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> 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 cak

> 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.
- tjpnz 6y ago
  That sounds more like a cooperative. Outside those situations stock ownership means very little for rank and file employees.
  - Mauricebranagh 6y ago
    Especially with the multi class share structure with different voting rights. And talking of employees shares lobbying for changes to the taxation of those to make it fairer would be an good thing for unions to lobby for
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  The total percentage of actual vested shares that are held by the rank-and-file workers is minuscule at best.
karl11 6y ago
Employees can ask for better, but when you already work at the company that pays and treats their employees like Google, I'm not sure what more you are entitled to. It seems clear to me that these are people who are unwilling to sacrifice some of the money they earn to follow their ideals and principles, so they are trying this instead. There are very few perils of leaving Google - a top tier company in an industry that is continuously struggling to hire enough people. If you are an engineer at Google and can't get a job somewhere else, I don't know what to tell you. Comparing Germany to USA is pointless, very different government, history, culture, business climate, etc.
- CydeWeys 6y ago
  > It seems clear to me that these are people who are unwilling to sacrifice some of the money they earn to follow their ideals and principles, so they are trying this instead. This phrasing is disingenuous. If you don't like what's going on you can stay and fight rather than giving up and leaving. The people unionizing are of the "stay and fight" variety. Where does this false dichotomy come from that your only options are to stay and shut up or leave and be vocal?
  - ATsch 6y ago
    It probably comes the people that would prefer you shut up and stay.
  - mikecoles 6y ago
    Absolutely not. People that want to unionize are the lazy or those whose dreams are sprinkled with unicorn glitter. Or a combination of the two. There are no benefits to modern unions. They are another level of bureaucracy. If you want better conditions or pay, earn it.
    - jakelazaroff 6y ago
      So when a company tries to squeeze as much labor out of as little compensation as it can, it’s a shrewd business move… but when employees try to get the most compensation for the least labor, they’re lazy? Do you see the double standard here?
runawaybottle 6y ago
Most union power comes from solidarity. If the Google people feel they don’t need unions, then all other lower unions are weaker. The power comes from the industry wide union. People at small startups can stand up for something because even the Google people stand up for it. Otherwise we’re divided and carry out the dog eat dog world. Edit: To all the skeptics, look, out of all the thousands of tech companies, how but one of you just try it. Can we just try it? Like, all of you join it, and just try it out, so we can actually have one real world example to discuss in this fantasy ‘to union or not to union’ debate. I’d like to at least see one attempt, one example, that way we can all point to and say ‘oh shit, google sucks now’, or ‘oh wait, it’s still a multi billion dollar company and the world didn’t end, here are the pros and cons and the overall conclusion’. We can’t even do that because the damn thing doesn’t even really exist for any of us. This actually working out means it spreads industry wide, the implications are bigger. So could we try it? Just try, nothing more. Please? Pretty please?
- lawnchair_larry 6y ago
  Why would you even want to try it? Have you personally been abused in some way that you think a union would have prevented?
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    Yes. I’ve worked at places that don’t give a 401k, only 2-3 days off including the federal holidays, I’ve worked at places that don’t extend any benefits to part-time workers that reach into the 30 hour range (multi year workers), I’m pretty sure I know full time workers that don’t get health insurance at some of these places, I’ve seen corporations relegate workers to temp status via actual legislation (Uber/lyft), I read the history of human-kind of labor abuse. And this is what I’ve seen as a ‘knowledge’ worker, and was raised by blue collar workers that have seen much more. I wanted to be civil, but I just have to ask, are you fucking stupid or something?
    - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
      > Yes. I’ve worked at places that don’t give a 401k Oh wow, you’re right, that is abuse! You poor thing! > I wanted to be civil, but I have to ask, are you fucking stupid or something? I’m not offended, but it doesn’t look good when you completely fail to read the question, answer a different question, and then call the other person “fucking stupid.” It sounds like the answer to the question that I actually asked you would be “No, absolutely not.” Otherwise, you wouldn’t make the laughable suggestion that lack of a 401k is in any way abusive. And obviously the experience of blue collar workers is going to be different. This is a thread about tech companies like Google.
toper-centage 6y ago
For a recent example on why tech needs unions, look up N26 (German modern Bank) and their employees attempts at creating a Works Council. The way management handled it was nothing less than despicable, including filing 2 restraining orders against 2 of their organizers, and reporting them to the police because of health (covid) concerns (the police came, everything was safe and in order, then left). https://www.worker26.com/ https://www.worker26.com/
- lawnchair_larry 6y ago
  In no way is this relevant to anything related to American tech companies. I don’t know how the plight of German bank employees suggests anything one eay or another about the need for tech unions.
gandutraveler 6y ago
Unions will only help the rest & vest culture. I worked at Google and trust me there is so much fat that can be trimmed there. Especially the ones who have been there for 7+ years.. With unions it will get harder to fire them and at the same time they will need to be compensated equally. Software is not a profession where output is proportional to work hours like blue collar jobs. This will demoralize engineers to work smarter & harder.
- erk__ 6y ago
  Do you have any sources that support that from the countries that have unions for software development. Because that is something I would be very interested in reading.
- esc_colon_q 6y ago
  Yeah, so much of Google's culture is already about slowing down work so that it takes 10 (5 eng ICs + lead, analyst, manager, PM and PgM) to do the work that 2 engineers would do with identical quality in any other company, and the old-timers are the absolute worst in terms of keeping that status quo in place. I can't recall seeing a single team there that was properly sized and wouldn't function better with half the team and an eighth of the process. There's a good argument to be made that a big chunk of the value of an engineer to Google is strategic, simply that they are locked up and aren't working at FB, Amazon, Apple or Microsoft. I was never at a high enough level to have a view into the data that would confirm that, but it certainly felt like even if you weren't particularly productive in the environment everyone up the ladder was perfectly happy to let you malinger on the payroll forever, as long as you weren't so bad that you did damage to someone's pristine art project of a codebase. So maybe inability to fire isn't really such an issue - even now, seeing anyone fired at Google, let alone an old timer, is extraordinarily rare.
  - sjg007 6y ago
    One day you will be the old timer that the young are trying to eat.
- acdha 6y ago
petre 6y ago
I am not against unionizing. But Hollywood's unions did not stop sexual harassement, in fact we've seen it was the norm with several names in the industry recently convicted for sexual harassement, assault and even rape.
MetalGuru 6y ago
My friend just moved to Germany. They make WAY less than SV engineers (working at the same company). Granted, they don’t have to work 24 hour oncall shifts. I’m not saying the less wages is because of unions, just pointing it out.
Zardoz84 6y ago
> 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. Well, well... Germany it's far from being true unions working. They are more like "labor rights consultant company".
briandear 6y ago
What’s the pay for a software engineer in Germany? Compared to the US? Citing German unionization as support for unions doesn’t help your case.
caseysoftware 6y ago
> Why shouldn't employees expect, and get, better working conditions? Are employees complaining/concerned about working conditions here? I'm trying to imagine how Google would be a terrible or dangerous place to work.. especially after working from home for ~10 months now.
tempuser189 6y ago
> Why shouldn't employees expect, and get, better working conditions? have their cake and eat it too is absolutely correct. And the reason why we want to keep it the way it has been, is that the status quo productivity maximization is what has resulted in our current high pay and quality of life. > individuals leaving "collectively bargain", it's the complete opposite, it's individual bargaining, with all the perils that entails. The benefit of market rate is that it's fundamentally sustainable, and fair. When businesses collectively bargain, we call them "cartels" >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. Because shareholder need to make decisions to improve shareholder value even if it means it's going to suck for employees. That's an important part of the system. You need to let go of deadbeats. Go ahead look at Germany. All their companies are very old. There's no room for startups. The only halfway relevant company they've produced in decades was a complete fraud. If the USA was like that, Google wouldn't even exist. Shareholders provide real value. For the most part from the fact that the business wouldn't even exist without them. How much they provide is supposed to be determined by the cost to replace them, the shareholders, by starting a new company and competing with the old one. > employees should absolutely make it clear who generates most of the value in a company, This would be hilarious. Only a tiny fraction of Google employees work on a part of the business that actually makes money. Most of the value google generates comes from their monopoly on search, not from workers. It would be trivially easy for google to crush the unionization efforts, sack more than half their employees, and increase theor profits.
grogenaut 6y ago
Honest question: how do unions help with sexual harassment? The me too movement seemed much more focused on hollywood. Unions didn't seem to stop Weinstein.
- enriquec 6y ago
  Not to mention the state of police unions
pelasaco 6y ago
> look at Germany where every industry has unions And the Companies in Germany pushes more and more the workforce to outside of Germany. The company that I work for has moving massively the workforce to Czech republic, China and since 2019, Bulgaria. I could imagine Google doing the same.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  U.S. has been outsourcing to cheaper countries for decades now, and while workers rights here aren't necessarily bad, unions have definitely been weak. As those countries are enriched and developed, eventually they will become more expensive for production, and might have their own stronger labor organizations as well. And then the cycle will continue until eventually you run out of countries/labor markets. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25635380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25635380

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.
tjpnz 6y ago
That sounds more like a cooperative. Outside those situations stock ownership means very little for rank and file employees.
- Mauricebranagh 6y ago
  Especially with the multi class share structure with different voting rights. And talking of employees shares lobbying for changes to the taxation of those to make it fairer would be an good thing for unions to lobby for
CydeWeys 6y ago
The total percentage of actual vested shares that are held by the rank-and-file workers is minuscule at best.

karl11 6y ago

Employees can ask for better, but when you already work at the company that pays and treats their employees like Google, I'm not sure what more you are entitled to. It seems clear to me that these are people who are unwilling to sacrifice some of the money they earn to follow their ideals and principles, so they are trying this instead. There are very few perils of leaving Google - a top tier company in an industry that is continuously struggling to hire enough people. If you are an engineer at Google and can't get a job somewhere else, I don't know what to tell you. Comparing Germany to USA is pointless, very different government, history, culture, business climate, etc.

CydeWeys 6y ago
> It seems clear to me that these are people who are unwilling to sacrifice some of the money they earn to follow their ideals and principles, so they are trying this instead. This phrasing is disingenuous. If you don't like what's going on you can stay and fight rather than giving up and leaving. The people unionizing are of the "stay and fight" variety. Where does this false dichotomy come from that your only options are to stay and shut up or leave and be vocal?
- ATsch 6y ago
  It probably comes the people that would prefer you shut up and stay.
- mikecoles 6y ago
  Absolutely not. People that want to unionize are the lazy or those whose dreams are sprinkled with unicorn glitter. Or a combination of the two. There are no benefits to modern unions. They are another level of bureaucracy. If you want better conditions or pay, earn it.
  - jakelazaroff 6y ago
    So when a company tries to squeeze as much labor out of as little compensation as it can, it’s a shrewd business move… but when employees try to get the most compensation for the least labor, they’re lazy? Do you see the double standard here?

runawaybottle 6y ago

Most union power comes from solidarity. If the Google people feel they don’t need unions, then all other lower unions are weaker. The power comes from the industry wide union. People at small startups can stand up for something because even the Google people stand up for it. Otherwise we’re divided and carry out the dog eat dog world. Edit: To all the skeptics, look, out of all the thousands of tech companies, how but one of you just try it. Can we just try it? Like, all of you join it, and just try it out, so we can actually have one real world example to discuss in this fantasy ‘to union or not to union’ debate. I’d like to at least see one attempt, one example, that way we can all point to and say ‘oh shit, google sucks now’, or ‘oh wait, it’s still a multi billion dollar company and the world didn’t end, here are the pros and cons and the overall conclusion’. We can’t even do that because the damn thing doesn’t even really exist for any of us. This actually working out means it spreads industry wide, the implications are bigger. So could we try it? Just try, nothing more. Please? Pretty please?

lawnchair_larry 6y ago
Why would you even want to try it? Have you personally been abused in some way that you think a union would have prevented?
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  Yes. I’ve worked at places that don’t give a 401k, only 2-3 days off including the federal holidays, I’ve worked at places that don’t extend any benefits to part-time workers that reach into the 30 hour range (multi year workers), I’m pretty sure I know full time workers that don’t get health insurance at some of these places, I’ve seen corporations relegate workers to temp status via actual legislation (Uber/lyft), I read the history of human-kind of labor abuse. And this is what I’ve seen as a ‘knowledge’ worker, and was raised by blue collar workers that have seen much more. I wanted to be civil, but I just have to ask, are you fucking stupid or something?
  - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
    > Yes. I’ve worked at places that don’t give a 401k Oh wow, you’re right, that is abuse! You poor thing! > I wanted to be civil, but I have to ask, are you fucking stupid or something? I’m not offended, but it doesn’t look good when you completely fail to read the question, answer a different question, and then call the other person “fucking stupid.” It sounds like the answer to the question that I actually asked you would be “No, absolutely not.” Otherwise, you wouldn’t make the laughable suggestion that lack of a 401k is in any way abusive. And obviously the experience of blue collar workers is going to be different. This is a thread about tech companies like Google.

toper-centage 6y ago

For a recent example on why tech needs unions, look up N26 (German modern Bank) and their employees attempts at creating a Works Council. The way management handled it was nothing less than despicable, including filing 2 restraining orders against 2 of their organizers, and reporting them to the police because of health (covid) concerns (the police came, everything was safe and in order, then left). https://www.worker26.com/ https://www.worker26.com/

lawnchair_larry 6y ago
In no way is this relevant to anything related to American tech companies. I don’t know how the plight of German bank employees suggests anything one eay or another about the need for tech unions.

gandutraveler 6y ago

Unions will only help the rest & vest culture. I worked at Google and trust me there is so much fat that can be trimmed there. Especially the ones who have been there for 7+ years.. With unions it will get harder to fire them and at the same time they will need to be compensated equally. Software is not a profession where output is proportional to work hours like blue collar jobs. This will demoralize engineers to work smarter & harder.

erk__ 6y ago
Do you have any sources that support that from the countries that have unions for software development. Because that is something I would be very interested in reading.
esc_colon_q 6y ago
Yeah, so much of Google's culture is already about slowing down work so that it takes 10 (5 eng ICs + lead, analyst, manager, PM and PgM) to do the work that 2 engineers would do with identical quality in any other company, and the old-timers are the absolute worst in terms of keeping that status quo in place. I can't recall seeing a single team there that was properly sized and wouldn't function better with half the team and an eighth of the process. There's a good argument to be made that a big chunk of the value of an engineer to Google is strategic, simply that they are locked up and aren't working at FB, Amazon, Apple or Microsoft. I was never at a high enough level to have a view into the data that would confirm that, but it certainly felt like even if you weren't particularly productive in the environment everyone up the ladder was perfectly happy to let you malinger on the payroll forever, as long as you weren't so bad that you did damage to someone's pristine art project of a codebase. So maybe inability to fire isn't really such an issue - even now, seeing anyone fired at Google, let alone an old timer, is extraordinarily rare.
- sjg007 6y ago
  One day you will be the old timer that the young are trying to eat.
acdha 6y ago

petre 6y ago

I am not against unionizing. But Hollywood's unions did not stop sexual harassement, in fact we've seen it was the norm with several names in the industry recently convicted for sexual harassement, assault and even rape.

MetalGuru 6y ago

My friend just moved to Germany. They make WAY less than SV engineers (working at the same company). Granted, they don’t have to work 24 hour oncall shifts. I’m not saying the less wages is because of unions, just pointing it out.

Zardoz84 6y ago

> 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. Well, well... Germany it's far from being true unions working. They are more like "labor rights consultant company".

briandear 6y ago

What’s the pay for a software engineer in Germany? Compared to the US? Citing German unionization as support for unions doesn’t help your case.

caseysoftware 6y ago

> Why shouldn't employees expect, and get, better working conditions? Are employees complaining/concerned about working conditions here? I'm trying to imagine how Google would be a terrible or dangerous place to work.. especially after working from home for ~10 months now.

tempuser189 6y ago

> Why shouldn't employees expect, and get, better working conditions? have their cake and eat it too is absolutely correct. And the reason why we want to keep it the way it has been, is that the status quo productivity maximization is what has resulted in our current high pay and quality of life. > individuals leaving "collectively bargain", it's the complete opposite, it's individual bargaining, with all the perils that entails. The benefit of market rate is that it's fundamentally sustainable, and fair. When businesses collectively bargain, we call them "cartels" >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. Because shareholder need to make decisions to improve shareholder value even if it means it's going to suck for employees. That's an important part of the system. You need to let go of deadbeats. Go ahead look at Germany. All their companies are very old. There's no room for startups. The only halfway relevant company they've produced in decades was a complete fraud. If the USA was like that, Google wouldn't even exist. Shareholders provide real value. For the most part from the fact that the business wouldn't even exist without them. How much they provide is supposed to be determined by the cost to replace them, the shareholders, by starting a new company and competing with the old one. > employees should absolutely make it clear who generates most of the value in a company, This would be hilarious. Only a tiny fraction of Google employees work on a part of the business that actually makes money. Most of the value google generates comes from their monopoly on search, not from workers. It would be trivially easy for google to crush the unionization efforts, sack more than half their employees, and increase theor profits.

grogenaut 6y ago

Honest question: how do unions help with sexual harassment? The me too movement seemed much more focused on hollywood. Unions didn't seem to stop Weinstein.

enriquec 6y ago
Not to mention the state of police unions

pelasaco 6y ago

> look at Germany where every industry has unions And the Companies in Germany pushes more and more the workforce to outside of Germany. The company that I work for has moving massively the workforce to Czech republic, China and since 2019, Bulgaria. I could imagine Google doing the same.

Apocryphon 6y ago
U.S. has been outsourcing to cheaper countries for decades now, and while workers rights here aren't necessarily bad, unions have definitely been weak. As those countries are enriched and developed, eventually they will become more expensive for production, and might have their own stronger labor organizations as well. And then the cycle will continue until eventually you run out of countries/labor markets. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25635380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25635380