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Good news for those 700: because we don't have tech worker unions, they are able to individually bargain the terms of their layoff! ...right?
by coldpie 3y ago
Good news for those 700: because we don't have tech worker unions, they are able to individually bargain the terms of their layoff!
...right?
- SpicyLemonZest 3y agoI don't understand what the dunk is supposed to be here. Plenty of unionized companies have layoffs.
- burnished 3y agoI believe the implication is that those layoffs have better overall terms.
- SpicyLemonZest 3y agoBetter overall terms than what? As far as I can tell there's no information available yet on what kind of severance package these people got. It's definitely not in the source article.
- syntaxing 3y agoOP is talking about the terms of layoffs (as in the severance package) rather than about layoffs in general.
- paxys 3y agoI'm willing to bet that LinkedIn's severance terms are significantly more generous that what a standard union shop can negotiate for its members.
- Ensorceled 3y agoWhen my father was pushed into early requirement, he got a full years severance and has his pension was topped up to 100%. Do you think the LinkedIn people will get their pensions fully paid out?
- paxys 3y agoCompanies like Google & Salesforce paid out 6-8 months of severance (more depending on tenure) and accelerated remaining stock vests, so not all that different.
- berdario 3y agoFirst waves of layoffs are famously more generous with their severance agreements than the following ones. They are already not as generous as they could be (for example, Google on January 20th boasted about accelerated vesting for the notice period of US employees that would be laid off... But employees in other regions didn't get the same terms) ...and they are going to get worse and worse, with future layoffs
- pb7 3y ago>employees in other regions didn't get the same terms Yep, that's what happens when you have labor laws that dictate the terms. It cuts both ways.
- berdario 3y agoYou're doubly wrong: 1- the laws dictate minimum terms for the agreements, they don't put ceilings on the maximums 2- the regions in which employees got shafted in that way aren't the regions in which employment laws are stricter
- Ensorceled 3y ago> 1- the laws dictate minimum terms for the agreements, they don't put ceilings on the maximums That's not how it works in many jurisdictions: if a company does a round of layoffs and exceeds the terms ... those are the new terms going forward for that company.
- berdario 3y ago
- lesuorac 3y agoHaving seen the difference between USA's severance packages vs Europes I think you're wrong.
- neilc 3y agoAlso relevant are the difference between overall comp for software engineering jobs in the USA vs Europe.
- rdoherty 3y ago2 months + 1 week per year at LinkedIn. Not good based on my experience with tech layoffs over the past few decades.
- bluGill 3y agoCompare to union shops though? I know of some factories that shut down for annual maintenance for several months every year, and they lay everyone off. There is another factory (same company) that works opposite months of the year so in theory people are laid off and just switch between the two factories, but depending on schedule and work needs you can be out of work for a while. I also know big projects often hire union labor (electricians, plumbers), and lay them off at the end of the project. I have no idea what the terms of this are.
- Apocryphon 3y agoYou're comparing situations in different industries with different economics, never mind the union situations.
- bluGill 3y agoBut that is the context if your read up a few levels we were told union shops have layoffs all the time. We cannot compare them is my point.
- JamesBarney 3y agoUnions probably have better severance packages but how many times is a typical worker laid off in their life? There are costs to increasing the cost of a layoff. It means corporations will rely on credentialism more, and take fewer risks. I'd rather live in a world where you can jump into software without a college degree, but maybe have to save a little money at your very well paying job than one that only hires college grads with a 3.5 GPA but you get a generous severance package.
- syntaxing 3y agoI worked for 5 jobs or so in my decade of experience. Every single one had layoffs (usually 10%+). Layoffs aren’t that common in tech until now but were always prevalent in the “industry”.
- JamesBarney 3y agoI think there is a large difference between number of employees who have worked at a company that had has layoffs, and number of times they were laid off. Assuming your experience is representative of every company (I don't think it is) then every company lays off 10% of their workforce every 2 years. Assume a random distribution (I don't think this is true) that means the average worker get laid off once every twenty years. So you're looking at 2 lay offs a career. Savings should be sufficient for this. Policies or agreements like this just make good hirs cheaper, and bad hires more expensive.
- raybb 3y agoThere are some tech worker unions (like at NYT) but not enough. A relevant book that recently came out but I have not read is You Deserve a Tech Union by Ethan Marcotte https://abookapart.com/products/you-deserve-a-tech-union https://abookapart.com/products/you-deserve-a-tech-union
- toomuchtodo 3y agohttps://code-cwa.org/ https://code-cwa.org/ https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1706 https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1706 ("Treasury Department Releases First-Of-Its-Kind Report on Benefits of Unions to the U.S. Economy") https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/10/us-union-workers-report-congress https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/10/us-union-wor... ("Feel the benefit: union workers receive far better pay and rights, Congress finds") https://newrepublic.com/post/175274/gallup-poll-two-thirds-americans-support-unions https://newrepublic.com/post/175274/gallup-poll-two-thirds-a... ("Poll: Majority of Americans Support Unions and Support Strikes | A new Gallup poll shows Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of labor unions.") https://www.axios.com/2023/04/27/unions-tech-industry-labor-youtube-sega https://www.axios.com/2023/04/27/unions-tech-industry-labor-... ("Push to unionize tech industry makes advances") https://www.axios.com/2022/06/15/microsoft-union-truce-techs-war-labor https://www.axios.com/2022/06/15/microsoft-union-truce-techs... ("Microsoft, meanwhile, announced last year that it would not stand in the way of any workers who wanted to unionize.") https://www.cbsnews.com/news/microsoft-first-labor-union-video-game-workers-zenimax-studios/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/microsoft-first-labor-union-vid... ("Microsoft recognizes its first U.S. labor union as video game testers organize") > Microsoft president Brad Smith has twice in recent weeks told me that Microsoft is simply doing what it sees fit for its own relationship with workers and not trying to push others. However, labor leaders see Microsoft's move as a potential model for others. > "I won’t say that it was completely easy for Microsoft to do this but they did it," Christopher Shelton, president of Communications Workers of America, the union organizing at Activision, told Axios. (last I checked, Microsoft owns Linkedin, but I could be mistaken; I am not uneducated on the challenges and downsides to organizing, but am also not so uneducated and inexperienced to think the power imbalance doesn't require improvement; maybe an individual can do better solo occasionally, but that's luck and not what the data shows)
- 3y ago
- aaa_aaa 3y ago[flagged]
- Apocryphon 3y agoPerhaps a newly-formed modern day union would strive to improve upon the problems of past unions with the benefit of historical hindsight.
- bluGill 3y agoMaybe, but it is likely that you will not be able to form a new union and instead be forced to join with an existing one. As soon as a big union hears of your efforts they will step in and demand to be the ones to represent you then they only need a couple people to scream we need to join the big union and they can fight your efforts to be independent in court.
- Apocryphon 3y agoIt’s more of the principle of the thing. We work in an industry that aspires to disrupt everything from human relations (social media), to commerce (Amazon, the sharing economy), to biology, nutrition, and the very laws of physics (or at least material science.) Even if a lot of this is just marketing hype, there is still ambition required to come up with such utopian grandiose goals. But whenever the idea of a union is discussed it’s “no, we’ve tried it already, that’s impossible, everyone knows that.” What hypocritical defeatism!
- bluGill 3y agoSome things we disrupt, others we fail, often because the very laws of physics are against it. There are also laws of what makes a union work and they don't point to success. Mind those laws are not as absolute as the laws of physics, but they also place limits on what a union can do, and in turn make me less interested.
- 3y ago
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoDon’t you know? We 10x engineers are so special that we are waving off offer after offer and that will never end. Not only will that never end, but luckily I’m so perfect that I’ll never experience a disability or need any accommodation that I can’t just code or build myself. I mean even then, certainly you had a good enough exit at your first company (like anyone good) that you could basically retire whenever. I mean, you know it boils down to this: just be a better software engineer and you’ll never have to NEED a union. The only people that need unions probably suck at algorithms and think Kubernetes is too hard. Live in emacs or starve is my motto
- slg 3y agoI know this is said in jest, but I just want to remind people there is no such thing as being too valuable to be a member of a union. LeBron James is in a union. Tom Cruise is literally striking right now as part of the SAG-AFTRA union strike. Unless John Carmack happens to be reading this, I guarantee you are not close to being as valuable an engineer as LeBron is a basketball player or Cruise is an actor.
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoJust look at the amount of sincerely antisocial comments that boil down to effectively what I wrote above It’s disappointing but not surprising
- scruple 3y agoYes, unsurprisingly I've had these exact sorts of conversations at work (gamesdev). Some of these people truly, truly believe that they are so gifted and so talented that the work opportunities will simply never dry up.
- smsm42 3y agoIf work opportunities dry up, how the union would help? Unions don't create work opportunities, they only can redistribute who gets the ones that are still there - e.g. by excluding nonmembers or by mandating that less senior members will be fired first, etc. Given that, why "these people" would be sure they aren't ones who'd get the short straw?
- deviantbit 3y agoA union would have done nothing other than accelerate the process. We need laws that if a job is off-shored the company is penalized heavily, where it makes it painful and unbearable.
- nojito 3y agoWhy?
- waynesonfire 3y agobecause these people are being replaced with off-shore hires from India and China.
- nojito 3y agoSo? Are you implying that those developers can’t compete with US developers?
- deviantbit 3y agoUS developers are far better than Indian developers, but they can't compete on wages. The cost of living is too high in this country.
- lotsofpulp 3y agoHow about Silicon Valley developers being outsourced to Missouri?
- g00gler 3y agoHow about US developers can’t compete with offshore developers? Average Indian earns $571/mo. Even if devs earn 2x average you’d be able to hire at least 3 for just the average SF/NYC rent a developer in the US has to pay let alone taxes, benefits, etc. Not particularly good for the country or economy long term; is the end game to destroy the US and start over paying people here $571/mo?
- WalterBright 3y agoThe time to negotiate your severance is when you're hired.
- fithisux 3y agoHeheheehehe!!!
- tiffanyh 3y agoWhen FANNG companies payout upwards of $1M/year/engineer - seems hard to understand why an employee would need a union.
- callalex 3y agoThose companies are absolutely not paying out 1M/yr to the average engineer. Only a small handful of engineers make that much money.
- aeyes 3y agoLet's start with on-call, some companies ask to always be on-call to whatever extend the local law permits. No weekend for you.
- meowtimemania 3y agoThat doesn’t happen at LinkedIn. I don’t totally understand what I would have to gain from a union when I feel like my employer treats me really well. The union feels like unneeded overhead
- asadotzler 3y agoWhen the NBA pays its players tens of millions of dollars a year - seems hard to understand why an NBA player would need a union.
- tiffanyh 3y agoThe NBA is an extreme outlier case where even the NBA wants there to be a union because any single player can have drastic negative repercussions. Theres virtually no other business that yields so much revenue from only ~10 people (5 on court players and 5 bench players). If Lebron decided to not show up to a bunch of games, this would have massive repercussions for the entire league & TV contracts.
- aeyes 3y agoI have worked for companies with tech unions. You can only negotiate the terms ahead of time because as a union you don't get a heads up before a mass layoff. The terms I saw were usually not that good. Usually they only had severance pay linked to years of service with a cap at 5. In some places that's barely more than the local law requires. On my own I have been able to negotiate stock as well. Unions won't touch that.
- bettercallsalad 3y agoYou are forgetting the root cause of why all the tech layoffs happened. Between mid 2020 and early 2022, tech was the place investors were willing to pay any money even at a ridiculous P/E. It wasn’t because the value proposition suddenly shifted to tech but money was plentiful and looking for places to go and tech was the place that could give you high return. Fast forward, US Fed has decided there is too much inflation and consumers need to slow down so they are shrinking their balance sheet. Investors suddenly are getting 8% return basically without any risk. Why would you invest in tech and all the volatility when you can get that return. Suddenly companies that could raise money and rollover their debt in peanut interest expenses are seeing money has dried up. There is one and only one responsible for this mess. Central Bankers. They had absolutely no idea what they were and are talking about including very basic things such as where would inflation and interest rate go in short term. In 8 months, they went from “we need deflation and we foresee low interest till 2024” to largest inflationary environment since 1980s and highest interest rates. And of course they face no consequences. #EndTheFed