8 ms·

> Together, we are organising around the things we want to change. Starting with: Pay transparency Flexible working An end to crunch That’s a lot of demands, w

> Together, we are organising around the things we want to change. Starting with: Pay transparency Flexible working An end to crunch That’s a lot of demands, what next? Competitive salary?! /sarcasm I hope more people will start fighting together for better work conditions. Company owners have money and lawyers so workers must unite to fight them back. I’m saying this as employer.

toomuchtodo 4mo ago
Unions are the only legal way for workers to improve their situation around compensation and working conditions. Support for them is at a historical high, especially amongst younger cohorts. https://news.gallup.com/poll/694472/labor-union-approval-relatively-steady.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/694472/labor-union-approval-rel... https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/08/27/majorities-of-adults-see-decline-of-union-membership-as-bad-for-the-us-and-working-people/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/08/27/majoritie... https://www.epi.org/blog/americans-favor-labor-unions-over-big-business-now-more-than-ever/ https://www.epi.org/blog/americans-favor-labor-unions-over-b...
- shric 4mo ago
  > Unions are the only legal way for workers to improve their situation around compensation and working conditions. How about going to work somewhere with better compensation and working conditions?
  - toomuchtodo 4mo ago
    Individual exit is a short-term solution to a systemic problem. Unions raise the floor, and you have no power otherwise. “Be lucky” is not a strategy that scales. If workers could easily find jobs where employers aren’t maxing extraction at the lowest cost possible, your proposal might be realistic. In this timeline, it is a suboptimal proposal. > Today, the US Treasury Department released a first-of-its-kind report on labor unions, highlighting the evidence that unions serve to strengthen the middle class and grow the economy at large. Over the last half century, middle-class households have experienced stagnating wages, rising income volatility, and reduced intergenerational mobility, even as the economy as a whole has prospered. Unions can improve the well-being of middle-class workers in ways that directly combat these negative trends. Pro-union policy can make a real difference to middle-class households by raising their incomes, improving their work environments, and boosting their job satisfaction. In doing so, unions can help to make the economy more equitable and robust. https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/labor-unions-and-the-us-economy https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/labor-unions... https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/Labor-Unions-And-The-Middle-Class.pdf https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/Labor-Unions-And-... (“if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together”)
    - shric 4mo ago
      You said “Unions are the *only legal way* for workers to improve their situation around compensation and working conditions.” (Emphasis mine) My reply was not to say unions were bad or ineffective at accomplishing the goal, it was simply refuting your blanket statement.
      - deleted 4mo ago
        [deleted]
      - spopejoy 4mo ago
        In case you haven't noticed, the era of sw devs being able to leave and find better conditions/pay anytime they want is gone. But even in the good old ZIRP days, leaving for better pay is not an action that can be taken collectively. OP said "workers" not "worker": if you want to improve conditions at a given company, collective bargaining is all you have.
      - kelnos 4mo ago
        I don't think that blanket statement is false if you interpret "workers" as "workers as a whole" (as I did when I first read it). Certainly an individual worker can quit and (try to) find a better-paying/better-hours job, but as GP notes, that method does not scale very far.
  - mrkpdl 4mo ago
    > How about going to work somewhere with better compensation and working conditions? Generally the reason there is a company that has better working conditions and compensation to go to is because of their union… so…
    - jayGlow 4mo ago
      or because they're trying to attract talent?
  - saghm 4mo ago
    That works when labor is higher enough in demand for that to be possible, and in practice management is most likely to try to get away with lower compensation and poor working conditions.
- psychoslave 4mo ago
  What about cooperatives?
jayceedenton 4mo ago
How do you end crunch? Teams always work at a more relaxed pace when the deadlines are years out. You can't beat Parkinson's law no matter how generous you are with the estimates. We've all tried methodologies to counter this problem and create a continuous, sustainable pace. Unfortunately there's something deep in human nature that prevents us spreading that effort out evenly from day one.
- Insanity 4mo ago
  The games industry is notorious for this, yet far from the only industry working against deadlines. Deadlines are a good way to timebox work, but they need to be set in a realistic way rather than an optimized happy-path. I do understand there are certain periods where games _should_ release to make more sales, and for most games that's probably true. But this is GTA VI, they can miss the launch window by a month and it'd probably hardly impact their sales.
  - SpaceNoodled 4mo ago
    They've missed their launch window by years now.
    - Insanity 4mo ago
      I mean the ideal sales window within a year, e.g period leading up to Christmas.
      - kbenson 4mo ago
        Of which year? GTA6 has been in development so long they could miss that period slightly in a year and decide to wait for the next year and polish it up and they likely wouldn't run out of things to fix or make better.
  - walthamstow 4mo ago
    Movies are just as bad, animation and vfx shops get crunched to hell. Fashion houses ahead of fashion week too.

toomuchtodo 4mo ago

Unions are the only legal way for workers to improve their situation around compensation and working conditions. Support for them is at a historical high, especially amongst younger cohorts. https://news.gallup.com/poll/694472/labor-union-approval-relatively-steady.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/694472/labor-union-approval-rel... https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/08/27/majorities-of-adults-see-decline-of-union-membership-as-bad-for-the-us-and-working-people/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/08/27/majoritie... https://www.epi.org/blog/americans-favor-labor-unions-over-big-business-now-more-than-ever/ https://www.epi.org/blog/americans-favor-labor-unions-over-b...

shric 4mo ago
> Unions are the only legal way for workers to improve their situation around compensation and working conditions. How about going to work somewhere with better compensation and working conditions?
- toomuchtodo 4mo ago
  Individual exit is a short-term solution to a systemic problem. Unions raise the floor, and you have no power otherwise. “Be lucky” is not a strategy that scales. If workers could easily find jobs where employers aren’t maxing extraction at the lowest cost possible, your proposal might be realistic. In this timeline, it is a suboptimal proposal. > Today, the US Treasury Department released a first-of-its-kind report on labor unions, highlighting the evidence that unions serve to strengthen the middle class and grow the economy at large. Over the last half century, middle-class households have experienced stagnating wages, rising income volatility, and reduced intergenerational mobility, even as the economy as a whole has prospered. Unions can improve the well-being of middle-class workers in ways that directly combat these negative trends. Pro-union policy can make a real difference to middle-class households by raising their incomes, improving their work environments, and boosting their job satisfaction. In doing so, unions can help to make the economy more equitable and robust. https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/labor-unions-and-the-us-economy https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/labor-unions... https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/Labor-Unions-And-The-Middle-Class.pdf https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/Labor-Unions-And-... (“if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together”)
  - shric 4mo ago
    You said “Unions are the *only legal way* for workers to improve their situation around compensation and working conditions.” (Emphasis mine) My reply was not to say unions were bad or ineffective at accomplishing the goal, it was simply refuting your blanket statement.
    - deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
    - spopejoy 4mo ago
      In case you haven't noticed, the era of sw devs being able to leave and find better conditions/pay anytime they want is gone. But even in the good old ZIRP days, leaving for better pay is not an action that can be taken collectively. OP said "workers" not "worker": if you want to improve conditions at a given company, collective bargaining is all you have.
    - kelnos 4mo ago
      I don't think that blanket statement is false if you interpret "workers" as "workers as a whole" (as I did when I first read it). Certainly an individual worker can quit and (try to) find a better-paying/better-hours job, but as GP notes, that method does not scale very far.
- mrkpdl 4mo ago
  > How about going to work somewhere with better compensation and working conditions? Generally the reason there is a company that has better working conditions and compensation to go to is because of their union… so…
  - jayGlow 4mo ago
    or because they're trying to attract talent?
- saghm 4mo ago
  That works when labor is higher enough in demand for that to be possible, and in practice management is most likely to try to get away with lower compensation and poor working conditions.
psychoslave 4mo ago
What about cooperatives?

jayceedenton 4mo ago

How do you end crunch? Teams always work at a more relaxed pace when the deadlines are years out. You can't beat Parkinson's law no matter how generous you are with the estimates. We've all tried methodologies to counter this problem and create a continuous, sustainable pace. Unfortunately there's something deep in human nature that prevents us spreading that effort out evenly from day one.

Insanity 4mo ago
The games industry is notorious for this, yet far from the only industry working against deadlines. Deadlines are a good way to timebox work, but they need to be set in a realistic way rather than an optimized happy-path. I do understand there are certain periods where games _should_ release to make more sales, and for most games that's probably true. But this is GTA VI, they can miss the launch window by a month and it'd probably hardly impact their sales.
- SpaceNoodled 4mo ago
  They've missed their launch window by years now.
  - Insanity 4mo ago
    I mean the ideal sales window within a year, e.g period leading up to Christmas.
    - kbenson 4mo ago
      Of which year? GTA6 has been in development so long they could miss that period slightly in a year and decide to wait for the next year and polish it up and they likely wouldn't run out of things to fix or make better.
- walthamstow 4mo ago
  Movies are just as bad, animation and vfx shops get crunched to hell. Fashion houses ahead of fashion week too.