5 ms·

It's not a free market. Corporations perform collective bargaining. Eliminate collective bargaining for a corporations, and then it would make sense to see thi

It's not a free market. Corporations perform collective bargaining. Eliminate collective bargaining for a corporations, and then it would make sense to see things on an equal playing field. The reason why employees jump from one company to another for salary boosts is because a corporation collectively bargains for salary, and this happens less so between different companies. When an employee can just as easily pit one manager at a FAANG against another manager to bid for their salary to get a boost, as they can get a higher offer at another company to get a boost then this situation will be resolved. As long as companies can say "you'll keep the same level and pay regardless of where you transfer within the company" because they've agreed to not complete against each other and instead collectively bargain for salary (and benefits) it will be an imbalance. And the only counterbalance is for employees to do the same. The need for collective bargaining of labor is to balance the presense of collective bargaining by management.

pc86 3y ago
Companies coordinating pay and benefits, anti-poaching agreements, etc. are all anti-competitive and illegal. So I'm not sure "corporations perform collective bargaining" is accurate.
- bigbillheck 3y ago
  > are ... illegal. So's murder, and yet that still happens.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  And yet all of FAANG has done exactly that like three times
- ath3nd 3y ago
  Have you not seen the coordinated layoffs in tech the last 1.5 years? How is that not collective bargaining against tech talent? They all used every excuse they have: overhiring, wars, inflation (which they partially helped create) to flood the market TOGETHER, thereby reducing the price of our labor. All while racking in record profits. All that perfectly legal, all that a form of them collectively bargaining to lower our labor value.
  - pc86 3y ago
    Seeing layoffs as a coordinated effort by companies to reduce labor value across the entire industry is so incredibly disconnected from reality I'm not even sure it's worth responding to.
    - taurath 3y ago
      It doesn’t have to be coordinated. It’s often people’s livelihoods being crushed for the benefit of a few investors.
    - ath3nd 3y ago
      I am not sure if it's worth explaining it either if you don't get it straight up, but I will try. I am not hinting at a conspiracy here. I am merely pointing to the fact that when the megacorps saw an opportunity to: - reduce spending by cutting off positions - boost their stagnating stock values - lower the bargaining power of their workers and have an excuse to keep their wages low they immediately, did it, in a uniform fashion, in 3 big waves in the last 1.5 years. That tanked the developer market and boosted their stock. We can only speculate how much it was coordinated, and how much they all saw the same opportunity after the unstable right-wing man-child that is Elon Musk burned Twitter to the ground. While probably nothing that they did was provably illegal, nevertheless, it was at least amoral and had the effect of dramatically cooling the market and stagnating our wages. > reduce labor value across the entire industry is so incredibly disconnected from reality YOU have to be very disconnected from reality to not acknowledge that there are 1000s of things that companies agree behind closed doors that we are just hearing about: - Google having a shady deal with Spotify where Spotify doesn't pay the Google Play store fee: https://www.pcmag.com/news/spotify-doesnt-pay-google-play-store-fees https://www.pcmag.com/news/spotify-doesnt-pay-google-play-st... - Or that Google is paying Apple 36% search revenue to stay the default search engine in Safari so it can keep (and exploit) its dominant position in search: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/14/google-pays-apple-36percent-of-safari-search-revenue-sundar-pichai.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/14/google-pays-apple-36percent-... - Or Apple's deal with Amazon to get cleaner Amazon listing pages: https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/10/23955934/apple-amazon-deal-search-product-pages-ads https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/10/23955934/apple-amazon-de... So what makes you think that they didn't have some friendly chats over the pesky tech workers, or "laptop class" as Elon so lovingly calls us. Somebody gotta put those ingrates back to their place, no? While you might be happy to accept being downtrodden by your corporate overlords, and worship the psychotic man-children that Musk, Bezos, Branson and Zuck are, in other countries we don't want to become like the US. A country where capitalism rages unchecked and throws workers rights, nature, and eventually the world under the bus in a never ending chase for growth is not how we want for us.
VirusNewbie 3y ago
If you think collective bargaining has happened with corporations, why has pay at all these non union companies skyrocketed in the last five years? You're evidence is showing things are going extremely well and that the market is working wonderfully, especially for software engineers.

pc86 3y ago

Companies coordinating pay and benefits, anti-poaching agreements, etc. are all anti-competitive and illegal. So I'm not sure "corporations perform collective bargaining" is accurate.

bigbillheck 3y ago
> are ... illegal. So's murder, and yet that still happens.
mrguyorama 3y ago
And yet all of FAANG has done exactly that like three times
ath3nd 3y ago
Have you not seen the coordinated layoffs in tech the last 1.5 years? How is that not collective bargaining against tech talent? They all used every excuse they have: overhiring, wars, inflation (which they partially helped create) to flood the market TOGETHER, thereby reducing the price of our labor. All while racking in record profits. All that perfectly legal, all that a form of them collectively bargaining to lower our labor value.
- pc86 3y ago
  Seeing layoffs as a coordinated effort by companies to reduce labor value across the entire industry is so incredibly disconnected from reality I'm not even sure it's worth responding to.
  - taurath 3y ago
    It doesn’t have to be coordinated. It’s often people’s livelihoods being crushed for the benefit of a few investors.
  - ath3nd 3y ago
    I am not sure if it's worth explaining it either if you don't get it straight up, but I will try. I am not hinting at a conspiracy here. I am merely pointing to the fact that when the megacorps saw an opportunity to: - reduce spending by cutting off positions - boost their stagnating stock values - lower the bargaining power of their workers and have an excuse to keep their wages low they immediately, did it, in a uniform fashion, in 3 big waves in the last 1.5 years. That tanked the developer market and boosted their stock. We can only speculate how much it was coordinated, and how much they all saw the same opportunity after the unstable right-wing man-child that is Elon Musk burned Twitter to the ground. While probably nothing that they did was provably illegal, nevertheless, it was at least amoral and had the effect of dramatically cooling the market and stagnating our wages. > reduce labor value across the entire industry is so incredibly disconnected from reality YOU have to be very disconnected from reality to not acknowledge that there are 1000s of things that companies agree behind closed doors that we are just hearing about: - Google having a shady deal with Spotify where Spotify doesn't pay the Google Play store fee: https://www.pcmag.com/news/spotify-doesnt-pay-google-play-store-fees https://www.pcmag.com/news/spotify-doesnt-pay-google-play-st... - Or that Google is paying Apple 36% search revenue to stay the default search engine in Safari so it can keep (and exploit) its dominant position in search: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/14/google-pays-apple-36percent-of-safari-search-revenue-sundar-pichai.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/14/google-pays-apple-36percent-... - Or Apple's deal with Amazon to get cleaner Amazon listing pages: https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/10/23955934/apple-amazon-deal-search-product-pages-ads https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/10/23955934/apple-amazon-de... So what makes you think that they didn't have some friendly chats over the pesky tech workers, or "laptop class" as Elon so lovingly calls us. Somebody gotta put those ingrates back to their place, no? While you might be happy to accept being downtrodden by your corporate overlords, and worship the psychotic man-children that Musk, Bezos, Branson and Zuck are, in other countries we don't want to become like the US. A country where capitalism rages unchecked and throws workers rights, nature, and eventually the world under the bus in a never ending chase for growth is not how we want for us.

VirusNewbie 3y ago

If you think collective bargaining has happened with corporations, why has pay at all these non union companies skyrocketed in the last five years? You're evidence is showing things are going extremely well and that the market is working wonderfully, especially for software engineers.