[HN Gopher] On leaving Mapbox after 12 years
___________________________________________________________________
On leaving Mapbox after 12 years
Author : gregoire
Score : 175 points
Date : 2022-06-20 16:37 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (trashmoon.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (trashmoon.com)
| tiffanyh wrote:
| > A company like Mapbox hadn't ever unionized before, so it
| seemed like an exciting _experiment_
|
| Call me crazy, but taking such a drastic move as unionizing
| shouldn't be trivialized into just being an "experiment".
|
| EDIT: why the downvotes? Why not simply reply with your thoughts
| so that we can have a thoughtful discourse.
| roguecoder wrote:
| Unionizing isn't "drastic": it is the norm for most trades in
| the United States. Any individual union is basically just you &
| your coworkers crowd sourcing employment lawyers you wouldn't
| afford individually.
|
| Until Boeing got taken over by finance people, the Boeing
| engineering guild had spent decades being a book club. It is
| only when things go wrong that unionization significantly
| changes how we work.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| > "crowd sourcing employment lawyers"
|
| How is that _not_ drastic?
|
| You're own words are saying unionizing is to bring in lawyers
| to be used against your employer.
|
| EDIT: to answer your question below since I can't reply.
|
| No, it's not drastic for a company to have lawyers. A company
| needs to ensure they are staying regulatory compliant, not
| breaking laws and de-risking company ... that's what the
| lawyers are doing.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| "It's not drastic for a company to have lawyers" is
| probably the point that was being made. It's _not_ drastic
| for a company to have lawyers; it shouldn't be drastic for
| a union--or in this case, a union organizing effort--to
| have lawyers as well.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| If you feel like you have lawyer-up just to go to work,
| that's probably a signal you shouldn't be working there.
| roguecoder wrote:
| If one party doesn't have a lawyer look over legal
| contracts they are signing and the other party does, all
| they are doing is putting themselves at a disadvantage in
| a business relationship.
|
| I see why that is advantageous for companies that get to
| employ workers at a disadvantage. I don't understand why
| it would be good for workers.
| jacobolus wrote:
| So in other words your company should pay a team of legal
| experts to fight against your interests, but if workers
| try to hire an expert of their own they "shouldn't be
| working there"?
| roguecoder wrote:
| They "de-risk" the company by making sure employees have as
| little power as possible, as few protections as possible,
| are as open to exploitation as possible, are paid as little
| as possible, have as little job mobility as possible, and
| have as little claim to their independent intellectual
| property as they can legally enforce.
|
| That's what "derisk" means: it means the company is
| protected from your interests.
| roguecoder wrote:
| The company has lawyers: is that drastic?
| bambam24 wrote:
| jenny91 wrote:
| I'm saddened by what happened to Mapbox. It's such a recurring
| pattern of organizational transformation: from a small "mission-
| driven" group building cool shit that starts taking money (and
| pressure from investors) and slowly erodes their past core
| values, changing into a faceless money-making machine subservient
| to some huge market or industry. In that process most of the
| original opinionated crowd will slowly rotate out and the more
| "career"/bureaucratic types will prevail and take over.
|
| Maybe unions and workers having more control could curb it? But
| in such a late stage it sounds almost impossible to achieve.
|
| Cars are certainly a problem, but technology has by and far been
| a great thing, and I would question whether the gaming is really
| such a positive industry in the end either.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Unions and Mapbox is a very sore topic and now the subject of a
| NLRB lawsuit for firing the union organizers.
| https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/mapbox-sued-firing-union-...
|
| But the union drive came far too late to help the larger
| problem. The big change happened in 2017 when Softbank invested
| $164M into MapBox. In retrospect it was far too much money with
| too many expectations. And with the ugly side effect of salting
| the earth for any other map startups. It only got worse in 2021
| when MapBox's attempt to go public via a SPAC failed. They're
| plodding along now but it's hard to see what a good final
| outcome is going to be.
| chx wrote:
| This is not the first time I see Softbank as a net negative.
| Too much money loosely controlled. Is there an example of
| Softbank doing good?
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| > And with the ugly side effect of salting the earth for any
| other map startups
|
| I'm unsure on that. Mapbox built a bunch of good tech (mostly
| around vector tiles), open-sourced it, and then lost interest
| in smaller customers in their rush for the petrodollar.
|
| This has been genuinely great for bootstrapped map
| businesses. You can easily list a dozen who are using .mvt
| tech right now and making a good living out of it.
|
| True, it wasn't good for Mapzen. But I can't weep too many
| tears for something funded with Samsung Accelerator magic
| money, much though they did hire one of the smartest teams in
| the business - Softbank vs Samsung is not a battle I can
| bring myself to care about.
|
| I 100% agree with you that Mapbox went too far, too fast. But
| on balance I think their trajectory has (unintentionally)
| been good for wider mapping tech.
| slively wrote:
| Here is the same story again. Sorry to hear about the inevitable
| ending, but glad they got to experience a good work culture for a
| time. At some point I hope we can shift the union discussion from
| just benefits and wages (which are not the biggest problems for
| SWE), to workers having a say in how a company operates. The idea
| that investing money garners complete control of a company is not
| healthy for the company or society at large. Workers risk more
| for the company and know more about what makes it succeed.
| reocha wrote:
| Does anyone know why tech companies tend to be so hostile to
| unions? I'm not sure if its due to the large amount of venture
| capital invested or other reasons.
| roguecoder wrote:
| Because unions could increase wages, stop the scams companies
| like to pull with options, and push back on under-staffed
| expectations of the impossible.
|
| Companies benefit by taking as much of the profit for
| themselves as possible, rather than doing right by their
| workers. Some of that pressure comes from VCs or shareholders,
| but even in private companies it takes a rare founder to put a
| worker's interests ahead of their own.
| pm90 wrote:
| I get the impression that a lot of Software Devs buy into
| libertarian philosophies.
|
| I think this is changing though. There's a lot of people
| working in tech and with the kind of abuse that's been reported
| (ahem, Amazon) we might see that change.
| smm11 wrote:
| incanus77 wrote:
| Appropriate, since they haven't heard of you either.
| mikl wrote:
| Thanks for lettings us know. Your ignorance is inspiring. /s
| donohoe wrote:
| Is it fair to say that MapBox is moving into auto services?
|
| Or to put it another way, is it not a good idea for me to move to
| a different provider for basic mapping services?
| woevdbz wrote:
| It sounds like OP wants to be a part of the kind of social change
| that fundamentally cannot exist independently of politics but
| trying to enact it without.
|
| A single company, especially one that is not generating
| monopoly/oligopoly profits and is still dependent on funding, is
| not really able to: unionizing creates a steep competitive
| downside on the capital market that is not offset by enough
| employee retention benefit to be worth it, and that alone creates
| existential risk for the whole company. Long term, it simply
| helps another competitor to come up without a union.
|
| Systemic problems need systemic solutions. It saddens me a bit
| that people want social change so much but dislike politics so
| much more that they take up the wrong fight, and then retreat to
| something like making videogames, which frankly as an industry
| has an even worse track record than tech in terms of respect for
| its workers.
|
| I hope OP changes their perspective and fights a wider fight,
| either on behalf of a party or of a larger union.
| roguecoder wrote:
| So your hypothesis is that VCs put their class interests ahead
| of making money to such an extent that it is impossible to
| exercise our legal rights without putting the companies we work
| for in their political crosshairs?
|
| You may be right. It still seems like the easiest solution is
| for all the startups to unionize so they don't have any choice:
| they can either invest in unionized startups or they can stop
| being VCs.
| [deleted]
| afandian wrote:
| It's surely not that bleak (at least, not everywhere). And it
| doesn't have to be remotely about 'politics'.
|
| My old employer made the leap to employee-owned and they seem
| to be going from strength to strength.
| https://torchbox.com/careers/employee-owned-trust
| woevdbz wrote:
| Right, that works until you need more funding (unless you can
| raise from employees, but that also has consequences and
| limits). I'm guessing that Mapbox is angling for an
| acquisition or more funding at some point.
| afandian wrote:
| Yes staying true to the rhetoric about 'making the world a
| better place' does preclude certain future states. But that
| rhetoric _can_ be true, actionable, and not incompatible
| with profit.
|
| Just saying here's an anecdatum about a money-making
| business that said the same kinds of things and is doing
| very well for itself.
| johnny313 wrote:
| > _Here's some advice as a jaded start-up veteran: business
| models and investment terms are kind of the only thing that
| matter. Even if you're a lowly designer or engineer, you must
| understand what your company needs to do to be sustainable._
|
| This is a key observation. Every incredible team and
| inspirational idea eventually has to make the unit economics
| work. The longer it takes for a leadership team to realize this
| and prioritize it, the more difficult it is for people (ICs and
| managers) to internalize the changes that need to be made. Worst
| of all is when the shift happens because runway is getting short,
| and "get rich quick" projects become the focus instead of
| building a good product.
|
| > _...you must understand what your company needs to do to be
| sustainable. It very likely is different from what they're doing
| now, and may come with unexpected ethical compromises._
|
| This sounds like a difficult situation, but is certainly
| something people should think about. Things can get weird when a
| company is running out of money.
| Brystephor wrote:
| I interviewed at MapBox within the past year. The team I was
| interviewing with gave a pretty bad outlook. Essentially it was
| everyone had left and they're trying to keep the lights on until
| they can hire enough to do new work.
|
| To be clear, I did receive an offer and passed.
| xyzzy4747 wrote:
| In my opinion you're hired somewhere to work there and be
| productive, not to unionize. Workers who join companies and then
| try to subvert the entire system are a cancer to the org.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| You are free to not work at unionized orgs, and also vote no
| when a vote is scheduled to unionize.
|
| Unionization is how employees get a seat at the table and a say
| in the business they contribute their labor to, labor without
| which the business could not exist. Comp and benefits are only
| a component why organizing is important, in my opinion.
| nightski wrote:
| Honestly I've had plenty of influence at the various
| workplaces I've been a part of. If a company is so
| dysfunctional it doesn't even take what employees are saying
| into account then I'm not convinced a union would help. Do
| you have concrete examples of unions succeeding in software?
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| Didn't the kickstarter folks successfully unionize to ban
| monitoring software and no CoL downgrades in pay?
| elil17 wrote:
| Why does it have to be software-specific? It's a new-ish
| field and American unions have been pretty disadvantaged
| over the last few decades due to an increasingly
| conservative judiciary and some nasty anti-union lawyers.
| But you can't just ignore that unions got us weekends,
| OSHA, and 8 hour days. Now there is enough wealth in
| society to support three day weekends, and people are ready
| to fight to distribute that wealth fairly. Why shouldn't
| they?
| nightski wrote:
| Because as far as I know traditionally unions have
| existed in jobs where humans are basically robots
| (manufacturing, etc...). These jobs can be dangerous and
| also each worker is very easily replaceable giving the
| employer a huge upper hand.
|
| This is not the case in software at all. Skill levels can
| vary dramatically and the more experience you have with
| your company often the more valuable and harder to
| replace you become. Software developers are expensive,
| especially bad hires. This puts them in an advantageous
| position. In sum we are - In demand, scarce, hard (or at
| least expensive) to replace (skill & domain knowledge
| vary considerably). The exact opposite of what a union
| fixes.
| roguecoder wrote:
| That's a pretty new development, and not necessarily
| true. Screen writing is pretty obviously creative,
| collaborative work, and they've been represented by a
| professional guild since 1933.
|
| I think it is more common for the umbrella union orgs to
| focus on industries either with high barriers to entry
| (like nursing) or huge employers, because they are going
| company-by-company & it's just more efficient. On the
| opposite end of the spectrum, trade unions are more
| likely to serve people who change jobs ever couple of
| years and where most of the learning happens on the job.
| They tend to be run by & for people actually in the
| profession and can cross company boundaries.
|
| Trade guilds will do things like specify minimum wages,
| but most of their members end up paid more than that.
| They'll specify minimum safety standards, but also
| support people on specific job sites that want or need
| additional protection to make that particular job safe.
| It isn't the same kind of one-size-fits-all approach you
| may be used to from Detroit auto plants.
|
| There are advantages for employers too: they know that
| people in the guild are held to certain professional
| standards, for example. When retirement programs or
| health care are managed through the guild, workers can
| take the benefits with them to their next job, and small
| employers don't get taken for a ride. And employers can
| benefit from the steady influx of newly-trained workers
| who have been taught up to the standards the trade feels
| are important to meet.
|
| Just look at the people in this thread who think it is
| "drastic" to have a lawyer look at our employment
| contracts: we may have individual leverage, but we aren't
| necessarily able to use it to make our working conditions
| better, or even to ensure the software we build is
| reliable and safe.
| [deleted]
| slively wrote:
| To say this person joined and then tried to subvert is a pretty
| dishonest reading of this story. They worked on something for
| 12 years and I'm sure there were many others similarly
| invested. To spend such a significant portion of your life on
| something and have basically no input on how it's run,
| directed, etc... is not a good system. In my opinion the people
| forming the union had much more invested in this company than
| the people that just invested money. I'd say the handful of
| people that insist on complete control for having invested
| money are a cancer to the org and society at large.
| roguecoder wrote:
| There is a good chunk research indicating that when employees
| share governance, it has a mild positive effect on
| productivity & firm survival:
| https://voxeu.org/article/worker-representation-worker-
| welfa...
|
| There are many short term pressures on executives and finance
| people. Sharing power with the people their decisions affect
| leads to better outcomes for the business than when they use
| their power over workers for short term gain.
| xyzzy4747 wrote:
| On the contrary I think it's a good system. If they want to
| control the company they can buy 51% of the shares. Those
| shares are valuable for a reason.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| If management doesn't want to negotiate with a majority of
| workers, they are free to pick a different career path and
| leave it to other professional managers.
| slively wrote:
| If the solution to a problem is have lots of money, it's a
| solution for only a tiny portion of people, and not
| generally applicable.
| xyzzy4747 wrote:
| Anyone can make their own company and their own shares
| and it's practically free other than registration costs.
| The people with the shares get to set all the rules.
| That's generally how it works. Otherwise the shares would
| be worthless.
| slively wrote:
| You are sidestepping a massive amount of factors that
| allows somebody to create their own business. Even then,
| a company grows on the backs of its employees, and there
| quickly comes a time when a single person should not have
| complete control because it's not just theirs anymore.
|
| I own shares in public companies and have basically zero
| say in how they operate and those shares are worth quite
| a bit.
|
| At this point it's clear these arguments are flippant and
| not serious. I hope one day you can have a perspective on
| these issues that is not so shallow. They are important
| and you also should have a say in your workplace. Our
| voices matter.
| xyzzy4747 wrote:
| Anyone who is willing can create a business, especially a
| software one that has no upfront costs, and the owner
| usually does most of the work to get it off the ground.
| The owner gets complete say in how it's run until they
| choose to relinquish or sell control or structure it
| otherwise.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| A company is a group effort and people can quit whenever
| they want. The owner doesn't have complete say and
| shouldn't have complete say, and it's good for employees
| to talk to each other so that they can use their say
| together.
| pmyteh wrote:
| The shares give you a claim on the profits. The rules are
| a combination of the corporate bylaws and the law. The
| latter does not let owners set all the rules: it imposes
| health and safety restrictions, taxes, and (yes!)
| unionisation rules.
|
| The people who make the _laws_ get to set all the rules.
| The shares are valuable anyway, because an economic
| interest in a profit making entity is valuable whether
| you have perfect control or not.
| mikkergp wrote:
| One way conceptualize many companies is that they're just the
| id of senior execs measuring their genitalia against one other,
| why shouldn't workers get to participate?
| xyzzy4747 wrote:
| The workers can make their own company if the terms of their
| employment don't make them happy.
| roguecoder wrote:
| Or they can organize, as is their legal right, and
| renegotiate those terms together.
|
| Even if you aren't unionized, it is your right to get
| together with your coworkers & advocate for better working
| conditions.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Your belief system isn't congruent with US labor law. Why
| leave when you can make your existing job better?
|
| Your other comment indicates they should have to amass 51%
| of company shares. Ridiculous. Their ability to organize
| and vote to do so comes from their labor rights, and is
| precisely why they don't require capital (per labor law) to
| have a say.
|
| Businesses can be built without capital. They cannot be
| built without labor.
|
| https://www.laborlab.us/the_right_to_unionize
| mikkergp wrote:
| Again they could, but they would not be following the
| example set by leadership.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| In my opinion, if you are starting a company in the US, you're
| supposed to follow labor law. Founders who create a company and
| then try to ignore the rules they signed up for are a cancer to
| society.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| That employee had been at the company for a dozen years, it's
| in the very title of the article.
| danpalmer wrote:
| I agree that union organisation work is not _work_, it's not
| what people are paid to do, and it should therefore be done on
| personal time.
|
| However, employers are in a position of significant power over
| their employees, and unions represent a way to balance that
| power. I think this is a broadly positive thing that I think
| employees should be in favour of, and that I think the best
| employers would also be in favour of.
| roguecoder wrote:
| IANAL, but my understanding is that it is illegal to treat
| unionizing differently than other social activities. If a
| company wants to ban unionizing on company time, they have to
| ban all non-work related socializing. If people are allowed
| to talk about movies & video games, they are also allowed to
| talk about unions.
| draw_down wrote:
| elil17 wrote:
| God forbid someone would want have a symmetric bargaining
| relationship between a single workforce and a single employer.
| draw_down wrote:
| The only thing they actually mention _doing_ at the company
| during all that time was the union drive.
|
| Did they create products? Features? Internal tools? Design
| guides/system? Any actual work? Or just agitating for a union
| that their coworkers clearly did not want?
| incanus77 wrote:
| Yes, _major_ contributor who touched many parts of the company
| 's core technology.
|
| Source: I overlapped with them for the first 7 of those 12
| years, back to the <20 employee days.
| awhitty wrote:
| Saman worked on many things at Mapbox, most notably to me is
| the interface for Studio [0], which continues to be an
| impressive expression of a really advanced set of features for
| map design. He also explicitly mentioned a stint as an
| engineering manager at the company in the post- maybe you
| didn't catch that? Or maybe you don't consider management to be
| doing "actual work"? If you think the latter, maybe consider
| organizing at your own workplace?
|
| [0] https://blog.mapbox.com/behind-mapbox-studios-new-
| look-874c1...
| mikl wrote:
| > _Over the next few years, Mapbox tried to find success in a
| variety of industries: journalism, social media, travel, ect. We
| never hit numbers that were big enough for our investors. In the
| process, we abandoned our focus on Open Source and Open data.
| Then, as is the case with many mapping companies, Mapbox shifted
| focus to the auto industry. My fear of loss of control fully
| materialized at this point. I'm a lifelong bicycle commuter, and
| I think cars are unequivocally bad._
|
| I wish people better understood what taking VC money means:
| trading control for money. While employees might _feel_ the
| company is still theirs, that's only true to the extent that they
| hold majority control of the board of directors.
|
| It's certainly possible to take VC money and keep your original
| vision intact. But only if your original vision works well enough
| to keep your shareholders happy. Failing that, the board will
| push management to compromise with the ideals as much as needed
| to get a return on investment.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Employees should never feel like the company is theirs. Unless
| you have a real seat at the table, you should assume you have
| no influence over the business. That's what being an employee
| is (with no actual shares). You give up the risk by being an
| employee, and your only negotiating power is leaving.
| roguecoder wrote:
| That sounds like you feel pretty helpless. Personally, I find
| that I have numerous avenues of negotiating power, even
| without unionization:
|
| 1. Do I recommend the company to my network? I can make it a
| lot cheaper or more expensive to hire.
|
| 2. How do I spend my time? All my technical choices will make
| certain changes easier down the line, and others harder. I
| work hard to understand the business context & help those
| choices serve our shared goals, but the emphasis there can be
| on "shared".
|
| 3. How much do I streamline my own work? I can work
| efficiently, or I can wait for that build to finish and that
| PR to be approved and merged before I move on to the next
| thing. This can be a particularly effective way to incentive
| investment in a platform team & build tools, if I'm not
| allowed to just fix them myself.
|
| 4. What do I collaborate on with my coworkers? We can pick
| priorities we care about, and negotiate together for specific
| improvements. I've gotten more vacation time, better
| computers, bigger screens, paid on-calls and time to fix bugs
| all just by talking with people about what's hard about our
| work.
|
| 5. Insisting on pushing improvements to open source software
| upstream if we are going to use the libraries at all. The
| company could decide it wants to write everything entirely in
| house, but as long as we are using open source software I
| personally only make changes to it that we are going to push
| back to the community.
|
| And I am sure there are more: those are just the ones I've
| used recently.
| secondcoming wrote:
| It also means getting your monthly payslip. Not a minor thing.
| julianeon wrote:
| I sort of disagree - and I think most VC's would too.
|
| The point of VC funding is not to pay salaries, really. If
| you squint it seems close enough, but it sets a terrible
| precedent that most VC's wouldn't want: looking at venture
| funding as how the company pays its bills. That's a natural
| way to read your statement - but also counterproductive &
| undesirable.
|
| The point of VC funding is to take a profitable business and
| allow it to scale. Ideally the company could turn $1 into
| $1.25, before funding; that is, ideally it's making money. It
| should be able to pay _some_ bills.
|
| The VC funding is helping it to make more money, faster, and
| shortening the loop from sales -> payment -> expansion. It's
| helping it to leapfrog its competitors. That's what that
| money should be doing.
|
| But what if it hasn't found product-market fit? Well, it's
| still not good to look at the VC's as "where our money comes
| from." That source is supposed to be customers, and you never
| want the focus to stray too far from there.
| blowski wrote:
| > The point of VC funding is to take a profitable business
| and allow it to scale.
|
| There's a heck of a lot of VC money funding only the dream
| of a profitable business.
| joecot wrote:
| Once a company takes VC funding or a buyout, or makes an IPO,
| any ethical promise they've ever made is null and void. Later
| when choices are made outside of their control, they wash their
| hands and say it's not their fault. But the founders break
| those promises at the time they take that money, when they
| willingly gave up their control. And the point of VC funding is
| always a buyout later, where all founder control will be lost
| anyway.
|
| Once you take VC, the goal of the company is never to make the
| world better or empower their employees. The goal is now solely
| to make money, by any means it can. The funders will allow you
| to do that ethically, at first. When you're not making their
| return as fast as they'd like, which you never will, the ethics
| go out the window.
| sbussard wrote:
| Key takeaway: investors ruin startups.
|
| It's that belief that still keeps me from going that route even
| while working through a regular career for several years. If the
| project succeeds, well you've already sold it to the people who
| ru(i)n the world. Bootstrapping is so expensive but you diversify
| power in tech. Don't sell out!
| thinkingemote wrote:
| There are some mapbox employees replying to comments here. I
| think some appear to be defensive of their employer, but if there
| are some who are in agreement with the article, I can't tell.
|
| It's hard to know one way or the other. Might be nice for
| employees to identify themselves.
|
| Personally I was intrigued with the formation of the union and
| knew that many of their employees were quite liberal:
|
| The company evolved from something called Development Seed -
| basically a progressive humanitarian and development focused
| company. It is different from most SV companies. And based on
| open source and open data. Them stopping key open source projects
| and charging for use of just their mapping JS library (not data
| usage, any use of the code anywhere) was shocking.
|
| I'd love to hear from an original principled humanitarian
| employee on what happened to the company and/or them. Maybe money
| is better. Maybe they left?
|
| We don't hear much about the union at all. We assume from the
| usual SV unions that it was all about identity, inclusion and
| diversity but perhaps it was more about this conflict of their
| humanitarian roots and money.
| tarkin2 wrote:
| It sounded like unionisation was an attempt at pushing back the
| ills of VC funding, especially taking back some control of the
| company's direction, rather than concentrating on fairer pay and
| working conditions. I support unions but I'm not sure I support
| them controlling the direction of the company: most of the time
| the business people, frankly, know best about profitability.
|
| The whole story reinforced the idea that if you build a company
| with value but no profits eventually you either abandon it as a
| business or give control to VCs, and if you had any emotional or
| political investment in the company you will be disappointed.
| jenny91 wrote:
| Maybe there is a middle ground? Surely VCs will fight tooth-
| and-nail against it since it's clearly taking away control (and
| some ability to extract profit) from them.
|
| For instance in some countries with stronger unions and better
| labor conditions the union often has a board seat and so can
| advocate and don't have by any means control over the directio
| of the company.
| tarkin2 wrote:
| Yeah definitely. My comment came from my understanding of
| what the author wanted the union to do rather than how unions
| could operate.
|
| As an aside, I'm slightly skeptical about unions in the US.
| The US's economic model seems to be based around innovation
| and unions arguably make making decisions slower and more
| difficult.
|
| If you look at Germany's economic model, one with very strong
| employee protection, it seems largely based on pre existing
| industries. Yet the US's seems more based on innovation and
| failing fast. And German political culture seems more
| consensual compared to US political culture.
|
| Of course, this doesn't mean I don't think unions are
| possible or a good idea in the US--for certain industries I
| think they could alleviate the US's problems--but I just
| doubt they'll readily get government backing, support or
| favorable legislation in the short term.
| jenny91 wrote:
| I agree, too strict labor regulations around e.g.
| firing/letting employess go certainly would hinder some of
| the innovation hapening in the US and especially tech.
| Though maybe there is a flavor of unions that recognizes
| this and pushes for other things e.g. proper treatment of
| contractors, or osme slight input in direction, etc?
|
| I think the US is screwed for unions mostly because to
| unionize you basically have to join one of the existing
| huge unions none of which are run very democratically or
| transparently; as well as the huge anti-union sentiment and
| misrepresentation of what unions could be. But those things
| are nigh impossible to change...
| nraynaud wrote:
| there is this deeply unsettling thing about innovation:
| it's historically been driven by people who did not need
| to work and had free time to explore.
|
| That means that innovators probably come with slackers,
| because they are secure in their standing.
| pm90 wrote:
| Im not sure that "Unions slow innovation" is true.
|
| As a counter: in tech, its the workers that generate a
| significant amount of value by writing software and
| building products. Giving them more control and a seat at
| the table can be useful in encouraging long term
| investments in lieu of extreme short term thinking that VCs
| typically promote.
| tschellenbach wrote:
| VC funding enables the high salaries in tech. You can definitely
| be bootstrapped and work 4 days a week, you'll just have a hard
| time earning your current salary.
| fny wrote:
| Once all of this unwinds, tech pay is going to get really ugly.
| mulligan wrote:
| VC funding enables the high salaries in _startups_ and that is
| because those startups are competing for talent against high
| margin, highly profitable other companies which can afford to
| pay very well.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Those startups are competing with other startups and
| ultimately VC money.
|
| There's significantly more tech talent out there than the
| business problems that can be solved profitably with said
| talent.
|
| When the VC money runs out and the "growth & engagement"
| engineering playgrounds close up shop we're going to see a
| massive readjustment. We're in the beginning of it now.
| jamiequint wrote:
| prescriptivist wrote:
| A lot of negative sentiment about Mapbox in this thread. I have
| been prototyping a (native) app powered by Mapbox -- would it be
| a bad idea to hitch oneself to their ecosystem?
| Doctor_Fegg wrote:
| Don't hitch yourself irrevocably to their SaaS. Make sure that,
| if your app becomes successful, you can swap out for Maplibre
| (the open-source fork of Mapbox GL) and an alternative provider
| such as Thunderforest, Geofabrik, Stadia or Maptiler. Mapbox
| have a lot going for them, but your app's success shouldn't be
| dependent on one company's tariff.
| iamleppert wrote:
| Blame your leadership for creating such a bloated company that
| the only thing to satiate investors was to sell out completely to
| auto companies. I interviewed at Mapbox at one time, a ridiculous
| 3-day interview at their SF office where lots of PM's and
| managers were buzzing around hosting meetings, giving the
| perception of getting stuff done when in fact it was even clear
| to me, an outsider, that nothing was being accomplished. I found
| the product to be lacking and the team to be outsized for the
| quality and depth of the product. The core business appeared very
| weak and on VC life-support.
| urschrei wrote:
| I can't speak to the organizational problems you saw, but when
| you consider the quality of software that Mapbox was producing
| before the failed union drive - Mapbox GL JS, Rasterio, Shapely
| - what you're saying is nonsensical. The latter two libraries
| have of course left Mapbox, along with their creator, and
| continue to see high-quality new features, but Mapbox GL JS is
| still so much better than anything else that I continue to use
| and pay for it, even though my friends and acquaintances were
| the people who quit after Mapbox management torpedoed the union
| drive (note: I'm relying on the current NLRB complaint against
| Mapbox here: https://www.nlrb.gov/case/20-CA-283393) and I hope
| that one day I'll have an alternative.
| urschrei wrote:
| Oh and I forgot to add that Vladimir Agafonkin and Morgan
| Herlocker's JS libraries (earcut, rbush, delaunator, turf,
| polylabel) have dragged state of the art spatial analysis
| into the browser to an extent that won't be equalled again in
| the foreseeable future. Just a ridiculously deep bench.
| deadmansshoes wrote:
| Shapely was around long before Mapbox, and Rasterio too. Both
| are based on stalwarts of the open source geospatial world -
| GEOS and GDAL.
|
| Vector tiles, Mapbox GL, and Mapbox styling, and numerous
| other libraries however did grow out of Mapbox - the amount
| of geospatial developer talent they hoovered up must have
| made it pretty amazing to work at for a time.
| urschrei wrote:
| I am not claiming otherwise, having been a Shapely user
| since...2012? I'm talking about the work done by Sean et al
| while they were at Mapbox.
| trgn wrote:
| Mapbox has had an incredible influence on geo software
| development for the web.
|
| Hats off to everybody who made it happen.
| mourner wrote:
| With this much saltiness, it's not hard to guess the result of
| that interview :)
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| It's possible to interview at a company and decide that it's
| not for you, and frankly I wish I'd done that more often over
| the years. I used to be more inclined to ignore the little
| voice saying "aren't these warning signs?", accepted the
| offer anyway, and quickly realized the little voice had
| absolutely been right.
| ukFxqnLa2sBSBf6 wrote:
| > where lots of PM's and managers were buzzing around hosting
| meetings, giving the perception of getting stuff done when in
| fact it was even clear to me, an outsider, that nothing was
| being accomplished
|
| How could you possibly come to this conclusion while on an
| interview loop? Did you sit in on all these meetings?
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