8 ms·

Right before COVID-19 stay at home order in Chicago, a bunch of improvisers who preformed at the popular i.o theater put together a list of demands which basica

Right before COVID-19 stay at home order in Chicago, a bunch of improvisers who preformed at the popular i.o theater put together a list of demands which basically asked for a bunch of changes to make the lives of performers better. They were not going to perform until those changes were made. The owner didnt respond for a few days and then said, "Hey! Heard you. Great valid concerns. But I'm actually shutting the theater down." i.o was closed for some period of time (1+ year) and then came back. The changes asked for were not made. Performers were happy just to get on stage again. I think about that a lot when I see people making demands. Sometimes companies can/will just say no or worse find some reason to let the person go. It's frustrating but as the individual its so hard to get any meaningful change when you have no real power.

dubcanada 4y ago
This is sadly why you need political power. People with money can afford WAY longer then you to just say "nah..."
- politician 4y ago
  The power to compel others is dangerous.
  - Retric 4y ago
    Having zero power is vastly more dangerous.
  - wolrah 4y ago
    > The power to compel others is dangerous. When one side already has massive power, it takes massive power to balance it. It is very rare that an individual will ever have the ability to stand up to a multi-billion dollar company on their own, so they need a powerful union who can actually legitimately threaten that company to be able to keep the company in check. Either that or the companies need to have their own power strongly curtailed, which can only be done by a powerful government. Pick your poison.
  - malcolmgreaves 4y ago
    Great argument against the entirety of capitalism! As an economic system, much like feudalism, capitalism is founded on the bedrock principle of capitalists having extreme power to compel non capitalists into all sorts of behavior.
- mrisoli 4y ago
  Or in other words, "Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."
- skmurphy 4y ago
  I think it's less a question of "(politcal) power" than "bargaining power." And bargaining power is not fundamentally about your ability to withhold your labor from one employer but sell it to other employers.
  - malcolmgreaves 4y ago
    I see what you’re saying, but I must point out that bargaining power is political. The story you’re commenting on is about a group of people working at one location, wanting something more from their employer. The solution to the problem isn’t to leave. Rather, it is to exert influence via collective action to change _that_ situation _there_.
    - skmurphy 4y ago
      Their mistake was in framing it as collective bargaining. What if they put the owner in the group with them and brainstormed ways to allow everyone to prosper. Casting it as a zero sum interaction--we want more from you and unfortunately you get less--rarely works as well as shared problem solving. At an individual level if they had investigated other opportunities and reported back practices from other employers that matched what they were asking for it would strengthen their case that it would be hard for the employer to attract new employees with their current set of policies. You have to look at it as a dynamic system or ecosystem. "Us against them" is rarely the most effective framing.
deanCommie 4y ago
I mean isn't that default position? Everyone has to go into situations like this with eyes open. If there was no risk to striking or demanding better working conditions, it wouldn't be as rare as it is. I think everyone is aware that by default "the companies" have more power than the individual or the worker class. What's unusual is that in 2021 the balance shifted for a little while for the privileged tech worker class. So it's notable that this brief blip was in fact a blip and not the start of a trend. I don't know how hackernews feels about this given that many here often acts like they are enterpreneurs-in-training, CEOs-in-waiting. Those that secretly (or not so secretly) can't wait to repress others because "<Shrug>, capitalism" rather than working towards a more equitable future (the word itself considered dirty by many here). Your key point is the last sentence. Individually we have no real power. That's because we are going against corporations and economic systems and governments, which are not individuals. The only way to have a meaningful chance at action is collectively.
- monero-xmr 4y ago
  It is insanely hard to build a business, and I speak as someone who has built businesses in both tech and franchising (which should theoretically be much more straightforwards). At the primordial stage, before there are reliable revenues, you must have everyone marching to the same drum. If you can’t do what I say, please GTFO because you are actively harming what is already hanging on by a thread. If I can’t fire bad people then I can’t build a business, period. And if you don’t like it, please go create a business model, raise and invest the capital, hire the workers, spend a huge fraction of your waking hours worrying and agonizing over the business, and then deal with entitled people who have way less stake in the game who think they can do it better. One thing I like about government offices is that the people most motivated to live in insane bureaucracies, punch a card, act entitled, and hurt customers go to work for them. At least it exits a large fraction of nightmare employees from the private sector pool.
  - nkjnlknlk 4y ago
    Wow. It sounds like you'd benefit from society where the risk of innovating (assuming your business is innovating in some capacity) is not life or death! I daresay a more equitable society would make it so you have an easier time with running your business as well.
godelski 4y ago
> Right before COVID-19 stay at home order in Chicago >Sometimes companies can/will just say no or worse find some reason to let the person go. This just seems like a story of good/bad timing, not a story of the theater owner taking a hit just to make the performers suffer. A "never let a tragedy go to waste" story if you will. Plenty of theaters, and other businesses (a lot of entertainment), shut down for long periods during the pandemic.
shmatt 4y ago
The federal, state, and even city governments paid millions to business owners. So it was an easy decision in 2020 Could the same owner shut down for a full year without thinking twice, just to avoid giving people a few more bucks an hour in 2023? I doubt it
mensetmanusman 4y ago
Our theaters were also closed during Covid because of distancing concerns and fear.
time_to_smile 4y ago
That's why the time to make demands and organize was when this current tech boom was just getting started, when engineer salaries started to really pick up and before bootcamps and massive new waves of CS grads where in swing. By organizing across the field, software engineers would have been able to have more input into the rate of engineer growth (which would have hurt bootcamps but generally lead to higher quality engineers, and avoided over hiring), compensation (which likely would have hurt some of the people making insane FAANG salaries, but lifted up most others), professional licensing (i.e. maybe you just do that leetcode/project/etc gauntlet once to get licensed, not for every new application), enforced professional ethics (as a profession we agree to limits on the kinds of exploitative work we do) etc, etc. The problem is that anyone even suggesting this back then (and there were a few people) would be downvoted into oblivion. Engineers found rewarding, high paying, prestigious work easily and virtually everyone thought that was an eternal truth. Now it's way, way too late.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  I’m on my third or fourth cycle of this in tech. The expansion we just saw will not be the last, nor will this contraction be the last.
  - btbuildem 4y ago
    Exactly. Two quarters from now it'll be a different story.
dehrmann 4y ago
> or worse find some reason to let the person go Making the demand is a reason. Whenever you ask your boss for a raise, it comes with the implication that if you don't get it, you'll leave. Even if you don't, they know you're not happy, so there's an argument to making the decision for you.
wheats 4y ago
>as the individual its so hard to get any meaningful change When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run, There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun; Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one But the union makes us strong.
- malfist 4y ago
  Solidarity Forever -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCnEAH5wCzo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCnEAH5wCzo
MuffinFlavored 4y ago
> but as the individual or in your case (and many other cases), even a collective group of individuals still had little to no bargaining power
jeffwask 4y ago
This is why I think Executives are terrified of remote work. If the local theater doesn't want to meet my demand I have a global theater and someone will be always willing to leverage their competitive advantage to secure talent that would typically not be in their talent pool. People are no longer trapped by their geography or situation and Executives are terrified of losing that control.
- jimbob45 4y ago
  Which is weird because they now have more control than ever in reality. Previously, if you headed up a tech firm in Wyoming, for example, your talent pool was the set of all the residents in Wyoming. You'd struggle to retain your top-end talent and you probably had to overpay to get them to stick around. Even worse, you probably had to donate to the University of Wyoming (read: bribe) to get them to train their students the way you needed them trained. With remote work, you just scribble out a post on Indeed, wait a week, and then pick the most desperate candidate that has the qualifications you need. If they threaten to leave, you offer a token raise knowing that you could always find someone else if you need.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    That firm in Wyoming already had the ability to hire remotely 5 and 10 years ago. All they had to do was decide to do it.
    - Firmwarrior 4y ago
      I guess there's more remote work talent and more remote work culture around now though Everyone learned (the hard way) how to be productive while working remotely
    - GrooveSAN 4y ago
      They previously had to make their whole « internal processes » (for lack of a better term) remote-friendly, which wasn’t probably the case back then. When you build a physical-first team, your documentation, your newcomer-induction trainings, your typical way of sharing and bonding, those will all be relying on physical presence. That makes onboarding of full-remote colleagues terribly challenging, « doomed to fail » I’d even say. Being remote-friendly is an important effort that requires you to actually become remote-first. And this effort is only considered, started and approved by executives now that the global context has totally changed because of COVID. At least in the tech industry, there’s no coming back, and people at the top of the company, even if fighting on some details, are totally getting that. So yes, my analysis is that, because of those fundamental « remote-friendly » changes, companies embracing the new normal can compete in a larger pool, which offers opportunities as well as challenges. Companies - in the IT domain - fighting this trend will only make their life terrible and eventually abide by the new rules (hey Apple! :))
cloutchaser 4y ago
Another way to interpret this story is that the performers were whining and thought they had a bad deal, but when faced with consequences they realised it actually wasn’t a bad deal for them. Words and words. Actions are actions.
Ferret7446 4y ago
Yeah, you can't just make demands of other people, especially if you're relying on the other person to help you (e.g., hire you). Biting the hand etc. You have to be the one who's bringing the goods to the table, or be prepared to have your bluff (or lack of sense) called.
wdr1 4y ago
Out of curiosity, what's to stop the performers from leaving & starting their own theater with those policies?
- sausagefeet 4y ago
  Probably: a lot of capital.
- AlwaysRock 4y ago
  If they had the money and the interest I'm sure they could have. It's just really hard to start and run a theater. I'm guessing a lot of performers want to perform but dont want to run a business. Interestingly enough... When i.o opened its current location they had TJ and Dave (a very popular improv act with a huge following - you may know TJ from Sonic commercials and Dave from Veep or Boba Fett or a bunch of other tv shows or movies) a big section of the theater and called it The Mission theater. Their show was the draw but they had many interesting acts fill out their line up. After ~2 years they gave the ownership back to i.o and went back to doing just their show. They wanted to perform. They didnt want to run a theater.

dubcanada 4y ago

This is sadly why you need political power. People with money can afford WAY longer then you to just say "nah..."

politician 4y ago
The power to compel others is dangerous.
- Retric 4y ago
  Having zero power is vastly more dangerous.
- wolrah 4y ago
  > The power to compel others is dangerous. When one side already has massive power, it takes massive power to balance it. It is very rare that an individual will ever have the ability to stand up to a multi-billion dollar company on their own, so they need a powerful union who can actually legitimately threaten that company to be able to keep the company in check. Either that or the companies need to have their own power strongly curtailed, which can only be done by a powerful government. Pick your poison.
- malcolmgreaves 4y ago
  Great argument against the entirety of capitalism! As an economic system, much like feudalism, capitalism is founded on the bedrock principle of capitalists having extreme power to compel non capitalists into all sorts of behavior.
mrisoli 4y ago
Or in other words, "Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."
skmurphy 4y ago
I think it's less a question of "(politcal) power" than "bargaining power." And bargaining power is not fundamentally about your ability to withhold your labor from one employer but sell it to other employers.
- malcolmgreaves 4y ago
  I see what you’re saying, but I must point out that bargaining power is political. The story you’re commenting on is about a group of people working at one location, wanting something more from their employer. The solution to the problem isn’t to leave. Rather, it is to exert influence via collective action to change _that_ situation _there_.
  - skmurphy 4y ago
    Their mistake was in framing it as collective bargaining. What if they put the owner in the group with them and brainstormed ways to allow everyone to prosper. Casting it as a zero sum interaction--we want more from you and unfortunately you get less--rarely works as well as shared problem solving. At an individual level if they had investigated other opportunities and reported back practices from other employers that matched what they were asking for it would strengthen their case that it would be hard for the employer to attract new employees with their current set of policies. You have to look at it as a dynamic system or ecosystem. "Us against them" is rarely the most effective framing.

deanCommie 4y ago

I mean isn't that default position? Everyone has to go into situations like this with eyes open. If there was no risk to striking or demanding better working conditions, it wouldn't be as rare as it is. I think everyone is aware that by default "the companies" have more power than the individual or the worker class. What's unusual is that in 2021 the balance shifted for a little while for the privileged tech worker class. So it's notable that this brief blip was in fact a blip and not the start of a trend. I don't know how hackernews feels about this given that many here often acts like they are enterpreneurs-in-training, CEOs-in-waiting. Those that secretly (or not so secretly) can't wait to repress others because "<Shrug>, capitalism" rather than working towards a more equitable future (the word itself considered dirty by many here). Your key point is the last sentence. Individually we have no real power. That's because we are going against corporations and economic systems and governments, which are not individuals. The only way to have a meaningful chance at action is collectively.

monero-xmr 4y ago
It is insanely hard to build a business, and I speak as someone who has built businesses in both tech and franchising (which should theoretically be much more straightforwards). At the primordial stage, before there are reliable revenues, you must have everyone marching to the same drum. If you can’t do what I say, please GTFO because you are actively harming what is already hanging on by a thread. If I can’t fire bad people then I can’t build a business, period. And if you don’t like it, please go create a business model, raise and invest the capital, hire the workers, spend a huge fraction of your waking hours worrying and agonizing over the business, and then deal with entitled people who have way less stake in the game who think they can do it better. One thing I like about government offices is that the people most motivated to live in insane bureaucracies, punch a card, act entitled, and hurt customers go to work for them. At least it exits a large fraction of nightmare employees from the private sector pool.
- nkjnlknlk 4y ago
  Wow. It sounds like you'd benefit from society where the risk of innovating (assuming your business is innovating in some capacity) is not life or death! I daresay a more equitable society would make it so you have an easier time with running your business as well.

godelski 4y ago

> Right before COVID-19 stay at home order in Chicago >Sometimes companies can/will just say no or worse find some reason to let the person go. This just seems like a story of good/bad timing, not a story of the theater owner taking a hit just to make the performers suffer. A "never let a tragedy go to waste" story if you will. Plenty of theaters, and other businesses (a lot of entertainment), shut down for long periods during the pandemic.

shmatt 4y ago

The federal, state, and even city governments paid millions to business owners. So it was an easy decision in 2020 Could the same owner shut down for a full year without thinking twice, just to avoid giving people a few more bucks an hour in 2023? I doubt it

mensetmanusman 4y ago

Our theaters were also closed during Covid because of distancing concerns and fear.

time_to_smile 4y ago

That's why the time to make demands and organize was when this current tech boom was just getting started, when engineer salaries started to really pick up and before bootcamps and massive new waves of CS grads where in swing. By organizing across the field, software engineers would have been able to have more input into the rate of engineer growth (which would have hurt bootcamps but generally lead to higher quality engineers, and avoided over hiring), compensation (which likely would have hurt some of the people making insane FAANG salaries, but lifted up most others), professional licensing (i.e. maybe you just do that leetcode/project/etc gauntlet once to get licensed, not for every new application), enforced professional ethics (as a profession we agree to limits on the kinds of exploitative work we do) etc, etc. The problem is that anyone even suggesting this back then (and there were a few people) would be downvoted into oblivion. Engineers found rewarding, high paying, prestigious work easily and virtually everyone thought that was an eternal truth. Now it's way, way too late.

sokoloff 4y ago
I’m on my third or fourth cycle of this in tech. The expansion we just saw will not be the last, nor will this contraction be the last.
- btbuildem 4y ago
  Exactly. Two quarters from now it'll be a different story.

dehrmann 4y ago

> or worse find some reason to let the person go Making the demand is a reason. Whenever you ask your boss for a raise, it comes with the implication that if you don't get it, you'll leave. Even if you don't, they know you're not happy, so there's an argument to making the decision for you.

wheats 4y ago

>as the individual its so hard to get any meaningful change When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run, There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun; Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one But the union makes us strong.

malfist 4y ago
Solidarity Forever -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCnEAH5wCzo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCnEAH5wCzo

MuffinFlavored 4y ago

> but as the individual or in your case (and many other cases), even a collective group of individuals still had little to no bargaining power

jeffwask 4y ago

This is why I think Executives are terrified of remote work. If the local theater doesn't want to meet my demand I have a global theater and someone will be always willing to leverage their competitive advantage to secure talent that would typically not be in their talent pool. People are no longer trapped by their geography or situation and Executives are terrified of losing that control.

jimbob45 4y ago
Which is weird because they now have more control than ever in reality. Previously, if you headed up a tech firm in Wyoming, for example, your talent pool was the set of all the residents in Wyoming. You'd struggle to retain your top-end talent and you probably had to overpay to get them to stick around. Even worse, you probably had to donate to the University of Wyoming (read: bribe) to get them to train their students the way you needed them trained. With remote work, you just scribble out a post on Indeed, wait a week, and then pick the most desperate candidate that has the qualifications you need. If they threaten to leave, you offer a token raise knowing that you could always find someone else if you need.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  That firm in Wyoming already had the ability to hire remotely 5 and 10 years ago. All they had to do was decide to do it.
  - Firmwarrior 4y ago
    I guess there's more remote work talent and more remote work culture around now though Everyone learned (the hard way) how to be productive while working remotely
  - GrooveSAN 4y ago
    They previously had to make their whole « internal processes » (for lack of a better term) remote-friendly, which wasn’t probably the case back then. When you build a physical-first team, your documentation, your newcomer-induction trainings, your typical way of sharing and bonding, those will all be relying on physical presence. That makes onboarding of full-remote colleagues terribly challenging, « doomed to fail » I’d even say. Being remote-friendly is an important effort that requires you to actually become remote-first. And this effort is only considered, started and approved by executives now that the global context has totally changed because of COVID. At least in the tech industry, there’s no coming back, and people at the top of the company, even if fighting on some details, are totally getting that. So yes, my analysis is that, because of those fundamental « remote-friendly » changes, companies embracing the new normal can compete in a larger pool, which offers opportunities as well as challenges. Companies - in the IT domain - fighting this trend will only make their life terrible and eventually abide by the new rules (hey Apple! :))

cloutchaser 4y ago

Another way to interpret this story is that the performers were whining and thought they had a bad deal, but when faced with consequences they realised it actually wasn’t a bad deal for them. Words and words. Actions are actions.

Ferret7446 4y ago

Yeah, you can't just make demands of other people, especially if you're relying on the other person to help you (e.g., hire you). Biting the hand etc. You have to be the one who's bringing the goods to the table, or be prepared to have your bluff (or lack of sense) called.

wdr1 4y ago

Out of curiosity, what's to stop the performers from leaving & starting their own theater with those policies?

sausagefeet 4y ago
Probably: a lot of capital.
AlwaysRock 4y ago
If they had the money and the interest I'm sure they could have. It's just really hard to start and run a theater. I'm guessing a lot of performers want to perform but dont want to run a business. Interestingly enough... When i.o opened its current location they had TJ and Dave (a very popular improv act with a huge following - you may know TJ from Sonic commercials and Dave from Veep or Boba Fett or a bunch of other tv shows or movies) a big section of the theater and called it The Mission theater. Their show was the draw but they had many interesting acts fill out their line up. After ~2 years they gave the ownership back to i.o and went back to doing just their show. They wanted to perform. They didnt want to run a theater.