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Imputing altruistic morals to profit-seeking entities and then continually being surprised and offended when companies act shady puts employees in a pointlessly

• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• 3pt14159 5y ago
  What if adversarial systems result in asymmetric arms races and the game theoretic best move is to work for a corporation that is so short sighted as to go to battle against their own employees and to work for them diligently and intelligently? Because I see a whole lot happier employees at Tesla than I do at General Motors. I'm not saying this is an all-or-nothing thing. I'd join a union if I was working for a certain type of employer (company town, federal government, etc) but when it comes to technology companies, I got to say it's pretty good here.
  • outside1234 5y ago
    Are they happier at Tesla? Because I hear it is pretty terrible place to work as a software engineer.
    • onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
      I assumed it must've been the non-manufacturer people who loved it. Because there have been an absurd amount of complaints from the people in manufacturing. I guess, it could be awful at Tesla, but maybe GM is even worse? I know GM had a REALLY bad reputation in the days of the NUMMI plant.
    • ejb999 5y ago
      given the job market, while it may 'suck', clearly nobody is making them stay. i.e. may suck on a day-to-day basis, but get rewarded richly after x amount of time Almost anybody can complain about their job, but in this industry, in this job market right now - anyone staying is staying because the pluses outweigh the minuses.
      • Apocryphon 5y ago
        That statement can apply to any company and doesn’t answer the question at all!
    • NikolaNovak 5y ago
      Note that "Software Engineer" is likely a small and skewed percentage of Tesla let alone GM employees :).
    • bertjk 5y ago
      I think it just depends on if you like the kool-aid there. If you embrace their mission statement as your own, then other concerns might factor less for you.
  • brightstep 5y ago
    I'd rather an arms race than one side having all the arms.
  • enragedcacti 5y ago
    Tesla: 5k review, 3.4 stars GM: 9k reviews, 4.0 stars GM is also higher rated on most metrics in the "Work Happiness" survey https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Tesla https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Tesla https://www.indeed.com/cmp/General-Motors https://www.indeed.com/cmp/General-Motors
    • cle 5y ago
      Are these representative samples?
      • pwinnski 5y ago
        Probably more representative than "I see..."
        • cle 5y ago
          They could be equally as bad if there's significant selection bias. It's unclear to me what conclusions I can draw from that data.
          • relaxing 5y ago
            Obviously responses are self-selecting, but it seems reasonable to believe they’re equally self-selecting.
  • asddubs 5y ago
    >Because I see a whole lot happier employees at Tesla than I do at General Motors. are you just saying that or have you spoken to a number of employees of both companies? It's kind of interesting to me because I would have assumed the opposite to be the case.
    • beebmam 5y ago
      Data better than anecdotes
    • YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo 5y ago
      My family worked in the automotive industry for over 60 years now most of them for Mercedes some for Toyota and in the newer generation a lot of them for Tesla. Everyone of them who switched from high profile positions at Merc or Toyota said that Tesla is without a doubt the worst employer especially for lower skilled labor. These are all lower or middle management positions not the poor guys on the assembly lines. Merc and Toyota have benefits for all their employees even the lowest skilled among them. From Tesla the only thing you can expect is an email from Elon to force your subordinates to come in over christmas because paraphrasing here from one of those emails "Without extra time Tesla will be in dire financial struggle." or retaliation because you said no.
  • cokeandpepsi 5y ago
    > when it comes to technology companies, I got to say it's pretty good here. At the moment yeah in some areas but I wouldn't say that 12 years or ago, and maybe not 12 years from now
  • deepsun 5y ago
    Two of my ex-Tesla contacts said it was pretty bad experience, actually.
• Aerroon 5y ago
  In this case they are treating the company as adversarial. Part of the process is to feign weakness and to appear sympathetic to outsiders. They know that the company cannot do anything when such accusations are thrown out.
• vanusa 5y ago
  Altruistic expectations, no. But I seem to recall a time (up until perhaps 15 years ago) when Google would not have been expected to engage in such blatantly Machiavellian tactics as placing fake op-eds. Nowadays though, I don't put anything past Google.
  • _jal 5y ago
    Google is a huge, public company. Any ideals that survived going public will slowly be ground out by repeated exposure to management consultants from McKinsey and the hordes of MBAs attracted to the smell of ibanker excitement. You can't go public, or become part of a public firm, and not become more like the rest of the big players.
    • poof131 5y ago
      The rampant cynicism regarding corporations is increasingly unhelpful. We’ve had forty years of hands off antitrust regulation and enforcement. We’ve had a bifurcating justice system that doesn’t hold white collar criminals accountable. It hasn’t always been this way and doesn’t have to stay this way. For those interested in the challenges we’re facing with monopolies and individuals trying to effect change, I recommend Matt Stoller’s substack [1]. 1. https://mattstoller.substack.com/ https://mattstoller.substack.com/
      • _jal 5y ago
        I love Matt. But tell me I'm wrong. Any proposed solution is going to have to explain how to change the very strong financial incentives that lead to people doing the same things over and over.
      • hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
        I wouldn't call it cynicism, just being realistic. It is perfectly normal that a company, from the size to Amazon to sole proprietorship, tend to maximize profit - and one of the main ways is to minimize costs. I'm yet to see a single one that doesn't care about costs and survives. Now, there are different people, with varying morals. When they advance to major positions in a company, they make various decisions. Unfortunately, our culture rewards the actions and attitude of people like Gates who deliberately made many grey-area decisions that we might call "egoistic" or just plain "evil" if they were aimed at individuals, or like Bezos, who treats human beings in his warehouses like cattle. So I'm sorry, we are not the ones being cynical here.
• stremrn8 5y ago
• wutbrodo 5y ago
  > when companies act shady Is it shady to communicate to employees the company's view that unions aren't good? Ie, is it that much different from the standard company public statement sayijng something like "we do not think unions are in the best interests of either the employees or the company"? This is a sincere question, as I'm not that versed in labor law and AFAIK it may even skirt legal lines to do this.
  • reaperducer 5y ago
    Is it shady to communicate to employees the company's view that unions aren't good? The large companies I have worked for — some unionized, some not — took great pains to be very neutral on the subject of unions. I suspect it has a lot to do with labor law. IANAL, but from what I read in the newspaper, there are certain circumstances where a company taking an anti-union stance is illegal.
• uncomputation 5y ago
  The problem with cynical takes like this is they absolve Google of any responsibility. Are they profit seeking? Yes. Does every for-profit company engage in 4D chess with its employees convincing them that unions are bad? No. This is a specific mea culpa of Google, not a flaw inherent in every company and we shouldn’t absolve them of fault because they’re “profit-seeking.” > come ready for battle every day On one hand, yes, it’s important to remember that you are only an employee at a company and to not get too doe-eyed about it. On the other hand, we shouldn’t have to come ready to fight misinformation from our own employer. Also, most people do find meaning and purpose from working, if they are working in the right career for them. It is an oversimplification to say the relationship between employer and employee is adversarial.
  • nerdponx 5y ago
    No, it does not absolve anyone of responsibility. Accepting that bad people exist and are bad and that their badness needs to be fought against, does not make the bad people somehow less-responsible for the badness.
    • mandmandam 5y ago
      I'm with you on this one. But here's the thing: They're all (95+%) fucking terrible. No exaggeration, no drama; they're literally evil and for real killing us and the planet. Rs and Ds, judges and lawyers, Banks, Media Energy, Pharma, Guns, and Big Tech - all of them. People might think this comment isn't helpful - because they don't see the above as scum. But they are.
      • nerdponx 5y ago
        I don't disagree. The sooner people can get wise to the idea that all relationships with government, employers, etc. are at least moderately adversarial by nature, the better. Power dynamics, etc. The one problem is that people use this "everyone is terrible" argument to justify selfish libertarianism. "All politicians are bad anyway, so I voted for the one that appeals to my personal beliefs." This seems to be more of a "right-wing" and/or "libertarian" phenomenon, to the point where it seems to be used as a dogwhistle in some circles. So I'm hesitant to promote it.
• awb 5y ago
  > treat the relationship as adversarial and come ready for battle every day against the legal structure designed to exploit you for the benefit of distant shareholders Exploit you with industry leading pay and perks? Unions are designed to balance out monopolistic / low pay / highly geographical companies like large auto manufacturers or airlines. There is so much competitive hiring in tech, it’s one of the easiest careers to switch companies if you don’t like who you work for. You’re not “free” under a union either, you’re just swapping one boss for another. Except now your new boss wants a cut of your paycheck, for you to be a nameless cog in the system who has to put in time instead of effort and for you to be willing to go without pay for a period of time if they tell you to, while putting up with the same (or worse) bullying and intimidation tactics if you disagree. Unions are great in some context, but for white collar careers with competitive pay and hiring practices in place, I can’t see it working out well, especially now that you can work remotely at most companies and literally choose any modern, remote-friendly tech company / startup within a few time zones of you.
  • sangnoir 5y ago
    > Unions are designed to balance out monopolistic / low pay / highly geographical companies like large auto manufacturers or airlines. Directors Guild of America says hello!
    • lovecg 5y ago
      Exactly. A guild for software engineers could be a good thing, with rules around ethics, code quality, security - all the things companies love to underinvest in.
  • satsuma 5y ago
    i remember a post on reddit's sysadmin subreddit a while back of a disillusioned help desk tech asking about unions. the majority response was basically this -- even in help desk, your value is high enough that you can pretty easily find equivalent or better work fast by putting yourself out there. tech corps need the workers more than the workers need tech
  • lovecg 5y ago
• toss1 5y ago
  Yup And if there was any doubt, this action by Google — in and of itself — should convince everyone (outside of Google management) that unions would be a good thing.
  • awb 5y ago
    That's not universally true. Imagine this scenario: If as OP stated employees treat their employer as an adversary, it's a reasonable outcome where adversarial employees demand more than a sustainable company would be willing / able to give. You cannot trust employees to demand a reasonable amount any more than you can trust companies to offer a reasonable amount. Both sides want to maximize their gains. If a collective group of employees have leverage over their employer (through strike threats, mass resignation threats, etc.), it's a perfectly expected outcome for them to squeeze the last ounces of profitability out of a company before it fails, then jump ship to the companies that replace it, especially for non-geographically dependent tech companies. Just as if the company had maximum leverage and no minimum wage / government intervention it would be a perfectly expected outcome for the company to squeeze the the last ounces of concessions out of their employees before replacing them, as we saw throughout most of history. It's nice to think that morals would intervene and both sides would find a healthy, sustainable balance, but that's the ideal outcome, not the realistic one.
    • toss1 5y ago
      >>That's not universally true. Indeed, it is not an absolute. But, considering that the power relationship is setup in society to nearly always favor the groups with the capital - the employers, it is close enough to being universally true to be a very usable heuristic. And yes, I understand that unions in the past have gone too far in extracting concessions, especially in the areas of work rules that impair progress, but I can't say I've ever seen a situation where unions squeeze then bust a company then just hop to a better deal elsewhere. The times I've seen a company fold, the workers wind up pretty much on the street... do you have any examples where they did wind up in a better situation?
• bagacrap 5y ago
  Except that after/while working at Google, the shareholders aren't distant --- the shareholders are YOU. An enormous chunk of the rank-and-file's compensation package at Google is equity, so employees want the company to succeed, i.e. not get bogged down by dealing with unions that generally protect the lowest performers at the expense of the highest performers by treating everyone as an equal performer.
  • krainboltgreene 5y ago
    It is wild to see a community so empowered by the internet be so easily managed with basic anti-union propaganda.