10 ms·

Seems to have worked amazingly well based on all the times I recall reading the comments of stories posted here involving unions.

by mhoad 5y ago

noah_buddy 5y ago
I do wonder how much of HN culture is affected by very smart people (in one domain) being subconsciously led to believe things by the machinations of tech. As smart people, they take very passionate positions on issues they believe strongly. Perhaps they wouldn't have believed them so strongly in a vacuum though?
- BuckRogers 5y ago
  You nailed something that I've noticed. Highly competent and intelligent people tend to lean libertarian in my experience. It's only when they get cancer, or finally meet some form of humility that they see the inherent advantages they had over others for what it is. Simply a roll of the dice. Competent, capable, hardworking people often fail to see the bigger picture, and dismiss others that aren't like them. If you have all 3 of those traits, which are both from your discipline and genetic predisposition, the world looks like a meritocracy, and it isn't.
  - AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
    > Simply a roll of the dice. In that case, so is this very conversation, the fact that we're both on this website, and even the fact that we are both interested in tech. If it's simply a roll of the dice, then nearly all aspects to existence are pointless, there's no point in trying to think for oneself, etc. Perhaps this is what you truly intend to convey, but until you explicitly state this, this is an incoherent perspective.
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      The author's point was that "inherent" advantages and third-party support are more to luck than to any intrinsic value a person brings to the table. Having conversations on a website is a choice. Interest in tech is probably a blend of luck and choice (hard to be interested in something you're never exposed to, and hard to sustain interest in an environment where people consistently discourage it; people ending up in those situations are the "roll of the dice" the author is referring to). In short, justifying a lack of empathy with "they made their choices" underestimates the amount people do not choose their circumstances in life.
    - BuckRogers 5y ago
      shadowgovt said it very well and he speaks for me there. But I do believe that when hard work and preparation meets opportunity, good things happen. I'm not saying everything is pointless at all. I've earned every one of the few pennies I have the hard way, believe me. I have a non-stop work history going back to when I was 11 years old, grinding down spot welding tips on a lathe to buy my own video games and toys. My efforts mattered. These experiences and my self-discipline built my character and who I am today. There's some luck involved though. Whether it's your genetic makeup, how you were or were not groomed by your family, and simple right place, right time. To dismiss everyone as "failures in the meritocracy" is short sighted. For example: John Carmack is a very successful programmer. I'd bet there's many here just as hard working, and as intelligent. He did the right thing, when he was at the right place, at the right time. That's all that separates Carmack from swaths, or multitudes of programmers on HN.
      - CPLX 5y ago
        > 11 years old, grinding down spot welding tips on a lathe Where did you store the lathe at night? Where did you plug it in? And how did you get the electricity to that outlet, was there an account in your name with the power company as an 11 year old?
        BitwiseFool 5y ago
        >"Where did you store the lathe at night? Where did you plug it in? And how did you get the electricity to that outlet, was there an account in your name with the power company as an 11 year old?" I'm not the GP but you're being obtuse and counterproductive. The idea that no one does anything completely on their own is not particularly revelatory or insightful. It comes off as dismissive more than anything else.
        BuckRogers 5y ago
        As GP, I agree. You hit the nail on the head there. I actually think the guy you're responding to and myself agree if we sat down and discussed in a more open and honest way. He's trying to prove a point about my opportunity, and win the internet. My response to that attitude always is: you win! See ya! It's why I don't use Twitter. That's the thing- I'm 50/50 on this issue. I believe there's inherent advantages that people have, and it's also about discipline and will. Some people will never grasp opportunity when it comes knocking. That's why many that do grasp (and are lucky to have) opportunity are often pretty upset when others try to dismiss their success. I get that. It's true too. Both can be true at the same time, some are fortunate by no effort of their own, and some are unambitious. It's a Venn diagram of conditions. But in 2022, everyone wants to be the victim. I don't believe in victimhood as a lifestyle. I firmly believe that "no one has more control over your life, than you".
  - Wiseacre 5y ago
    You are describing privilege, although it's a bit of a tainted word now.
    - klyrs 5y ago
      That word, whatever its meaning, is triggering to a lot of people here.
      - BitwiseFool 5y ago
        Ideally we would parse words according to their definitions but the vernacular and it's connotations are impossible to ignore. "Privilege" is a trendy word that gets thrown around haphazardly in arguments, especially in a condescending manner. In my anecdotal experience, the p-word is most often invoked as an explanation for why a critic of [x] doesn't see the merit of [x] because they simply can't understand due to their background.
  - Fordec 5y ago
    From my experience, I find this is true only in the very core of core tech hubs that you can count on one hand. And also with a bias towards finance, adtech, crypto, fintech and other industries that rely on extracting wealth than creating it. Core R&D, hardware, B2B services, networking companies, etc. and then also the factor of geographic places that aren't considered "sexy" in the HN crowd revert to the mean for that geographic area in regards to the mix of political leanings. I disagree it's about hard work, but about ego about how society deserves to value them. That correlates only really under the age of 35 before their first health scare when suddenly society owes something to them that they never previously wanted to feed a cent into.
    - hindsightbias 5y ago
      Before FAANG was really a thing, I worked in/with/around blue collar folks. Ron Paul types were not that uncommon. Vocal pro-union folks who voted for Reagan and embraced Milton Friedman even after their jobs got shipped somewhere else. As their benefits and health collapsed as they aged, any change to healthcare became Hillarycare and the root of communism. At universities though, the libertarians had actually read The Road to Serfdom and could debate with you. Today’s libertarianism is google search deep, just another veneer over tha antipathies of our time.
      - Fordec 5y ago
        Half the population are conservatives at least, which is what I mean regards to reverting to the mean in a geographic area. Plenty of people are not libertarians but just base level, Fox news repeating (eg. Hillarycare), auth-right quadrant conservative and are ashamed of the moniker.
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    > It's only when they get cancer, or finally meet some form of humility that they see the inherent advantages they had over others for what it is. People with terminal diseases also usually become religious. Perhaps atheists are faking it too. > the world looks like a meritocracy, and it isn't. Tomorrow an asteroid may, very unluckily, fall and strike me so as to kill me. It would not be due to my merits or lack thereof. Yet if you want to get ahead, you should generally work hard and do the right things while being sufficiently savvy.
  - sunaurus 5y ago
    I have the opposite experience - I’ve found that people who are good at abstract thinking (most of my software engineering colleagues) tend to also have more empathy than average people. In fact, I believe empathy is just a form of abstract thinking.
    - mgaunard 5y ago
      Sympathy yes, empathy not so much. Abstract thinking pretty much makes it so that you can reason about your emotions, so you're not subject to that of others.
      - ravenstine 5y ago
        > Abstract thinking pretty much makes it so that you can reason about your emotions, so you're not subject to that of others. That's interesting. I wouldn't suspect that to be the case, but perhaps I'd need to think about that more. I would guess that while abstract thinking may not have much of a relationship with empathy directly, it may be a pattern of thinking that benefits highly emotional individuals in that if they are capable of empathy then being able to make connections between disparate concepts can help them intuit where someone else's emotions are coming from, hence helping them be better empathizers. Of course that doesn't mean abstract thinking creates empathy, but perhaps it helps existing empathy.
  - caskstrength 5y ago
    > It's only when they get cancer, or finally meet some form of humility that they see the inherent advantages they had over others for what it is. It is surprising to me since I'm not from US. Don't tech workers at Google have good health and life insurance for such cases?
    - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
      They do.
  - hardwaregeek 5y ago
    Well also "highly competent and intelligent people" are people who have had some success. Even if someone is very smart, if there's no success, it's hard to call them "highly competent". Therefore it's really successful people who lean libertarian. Which isn't that surprising since people don't like considering how much luck went into their success.
  - brightball 5y ago
    IMO, this is a fairly simplistic view. You're assuming that highly competent and intelligent people don't see the forces at work which create and exaggerate these different situations. I lean libertarian because I see all of the problems that come from federal level programs trapping us into a status quo that we are mostly powerless to change. You want to change the way that healthcare or education works...let's just say in your county of residence. It's virtually impossible, not because we lack smart people with better solutions but because the money for healthcare and education is already tied up. Wealthy people can afford private schools or alternative approaches to healthcare if they want. The rest of the population is stuck with what they are given, whether they want it or not. I don't know anyone who is happy with the state of public schools in the United States: teachers, students or parents. We're all mostly powerless to change it though. It's not a lack of humility that creates these views, it's empathy for people who are stuck and want things to be better. I lean libertarian because I see the effects that are making it harder to improve all of our lives. I simply want to reduce the barriers between a person having an idea of how to do things better and trying that out with other people who agree with them. If it works, it will be imitated and improved upon. If it doesn't, it will be discarded. This type of experimentation naturally leads to constant improvement. People need freedom to make their own choices without having to ask for permission.
  - ravenstine 5y ago
    That seems backwards to me. Many libertarians are above average in intelligence, in part because it's a less mainstream viewpoint, but I don't think it follows that intelligent people tend to be libertarian. I could be wrong about that, but I've met enough intelligent people whom are the opposite of libertarian that if there is any relationship between intelligence and libertarianism that it's probably small. > Competent, capable, hardworking people often fail to see the bigger picture, and dismiss others that aren't like them. It's interesting that you say that. I can't say that you're wrong if that's a result of your experience. On the contrary, I've found that those who are competent, as you say, and have their heads down in hard work a lot, are as liable to viewing the world as being anti-meritocratic. Though I wouldn't go as far as to say whether the world is strictly meritocratic or anti-meritocratic, I think there's more of a relationship between having such black and white viewpoints and having one's head down in work for so many hours that little time is left to read about different facts and opinions. My best example is a good friend of mine who is also above average intelligence, but works in a field outside of tech where he is, in contrast to me, much more of a slave to the office, hence he spends a great deal of time staring at one subject and not interacting much with information outside his field of view. His perspectives are often very black and white, and he would view the world as being entirely anti-meritocratic. Being an openly communist type, I could make some educated guesses about why that is, but I'll leave my opinion on that vague for now. When we have discussions about any number of things, including meritocracy, it's pretty obvious to me that he holds these black and white opinions because he's rather oblivious to the various counterarguments and experiences of others outside of his narrow field of study. Yet he is at least 120 IQ. I just realized I indirectly insulted your view on meritocracy. I'm not really here to debate that, and your conclusion may be entirely valid. (and I would say not completely unjustified) Yes, it's one anecdotal example, but that's a repeated observation of mine. Besides, pigeon holing people into single categories is a flaw of its own.
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  I don’t think this kind of analysis is ever productive. Have you considered the possibility that they’ve been convinced not by subconscious machinations but by arguments they believe are valid? If someone went around saying that your beliefs come from subconscious influence operations, is there any way you could prove them wrong?
  - p_j_w 5y ago
    >I don’t think this kind of analysis is ever productive. Not even if it's true?
    - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
      The problem is that it's always true. If you're open to changing your mind in response to evidence and arguments, then your current beliefs will depend on which information you've seen, and thus you will have been influenced by organizations who chose to promote information supporting their own beliefs. We're affected by the machinations of tech, but also the machinations of retailers and unions and political parties and editors and... I can imagine someone presenting this as an argument for being open-minded, and that might make sense. But in every instance I've seen, including this one, it was deployed as an argument that some specific belief should be disregarded because the people who hold it have been tricked. That kind of selective skepticism doesn't make sense.
      - p_j_w 5y ago
        >The problem is that it's always true. Is it, though? We've got here an article about a multibillion dollar company using its money and influence to peddle a view that's beneficial to them and trying very hard to make it look like it's not actually coming from them. This is absolutely not always the case. This is more than just run of the mill people being open to changing their minds then, is it? >in every instance I've seen, including this one, it was deployed as an argument that some specific belief should be disregarded I think you've misread the post above, because at no point in that comment was it suggested that said belief should be disregarded.
BuckRogers 5y ago
I believe unions are actually necessary. Necessary evil at times or not, it's a human right to have a union. I've never been in a union, but my wife is. And I've worked as management with unions in a factory setting. It was fine, actually. The company I worked for that was unionized was the best, most efficient corporation that I've ever seen. In fact it was a superior there that told me, when I was more anti-union, that "companies get the union they deserve". I did everything I could to get my wife into a professional career with a union, so that when I die she'll be as safe and protected without me. I never wanted anyone taking advantage of her in her career. The union may sometimes do stupid things, but overall to not have one is an absurd, and small-minded idea. All that said, unions should also be sector-wide not worksite based. And there probably shouldn't be any government unions- I wouldn't budge on anything though as things are today, without real and significant gains for unions in the private market. I do believe small business under a certain number of employees should be exempted from unions. Say <10 employees. I know France does this, or something similar to it. Big corps keep out competition too easily, and should be doing more to keep the American middle class around. Their contribution can be unionizing. I also think unions would help the world, while I'm certainly not overpaid myself, my Indian colleagues deserve the same pay I receive. I'd strike for that. They, and my employer, deserve it.
- Shish2k 5y ago
  > I do believe small business under a certain number of employees should be exempted from unions. Say <10 employees. The rule of thumb I go by is "If the company has an HR department protecting the company’s interests, then the workers should have a union protecting the workers’ interests."
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  “All that said, unions should also be sector-wide not worksite based.” That’s how it works in Germany and it’s much better than the per company unions in the US. Workers also have a seat on the board of directors by law which also helps balancing things a little. The capitalists and CEOs still make plenty of money within that arrangement, companies are competitive on the world market so it seems to work.
n8cpdx 5y ago
Some of us have seen the exorbitant damage bad unions can cause, for example ILWU destroying Portland, OR’s container shipping industry in a bid to steal two jobs from another union. https://www.universalcargo.com/jury-hits-ilwu-with-93m-verdict-for-what-union-did-to-port-of-portland/ https://www.universalcargo.com/jury-hits-ilwu-with-93m-verdi... (less industry-oriented source: https://www.wweek.com/news/2019/11/29/longshore-union-faces-bankruptcy-over-two-jobs-in-portland/ https://www.wweek.com/news/2019/11/29/longshore-union-faces-...) See also: public sector unions.
- brightstep 5y ago
  Some of us have seen the exorbitant damage corporations can cause, for example Exxon et al knowingly destroying the planet in a bid to extract profit. No organization is inherently good. Unions can be led by bad actors, and that doesn't diminish their overall value. They provide employees with a countervailing force to use against employers who would otherwise be mostly free to squeeze them for every penny, whether via cut wages, unpaid overtime, etc.
  - sershe 5y ago
    Monopolistic organizations of all kinds tend to be bad. The corporate monopolies are frowned upon and at least in theory, and sometimes in practice, curbed by the government. Union monopolies are actively protected by the government. If the unions operated more like competing guilds with low barrier to entry and anti-monopoly rules similar to corporations, and rules were e.g. you can only hire factory workers from a union but there are 5 competing unions in town, there could be an argument for their usefulness. As such they are about as evil (especially in the public sector where there's no competition pretty much by definition) as if e.g. Google had legal monopoly on internet search. Or Exxon had legal monopoly on oil production and unquestioning government support.
- dls2016 5y ago
  Unions are comprised of large groups of people, and are subject to make the same kinds of "self-serving" mistakes as any other large group of people (like corporations and governments and universities and churches and...). Which is entirely the point! Why should we trust a large monopoly like Google to have workers' best interests at heart when there's no counter-balancing force with the same power (be it a union, or trust-busting arm of the federal government)? Everyone forgets that Google and Apple already colluded to suppress wages! https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/01/16/377614477/tech-giants-will-pay-415-million-to-settle-employees-lawsuit https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/01/16/37...
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
You think Google’s internal plan (with vague details in the article), which was entirely internal to the company, convinced most HN commenters of a specific political position?
onion2k 5y ago
HN is ostensibly full of people who want to run companies (startup founders). Consequently the readership is skewed towards people who are likely to be more "pro-employer rights" than "pro-employee rights". There's no reason to believe that the views posted on HN should extend to tech workers as a whole, and even less reason to think it'd be representative of a specific tech company. If the views expressed regularly on HN are really a window into how the typical Googler thinks then presumably Google should be shutting down its ad networks and personal data tracking services very soon...
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
  Is it? I’m sure there are lots of founders, but there have to be way way more employees than founders. Even if you count the aspiring founders.
  - ryandrake 5y ago
    I would guess a great many employees here imagine themselves as top-1% "captains of their industry" employees who are also master salary negotiators, have LinkedIn recruiters reaching out to them daily, have top-notch benefits and working conditions, and are therefore not the types of people who could possibly benefit from a union.
ralusek 5y ago
Yes, because the only valid arguments against unions are formulated as a result of a psyop by Google.
karaterobot 5y ago
I was in the UAW for about 6 six years. My dad was a Teamster for about 30 years. My feelings on unions are mixed — there are pluses and minuses — but they're mine. What I hear on HN a lot of the time is a naive belief that unions are an unalloyed good, and I'm not sure where that comes from. I won't accuse anybody of being a shill, I just think they're getting their information secondhand and don't fully appreciate the tradeoffs of the non-theoretical world.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago
  I'm in a similar position. I think given the propensity for criminal organizations to "dabble" I think all unions should have federal oversight just like corporations (which don't have enough) and that there should be very transparent finances that are open to the Feds and to the union members themselves to prevent criminal connections. Also I have seen unions go overboard with "this is my job and will be my cousin Vinnie's when I retire next year". So nepotism/boys_club issues can easily form as well, at least in the 3 unions or so I have experience with through family members. I personally have never been in a union, but I can see pluses and minuses on both sides that can be at least under some amount of control with 3rd party auditors, whether that's governmental or via transparency from union members.
- baq 5y ago
  unions nowadays should be something like HR, but for employee benefit instead of the company. basically something that HR needs to talk to to get things done instead of just doing stupid things. what unions really are often is something that primarily serves a select few members of the union, which is worse than not having a union at all.
- jonwithoutanh 5y ago
  > What I hear on HN a lot of the time is a naive belief that unions are an unalloyed good Where do you read this? It seems to me that every thread about unions is filled with former union members that dislike unions but don't back up their dislike with any information. I was part of Teamsters Canada for 10 years. I made $25/hr where similar positions at other companies were for $10-$12/hr. Overtime I worked was paid, always, that's literally never happened in software. If we were understaffed, management had to call in extra employees from a staffing firm to bring us to a minimum headcount, no working understaffed. We had guaranteed, mandatory to take, paid time off. When the managers were being idiots, we could tell them such without fear of being fired instantly, the union would back us when the managers were being idiots. Retirement benefits. That's not to say it was all good though. The union never listened to our shops complaints. They didn't step in for months when things were terribly mismanaged. There was visible grifting by the leadership of the union. They could have done a better job. That said, without the union, I would have made maybe 50% of the money I did make, the conditions would have been worse, and the chances of fixing things in the workplace would have been reduced.
brightball 5y ago
Campaigns aren't really necessary. There's plenty of history and first hand experience to go along with it. No question unions led to many improvements historically in the lives of American workers, but they're also responsible for a lot of problems (including causing many businesses to close entirely). In many cases their tactics have been questionable. Sometimes those demands lead to a lot of long term side effects for all of us too. Want to know why your healthcare goes through your employer? Unions. Maybe you see that as a good thing? Maybe not? But unions are the reason it's there. In a software industry that's seen dramatic increases in demand and compensation, it's also questionable why people would even see a need? What is supposed to be the big benefit in this field that pays well, offers great flexibility in hours and location, cushy benefits and numerous opportunities for personal development?
- ravenstine 5y ago
  > In a software industry that's seen dramatic increases in demand and compensation, it's also questionable why people would even see a need? What is supposed to be the big benefit in this field that pays well, offers great flexibility in hours and location, cushy benefits and numerous opportunities for personal development? Exactly. I really can't name one reason, besides in a hypothetical scenario where an entire tech firm was made up of employees who are married with kids and aren't being paid enough such that 2 to 4 months of unemployment would be a big deal. But even in that case, I have a hard time seeing that being a huge problem because it just seems so rare that anyone gets let go unless the company is in serious trouble. Plus in tech so many of us have the skills to be our own employer if need be. That's not to say it's always an alternative to employment, but that's an opportunity there for many of us that doesn't exist in most other fields. A particular company would have to have serious problems and its employees would need to lack leverage for a union to be conceptually necessary in tech, at least in the United States. I can't speak for the rest of the world.
ravenstine 5y ago
Others here seem to be speculating that it has to do with the number of business owners here, but I don't think that paints the entire picture. I'm a single guy who's a senior software engineer with no one depending on him, and I've never had difficulty finding a job (quite the contrary), hence the benefit of being unionized doesn't outweigh the negatives. If an employer mistreats me, then I leave. It's that simple. And yes, Poindexter J. Smartypants, not everyone has it "as good" as I. For some, unionization might be a real benefit, especially if they are working a job that is physically taxing and where the employer has more leverage. I am not disputing this fact. In much of tech, however, especially if you are at all adjacent to Big Tech, the employee has more leverage over the employer than in many other fields. Many software engineers are in a similar position to mine, and even the ones who aren't likely need the employer much less than the employer needs the employee. As much as I've heard great things about being a Google employee, I don't think Google would be concerned about unionization if they were as terrific as is often claimed. Perhaps you don't have to work for Google if they suck. The solution to working somewhere crummy, if the negotiation stage fails, is to leave. Even if you're the worst engineer who ever lived, you'll find another job, and probably a better one. I went off on a bit of a tangent there, but I don't think the anti-union perspective is as simple as to be explained by corporate propaganda or the HN bubble. If someone tried to sell unionization to me in my position as a software engineer, it would only come off as an added cost with for nothing I would personally be interested in benefiting from, and I don't believe I'm an oddball in that regard.
- andrewxdiamond 5y ago
  Pure speculation on my part but I think Google unionizing makes the most sense out of any FAANG. Googlers in SF are “trapped” by the benefits they get. > the employee has more leverage over the employer than in many other fields Housing deductions, childcare costs, food, travel, etc are all heavily subsidized by the company making it near impossible to leave without moving out of the Bay Area. Housing benefits alone can be an enormous deterrent because if you quit Google, your rent can jump up 50% easily.
  - gundmc 5y ago
dang 5y ago
HN has a lot of people on both sides of this issue. You may be falling prey to the notice-dislike bias: we're all much more likely to notice the posts we dislike, and to weight them more heavily. This leads to the sense that the community is lined up against you, but it's an artifact of perception: people with the opposite perception share exactly the same feeling, but they imagine the community being lined up in just the opposite way. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20dislike%20notice&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22false%20feelings%20of%20generality%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Seems to have worked amazingly well based on all the times I recall reading the comments of stories posted here involving unions.

by mhoad 5y ago

Seems to have worked amazingly well based on all the times I recall reading the comments of stories posted here involving unions.

noah_buddy 5y ago

I do wonder how much of HN culture is affected by very smart people (in one domain) being subconsciously led to believe things by the machinations of tech. As smart people, they take very passionate positions on issues they believe strongly. Perhaps they wouldn't have believed them so strongly in a vacuum though?

BuckRogers 5y ago
You nailed something that I've noticed. Highly competent and intelligent people tend to lean libertarian in my experience. It's only when they get cancer, or finally meet some form of humility that they see the inherent advantages they had over others for what it is. Simply a roll of the dice. Competent, capable, hardworking people often fail to see the bigger picture, and dismiss others that aren't like them. If you have all 3 of those traits, which are both from your discipline and genetic predisposition, the world looks like a meritocracy, and it isn't.
- AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
  > Simply a roll of the dice. In that case, so is this very conversation, the fact that we're both on this website, and even the fact that we are both interested in tech. If it's simply a roll of the dice, then nearly all aspects to existence are pointless, there's no point in trying to think for oneself, etc. Perhaps this is what you truly intend to convey, but until you explicitly state this, this is an incoherent perspective.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    The author's point was that "inherent" advantages and third-party support are more to luck than to any intrinsic value a person brings to the table. Having conversations on a website is a choice. Interest in tech is probably a blend of luck and choice (hard to be interested in something you're never exposed to, and hard to sustain interest in an environment where people consistently discourage it; people ending up in those situations are the "roll of the dice" the author is referring to). In short, justifying a lack of empathy with "they made their choices" underestimates the amount people do not choose their circumstances in life.
  - BuckRogers 5y ago
    shadowgovt said it very well and he speaks for me there. But I do believe that when hard work and preparation meets opportunity, good things happen. I'm not saying everything is pointless at all. I've earned every one of the few pennies I have the hard way, believe me. I have a non-stop work history going back to when I was 11 years old, grinding down spot welding tips on a lathe to buy my own video games and toys. My efforts mattered. These experiences and my self-discipline built my character and who I am today. There's some luck involved though. Whether it's your genetic makeup, how you were or were not groomed by your family, and simple right place, right time. To dismiss everyone as "failures in the meritocracy" is short sighted. For example: John Carmack is a very successful programmer. I'd bet there's many here just as hard working, and as intelligent. He did the right thing, when he was at the right place, at the right time. That's all that separates Carmack from swaths, or multitudes of programmers on HN.
    - CPLX 5y ago
      > 11 years old, grinding down spot welding tips on a lathe Where did you store the lathe at night? Where did you plug it in? And how did you get the electricity to that outlet, was there an account in your name with the power company as an 11 year old?
      - BitwiseFool 5y ago
        >"Where did you store the lathe at night? Where did you plug it in? And how did you get the electricity to that outlet, was there an account in your name with the power company as an 11 year old?" I'm not the GP but you're being obtuse and counterproductive. The idea that no one does anything completely on their own is not particularly revelatory or insightful. It comes off as dismissive more than anything else.
        BuckRogers 5y ago
        As GP, I agree. You hit the nail on the head there. I actually think the guy you're responding to and myself agree if we sat down and discussed in a more open and honest way. He's trying to prove a point about my opportunity, and win the internet. My response to that attitude always is: you win! See ya! It's why I don't use Twitter. That's the thing- I'm 50/50 on this issue. I believe there's inherent advantages that people have, and it's also about discipline and will. Some people will never grasp opportunity when it comes knocking. That's why many that do grasp (and are lucky to have) opportunity are often pretty upset when others try to dismiss their success. I get that. It's true too. Both can be true at the same time, some are fortunate by no effort of their own, and some are unambitious. It's a Venn diagram of conditions. But in 2022, everyone wants to be the victim. I don't believe in victimhood as a lifestyle. I firmly believe that "no one has more control over your life, than you".
- Wiseacre 5y ago
  You are describing privilege, although it's a bit of a tainted word now.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    That word, whatever its meaning, is triggering to a lot of people here.
    - BitwiseFool 5y ago
      Ideally we would parse words according to their definitions but the vernacular and it's connotations are impossible to ignore. "Privilege" is a trendy word that gets thrown around haphazardly in arguments, especially in a condescending manner. In my anecdotal experience, the p-word is most often invoked as an explanation for why a critic of [x] doesn't see the merit of [x] because they simply can't understand due to their background.
- Fordec 5y ago
  From my experience, I find this is true only in the very core of core tech hubs that you can count on one hand. And also with a bias towards finance, adtech, crypto, fintech and other industries that rely on extracting wealth than creating it. Core R&D, hardware, B2B services, networking companies, etc. and then also the factor of geographic places that aren't considered "sexy" in the HN crowd revert to the mean for that geographic area in regards to the mix of political leanings. I disagree it's about hard work, but about ego about how society deserves to value them. That correlates only really under the age of 35 before their first health scare when suddenly society owes something to them that they never previously wanted to feed a cent into.
  - hindsightbias 5y ago
    Before FAANG was really a thing, I worked in/with/around blue collar folks. Ron Paul types were not that uncommon. Vocal pro-union folks who voted for Reagan and embraced Milton Friedman even after their jobs got shipped somewhere else. As their benefits and health collapsed as they aged, any change to healthcare became Hillarycare and the root of communism. At universities though, the libertarians had actually read The Road to Serfdom and could debate with you. Today’s libertarianism is google search deep, just another veneer over tha antipathies of our time.
    - Fordec 5y ago
      Half the population are conservatives at least, which is what I mean regards to reverting to the mean in a geographic area. Plenty of people are not libertarians but just base level, Fox news repeating (eg. Hillarycare), auth-right quadrant conservative and are ashamed of the moniker.
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  > It's only when they get cancer, or finally meet some form of humility that they see the inherent advantages they had over others for what it is. People with terminal diseases also usually become religious. Perhaps atheists are faking it too. > the world looks like a meritocracy, and it isn't. Tomorrow an asteroid may, very unluckily, fall and strike me so as to kill me. It would not be due to my merits or lack thereof. Yet if you want to get ahead, you should generally work hard and do the right things while being sufficiently savvy.
- sunaurus 5y ago
  I have the opposite experience - I’ve found that people who are good at abstract thinking (most of my software engineering colleagues) tend to also have more empathy than average people. In fact, I believe empathy is just a form of abstract thinking.
  - mgaunard 5y ago
    Sympathy yes, empathy not so much. Abstract thinking pretty much makes it so that you can reason about your emotions, so you're not subject to that of others.
    - ravenstine 5y ago
      > Abstract thinking pretty much makes it so that you can reason about your emotions, so you're not subject to that of others. That's interesting. I wouldn't suspect that to be the case, but perhaps I'd need to think about that more. I would guess that while abstract thinking may not have much of a relationship with empathy directly, it may be a pattern of thinking that benefits highly emotional individuals in that if they are capable of empathy then being able to make connections between disparate concepts can help them intuit where someone else's emotions are coming from, hence helping them be better empathizers. Of course that doesn't mean abstract thinking creates empathy, but perhaps it helps existing empathy.
- caskstrength 5y ago
  > It's only when they get cancer, or finally meet some form of humility that they see the inherent advantages they had over others for what it is. It is surprising to me since I'm not from US. Don't tech workers at Google have good health and life insurance for such cases?
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    They do.
- hardwaregeek 5y ago
  Well also "highly competent and intelligent people" are people who have had some success. Even if someone is very smart, if there's no success, it's hard to call them "highly competent". Therefore it's really successful people who lean libertarian. Which isn't that surprising since people don't like considering how much luck went into their success.
- brightball 5y ago
  IMO, this is a fairly simplistic view. You're assuming that highly competent and intelligent people don't see the forces at work which create and exaggerate these different situations. I lean libertarian because I see all of the problems that come from federal level programs trapping us into a status quo that we are mostly powerless to change. You want to change the way that healthcare or education works...let's just say in your county of residence. It's virtually impossible, not because we lack smart people with better solutions but because the money for healthcare and education is already tied up. Wealthy people can afford private schools or alternative approaches to healthcare if they want. The rest of the population is stuck with what they are given, whether they want it or not. I don't know anyone who is happy with the state of public schools in the United States: teachers, students or parents. We're all mostly powerless to change it though. It's not a lack of humility that creates these views, it's empathy for people who are stuck and want things to be better. I lean libertarian because I see the effects that are making it harder to improve all of our lives. I simply want to reduce the barriers between a person having an idea of how to do things better and trying that out with other people who agree with them. If it works, it will be imitated and improved upon. If it doesn't, it will be discarded. This type of experimentation naturally leads to constant improvement. People need freedom to make their own choices without having to ask for permission.
- ravenstine 5y ago
  That seems backwards to me. Many libertarians are above average in intelligence, in part because it's a less mainstream viewpoint, but I don't think it follows that intelligent people tend to be libertarian. I could be wrong about that, but I've met enough intelligent people whom are the opposite of libertarian that if there is any relationship between intelligence and libertarianism that it's probably small. > Competent, capable, hardworking people often fail to see the bigger picture, and dismiss others that aren't like them. It's interesting that you say that. I can't say that you're wrong if that's a result of your experience. On the contrary, I've found that those who are competent, as you say, and have their heads down in hard work a lot, are as liable to viewing the world as being anti-meritocratic. Though I wouldn't go as far as to say whether the world is strictly meritocratic or anti-meritocratic, I think there's more of a relationship between having such black and white viewpoints and having one's head down in work for so many hours that little time is left to read about different facts and opinions. My best example is a good friend of mine who is also above average intelligence, but works in a field outside of tech where he is, in contrast to me, much more of a slave to the office, hence he spends a great deal of time staring at one subject and not interacting much with information outside his field of view. His perspectives are often very black and white, and he would view the world as being entirely anti-meritocratic. Being an openly communist type, I could make some educated guesses about why that is, but I'll leave my opinion on that vague for now. When we have discussions about any number of things, including meritocracy, it's pretty obvious to me that he holds these black and white opinions because he's rather oblivious to the various counterarguments and experiences of others outside of his narrow field of study. Yet he is at least 120 IQ. I just realized I indirectly insulted your view on meritocracy. I'm not really here to debate that, and your conclusion may be entirely valid. (and I would say not completely unjustified) Yes, it's one anecdotal example, but that's a repeated observation of mine. Besides, pigeon holing people into single categories is a flaw of its own.
SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
I don’t think this kind of analysis is ever productive. Have you considered the possibility that they’ve been convinced not by subconscious machinations but by arguments they believe are valid? If someone went around saying that your beliefs come from subconscious influence operations, is there any way you could prove them wrong?
- p_j_w 5y ago
  >I don’t think this kind of analysis is ever productive. Not even if it's true?
  - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
    The problem is that it's always true. If you're open to changing your mind in response to evidence and arguments, then your current beliefs will depend on which information you've seen, and thus you will have been influenced by organizations who chose to promote information supporting their own beliefs. We're affected by the machinations of tech, but also the machinations of retailers and unions and political parties and editors and... I can imagine someone presenting this as an argument for being open-minded, and that might make sense. But in every instance I've seen, including this one, it was deployed as an argument that some specific belief should be disregarded because the people who hold it have been tricked. That kind of selective skepticism doesn't make sense.
    - p_j_w 5y ago
      >The problem is that it's always true. Is it, though? We've got here an article about a multibillion dollar company using its money and influence to peddle a view that's beneficial to them and trying very hard to make it look like it's not actually coming from them. This is absolutely not always the case. This is more than just run of the mill people being open to changing their minds then, is it? >in every instance I've seen, including this one, it was deployed as an argument that some specific belief should be disregarded I think you've misread the post above, because at no point in that comment was it suggested that said belief should be disregarded.

BuckRogers 5y ago

I believe unions are actually necessary. Necessary evil at times or not, it's a human right to have a union. I've never been in a union, but my wife is. And I've worked as management with unions in a factory setting. It was fine, actually. The company I worked for that was unionized was the best, most efficient corporation that I've ever seen. In fact it was a superior there that told me, when I was more anti-union, that "companies get the union they deserve". I did everything I could to get my wife into a professional career with a union, so that when I die she'll be as safe and protected without me. I never wanted anyone taking advantage of her in her career. The union may sometimes do stupid things, but overall to not have one is an absurd, and small-minded idea. All that said, unions should also be sector-wide not worksite based. And there probably shouldn't be any government unions- I wouldn't budge on anything though as things are today, without real and significant gains for unions in the private market. I do believe small business under a certain number of employees should be exempted from unions. Say <10 employees. I know France does this, or something similar to it. Big corps keep out competition too easily, and should be doing more to keep the American middle class around. Their contribution can be unionizing. I also think unions would help the world, while I'm certainly not overpaid myself, my Indian colleagues deserve the same pay I receive. I'd strike for that. They, and my employer, deserve it.

Shish2k 5y ago
> I do believe small business under a certain number of employees should be exempted from unions. Say <10 employees. The rule of thumb I go by is "If the company has an HR department protecting the company’s interests, then the workers should have a union protecting the workers’ interests."
spaetzleesser 5y ago
“All that said, unions should also be sector-wide not worksite based.” That’s how it works in Germany and it’s much better than the per company unions in the US. Workers also have a seat on the board of directors by law which also helps balancing things a little. The capitalists and CEOs still make plenty of money within that arrangement, companies are competitive on the world market so it seems to work.

n8cpdx 5y ago

Some of us have seen the exorbitant damage bad unions can cause, for example ILWU destroying Portland, OR’s container shipping industry in a bid to steal two jobs from another union. https://www.universalcargo.com/jury-hits-ilwu-with-93m-verdict-for-what-union-did-to-port-of-portland/ https://www.universalcargo.com/jury-hits-ilwu-with-93m-verdi... (less industry-oriented source: https://www.wweek.com/news/2019/11/29/longshore-union-faces-bankruptcy-over-two-jobs-in-portland/ https://www.wweek.com/news/2019/11/29/longshore-union-faces-...) See also: public sector unions.

brightstep 5y ago
Some of us have seen the exorbitant damage corporations can cause, for example Exxon et al knowingly destroying the planet in a bid to extract profit. No organization is inherently good. Unions can be led by bad actors, and that doesn't diminish their overall value. They provide employees with a countervailing force to use against employers who would otherwise be mostly free to squeeze them for every penny, whether via cut wages, unpaid overtime, etc.
- sershe 5y ago
  Monopolistic organizations of all kinds tend to be bad. The corporate monopolies are frowned upon and at least in theory, and sometimes in practice, curbed by the government. Union monopolies are actively protected by the government. If the unions operated more like competing guilds with low barrier to entry and anti-monopoly rules similar to corporations, and rules were e.g. you can only hire factory workers from a union but there are 5 competing unions in town, there could be an argument for their usefulness. As such they are about as evil (especially in the public sector where there's no competition pretty much by definition) as if e.g. Google had legal monopoly on internet search. Or Exxon had legal monopoly on oil production and unquestioning government support.
dls2016 5y ago
Unions are comprised of large groups of people, and are subject to make the same kinds of "self-serving" mistakes as any other large group of people (like corporations and governments and universities and churches and...). Which is entirely the point! Why should we trust a large monopoly like Google to have workers' best interests at heart when there's no counter-balancing force with the same power (be it a union, or trust-busting arm of the federal government)? Everyone forgets that Google and Apple already colluded to suppress wages! https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/01/16/377614477/tech-giants-will-pay-415-million-to-settle-employees-lawsuit https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/01/16/37...

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

You think Google’s internal plan (with vague details in the article), which was entirely internal to the company, convinced most HN commenters of a specific political position?

onion2k 5y ago

HN is ostensibly full of people who want to run companies (startup founders). Consequently the readership is skewed towards people who are likely to be more "pro-employer rights" than "pro-employee rights". There's no reason to believe that the views posted on HN should extend to tech workers as a whole, and even less reason to think it'd be representative of a specific tech company. If the views expressed regularly on HN are really a window into how the typical Googler thinks then presumably Google should be shutting down its ad networks and personal data tracking services very soon...

6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
Is it? I’m sure there are lots of founders, but there have to be way way more employees than founders. Even if you count the aspiring founders.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  I would guess a great many employees here imagine themselves as top-1% "captains of their industry" employees who are also master salary negotiators, have LinkedIn recruiters reaching out to them daily, have top-notch benefits and working conditions, and are therefore not the types of people who could possibly benefit from a union.

ralusek 5y ago

Yes, because the only valid arguments against unions are formulated as a result of a psyop by Google.

karaterobot 5y ago

I was in the UAW for about 6 six years. My dad was a Teamster for about 30 years. My feelings on unions are mixed — there are pluses and minuses — but they're mine. What I hear on HN a lot of the time is a naive belief that unions are an unalloyed good, and I'm not sure where that comes from. I won't accuse anybody of being a shill, I just think they're getting their information secondhand and don't fully appreciate the tradeoffs of the non-theoretical world.

stjohnswarts 5y ago
I'm in a similar position. I think given the propensity for criminal organizations to "dabble" I think all unions should have federal oversight just like corporations (which don't have enough) and that there should be very transparent finances that are open to the Feds and to the union members themselves to prevent criminal connections. Also I have seen unions go overboard with "this is my job and will be my cousin Vinnie's when I retire next year". So nepotism/boys_club issues can easily form as well, at least in the 3 unions or so I have experience with through family members. I personally have never been in a union, but I can see pluses and minuses on both sides that can be at least under some amount of control with 3rd party auditors, whether that's governmental or via transparency from union members.
baq 5y ago
unions nowadays should be something like HR, but for employee benefit instead of the company. basically something that HR needs to talk to to get things done instead of just doing stupid things. what unions really are often is something that primarily serves a select few members of the union, which is worse than not having a union at all.
jonwithoutanh 5y ago
> What I hear on HN a lot of the time is a naive belief that unions are an unalloyed good Where do you read this? It seems to me that every thread about unions is filled with former union members that dislike unions but don't back up their dislike with any information. I was part of Teamsters Canada for 10 years. I made $25/hr where similar positions at other companies were for $10-$12/hr. Overtime I worked was paid, always, that's literally never happened in software. If we were understaffed, management had to call in extra employees from a staffing firm to bring us to a minimum headcount, no working understaffed. We had guaranteed, mandatory to take, paid time off. When the managers were being idiots, we could tell them such without fear of being fired instantly, the union would back us when the managers were being idiots. Retirement benefits. That's not to say it was all good though. The union never listened to our shops complaints. They didn't step in for months when things were terribly mismanaged. There was visible grifting by the leadership of the union. They could have done a better job. That said, without the union, I would have made maybe 50% of the money I did make, the conditions would have been worse, and the chances of fixing things in the workplace would have been reduced.

brightball 5y ago

Campaigns aren't really necessary. There's plenty of history and first hand experience to go along with it. No question unions led to many improvements historically in the lives of American workers, but they're also responsible for a lot of problems (including causing many businesses to close entirely). In many cases their tactics have been questionable. Sometimes those demands lead to a lot of long term side effects for all of us too. Want to know why your healthcare goes through your employer? Unions. Maybe you see that as a good thing? Maybe not? But unions are the reason it's there. In a software industry that's seen dramatic increases in demand and compensation, it's also questionable why people would even see a need? What is supposed to be the big benefit in this field that pays well, offers great flexibility in hours and location, cushy benefits and numerous opportunities for personal development?

ravenstine 5y ago
> In a software industry that's seen dramatic increases in demand and compensation, it's also questionable why people would even see a need? What is supposed to be the big benefit in this field that pays well, offers great flexibility in hours and location, cushy benefits and numerous opportunities for personal development? Exactly. I really can't name one reason, besides in a hypothetical scenario where an entire tech firm was made up of employees who are married with kids and aren't being paid enough such that 2 to 4 months of unemployment would be a big deal. But even in that case, I have a hard time seeing that being a huge problem because it just seems so rare that anyone gets let go unless the company is in serious trouble. Plus in tech so many of us have the skills to be our own employer if need be. That's not to say it's always an alternative to employment, but that's an opportunity there for many of us that doesn't exist in most other fields. A particular company would have to have serious problems and its employees would need to lack leverage for a union to be conceptually necessary in tech, at least in the United States. I can't speak for the rest of the world.

ravenstine 5y ago

Others here seem to be speculating that it has to do with the number of business owners here, but I don't think that paints the entire picture. I'm a single guy who's a senior software engineer with no one depending on him, and I've never had difficulty finding a job (quite the contrary), hence the benefit of being unionized doesn't outweigh the negatives. If an employer mistreats me, then I leave. It's that simple. And yes, Poindexter J. Smartypants, not everyone has it "as good" as I. For some, unionization might be a real benefit, especially if they are working a job that is physically taxing and where the employer has more leverage. I am not disputing this fact. In much of tech, however, especially if you are at all adjacent to Big Tech, the employee has more leverage over the employer than in many other fields. Many software engineers are in a similar position to mine, and even the ones who aren't likely need the employer much less than the employer needs the employee. As much as I've heard great things about being a Google employee, I don't think Google would be concerned about unionization if they were as terrific as is often claimed. Perhaps you don't have to work for Google if they suck. The solution to working somewhere crummy, if the negotiation stage fails, is to leave. Even if you're the worst engineer who ever lived, you'll find another job, and probably a better one. I went off on a bit of a tangent there, but I don't think the anti-union perspective is as simple as to be explained by corporate propaganda or the HN bubble. If someone tried to sell unionization to me in my position as a software engineer, it would only come off as an added cost with for nothing I would personally be interested in benefiting from, and I don't believe I'm an oddball in that regard.

andrewxdiamond 5y ago
Pure speculation on my part but I think Google unionizing makes the most sense out of any FAANG. Googlers in SF are “trapped” by the benefits they get. > the employee has more leverage over the employer than in many other fields Housing deductions, childcare costs, food, travel, etc are all heavily subsidized by the company making it near impossible to leave without moving out of the Bay Area. Housing benefits alone can be an enormous deterrent because if you quit Google, your rent can jump up 50% easily.
- gundmc 5y ago

dang 5y ago

HN has a lot of people on both sides of this issue. You may be falling prey to the notice-dislike bias: we're all much more likely to notice the posts we dislike, and to weight them more heavily. This leads to the sense that the community is lined up against you, but it's an artifact of perception: people with the opposite perception share exactly the same feeling, but they imagine the community being lined up in just the opposite way. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20dislike%20notice&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22false%20feelings%20of%20generality%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...