I don't think that's true, precisely because the employee with a complaint can potentially increase their leverage significantly by educating and organizing other employees around the cause.

Your analysis seems to assume that there's some fixed percentage of employees who think some action from their employer is bad, and if that percentage is high enough, then all those employees could quit, which would either somehow signal to the employer that their action was bad or would damage the company so much that they would need to change their actions.

I think that's wishful thinking, and of course the percentage of employees with a complaint is not fixed and can be directly increased by internal efforts to organize. That applies not just to internal awareness, but also public awareness: note that we're only having discussions about cases where employees attempted to organize other employees.

If everyone who participated in the Google Walkout (20% of their workforce) stayed out until Google addressed their complaints, rather than returning to work after their lunch hour was over, all seven demands would've been met, instead of one. (And they probably would've still got paid!) I have my doubts that tech companies could operate with a sudden loss of 20% of their workforce and talent base.

If a company knows you will return to work no matter how much you complain, they are not going to take you seriously. (This was the Walkout's mistake.) And if, as an individual, you make too much noise, you'll just get fired. (See numerous individual examples.) Decisive collective action works, and that's what unions figured out a long time ago.

This sort of action is precisely the reason why we have, in the UK, the ability for working men to vote (Originally, they couldn't, it was won by the Chartists in the 1800s), the ability for women to vote, human rights laws, worker's rights laws, and the NHS.

More recently McDonalds workers went on a mass strike in the UK for a living wage, and got a pay rise:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/mcdonalds-w...

But it is also plausible that if an indefinite strike was on the agenda only 1% of them had joined the walkout instead of 20%, making them easier to let go.

True, but this is, again, why unions exist. Because then the union can decide to strike, everyone in the union is expected to participate, and the outcome is successful and people's jobs are protected. If engineers at Google want to be taken seriously, they should unionize.

Considering the massive over supply of labor, I’d say they could very easily replace that 20% several times over before they had any problems finding more engineers.

Techies work in a seller's market (as evidenced by the comparatively huge salaries they command). There is definitely no "over supply of labor".

One of Google's biggest assets is their huge army of talented techies. I'd go so far as to say losing that would be an existential threat to the business.

Comparative to what? Big tech companies are wildly profitable for their owners.

Techies make a lot of money compared to other professions because we genuinely produce a disproportionate amount of value, but that doesn't imply we're in a seller's market.

One way you can tell that there's no dearth of labor is that most companies round an "unsure" in the interview process to "no," not "yes."

Comparative to most other jobs, of course.

I sugggest you ask a non-tech friend about their experience getting a new job: how many applications they've sent out, how many responses they've received and how many interviews they've actually been to. Then compare that to a software dev's hit rates.

I submit to you that a halfway decent software dev will have a hard time being unemployed: they might not get hired by FAANG and they might have to code in $LANGUAGE_I_HATE, but they'll be able to get a job at a reasonable salary.

Also, consider the fact that there's been a large number of businesses focused on recruitment specifically in the tech area. That's because everyone wants to hire devs and they're willing to pay recruiters to channel the funnel their way.

Few other industries have that luxury.

A large part of supply and demand is the amount of immediate liquidity. Employers seem to have the upper hand when hiring typically because they have a bunch of options right then whereas few applicants have multiple simultaneous offers and if they do, they don't have many. But that's not the same as supply and demand of labor on a longer timescale.

Somebody who's thought more and more clearly about this could write something better about it, but I felt like pointing out what I think is overlooked.

The issue isn't finding more engineers, the issue would be the sudden loss of institutional knowledge, the paralysis while trying to maintain basic functionality, and the distinct possibility of critical, catastrophic failure due to broken processes from missing people. What's the chances that the 20% of employees who don't show up include everyone needed to prevent a failure of Google's entire Ads product?

When say, the teachers go on strike in Chicago, it's not that it's impossible to hire new teachers, it's that someone in the meantime of negotiation has to watch over (and ideally educate) all of the kids that those teachers are responsible for teaching.

Wherever you work, try to imagine a random 1 out of every 5 employees missing one day. How likely are you (and everyone else still there) likely to run into problems conducting your general work. And imagine that that is going to continue until your company manages to interview, vet, hire, onboard, and train all of those people back.

...Or, the corporation could just capitulate to demands. Collective action is incredibly powerful.

This sounds like an Econ 101 understanding of the labor market.

Most (white collar) employees are not as fungible as people assume, first of all. Two "Senior Back-end Developers" might have such different work experience that one would ramp up on a project in 5 days, and the other would take a couple of weeks.

Second, all turnover is expensive. For a large company like Google, turnover of 100 people could easily cost millions.

Unfortunately, unless those people worked on ads, Google's investors (and therefore C-suite) probably wouldn't miss them much.

What do you think is the end result of all the "educating and organizing"? Do you think Google would make major policy decisions (which had massive financial and competitive impacts) because of employees emailing the CEO to voice their displeasure with what they are assigned to do (while they continue to do it regardless)?

If a critical mass of the employees both share your view and act in kind. But if you have that much power organized already, you've effectively already got the internal power to make the change you want to achieve rather than resigning.

If you do not have that critical mass, and resignation is the only moral choice, then all you achieve is eliminating that voice from the inside and eliminate any inside power to influence.

It's really not. This decision is a very personal one unique to each employee. Internal activism can be very effective especially if done in a way that gets more attention among existing employees. On the other hand, this is extremely risky to their employment (and in America that means their housing and healthcare) and on top of that it's a ton of work.

It's great when someone who quits has the resources to also try to bring some attention to the reasons why.

Your labor is your only real political power.

Sadly, labor is not that powerful anymore... especially when the company has the capital to replace you with 5 people tomorrow.

I think the political power can only be regained by pooling your labor with your peers.

Like an union, it has been brought up in tech from time to time.

https://mobile.twitter.com/codinghorror/status/1172279395035...

Yup, but one brought together by morals and ethics for the sake of morals and ethics. As Jeff points out, tech is not known for poor compensation or working environments. Tech is pervasive because convenience is a hot commodity. Technology disrupts, tech can make or break monopolies / monopsonies by changing the status quo. Having the ability to get another job on a whim doesn't matter much if you one day unintentionally end up serving the parent company that you resigned from; as big fish swallow small fish through acquisition etc.

I wish there was another way, but I can't really think of one that's within our control... Unions are certainly not above corruption either. I see Republicans / Democrats as two opposing unions; instead of making rational decisions on each issue independently everything gets encoded into a binary choice. Red or blue and all the good / bad that comes with either choice.

The real solution is smaller companies. Local businesses that you can simply stop using / move away from. That seems like a pipe dream though; it's more convenient to buy your internet from Comcast and support a monopoly than start your own ISP - even if you do and it gains traction, Comcast will come knocking and you'll take the money and retire.

And that's what distinguishes a Googler walking out from most walkouts: Google still struggles to hire fast enough to fill open roles.

Because of the nature of the roles or because they are selective to a fault? It's my experience that most people at a company of that size are "just there". If you have 2 employees, both of them have to be excellent. If you have 200 employees, 2 of them have to be excellent.

The nature of the software Google rights still requires quite a bit of specialization or quite a bit of adaptability, in general.

I agree, but I hear more stories from / about ex-googlers along the lines of: I have 20 years experience and 2 PhDs and they have me writing unit tests.

I think its likely hard to hire smart people who don't rock the boat; and thus it takes a long time to hire. It's of course possible (and reasonably likely) that there are only a handful of people that can do the work, but I dunno... with the kind of money that Google has you just open a school and start grooming people specifically for the roles that you have open. Build a pipeline of qualified workers, don't wait for them to come to you.

They've setup shop in Waterloo (ON, Canada) specifically to influence the University and scoop kids up as they graduate.

Or you end up just leaving behind all the people who don't really care about it, and thus it is never fixed.

such a pat, real world workable answer. /s