8 ms·

The Class Struggle in Silicon Valley

cs702 2y ago
...by Cory Doctorov. If you've read anything by him before, you will already have a sense of what he writes in this opinion piece. As always, he's very much in favor of unionization by tech workers, including engineers.
- solardev 2y ago
  I don't know who he is, but what are some of the arguments against tech unionization, in your opinion?
  - Detrytus 2y ago
    Unionization is for losers. If you're not confident in your skills and your value on the market then you want to artificially restrict employment options for your potential competitors.
    - pyvpx 2y ago
      I would implore you to read anything on the history of unionization.
      - jessriedel 2y ago
        Hard to find anything remotely unbiased, or that does even a passable job at trying to remove confounding factors between the rate of unionization and commonly cited benefits like the rise in worker safety (which is overwhelmingly driven by rising standard of living). Got any economically literate reading recommendations?
        wyre 2y ago
        Historical events are biased? Read about the Great Railroad Strike of 1977.
        jessriedel 2y ago
        No the data collection and analysis are biased. If your argument is “consider this anecdote”, and you can’t imagine historical analysis of economic questions other than through non-quantitative hand-selected case studies, you’re falling into the same trap.
        andsoitis 2y ago
        > Historical events are biased? It would be a mistake to take historical accounts at face value. They are written by humans, not some objective entity.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - jrvarela56 2y ago
      While I agree directionally with your stance, the argument is that businesses collude against workers (eg Apple/Google case) so workers might as well collude against businesses.
    - thebiteitstings 2y ago
      Correct.
    - solardev 2y ago
      What do you mean by this? > you want to artificially restrict employment options for your potential competitors.
      - Detrytus 2y ago
        Well, in many professions unions demand that you only hire unionized workers. Hire one person person who is not a member, and the union workers will go on strike. Sometimes it even get's codified into the law, that you have to consult unions on everything.
      - baruz 2y ago
        Most unions demand standardized pay scales, maybe varying with seniority or experience. Slichter et alii (1960) say wage standardization is the most widely heralded union wage policy. Freeman (1980, 1984) showed that wages compress due to wage standardization at union shops. Because wage dispersion and inequality is lower, if you consider your skills and experience extraordinary, you will not be getting pay commensurate with your perceived value to the company at a union shop. That provides a moat of sorts for incumbent workers against "rockstars," "10x," and higher-skilled workers deciding to join the company. Slichter, S. H., Healy, J. J., and Livernash, E. R. (1960). _The Impact of Collective Bargaining on Management_. Freeman, R. B. (1980) "Unionism and the dispersion of wages," _Industrial and Labor Relations Review_. Freeman, R. B. (1984), "Longitudinal analyses of the effects of trade unions," _Journal of Labor Economics_
  - johnsimer 2y ago
    If I decide to improve my skills and negotiate a 2x raise with my employer or another employer I don’t want to have to be limited by some additional bureaucracy trying to tell me what my employment contract should be
    - solardev 2y ago
      Does this happen frequently in reality, where unions prevent exceptional employees from negotiating better pay?
      - jessriedel 2y ago
        Aren't unions overwhelmingly the driving force behind senority-based pay? Honest question. Like, I think teacher's unions are strongly against pay-for-performance.
        firstplacelast 2y ago
        You don't have to unionize in a set way, just like there's no one way to write an employment contract. If anything, the tech industry should be leading the world in new ideas and methods (and dare I say it...technology) to organize labor.
        jessriedel 2y ago
        I’m just responding to the question about how unions have often operated in the past.
        solardev 2y ago
        I'd never heard of this before (but I'm also not any sort of expert in unionization). I'm coming into it more from the other side, unionization as a way buffer against (and maybe negotiate something other than) sudden mass layoffs.
        jessriedel 2y ago
  - advisedwang 2y ago
    The biggest argument against unionizing, as someone who has seen the scene a tiny bit, is that you might put in a lot of effort for a unionization effort that fails. Running a unionization campaign is a lot of work and can even entail taking some risks. If people at your company are pretty happy, if management is responsive, if benefits haven't been eroded yet, if lots of people have a strong libertarian bent, then you might not be able to convince enough people. Even when unionization is the best long term course for the workers as a whole, if the actual campaign is futile it's the best course for you as an single person not to get involved in a campaign.
  - IncreasePosts 2y ago
    It's hard to imagine how it could improve my life. I'm a senior SWE at a FANG, what would get better for me?
    - fragmede 2y ago
      not enough conference rooms, open office floor plan, RTO, interviews being scheduled at 8am the next day at 5pm the day before; death march code projects, scrum meetings, t-shirt sizes. there are pain points we just kind of accept as how things are done that don't really have to be.
      - IncreasePosts 2y ago
        Literally none of those things affect me except RTO, and we're "only" 3 days/week, so it isn't that bad.
        fragmede 2y ago
        If upper management has never pulled any shenanigans to their benefit at the expense of any of their employees (programmers get special treatment), I wanna know where you work so I can apply, but unfortunately, that's just not believable of a large corporation.
  - beau_g 2y ago
    From what I can measure from most HN posting at least, I have had the a relatively uncommon experience in that I've both worked in a union (carpenter's union, doing acoustic ceilings in SF) and worked as an engineer in SV. Of course my experience with both may not be exemplary of all. If I had stayed with the acoustic ceiling job, I would be doing the exact same thing I was doing then, for a bit more money. I may or may not have inherited more responsibility if people more senior to me retired, moved, changed jobs, or died. Really this would be capped though, as company ownership has nothing to do with the labor, so if you start your own company, what you are doing has little to do with you having been in the union (IDK how this applies to contracts for city jobs and all that). If I invented a magic spell that installed an acoustic ceiling for $1 in 2 seconds, I would have been actively encouraged to destroy it or hide it. The union ethos I was in was to promote mediocrity, not accidentally provide too much benefit to your employer or customer. I really don't know where this idea that unions would stop mass layoffs comes from that is brought up on HN all the time, but that's simply not true, union people find themselves out of work all the time, and it's very hard to do any job on the side if you are hoping you get picked out of the pool to work a job. Really worst of all, which is the prime driver that got me to leave, is I knew exactly what this path would look like for years to decades in the future - many people promote that as a positive (which makes sense as most people are scared of risk and change), but I found it soul crushing. I won't go into my engineering career other than it has completely changed my life for the better both financially and just in general leading a rewarding life, and operating without whatever safety net I had in the union (which was basically nothing anyway) is not even a passing thought I've ever had. Have any other posters either pro or anti union actually worked in a union? Curious about your experience and thoughts.
    - charlie0 2y ago
      For a large number of people, a sense of security > avoiding soul crushing work.
  - matrix87 2y ago
    they probably won't negotiate higher pay or better WLB, they'll just waste the negotiating power on a bunch of political horseshit (specifically a tech union). For example the alphabet one pushing BDS as a dev, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of incentive to join one (except maybe in parts of industry that get a shittier bargain like gamedev) In general the people like Doctorow or journalists more generally push tech unions not because they think it will benefit tech workers economically but because unions further their own political agenda
- petermcneeley 2y ago
  Hot take. There already is unionization in tech its just that it very seniority biased.
- unclebucknasty 2y ago
  The article is not just about unionization, but goes into some background on the tech industry and how it evolved to become worker-unfriendly. So, it's far more interesting than a pro-union rant.
- andsoitis 2y ago
  Cory Doctorow, blogger, journalist, and science fiction author, talking authoritatively about the technology industry, products, business strategy, etc.
  - unclebucknasty 2y ago
    OTOH, he consistently nails it. His "enshittification" observation—i.e. his primary thesis WRT what's wrong with Tech—resonates as objectively true, and I've yet to see anyone offer a compelling counter.
    - webnrrd2k 2y ago
      I agree with Cory on his points about enshittification, but I think it should just be called bait-and-switch.
      - unclebucknasty 2y ago
        >it should just be called bait-and-switch. Yeah, it's similar, but not really that. Bait and switch is more that the advertised value is never provided. Enshittification is more of a specific process in which the value is actually initially provided to all parties. This is generally done at a loss to the company, which is well-funded. When, as a result, the company obtains a monopoly or nearly so, it then begins to claw back all of the value for itself. First from the end user. Then from other partners (e.g. advertisers). The end result is a shitty experience for everyone but the now very profitable company, but by then there are limited options. Of course, that's the simplified version. Doctorow goes into a lot more detail, claiming it's a frequently run playbook in the tech industry and offering many compelling examples.
nytesky 2y ago
I thought the better option would be a guild model like SAG?
ddsgtuuuu 2y ago
[flagged]

...by Cory Doctorov. If you've read anything by him before, you will already have a sense of what he writes in this opinion piece. As always, he's very much in favor of unionization by tech workers, including engineers.

solardev 2y ago
I don't know who he is, but what are some of the arguments against tech unionization, in your opinion?
- Detrytus 2y ago
  Unionization is for losers. If you're not confident in your skills and your value on the market then you want to artificially restrict employment options for your potential competitors.
  - pyvpx 2y ago
    I would implore you to read anything on the history of unionization.
    - jessriedel 2y ago
      Hard to find anything remotely unbiased, or that does even a passable job at trying to remove confounding factors between the rate of unionization and commonly cited benefits like the rise in worker safety (which is overwhelmingly driven by rising standard of living). Got any economically literate reading recommendations?
      - wyre 2y ago
        Historical events are biased? Read about the Great Railroad Strike of 1977.
        jessriedel 2y ago
        No the data collection and analysis are biased. If your argument is “consider this anecdote”, and you can’t imagine historical analysis of economic questions other than through non-quantitative hand-selected case studies, you’re falling into the same trap.
        andsoitis 2y ago
        > Historical events are biased? It would be a mistake to take historical accounts at face value. They are written by humans, not some objective entity.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - jrvarela56 2y ago
    While I agree directionally with your stance, the argument is that businesses collude against workers (eg Apple/Google case) so workers might as well collude against businesses.
  - thebiteitstings 2y ago
    Correct.
  - solardev 2y ago
    What do you mean by this? > you want to artificially restrict employment options for your potential competitors.
    - Detrytus 2y ago
      Well, in many professions unions demand that you only hire unionized workers. Hire one person person who is not a member, and the union workers will go on strike. Sometimes it even get's codified into the law, that you have to consult unions on everything.
    - baruz 2y ago
      Most unions demand standardized pay scales, maybe varying with seniority or experience. Slichter et alii (1960) say wage standardization is the most widely heralded union wage policy. Freeman (1980, 1984) showed that wages compress due to wage standardization at union shops. Because wage dispersion and inequality is lower, if you consider your skills and experience extraordinary, you will not be getting pay commensurate with your perceived value to the company at a union shop. That provides a moat of sorts for incumbent workers against "rockstars," "10x," and higher-skilled workers deciding to join the company. Slichter, S. H., Healy, J. J., and Livernash, E. R. (1960). _The Impact of Collective Bargaining on Management_. Freeman, R. B. (1980) "Unionism and the dispersion of wages," _Industrial and Labor Relations Review_. Freeman, R. B. (1984), "Longitudinal analyses of the effects of trade unions," _Journal of Labor Economics_
- johnsimer 2y ago
  If I decide to improve my skills and negotiate a 2x raise with my employer or another employer I don’t want to have to be limited by some additional bureaucracy trying to tell me what my employment contract should be
  - solardev 2y ago
    Does this happen frequently in reality, where unions prevent exceptional employees from negotiating better pay?
    - jessriedel 2y ago
      Aren't unions overwhelmingly the driving force behind senority-based pay? Honest question. Like, I think teacher's unions are strongly against pay-for-performance.
      - firstplacelast 2y ago
        You don't have to unionize in a set way, just like there's no one way to write an employment contract. If anything, the tech industry should be leading the world in new ideas and methods (and dare I say it...technology) to organize labor.
        jessriedel 2y ago
        I’m just responding to the question about how unions have often operated in the past.
      - solardev 2y ago
        I'd never heard of this before (but I'm also not any sort of expert in unionization). I'm coming into it more from the other side, unionization as a way buffer against (and maybe negotiate something other than) sudden mass layoffs.
        jessriedel 2y ago
- advisedwang 2y ago
  The biggest argument against unionizing, as someone who has seen the scene a tiny bit, is that you might put in a lot of effort for a unionization effort that fails. Running a unionization campaign is a lot of work and can even entail taking some risks. If people at your company are pretty happy, if management is responsive, if benefits haven't been eroded yet, if lots of people have a strong libertarian bent, then you might not be able to convince enough people. Even when unionization is the best long term course for the workers as a whole, if the actual campaign is futile it's the best course for you as an single person not to get involved in a campaign.
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  It's hard to imagine how it could improve my life. I'm a senior SWE at a FANG, what would get better for me?
  - fragmede 2y ago
    not enough conference rooms, open office floor plan, RTO, interviews being scheduled at 8am the next day at 5pm the day before; death march code projects, scrum meetings, t-shirt sizes. there are pain points we just kind of accept as how things are done that don't really have to be.
    - IncreasePosts 2y ago
      Literally none of those things affect me except RTO, and we're "only" 3 days/week, so it isn't that bad.
      - fragmede 2y ago
        If upper management has never pulled any shenanigans to their benefit at the expense of any of their employees (programmers get special treatment), I wanna know where you work so I can apply, but unfortunately, that's just not believable of a large corporation.
- beau_g 2y ago
  From what I can measure from most HN posting at least, I have had the a relatively uncommon experience in that I've both worked in a union (carpenter's union, doing acoustic ceilings in SF) and worked as an engineer in SV. Of course my experience with both may not be exemplary of all. If I had stayed with the acoustic ceiling job, I would be doing the exact same thing I was doing then, for a bit more money. I may or may not have inherited more responsibility if people more senior to me retired, moved, changed jobs, or died. Really this would be capped though, as company ownership has nothing to do with the labor, so if you start your own company, what you are doing has little to do with you having been in the union (IDK how this applies to contracts for city jobs and all that). If I invented a magic spell that installed an acoustic ceiling for $1 in 2 seconds, I would have been actively encouraged to destroy it or hide it. The union ethos I was in was to promote mediocrity, not accidentally provide too much benefit to your employer or customer. I really don't know where this idea that unions would stop mass layoffs comes from that is brought up on HN all the time, but that's simply not true, union people find themselves out of work all the time, and it's very hard to do any job on the side if you are hoping you get picked out of the pool to work a job. Really worst of all, which is the prime driver that got me to leave, is I knew exactly what this path would look like for years to decades in the future - many people promote that as a positive (which makes sense as most people are scared of risk and change), but I found it soul crushing. I won't go into my engineering career other than it has completely changed my life for the better both financially and just in general leading a rewarding life, and operating without whatever safety net I had in the union (which was basically nothing anyway) is not even a passing thought I've ever had. Have any other posters either pro or anti union actually worked in a union? Curious about your experience and thoughts.
  - charlie0 2y ago
    For a large number of people, a sense of security > avoiding soul crushing work.
- matrix87 2y ago
  they probably won't negotiate higher pay or better WLB, they'll just waste the negotiating power on a bunch of political horseshit (specifically a tech union). For example the alphabet one pushing BDS as a dev, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of incentive to join one (except maybe in parts of industry that get a shittier bargain like gamedev) In general the people like Doctorow or journalists more generally push tech unions not because they think it will benefit tech workers economically but because unions further their own political agenda
petermcneeley 2y ago
Hot take. There already is unionization in tech its just that it very seniority biased.
unclebucknasty 2y ago
The article is not just about unionization, but goes into some background on the tech industry and how it evolved to become worker-unfriendly. So, it's far more interesting than a pro-union rant.
andsoitis 2y ago
Cory Doctorow, blogger, journalist, and science fiction author, talking authoritatively about the technology industry, products, business strategy, etc.
- unclebucknasty 2y ago
  OTOH, he consistently nails it. His "enshittification" observation—i.e. his primary thesis WRT what's wrong with Tech—resonates as objectively true, and I've yet to see anyone offer a compelling counter.
  - webnrrd2k 2y ago
    I agree with Cory on his points about enshittification, but I think it should just be called bait-and-switch.
    - unclebucknasty 2y ago
      >it should just be called bait-and-switch. Yeah, it's similar, but not really that. Bait and switch is more that the advertised value is never provided. Enshittification is more of a specific process in which the value is actually initially provided to all parties. This is generally done at a loss to the company, which is well-funded. When, as a result, the company obtains a monopoly or nearly so, it then begins to claw back all of the value for itself. First from the end user. Then from other partners (e.g. advertisers). The end result is a shitty experience for everyone but the now very profitable company, but by then there are limited options. Of course, that's the simplified version. Doctorow goes into a lot more detail, claiming it's a frequently run playbook in the tech industry and offering many compelling examples.

nytesky 2y ago

I thought the better option would be a guild model like SAG?

ddsgtuuuu 2y ago

[flagged]