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Apple banned a pay equity Slack channel
- dekhn 5y agoAfter watching for a while I noticed that basically the author of this article is not really a journalist, but actually a person working in concert with apple employees to establish a union. The articles are written with a clear lack of fairmindedness or any attempt at objectivity.
- mehlmao 5y agoDoes that change the facts? Apple banned a channel discussing pay equity, giving the reason that Slack 'must advance the work, deliverables, or mission of Apple departments and teams', which is clearly being selectively enforced.
- dekhn 5y agowell, certainly I don't believe the "facts" that schiffer writes because it's clear she has a very strong bias. If you keep asking the same people for pull quotes, and present only one side of the story, with no acceptance of nuance, it means you're a poor journalist.
- jsnell 5y agoThey appear to have written 200 articles for the site. That's some proper diligence to establishing a deep cover as a journalist. Their beat is labor issues and workplace organization. You generally don't get a lot of company puff pieces in that particular area.
- wil421 5y agoI mean it pretty much says so in her bio: > [name removed] senior reporter at The Verge where she reports on labor and workplace organizing.
- xt00 5y agoWhy don’t they just create a slack channel and pinned on that channel it says “hey here is a discord channel to go to…” Maybe the point of creating the channel actually is to get it banned so they can point to that for anti unionizing complaints?
- moate 5y agoSet up honey-pots to demonstrate labor abuses? Now there's something I can get behind.
- duxup 5y agoAnything could be a honey pot but they're already posting on a service hosted by their employer... weird concern at that point.
- perihelions 5y agoBecause it's their right. Why give that up for nothing?
- duxup 5y agoBecause doing it on Apple's slack channels gives Apple the identity of everyone and what they said? That seems like something you'd want to avoid.
- tibbetts 5y agoApple already knows everyone’s salary…
- p_j_w 5y agoApple banned the channel, I'd be surprised if they actually wanted the sort of info you're suggesting they might be after. At the very least, it suggests Apple doesn't think there's much benefit in having that info. What do you think Apple would even do with it?
- duxup 5y agoI really think employer hosted employee activism is just ... always a problem. It's a minefield, and one with slack where the employer has all that data, what was said, and who... that's just a mess for EVERYONE. >But that rule has not been evenly enforced. Currently, Apple employees have popular Slack channels to discuss #fun-dogs (more than 5,000 members), #gaming (more than 3,000 members), and #dad-jokes (more than 2,000 members). I would find those more acceptable if I were an employer, even an employee. Edit: I had a bad typo in this post where I said "employee hosted" and intended it to say "employer" now fixed, thus some of the responses.
- fsckboy 5y agoemployer hosted you mean... i'll delete after you correct, cheers but the apple anti-trust enforcement action I'd like to see enforced would be them keeping dad-jokes all to themselves, denying competitors the same comic relief
- moate 5y agoJust out of curiosity: what are your thoughts on Unions, the epitome of "employer hosted employee activism"? Of course management is going to be least tolerant of things that represent financial risk to them, and there's nothing more financially risky than employees realizing where all the excess profits go...
- duxup 5y agoI wouldn't expect an employer to host the union communication channels. Edit: My bad I had a terrible typo in my original post where it said 'employee hosted' and not 'employer' as I intended. I think the folks working towards that stuff would be much better served to have their own slack disconnected from the employer's systems.
- finder83 5y agoNot that I agree with the move, but is that really surprising? Creating a false sense of camaraderie and family creates a culture where people are interested in working and are positive toward the company. It increases productivity, makes people work more hours, and probably increases tenure. Talking about pay equity leads to dissatisfaction and likely loss of profits as people look for more money, or for different jobs. It's not in the company's best interests. Remember, HR is not there primarily for your benefit as an employee. I would say the same about company chat.
- advisedwang 5y agoThere's a long case history in front on the NRLB about whether or not employees can use employer's resource (ie notice boards, email system, slack) for organizing. In general the rule has been that if employees can use something for general non-work purposes (e.g. setting up a baseball game on the weekend) then the company can't stop them from using it for organizing. However the specifics (e.g. what if there is a policy about what topics are OK, but some OK topics are non-work, or what if there is a general work-only policy that is selectively enforced against organizing) have gone back and forth depending on the administration. Apple's behaviour is probably a result of a 2019 ruling [1] which opend the door to this kind of thing. Given that the administration has swung back to being fairly labor friendly, it'll be interesting if this gets to the NRLB to see if they find a way to make this illegal. [1] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/labor-board-paves-way-for-employers-to-ward-off-union-emails https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/labor-board...
- foepys 5y agoMeanwhile in Germany an employer has to provide rooms and resources for a works council (Betriebsrat) to meet and organize, and has to pay all necessary trainings, including all related travel expenses.
- Glawen 5y agoIt is the same in France, but they are still powerless because they are not present on the company's board unlike Germany. In France it is only the government owned companies who can strike, strikes in private companies are rare. It only happens when they are all fired, but it is too late..
- sofixa 5y ago> It is the same in France, but they are still powerless because they are not present on the company's board unlike Germany Not exactly powerless, some decisions and some changes need to be accepted by the worker's councils. But they cannot make decisions and force the company to go in a certain direction.
- delaaxe 5y agoApple uses Slack??
- saagarjha 5y agoThey’ve been on it for a couple of years.
- rcarmo 5y agoYes.
- chrisseaton 5y agoDid you think they use group Messages rooms for comms?
- davidsawyer 5y agoI've got to imagine most of the big companies do at this point. Amazon uses Slack as of about a year ago.
- dekhn 5y agogoogle tried to prevent teams from using slack "for security reasons" but then deepmind got an exception, and enough people had to join slack groups for external work collaborations, but I don't think the leadership ever explicitly sanctioned slack as an officially supported internal mechanism.
- morgante 5y agoThe vast majority of team communication at Google goes through Chat. The only Slack usage I know of is acquisitions (who are encouraged to move off it) and interaction with customers/partners.
- dekhn 5y agoworked there for 12 years. deepmind uses slack. many other teams do to. Unofficially.
- truthwhisperer 5y agoBe woke go broke or at least get some stuff thrown back
- rchaud 5y agoIs there a reason the employees didn't use a different IM client to do this? Pay equity is a serious issue that directly impacts the corp's ability to negotiate against their own employees. Why give Apple banhammer privileges by discussing it on corporate channels?
- duxup 5y agoI find it strange too. Even in the context of companies that often have slack channels where people discuss all sorts of topics ... it's one I would expect many people would want away from the prying eyes of the folks who chose to pay them X. I wonder if there is some expectation / hope / motivation the the employer would see the topic and somehow respond? A sort of slack channel as a psudo-protest / online activism?
- tsycho 5y agoGenerally, using an internal IM client provides a stronger guarantee that all people in the group are employees. This reduces the risk of leaking out sensitive info, or the chances of a journalist/competitor snooping in, or phishing attacks etc. As such, employers should strongly prefer that such communication happens via internal channels. It is the smart thing to do, unless you believe that employees would just stop discussing these things if you banned them from internal IM. But of course, this is Apple.
- jkestner 5y agoDiscovery. Same reason organizers want to work in the company parking lot, and the company doesn’t want them to.
- nullc 5y agoFlashback: From 2005 to 2009 Apple was running an illegal wage fixing scheme and using threats of demolishing competitors with patent infringement lawsuits when they stated they didn't want to participate because the scheme was illegal. Apple eventually had to pay out in a settlement a tiny fraction of what they stole from employees, so there is little incentive to engage in other blatantly illegal acts against their employees-- much less in activities which are arguably just inside the line of legally permitted.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y agoThis should be on the top of every FAANG comp thread. We must never let this be memory-holed.
- acomjean 5y agoWhen I worked at "Big Defense Corp" we had 2 things that made it easy to tell who made what. - An online directory which included your title. - A list of salary ranges by title. The ranges actually were a little wide (they would overlap a little), but you basically could figure out what everyone was making.
- floren 5y agoAt my previous job at a national lab, we could access these charts that would show pay bands for each title, and had a dot for each employee in your department. Since you know your own salary, you could pretty easily see if you were being underpaid--although of course you'd need to take into account how long you had been in the position vs. your colleagues.
- bob33212 5y agoI could see this gaining steam. Why would the activism stop with equal pay between men and women. Why not equal pay for everything. Who is going to stand up and say I think the Non-binary Black Cook in the cafeteria should be paid 60% less than the privileged white male programmer? Could AAPL afford to pay every employee 500k?
- dang 5y agoYou've posted ideological flamewar comments more than once recently. That's against the rules here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. We ban accounts that break the rules, so please stop doing that.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- S_A_P 5y agoI have a few thoughts about this- 1) I dont think it is 'professional' behavior to discuss everyones business on a slack channel 2) I dont necessarily agree with equal pay for each job title. I think it should definitely be in a ballpark based on job function. I've worked long enough that I've seen equally titled employees with VASTLY different work outputs. That isnt to say that the less productive employee was even a bad employee, they just werent the 10x employee the other one was. I dont see a problem with the 10x employee making more money. 3) Is complaining on Slack or posting your salary the best way to accomplish the goal of equal pay? I don't personally think it is, but I am willing to hear counter arguments. 4) If I were unhappy about my current pay, I would approach it much differently. I would first go to my direct manager and tell that person I felt I deserved more comp. I would put together a list of reasons/accomplishments/justifications for this reason. I always keep a journal of what Im working on and try to send a list of "working on, completed, to do" so that I have my goals set properly. I send that on a regular basis to my manager(But I contract so its a bit different than an employee in this regard). 5) If you still feel like you are under compensated or underappreciated, go look for a job. Get an offer. Have leverage. You will either get a raise or a new job. Win Win Its frowned upon to do this often but I think its better behavior than starting a slack channel and asking people to post their salary.
- pokstad 5y ago> 3) Is complaining on Slack or posting your salary the best way to accomplish the goal of equal pay? I don't personally think it is, but I am willing to hear counter arguments. A slack channel is probably an efficient way to organize other employees for collective bargaining. There are already salary sharing sites like team blind and levels.fyi
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- scotuswroteus 5y agoCan't for a year and a half of acting as though establishing Slack channels will serve as some proxy for whether a company is dedicated to pay equity. Will totally distract everyone from the underlying question.
- smoldesu 5y ago>“It sure is very convenient for Apple that these Terms of Use that they wrote are extremely useful for crushing free and open communication among employees,” one source says. >Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Verge.
- tomp 5y agoOne of this channels can lead to a lawsuit. Guess which one.
- moate 5y agoAny, depending on content! If you don't think "doggo discussion" is a liability, you don't understand how passionate people get about dogs.
- jhayward 5y agoI once made the mistake of making an offhand remark about people "aren't sitting around watching the dogs channel" in a meeting. Oh, did I get some dirty looks from that ill-considered thought that was spoken aloud.
- mountainb 5y agoTrick question. It's all of them. All the stupid chats are subject to discovery.
- tomp 5y agoSure, but some are more risky... The company I worked for, set the retention policy of the #general channel to 1 week two days after a discussion of racial/sex biases during hiring...
- mountainb 5y agoThere shouldn't be any chat at all. This crap just creates unnecessary opportunities for liability. The only purpose for these chat services is to create attack surfaces for plaintiff lawyers. In banking the government saddles the banks with logged chats and recorded phone lines that get forwarded to regulators. Yet now in tech the industry has saddled itself with risk without even being forced to, bombarding employees with pointless notifications to boot through these insipid, time-wasting chat services. It is very bad for employees because employees are the sacrificial goats for shareholders. The catch all escape for liability is 'an employee did it' followed by 'a manager did it' followed by 'an executive did it.' These chats to some extent make it easier to sacrifice peons to the government and/or civil plaintiffs but it also makes it harder to fend off such conflicts in the first place by just making it harder for the other side to find any dirt.
- babesh 5y agoNot all equities are the same in Apple’s eyes. - not George Orwell I hope people aren’t surprised. Apple has a very consumer friendly image but that is because the incentives are aligned. Behind the scenes, the knives come out: Apple labor fixing scandal, Apple caving to the FBI on end to end encryption, Apple playing favorites in the App Store, etc… These aren’t one-offs, they are the culture.
- paxys 5y agoCalifornia DoL is going to be very interested in these proceedings. Of course Apple has never been one to shy away from illegal wage fixing.
- yreg 5y ago>Currently, Apple employees have popular Slack channels to discuss #fun-dogs (more than 5,000 members) I can't imagine a channel of that size. Is it an endless flood of text like twitch chat? Are there limited aproved submitters? We have off topic channels with few hundred members and they are already a mess. Also, is everyone within Apple in the same Slack team?
- magneticnorth 5y agoWe have a similar large pets-focused channel at my company and it's more like reddit.com/r/aww than a conversation with coworkers. I keep it muted, and check in from time to time if I need a happy-pictures fix.
- gambiting 5y ago>>Slack channels for activities and hobbies not recognized as Apple Employee clubs or Diversity Network Associations (DNAs) aren’t permitted and shouldn’t be created. Clearly the solution is to have an "LGBTQ+ and pay equality" channel. /s if it isn't obvious.
- loudtieblahblah 5y agoyou "/s" but it would work. The folks that work HR would explode like robots being hit with Kirk spouting intentionally irrational and contradictory statements.
- zentiggr 5y agoMake that "SLGBTQ+ and pay equity" so you're fully inclusive and that's a solid option :)
- joshuamorton 5y agoApple actually already nixed an employee run pay survey because it collected diversity data. Their argument was that while collection and discussion of pay is protected, collection of (opt in) gender and race etc. Data is not.
- Tempest1981 5y agoAnd "pets club" (all inclusive)
- m0zg 5y agoI'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, talking about pay is often counterproductive, as you never see the blood sweat and tears that went into someone's pay, you only see the end result and it seems "unfair". On the other hand, at Google, there's a gigantic spreadsheet where people share their comp, and it helped dispel some narratives like "women in the same positions are paid less" to some extent. It's not the same when the company itself shares the stats - you always know there are a million ways to lie with statistics. So there are positives and negatives to this. Were it up to me, I'd ban all such discussion. By all reasonable measures, FANG employees are paid more than enough. Focus on work, not on someone else's wallet. But it's not up to me, for better or worse.
- websap 5y agoNope, make pay transparent. At least people can have a fair discussion with their managers why they don't get paid the median amount at their level. So sick of companies promoting transparency in all engineering processes, but when it comes to pay it becomes this opaque thing that's also taboo to talk about.
- m0zg 5y agoHow do you make _effort_ transparent though? If pay is conditioned on effort and productivity (which it arguably should be), how do you surface that explanation, rather than just the extremely inflammatory "this person makes $700K a year" number. For all you know this person might have made the company 10x the amount, whereas someone who "only" made $600K a year had effectively negative productivity. Without this context comp numbers are effectively useless.
- websap 5y agoI'm mature enough to understand some people work harder / have greater output, etc. That's for my manager to explain. If I'm getting feedback that I'm doing well at my level but still being underpaid or not hitting the 90th percentile, than there's a disconnect between the feedback I'm receiving and the compensation. There's another problem in the industry that new hires get way higher salaries than tenured engineers. This allows me to understand what salaries are being paid to new engineers. It's hard for me to believe a new engineer coming into the org is more productive than me. This further allows me to make a case against my manager to adjust my pay.
- goatcode 5y agoSelective enforcement's a pain, isn't it.
- chadlavi 5y agoRule number zero of organizing in the workplace: never use company resources to do it, they'll get you every time
- ankushnarula 5y agoThese aren’t factory line workers — these are highly compensated “employment at will” knowledge workers at one of the most prestigious employers in the world. With Apple on your resume, you can likely apply for a job at many firms who will compensate you much more than Apple. A typical skilled knowledge worker who feels underpaid would look for opportunities elsewhere and either leave or leverage an offer for a raise —- unless of course they were not really skilled and/or they had other motivations. Also, these demands for pay equity from knowledge workers (and their leaks to tech media activists) will almost certainly incentivize and drive employers to increase hierarchies and divisions in their organizational structures. Can you legitimately complain about pay equity when your job is unlike anyone else’s job in the org chart?
- muricula 5y agoYou have to learn what your skills are worth by asking others. It doesn't make a difference if you're "at will" or factory line or whatever.
- ecnahc515 5y agoNot everyone at Apple is a high compensated IC. A lot of them are retail workers.
- bastawhiz 5y agoYou shouldn't need to be unhappy with your salary to expect to be treated fairly relative to your peers. Arguing that jobs are different is moot. Even two very different jobs for the same title with the same tenure are in the same rough ballpark. It's not a justification that it should be impossible to get the data.
- emptyparadise 5y agoWhat's wrong with knowing how much people around you are getting paid?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- allenu 5y agoWith many of us working from home, now all of our "normal day to day" communication channels are basically "hosted" by the company. When you were in the office, you could easily walk over and have a private conversation with someone. Now it's done over communication lines that the company pays for. I wonder if that will have a long-term effect on our ability to talk critically about our workplace with coworkers.
- sumedh 5y agoYou can always create an external slack group and have these conversations on the external group.
- adolph 5y agoSee also: Jacob Preston was sitting down with his manager during his first week at Apple when he was told, with little fanfare, that he needed to link his personal Apple ID and work account. https://www.theverge.com/22648265/apple-employee-privacy-icloud-id https://www.theverge.com/22648265/apple-employee-privacy-icl...
- Manuel_D 5y agoThis story is presents a very distorted view of what Apple actually asks employees to do: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28242009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28242009
- alasdair_ 5y agoAs an aside, Facebook has all employees use their personal FB account for work purposes, logins, group memberships etc.
- danbrooks 5y agoYou need a Facebook account. It's okay to create a new account for work purposes only.
- d3mon 5y agoFacebook doesn't allow 2 accounts for the same person for account security reasons. This is also why they tried to get so aggressive with checking ID cards to create facebook accounts. So either you delete everything from your personal account before linking, or link it as is. Source: Relative who joined FB recently
- alasdair_ 5y agoThis wasn’t true when I joined the company.
- azinman2 5y agoYou are not required to use your personal Apple ID at work. It just means you’ll carry separate devices, and most don’t want that inconvenience (including me). It also makes it harder to debug real world scenarios if you only test on non-real world data.
- makeva 5y agoTbf I'm more surprised that Apple is using Slack internally that the fact it is mistreating it's employees
- decebalus1 5y agoStupid, stupid, stupid. That channel could have been a goldmine for HR to assess morale and to get candid basic feedback about compensation. But sure. Do you want employees to start talking work related stuff on encrypted messaging apps on their personal (or burner) phones? This is how you get them to start doing just that..
- hn-is-life 5y agoCan someone please convince me: why should I want to talk about my pay with any of my colleagues? If I know how much you earn, if we are in separate teams, if you earn less than me I will not take you seriously; if you earn more than me I will give you all my attention since I want to be you and learn from you. If we are in the same team: if you earn more than me I will be jealous; if you earn less than me I will feel guilty. What the hell is pay equity good for me ? How can I feel better in any of those outcomes?
- beervirus 5y agoKnowing these things can give you information to use in negotiations with your employer.
- vineyardmike 5y ago> if you earn more than me I will be jealous Maybe you take this info and say "hey boss, i noticed all the women on our team earn less than the men (of equal level) on average"
- crb002 5y agoInjunction on Apple filed today in my racketeering action CVCV043016 District Court for Dallas County Iowa on behalf of major shareholder Iowa Public Employee Retiree System. The last thing shareholders need is erosion of equity via a massive NLRA lawsuit.
- throwawaylinux 5y agoWell that's really strange I felt sure since their last vapid, empty gesture on social media that these mega corporations were going to be on our side for the socialist revolution. I was willing to overlook their tax avoidance and labor exploitation, but this!?
- theteapot 5y agoWhat they should do is, anyone who's unfairly being paid too much should have that amount deducted from their pay and diverted to community programs, or actually paying off some taxes.
- Arete314159 5y agoThey could start by posting surveys in women's bathrooms. If Apple is like other tech company's, the C suite folks will all be cis men and never go in the women's bathrooms. Once the women gather data they'd have to figure out how to do part 2, gathering men's data, in some equally sneaky fashion.
- metalliqaz 5y agoor they could just, ya know, do it at home. if only there was some kind of communications system they could all use to get in touch with eachother...
- whywhywhywhy 5y agoThis is why you do this sort of thing at the pub on your turf, not on your employers turf.
- grillvogel 5y agoim always impressed and surprised about the things that people at my megacorp are willing to post in public slack channels
- GoodJokes 5y agoFirst rule of “build a union” is don’t do it on company tools. Noobs. Probably another 5-10 years before employees do anything more than performativ to demand less exploitation from their bosses. I hope I am wrong.
- pengaru 5y agoIn other news, employer tells employees what to do with employer's facilities.
- logicalmonster 5y agoI am curious about what a "Diversity Network Association" from the article is. Does anybody have a definition for that?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- teakettle42 5y agoMy general feeling is "good riddance". As someone with autism, I find professional business environments entirely navigable, and have been able to thrive in them. Almost all interactions — even those involving professional workplace politics — conform to a reasonable set of established rules. The people involved with these Slack channels and associated "organizing" efforts are consistently bringing their (eminently messy) "whole self" to work, and the result is a corrosively unprofessional mess — one that they want to introduce to the rest of the company. I do not trust for a second that salary transparency, with these individuals, would lead to more fair, equitable outcomes for us all. I do not trust that they would evaluate the information maturely, with an understanding of the complex variables at play. I do not trust that they wouldn't use further politicking and social dominance games (including leaking to The Verge) to advance their own personal or political interests, at a cost to others. Ultimately, I shouldn't have to navigate their complex, subjective, toxic social hierarchies — which have nothing to do with advancing business objectives — just to get through my business day and be successful in my job.
- bastawhiz 5y agoNobody is forcing anyone to join a chat room to discuss their own or others' salaries.
- teakettle42 5y agoVerge has been publishing leaks to support this group for months now, and it's disingenuous to suggest, given the body of evidence, that voluntary pay transparency is the extent of their organizing or goals.
- bastawhiz 5y agoWhat do you care? Honestly, so what if Apple employees unionize? They get what...better pay? They have greater equity in the trillion dollars of value that they've created? Even if pay transparency was a small step towards organization, you say that as if it is a bad thing. The only people who benefit from suppressing organization are the executives and biggest shareholders at Apple.
- czbond 5y agoThese cycles are interesting to observe from afar: Financial bubble: People complain about not making enough. Three years later after S&P falls 40% and massive layoffs: Same groups will say "I'll take anything, so glad to have a job"
- anonygler 5y agoThere are plenty of resources outside the company (blind, etc) to discuss this. I’m fine with banning activism channels. They erode morale.
- fsociety 5y agoSo much spin. I can’t visit the pay equity channel because Slack should only be used for business functions but I can go onto a dog related channel.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]