5 ms·

Mapbox Workers Union

47 points by edward 5y ago

russian-hacker 5y ago
Sponsored by the Google Maps team.
everybodyknows 5y ago
Hmmm, no comment from Mapbox management on the company "blog" just yet: https://www.mapbox.com/blog/ https://www.mapbox.com/blog/
CryptoPunk 5y ago
These workers have just obtained regulatory privilege that shields them from competition from other people who may want to apply for their positions, while allowing them to exploit MapBox's investors by suppressing their contracting rights in deciding who to hire. Of course, ideological hocus pocus is needed to obfuscate the exploitive nature of regulation-entrenched unions, so you get statements like this: >>Our operations are informed by an intersectional perspective on power and privilege.
- confused_corbin 5y ago
  One side is already collectively bargaining, seems fucked to have a monopoly on that. Especially when VCs publish books bragging about violating labor laws and colluding.
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    What collusion are you referring to? There was one case I am familiar with, from several years back, where tech giants had a gentlemen's agreement to not cold call each other's employee AT work to recruit them. It seems to be an outlier, and pretty mild as far as collusion goes. Competition amongst tech employers for workers is actually very intense, which produced the arms race in tech talent and corresponding salary growth over the last decade. Anyway, my issue is not the collusion, it's the regulatory restrictions, that violate the right of the employer to freely contract. That's coercive.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - confused_corbin 5y ago
      wtf, you can't be that stupid. They were and are fixing salaries. They were explicitly turning away people in addition to failing to go after people they should have. Executive salaries are going up, particularly in exits, IC salaries aren't. It wasn't and isn't the outlier, it is openly talked about. Corporations have no natural rights, those are for individuals.
      - CryptoPunk 5y ago
        It's better if you don't insult people and just provide a source. Also, you didn't address my main objection to what's happening in this situation.
- confused_corbin 5y ago
  It’s also a private company, they are literally investors in it, with the least liquidity and information. Are you anti stock option / RSU or something?
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    I don't follow your point. Could you elaborate?
    - confused_corbin 5y ago
      I am an investor in the companies I work for. Everyone in the union is an investor. The voting model and incentives have gotten increasingly more abusive and fucked up. Shit like the loans against equity, debt rounds, and so many other things are there to fuck over the people actually doing the work, to benefit the people laundering money. I've yet to see a private company fulfill even their basic stockholder duties to their shareholders who are also employees. Go dig up uber's sheets, or look into what happened at zynga, or hundreds of other places.
      - kdamica 5y ago
        Aren't debt rounds good because there's no dilution? How are they worse than selling new shares? (Genuinely curious)
      - CryptoPunk 5y ago
        If what you say is true, you should be able to convince shareholders/investors to require the workforce of the companies they own shares in to be unionized. There is no justification to back laws that limit the contracting rights of the employers. Such advocacy is based on a "I know better, so I will dictate your choices" principle. And I would bet that companies that see their workforce unionize see a drop in market performance, across all dimensions: revenue, profits, innovation, etc. And I would make that bet in the market, and you would stand to make money off of me if you bet the opposite and were right. But the labor laws as they stand don't allow these varying models to compete freely. As soon as a company's workforce unionizes, it receives regulatory protection from dismissal, and has the power to suppress the employer's contract freedom, by forcing it to forego negotiating with any party not in the union. It's a situation that's ripe for abuse, and rampant abuse has occurred in such situations over the past century, as unions suck shareholders dry.
- cinntaile 5y ago
  You're giving this the most negative interpretation you can because of your own ideological bias. That's not particularly helpful. Perhaps internal changes at the company are no longer benefiting employees and the employees feel that they need to team up to get heard.
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    I am biased against restrictions on people's right to freely interact, and that includes people acting in the capacity of an employer. It's perfectly reasonable to be highly critical of something one views as a violation of human rights. My comment is also a valuable contribution to the public discourse, because it describes the poorly understood mechanism by which unions derive their power, which is regulatory restrictions preventing people outside of the union from competing on a level playing field with people within the union.
    - cinntaile 5y ago
      I don't know what the right to freely interact is, where is this defined somewhere? An employer is a collection of people, so is a union. Why is only one of those allowed to "freely interact"?
      - CryptoPunk 5y ago
        The right to freely interact with other consenting adults, which is variously described as the right to free association, and the right to contract, is a foundational principle of a free society, and we see various reflections of that in the legal rights found in many charters and bills of rights and constitutions. >>An employer is a collection of people, so is a union. I am not opposed to people forming a union. I'm opposed to regulatory restrictions preventing employers from refusing to negotiate with unions or employ their members.
        cinntaile 5y ago
        Do you only oppose this type of employment discrimination or do you oppose employment discrimination in general?
throwawaysea 5y ago
From their FAQ: > Additionally, we will reserve the individual right to refuse to work on any projects that conflict with a worker’s ethics and to do so without fear of reprisal; as well as the ability to deny service to any customer completely if put to a majority vote by the workers. This union's landing page already reads like a desire to bring progressive politics into the workplace, a disturbing trend throughout the tech industry that is completely inappropriate and needs to stop. But this portion from their FAQ goes even beyond that, basically saying they want to control business decision making based on their personal ethics and politics, but without any consequence. Put another way, they basically want to take control of the company and create a new management structure that supplants the existing one. Maybe they should just go do the hard work of leaving and forming their own company, instead of engaging in a long march through the institution (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_march_through_the_institutions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_march_through_the_insti...).
- grasshopperpurp 5y ago
  >Put another way, they basically want to take control of the company and create a new management structure that supplants the existing one. Why do you think unions exist?
- zaarn 5y ago
  Atleast it would be a structure that works could elect instead of being forced into.
- lucian1900 5y ago
  The whole point of unions is workplace democracy, struggling against the dictatorship of the owners. Of course workers want to decide what they work on and ultimately own the workplace collectively.
ekianjo 5y ago
So I guess Mapbox will be on a downward trend from now on?
thinkingemote 5y ago
FAQ: "we will reserve the individual right to refuse to work on any projects that conflict with a worker’s ethics" Are these the same workers that are very happy with and encourage closed source proprietary software to sell for profit (as some developers from the company have written and posted previously to HN)? Or maybe that's another group? Anyone know? Maybe there's some crossover? At the very least one can say that "ethical source" licenses as implied in the FAQ are anti Free Software. But should be ok for proprietary software right? There is no mention about open source or users freedoms in the website.
thinkingemote 5y ago
"Equal pay for equal work" This is interesting as the company have teams in developing worlds. I imagine they would be supportive of raising their pay and conversely reducing pay for Americans. I've always thought being paid for where you were in the world and not for what you do as unfair.
- lucian1900 5y ago
  Why would any pay be reduced? Profits can be reduced instead. The workers are opposed to the owners, not to each other.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    Profits can't be reduced forever.
    - lucian1900 5y ago
      They still dwarf salaries, overall. There’s a long way to go until zero.
sanguy 5y ago
Full disclosure - I worked for MapBox for about 18 months and left as it was a miserable and fucked up place to be because of the internal politics and lack of competence in the geo domain. The Washington DC team are a bunch of social warriors who spend more time preaching politics and activism versus doing their jobs. During the 2020 election campaigns several of the more conservative staff were actively retaliated on - code review comments like "This is the sort of code a Trumper would write..." The SF team is a bit better as further from ground-zero, but not much. The Belarus people get shit done without drama or complaints. They are the top performers in the company. They also avoid all the politics. The union is nothing more than an attempt to stall the offshoring of all dev to Belarus and other locations due to the performance of the DC/SF teams. We have the social warriors protecting their nice do-nothing but get paid well jobs. The company is on a path to a SPAC with Softbank so this was well planned timing to prevent that, or force some nice severance plans to allow the company to move forward.

47 points by edward 5y ago

Sponsored by the Google Maps team.

Hmmm, no comment from Mapbox management on the company "blog" just yet: https://www.mapbox.com/blog/ https://www.mapbox.com/blog/

CryptoPunk 5y ago

These workers have just obtained regulatory privilege that shields them from competition from other people who may want to apply for their positions, while allowing them to exploit MapBox's investors by suppressing their contracting rights in deciding who to hire. Of course, ideological hocus pocus is needed to obfuscate the exploitive nature of regulation-entrenched unions, so you get statements like this: >>Our operations are informed by an intersectional perspective on power and privilege.

confused_corbin 5y ago
One side is already collectively bargaining, seems fucked to have a monopoly on that. Especially when VCs publish books bragging about violating labor laws and colluding.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  What collusion are you referring to? There was one case I am familiar with, from several years back, where tech giants had a gentlemen's agreement to not cold call each other's employee AT work to recruit them. It seems to be an outlier, and pretty mild as far as collusion goes. Competition amongst tech employers for workers is actually very intense, which produced the arms race in tech talent and corresponding salary growth over the last decade. Anyway, my issue is not the collusion, it's the regulatory restrictions, that violate the right of the employer to freely contract. That's coercive.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - confused_corbin 5y ago
    wtf, you can't be that stupid. They were and are fixing salaries. They were explicitly turning away people in addition to failing to go after people they should have. Executive salaries are going up, particularly in exits, IC salaries aren't. It wasn't and isn't the outlier, it is openly talked about. Corporations have no natural rights, those are for individuals.
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      It's better if you don't insult people and just provide a source. Also, you didn't address my main objection to what's happening in this situation.
confused_corbin 5y ago
It’s also a private company, they are literally investors in it, with the least liquidity and information. Are you anti stock option / RSU or something?
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  I don't follow your point. Could you elaborate?
  - confused_corbin 5y ago
    I am an investor in the companies I work for. Everyone in the union is an investor. The voting model and incentives have gotten increasingly more abusive and fucked up. Shit like the loans against equity, debt rounds, and so many other things are there to fuck over the people actually doing the work, to benefit the people laundering money. I've yet to see a private company fulfill even their basic stockholder duties to their shareholders who are also employees. Go dig up uber's sheets, or look into what happened at zynga, or hundreds of other places.
    - kdamica 5y ago
      Aren't debt rounds good because there's no dilution? How are they worse than selling new shares? (Genuinely curious)
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      If what you say is true, you should be able to convince shareholders/investors to require the workforce of the companies they own shares in to be unionized. There is no justification to back laws that limit the contracting rights of the employers. Such advocacy is based on a "I know better, so I will dictate your choices" principle. And I would bet that companies that see their workforce unionize see a drop in market performance, across all dimensions: revenue, profits, innovation, etc. And I would make that bet in the market, and you would stand to make money off of me if you bet the opposite and were right. But the labor laws as they stand don't allow these varying models to compete freely. As soon as a company's workforce unionizes, it receives regulatory protection from dismissal, and has the power to suppress the employer's contract freedom, by forcing it to forego negotiating with any party not in the union. It's a situation that's ripe for abuse, and rampant abuse has occurred in such situations over the past century, as unions suck shareholders dry.
cinntaile 5y ago
You're giving this the most negative interpretation you can because of your own ideological bias. That's not particularly helpful. Perhaps internal changes at the company are no longer benefiting employees and the employees feel that they need to team up to get heard.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  I am biased against restrictions on people's right to freely interact, and that includes people acting in the capacity of an employer. It's perfectly reasonable to be highly critical of something one views as a violation of human rights. My comment is also a valuable contribution to the public discourse, because it describes the poorly understood mechanism by which unions derive their power, which is regulatory restrictions preventing people outside of the union from competing on a level playing field with people within the union.
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    I don't know what the right to freely interact is, where is this defined somewhere? An employer is a collection of people, so is a union. Why is only one of those allowed to "freely interact"?
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago
      The right to freely interact with other consenting adults, which is variously described as the right to free association, and the right to contract, is a foundational principle of a free society, and we see various reflections of that in the legal rights found in many charters and bills of rights and constitutions. >>An employer is a collection of people, so is a union. I am not opposed to people forming a union. I'm opposed to regulatory restrictions preventing employers from refusing to negotiate with unions or employ their members.
      - cinntaile 5y ago
        Do you only oppose this type of employment discrimination or do you oppose employment discrimination in general?

throwawaysea 5y ago

From their FAQ: > Additionally, we will reserve the individual right to refuse to work on any projects that conflict with a worker’s ethics and to do so without fear of reprisal; as well as the ability to deny service to any customer completely if put to a majority vote by the workers. This union's landing page already reads like a desire to bring progressive politics into the workplace, a disturbing trend throughout the tech industry that is completely inappropriate and needs to stop. But this portion from their FAQ goes even beyond that, basically saying they want to control business decision making based on their personal ethics and politics, but without any consequence. Put another way, they basically want to take control of the company and create a new management structure that supplants the existing one. Maybe they should just go do the hard work of leaving and forming their own company, instead of engaging in a long march through the institution (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_march_through_the_institutions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_march_through_the_insti...).

grasshopperpurp 5y ago
>Put another way, they basically want to take control of the company and create a new management structure that supplants the existing one. Why do you think unions exist?
zaarn 5y ago
Atleast it would be a structure that works could elect instead of being forced into.
lucian1900 5y ago
The whole point of unions is workplace democracy, struggling against the dictatorship of the owners. Of course workers want to decide what they work on and ultimately own the workplace collectively.

ekianjo 5y ago

So I guess Mapbox will be on a downward trend from now on?

thinkingemote 5y ago

FAQ: "we will reserve the individual right to refuse to work on any projects that conflict with a worker’s ethics" Are these the same workers that are very happy with and encourage closed source proprietary software to sell for profit (as some developers from the company have written and posted previously to HN)? Or maybe that's another group? Anyone know? Maybe there's some crossover? At the very least one can say that "ethical source" licenses as implied in the FAQ are anti Free Software. But should be ok for proprietary software right? There is no mention about open source or users freedoms in the website.

thinkingemote 5y ago

"Equal pay for equal work" This is interesting as the company have teams in developing worlds. I imagine they would be supportive of raising their pay and conversely reducing pay for Americans. I've always thought being paid for where you were in the world and not for what you do as unfair.

lucian1900 5y ago
Why would any pay be reduced? Profits can be reduced instead. The workers are opposed to the owners, not to each other.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  Profits can't be reduced forever.
  - lucian1900 5y ago
    They still dwarf salaries, overall. There’s a long way to go until zero.

sanguy 5y ago

Full disclosure - I worked for MapBox for about 18 months and left as it was a miserable and fucked up place to be because of the internal politics and lack of competence in the geo domain. The Washington DC team are a bunch of social warriors who spend more time preaching politics and activism versus doing their jobs. During the 2020 election campaigns several of the more conservative staff were actively retaliated on - code review comments like "This is the sort of code a Trumper would write..." The SF team is a bit better as further from ground-zero, but not much. The Belarus people get shit done without drama or complaints. They are the top performers in the company. They also avoid all the politics. The union is nothing more than an attempt to stall the offshoring of all dev to Belarus and other locations due to the performance of the DC/SF teams. We have the social warriors protecting their nice do-nothing but get paid well jobs. The company is on a path to a SPAC with Softbank so this was well planned timing to prevent that, or force some nice severance plans to allow the company to move forward.