[true_religion]

If you look at trade unions, you see that walkouts, work slow downs and temporary strikes are commonly used.

The goal is never to destroy the company but to simply force them to the bargaining table by reminding them of the economic power workers provide.

A total strike or worse a union quitting a company all together is a nuclear option.

[xiphias2]

It may work with physical work, but at FANG companies software engineers will just make up for it on the weekends at nights. Stack ranking works wonderfully at making engineers to compete in working as much as they can (which is not a bad thing, just how the system works).

[pydry]

Stack ranking causes political backstabbers to rise to the top and filters out the conscientious. It probably functions well enough in companies that are fundamentally extractive, but it will put a company that is supposed to innovate on a self destructive spiral.

Microsoft improved a lot ever since it dumped stack ranking.

[xiphias2]

Microsoft was using per team stack ranking, Google global stack ranking. That's a huge difference I think. The problem is that the managers go to the promotion commitees and started exchanging promotions with eachother, so the system that was working before doesn't work anymore.

[true_religion]

All that stuff sounds like systematic abuses that a union would reduce.

The problem of the effectiveness of Facebook employee walkouts stems from the fact that they aren’t a real union, so the employer can just force them to make it up without providing for any additional compensation.

Any protest is a null option until the whole thing catalyzes and they form a union to address the repeated disregard the company shows them.

The only way for the company to avoid this is to self regulate or at least pay lip service to buy more time.

[xiphias2]

,,All that stuff sounds like systematic abuses that a union would reduce.''

It doesn't always feel like it when you get an above average salary. Also it really depends on the team, how much the tech lead and the manager can push back to external requests...I don't see how adding even more politics can solve political issues. The fact that it's super easy to move between teams is much more important than anything the union could achieve.

[gfodor]

This wasn’t a labor dispute about being treated fairly but a position employees were taking on principles. The truly principled walked out and didn’t come back.