6 ms·

This string of high-tech layoffs this feels like a wage-war to me. At some point engineers & scientists of various disciplines need to form country-wide unions

This string of high-tech layoffs this feels like a wage-war to me. At some point engineers & scientists of various disciplines need to form country-wide unions. Imagine for a moment that CS & software engineers, electrical engineers, MechE's, ChemE, CivE's, etc. formed unions and then maybe collaborated to occasionally act an unified super-union. Those unions would wield incredible power over national economic policy and the dealings in a lot of company board rooms.

nigrioid 4y ago
It would just give them more motivation for outsourcing.
- brendamn 4y ago
  Outsource to where? Outsourcing isn't exactly new and many large orgs already outsource as many activities/projects/roles as possible. Even with outsourcing there is still a skilled tech labor shortage.
  - missedthecue 4y ago
    When GM or Ford wants to outsource, they need to pour billions into new plants in Alabama or Mexico or other non-UAW locations. If google wanted to outsource, they could hire people globally, with very little cost or efficiency loss. All else being equal, a dev in Baton Rouge (or Bogota, or Buenas Aires, or Bangalore) is as productive as one in San Jose. And it doesn't cost anything extra to bring one on.
    - doctorwho42 4y ago
      Then why haven't they? I doubt the efficiency claim.
      - missedthecue 4y ago
        They have. Google used to be mostly Palo Alto (and foreign branch offices) and now they're much much less Palo Alto.
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  They already are, and a union could actually prevent it. A union could say something like "if you want any union workers, you can't have more than X% of open jobs be to non-union workers (or non-US workers)". This is pretty standard fare, and I doubt most (US) companies would forgo US software engineers entirely. Look at yelp, their official hiring policy is almost "anywhere but the bay". (its technically more nuanced, and closer to "distributed across major global metros", but basically the implication is lower cost workers outside of SF.
  - pokepim 4y ago
    [dead]
  - junofan 4y ago
    Professional licensing gets you there with less overhead, no?
    - vineyardmike 4y ago
      Professional licensing is messy in a different way. First, it’d be harder to retroactively license people. Second is the there is significant variety is specialty (ML, kernel research, front end) so it’d be harder to create a standard for licensure. A license creates scarcity, and deputizes a few people as “licensed” which grants them some special privileges. But not quality of life privileges, work privileges. My mother is a licensed engineer in another discipline. She has to “stamp” or approve anything before it can be built. A lot of her job is resisting management requests for her to stamp everyone else’s work (cheaper unlicensed engineers). She says the extra job security is more than ruined with extra stress and fighting. If she says someone else’s work is inadequate… it’s a problem for everyone including her to fix. So… we could require that licensed software engineers approve all code reviews that go to production…? But not do anything to mandate quality of life improvements. You couldn’t even prevent outsourcing because you can have one licensed American whose sole job is approving the overseas code reviews. They may not even be team specific. Sounds terrible to me. The benefit of a union is negotiation. A Union could say “no unpaid oncall”, and “you have to hire x% union workers”. With a license…? How would you enact those protections? How would you slow layoffs, or ensure jobs don’t get outsourced? One thing people always forget: unions don’t have to dictate pay. There are examples of unions today. Google had a union. It wasn’t very popular because no one thought they needed it, but it was there. Most government jobs in the US have a union. Hollywood actors have a union, and those actors get paid very well. The union uses the actors as bargaining power - if you want the famous actor, you need the union cameraman and sound guy. It prevents a lot of the behind-the-scenes work from being outsourced.
gymbeaux 4y ago
I’m all for unionizing, but most people lack the balls/will/whatever you want to call it. Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck and the banks owns their cars and homes, so it’s much harder to unionize now than it was in the 1800s.
- 1letterunixname 4y ago
  Yep. And most employees who make more than most don't see a problem and don't see the need to organize. If corporate workers had any sense, they'd quit megacorps and form tech worker-owned co-ops to capture the value that they generated rather than let is slip by. Working-class French know how to strike.
  - gymbeaux 4y ago
    By the time the SWEs need to unionize it will be too late
  - thworp 4y ago
    You know, software engineers at FAANG earn enough money after a few years that 10 of them could seed a nice capital base for a startup. Yet they don't do that en masse, preferring instead to take (and risk!) investor's money instead of their own. All the while pulling a regular salary regardless of the company's financial health. It might be that outside of Marx's text that were already dubious in the 1800s people know that "surplus value" is a BS one-dimensional concept that totally disregards time-value, risk appetite and a preferrence for stable income vs moon-shots.
  - vineyardmike 4y ago
    > form tech worker-owned co-ops to capture the value that they generated rather than let is slip by. Lawyers have it good. They’re the smart ones. They made it illegal to own a law firm unless you’re a lawyer. Because “shareholders vs clients would be a conflict of interest”. No more so than other industries! Bridge designer or aerospace engineers vs shareholders seems an even greater conflict of interest than lawyers. Engineers should create the same arrangements for their own work. Instead of trying to be a “staff” engineer at a big tech company you’d try to be a partner at a tech firm…
specialist 4y ago
You're advocating sectoral bargaining. Common in the EU. It's probably The Correct Answer™. Though organizing by craft or industry may also achieve what you want. The USA has enterprise bargaining. Sectoral bargaining was proposed. But the corporations (plantation class) nerfed it. The comparative power of Labor, USA vs EU, speaks the merits of sectoral over enterprise bargaining. "Sectoral collective bargaining is an aim of trade unions or labor unions to reach a collective agreement that covers all workers in a sector of the economy. It contrasts to enterprise bargaining where agreements cover individual firms. Generally countries with sectoral collective bargaining have higher rates of union organisation and better coverage of collective agreements than countries with enterprise bargaining." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectoral_collective_bargaining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectoral_collective_bargaining
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jtode 4y ago
It's hard enough to get factory workers, who it's way more clear are being exploited, to vote for a union. There are professional people whose sole job is to create FUD about unions when there's a campaign on, and it works on people making minimum wage. I am completely with you morally, but with the amounts we make, I have a very hard time seeing it ever get any traction. If the workers ever unite in a real way, we could possibly make something happen in that context, but I have a hard time seeing that too. I can more easily see robot slaves getting here first.
- scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
  I think the film industry with it’s variety of specialist guilds is the model that could be followed by tech people. As opposed to the unions that you get with more traditional job-jobs.
  - deadmutex 4y ago
    "Sorry, you have to wait until release management is available to push this small bugfix to prod. You job role of software developer does not qualify"
    - thebradbain 4y ago
      That is not at all what Hollywood guilds are like, though. As someone who lives in LA, and is very close with people who work in the industry, the unions should be held up as a model for high skilled labor. It’s also something tech and (and especially the gaming industry) can learn from The WGA, for example, allows the lowest-rung writers of tv shows to make $70-80k/year as a minimum floor for 6-8 months of work, twice that if it’s the full year, and guarantees you healthcare for when you’re unemployed between shows/gigs. That helps push up the wage ladder for everyone else, too— many established, but not famous, writers on regular shows that have decent size followings but are not phenomenons are able to earn $400/500k year base salaries this way, and provide a ladder to a really fortunate life for them and their families. There’s many different guilds, from writing, to acting, to production, to lighting, to animation/vfx, to crew, to assistants, but they all more or less provide a baseline coverage to their members. IATSE, which is the guild that represents assistants and crew, went on strike last year and secured a minimum $25/hr wage and mandatory breaks last year. The guilds explicitly foster creativity, because it allows even entry-level members to jump from company to company and project to project without worrying about day-to-day logistics. Imagine if software engineers could hop from project to project at different companies working on just things they were interested in?
up2isomorphism 4y ago
Why do you need to unionize if you actually can do some job and there is a well defined social welfare? So if you can not do a job you shouldn’t be hired at all. If you can do a job but get laid off because of economic conditions we should push for a better social welfare system. BTW, Layoff is the natural consequence of over hire, but did you feel angry when companies are over hiring? Probably not. It means employees are just as blind as employers.
throwntoday 4y ago
No thanks I have zero interest in paying union dues for the bloated salaries of their cancerous "leaders". The idea of a union is far nobler than it's execution because at the end of the day it is run by people and people are greedy. Consider unions for doctors that lobby to keep residency slots low each year and consequently their own salaries high. I am more than happy to continue negotiating on my own as I always have. I don't trust anyone to do that on my behalf.
- ahoya 4y ago
  [dead]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

nigrioid 4y ago

It would just give them more motivation for outsourcing.

brendamn 4y ago
Outsource to where? Outsourcing isn't exactly new and many large orgs already outsource as many activities/projects/roles as possible. Even with outsourcing there is still a skilled tech labor shortage.
- missedthecue 4y ago
  When GM or Ford wants to outsource, they need to pour billions into new plants in Alabama or Mexico or other non-UAW locations. If google wanted to outsource, they could hire people globally, with very little cost or efficiency loss. All else being equal, a dev in Baton Rouge (or Bogota, or Buenas Aires, or Bangalore) is as productive as one in San Jose. And it doesn't cost anything extra to bring one on.
  - doctorwho42 4y ago
    Then why haven't they? I doubt the efficiency claim.
    - missedthecue 4y ago
      They have. Google used to be mostly Palo Alto (and foreign branch offices) and now they're much much less Palo Alto.
vineyardmike 4y ago
They already are, and a union could actually prevent it. A union could say something like "if you want any union workers, you can't have more than X% of open jobs be to non-union workers (or non-US workers)". This is pretty standard fare, and I doubt most (US) companies would forgo US software engineers entirely. Look at yelp, their official hiring policy is almost "anywhere but the bay". (its technically more nuanced, and closer to "distributed across major global metros", but basically the implication is lower cost workers outside of SF.
- pokepim 4y ago
  [dead]
- junofan 4y ago
  Professional licensing gets you there with less overhead, no?
  - vineyardmike 4y ago
    Professional licensing is messy in a different way. First, it’d be harder to retroactively license people. Second is the there is significant variety is specialty (ML, kernel research, front end) so it’d be harder to create a standard for licensure. A license creates scarcity, and deputizes a few people as “licensed” which grants them some special privileges. But not quality of life privileges, work privileges. My mother is a licensed engineer in another discipline. She has to “stamp” or approve anything before it can be built. A lot of her job is resisting management requests for her to stamp everyone else’s work (cheaper unlicensed engineers). She says the extra job security is more than ruined with extra stress and fighting. If she says someone else’s work is inadequate… it’s a problem for everyone including her to fix. So… we could require that licensed software engineers approve all code reviews that go to production…? But not do anything to mandate quality of life improvements. You couldn’t even prevent outsourcing because you can have one licensed American whose sole job is approving the overseas code reviews. They may not even be team specific. Sounds terrible to me. The benefit of a union is negotiation. A Union could say “no unpaid oncall”, and “you have to hire x% union workers”. With a license…? How would you enact those protections? How would you slow layoffs, or ensure jobs don’t get outsourced? One thing people always forget: unions don’t have to dictate pay. There are examples of unions today. Google had a union. It wasn’t very popular because no one thought they needed it, but it was there. Most government jobs in the US have a union. Hollywood actors have a union, and those actors get paid very well. The union uses the actors as bargaining power - if you want the famous actor, you need the union cameraman and sound guy. It prevents a lot of the behind-the-scenes work from being outsourced.

gymbeaux 4y ago

I’m all for unionizing, but most people lack the balls/will/whatever you want to call it. Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck and the banks owns their cars and homes, so it’s much harder to unionize now than it was in the 1800s.

1letterunixname 4y ago
Yep. And most employees who make more than most don't see a problem and don't see the need to organize. If corporate workers had any sense, they'd quit megacorps and form tech worker-owned co-ops to capture the value that they generated rather than let is slip by. Working-class French know how to strike.
- gymbeaux 4y ago
  By the time the SWEs need to unionize it will be too late
- thworp 4y ago
  You know, software engineers at FAANG earn enough money after a few years that 10 of them could seed a nice capital base for a startup. Yet they don't do that en masse, preferring instead to take (and risk!) investor's money instead of their own. All the while pulling a regular salary regardless of the company's financial health. It might be that outside of Marx's text that were already dubious in the 1800s people know that "surplus value" is a BS one-dimensional concept that totally disregards time-value, risk appetite and a preferrence for stable income vs moon-shots.
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  > form tech worker-owned co-ops to capture the value that they generated rather than let is slip by. Lawyers have it good. They’re the smart ones. They made it illegal to own a law firm unless you’re a lawyer. Because “shareholders vs clients would be a conflict of interest”. No more so than other industries! Bridge designer or aerospace engineers vs shareholders seems an even greater conflict of interest than lawyers. Engineers should create the same arrangements for their own work. Instead of trying to be a “staff” engineer at a big tech company you’d try to be a partner at a tech firm…

specialist 4y ago

You're advocating sectoral bargaining. Common in the EU. It's probably The Correct Answer™. Though organizing by craft or industry may also achieve what you want. The USA has enterprise bargaining. Sectoral bargaining was proposed. But the corporations (plantation class) nerfed it. The comparative power of Labor, USA vs EU, speaks the merits of sectoral over enterprise bargaining. "Sectoral collective bargaining is an aim of trade unions or labor unions to reach a collective agreement that covers all workers in a sector of the economy. It contrasts to enterprise bargaining where agreements cover individual firms. Generally countries with sectoral collective bargaining have higher rates of union organisation and better coverage of collective agreements than countries with enterprise bargaining." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectoral_collective_bargaining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectoral_collective_bargaining

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jtode 4y ago

It's hard enough to get factory workers, who it's way more clear are being exploited, to vote for a union. There are professional people whose sole job is to create FUD about unions when there's a campaign on, and it works on people making minimum wage. I am completely with you morally, but with the amounts we make, I have a very hard time seeing it ever get any traction. If the workers ever unite in a real way, we could possibly make something happen in that context, but I have a hard time seeing that too. I can more easily see robot slaves getting here first.

scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
I think the film industry with it’s variety of specialist guilds is the model that could be followed by tech people. As opposed to the unions that you get with more traditional job-jobs.
- deadmutex 4y ago
  "Sorry, you have to wait until release management is available to push this small bugfix to prod. You job role of software developer does not qualify"
  - thebradbain 4y ago
    That is not at all what Hollywood guilds are like, though. As someone who lives in LA, and is very close with people who work in the industry, the unions should be held up as a model for high skilled labor. It’s also something tech and (and especially the gaming industry) can learn from The WGA, for example, allows the lowest-rung writers of tv shows to make $70-80k/year as a minimum floor for 6-8 months of work, twice that if it’s the full year, and guarantees you healthcare for when you’re unemployed between shows/gigs. That helps push up the wage ladder for everyone else, too— many established, but not famous, writers on regular shows that have decent size followings but are not phenomenons are able to earn $400/500k year base salaries this way, and provide a ladder to a really fortunate life for them and their families. There’s many different guilds, from writing, to acting, to production, to lighting, to animation/vfx, to crew, to assistants, but they all more or less provide a baseline coverage to their members. IATSE, which is the guild that represents assistants and crew, went on strike last year and secured a minimum $25/hr wage and mandatory breaks last year. The guilds explicitly foster creativity, because it allows even entry-level members to jump from company to company and project to project without worrying about day-to-day logistics. Imagine if software engineers could hop from project to project at different companies working on just things they were interested in?

up2isomorphism 4y ago

Why do you need to unionize if you actually can do some job and there is a well defined social welfare? So if you can not do a job you shouldn’t be hired at all. If you can do a job but get laid off because of economic conditions we should push for a better social welfare system. BTW, Layoff is the natural consequence of over hire, but did you feel angry when companies are over hiring? Probably not. It means employees are just as blind as employers.

throwntoday 4y ago

No thanks I have zero interest in paying union dues for the bloated salaries of their cancerous "leaders". The idea of a union is far nobler than it's execution because at the end of the day it is run by people and people are greedy. Consider unions for doctors that lobby to keep residency slots low each year and consequently their own salaries high. I am more than happy to continue negotiating on my own as I always have. I don't trust anyone to do that on my behalf.

ahoya 4y ago
[dead]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]