5 ms·

Yeah places that need unions usually have bad management. The #1 reason to form a Union is that you work for shitty unreasonable managers

by rdtwo 5y ago

andrew_ 5y ago
I've never loved a job so much that I'd try to organize versus finding a better home for my trade. It's a concept that's completely foreign to me. In tech, we've never been in a market this vast and this thirsty for talent. Making a move has never been more possible or more lucrative. It just doesn't add up for me personally.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  You’re living in a happy time. Ask a former high flying IBM engineer from what Binghamton or Poughkeepsie, NY was like circa 1992 when IBM detonated the mainframe business. Or anyone from DEC or HP. If you don’t think that will happen to the current cohort of tech giants, you’re engaging in magical thinking.
  - andrew_ 5y ago
    I get your point, but that was 30 years ago. When I played basketball, we used to say "two buckets is luck, three is a streak" - we've been in favorable markets, with a few temporary dips, for 20 years. I'd call that a streak, more so than magical thinking.
    - mkr-hn 5y ago
      All it takes is a structural shift. Blockbuster had a 29-year run, most of which was after it wiped out the independent stores that predated it.
      - andrew_ 5y ago
        Do you have an example of industry-wide, pervasive structural shift? Sincere question, as Blockbuster is a good example, but relatively isolated. By the time Blockbuster was done, viable replacements had already arisen.
        mkr-hn 5y ago
        I think that's the point. Something will come along to replace it, and that thing does not historically pay better. "Your margin is my opportunity," as Lord Bezos said. It's already kind of happening. I could get $25 per extremely plain HTML page when I was a kid because that was a rare, in-demand skill. Now $20 buys 10 fancy Carrds. Every new framework or language or platform is chasing an efficiency or simplicity that opens it up to people who'll work for less or lets one person do the job of 10. There's always an initiating event, and then the prophecy of the tech adoption curve takes over. Someone is gunning for the margins behind those salaries, but the people making those sums don't know it yet. If I knew where it was coming from, I would email them about a collaboration, not post it here. edit to add: It can be a slow boil or a rapid shift. Google swept the search engine space in a few years, but Netflix and Blockbuster traded places over decades. Now Netflix is struggling as third-party content retreats into publisher silos.
        Spooky23 5y ago
        Sure. The easy money growth phase of cloud will slow or stop. People laugh at my mainframe example upthread, but no Data Processing Executive saw 1992 coming in 1988. Most of the people making $500k comp at AWS, MS, GCP will all get nuked once the growth and investment phase slows down. You’re already seeing it happen at the margins - you don’t see “Uber for Litter Box” startups in 2022. I’ve seen this happen with internal enterprise services as well. When you’re growing 50-500% a year, all of your sins and fuckups are hidden in the growth. Once dust settles and you shift to steady state, you suddenly care about cost accounting vs growth.
      - scarface74 5y ago
        How would a union have helped?
        mkr-hn 5y ago
        I'm sure people at all levels except executive got the short end during the collapse of Blockbuster. A union would have represented employee interests every time the C-suite issued an execution order down the chain. They could very well have stopped the decline if there had been anyone to protect the retail employees who used to be able to recommend movies. That could have held the line against Netflix and its algorithm the way it has for electronics stores that have survived. Every story I heard about a closing store, from Sears to Best Buy, began with "first, they fired everyone who knew anything and hired a bunch of people who were completely out of their depth to save money." Best Buy in particular saved itself by remembering the value of competence. Their stock is at record highs. Now imagine if there'd been a union to bring that to the people in charge before the business penny pinched itself to near death. Unions also help with getting people into new jobs when the company really can't keep them.
        scarface74 5y ago
        So a union would have stopped Carl Icahn from killing Blockbuster? It would have stopped Viacom from spinning off Blockbuster and saddling it with debt? How much negotiation does a union have in a company that is bankrupt? https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/review-blockbusters-demise-had-many-culprits-2021-04-16/ https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/review-blockbusters-de... How would a union have helped? Retail was the cause of BlockBuster’s problems. Forcing stores to stay open wouldn’t have helped. How much did unions help employees at automakers get jobs?
        rdtwo 5y ago
        Unions make the slow demise of companies bearable for workers. Think of any big company it has a 50-100 year life cycle with the first 10-20 years being up and the rest being middling or decay. During the first 10-20 unions aren’t common or needed much but eventually management rot sets in and you start getting some crazy policies. Take Amazon for example, if they had a Union a lot of the crazy stacked ranking insane ot oddities would be resolved by Union contact. Salary would probably go down because you don’t need to pay insane wages if your work/life environment is good. The company Might be a bit less productive but the effect would be pretty negligible
  - missedthecue 5y ago
    I think a union forming at IBM in order to compel management to stay in the mainframe business would be a net bad for society.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
      And also would have probably led to a quicker implosion of that business. A union can't magic demand for its labor into existence.
  - yibg 5y ago
    What would've been the benefit to employees with having a union in that case?
- afavour 5y ago
  There are plenty of opportunities in tech but far fewer in news. If you’re someone that’s passionate about doing tech in news it makes more sense.

Yeah places that need unions usually have bad management. The #1 reason to form a Union is that you work for shitty unreasonable managers

by rdtwo 5y ago

Yeah places that need unions usually have bad management. The #1 reason to form a Union is that you work for shitty unreasonable managers

andrew_ 5y ago

I've never loved a job so much that I'd try to organize versus finding a better home for my trade. It's a concept that's completely foreign to me. In tech, we've never been in a market this vast and this thirsty for talent. Making a move has never been more possible or more lucrative. It just doesn't add up for me personally.

Spooky23 5y ago
You’re living in a happy time. Ask a former high flying IBM engineer from what Binghamton or Poughkeepsie, NY was like circa 1992 when IBM detonated the mainframe business. Or anyone from DEC or HP. If you don’t think that will happen to the current cohort of tech giants, you’re engaging in magical thinking.
- andrew_ 5y ago
  I get your point, but that was 30 years ago. When I played basketball, we used to say "two buckets is luck, three is a streak" - we've been in favorable markets, with a few temporary dips, for 20 years. I'd call that a streak, more so than magical thinking.
  - mkr-hn 5y ago
    All it takes is a structural shift. Blockbuster had a 29-year run, most of which was after it wiped out the independent stores that predated it.
    - andrew_ 5y ago
      Do you have an example of industry-wide, pervasive structural shift? Sincere question, as Blockbuster is a good example, but relatively isolated. By the time Blockbuster was done, viable replacements had already arisen.
      - mkr-hn 5y ago
        I think that's the point. Something will come along to replace it, and that thing does not historically pay better. "Your margin is my opportunity," as Lord Bezos said. It's already kind of happening. I could get $25 per extremely plain HTML page when I was a kid because that was a rare, in-demand skill. Now $20 buys 10 fancy Carrds. Every new framework or language or platform is chasing an efficiency or simplicity that opens it up to people who'll work for less or lets one person do the job of 10. There's always an initiating event, and then the prophecy of the tech adoption curve takes over. Someone is gunning for the margins behind those salaries, but the people making those sums don't know it yet. If I knew where it was coming from, I would email them about a collaboration, not post it here. edit to add: It can be a slow boil or a rapid shift. Google swept the search engine space in a few years, but Netflix and Blockbuster traded places over decades. Now Netflix is struggling as third-party content retreats into publisher silos.
      - Spooky23 5y ago
        Sure. The easy money growth phase of cloud will slow or stop. People laugh at my mainframe example upthread, but no Data Processing Executive saw 1992 coming in 1988. Most of the people making $500k comp at AWS, MS, GCP will all get nuked once the growth and investment phase slows down. You’re already seeing it happen at the margins - you don’t see “Uber for Litter Box” startups in 2022. I’ve seen this happen with internal enterprise services as well. When you’re growing 50-500% a year, all of your sins and fuckups are hidden in the growth. Once dust settles and you shift to steady state, you suddenly care about cost accounting vs growth.
    - scarface74 5y ago
      How would a union have helped?
      - mkr-hn 5y ago
        I'm sure people at all levels except executive got the short end during the collapse of Blockbuster. A union would have represented employee interests every time the C-suite issued an execution order down the chain. They could very well have stopped the decline if there had been anyone to protect the retail employees who used to be able to recommend movies. That could have held the line against Netflix and its algorithm the way it has for electronics stores that have survived. Every story I heard about a closing store, from Sears to Best Buy, began with "first, they fired everyone who knew anything and hired a bunch of people who were completely out of their depth to save money." Best Buy in particular saved itself by remembering the value of competence. Their stock is at record highs. Now imagine if there'd been a union to bring that to the people in charge before the business penny pinched itself to near death. Unions also help with getting people into new jobs when the company really can't keep them.
        scarface74 5y ago
        So a union would have stopped Carl Icahn from killing Blockbuster? It would have stopped Viacom from spinning off Blockbuster and saddling it with debt? How much negotiation does a union have in a company that is bankrupt? https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/review-blockbusters-demise-had-many-culprits-2021-04-16/ https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/review-blockbusters-de... How would a union have helped? Retail was the cause of BlockBuster’s problems. Forcing stores to stay open wouldn’t have helped. How much did unions help employees at automakers get jobs?
      - rdtwo 5y ago
        Unions make the slow demise of companies bearable for workers. Think of any big company it has a 50-100 year life cycle with the first 10-20 years being up and the rest being middling or decay. During the first 10-20 unions aren’t common or needed much but eventually management rot sets in and you start getting some crazy policies. Take Amazon for example, if they had a Union a lot of the crazy stacked ranking insane ot oddities would be resolved by Union contact. Salary would probably go down because you don’t need to pay insane wages if your work/life environment is good. The company Might be a bit less productive but the effect would be pretty negligible
- missedthecue 5y ago
  I think a union forming at IBM in order to compel management to stay in the mainframe business would be a net bad for society.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
    And also would have probably led to a quicker implosion of that business. A union can't magic demand for its labor into existence.
- yibg 5y ago
  What would've been the benefit to employees with having a union in that case?
afavour 5y ago
There are plenty of opportunities in tech but far fewer in news. If you’re someone that’s passionate about doing tech in news it makes more sense.