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Google hired union-busting consultants to convince employees “unions suck”
- amai 5y agoIf people in the US mention „Unions“ it remembers me of the scene in Monty Python Life of Brian when people say „Jehovah“. It is called blasphemy and made into an absolute scandal and people get stoned/fired for simply saying the word immediately.
- paisawalla 5y ago
- ziggus 5y ago"Professional employees whose work is merit-based don't need labor unions." You're living in a dream world, Neo.
- paisawalla 5y agoWhat's your argument? That talented people can't get ahead at Google or competing employers?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ziggus 5y agoBureaucracies often impose arbitrary measures of success on teams and employees that often have nothing at all to do with merit or productivity or any other measure that a reasonable person would use, and reduce or increase staffing levels based on those measures. See 'stack ranking' for a perfect example.
- paisawalla 5y agoWhat's the evidence that stack ranking is unreasonable or that it doesn't correlate (even imperfectly) to merit? I think it's pretty trivial to construct a case that, given pressure to apply resources efficiently and to incentivize growing performance, stack ranking or similar are reasonable approaches.
- ziggus 5y agoStack ranking is based on whatever metrics team leaders/supervisors want to use. It often becomes a simple popularity contest, and leads to an 'every person for themselves' culture which can stifle innovation and collaboration. Even in cases where there's a quantitative metric used for ranking, it's often subject to gaming, such as the use of number of commits or ticket closures. Also, stack ranking doesn't account for any flaws in the systems of the company itself - if you have poor processes that hinder productivity, it's going to artificially diminish the rankings of employees that have to use or are subject to those processes. There's a reason why companies that use it tend to have much higher turnover than companies that don't - because it makes for a really unpleasant workplace.
- literallycancer 5y agoYou are getting sidetracked by appearances.
- DrammBA 5y agoWhat does "LGBTQ2SPPIA+" mean? I tried googling it but the one and only result is this comment.
- paisawalla 5y ago
- DrammBA 5y ago"No results found for LGBTQQ2SPIA+"
- paisawalla 5y agoI'm sorry, I got it wrong again, it's LGBTQQIP2SAA https://oie.duke.edu/knowledge-base/glossary/lgbtqqip2saa https://oie.duke.edu/knowledge-base/glossary/lgbtqqip2saa As you well know, the ordering and meaning of these last letters changes. It can't be refuted that the acronym continues to accumulate identities.
- wyre 5y agoSo I’m hearing you say unions are bad because there promote anti-racism and bring up moral issues? And that’s bad because?
- paisawalla 5y agoI'll engage as though this is a good faith attempt to read the complaint, for the benefit of anyone who is interested by this critique. 1. A union purports to represent the interests of a labor force to its management. Those interests are diverse, because the workplace is diverse, but the issues with largest intersection tend to be compensation, time off, and health benefits. 2. In the past several years, there has been an unambiguous inclination for the stultifying, puritanical, logocentric manner of leftist political spaces to also invade and supplant workplace norms and office culture. This goes as far back as Brandon Eich being ousted for making a donation that follows his conscience, but also includes a funded menstrual app startup that has to claim to serve not women, but "people with periods". It's an insane worldview that maybe 5% of Americans agree with, yet it's the dominant corporate culture. 3. These supposedly moral issues (I called them fashions) being broadly unpopular are nonetheless enforced norms. The way they are enforced is through the actions of HR departments, and particularly on the backs of legal theories such as disparate impact and workplace fairness. 4. Unions, i.e. labor relations, are exactly the type of concern that would fall under (3) and therefore susceptible to becoming another vector for propagating (2). That, along with the fact that most Google employees are extremely well compensated, make it reasonable that progress on (1) is not nearly the likely outcome of a union, while (2) is an easily foreseeable side effect, intended or otherwise. 5. Again, evidence of how unions in other knowledge work fields such as journalism, supports this. Journalists have been outed from their positions, without support from their unions, for expressing basic journalistic freedoms. Isn't the union supposed to protect you from being fired for doing your job? Education is another such field where we can see plainly what's happening. Lastly, anti-racism is a moral abomination under its current critical theory construction popularized by e.g. Kendi, DiAngelo etc. Also, it's not the union's job to propagate morals or enforce them onto labor.
- wyre 5y ago1. Unions are a democratic force and it’s important to consider that it’s faults are problems of democracy, not something inherent or restricted to unions. 2. Lots of big words to justify being a bigot here imo. There is nothing cool about being against gay marriage. Also menstrual cups are exactly for people with periods and not women. Why would a post-menopausal woman need a menstrual cup? Your sexism is exclusionary and doesn’t benefit anyone while actively harming the people you are denying. 3. Citations please. Even a journalistic anecdote would mean more here than your opinion. 4. You might have to dumb this down for me, your mental gymnastics are getting hard to follow. 5. I don’t know what journalists you’re talking about but I would imagine it boils down to maintaining journalistic integrity being more important than the unconditional support from the union. > anti-racism is a moral abomination Looks like one small step to racism to me.
- literallycancer 5y agoLawyers unionize the moment they reach the required headcount. That tells you all you need to know about this particular facet of the game.
- papito 5y agoIt's a testament to how fraudulent this "trickle down" argument is. The contractors in security, the kitchen, cleaning - they get peanuts, while working in one of the most decadent centers of wealth on the planet.
- gargalatas 5y agoThis is how Sergey Brin and Larry Page have raised 30% their fortune the last years. They already did enough to their workers but even more and worse tactics I am expecting to see from them the next years.
- sanxiyn 5y agoUnions don't suck, Google sucks.
- endisneigh 5y agoIf Google does indeed suck, wouldn’t employees leave for a company that doesn’t? I wonder what the attrition looks like
- izzydata 5y agoNot if they are unaware of how things might be elsewhere. If they have only ever worked at Google out of college they could have no idea that things suck.
- bhaavan 5y agoIt's hard to believe that people working in one of the most seek-ed/desired jobs in the Valley / tech world, are unaware of how things might be elsewhere.
- krageon 5y agoPeople still work for Amazon, so we can be sure it is nevertheless true that some people don't know how good things could be for them.
- flavius29663 5y agowhat does attrition look like for Amazon vs Google?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nosequel 5y agoMoney. As soon as a lot of people leave a team or location in Google, Google responds by giving everyone bonuses. When a bunch of people started quitting from the Boulder office a few (5?) years back, they offered to send everyone on a trip to Hawaii. Google's Do No Evil has been gone for a long while, but people stick around because they are making so much goddamn money.
- sanxiyn 5y agoLearn from South Korea: all top tech companies are unionized. #1 search engine (Naver), #1 messenger (Kakao), #1 game company (Nexon), etc.
- nvr219 5y agoI thought Samsung was the top tech company.
- sanxiyn 5y agoSamsung union situation is in a bit of chaos, but it is in progress: https://samsunglabor.co.kr/ https://samsunglabor.co.kr/ Edit: if you want to learn more, here is a news article titled "Samsung Electronics concludes its first collective bargaining" (Maeil Business, 2021-08-12) https://news.v.daum.net/v/20210812160601200 https://news.v.daum.net/v/20210812160601200
- Zigurd 5y agoI saw a picket line in Korea while I was there on business. It gave the impression that unionization is pretty robust there. It wasn't at a tech company, as far as I could tell. But I would not try to cross that picket line.
- Extropy_ 5y agoWhat do we learn from that?
- seany 5y agoUnions do suck, so that shouldn't be too hard of a job.
- nvr219 5y agoThey do, and they're still better than no union. It's all relative.
- eternalban 5y agoLeadership structure and bureaucracy are the basic problems of all organizations. Empowered executive and operational roles with non-sticky seats subject to collective input would work. But the problem remains the human element and dynamics of group pyschology.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Minor49er 5y agoFound the consultant
- suprfsat 5y agoShould we tell them that they can get a job doing this?
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data. - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Minor49er 5y agoI searched that page and didn't see a rule about jokes not being allowed
- flerchin 5y agoEveryone can benefit from a union IMO. The Googlers that most need one are probably contractors (ie, not actually Googlers).
- agentdrtran 5y agoUnions aren't just for compensation - it's about having a say in your work.
- mikkergp 5y agoThis is the bigger part that bugs me, I don't my job description enforced by committee.
- tablespoon 5y ago> This is the bigger part that bugs me, I don't my job description enforced by committee. Huh? If you choose to work for a company with any size, your job description is enforced by a committee. It's just a committee of managers. If you don't believe me, try to stop working on your assignments and instead work on the cool new project that really interests you.
- aradox66 5y agoIt's not necessarily about your job description. It tends to be about whatever there's the most discontent among coworkers about. Like the mandatory all-nighters with no overtime, or whatever.
- magicalist 5y ago> This is the bigger part that bugs me, I don't my job description enforced by committee. unless you're self-employed, I have bad news
- 5560675260 5y agoBut you, the worker, will not have more say in your work than you do now, probably less. Union will have. It's great if your views will align with union's views, but that's far from guaranteed.
- johncena33 5y agoAmazon has also done the same [1]. [1] https://theintercept.com/2021/02/10/amazon-alabama-union-busting-koch/ https://theintercept.com/2021/02/10/amazon-alabama-union-bus...
- 0xbadc0de5 5y agoHaving worked for both union and non-union employers - it's a mixed bag. Unions have advantages and disadvantages. They are great for worker representation - but that's a double-edged sword. Ideally, unions protects worker's interests. In practice, they often lead to abuse, stagnation and corruption. I've personally witnessed union employees who contributed nothing for years, get perpetually shifted from team to team to team and even promoted because it was too complex and costly to fire them. I've seen union stewards padding their own pockets with members dues through lavish "retreats" to five-star resorts. We must not forget that unions are made up of people - and people can be awful.
- lbriner 5y agoAgree and this depends on the union also. The RMT in the UK is famously militant. When a new General Secretary was voted in a few years ago (before the current one I think), he didn't promise to "represent his members" but instead promised "that the RMT would remain militant", which doesn't sound great. Another railway union, the TSSA had a generally "no strike" policy but would still provide support for any disagreements with management. I guess, as always, be careful for what you wish for, you might not be able to afford to go on strike for something you don't feel very strongly about because the union says so and if you don't strike, well, good luck continuing to work there.
- kubb 5y agoEveryone could get a better comp and work conditions but noo, that one lazy guy won't be fired, we can't have that!
- bennysomething 5y agoThere are quite a few reasons why I don't want unions: 1. I don't want pay banding based on job title, I am capable of negotiating this myself. This is especially true because I can remain at senior Dev level but based on contribution I can be compensated, not by title . 2. Historically there's evidence of damage to industry caused by unions. 3. The unionised work places I have heard about second hand, do not sound like places I want to work. For example unproductive employees not fired, promotions and internal job moves being extremely bureaucratic and check box oriented. 4. I do not want to be forced to pay union dues. 5. I do not want people telling me I must strike.
- 0xbadc0de5 5y agoA related topic would be collective bargaining - which is often (but not always) associated with a unionized workplace. If you're a sub-standard employee, you win big through collective bargaining because pay bands will move toward the mean. If however, you are a high-performer, you will likely be under-compensated in a collective bargaining environment because your excess effort will be used to compensate those who contribute less. In a non-collective workplace, you will be evaluated and compensated on your personal contribution and negotiation skills.
- ranuzz 5y agoThis line of thought might be something that makes employees think that “union sucks”. At a place like Google I assume that everybody thinks they are high-performers and in most cases they are since they got into google. So the majority will always think that they will be “under compensated” and never attempt to unionize. What I want to know is, is it really just another way to convince employees against unions ?
- helios_invictus 5y ago"Everyone is a high performer or thinks they are at....", but not everyone can be with in a given cohort. But who really knows? The employer might know based on their internal metrics, but is that info worth sharing accurately to the employee? Wouldn't you want your high-performers to think they just might be just good enough to keep "performing up" and costs down?
- ranuzz 5y agoI agree, there is an incentive for employers to create an environment where employees are being gaslighted by the employer but that might turn into a toxic work culture (IMO). I think creating an uncertain environment where the majority lives in a myth of being a high performer and salary discussion is frowned upon benefits companies the most.
- dundarious 5y agoIndividuals, even stellar performing ones, also have significantly less bargaining power than the collective bargaining power of either a union or the employer. There are plenty of companies that know this, and it is the primary source of their antagonism towards unions.
- nerbert 5y agoSeeing comments from previous posts on this forum, I'd say they kind of succeeded.
- kubb 5y agoYup, money wins, people will fight against their own interest, etc etc
- the_printer 5y agoIt’s incredibly presumptuous to assume you know someone else’s best interest better than them. If someone makes a different decision than you, maybe it’s because they value things differently than you and not that you’re sooooo much smarter than them,
- gunfighthacksaw 5y agoAh, the old reductio ad puerilem.
- the_printer 5y ago
- blululu 5y agoResistance to Unions in America is pretty deep. This is a 150 year old issue that previously involved hiring consultants with guns to shoot at anyone who dared to ask for an 80 hour work week. I doubt that a crew of modern consultants did much more than run up some bills on a corporate expense account. *Note that support/opposition to Unions is often form from petty core experiences (first hand and family relations). For me it is a contest between a 2 minute promotional video, three years of my professional life, and 25 years of my uncle's work experience. Given these forces, you would be pretty hard pressed to change my thoughts on the matter in the abstract (particulars are what matter here).
- 5y ago
- baybal2 5y agoI keep recalling, Microsoft once seen a unionisation action back in 200X. What has come out of that?
- fallingknife 5y agoIf I were to join a union it would have to have the following: 1. No protection for incompetent people 2. No seniority based pay or privileges 3. Narrow focus on comp and quality of life Any of these would be a deal breaker for me. And I just don't see it happening. The people who seem to be into unions are the type of people that can't STFU about politics at the office. And if I hear one word about pronouns instead of a raise, I'm out.
- __float 5y agoWho decides who is "incompetent"? What do pronouns have to do with anything? I don't really see how this is related to the post.
- tablespoon 5y ago> What do pronouns have to do with anything? Unfortunately way too much, some of the people who advocate for them the loudest are very political people of a particular polarization that makes a big deal about pronouns. Take this Google union I found from another comment here: https://alphabetworkersunion.org/ https://alphabetworkersunion.org/. Take a look at what they have at the top of their homepage. The forth word is "BIPOC," towards the middle it says "believe in social justice." Those are polarizing political shibboleths. Frankly, unions will not get off the ground without solidarity across worker political factions, and injecting polarizing ideology not strictly necessary for unionization does the same union-busting job as Google's consultants.
- alistairSH 5y agoThe fact that in the US, treating minorities (BIPOC or otherwise) fairly is polarizing is sad.
- tablespoon 5y ago> The fact that in the US, treating minorities (BIPOC or otherwise) fairly is polarizing is sad. It is, however "fairly" is a pretty loaded word that leaves too much unspecified. It's important to emphasize that "BIPOC" is a shibboleth, and you can be for "treating minorities fairly" without being aligned with the ideological faction the use of "BIPOC" indicates. And just to be clear, a union effort will almost certain fail if it goes down political rabbit holes that are not strictly necessary for its function, even if those rabbit holes are righteous issues.
- gunapologist99 5y agoAt one place I worked, I discovered that an employee had intentionally broken a machine that resulted in more than $8m in losses, but because of union negotiations, no one would do anything about it. At a different company, a union worker actually aimed a forklift at me, apparently because I was in IT. Unions historically served an important role, but they're an anachronism in the U.S. -- especially for coders at Google who are literally in the 1% of top earners. Google SWE's complaining they're not making enough is just breathtaking hubris. There's so much money sloshing around that they could, and should, go work for another startup or start their own, especially as an ex-Googler.
- lovich 5y agoI’m willing to be convinced here but how does 2 shitty people convince you that unions are an anachronism, especially when we are in the middle of an effective nationwide labor revolt over how shitty workers have been paid and treated for years?
- gunapologist99 5y agoThanks! these are not the only stories I could tell, but just two picked at random.
- lovich 5y agoWilling to be convinced == I am willing to here your logic here. This is still just anecdotes with no connection other than that some people can suck
- gunapologist99 5y agoYou're right, it's just anecdata, but literally I have a dozen stories like that and almost (not quite) zero countervailing stories. My experience with unions is that they start out with noble intentions, and then within a generation or two of union leaders devolve into just serving themselves; meanwhile, management suffers with worse and worse employees, because they can't do anything to get rid of the bad apples. Over time, the bad apples bring in more bad apples and things get progressively worse. That can happen in a non-union company, too, but then it'll get punished by the market. It's really a question of misaligned incentives; the union reps have no incentive to do anything to help the company, and often have incentives to do the exact opposite, like initiate a strike at the worst possible time.
- brezelgoring 5y agoI'd like to open a thread to discuss the optics (?) of unions as an organization, and see what you all think. A bit of context, I come from a region in which unions are looked at fondly from the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder, as they can help avoid the meat grinder and can make shaky jobs stick for longer and have better pay/benefits. However, as you educate yourself and can land better jobs, unions start being more redundant as the jobs are the ones trying to get you to stay for longer and compete with better pay and benefits. Our labor laws are very strong so ideally you don't even need unions, just knowing what your rights are. All that being said, unions have this undercurrent of mafia going on where politically connected unions have the power to shut down an entire sector of the economy and their leaders use this power to wring money out of big companies, you can call it union donations or extortion but its quite common around here. There's allegations of being affiliated to narco guys, ties to Venezuela and Cuba (their leaders travel there frequently, and all have been photographed with Maduro and Diaz-Canel), and some other stuff related to hiding millions of dollars in their leader's homes (why does a union have this kind of capital? 1M USD is a ridiculous amount of cash here). Some of them follow up this questionable life by straight up becoming senators, on the lists of bigger, more popular left-leaning politicians. This worries me, it doesn't help that they all seem to look like Richard Stallman after climbing a flight of stairs and have a terrible attitude to boot. So, you've heard me, now I want to hear you. How are unions seen in your country? Are they worth it, in your opinion?
- motohagiography 5y agoA union at google would be sufficient for the unions to operate a single party state. It's not a workers rights issue, it's a national security one, imo.
- skywal_l 5y agoOh so you are worried about what a union could do at google, but what google does is not a problem?
- woodruffw 5y agoThis is a weird analogy: Google is not a state, and a union's labor positions don't reflect the individual political positions of its members (this is famously a point of frustration among liberals). If you're actually worried about national security: consider the fact that many of the police forces in the US are in "unions" that menace your local elected representatives and openly subvert the justice system they belong to when it attempts to prosecute cops[1]. [1]: https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-trouble-with-police-unions https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-trou...
- bena 5y agoAnd I'm just here like "Yes, and?" Any non-unionized company would like to remain that way. It is in their best interest to do so. I would expect them to act like it. Way back in the day when I worked retail, there were training videos and at least one or two of them were pretty much "unions suck". And this isn't to say that unions are good or bad overall. But I would expect any large corporation to do at least something to resist unions or other sort of collective bargaining units. Because whether or not unions are good for employees, they're always a negative for employers. Because at the very least, unions take some of the power away from the employer.
- exabrial 5y agoThis whole debacle is sort of humorous. I fully support the rights of workers to unionize. The problem is in "Non Right to Work States" the unionized can clobber people that choose not to unionize and coerce them into participation. This is incredibly unethical, immoral, and unconstitutional and violates a person's right to self-determination and other human rights.
- VictorPath 5y agoSo a mine exists and a bunch of heirs have a corporation. Through the corporation, a portion of the wealth miners create by mining from that mine goes to the heirs. The workers doing all the work and creating all the wealth organize and strike a deal that the company hires only union members. So the thing which is "unethical, immoral, and unconstitutional and violates a person's right to self-determination and other human rights" is not what the heirs did, but what the workers doing all the work and creating all the wealth did. No questions about the province of the heirs. You're dealing with both these groups but questioning the paternity of only one of them, the ones actually doing all the work and creating all the wealth.
- cuteboy19 5y ago
- 5560675260 5y ago> doing all the work and creating all the wealth Miners extract resources from someone's else land, using someone's else tools to be sold by someone else via someone's else logistical chains. And that high valuation of a natural resource that keeps mine operational? Miners had nothing to do with it. What miners do here is spend their time to add value to existing resource. In most cases this is done voluntarily and with a fair compensation.
- cool_dude85 5y ago>The problem is in "Non Right to Work States" the unionized can clobber people that choose not to unionize and coerce them into participation. You are badly misinformed about what "right to work" is. In a union shop, the unionized "coerce" all employees in their bargaining units to participate, even in "right to work" states! Everyone is covered by the same contract! That's the whole point! Even in "right to work" states, everyone in the unit is coerced into participation by your understanding. The only thing "right to work" offers is that people covered by the contract may choose not to pay dues (or choose to forgo some portion of the dues). In all cases, all relevant employees are "coerced" into the union contract.
- nimbius 5y agoReminder that Alphabet, the parent company of Google, already has a union. AWU-CWA Local 1400 https://alphabetworkersunion.org/ https://alphabetworkersunion.org/
- fleddr 5y agoThe American idea of a union seems worlds apart from what I know in western Europe. Over here, jobs are not favorably handed out to union members just for being a union member. It's completely irrelevant if you're a union member. Not only does it not directly favor you in getting in, you also don't get any individual protection. What a union over here does instead: - Collective bargaining of salary increases, yearly. Mostly based on the macro trend of the economy. It's not even the goal to maximize the increase, above all the goal is maintain purchase power. So it aims to compensate inflation, and will leave the rest to markets and individuals. - Protection is only collectively, for example when a mass firing of workers is pending. Or when terms are suddenly dramatically worsened for all workers at once. Here a union may step in. And it will engage in a large number of steps before going to the absolute last resort: a large strike. Which are rare. Even strikes are regulated and bound to federal terms. The American version sounds like a bad movie.
- excalibur 5y agoToday's unions DO suck. In that they're becoming scarce and have grown largely ineffective at shielding workers from employer abuse. (Thanks in no small part to red tape introduced at the behest of corporate lobbyists.) And now that the corporations have beaten worker advocates into a useless bloody pulp they want them removed altogether so that they may exploit their workers with fewer constraints. Google, Amazon et al can fuck ALL THE WAY off.
- marricks 5y agoGo figure the top comments on this thread echo how companies talk about unions. “Oh unions can be good but those Americans don’t know their downsides…” Or “Unions are great but it’s awful people can be forced to join them!” I’m just saying Google’s money was well spent.
- rtkwe 5y agoNot just Google there's been decades of trash talking by businesses and politicians for their own purposes really works. The whole Cold War period really messed up the US discourse of any kind of collectivism.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rapind 5y agoYeah when I clicked into the comments I was hoping for a discussion on the ethics of hiring a firm to trash talk unions (for or against). Instead it’s like the Google 50c party arguing the merits of unions. I’m uncomfortable with companies constantly trying to influence their employees opinions. It’s marketing turned inwards. I’m not so naïve to be surprised, but I would never work at a business who employed tactics like this.
- Starlevel001 5y agoI'm really not sure why you were hoping for that on a forum attached to a venture capitalist firm site.
- d4mi3n 5y ago> It’s marketing turned inwards. I believe the word for this is propaganda: prŏp″ə-găn′də noun 1. The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or cause.
- z3c0 5y agoTBF marketing turned outwards is technically propaganda as well.
- yeah_well 5y agoAs a matter of principle, in a big company, if my boss tells me that something is not good for me, I want that thing !
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- VirusNewbie 5y agoUnions are helpful when you have a homogeneous workforce all doing similar work with similar outputs. We have studies showing how different software engineering is, where some workers vastly outperform others, some workers are interchangeable, some are specialists, and some underperform. This is exactly the wrong type of work that benefits from collective bargaining and gatekeeping. Unions help subpar workers. They do not help anyone else (other than their power structure that they themselves carve out using other workers wages).
- sgift 5y ago> We have studies showing how different software engineering is, where some workers vastly outperform others, some workers are interchangeable, some are specialists, and some underperform. Do we? Please, show these studies. Obviously, we can only accept peer-reviewed replicated studies. Not some study which was never replicated (there are a few) or even worse some blog post by someone stating they personally know 10x engineers or whatever.
- VirusNewbie 5y ago>. Obviously, we can only accept peer-reviewed replicated studies That's your bar to prove that some engineers are better than others? Seriously? What are you claiming here? That some engineers aren't better than others?
- discardedrefuse 5y agoHere is my copy/paste response to another extremely similar comment: > This is non-sense. There's no rule that says collectively bargained contracts can't include rewards or incentives for higher-performance. In fact, many do. > Look at any professional sports contract. Players usually get bonuses for hitting predetermined stat goals on the field. Look at any teacher contract. Teachers get bonuses for attaining higher education and certifications, or simply taking on leadership roles.
- VirusNewbie 5y agoTeachers unions actively fight against performance metrics and instead focus on seniority as the main way to get pay increases. People who have worked and doing the same job for 30 years are payed more than twice as much as newcomers to the field. The existence of a teacher's union is actively harmful to new teachers.
- mihaigalos 5y agoShame. Shame. Shame.
- b8 5y agoAmazon hired Pinkerton to try and prevent unions.[1] There was an article about some of the people who organized the Google Android dev/DoD project walk out being targeted/fired from Google.[2] Maybe it'll take employees leaving these companies/not going to work there to get them to change. On teamblind people talk about bad it is to work at Amazon and so folks have been declining offers to work there etc. 1. https://www.npr.org/2020/11/30/940196997/amazon-reportedly-has-pinkerton-agents-surveil-workers-who-try-to-form-unions https://www.npr.org/2020/11/30/940196997/amazon-reportedly-h... 2. https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/25/20983053/google-fires-four-employees-memo-rebecca-rivers-laurence-berland-union-busting-accusation-walkout https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/25/20983053/google-fires-fo...
- beiller 5y agoI was a member of a union where i.t. was involved in that union and I was a software developer. We shared an emergency iPhone that we swapped every 2 weeks. When it rang and DevOps called, we were paid time and a half and recorded each hour worked 'on call'. Double time on holidays. No one was significantly lazier than my experience working in non union shops. People sometimes complain others "only do the status quo". I guess those people never saw someone work on a refactor project before that goes on 2 years and is eventually thrown away (negative contributors). Just an acecdote for you all to say I think unions _can_ work in i.t. and I had a positive experience.
- captainredbeard 5y agoIs changing someone's mind wrong? Is it wrong to belief that unions aren't all ponies and rainbows? If the answer to both of those questions is "no" then I don't see a problem here.
- andrewon 5y agoWhat's wrong with letting employees to hear both sides of the argument, from professionals? Both unions and "consultants" are resourceful organizations. Perhaps they can keep the good and take out the bad practices in their unionization, if they ever choose to.
- culi 5y agoI don't think > Two employees who helped organize the 2018 walkout later left the company, saying they were facing retaliation is the same as > letting employees to hear both sides of the argument I've worked in a place that had a unionization effort underway and, let me tell you, the company certainly did not let people hear the union side of things. They'd make sure to schedule our lunches async so the employees couldn't talk to each other; they banned chatting about non-work stuff during work time; etc
- softsound 5y agoThe US once had a rich history of unions for 100's of years since the 17th century, and plenty of wars over them where the US government literally attacked union workers in wars like Battle of Blair Mountain. The US seems to have almost wiped out this history and few people know who died for these movements and few people realize we have had bloody battles, I never really learned it in school but it's pretty darn American to have unions and die for your rights. Sure there is corruption but literally every system does, that doesn't make people stop using it. If we had better union power we would not see the poor treatment of Amazon workers, or game testers, or retail works. Heck, one day we may make a requirement to have a vacation day, imagine how crazy that would be if vacation time was written into a work law! Almost imagine that Russia, South Africa and many other countries have literally better labor laws then America not to mention the EU. I was quite shocked how bad our labor laws were when I looked into it further because I assumed a lot, makes it hard to be human in the US. At will employee with literally no time off is perfectly legal here, but I hope one day paid vacations (even just a few days) are requirement for all full time employees at least.
- cat_plus_plus 5y ago"Union hired consultants to convince employees that union rock" - would that even be news?
- dehrmann 5y agoYeah; I saw that headline and saw it as non-news. Of course that the the specialty of the consultants.
- dang 5y agoGoogle Had Secret Project to ‘Convince’ Employees ‘That Unions Suck’ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29876068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29876068 - Jan 2022 (385 comments)
- green_screen 5y agoThere are a lot of comments here debating the merits of unions in general. I am interested in hearing peoples opinions on this particular situation at hand. In the case of Google specifically, what problems or grievances would be addressed by unionizing?
- ambrozk 5y agoThis conversation makes me crazy. People talk about the merits of unions in the abstract, with no reference to the actual, very specific union at hand: the Alphabet Workers' Union, or "AWU". AWU is not a traditional workers' union. It is a political advocacy organization. AWU's mission statement is explicitly and emphatically not to further full-time employee's interests. Rather, it is organized primarily as a vehicle for achieving a broader political end ("social justice", as that term is construed by AWU's organizers), potentially at employees' expense. Almost none of AWU's projects have focused on Googlers' work conditions or pay. Instead, they have focused nearly exclusively on modifying Google's products and policing its contracts, often in ways I find extremely objectionable. For example, they have lobbied heavily for Google to increase censorship of YouTube and Search, and to demonetize "problematic" content creators. They consistently advocate increasing institutional support for DEI efforts, and it was their efforts which led to the creation of Alphabet's Chief Diversity Officer position. They agitated on behalf of ex-employee Timnit Gebru against Google's ML work, which is obviously a threat to the hundreds of Google workers whose jobs depend on the models that Gebru's research criticized. Why should ordinary Google workers support such a "union"? I want to add that I agree with some of AWU political stands. For example, they opposed Project Dragonfly, a censored version of Google Search intended for the Chinese market. They opposed Google contracts with the DoD and CPB. I think these are all worthy causes and I hope that employees continue to agitate against them! But as a former employee of Google, I am under no illusions that AWU would have represented my interests as an employee. Primarily, they are a political action committee set up by an extremely vocal minority of Google's employees to further those employees' political goals.
- Melatonic 5y agoAll major corporations have been doing this since the 1970's - you can see it reflected in popular culture today. Tons of people will parrot stories about some lazy union employee not doing any work (and then if you dig deeper you often find it was not a first hand story - just something "they heard"). I always find it funny when someone identifies as progressive and then talks about how mega corporations are screwing all of us and then seconds later is talking shit about unions. The propaganda has been very successful it seems with certain segments of the population.