that unions will somehow be the first to introduce political schisms within Google.

mkr-hn 6y ago

They did a strike to get paid for streaming back when most people thought it wouldn't go anywhere. I think the industry is better off with them getting paid for what is becoming the default way to watch stuff.

inoop 6y ago

> engineers can "collectively bargain" with Google by simply leaving and working somewhere "better" While I generally agree with the sentiment of your comment, I would like to point out that the above is only true for green card holders. There are a lot of H1B/L1B workers stuck at bad teams with high amounts of pressure/stress and incompetent or downright abusive managers. For them, leaving the company isn't an option because it means leaving the country and leaving a life-changing amount of money on the table and denying their children the advantage of growing up in the US. You might argue they can switch teams, which is technically true, but this can complicate and delay the green card process, and vindictive managers often smear engineers with HR because people bailing on them makes them look bad. At Amazon for example, particularly bad managers will PIP an engineer to block them from transferring teams. So while in general engineers are treated well and can choose where they want to work, I think we should also show some solidarity with our friends who don't have the same options that we do.

Mauricebranagh 6y ago
Also the previous commentator doesn't understand what collective means here.
irateswami 6y ago
Ugh, we really need to reform the H1B. It's basically indentured servitude and helps perpetuate shitty behavior in our industry.
alchemism 6y ago
The best way to respond to a frivolous PIP as an employee is a frivolous harassment claim against the manager, sexual or otherwise.
- zanmat0 6y ago
  Encouraging fraud, nice.

josefx 6y ago

> as there are thousands of tech companies hiring engineers in the valley -- engineers can "collectively bargain" with Google by simply leaving and working somewhere "better". And we have court cases documenting that Google, Apple, etc. will do their worst to collectively reduce job mobility and artificially reduce wages. You can't use a better paying position at Apple to bargain for better wages at Google because they (and dozens others) agreed not to hire each others workers.

JKCalhoun 6y ago

You have merely to look at the animators on Disney's films prior to unionization. I find the analogy very close to the stories I hear about coders in the game industry. Google unionizing might sound odd to your ears, Electronics Arts programmers unionizing sounds like something that should have happened a decade ago.

baq 6y ago

Unionizing doesn’t make sense is a great sentence for an HR person to speak. In truth, it’s about as real as ‘HR doesn’t make sense’. Unions are supposed to be a counterweight for HR in that they should care about employees in the same way HR cares about the company.

14 6y ago

Have you ever been part of a union your comment makes me doubt it?

maeln 6y ago

I have to say, this is a really American view of unions. Here in Europe, I know a lot of people who love their company and are still part of an union. First of, yeah, you could "just go" if you don't like what the company is offering. But it is not a reality for a lot of people, even in the tech industry. Leaving your job is not that easy. And it encourage a race to the bottom. With no union to negotiate, the negotiation will always be unbalanced in the favour of the employee since you are negotiating as an individual vs. a organization. Its way, way easier for company to scare you and keep wage low when their is no union to back you up. Also, union can help you when you have a manager or any higher-up that makes your work life hard. I know a lot of company who try to sweep complain under the rug for one reason or another. But when the union get involved, they just can't, they have to deal with it. Finally, employee are stake holder in a company. A lot feel involved and responsible in the company direction and future. You can't just excluded them because they are not shareholder. I mean, you can, but that will lead to a strong feeling of alienation. Union help with that, and I know some people who are part of a union just for this: They love their job and the company they work for, so they want to have a say in where the company is going.

nooyurrsdey 6y ago

> Unions are intended for industries where a worker doesn't have a marketplace of options as there is a single or just a few employers (e.g. Hollywood, teachers, coal mining towns, hospital staff, etc.) Unions serve a purpose of being able to collectively bargain, regardles off how many "options" there are. Employers and corporations always have bargaining power and are basically collective establishments themselves. Individuals rarely have any negotiating power for better conditions, wages, treatment, etc...

onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago

I work at Google, and when I started, I thought the idea of unionizing there is ridiculous. They already have a very well defined leveling system. The promotion and hiring system - people hate - but it is as un-nepotistic as possible and (I think) fairer than pretty much anywhere else. The compensation is already higher than basically everywhere - as you mentioned - ESPECIALLY considering expectations for your work. And, sure, I think no one in America gets enough time off. We could maybe squeeze out 5 weeks of PTO for all employees. Originally, I thought, is that worth unionizing for? I didn't think so. HOWEVER, Googlers have since convinced me that this is more about employees having a voice in corporate decisions than compensation. For example (and I don't really agree with this) - most Googlers are VERY much against Google working with the DoD. They want to be able to use unions to block that. Others want to use unions to force Google to be more transparent about what it's doing with data and so on. Others want a better way for employees to speak up when we do things that seem illegal (breaking GDPR rules) or extremely unethical (hypnotizing babies on YouTube for ad-money). Currently, as with most companies, Google is a company that really cares only about maximizing shareholder value. Most Googlers were hired when the Google slogan was "Do no evil" and they really took that to heart. And for a long time, that WAS true. Now, a lot of them (and current employees) feel differently. And they think unions can bring "Do no evil" back to our main corporate guideline. I'm not sure I'm convinced this is worth it or possible, but (to me) it's DEFINITELY more convincing than the compensation / working conditions argument. If we unionizing and employees get a stronger corporate voice AND 5+ weeks PTO, I'll be very happy. But it seems like a pipe dream to me.

thu2111 6y ago
Yes, exactly. There is no "workers rights" argument for a union at Google. It is purely a hard-left power grab, just like at Kickstarter when they unionised for the pure, noble purpose of forcing their employer to allow fundraisers that were threatening violence against conservatives (and thus had been taken down as a ToS violation). As a former Googler myself (not for quite some years), I see this as the inevitable end result of always kowtowing and giving in to ever more radical left extremism. It started with nice but trivial sounding language about how there should be more women in tech, and it ends with hiring endless full time activists like Timnit Gebru. If Google is ever to regain its former glory, it needs a serious purge. There won't be one: instead I suspect it will become a cautionary tale spoken about quietly throughout the world, for many decades to come. The lesson drawn will be: don't hire SJWs or else you might end up like Google did, with managers being deposed by a unionised mob demanding endless and ever-spiralling purity warns.

skywhopper 6y ago

Wow, you are excluding a LOT of workers in your statements here. Most people who work at Google, even the tech-focused ones, are not the type of full-time high-demand engineers who can get a new job at the drop of a hat. But I'm not sure what that has to do with the question anyway. Unions aren't "intended" only for certain industries or market conditions. They are a means of balancing the power difference between workers and employers. And we see evidence every day that Google and most other large tech employers in the area are abusing the power they have over their workers on a regular basis. "Just get a new job" is not a solution for the vast majority of people who work at Google et al.

SerLava 6y ago

Unions are for every single industry.

lawwantsin17 6y ago

We have history books. Scab.

bumby 6y ago

>Unions are intended for industries where a worker doesn't have a marketplace of options... engineers can "collectively bargain" with Google by simply leaving and working somewhere "better". I don’t know that you’ve put forth a convincing argument here. There is no defining union industry in principle, only in past embodiment. The intent of a union is to balance the leverage of workers compared to management via collective bargaining. So a union is valid anywhere there is a real or perceived imbalance of leverage. Claiming one can go get a job anywhere else only balances the leverage when certain assumptions are met (e.g., symmetry of information, no conspiracies to suppress wages or prevent hiring etc.) Considering the tech industry hasn’t always met these assumptions, I don’t know that your claim proves true

SkyBelow 6y ago

>Unions are intended for industries where a worker doesn't have a marketplace of options as there is a single or just a few employers (e.g. Hollywood, teachers, coal mining towns, hospital staff, etc.). Unionizing at Google makes no sense, as there are thousands of tech companies hiring engineers in the valley -- engineers can "collectively bargain" with Google by simply leaving and working somewhere "better". I feel like this is only half of the truth. They also help employees increase negotiating power as a counter to employers working together to increase their negotiating power (colluding on wages). >The reality is that Google is an easy place to work relative to how much people get paid. People don't want to leave a cushy job for one where they would have to work harder for their money, so instead, they are trying other means to have their cake and eat it too. If by taking some action they get a bigger slice of cake, why shouldn't they take that action? Our economy is built off the idea of rational actors acting in their own self interest, so doing something to get you a bigger slice of cake at a lower (or equal) price fits the expected behavior of actors in such a system.

egypturnash 6y ago

I have friends who are in the animation industry (which has been heavily unionized since the 50s) and they tell me the Union is constantly fighting with the studios over the studios trying to get more work out of them for less money. I have friends in the visual effects industry (which has never been unionized) and their lives are full of stuff like effects houses that did work on award-winning films with huge budgets closing up without paying people because the studio skipped out on payments. These are very similar fields in terms of skills. Both are mostly based in the same place. Both involve a lot of long hours working on stuff that flashes by in seconds. One has a union, one doesn’t. One is better off than the other.

dagmx 6y ago
Minor nitpick...the animation industry is only really unionized in LA. Outside of LA, the animation union dwindles dramatically and is close to non existent. For example, Titmouse was the first studio in Canada to unionize and that was just in mid 2020. The Bay area studios like Pixar aren't unionized either, even though their sister studio WDAS in LA is unionized.
- egypturnash 6y ago
  Ooh, good point. I've heard some of the Asian animation industry is super bad about burning people out in just a few years.

tshaddox 6y ago

> Unionizing at Google makes no sense, as there are thousands of tech companies hiring engineers in the valley -- engineers can "collectively bargain" with Google by simply leaving and working somewhere "better". Wouldn’t Google workers collectively bargaining with Google using the threat of leaving to work at another tech company be, like, a union?

Odoia 6y ago

> Don't think we've ever seen Hollywood in the modern era without unions, so not sure how you can claim it's "undeniable" the industry is better off. We basically have no clue if it's better off or not. > Unions are intended for industries where a worker doesn't have a marketplace of options as there is a single or just a few employers (e.g. Hollywood, teachers, coal mining towns, hospital staff, etc.). Unions are for all workers in all industries and sectors. Unions protect workers rights through collective action and ensure the work force isn't marginalized, mismanaged or abused. A worker has a right to a voice. Unions are the body of that voice.

dv_dt 6y ago

We have seen glimpses of what a modern Hollywood equivalent could be without unions in the gaming industry

dagmx 6y ago

Large swaths of film production work is non union btw. Union is the default for on set and pre production but it's not exclusively so. Post production is majority non union

newacct583 6y ago

> engineers can "collectively bargain" with Google by simply leaving and working somewhere "better". That is literally the opposite of what "collective" means. You seem to be trying to argue against unionization by circular logic, by claiming that it doesn't work because market forces do the same thing because unionization isn't necessary. I mean, it's easy to do that in the case of FAANG employers who already pay very high salaries. But they make outrageous profits too. What's the argument that the already-highly-paid engineers shouldn't get a bigger share?

pmoriarty 6y ago

"engineers can "collectively bargain" with Google by simply leaving and working somewhere "better"." That's only collective bargaining if a lot of them leave en masse (ie. collectively), and for the same issue(s). To do that effectively they'd need to organize, coordinate their efforts, and speak as one voice: in other words, they'd need to unionize. Leaving one at a time, for different issues is not collective bargaining, it's individual bargaining, so not at all comparable to a union.

wilde 6y ago

Sure we can. Hollywood without unions = gamedev. Looks pretty shitty to me.

adamsea 6y ago

KaiserPro 6y ago

a Union is about rights, they _should_ provide an extra safety net should your employer put you in a bad position. It means that its much harder to divide and conquer employees A moderately well run union is useful for the employer as a way to consult, defuse and get sentiment for changes. Unions have nothing to do with employability, its about making the conditions better for the workers, and not because that's what other companies do. Employees leaving doesn't mean the place changes, especially if there is a limitless supply of keen, naive and cheap labour out there. The VFX industry is a prime example of this.

tehjoker 6y ago

If you want to imagine a non-unionized hollywood, imagine film makers being able to pay people in exposure for nearly everything.

cogman10 6y ago

I agree with you to a point. I'd just say that there are more reasons to unionize than just local monopolies. You unionize whenever there's a major disparity between cooperate profits and worker benefits. You unionize when work conditions are bad and management doesn't care. You unionize when you feel you are being treated unfairly. For example, construction companies are often places where there's both lots of work available and union outfits doing a lot of good.

beerandt 6y ago

We've seen lots of exodus from Hollywood to states that are less union friendly, or at least that don't yet have a strong related union presence (yet). While there maybe isn't yet a definitive "Hollywood East" or "Hollywood South" etc yet, the desire to find/build an alternative to Hollywood proper seems clear.

Apocryphon 6y ago
Just as workers rights for employees at manufacturing plants improve over time, so will these secondary Hollywoods. https://deadline.com/2020/08/vancouver-production-to-restart-british-columbia-unions-reach-agreements-us-studios-sony-pictures-tv-disney-tv-studios-the-good-doctor-a-million-little-things-mighty-ducks-1203014249/ https://deadline.com/2020/08/vancouver-production-to-restart... https://deadline.com/2020/11/election-2020-entertainment-industrys-unionized-workforce-could-play-decisive-role-in-presidential-battleground-states-1234610012/ https://deadline.com/2020/11/election-2020-entertainment-ind... And as always, there's an HBO's Silicon Valley for everything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDzTKI9a78k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDzTKI9a78k

kenjackson 6y ago

> engineers can "collectively bargain" with Google by simply leaving and working somewhere "better". To do this as a group you will still benefit from an organization to manage it. Its a lot more effective to say, "Stop doing this or we 1500 engineers are all leaving on Feb 1" versus a bunch of engineers seemingly random quitting (although for similar reasons).

yibg 6y ago

Also, unions are about balance of power. Giving more bargaining power (collectively) to people that otherwise don't have much bargaining power. Most people in tech, and especially so at places like google don't feel like they have low bargaining power. So I think the perception is, not only is there not much to be gained by unionizing, there is potentially more to lose by giving up individual bargaining power to the union. So basically losing autonomy and control for some unknown and fuzzy benefit.

dang 6y ago

This comment is a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25630456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25630456 but I've lifted it to the top level in a feeble effort to reduce the steam coming out of our server.

ma2rten 6y ago
Thanks for your work keep HN running. I hope that you can find a more sustainable solution soon.

shrimpx 6y ago

> Unionizing at Google makes no sense, as there are thousands of tech companies hiring engineers in the valley > they are trying other means to have their cake and eat it too. I think you're basically correct but are making multiple slightly incorrect assumptions: - That working at Google is comparable to any other tech company in terms of benefits and stability. In reality, only a few companies could compare. (Not everyone can work at a startup, etc.) - That tech companies are wildly different in terms of culture and philosophy. In my experience, tech industry culture is hyper normalized and you see the same problems everywhere. So it's not like a selfish "have their cake and eat it too", but more like they actually can't gain what they want by moving, so the remaining path is change from the inside.