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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 gu

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
  What "housing deductions and childcare costs" does Google provide? A web search didn't turn up much and this doesn't sound like a standard benefit.
  - andrewxdiamond 5y ago
    I also am having difficulty finding documentation for this, but I know it’s true. Many condo and apartment complexes around Google campuses have “preferred employer rates” that slash the rent for Googlers.
    - compiler-guy 5y ago
      I have been at Google for many years, and the only time I have ever heard of this are certain corporate housing for long-term temps working in MTV and for a while there was some subsidized intern housing. If such rates exist, they are uncommon or not often talked about. There may be better proof out there, in which case you ought to provide it. But until I see something better, I am very skeptical.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - joshuamorton 5y ago
        It's possible these exist, but I'd expect they're a sense of risk-awareness on the part of business owners, not sponsored by any employer directly. If you know you'll have someone who makes >$ dollars and lives less than a mile from your condo/apartment complex, you probably have a very stable, long term leasee.
- rcpt 5y ago
  I work at Google. How do I save 50% on Bay Area housing?
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
> I don't think Google would be concerned about unionization if they were as terrific as is often claimed. This doesn't follow. In general, unions are bad for companies. That isn't the same thing as saying that they're good for employees. If they do nothing useful and increase overhead, they're bad for both. Unions also have structural incentives to impose things like seniority rules, because existing employees have a vote in the union and future employees don't, so they vote for things that benefit one at the expense of the other. But that can interfere with the company's ability to attract new talent, which is bad for everybody.
- ravenstine 5y ago
  I see what you're saying, and while I agree that indeed, unions are basically always adversarial to the employer at some level (every?), that doesn't mean that every employer or industry needs to prioritize unions on their list of things to be concerned with or counteract. To take my argument to its logical extreme, let's imagine the real world probability that an asteroid may hit BigCo HQ and completely destroy its main data center and most of its key staff, killing the business both figuratively and physically; while that possibility is extremely remote, it's still a non-zero probability. Is it a good use of time for BigCo's execs to come up with a plan to lobby the government to build a giant laser to obliterate incoming asteroids? Would any individual bother? Probably not, because a more likely an immediate threat to BigCo is competition from other BigCos and even SmallCos, government regulation and so forth. In comparison, if a particular company or industry happened to have such a culture where everyone was generally benevolent, everyone was making lots of money hand over fist, and the work-life balance was optimal, then it really doesn't make sense for big wigs to seriously consider dealing with the possibility of employees taking collective action to gain leverage because the will among individual employees may not exist. Maybe it'd manifest as a topic during a meeting between big wigs only to be shrugged off and replaced by the next agenda item. On the other hand, if BigCo realized that something is creating a high probability that its employees will unionize, which is adversarial to BigCo, but the thing that is generating said will to unionize is too ingrained and there's no incentive for leadership to change it, the path of least resistance may be to develop techniques to persuade employees not to take action that may be in their own favor. Indeed, unions can be bad for both employers and employees. That doesn't really matter, though, because either enough employees are going to believe they will benefit from a union or not, despite whether that becomes effectively true, and businesses know that unions are bad news for them; the business also couldn't care less whether a union is bad for their employees unless that hurts productivity by-proxy, as is the case with your example with talent attraction. All that rambling is to say that I believe that all the individual pros and cons of unions can be presented and weighed, but ultimately the primary driver that creates the will to unionize comes from just how disgruntled or alienated employees feel. If employees don't feel alienation, if they feel they are treated with respect, they like the work they are doing, they are paid fairly, and can go home without stress at the end of the day, then what's the incentive to unionize? So that I can give yet another boss a slice of my paycheck that they didn't earn? Rather than think about all that, I'd rather just hit the gym after work, go home and not harbor that stress. This is why I make presumptions about life as a Googler in a general sense. If being a Googler is the kind of career apex it at least once was seen as, it seems odd that those who have "made it" would think they need to spend time and money on unionizing. And why would Google's solution be so tactical? My guess is that there are reasons why Googlers in particular would want to unionize, that Google knows this, and have decided that the best way to address the issue is to weaponize psychology. Otherwise, it wouldn't be such a secret. Hell, they actually hired a company that specializes in this. I could be way off base because I've never worked for Google, and having worked for Apple I'd presume that there are divisions of Google that operate significantly different from the others. Nevertheless, I still think it's reasonable to see a relationship between the employee experience and whether unionization is a real threat to a business.

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
What "housing deductions and childcare costs" does Google provide? A web search didn't turn up much and this doesn't sound like a standard benefit.
- andrewxdiamond 5y ago
  I also am having difficulty finding documentation for this, but I know it’s true. Many condo and apartment complexes around Google campuses have “preferred employer rates” that slash the rent for Googlers.
  - compiler-guy 5y ago
    I have been at Google for many years, and the only time I have ever heard of this are certain corporate housing for long-term temps working in MTV and for a while there was some subsidized intern housing. If such rates exist, they are uncommon or not often talked about. There may be better proof out there, in which case you ought to provide it. But until I see something better, I am very skeptical.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - joshuamorton 5y ago
      It's possible these exist, but I'd expect they're a sense of risk-awareness on the part of business owners, not sponsored by any employer directly. If you know you'll have someone who makes >$ dollars and lives less than a mile from your condo/apartment complex, you probably have a very stable, long term leasee.
rcpt 5y ago
I work at Google. How do I save 50% on Bay Area housing?

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

> I don't think Google would be concerned about unionization if they were as terrific as is often claimed. This doesn't follow. In general, unions are bad for companies. That isn't the same thing as saying that they're good for employees. If they do nothing useful and increase overhead, they're bad for both. Unions also have structural incentives to impose things like seniority rules, because existing employees have a vote in the union and future employees don't, so they vote for things that benefit one at the expense of the other. But that can interfere with the company's ability to attract new talent, which is bad for everybody.

ravenstine 5y ago
I see what you're saying, and while I agree that indeed, unions are basically always adversarial to the employer at some level (every?), that doesn't mean that every employer or industry needs to prioritize unions on their list of things to be concerned with or counteract. To take my argument to its logical extreme, let's imagine the real world probability that an asteroid may hit BigCo HQ and completely destroy its main data center and most of its key staff, killing the business both figuratively and physically; while that possibility is extremely remote, it's still a non-zero probability. Is it a good use of time for BigCo's execs to come up with a plan to lobby the government to build a giant laser to obliterate incoming asteroids? Would any individual bother? Probably not, because a more likely an immediate threat to BigCo is competition from other BigCos and even SmallCos, government regulation and so forth. In comparison, if a particular company or industry happened to have such a culture where everyone was generally benevolent, everyone was making lots of money hand over fist, and the work-life balance was optimal, then it really doesn't make sense for big wigs to seriously consider dealing with the possibility of employees taking collective action to gain leverage because the will among individual employees may not exist. Maybe it'd manifest as a topic during a meeting between big wigs only to be shrugged off and replaced by the next agenda item. On the other hand, if BigCo realized that something is creating a high probability that its employees will unionize, which is adversarial to BigCo, but the thing that is generating said will to unionize is too ingrained and there's no incentive for leadership to change it, the path of least resistance may be to develop techniques to persuade employees not to take action that may be in their own favor. Indeed, unions can be bad for both employers and employees. That doesn't really matter, though, because either enough employees are going to believe they will benefit from a union or not, despite whether that becomes effectively true, and businesses know that unions are bad news for them; the business also couldn't care less whether a union is bad for their employees unless that hurts productivity by-proxy, as is the case with your example with talent attraction. All that rambling is to say that I believe that all the individual pros and cons of unions can be presented and weighed, but ultimately the primary driver that creates the will to unionize comes from just how disgruntled or alienated employees feel. If employees don't feel alienation, if they feel they are treated with respect, they like the work they are doing, they are paid fairly, and can go home without stress at the end of the day, then what's the incentive to unionize? So that I can give yet another boss a slice of my paycheck that they didn't earn? Rather than think about all that, I'd rather just hit the gym after work, go home and not harbor that stress. This is why I make presumptions about life as a Googler in a general sense. If being a Googler is the kind of career apex it at least once was seen as, it seems odd that those who have "made it" would think they need to spend time and money on unionizing. And why would Google's solution be so tactical? My guess is that there are reasons why Googlers in particular would want to unionize, that Google knows this, and have decided that the best way to address the issue is to weaponize psychology. Otherwise, it wouldn't be such a secret. Hell, they actually hired a company that specializes in this. I could be way off base because I've never worked for Google, and having worked for Apple I'd presume that there are divisions of Google that operate significantly different from the others. Nevertheless, I still think it's reasonable to see a relationship between the employee experience and whether unionization is a real threat to a business.