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What happens if the NY Times tech staff strikes on election night?
- Molitor5901 2y agoI was hoping this would be an analysis of exactly what would happen and how NYT would handle it, but it's not. It's very one-sided of what the union claims will happen. I'm much more curious about the what the NYT has planned just in case.
- newtonyorkshire 2y agoWhat would you like to know? Stress testing happens well in advance, content's on enterprise CDNs. Legacy systems are probably the greatest risk, the "if engineers with critical knowledge of those systems aren’t there" part rings true there.
- Molitor5901 2y agoI'd like to know how that impacts their reporting strategy and what their contingency plan is for it. I'm also curious if they've considered hiring outside or international assistance to fill the gaps; not sure the NLRB considerations but easier to ask forgiveness than permission? Have they considered riding it out and seeing what happens? I'm just curious of the inside thinking of management with how to deal with this unique situation.
- newtonyorkshire 2y agoGreat questions, stuff in the newsroom is handled by a separate union, the NewsGuild - funny you mention the NLRB, they just filed suit against NYT related to the strike: https://www.axios.com/2024/10/22/nyt-newsguild-labor-charge-nlrb https://www.axios.com/2024/10/22/nyt-newsguild-labor-charge-... On a technical side NYT certainly haven't considered "riding it out" but instead boring, predictable contingency and fallback. The TechGuild union membership is not mandatory (neither is striking). Hiring strikebreakers in NYC is illegal. https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/newyorkcity/latest/NYCadmin/0-0-0-39661 https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/newyorkcity/latest/NYC...
- botswana99 2y agoWe'll check another website, no biggie
- brodouevencode 2y agoExactly this. The NYT ceased being the paper of record a long time ago.
- drawkward 2y ago[Citation missing]
- CamperBob2 2y agoIt's hard to get past their cheerleading for the Iraq war, for example.
- pessimizer 2y agoIt really wasn't. It wasn't difficult for anyone to get past their cheerleading for the Iraq War other than Judith Miller, who (for her service) was given a fake job at a fake conservative paper for a time that I'm sure paid her enough to retire comfortably. The Cheneys and Bushes are media and political darlings. No one paid a price for going with the herd, and doing what the administration demanded. It was and is difficult for people who failed to cheer on the Iraq War. The NYT has always been on the administration's side when asked, and "corrects" the record about 5 years after it could make a difference for anyone. Everyone involved gets cush editor-in-chief jobs at "liberal" magazines, or professorships at quarter-million dollar J-schools.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- drawkward 2y agoThat doesn't make it not the paper of record.
- Asparagirl 2y ago“The second issue is return-to-office policies. Though Times management has told the bargaining unit that it has no plans to change the current hybrid-work model, Goran Svorcan-Merola, a software engineer who is on the Tech Guild’s bargaining committee, said that management wants to reserve the right to eventually have tech employees in the office five days a week. “It’s not the standard around the tech industry,” he said.” More of this RTO bullshit from upper management? For a tech team?! Ugh. Solidarity with the Tech Guild.
- PreInternet01 2y agoWe'll miss out on an insightful analysis of how the huge amount of votes for Harris are a big problem for the Harris campaign? Scary... Big Media thought-pieces on how Big Media is important, and/or over, and/or somehow indifferent are... over?
- giraffe_lady 2y agoA harrowing piece on the democracy-threatening trend of campus protests? A curious and thoughtful interview with an anti-trans activist? A 3D infographic about tunnels that israel uses as justification to bomb a school or hospital?
- uhhhd 2y ago[flagged]
- PreInternet01 2y agoPravda has been out of print since 1991. So, while I get your sentiment, it's probably good to acknowledge that propaganda has gotten a bit more... subtle in the meantime?
- FactKnower69 2y agoAmericans are immune to propaganda, that's why I love and support the architects of Operation Northwoods and the Lavon Affair :)
- PreInternet01 2y agoNo, but would you accept an above-the-fold photo of Trump at a McDonald's instead?
- FactKnower69 2y agoWe'll miss Bedbug Bret writing whiny op-eds about how people aren't allowed to be mean to him on Twitter and how those tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians deserved to die
- 2y ago
- sxv 2y ago| source: washingtonpost.com nice try, guys
- jbs789 2y agoThe trouble with the strike option is it either exposes your leverage. Good or bad.
- Molitor5901 2y agoTo plays devils advocate a little, what happens if the union does strike and the NYT carries on like or mostly-like normal? That could show the weakness of the strike.
- drawkward 2y agoI think that was part of the parent commenter's point
- Buttons840 2y agoIf the tech staff strikes and everything keeps working, they must be a good tech staff.
- from-nibly 2y agoThings go wrong: why do we pay you? Things don't go wrong: why do we pay you?
- whywhywhywhy 2y agoDon't see the point of entertaining continuing to employ a workforce that threatens to sabotage you on the biggest night of the year for your company.
- ceejayoz 2y agoI mean, that goes both ways. The union doesn't see a point to negotiating with a brick wall, either, and a strike is intended to generate leverage to push negotiations forwards. That's how the whole system works. > “Currently in management’s counter, they have proposed a one-percent general wage increase,” said Svorcan-Merola, who pointed out that publisher Sulzberger’s total compensation increased by more than 50 percent in 2023, per publicly available records. “So we think [one percent] is a little bit low.”
- whywhywhywhy 2y ago> The union doesn't see a point to negotiating with a brick wall They're free to work somewhere else, no ones forcing them to stay.
- ceejayoz 2y agoSure. They're also free to strike, a technique that's a lot more likely to get them at least some of what they're asking for. The same applies for Boeing. They're free to give in. Production could restart today!
- blitzar 2y agoContinue to employ them, force them to strike on the "biggest night of the year for your company" (i'm thinking do some pay cuts or something more) - then let the striking workers watch on as nobody cares and realise that you no longer have any bargaining power.
- DonHopkins 2y ago[flagged]
- 2y ago
- hprotagonist 2y agoperhaps we'd reevaluate our sense of the grey lady's importance even more than we have already been?
- drawkward 2y agoWho's "we"?
- hprotagonist 2y agothe collective public
- drawkward 2y agoSpeaking for a lot of people, huh?
- ForHackernews 2y agoITT: A bunch of techies who would never have the guts to unionize running down their colleagues who did for flexing their leverage over their employer.
- enlyth 2y agohttps://archive.is/VAB7W https://archive.is/VAB7W
- flkiwi 2y agoAside from never, ever, ever using the NYT for elections after "the needle" debacle in 2016, I have been utterly unimpressed with the NYT more broadly. Their average, day-to-day journalism--and especially their political journalism--has been little better than gossip at best and actively hostile to healthy democracy at worst. To the extent they were ever anything special and not simply the beneficiary of huge market bias, they lost that years ago.
- mmaunder 2y agoWhat was the needle debacle?
- ceejayoz 2y agoA false sense of precision, like saying “93.274% chance” when your error margin is +/- 10%.
- flkiwi 2y ago8pm - Hillary shows as having a 99% chance of winning the presidential election. 9pm - Hillary has a 0% chance of winning. Turning rapidly changing and imprecisely known information into a widget was just one of their astonishing number of problems, but, more than anything, it symbolized to me their absolute arrogance that they were the source of societal trends rather than merely teasing out hints from incomplete data like any other peon.
- asadalt 2y agodoes newer generation even care about big media? all the news comes from x or tiktok or youtube.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- taco_emoji 2y agoWhat an utter relief it would be if NYT was unable to report completely useless minute-to-minute updates. Who gives a shit?
- mmaunder 2y agoHard to imagine a unionized content business staying relevant in what’s about to come.
- timnetworks 2y agoNothing at all, not even a little bit lol. NYT makes for great papier mache though, nice pictures, but that's aboooout it, for over a hundred years already somehow.
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoSome related material: ‘We Can't Do Our Jobs Without the Tech Guild’ https://www.nyguild.org/post/we-cant-do-our-jobs-without-the-tech-guild-nearly-750-in-ny-times-newsroom-sign-pledge-of-support https://www.nyguild.org/post/we-cant-do-our-jobs-without-the...