[x0x0]

I have to wonder if this isn't an attempt to co-opt the movement started by @TechSolidarity / Maciej.

I also think -- particularly if the HN audience is in any way representative -- that engineering in particular is far too deeply bought into the narrative of the rights of capital owners to unionize. Much like America, we think we're all temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

I'm well aware unions aren't perfect. But they are a countervailing center of power who work for employees. The relationship between the employeed and the employers is a fundamentally contentious relationship: sometimes your incentives align, but often they don't. See eg things like the option trap vs 10 year exercise periods, or even founders getting millions of cash off the table while employees get $0. Much like how VCs can whine all they want, founders get better deals because of economic forces such as decreased engineering costs from open source software and better tooling, more capital seeking investment, etc; employee unions are a way to better the outcome of the employees themselves.

[ThrowawayR2]

> Much like America, we think we're all temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

The reason that old canard doesn't carry a lot of weight around SV and the other tech hubs is that a lot of rank-and file, non-manager techies actually _are_ millionaires.

[eli_gottlieb]

"A lot" if you measure in absolute numbers. Very few if you measure in percentages. Remember, the median salary for a tech worker stagnated between 2000 and roughly 2012 or so, and even since then has only really risen because a few huge firms pay high salaries. Your average tech-worker still makes an upper-middle class salary that won't even buy a house in the Bay Area, Seattle, New York, or Boston.

[x0x0]

Exactly.

All the rampant stupidity on here and elsewhere about how well tech employees are supposedly paid is simple to vanquish: divide by the median home price within a 30 minute commute of the office.

[alphonsegaston]

While the capital class makes billions off their backs, colludes with each other to restrict wages and labor mobility, and exploits H1-B subcontractors to do more of the same.

Why settle for this?

[ThrowawayR2]

> While the capital class makes billions off their backs, colludes with each other to restrict wages and labor mobility, and exploits H1-B subcontractors to do more of the same.

You do realize that you're on a site run by Y Combinator, where a few people with an idea can transform into a multi-million dollar startup or even a multi-billion dollar business[0] for all to see? It should be rather self-evident why tired, old classist rhetoric doesn't get taken very seriously, particularly on a startup-oriented site like HN.

"Why settle for this?" I ask you in turn: why would anyone in SV settle for the stifling mediocrity and onerous rules of a union when millions are out there to be had for any with the courage and drive to try for it?

[0] "Including more than 400 active companies–Dropbox, Airbnb, Reddit, Stripe, Twitch, Homejoy and more–the market capitalization of Y Combinator startups exceeds $30 billion, according to the accelerator's president, Sam Altman." -- https://www.fastcompany.com/3033215/the-value-of-y-combinato...

[alphonsegaston]

>You do realize that you're on a site run by Y Combinator, where a few people with an idea can transform into a multi-million dollar startup or even a multi-billion dollar busineas

Of course. Why preach to the converted? And if you think "classists arguments" are outdated in an era of inequality unseen in the US since the 19th century, perhaps look more to history.

>why would anyone in SV settle for the stifling mediocrity and onerous rules of a union when millions are out there to be had for any with the courage and drive to try for it?

Because under the conditions of contemporary Capitalism, believing in venture capital as your ladder to the moon is as mythically fictitious as your description of unions.

Don't get me wrong - technology and its impact on society is as revolutionary as was industrialization. But it's also obvious that a similar class of robber barons is attempting to subvert this revolution into a new Gilded Age. In that era, the laboring classes, through their solidarity and protest, stopped their children and families from being worked to death, their land being poisoned, and generally having their futures stolen from them. What you have the privilege of calling "stifling mediocrity" is only because of their sacrifice.

[ThrowawayR2]

> Because under the conditions of contemporary Capitalism, believing in venture capital as your ladder to the moon is as mythically fictitious as your description of unions.

We have before us, in the form of Y Combinator and other accelerators, many examples of successful businesses started using VC by ordinary people such as you and I. And, as a former resident of Detroit, I quite assure you that my portrayal of unions comes from observing their behavior over quite some time and I am far from alone in having first-hand experience with their, shall we say, drawbacks. So forgive me if I fail to see the "mythically ficticious" bits here.

I will agree that many modern worker protections do stem from the risks taken and sacrifices made by organized labor nearly a century ago and that we ought all to be grateful for that indeed. However, that was then, this is now. History is fine but what unions are in the United States today is something that many software professionals, including myself, don't wish to be a part of.

[eli_gottlieb]

>We have before us, in the form of Y Combinator and other accelerators, many examples of successful businesses started using VC by ordinary people such as you and I.

Well no. We have many examples of successful businesses started using VC by people with family money to subsidize away the risk to their living expenses.

[diyorgasms]

Right. Even at the top of the shit pile you're still standing in shit.