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I disagree. The entire tech sector had one of the strongest labor positions in the country for the last decade. It was short sighted not to unionize. Now, layof

by rcme 4y ago

I disagree. The entire tech sector had one of the strongest labor positions in the country for the last decade. It was short sighted not to unionize. Now, layoffs are widespread, compensation is way down, while all the profits go to shareholders. This applies to Google and many other profitable tech companies.

chaostheory 4y ago
You anti-work guys are again showing your ignorance. A large chunk of techie compensation is in stock.
- rcme 4y ago
  What difference does it make what form the compensation is in? Is your argument that because employees receive stock that they somehow have enough voting power to influence company policy? That’s laughable.
  - chaostheory 4y ago
    > Now, layoffs are widespread, compensation is way down, while all the profits go to shareholders. People who own stock are shareholders
  - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
    Does employee owned stock magically not go up in value because "reasons"?
    - rcme 4y ago
      Of course the stock goes up. But the employees are an extreme minority shareholder, so they're totally beholden to the larger shareholders. If the company wants to layoff workers, they're powerless to stop it. Workers are also powerless to stop getting their pay cut. Go look at current job openings. Those cushy 500K total comp jobs are gone.
      - chaostheory 4y ago
        Rank and file employees owning hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions of dollars of shares is not unheard of in companies like Google. It’s obvious that you havent worked in the tech industry because you really don’t know what you’re talking about.
        rcme 4y ago
        1 million on 1.36T (Google’s market cap) is 0.00007%. Let’s say Google has 25,000 engineers and they each own 1 million. That’s less than 2% of the company. And obviously 1 million is unlikely to be the average engineer ownership stake. You’re conflating two things: earning a decent salary and having power with management. Current Google engineers have good salaries, but they hold no power with management. Their positions could eliminated without them having a say. I highly recommend you look at other industries. How many people are earning 500K? Not many. Do you really believe software engineers are so special? No. We existed in a specific period of time: explosive economic growth, coupled with low interest rates, coupled with low supply of software engineers. The industry is maturing. Money is no longer free. Tens of thousands of software engineers are pumped out of universities every year. The writing is on the wall. The lifestyle software engineers have come to enjoy is under threat. Why will software look any different than any other professional industry? Probably you’ll answer with something like: “software has 0 marginal cost so software engineers have extreme productivity numbers.” That’s true, but your wage, absent a union or scarcity of skill, is not tied to your productivity. Take construction nail production. Nails used to be made by hand. Now someone with some rolls of steel wire and a machine can make hundreds of thousands of nails in the time it took to make a few by hand. Yet the person making nails probably earns less than the person who made them by hand. The surplus value is captured by the owner of the machine. You, as an engineer, are not special. You have no moat. From this conversation, I get the impression you’re not even particularly intelligent. Get over yourself.
        chaostheory 4y ago
        > 1 million on 1.36T (Google’s market cap) is 0.00007%. Let’s say Google has 25,000 engineers and they each own 1 million. That’s less than 2% of the company. And obviously 1 million is unlikely to be the average engineer ownership stake. It doesn't matter. Compared to the average person, they will still reap a lot of the benefits of rising stock value. Given that stock is a major part of compensation, owning $1 million or more dollars worth of shares is more common than you think, but how should you know? You haven't worked in tech, and judging from your comments it doesn't seem like you've even joined the work force yet. > I highly recommend you look at other industries. How many people are earning 500K? Not many. Do you really believe software engineers are so special? No. We existed in a specific period of time: explosive economic growth, coupled with low interest rates, coupled with low supply of software engineers. The industry is maturing. Money is no longer free. Tens of thousands of software engineers are pumped out of universities every year. The writing is on the wall. The lifestyle software engineers have come to enjoy is under threat. Why will software look any different than any other professional industry? We are talking about circumstances in the past and present ie right now, and not in the far off future of 10-20 years from now. It is nonsensical to unionize when both the pay and benefits are decent. When this changes, then behaviour will naturally change. > From this conversation, I get the impression you’re not even particularly intelligent. Get over yourself. Given all of the convoluted logic from your comments, that applies more to the person you see in the mirror rather than myself. You live in an ivory tower; you need to experience the real world first before you double down on a subject that you're not very familiar with. You're also too overconfident. It's not merited.
  - evancox100 4y ago
    Because the employees are shareholders? If the profits are going to shareholders then employees are directly benefiting
    - rcme 4y ago
      That's really irrelevant. Even if compensation was entirely in cash, they'd likely still be shareholders through index fund investing, e.g. most 401k options would invest in the company. Does that mean employees working at an S&P 500 company should never unionize because technically they're shareholders? Employees at Google are made shareholders because its cheaper for the company than paying cash. Employees form an absolutely tiny minority. The point of unionizing is to increase the leverage of the workers at a company. Workers would benefit much more from unionization than they would from holding the stock at a company without a union.
      - chaostheory 4y ago
        > Workers would benefit much more from unionization than they would from holding the stock at a company without a union. Maybe this would work if the employees have some sort of monopoly like the people who work at the ports. However, with knowledge workers there’s a threshold when it’s simply cheaper to move states or even countries. Employees who are well compensated also do not have an incentive to form a union. You’re still wrong. What’s your next proposal? Investment bankers should unionize?
        rcme 4y ago
        Investment bankers job is to deploy capital. How would unionizing help them? Will unionizing increase the amount of capital? No, so no sane person would suggest that. Software engineers are primarily manufacturers. They make products. The barrier to entry is extremely low for this line of work. I get that you think you’re really smart, but there are tens to hundreds of millions of people in the world who could do your job adequately. Your only leverage is to band together with others doing your work and demand your fair share from the business’ owners.
- polygamous_bat 4y ago
  > You anti-work guys are again showing your ignorance. Do you have an actual argument, or do you just plan on name-calling until people shut up and fall in line? > A large chunk of techie compensation is in stock. Oh ok, I guess they can fire Sundar Pichai/Mark Zuckerberg when he underperforms, then? What? They don't own enough stocks to do that? There you go. That's your problem.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - chaostheory 4y ago
    > Do you have an actual argument, or do you just plan on name-calling until people shut up and fall in line? It’s literally the 2nd sentence. An ignorant person is someone who is lacking in knowledge. It’s pretty accurate in this case > Oh ok, I guess they can fire Sundar Pichai/Mark Zuckerberg when he underperforms, then? What? They don't own enough stocks to do that? What are you even trying to say?
    - polygamous_bat 4y ago
      > What are you even trying to say? Shares generally give you two benefits, one is a share of the up/downsides, and another is a right of governance in the company. The way employee share distributions are done right now means employees get a tiny fraction of the first and none of the second, even though they are a large stakeholder in the company's future.
      - chaostheory 4y ago
        This is a moot point if you understand how capitalism works and the goal of corporate executives: ensuring maximum value for shareholders. As I’ve mentioned before, Google employees own a large amount of stock compare to the average person. Consequently, they will benefit no matter what
        polygamous_bat 4y ago
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
Many, many people in the software industry, especially at a place like Google, absolutely do not want to unionize, and for excellent reasons. Pretty much every union in existence assigns value to union members based on tenure, and it pretty much assumes members are "interchangeable cogs" in most other respects. A lot of people reasonably hate that idea, because they know that they can negotiate for more based on their personal value to a company. I'm not anti-union generally, and I'm glad to see a revival of unionization where it makes sense, e.g. places like Starbucks and Amazon, where workers are largely treated like interchangeable cogs by management already, and so a union improves employee bargaining power. And I also think it would make sense for certain areas of tech, and certain software companies, to want to unionize. But this is Google. As others have commented, many software engineers at Google easily make hundreds of thousands annually in stock awards alone. I can't imagine any highly competent software engineer there wanting a union, because it means that their bargaining power is no better than the "average" software dev, which is obviously false. I think Sundar's compensation is absurd, but I also think layoffs were warranted given the obscene levels of overhiring many of these tech companies did during the pandemic. And when you say "compensation is way down", at big FAANGs that is largely due to the value of stock awards, but many people would rather get compensated in stock to begin with - Google employees especially reaped gargantuan rewards up until 2022 based on stock.
- rcme 4y ago
  I understand this argument, and there are definitely many Google engineers who believe this, but I believe this belief to be mistaken. Unfortunately, most engineers really are replaceable cogs. Google’s origins can be traced back to really smart people innovating through brilliant new algorithms. So it’s understandable why people at Google believe that being brilliant is an irreplaceable asset. If only enough Jeff Deans could be brought together, something amazing would surely happen. But how accurately does this belief match reality? Most successful companies today innovate on product, not raw technology. 99% of product work really can be done by anyone. There are now plenty of multi-billion dollar companies that had original products engineered by total amateurs. Raw technical ability just isn’t that important anymore. And you see this in Google’s business. For how self-proclaimedly smart Googlers are, they sure have a hard time growing the business through new products. And when I say total comp is down, I’m not talking about existing employees (although their comp is down too for the reason you mention). Go look at job openings near you. More likely than not, base salaries and equity packages will be much lower than before.

by rcme 4y ago

chaostheory 4y ago

You anti-work guys are again showing your ignorance. A large chunk of techie compensation is in stock.

rcme 4y ago
What difference does it make what form the compensation is in? Is your argument that because employees receive stock that they somehow have enough voting power to influence company policy? That’s laughable.
- chaostheory 4y ago
  > Now, layoffs are widespread, compensation is way down, while all the profits go to shareholders. People who own stock are shareholders
- cscurmudgeon 4y ago
  Does employee owned stock magically not go up in value because "reasons"?
  - rcme 4y ago
    Of course the stock goes up. But the employees are an extreme minority shareholder, so they're totally beholden to the larger shareholders. If the company wants to layoff workers, they're powerless to stop it. Workers are also powerless to stop getting their pay cut. Go look at current job openings. Those cushy 500K total comp jobs are gone.
    - chaostheory 4y ago
      Rank and file employees owning hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions of dollars of shares is not unheard of in companies like Google. It’s obvious that you havent worked in the tech industry because you really don’t know what you’re talking about.
      - rcme 4y ago
        1 million on 1.36T (Google’s market cap) is 0.00007%. Let’s say Google has 25,000 engineers and they each own 1 million. That’s less than 2% of the company. And obviously 1 million is unlikely to be the average engineer ownership stake. You’re conflating two things: earning a decent salary and having power with management. Current Google engineers have good salaries, but they hold no power with management. Their positions could eliminated without them having a say. I highly recommend you look at other industries. How many people are earning 500K? Not many. Do you really believe software engineers are so special? No. We existed in a specific period of time: explosive economic growth, coupled with low interest rates, coupled with low supply of software engineers. The industry is maturing. Money is no longer free. Tens of thousands of software engineers are pumped out of universities every year. The writing is on the wall. The lifestyle software engineers have come to enjoy is under threat. Why will software look any different than any other professional industry? Probably you’ll answer with something like: “software has 0 marginal cost so software engineers have extreme productivity numbers.” That’s true, but your wage, absent a union or scarcity of skill, is not tied to your productivity. Take construction nail production. Nails used to be made by hand. Now someone with some rolls of steel wire and a machine can make hundreds of thousands of nails in the time it took to make a few by hand. Yet the person making nails probably earns less than the person who made them by hand. The surplus value is captured by the owner of the machine. You, as an engineer, are not special. You have no moat. From this conversation, I get the impression you’re not even particularly intelligent. Get over yourself.
        chaostheory 4y ago
        > 1 million on 1.36T (Google’s market cap) is 0.00007%. Let’s say Google has 25,000 engineers and they each own 1 million. That’s less than 2% of the company. And obviously 1 million is unlikely to be the average engineer ownership stake. It doesn't matter. Compared to the average person, they will still reap a lot of the benefits of rising stock value. Given that stock is a major part of compensation, owning $1 million or more dollars worth of shares is more common than you think, but how should you know? You haven't worked in tech, and judging from your comments it doesn't seem like you've even joined the work force yet. > I highly recommend you look at other industries. How many people are earning 500K? Not many. Do you really believe software engineers are so special? No. We existed in a specific period of time: explosive economic growth, coupled with low interest rates, coupled with low supply of software engineers. The industry is maturing. Money is no longer free. Tens of thousands of software engineers are pumped out of universities every year. The writing is on the wall. The lifestyle software engineers have come to enjoy is under threat. Why will software look any different than any other professional industry? We are talking about circumstances in the past and present ie right now, and not in the far off future of 10-20 years from now. It is nonsensical to unionize when both the pay and benefits are decent. When this changes, then behaviour will naturally change. > From this conversation, I get the impression you’re not even particularly intelligent. Get over yourself. Given all of the convoluted logic from your comments, that applies more to the person you see in the mirror rather than myself. You live in an ivory tower; you need to experience the real world first before you double down on a subject that you're not very familiar with. You're also too overconfident. It's not merited.
- evancox100 4y ago
  Because the employees are shareholders? If the profits are going to shareholders then employees are directly benefiting
  - rcme 4y ago
    That's really irrelevant. Even if compensation was entirely in cash, they'd likely still be shareholders through index fund investing, e.g. most 401k options would invest in the company. Does that mean employees working at an S&P 500 company should never unionize because technically they're shareholders? Employees at Google are made shareholders because its cheaper for the company than paying cash. Employees form an absolutely tiny minority. The point of unionizing is to increase the leverage of the workers at a company. Workers would benefit much more from unionization than they would from holding the stock at a company without a union.
    - chaostheory 4y ago
      > Workers would benefit much more from unionization than they would from holding the stock at a company without a union. Maybe this would work if the employees have some sort of monopoly like the people who work at the ports. However, with knowledge workers there’s a threshold when it’s simply cheaper to move states or even countries. Employees who are well compensated also do not have an incentive to form a union. You’re still wrong. What’s your next proposal? Investment bankers should unionize?
      - rcme 4y ago
        Investment bankers job is to deploy capital. How would unionizing help them? Will unionizing increase the amount of capital? No, so no sane person would suggest that. Software engineers are primarily manufacturers. They make products. The barrier to entry is extremely low for this line of work. I get that you think you’re really smart, but there are tens to hundreds of millions of people in the world who could do your job adequately. Your only leverage is to band together with others doing your work and demand your fair share from the business’ owners.
polygamous_bat 4y ago
> You anti-work guys are again showing your ignorance. Do you have an actual argument, or do you just plan on name-calling until people shut up and fall in line? > A large chunk of techie compensation is in stock. Oh ok, I guess they can fire Sundar Pichai/Mark Zuckerberg when he underperforms, then? What? They don't own enough stocks to do that? There you go. That's your problem.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- chaostheory 4y ago
  > Do you have an actual argument, or do you just plan on name-calling until people shut up and fall in line? It’s literally the 2nd sentence. An ignorant person is someone who is lacking in knowledge. It’s pretty accurate in this case > Oh ok, I guess they can fire Sundar Pichai/Mark Zuckerberg when he underperforms, then? What? They don't own enough stocks to do that? What are you even trying to say?
  - polygamous_bat 4y ago
    > What are you even trying to say? Shares generally give you two benefits, one is a share of the up/downsides, and another is a right of governance in the company. The way employee share distributions are done right now means employees get a tiny fraction of the first and none of the second, even though they are a large stakeholder in the company's future.
    - chaostheory 4y ago
      This is a moot point if you understand how capitalism works and the goal of corporate executives: ensuring maximum value for shareholders. As I’ve mentioned before, Google employees own a large amount of stock compare to the average person. Consequently, they will benefit no matter what
      - polygamous_bat 4y ago

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

Many, many people in the software industry, especially at a place like Google, absolutely do not want to unionize, and for excellent reasons. Pretty much every union in existence assigns value to union members based on tenure, and it pretty much assumes members are "interchangeable cogs" in most other respects. A lot of people reasonably hate that idea, because they know that they can negotiate for more based on their personal value to a company. I'm not anti-union generally, and I'm glad to see a revival of unionization where it makes sense, e.g. places like Starbucks and Amazon, where workers are largely treated like interchangeable cogs by management already, and so a union improves employee bargaining power. And I also think it would make sense for certain areas of tech, and certain software companies, to want to unionize. But this is Google. As others have commented, many software engineers at Google easily make hundreds of thousands annually in stock awards alone. I can't imagine any highly competent software engineer there wanting a union, because it means that their bargaining power is no better than the "average" software dev, which is obviously false. I think Sundar's compensation is absurd, but I also think layoffs were warranted given the obscene levels of overhiring many of these tech companies did during the pandemic. And when you say "compensation is way down", at big FAANGs that is largely due to the value of stock awards, but many people would rather get compensated in stock to begin with - Google employees especially reaped gargantuan rewards up until 2022 based on stock.

rcme 4y ago
I understand this argument, and there are definitely many Google engineers who believe this, but I believe this belief to be mistaken. Unfortunately, most engineers really are replaceable cogs. Google’s origins can be traced back to really smart people innovating through brilliant new algorithms. So it’s understandable why people at Google believe that being brilliant is an irreplaceable asset. If only enough Jeff Deans could be brought together, something amazing would surely happen. But how accurately does this belief match reality? Most successful companies today innovate on product, not raw technology. 99% of product work really can be done by anyone. There are now plenty of multi-billion dollar companies that had original products engineered by total amateurs. Raw technical ability just isn’t that important anymore. And you see this in Google’s business. For how self-proclaimedly smart Googlers are, they sure have a hard time growing the business through new products. And when I say total comp is down, I’m not talking about existing employees (although their comp is down too for the reason you mention). Go look at job openings near you. More likely than not, base salaries and equity packages will be much lower than before.