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Ask HN: Would a tech recession vindicate calls for tech unionization?

28 points by Apocryphon 4y ago

For years, the idea of unionizing software engineers and other tech workers has been mostly a fringe idea. While there have been some high-profile examples such as the Kickstarter union and organizing in the notoriously cutthroat video games industry, the idea has been largely scoffed at. The idea is that because SWEs are in such hot demand, it is one of the very few examples where employment relations benefit workers greatly. Now with large scale layoffs already and who knows what else on the horizon, it seems like that leverage, once present during the low interest rates environment of the pandemic bubble, is fast disappearing. So does that vindicate the idea that tech workers should have codified the benefits they enjoyed during the good times, through unionizing?

LatteLazy 4y ago
The market in tech still seems pretty hot to me. All my news is "layoffs" but all my unsolicited emails are invitations to interview... Also, it's not clear to me how a union would assist. If your startup is shutting down because it cannot get funded because interest rate rises mean there is no more cheap cash, what will a Union do? Convince the FED to slash interest rates to save your company?
- wildrhythms 4y ago
  I think most workers in tech and in most industries can recognize many areas of waste and inefficiency at their employer that have nothing to do with interest rates.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  > All my news is "layoffs" but all my unsolicited emails are invitations to interview... What kind of firms are there? Saw a comment on HN last week saying that recently-funded startups are still hiring, which means they might have a year or two of runway before they get into trouble. We're not actually in a recession yet, and hopefully there won't be, but the smoke we're seeing before the fire is not great. > If your startup is shutting down because it cannot get funded because interest rate rises mean there is no more cheap cash, what will a Union do? Convince the FED to slash interest rates to save your company? It's less that a union could have prevented this situation, and more that a union could protect whatever benefits SWE in tech are taking for granted right now, that might be removed later on. Pushing back against involuntary RTO, for instance, which may or may not happen regardless if there is a recession. Perhaps it could be argued that unions could have cautioned against management from overhiring during the last two years, but given that would be seen as gatekeeping, which is a common accusation against not only unions but professional orgs such as the AMA, I'm not sure if tech unions would have affected the current industry predicament. They might have even agreed with managements' actions during the gravy train years.
  - LatteLazy 4y ago
    I am in FinTech in London. Everyone from Tier 1 banks down to startups seem to be recruiting here. I work at a crypto company, about 200 employees now so not a start-up anymore really. We've had plenty of bad news this year :). But we're actively hiring and revenue is ok. I think it's important to remember that a recession is a whole-economy event. A 20% drop in one half of the economy and 10% growth in the other half is still a 5% drop over all. But if you work in that growing part then you, your company etc don't have a problem... I am not fundamentally opposed to unions, but I am also not convinced they will improve things either (either for me or my colleagues or the company). Like you say, maybe a union would have reduced hiring and put companies in a better place? Or maybe they would have increased it and made things worse? Who knows? We could go back and forth and be right or wrong. But I don't think and of those factors change significantly in a (possible) recession that may or may not affect tech...
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      Maybe the tech scene in the U.K. and Europe is different, perhaps companies there have not overhired as zealously as the American tech industry thanks to Fed money. And as far as banks go, they're hiring on this side of the pond too, other industries do not seem to have made the same mistake as tech has. > I am not fundamentally opposed to unions, but I am also not convinced they will improve things either (either for me or my colleagues or the company). [...] But I don't think and of those factors change significantly in a (possible) recession that may or may not affect tech... My overall point that when the boom times end and employee leverage goes away, who knows what benefits will disappear as well. A union could help maintain that leverage even in bad times.
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      > Everyone from Tier 1 banks down to startups seem to be recruiting here In my experience, everyone seems to be recruiting but with salaries that no longer correspond to the cost of living (and especially housing) nor will allow you to save anything meaningful to eventually get on the property ladder. Actually good roles that allow you build a future (in London at least) are far and far between.
smitty1e 4y ago
People who architect systems know that there can be value from a management layer, especially where scalability is a concern. People who look at history often see unions becoming a solution in search of a problem.
- yerpyerpyerp 4y ago
  > People who look at history often see unions becoming a solution in search of a problem. Unions are the reason we have a 40-hour workweek, minimum wage and the Civil Rights Act. If you're not working today (Saturday), you can thank organized labor efforts for that. They've deeply impacted our work lives in ways that are not immediately apparent to those that haven't read about them.
  - dehrmann 4y ago
    > Civil Rights Act Do you have a source for this? The Wikipedia entry on the Civil Rights Act hardly mentions unions.
    - yerpyerpyerp 4y ago
      Unions were integral to the success of the Civil Rights Movement. Without them, boycotts would not have been successful. MLK Jr. spoke often about the rights of workers in his speeches, although this is rarely discussed today outside of leftist circles.[0] There's quite a bit of literature on organized labor's relationship to the Civil Rights Movement, here are just a couple of examples[1][2]. 0: https://www.afscme.org/about/history/mlk/dr-martin-luther-king-jr-on-labor https://www.afscme.org/about/history/mlk/dr-martin-luther-ki... 1: https://teamster.org/2021/02/civil-rights-and-the-labor-movement-a-historical-overview/ https://teamster.org/2021/02/civil-rights-and-the-labor-move... 2: https://www.epi.org/blog/labor-rights-and-civil-rights-one-intertwined-struggle-for-all-workers/ https://www.epi.org/blog/labor-rights-and-civil-rights-one-i...
  - nitwit005 4y ago
    Sort of. The truth tends to be more complicated. Religious groups were important in the weekend becoming a thing. It's not a coincidence it includes the two days Jews and Christians typically attend religious services. Unions did have a role in the Civil Rights act, but they were not the only backers, and were hardly uniform in their support. Unions in the South had pushed blacks out of entire industries.
interactivecode 4y ago
I feel like a union would do really well in situations like the layoffs at twitter.
- karaterobot 4y ago
  How so?
sillysaurusx 4y ago
> does that vindicate the idea that tech workers should have codified the benefits they enjoyed during the good times, through unionizing? It seems like one is unrelated to the other. The goal is good — to get back to the good times. But the path from here to there seems unlikely to pass through a union, at least for most tech workers. It would help to list some of the perceived benefits of unionizing. Then we’d be able to quantify an answer. Without a specific target, it’s hard to say whether a certain proposal might get there. Later: The recent layoffs are a good example of one of the benefits of unionizing. Theoretically, companies would have a tough time reducing head count if we were organized. But that raises the question of whether 14 weeks of severance is sufficient. For me it would’ve been, but there are a great many who wouldn’t have. Are there other benefits besides layoff protection? Discussions like these often focus on the downsides of unionization. It’s hard to recall one extolling the virtues.
- yerpyerpyerp 4y ago
  > It would help to list some of the perceived benefits of unionizing. It helps to look at other highly-skilled workers that are unionized, and pro athletes are a particularly interesting as a case-study for modern organized labor. They get profit-sharing and guaranteed raises built into their contracts. No need to wade through the BS of exercising shares that may or may not be worth something down the road. There are obviously many differences between the revenue that pro athletes generate and earn compared to tech workers, but if anything, I believe that it shows that tech workers leave a lot on the table by not unionizing. Additionally, organized labor would give more power to workers in termination situations. Right now, lots of people are being laid off because companies raised headcount irresponsibly and are now dealing with it by trimming their staffs. A unionized workplace is in a much better position to demand more favorable separation terms (guaranteed insurance, severance, etc.) in order to disincentivize employers from irresponsibly hiring and firing. If we're gonna be sacrificed in a market downturn, we should always be taken care of.
  - _3u10 4y ago
    Given the P/E ratio for tech shares are generally better than profit sharing, especially in R&D heavy industries. The companies that go under don’t tend to have a lot of profit.
browningstreet 4y ago
Skeptical POV: tech management culture is so consistently awful I hardly want to add another management party to the mix.
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  I don't buy it. It's like saying, "Of course the executive is bad, we wouldn't want to add legislature and judicial to the mix because it would make it even worse."
Multicomp 4y ago
Any organization including a union eventually gets captured by corruption. See teachers unions that don't let bad teachers get fired even after abusing students. The iron law of bureaucracy dampens my desire to have the feeling of safety that may come from being in a union.
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  This is true for corporations too. C-suite suits effectively collude to benefit themselves the most. The only difference is the interpretive frame we decorate their behaviors with. In the case of unions and government, it's bad, but the same actions taken in the corporate world are inevitable and good. "Of course they would do that! That's how it works!"
  - codekansas 4y ago
    The difference is that you have a choice about whether or not to engage with a corporation, but not for your union or government. If you don't want to engage with a corrupt corporation then you can switch jobs or start a new company, but if you don't want to engage with a corrupt union then you basically have to switch industries.
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      On the flip side, there can be industry-wide practices that are only avoidable if you switch professions. Prior to the pandemic, unless you were lucky to already WFH you were basically guaranteed to work in an open office as a SWE in tech, not even a cubicle.
    - kelseyfrog 4y ago
      I'm glad you brought this up. It allows me to get to my point which is that choice between corrupt corporations isn't really a choice at all. It highlights the absurdity of choice under markets, namely that markets frame choices in a way that constrains thinking. Markets don't provide for choices beyond their horizon while making people think that they have all the choice in the world. These are in fact the same thing. It's just as absurd to say, "why don't you create your own government if you don't like this one?" as it is to say "why don't you just not engage with corrupt corporations?" The question itself is ill-posed and assumes its own conclusion. This very mechanism is addressed in Žižek's summation, "I would prefer not to," and in the topic of choosing among the least corrupt corporations, I too would like to affirm the non-predicate. I would prefer not to.
theklr 4y ago
(American biased) I think too many in these conversations fail to show good unions (sports and entertainment) and harp on the bloated ones (teachers UAW). Ideally the union should just be a floor, what protections we’re provided, benefits for when corporate feels trimming happy to soften these blows, and to reduce inherent biases within the industry. While I’d love for one to develop in this time, it’s still too many thinking they’ll be the successor versus the next to be expendable.
- celeritascelery 4y ago
  I think the only reason people think certain unions like sports or entertainment are “good” is because they have no interaction with them (as opposed to teachers unions). I had some family that made a TV show, and SAG (screen actors guild) was a huge pain point. They are one of the reasons you don’t see more small scale movies and tv shows.
- leereeves 4y ago
  The entertainment unions may be good for those already in them, but they make it really difficult for new people to enter the profession.
  - drivingmenuts 4y ago
    One of the reasons unions exist is to provide some sort of job protection for the members. If anyone can just join up, then the effectiveness is reduced. Having an entry bar also guarantees some level of experience to the employer, making the union an attractive hire, in theory.
skfingngihg 4y ago
Hardly. Seeing how the nyt union organizes against employees, I’d fight any unionization effort at my work strongly because I’d be worried the union would go after me if it could
replygirl 4y ago
i'm trying to skip the corporate union layer and just start a co-op with my other talented friends
- bee_rider 4y ago
  Perhaps a guild? Or does that sound too old-timey?
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    I've always held that guilds would be the perfect name for a tech union, given their MMO connotations.
    - bee_rider 4y ago
      Of course skilled professionals have formed guild forever and this is where the concept comes from, but also, I think plenty of us secretly want to join the IRL equivalent of a Mage’s Guild.
dehrmann 4y ago
An issue with unions is they can only really form at times where workers have leverage and wouldn't benefit much from the union. Once the labor market is tight, unions don't really have the leverage to negotiate unless they fully monopolize labor.
closeparen 4y ago
It depends on the shape of the recession. Collective bargaining is a way for workers to demand some of the surplus that's otherwise flowing to owners. If the tech labor market crashes by itself, such that tech firms are able to increase their revenue per employee, then a union could claw some of that back. But if layoffs are coming from companies with thin or negative margins, then to the extent that employees can secure higher wages or make themselves harder to fire, those companies will only go bankrupt faster.
bko 4y ago
Maybe the reverse. You're assuming that a tech union would prevent people from being laid off and maybe it would to some degree. But more likely there would be rules on how you have to treat workers. And they would necessarily be rigid. For instance, layoffs would likely happen by some rule that favors how long you've been at the firm or some meaningless objective measure. That obviously doesn't make sense because layoffs are an opportunity to cut weaker performers or entire teams that don't really do anything. It would also hurt hiring and make employers more risk averse if they know they cannot get rid of poor performers easily. This impacts young inexperienced workers especially and is part of the reason places like France have youth unemployment is around 20% while US youth unemployment is around 8% https://www.statista.com/statistics/460548/youth-unemployment-rate-france/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/460548/youth-unemploymen... https://www.statista.com/statistics/217448/seasonally-adjusted-monthly-youth-unemployment-rate-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/217448/seasonally-adjust...
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  A tech union doesn't necessarily have to behave like traditional unions that favor seniority, and not all unions prioritize seniority anyway.
  - ThrowawayR2 4y ago
    It doesn't have to, no, but it probably would. Certainly most unions seem to. [EDIT] I'm poking around the sites for various unions for technical workers and engineers outside the software industry and, at a casual glance, many seem to factor in seniority as well. Are there examples of technical or engineering unions that are not seniority-based? Seems like those would be better indicators of what a software workers union would look like than the usually cited actors or sports player unions.
    - ffssffss 4y ago
      Why "probably"? A union is whatever its members make of it, and most engineers at any given tech company have relatively little seniority. It's hard to imagine them voting to join a union that would so obviously not prioritize their interests like that. My guess is in most cases you'd still end up with an avenue for merit based layoffs, they just wouldn't start until new hiring had been completely stopped, and perhaps include an option for everyone to take a pay cut instead (which might be bad! but it's an idea I've heard floated by engineers way more than seniority based protections).
mabbo 4y ago
I'm not certain that I want something as simple as a union that just works to make sure I'm not fired. What I'd love to see is a collective of employees that owns a significant portion of the company- the group, not just the individuals within it. It doesn't need to be the majority ownership, but enough that this group is a major player. They get consulted, and their support matters. As owners, this group would be incentivized to help maximize profits. But those profits would then go to the employees. The leadership would be elected, and be tasked with trying to divvy up those profits among employees in whatever way seems fair. There's a lot of flaws in this idea. It's initial. But I would love to see something tried where employee power doesn't just come from the threat of holding out labor, but from actual ownership.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  It would be interesting if the next tech boom sees startups and other new ventures set up with co-op structures and democratic management structures, certainly. Even something as simple as allowing worker reps to have a seat at the board, codetermination, would be innovation for the U.S. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany
- satvikpendem 4y ago
  You can start a co-op, I was in one. But it necessitated finding our own work and that was too much of a hassle for me compared to simply working at a regular company, even if I don't get all the fruits of my labor so to speak.
cat_plus_plus 4y ago
Only if these so called "tech worker unions" start acting like they have an "R" in their names. Not a peep from the lot about recent layoffs or abuses going on at Twitter. All they seem to care about is everyone being called by their preferred gender pronouns. They act pretty much like management plants to prevent formation of real worker-centered unions. After all, it costs much less to replace gender pronouns on various corporate websites than to give a raise. Also, no political donations from member dues please? I can already donate to whomever I want and might be amenable to follow union guidance if I see how that will make my life better. But for example, I am fine with Biden, however I am not sure if I want to support Harris reelection campaign in 2024 (let's be real about the inevitable). Have to at least see who the other candidate is, maybe DeSantis is lesser of two evils? In any case, there is no way I am paying thousands of dollars in dues every year to support candidates and causes I might oppose. For better wages / benefits / job security, maybe.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  While it does certainly seem like Silicon Valley unions like the Alphabet Workers’ Union have a tendency to weigh in hot button issues, the ones I've seen are more about protesting against management taking on defense or border control contracts, not culture war issues. Do you actually have cases to back that up? On the flip side, the Tech Workers Coalition for starters certainly weighed in on the Twitter layoffs. https://news.techworkerscoalition.org/2022/11/03/issue-16/ https://news.techworkerscoalition.org/2022/11/03/issue-16/
  - cat_plus_plus 4y ago
    Well, defense and border control contracts are good for employees' job security / wages while uncontrolled immigration could potentially hurt jobs and wages of existing workers. I understand that immigration also has benefits and humanitarian considerations and defense tech can be potentially misused. But if I pay $2K/year to join a labor union, I expect them to focus on protecting and improving my job and then I might separately get involved in other causes. Right now though I would gladly work on military tech to protect Ukraine and Taiwan rather than focusing on "US also has been bad sometimes".
exabrial 4y ago
As someone that used to work blue collar jobs, I would never join a tech union.
gedy 4y ago
Given tech working conditions are pretty nice, tech unions would likely quickly devolve into some DEI and politics catchall worse than current HR stuff, and I can't imagine many of us would want to work in union shops.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  Working conditions are pretty nice until the floor drops from the bottom of the market and we have an entire generation in tech who has never known bad times suddenly become relive the history of the dot com bubble.
  - gedy 4y ago
    Even then, we just lost our jobs or companies folded, it's not like we were working in coal mines or sweatshop conditions after dot com.
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      Perhaps, but it seems like rather wasteful folly, to not have protected good things taken for granted earlier on. The grasshopper and the ants.
monero-xmr 4y ago
All these geniuses on HN and none of them starts a company founded from Day 1 on worker-coop model. You can start a consultancy or some low-risk business on such a model. So many people here had solid exits and have $XX millions - why not prove out some worker socialism without coercing everyone else to do it? Do it voluntarily.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  It would definitely be great to see examples of co-op software companies! Though one wonders if the voluntarist nature of the FOSS movement is not dissimilar to such structures.
- satvikpendem 4y ago
  I did, but like you probably guessed, I found it too much of a hassle to find our own work and I'd have rather worked at a traditional company that just pays me every two weeks for work done, even if I'm not getting 1/n of the profits.
Mistletoe 4y ago
Why do I feel a tech union would just cause companies to outsource everything overseas to places where there is no union? I love the idea of unions but I don't know how to get around asshole companies. https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2011/04/25/moving-factories-to-flee-unions https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2011/04/25/mo...
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  Those places might also start forming unions, even if those unions might not be in their members' interests. https://www.protocol.com/china/china-tech-companies-unions https://www.protocol.com/china/china-tech-companies-unions
- survirtual 4y ago
  If companies started outsourcing and we had a union of tech workers, we could just collectively replace those companies. They’d either play ball with us or we’d do a nuclear option & GNU an equivalent tech stack that obsoletes them.
SecurityMinded 4y ago
What will unionization do for recession? Will they create jobs ? Or will they force employers to keep people on their payroll, who will not be doing anything productive? Recessions happen for a reason, which is the economy tanking in general. An in a long roundabout of thing, most of the time an overzealous union or two can be found close to the heart (root cause if you will) of the recession. Unionizing even more, will not help the situation of workers but will fatten the union organizers. IT industry is not a good place for unions as far as the tech workers are concerned. If you are good at what you do, your unemployment period is negligibly small. Call it an unpaid vacation. If you are one of those crash course graduates who call themselves IT experts, then all bets are off. This IT unionizing thing getting pushed more and more by the inept people in IT as well as the few clever guys who are looking into living the life of dolce-vita off of the backs of unionized workers. Screw all of them.
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  > Or will they force employers to keep people on their payroll, who will not be doing anything productive? I don't know if unions could actually affect hiring or retention, but they can protect benefits, the sort of things that might go away during an economic downturn. > An in a long roundabout of thing, most of the time an overzealous union or two can be found close to the heart (root cause if you will) of the recession. That's certainly not the case of a tech recession, if one was to happen this year. > If you are good at what you do, your unemployment period is negligibly small. Call it an unpaid vacation. It's not a matter of unemployment. In harsh times, who knows what direction the industry will move towards as labor power disappears, in contrast to the past two years. Perhaps some firms might start moving towards 996, even. There are a lot of good things everyone took for granted during the good times, and in bad times, who knows how it'll change. This is simply a "memento mori" sort of caution as we appear to be on the onset of bad times. > This IT unionizing thing getting pushed more and more Is it really? Software is an industry that has been around for perhaps half a century? Any chatter towards unionization in the field seems as hypothetical as it always been, except at a few companies, so the usual anti-union alarmism is as hysterical as ever in a field as anti-union as this.

philwelch 4y ago

Pro athletes are orders of magnitude away from tech workers in terms of how valuable and irreplaceable they are. There are fewer than 500 NBA players and fewer than 1700 NFL players on current rosters, and few of them can be usefully replaced by anyone not currently in the league. Also, tech is a fairly open marketplace. John Carmack can start his own company and has done so multiple times, but LeBron James can’t start or even buy his own NBA franchise if he wants to play. So while professional sports owners are an obvious, fixed counterparty to the players in a collective bargaining sense, the top tech workers can be and often are the owners and management of tech companies.

Apocryphon 4y ago
Doctors, psychiatrists, and lawyers all of professional organizations that effectively function as unions. And the SAG includes many workers beyond the marquee film stars.
- philwelch 4y ago
  Yes, let’s talk about the doctors, then. Thanks to the AMA (the de facto US doctors union), there is a deliberate and structural shortage of doctors in order to deliberately prop up the pay for US doctors. It’s also virtually impossible for any practicing physician outside the US—even in other developed countries—to immigrate to the US and continue practicing medicine. This has obvious negative consequences for the availability, affordability, and cost of health care in the United States.
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    The AMA's actions were undesirable, but that just goes to show the power it wielded on behalf of its members, and the occupation it represented. Imagine if the IEEE/ACM could lobby for SWEs as effectively, but in a socially desirable way. Also, perhaps in the present or future, the AMA could use its own power to undo the mistakes it made in the past: https://blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2022/03/15/ama-scope-of-practice-lobbying/ https://blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2022/03/15/ama-scope...
    - philwelch 4y ago
      Yes, if we had a powerful union that exerted power in the specific ways that you agreed with, I’m sure you’d be happy with it. In fact, why stop there, we could just make you dictator! Or at least someone who exclusively did things you agreed with, if you didn’t want the extra work. Failing that, we have a bit of a fork. Either we have a union that acts in the interests of its members (which the AMA has done!) or we have a union with some serious principal/agent issues that follows some other agenda, and the odds aren’t very good that you or I would always agree with that agenda.
      - Apocryphon 4y ago
        All beings act in the interests of its members, and can still do so while in compliance to some greater system. That is why perhaps a union, like any other association of sentients that have ever existed, may be governed by a greater set of rules, such as laws, designed to preclude abuses such as in the AMA case. Which is why it is possible to support a ruler- even me- while simultaneously be at ease that they are not a dictator, because we live in a society of the rule of law.
        philwelch 4y ago
        Sure. Which laws stopped the AMA’s abuses? Conversely, which laws made those abuses possible? How are laws made, and how has the AMA, or unions in general, influenced that process? How often is the answer, “the union is a de facto segment of a specific political party, always contributes to that party’s campaign funds, and due to closed-shop employment arrangements, those funds are collected from workers’ paychecks regardless of their personal opinions”?
        Apocryphon 4y ago
        Certainly, if both parties worked with unions, labor would not be seen as a partisan topic. And perhaps the continued rise of inequality might have been stymied. https://www.epi.org/publication/unions-decline-inequality-rises/ https://www.epi.org/publication/unions-decline-inequality-ri... And again, the AMA is not a union, but a professional association.

codekansas 4y ago
What's wrong with employees just voting with their feet, instead of mandating rules like this? If a company behaves horribly just go somewhere else
- Apocryphon 4y ago
  Doesn't seem to happen in tech judging by Amazon horror stories about PIP culture and the like.
  - klipt 4y ago
    I think it's pretty easy for an average US citizen or green card holder engineer who gets pipped at Amazon to get hired elsewhere. The people who really get screwed are the OPTs/H1-Bs who have a very short grace period to get a new job or leave the country.
    - Apocryphon 4y ago
      Sure, but 1) it goes to show that tech workers won't necessarily "vote with their feet", 2) in the event of an industry-wide downturn, that ability to vote becomes far more limited.
      - leereeves 4y ago
        Amazon pays software engineers very well (compared to software engineering jobs in general). Perhaps people don't vote with their feet because they like the money.
        Apocryphon 4y ago
        Amazon comp was entirely predicated on stock, wasn't it? Because they uniquely have a salary cap that's not particularly high. https://www.levels.fyi/blog/amazon-salary-negotiation.html https://www.levels.fyi/blog/amazon-salary-negotiation.html It seems like there is more Amazon non-warehouse employees interest in unionizing now anyway: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-layoffs-corporate-employees-discuss-forming-union-unionization-2022-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-layoffs-corporate-emp...
        comp_throw7 4y ago
        Not exactly - while the initial stock they grant vests on a 5/15/40/40 schedule, they also have a large cash "bonus" which "vests" monthly for the first two years. With their assumption of 15% stock growth per year, you should have equal TC per year for your first 4 years. Of course, assuming 15% annual stock growth is silly, but you can run the numbers however you want. The point is that compensation for the first two years is predominantly cash.
  - satvikpendem 4y ago
    No? I've definitely heard stories that Amazon is having a harder time hiring people because many workers are churning out.
klipt 4y ago
> an option for everyone to take a pay cut instead (which might be bad! but it's an idea I've heard floated by engineers way more than seniority based protections). We already do that, it's called RSUs. If a portion of your compensation is in RSUs and the market goes down, you automatically get a paycut. Better than being laid off, isn't it?
- deleted 4y ago
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HEmanZ 4y ago
This is like doing the same thing but expecting a different result. You think unions follow some optimal logic but I’ve seen no examples that do. The only real expectation you can have is that it would end up roughly like existing unions. I have had personal experience with men in leather jackets giving you the “better vote x or you might have an accident” unions. So I’m a bit biased.
- deleted 4y ago
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- Apocryphon 4y ago
  > This is like doing the same thing but expecting a different result. Tech culture, and Silicon Valley in particular, is so obsessed with recreating things from first principles and experimenting for the sake of it, that you would expect that they'd give reinventing unions but under a different name a shot.
philwelch 4y ago
There are a few problems with unions, many of which can be summed up as principal/agent problems. But another issue is that unions are fundamentally democratic, which leads to some misaligned incentives. Seniority is a completely legible and unambiguous criteria, and it’s one that most workers can eventually benefit from in the long run. Merit is more of a judgment call. Management at least has the incentive to get that judgment call right (which isn’t to say they do get it right, but at least they have the incentive to, modulo the same principal/agent problems that unions also introduce), but unions don’t. So if I’m part of the top 20% of workers at a firm, or part of the top 20% that the firm could reasonably hire, my incentives are actually better aligned with management than with the other 80% of workers who would dominate the union. The classic union solution to this problem is closed shops, but that’s hard to achieve without specific legal and regulatory moats. Also: > My guess is in most cases you'd still end up with an avenue for merit based layoffs, they just wouldn't start until new hiring had been completely stopped This is another common failure mode of unions. People who already work in a given field are in the union, but people trying to break into the field are not. So it becomes harder to hire new people, which actually leads to longer tenures and makes seniority seem like a better deal for the union members.

bko 4y ago

What way would be ideal? It would have to be an objective measure applied universally. I challenge you to come up with a reasonable measure. In reality, front line workers and managers (the good ones) know ability of people and how much they contribute. In my experience it was very obvious and agreed upon for the most part. But none of the (in)effective people could be discerned in an objective way.

Apocryphon 4y ago
My point isn't that unions could necessarily protect layoffs, and thus I am agnostic about how they should respond to layoff criteria. My point is that unions could protect benefits that might go away in the event of a market downturn, when tech labor power is similarly weakened.
- bko 4y ago
  Right, but everything has tradeoffs. If the org chooses to protect benefits, then it may mean more cuts. For instance, to save $X a non-unionized firm may have to cut 5% of the workforce, and it would likely choose weaker performers. But if they have to provide more benefits and severance to those they let go, they may have to cut 10% of the workforce instead. In my experience layoffs were always measured. The people affected were usually weaker performers or in functions that weren't practical anymore (e.g. recruiter during a hiring freeze). For me the tradeoff is not worth it. I understand that there will be ups and downs and I may one day be a victim. But I appreciate the flexibility that likely led me to be hired in the first place without a traditional background in tech. Basically they took a chance and luckily it worked out. But if the firm had a much higher cost to get rid of someone, they likely would have went with a more traditional candidate
  - Apocryphon 4y ago
    By benefits I don't mean simply TC pay package items or employee perks, I mean not being subject to games industry-style unpaid overtime crunch, or forced RTO for those who had moved hours away from the nearest office during the pandemic, basic QoL "luxuries" who might be put into jeopardy as labor power weakens in poor economic situations.

satvikpendem 4y ago

I've heard before that in France it's basically impossible to fire people and due to that, some tech companies stopped hiring there, is that true? Either way, I think people who advocate for tech unionization blindly (not those who consider it carefully, I'm talking more about people on the internet who likely have never been in a union) should understand that it's not without tradeoffs, it's not always a net good depending on what the higher order effects are.

Apocryphon 4y ago
The thing about tech unionization is that too often the conversation is to assume that such an phenomenon would be exactly resemble that of mid-century heavy industry labor unions, when that is neither predestined nor even feasible. Given how relatively new the software industry is, how its production processes differ from those of manufacturing or mining, and how tech seems to embody its own unique Silicon Valley culture of its own. Not to mention, a sweeping all-encompassing unionization of tech is unimaginable given how for a long time now, unions have been seen as completely unthinkable, due to libertarian sentiments in the industry and employer relations favorable to labor. Thing is, tech unionization is most likely to happen in gradual patchwork efforts, as it is now, and is far from the bogeyman that critics pose it as. Not to mention, there are different halfway compromises that could be a good initial step, such as introduction co-determination or bringing back board ombudsmen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22367243 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22367243
- acdha 4y ago
  > The thing about tech unionization is that too often the conversation is to assume that such an phenomenon would be exactly resemble that of mid-century heavy industry labor unions, when that is neither predestined nor even feasible. I’d definitely welcome more comparisons with professional guilds or similar, and especial non-English sources. For example, I’ve been told by multiple people German and Scandinavian unions are quite different culturally.