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Not only should we not work for these people, we should actively take their power from them by organizing and supporting each other as much as possible. It's c

Not only should we not work for these people, we should actively take their power from them by organizing and supporting each other as much as possible. It's crazy to me that our profession fights unionization despite repeated, predictable and consistent anti-worker, antisocial, narcissistic, ego driven companies that grind us up and spit us out Giving someone unvested RSUs with no voting rights, in third class stock isn't meaningful. Being employee 10 of $tartup doesn't matter anymore, because the company raised their D round in a down round which wiped out every Angel Investor and any common stock holders. Luckily the new Saudi backed VC fund that did the round is going to make sure that the CEO is doing their "most important job" of serving the Board and protecting investors over the expendable employees The capital class couldn't care less about you the person writing code or managing a team or building pipelines or maintaining dbs. Am I the only one that remembers Office Space?

up2isomorphism 4y ago
If you don’t want to work for him that’s fine, in fact I don’t think it is a bad idea working for Elon Musk. But it does not make sense to push your own agenda about unionization, which is the worst thing happened in US private/public sector. Unionization basically kills the key reason why a corporate can make money: free labor market.
emptyparadise 4y ago
remaining twitter engineers unionizing would be the funniest thing in the world
Dracophoenix 4y ago
> It's crazy to me that our profession fights unionization despite repeated, predictable and consistent anti-worker, antisocial, narcissistic, ego driven companies that grind us up and spit us out Unionization is no different from giving someone else control over your paycheck. Just as there are narcissistic bosses there are mafia-like unions and, in both cases, you're not going to know until it's too late. The benefit of the tech industry is that there's always a market for it and there are low barriers to entry. Programmers can vote with their feet. This isn't the 1950s. There are millions of choices for tech workers today that aren't street-sweeping or working for Big Blue. > Giving someone unvested RSUs with no voting rights, in third class stock isn't meaningful. Vested RSUs turn people into millionaires overnight. If that isn't meaningful to you, there are plenty of actors in Los Angeles that would trade their union cards for your stock. > The capital class couldn't care less about you the person writing code or managing a team or building pipelines or maintaining dbs. Am I the only one that remembers Office Space? The lesson I got from Office Space was that working as a spreadsheet-filling accountant was boring and soul crushing. Little to do with tech per se. In fact, what liberated the protagonists from their drudgery was one of the character's knowledge of finance and programming. Tech, in addition to managerial incompetence and a building fire, saved them.
- AndrewKemendo 4y ago
  This is precisely the attitude that keeps us here. Crabs in a bucket. >Vested RSUs turn people into millionaires overnight. So do lottery tickets - your odds are about the same too >The benefit of the tech industry is that there's always a market for it and there are low barriers to entry. Programmers can vote with their feet. This isn't the 1950s. There are millions of choices for tech workers today that aren't street-sweeping or working for Big Blue. "I have enough options so I do not feel any sense of responsibility to support my coworkers against a structurally imbalanced system" Not to put too fine of a point on it, but your response is almost precisely the point people make with the misquoted phrase: "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires" More nuance to that quote here: https://hellyesjohnsteinbeck.tumblr.com/post/23486952183/commonly-misquoted-socialism-never-took-root-in https://hellyesjohnsteinbeck.tumblr.com/post/23486952183/com...
  - fdasfdafdasfdsa 4y ago
    My poor immigrant Indian grandparents became millionaires as did many of their siblings and friends. They certainly wouldn't have done so with socialism.
    - aaomidi 4y ago
      They wouldn’t have needed so. Being a millionaire is only “powerful” if there are people in poverty. If poverty didn’t exist, then being a millionaire wasn’t actually going to be that big of an increase in life quality. We should seek to cancel out rent seeking behavior. The thing I hate about our economy is the amount of momentum money gives others while actively holding others back. If our economy was truly based around your abilities it wouldn’t be so annoying. However, we should also remember that not everyone can work, but everyone deserves a high quality life in line with our powerful economy.
      - AndrewKemendo 4y ago
        Precisely right Everyone wants to decouple labor and life, when the actual way to do that is to merge capital and labor such that there are no people who aren't part owner. The existence of billionaires means that at some point there was an unethical decision made to hold onto power and wealth instead of distributing it to employees
fdasfdafdasfdsa 4y ago
Because pay would be by seniority instead of by....skills?
- cthulha 4y ago
  Not necessarily. You're joining 'mutual action to protect workers' with 'minutiae of internal processes are done the same as other unionized industries did them 50 years ago'. It's possible to have one without the other.

up2isomorphism 4y ago

If you don’t want to work for him that’s fine, in fact I don’t think it is a bad idea working for Elon Musk. But it does not make sense to push your own agenda about unionization, which is the worst thing happened in US private/public sector. Unionization basically kills the key reason why a corporate can make money: free labor market.

emptyparadise 4y ago

remaining twitter engineers unionizing would be the funniest thing in the world

Dracophoenix 4y ago

> It's crazy to me that our profession fights unionization despite repeated, predictable and consistent anti-worker, antisocial, narcissistic, ego driven companies that grind us up and spit us out Unionization is no different from giving someone else control over your paycheck. Just as there are narcissistic bosses there are mafia-like unions and, in both cases, you're not going to know until it's too late. The benefit of the tech industry is that there's always a market for it and there are low barriers to entry. Programmers can vote with their feet. This isn't the 1950s. There are millions of choices for tech workers today that aren't street-sweeping or working for Big Blue. > Giving someone unvested RSUs with no voting rights, in third class stock isn't meaningful. Vested RSUs turn people into millionaires overnight. If that isn't meaningful to you, there are plenty of actors in Los Angeles that would trade their union cards for your stock. > The capital class couldn't care less about you the person writing code or managing a team or building pipelines or maintaining dbs. Am I the only one that remembers Office Space? The lesson I got from Office Space was that working as a spreadsheet-filling accountant was boring and soul crushing. Little to do with tech per se. In fact, what liberated the protagonists from their drudgery was one of the character's knowledge of finance and programming. Tech, in addition to managerial incompetence and a building fire, saved them.

AndrewKemendo 4y ago
This is precisely the attitude that keeps us here. Crabs in a bucket. >Vested RSUs turn people into millionaires overnight. So do lottery tickets - your odds are about the same too >The benefit of the tech industry is that there's always a market for it and there are low barriers to entry. Programmers can vote with their feet. This isn't the 1950s. There are millions of choices for tech workers today that aren't street-sweeping or working for Big Blue. "I have enough options so I do not feel any sense of responsibility to support my coworkers against a structurally imbalanced system" Not to put too fine of a point on it, but your response is almost precisely the point people make with the misquoted phrase: "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires" More nuance to that quote here: https://hellyesjohnsteinbeck.tumblr.com/post/23486952183/commonly-misquoted-socialism-never-took-root-in https://hellyesjohnsteinbeck.tumblr.com/post/23486952183/com...
- fdasfdafdasfdsa 4y ago
  My poor immigrant Indian grandparents became millionaires as did many of their siblings and friends. They certainly wouldn't have done so with socialism.
  - aaomidi 4y ago
    They wouldn’t have needed so. Being a millionaire is only “powerful” if there are people in poverty. If poverty didn’t exist, then being a millionaire wasn’t actually going to be that big of an increase in life quality. We should seek to cancel out rent seeking behavior. The thing I hate about our economy is the amount of momentum money gives others while actively holding others back. If our economy was truly based around your abilities it wouldn’t be so annoying. However, we should also remember that not everyone can work, but everyone deserves a high quality life in line with our powerful economy.
    - AndrewKemendo 4y ago
      Precisely right Everyone wants to decouple labor and life, when the actual way to do that is to merge capital and labor such that there are no people who aren't part owner. The existence of billionaires means that at some point there was an unethical decision made to hold onto power and wealth instead of distributing it to employees

fdasfdafdasfdsa 4y ago

Because pay would be by seniority instead of by....skills?

cthulha 4y ago
Not necessarily. You're joining 'mutual action to protect workers' with 'minutiae of internal processes are done the same as other unionized industries did them 50 years ago'. It's possible to have one without the other.