[HN Gopher] Mapbox Employees Have Unionized
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Mapbox Employees Have Unionized
Author : potench
Score : 46 points
Date : 2021-07-30 18:07 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.protocol.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.protocol.com)
| mkw2000 wrote:
| Love to see it
| deltree7 wrote:
| Great! Now I have an open database of people of"Never hire"
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| More of this! Onward to the next companies.
| mkw2000 wrote:
| Hopefully..
| vangelis wrote:
| That's right.
| nunez wrote:
| Please sell me on the value of unionizing.
|
| At the moment, I don't support engineers unionizing in tech. But
| my mind is open, and I'm ready to change my view on this.
|
| Here's why this is where I stand:
|
| System/software/hardware engineering is one of the most highly-
| compensated and least-regulated careers out there. It's the only
| career where an individual can make over $100,000/year without
| having to complete years of additional training or
| apprenticeship. Unlike consulting (also non-unionized), you don't
| even need to graduate from target schools to get paid in this
| industry! I'm not talking about pure cash comp, either. Tech and
| tech-adjacent companies typically offer very good insurance
| policies with low/no-cost, great long-term disability benefits,
| great vacation and time-off policies, and more.
|
| Engineers have also been in a seller's market for a long time.
| "Recruiters fill my inbox so much, I have to ignore them" is a
| common trope in this industry. Engineers very much have the
| option of leaving a company if they disagree with work
| conditions.
|
| All I see are companies spending more money on bolstering their
| legal and HR departments to implement union relations. Which
| means less money and benefits for us.
| babelfish wrote:
| If you want to preserve the benefits you describe, unionize. If
| you want to rely on the goodwill of executives keeping things
| how they've been, don't. But remember - executives are working
| as hard as possible to drive developer costs down.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Not sure why the need for unionizing at Mapbox in particular,
| but generally not all engineering departments in different
| industries are treated the same.
|
| You'd think that because earning potential is so much higher in
| other adjacent fields where you're doing the same exact job,
| people would just leave, but that seems to be a lot more
| personal than economic.
| closeparen wrote:
| Despite tech workers' financial power, management gets away
| with many widely unpopular working conditions. Think of the
| ubiquity of open offices, or of offices in general. Or sprints,
| or story points, or JIRA. Or the prioritization of new feature
| work over reliability and refactoring. Or the infamous crunch
| time near a deadline. Or the unfairness and perverse incentives
| in a promotion process. Coworkers making more than you because
| they joined at a lower stock price or had better counteroffers.
| Theoretically, workers could get more control over these
| conditions.
|
| There are also many things programmers are asked to build,
| which at least the loudest among us find reprehensible. This
| includes anything to do with advertising, personal data,
| aggressive sales practices, dark patterns, etc. Programmers
| could reduce the prevalence of these things by collectively
| refusing to work on them. Even informal rumblings made some
| headway on this kind of thing at Google.
|
| Finally there is a more general leftist solidarity angle where
| programmers could "make the world a better place" by using
| their own indispensability to leverage their employers into
| better pay and conditions for others. Kitchen staff, cleaning
| crew, even gig workers contracted through the platforms they
| work on. Tech workers have a better chance of getting this sort
| of thing done by contract than by legislation.
| mrbadideas wrote:
| If unionization takes hold for tech / software engineering type
| jobs, I'm curious what this will do to the ability of companies
| to effectively compete and attract talent. The best people I know
| are aware of their value and typically want to work with like
| minded motivated people. How many pro-union people here have
| actually put in time at union shops in more traditional
| industries to understand the perverse incentive structure unions
| can have on individual productivity.
| babelfish wrote:
| Amazing news. Love to see the push for workers rights in tech.
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