Nonsense. Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay all colluded with each other to keep tech worker compensation below its market rate[1].
Good luck negotiating a group health plan that an employer buys as a single employee.
> Given all that I personally think the downsides of unions in tech would be much higher than the upsides.
I would rather go with the facts, and not how you in particular feel about the issue.
The facts are that white collar employees that are union members have higher pay[2], better benefits, more time off, and report higher life satisfaction[3] compared to their non-union peers.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
[2] https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/04/art2full.pdf
[3] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0160449X16643321
In fact to claim a union could have avoided this situation is backwards: unions create cross-firm wage fixing agreements as part of their core policy goals.
The facts are that white collar employees that are union members have higher pay[2]
Averaged across all industries, yes: because they engage in industry-wide wage fixing. That's great if you can't command a high rate yourself, sucks if you can as you're chopped down to their level.
But we're not talking about all industries, we're talking about the tech industry. And if you compare the tech industry vs other industries, there are no unions (except this one) and there are high wages.
Unions could also help in the world of game studios, to stop the deeply harmful practice of "crunch".
Of course they do. Because Unions drive competitiveness down, decrease efficiency, increase costs and so on. A lot of people would be very satisfied if they didn't have to work as hard and their paycheck would be pretty effortlessly guaranteed, and competition within the industry was kept in check.
But everybody else have to pay for it . And then naive socialists who advance labor unions forget about it, and start another campaign on why can't blue collar workers afford any white collar services anymore. Why are public teachers collectively not doing great job despite second in the world spending per student. And then riot on the streets why some cops are shooting people for no good reason, after years of people reporting their abuse. (I'm not saying that unions are the only or even main reason, but they sure do contribute to the problem).
Why are public teachers collectively not doing great job despite second in the world spending per student.
US government spending on education is high. However, US average teacher salary is ranked 7th in the world (Canada pays better, apparently). You're trying to attribute this spending inefficiency to teacher unions, where the problem is poor government spending (educational-industrial complex). Selling to governments is a big business; more software, more technology, more programming. Education in America has become commercial industry. That spending should probably be on teacher training programs instead.
https://naibuzz.com/10-countries-with-the-highest-teachers-s...
Unions are owned/compromised of workers. Workers vote on issues that affect them.
Tech workers are in so much demand that they don't really suffer such a disparity of negotiating power, like workers in other industries.
Absolutely true, but if demand wasn't so high and supply wasn't so short, what happens to worker leverage and treatment?
Many software companies offer equity, which makes employers the shareholders. What's good for shareholders is also good for a lot of tech employees.
Equity compensation is a result of the pressures of a competitive labour market. If companies could get away with not handing out equity, they would. But since the other guys are paying so well, they are forced to up the ante.
Also, barriers to entry in software are almost 0. If you can't get someone to treat you well, you can have your own software company paying your bills in 6 months, or VCs funding your startup.
An exaggeration. You're not getting hired at the big players without a degree and/or significant experience. Software engineering != entrepreneurship. The majority of software devs would not be able to pay their own bills after 6 months of working on their own projects. Most projects fail.
There is a reason all the big sports leagues are unionized with player associations (also highly skill specialized, limited labour supply pool). They are able to negotiate for 50% of league revenue and establish protections. There are downsides; the highest earners are giving up their ability to earn true market wage (ex: a salary cap creates a wage maximum on an individual). But in general I've never heard a pro athlete say that the union has not given them measurable benefit and otherwise higher long term gain.
"We the people" is a founding myth, and it's our myth, but it's still a political myth similar to the divine right of kings, a way of justifying the rule of the many by the few. The leaders are not the masses, no matter what anyone pretends.
(I'm not saying I have a better idea, but let's not be naive about principal-agent problems.)
A representational "democracy", compared to other systems, has the least potential for corruption.
If unions do in fact give workers more representation/power, than game theory says it is a worthwhile trade off, as we expect average worker gains to be net positive of any corruption losses.
In direct democracy, a decision still needs to be made on what to vote on. As an example, if you look at California propositions, these aren't necessarily all that well drafted. Often propositions are created by business interests and approved by people coming out of stores who aren't thinking very carefully about what petitions they sign.
And after that point, you're putting an algorithm is in charge of making the final decision. This isn't necessarily better than having a leader in charge, because the leader can maybe think of creative compromises and the algorithm can't.
If you study voting systems you'll see they all have flaws, and they are all very simple-minded algorithms compared to people. Whether they actually capture the "will of the people" is impossible to say since the "will of the people" isn't really a thing. There are just people with a lot of different opinions.
Athletes' unions exist to protect the players at the bottom, who are just talented enough to play at the professional level but aren't superstars, like the offensive line in football or the bench players in basketball.
Notably: many of the athletes' unions predate the era of the monopolistic sports leagues. (The modern NFL, MLB, and NBA are all the products of the mergers of smaller leagues, and their players' unions formed before they achieved monopoly status.)
> I would rather see more laws universally protecting intellectual workers like e.g. non-enforcability of non-compete clauses and alikes
One of this must be incorrect. If tech workers have good negotiating power, they should be able to get rid of non-compete clauses. If they can't, see, that's what union can do (at least try to negotiate) for you.
But a law like in CA is much better solution for cases like that, than dealing with Unions, IMO.
In practice though, I fear, they will be overtaken by parasites, will advance bureaucratic BS, political opinions, protections for people who game the system, start mandating nonsense technological choices, hurt the efficiency, and just drive the well-paying industry into a ground, forcing capital to just move software companies into places that are better for business.
Surely this would have been the case for movie studios, given that every actor they do business with is a member of SAG-AFTRA. Movie stars can command multi-million dollar contracts with studios with the help of SAG-AFTRA, and the same union protects everyone down to the background actors. Yet studios remain in the US despite your fear that they'd leave.
But we already have democratically elected representatives that can also do this for us. For instance in California, non-competes are already basically not enforceable thanks to legislative action.
As another example, see the lawsuits a few years ago that were ruled in favor of workers for wage fixing at Google and Apple.
The structures are already in place give these sorts of reasonable protections, why add another bureaucratic, big, slow, expensive, greedy organization into the mix when we can use the processes we already have? (If the argument is that government is not responsive enough, that's a problem for many other reasons too, let's fix it).
I am skeptical about this. At public companies, it seems like in general shareholders do an ineffective job at reigning in management. See e.g. all the discussions around executive pay, as well as the proportion of shares that are held through passive funds.
Within tech in some cases (e.g. FB) extra means were taken so that shareholders have even less control than is typical.
Within private companies, employees with vested options typically have far less visibility into company finances than do the VCs, and certainly don't have a board seat or the ability to vote. I.e. being an employee shareholder at a startup often gives you no ability to see whether management is actually working in your interest, and certainly no special input into corporate governance.
But the point is - if the company granted me some equity, than I participate in the upside and even if certain decision seems not perfect for me as a employee, and they "just benefit the shareholder", I am too a shareholder, and at least I might get some dollars to wipe away my tears.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/07/an-ipo-could-make-these-work...
https://www.barrons.com/articles/snowflake-showed-that-ipos-...
And that's assuming if the equity ever actually does become worth anything. Or if they even get equity.
https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2020/03/30/laid-off...
> Many software companies offer equity, which makes employers the shareholders. What's good for shareholders is also good for a lot of tech employees.
> Also, barriers to entry in software are almost 0. If you can't get someone to treat you well, you can have your own software company paying your bills in 6 months, or VCs funding your startup.
Points 1 and 3 apply, perhaps, to Silicon Valley, but not as much in the rest of the world. I currently work in the Netherlands - there are plenty of jobs and the pay can be good, but at the end of the day you're just another worker. The disparity in negotiating power is still enormous.
Point 2 is mostly not that relevant (outside of SV). Even if you get some equity, it will be peanuts. I worked at a company that had a very successful IPO. We all got a few stock options, enough to make a few tens of thousands of euros if you sold them at the right time. The actual shareholders (the ones with decision power) made from tens of millions to billions. The disparity is enormous.
If your choices are between working for one of several capital-owned tech conglomerates, or accepting their money for the runway to compete in the current business climate, can you really call that an even playing field?
The second and third order effects of labor unions are class consciousness, something that the people on this forum seem to constantly miss.
37 people voted against unionization of kickstarter, that is 37 people who were forced to join a union against their will. "Nobody is forcing you, except if a majority of your colleagues wants to force you of course..." isn't a good argument.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/technology/kickstarter-un...
Presumably, you and your employer entered into some contract in which you are compensated for your labor. If you find the terms unconscionable, perhaps you should petition your legislators to change the labor laws (this is where democracy is appropriate).
As an aside, I do not understand where the notion that <something> + democracy is always going to be better than <something>. I never would have thought back in college that banding together with my fellow physics majors and demanding what we're taught and how we're graded would produce better outcomes; I choose my school/department because of the reputation resulting from the faculty's decisions. I imagine the same goes with most employees at most companies - a lot of engineers want to work at FAANG because of what <ceo> is doing. Democracy works well for things you can't opt out of, like society. I doubt Apple products would be as good if Steve Jobs let every engineer into the boardroom.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23535292
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13986889
Also, if the consequences to decisions were always attainable a priori, I doubt management would make bad decisions. It's easy to look at Microsoft and say Ballmer dropped the ball on mobile, but then again they still don't have a competitive product to iOS or Android and are doing well. Was Ballmer wrong/right? Is Nadella wrong/right? It was hard to say in 2007 and it's still difficult to say in 2020.
The Audi example is only a good example in that management is listening to a group of employees who are advocating for a position in which the market is already trending (which also happens to have substantial environmental benefits). We wouldn't applaud BP if they opted to do more drilling at the request of their oil rig workers.
For whatever reason, who ever was responsible for putting your manager in place trusts that person; you can appeal to your manager if you think they are making a bad decision or you can appeal to their manager that you think they are ill suited to their position. After that, you've exhausted your options at that company and aren't owed anything further. I would strongly suggest to any job seekers that if having a seat at the table is important to you, assess that when you are interviewing. Find or start a company in which that is the culture.
Now I do have to caveat all this with that I am 30, no kids, and live in decently sized market for tech. I may be more cavalier with my "if you don't like it, then leave" attitude. I find the ombudsman position interesting and was unaware of the history around it and HR. I will have to look into that more, thank you for the knowledge.
And yet, despite startups' attempts to introduce concepts such as transparency, "radical candor", "employee wellness", even radical experiments like holacracy, etc., at the end of the day the core of these businesses are the same old corporate structures.
And amidst the high-paced, high-stakes froth of move fast and fueled by the promise of dumb money, many firms end up having mgmt. that shall we say, are more susceptible to mistakes, and persist in them despite discontent from the rank and file. And despite performative attempts to promote open discourse and welcome questions, they often don't listen to that discontent. So those truly unhappy just jump ship. Which is fine to some extent, but it just feels like it's contributing to an unsustainable throwaway culture.
> After that, you've exhausted your options at that company and aren't owed anything further.
> I may be more cavalier with my "if you don't like it, then leave" attitude.
But what about the end user? The customers who will be failed if the company does? And what about the product itself? If someone who works on it feels like company leadership isn't making the right choices, and if their concerns are echoed by a good amount of the workforce, shouldn't they at least be given the chance to appeal to the board?
It just feels highly hypocritical that an industry that sees itself as so forward-looking and enlightened, so flexible and boundaries breaking, just ends up conforming to the same corporate fiat structure at the end. It really belies the messaging of being able to "make a difference."
Arguably it was achieved first and foremost because increase in productivity caused by capital investments actually made it economically possible.
I mean, I don't deny that 19th century capitalists required a little bit of a "push" for it to actually happen, but it's debatable if it was actually necessary and wouldn't just happen naturally.
> class consciousness
That's a part of political opinion, that I just don't share. I was born in family of a blue collar family of a coal miner and school janitor, now I'm a intellectual worker, and in a way I already joined "evil capitalist class" and hope to entrench myself in it even more with time.
Thinking in people having assigned "classes" is just so a low-resolution way to look at complex reality, that it is just not helpful.
> If your choices are between working for one of several capital-owned tech conglomerates, or accepting their money for the runway to compete in the current business climate, can you really call that an even playing field?
I just don't think labor organizations help with anything. What helps is having more options (competition), better social mobility (access to education and knowledge) and general economic prosperity that allow entrepreneurship (taking risks). Labor unions typically work against all of it.
I do know that field is not level, but I just think naive ways to trying to level it make more harm than good.
> I mean, I don't deny that 19th century capitalists required a little bit of a "push" for it to actually happen, but it's debatable if it was actually necessary and wouldn't just happen naturally.
Well, given that, with the subsequent increases in productivity since then, the work week could could easily be reduced by another day (32 hours work week), but no such change has yet happened naturally, I don't see why you would believe that it would have happened then either.
> I just don't think labor organizations help with anything. What helps is having more options (competition), better social mobility (access to education and knowledge) and general economic prosperity that allow entrepreneurship (taking risks). Labor unions typically work against all of it.
And yet, before mass labor organizations you had children being forced to work, and everyone working longer hours for 6 days a week, with no worker safety laws to speak of; and, with the hard struggles of labor unions (which included getting shot by US military forces!) you live in a world with worker safety regulations, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, etc.
Basically, I think your post shows exactly what class-consciousness does for you. Most working-class people can see very well how stacked the deck is against them, and have few illusions about how explicitly the current system is working to keep them down (their biggest illusion is that they can't do anything about it, or that it's foreign workers' fault - both of these the result of explicit propaganda/PR efforts). But if you manage to move into the capitalist class, your perspective often changes, as your seems to have, and you start believing the system as it is works well, and actually start to work for it - like you are here, trying to convince people that unions would be harmful for our own interests.
To be clear, I am in no way accusing you of not believing what you are saying! I am just pointing out that it is exactly an example of class-consciousness at work: since you are part of the capitalist class, you believe more in the good of the capitalist class as the one likely to bring the most benefit to everyone. Myself, part of the working class, believe that the good of the working class will bring more overall good in the world.
What?
If that actually describes you, then yeah a union membership isn't for you. For the rest of us, this doesn't really apply though...
How do we test this hypothesis? Do we know that tech companies couldn't afford to double the wages of all their staff, or is that an assumption we've made based on high wages relative to other industries?
I imagine the likes of Apple could certainly pay their devs a lot more.
https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2020/08/research-rev...
Not just their devs, but all of their workers.
Yes, a lot of engineers at FAANG make more than $400k total comp. People seem to have a hard time believing that, but it's true. And according to that chart, only two companies actually make that much profit per employee.
Seriously markets only go up (and the absurd inflation of tech company stock prices since 2008) is a deep, deep problem with society which will inevitably end.
Companies exist to reward their shareholders. Employees at most companies get paid as little as possible, as long as they don't quit. At tech companies, employees are shareholders and therefore they get to be part of the group of people that the company exists to reward.
If you approach your stock compensation with that understanding, you'll be fine. If you expect the stock to only ever increase in value then you are being stupid. In my experience, tech workers at public companies are pretty savvy about their stock compensation. At startups, it's another matter...
This is the problem as I see it: $400k sounds like a good compensation, but we have no idea if that's as high as FAANGs would go. Maybe all those engineers could be on $800k if they'd negotiated better.
We don't, and can't, know the answer to this problem. And frankly it doesn't matter if those engineers are happy with $400k, and FAANG companies happy paying them that, then everybody comes away feeling like they've won. I'm just wondering if, as a whole, engineers are actually leaving a lot of money on the table because using the 'market rate' is really the average of all the negotiations that have come before, and if the average engineer is bad at negotiating that means everyone is basing their salary expectation on lots of previous low offers that people shouldn't really have accepted.
This is really a pricing problem, and everyone knows pricing is hard.
If I have to split $2,000,000 between you and me, but you don't know how much money there is, then you might be happy with me giving you $400,000. That's $400,000 you didn't have before. Hell yeah, $400k! That's loads. The fact we're both going away happy doesn't make it right though. There's a big disparity there. If you found out that I'd kept 4* what you got you'd have every reason to be pissed about it.
That's what I'm suggesting FAANG companies might be doing - giving developers $400k, which makes them very happy, while keeping a far greater amount for themselves that could have been distributed between the workers at the company had those workers negotiated better by having greater knowledge of the system.
I don't even know if that's really a bad thing if that's what's going on. The line that I originally quoted ("Tech workers are in so much demand that they don't really suffer such a disparity of negotiating power") just made me wonder if it's actually true that demand for tech workers has really driven wages to a natural equilibrium, or whether we just think that's true because $400k sounds like a lot.
Do you honestly believe that every penny a company makes ought to be given to its employees?
If not, then why should employees expect to make more than the market rate for the labor they provide?
I didn't suggest anything of the sort. I said that maybe companies are paying their employees much less than they could, and that maybe employees aren't getting a good deal despite wages being high relative to other industries. I didn't say that all of the value an employee generates should go to that employee - just maybe it could be more than does right now.
If not, then why should employees expect to make more than the market rate for the labor they provide?
"Market rate" is basically the median negotiated salary for similar roles. There's an assumption that a salary is like a price, and supply and demand will drive that price up for in-demand skills. This is the part I'm challenging. I don't know if price theory works for salaries where one side of the market (employers) has far more information and leverage than the other side (developers). If most developers are bad negotiators then getting a "market rate" salary means you, as an individual, are being paid the same as the other bad negotiators, and you actually lost out on getting a higher salary.
It could be that using the market rate to derive the appropriate salary for a job actually keeps developer wages lower than they could otherwise be.
At this point this is all just futile speculation though, and no one is going to change anything so we might as well just accept it.
Ok, then most FAANG engineers are far above the market rate. If they unionized they would probably lose money when the union tries to level everyone out.
We all know people at companies that give devs 'lesser' titles (and lower wages) and then expect the person to do the work of the higher title role.
How exactly do you see something like this coming to fruition without labor organization? There’s no way federal law like this happens without some sort of coordinated effort to compel congress to pass such a law.
Fundamentally disagree with you right there. Civil rights, marriage equality, and countless other freedoms bestowed on Americans came from Federal action. If Congress never passed the civil rights act, we might still have segregated bathrooms in half of the US today. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with legislating at the Federal level.
> California made non-competes non-enforceable.
Yeah, back when they ratified their common codes in the 1800’s, it didn’t happen in the modern era. If such legislation were to pass today, you bet labor organizations would be behind it.
Yet doctors and lawyers and pilots have strong unions in all but name. What do you suppose they know that we don’t?
Many software companies offer equity, which makes employers the shareholders. What's good for shareholders is also good for a lot of tech employees.
I’m sorry but this is just naive. Preferred stock and dilution make shares owned by rank-and-file employees nothing more than a rounding error these days. It was different back in the 90s when all the myths around stock options were formed but those days are long gone.
Agree on non-public companies. I've been part of three, one is still going 10 years after I left and two were acquired. Net value of my equity was $0.
Isn't it protection from patients/clients/passengers, not employers, because of how visible they are as individuals and how directly they affect lives?
In USA that is, things can be very different abroad.
United artists, AFTRA, WGA, DGA, all formed when their skills were in high demand. There's a natural employer/employee power dynamic that even Adam Smith talks about. If his fanboys only read his books they'd know that.
There's an alternative narrative where the government steps in and says hey, you have to allow unions. In practice, while some government support is necessary, this doesn't seem to lead to powerful unions in the same way.
Of course, some would say taking the ACFTU as representative of unions is like taking the East India Company as representative of multinational corporations...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-China_Federation_of_Trade_...
[1] https://www.chinabusinessreview.com/trade-union-law-and-coll...
> Also, barriers to entry in software are almost 0
One of these statements has to be false. I think it's the second one.
It's true that software has few regulatory or credential barriers. However not everyone is cut out for a career in tech. In fact very few are. This natural moat keeps the supply of workers lower than other industries, making unions less necessary.
I'm sorry but that is not true at all.
Tech workers are in so much demand that they don't really suffer such a disparity of negotiating power, like workers in other industries.
Many software companies offer equity, which makes employers the shareholders. What's good for shareholders is also good for a lot of tech employees.
Also, barriers to entry in software are almost 0. If you can't get someone to treat you well, you can have your own software company paying your bills in 6 months, or VCs funding your startup.
Given all that I personally think the downsides of unions in tech would be much higher than the upsides. I would rather see more laws universally protecting intellectual workers like e.g. non-enforcability of non-compete clauses and alikes.