[shareometry]

> A great example of how working people have more power than they think if they're willing to risk dollars and cents for matters of right and wrong.

I believe this is key. If more folks at more organizations were brave like this and willing to take the risk, a good chunk of the problems our civilization is facing might be greatly improved.

[kiliantics]

Worker's unions helped win the majority of our rights in modern democracies. I wish this fact was more widely appreciated.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Worker's unions helped win the majority of our rights in modern democracies. I wish this fact was more widely appreciated.

The problem with modern unions, particularly in tech, is that the legacy structure is inapt for current problems. Tech workers don't need a union to negotiate compensation, they're compensated fine already. They don't need a huge bureaucratic structure for engaging in long-term detailed negotiations. They don't need a contract at all.

What they need is a no-dues no-fulltime-union-reps union that operates through direct democracy. It does nothing unless the employer is doing something bad wrong. Then if the majority of the union members vote to refuse, either the employer concedes or they strike.

Because it's not about a thousand little things here, it's about a small number of big things. It needs to be able to address those and then go back to being invisible instead of succumbing to feature creep and destroying the host with overhead and principal-agent problems as we've seen with the auto makers.

[cultus]

> Tech workers don't need a union to negotiate compensation, they're compensated fine already.

Software one of the highest margins of any industry. They can afford to pay more, especially since they are constantly whining about "shortages" of tech workers.

http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/...

[AnthonyMouse]

> They can afford to pay more

Which is why they already do pay more than other industries.

The best argument you have against that is the anti-poaching shenanigans they've engaged in -- but that's already illegal, so the answer there is a courtroom rather than a union.

[ygjb]

No, it really isn't. The court requires someone to notice the pattern, or be aware of the pattern, and be willing to risk their reputation. With a union, the onus is on the business to act right, or risk labour action where the SRE folks walk out, and all the little blinky lights turn off.

[AnthonyMouse]

> The court requires someone to notice the pattern, or be aware of the pattern

How is that different with a union?

> and be willing to risk their reputation

Class action suit or submit evidence confidentially to the attorney general.

> With a union, the onus is on the business to act right, or risk labour action where the SRE folks walk out, and all the little blinky lights turn off.

If Apple won't hire Google employees then the Google employees can retaliate against Apple by not working for them?

[tomlock]

> they're compensated fine already.

I disagree, given the massive cash reserves the tech companies have.

Yes, having a higher salary would be ridiculous in a lot of these cases, but we should moderate that through legislation that benefits the most people - not by a public company further lining the coffers of its owners.

Apple and Google particularly have a lot of cash just lying around, and that cash is the result of the employee's efforts, and they deserve it. I think if we think their salaries are too high in that case, we need to talk about better taxation systems.

[AnthonyMouse]

> I disagree, given the massive cash reserves the tech companies have.

They have massive cash reverses because the tax laws have encouraged that rather than paying it to shareholders as dividends. And that level of return is necessary because of the nature of the industry -- you have to spend millions of dollars trying to create the next tech giant before you know whether you've succeeded or not, and most of the time you haven't. The returns to success have to be enough to overcome the high failure rate.

Most of the employees aren't taking the same level of risk. If you work for a company for five years taking home a six figure salary and that company fails, you don't have to give back your salary and in a few months you're working for another company making the same amount of money.

If you think you can do better on your own, risking your own time and money instead of taking outside investment, go right ahead -- but then shouldn't it be you who gets more of the reward if you succeed rather than the people you hire in after you're already an established success?

[tomlock]

On the one hand it sounds like you're saying that software engineers are paid enough already, then on the other hand you're saying you think the compensation given to the software engineers that founded the company - which is much MUCH higher than that of the average company engineer is appropriate.

It feels like what you're saying is that the risk of failing in a startup is massive enough for a founder that they deserve literally billions of dollars.

Could you let me know exactly what risks you think a failing startup founder faces that would entitle them to say, a thousand times more dollars than the average salaried employee? Are you saying that because a founder may go bankrupt they are entitled to thousands of times more money? Does this mean that any individual that takes out a loan larger than their assets to start a business is entitled to thousands of times more money than their average employee? Could you help me understand what makes you think that?

[AnthonyMouse]

> On the one hand it sounds like you're saying that software engineers are paid enough already, then on the other hand you're saying you think the compensation given to the software engineers that founded the company - which is much MUCH higher than that of the average company engineer is appropriate.

Of course, because the level of risk is different. $100,000 guaranteed is worth more than a <50% chance at $200,000, much less a <1% chance. A very high reward is inherently necessary to offset the very low probability of major success, otherwise people aren't going to do it.

> Could you let me know exactly what risks you think a failing startup founder faces that would entitle them to say, a thousand times more dollars than the average salaried employee?

The less than one in a thousand chance of making that much.

> Does this mean that any individual that takes out a loan larger than their assets to start a business is entitled to thousands of times more money than their average employee?

There are many ways to turn a thousand dollars into a 0.1% chance at a million dollars. Then 99.9% of the time you lose the thousand dollars -- and it's your time/money, not the bank's. Nobody is going to give you an unsecured loan to gamble with.

But if you bet on your own horse at 1000:1 odds and win, how are you not entitled to the proceeds?

[kiliantics]

If tech workers form a union, I'm sure it will look very different to the industrial worker's unions of the 20th century. And so it should, the needs of today are very different. The thing is, apart from the remaining unions from that time, most unions already look very different to that model so this is not really a good argument against unionising.

The other thing you aren't taking into account is the fact that this boom in the tech industry isn't guaranteed to continue forever. There will come a time, maybe pretty soon, where tech workers will become as precarious as those steel workers and autoworkers eventually became. Big tech companies are already putting a lot of effort and resources into educating the next generation of programmers to provide a more competitive labour market and drive down salaries. There's already talk of a coming recession, where I'm sure the belts will be tightened and people will be laid off. When we have a union, we will be more protected from the inevitable exploitation in such scenarios.

The temporarily embarassed unicorn founders among us need to realise that we are the creators of all the value in these companies and, collectively, we have the power to influence their direction and impact on society. We can help secure not only our own rights as workers but also have the power to change society at large and secure better standards of living for all workers (or non-workers). That's why these recent actions by Google employees have been so important. They can set a precedent for how other companies and even states can safely act in future, without fearing repercussions from their most valuable resource - the workers.

[ineedasername]

How do you get and pay for the infrastructure of this direct democracy without resources paid for by dues? How do you get the minority in any vote to go along with the result when there isn't any common binding agreement such as a contract that enforces majority rule?

[AnthonyMouse]

> How do you get and pay for the infrastructure of this direct democracy without resources paid for by dues?

The technology needed to let people submit proposals and let other people vote on them is on the level what individuals do over a weekend as adjunct to a side project.

> How do you get the minority in any vote to go along with the result when there isn't any common binding agreement such as a contract that enforces majority rule?

Why do you need to force them to? By definition the majority will already agree, and then many in the minority would participate out of solidarity because that's the whole point of joining a union to begin with. You don't need 100.0%, a large majority is quite sufficient in general. And anything that actually required 100.0% is already lost, because then they could pay off the cheapest defector or contract it out.

[ineedasername]

The technology to submit and receive votes on proposals is only trivial until you think about the details, especially those required for security and authentication.

And your picture of humam behavior is all too rose-colored glasses if it's having all members of a minority vote just go along out of solidarity when it's non-binding. I've seen unions vote on issues, and it's often contentious with emotions running high on all sides. If the losing side in any of those could have just said "nope" to accepting the result, they would have. Sometimes they try to anyway.

[AnthonyMouse]

> The technology to submit and receive votes on proposals is only trivial until you think about the details, especially those required for security and authentication.

This is a major problem for country-level populations. For corporations it typically comes pre-solved by the corporation itself, because each employee would have a company email address or Active Directory account etc. that could be used for authentication. (In theory the corporation could illegally tamper with the results that way, but the tampering would be immediately obvious to the person whose vote was changed.)

> If the losing side in any of those could have just said "nope" to accepting the result, they would have.

Because they're using the union for the wrong stuff. A lot of the votes would be for things like accepting a policy that gives raises to only senior people. No doubt the junior people being screwed over by that policy would strenuously object when they're the 49%, especially when being in the union deprives them of the opportunity to negotiate something else as an individual.

But how many Google employees have that kind of personal stake in a question like whether to censor search results in China?

[tracker1]

Unions are rarely formed unless conditions are particularly bad. One upon a time in this country, the national guard with machine guns might have been called out to clear a strike/protest. Most people are very happy being ignorant of their surroundings or influence of.

The most I've ever done is threaten to quit if a project for the RIAA was accepted by my employer when I was invited into the pre-pitch meeting. It just depends on a specific case.

[kiliantics]

I'm part of a very privileged workforce and our situation, while not great, was a lot better than the average worker. We still managed to form a union. It can be done.

[petee]

I wish more people knew that workers fought and died for those rights.

Its one thing to say maybe you'll quit, or skip your pay check for change, its another to actually put your life on the line for what you know is right.

[pompousprick]

Since China is known for its countless human rights violations, Are these Google employees also going to...

1. Give up their Chinese-Manufactured iPhones/Android Phones? Tablets? Laptops and workstations??

2. Give up watching movies/shows on their Chinese-manufactured TVs??

3. Stop wearing Chinese-made iwatches/fitbits/etc.??

4. Boycott silicon valley startups that have accepted chinese investments?

5. Boycott every product by US/Foreign company (Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, GE, Disney, Chevron, Exxon, Shell, etc.) doing business in China?

[colordrops]

There's a difference between boycotting products made in China and protesting against building technologies that enable dictatorial regimes. They do not deserve to be conflated.

[derangedHorse]

They're not "enabling" a dictatorial regime, they're just following the laws of a foreign government. Making a censored search engine isn't "supporting" the government, it's just abiding by it.

[PeterisP]

A censored search engine is a direct instrument of oppression.

Contracting to build a censored search engine is the moral equivalent of contracting to build a barbed wire fence around a concentration camp.

You're being an active participant that directly assists in making that oppression happen by building tools required for the actual act of oppression, as opposed to building something that merely done in the same country.

[sullyj3]

"You're not allowed to do anything good ever if you're not already a maximally good person. That would make you a hypocrite, which is way worse than someone who doesn't do anything to help in the first place."

[derangedHorse]

I don't understand the context in which you're posting this quote. pompousprick's argument was that we shouldn't morally prosecute these companies as supporting dictatorships just because they do business in China.

[jpster]

Bargaining power. (Organized) working humans have it...but it will erode as robots and algorithms take on more and more work. An argument for striking while the iron is hot. (No pun intended.)

[profalseidol]

Historically, whenever there's advancement in technology. Powers that control the current will get challenged, and so far, it has been for the better for the majority.

We've gone a long way from being serfs who have almost no rights, even the right to read and write.. to citizens who can communicate via the internet.

Advancement in technology will/have make current powers obsolete. Robots and algorithms have been taking more work since the stone age.

Better tools, means more surplus, means more time to think critically, more time to comment over the internet, or read books.

The only problem is that we probably won't see any observable improvement in one lifetime. It is however, also very possible that the incumbent powers put an end to our civilization. Hopefully enough people like these Google employees, Snowden, Assange will be there to stop fascism.

[kiliantics]

I think technology has allowed power to become more and more concentrated. Never before has one state had the power to annihilate entire cities, or land entire armies worth of troops at any point on earth within 24 hours. Never before have large and powerful organisations and governments had the capability to read every word that every person sends to each other and track their every motion around the city with cameras.

Yes there is more surplus, but where is that going? People in developed societies are working more hours now than they were 100 years ago. Wealth inequality has risen to higher levels than ever existed in modern society. I wish it gave me more time to read books...

We definitely need to be more engaged in resisting these dangerous tendencies, particularly with recent political developments. I think organised tech workers have immense power. If Google employees could formalise their current actions and then even unite with other groups across other companies, they would be a force to be reckoned with.

[Lkjhmnbv]

Corruption is a bottom up process.

It only works if everyone goes along.

Be brave and stand up for yourself, what do you have to lose?