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> It's crazy to me that our profession fights unionization despite repeated, predictable and consistent anti-worker, antisocial, narcissistic, ego driven compan

> 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
    - nec4b 4y ago
      >> They wouldn’t have needed so. I guess you have never been to a socialist country?
      - aaomidi 4y ago
        No because they don’t exist.
        nec4b 4y ago
        Unfortunately there are still a few of countries today. Not so long ago there were dozens of them. Their recent history is fairly well documented. You can read it your self how life there was nothing but a struggle with no chance of success unless you or your family belonged to red nobility.
kamaal 4y ago
>>Unionization is no different from giving someone else control over your paycheck. Most people would do anything to have the privilege to work at a company like Twitter. Even with insane productivity standards that Musk demands. People grind their bodies for way less and non-meaningful labor work. Here you get an opportunity to gain skills and competence which you can immediately use as your career progresses. There is a reason why unionising hasn't caught up in Tech. Firstly most employees don't stay long enough for any meaningful thing to happen. But beyond that, unions just transfer your responsibility to career managers, who have no stake in seeing you do good in real way. Sure they might negotiate a little better pay and benefits. But they have 0 interest in making you truly better, like better skilled, educated and trained on the longer run. Which has more potential to unlock better opportunities. In fact competent employees run contrary to the goals of a union. This is for several reasons. They threaten the existing leadership structure of the union, and if that isn't the case, they are likely to move jobs and that means one less paying employee for the union structure.

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
  - nec4b 4y ago
    >> They wouldn’t have needed so. I guess you have never been to a socialist country?
    - aaomidi 4y ago
      No because they don’t exist.
      - nec4b 4y ago
        Unfortunately there are still a few of countries today. Not so long ago there were dozens of them. Their recent history is fairly well documented. You can read it your self how life there was nothing but a struggle with no chance of success unless you or your family belonged to red nobility.

kamaal 4y ago

>>Unionization is no different from giving someone else control over your paycheck. Most people would do anything to have the privilege to work at a company like Twitter. Even with insane productivity standards that Musk demands. People grind their bodies for way less and non-meaningful labor work. Here you get an opportunity to gain skills and competence which you can immediately use as your career progresses. There is a reason why unionising hasn't caught up in Tech. Firstly most employees don't stay long enough for any meaningful thing to happen. But beyond that, unions just transfer your responsibility to career managers, who have no stake in seeing you do good in real way. Sure they might negotiate a little better pay and benefits. But they have 0 interest in making you truly better, like better skilled, educated and trained on the longer run. Which has more potential to unlock better opportunities. In fact competent employees run contrary to the goals of a union. This is for several reasons. They threaten the existing leadership structure of the union, and if that isn't the case, they are likely to move jobs and that means one less paying employee for the union structure.