[erlich]

This is such a crazy and enraging read. If you don’t like your job, go join another company. It’s not as if devs don’t have plenty of high paying choices out there.

Especially for a startup that had struggled to find market fit, the last thing they need is a union.

Companies are not democracies and setting up a union is a hostile action. It basically says: here are the things we want and if we don’t get them we all stop working. If you want to run the company differently go setup your own company or buy some shares.

[sclv]

Yes, companies are not democracies. That's why we need unions! That's the only way to exercise our collective power to negotiate with the employer on more equal terms. When we negotiate individually we also say "here are the things we want, and that is our condition of work." There is _always_ a conflict between what employees want, which involves wages and conditions, and what employers want, which is getting the most work while yielding the least in wages and conditions.

Unions in tech are as possible and necessary as unions anywhere else. Nothing about being it tech makes us "special" and the whole mythology it does only serves to keep us from organizing and solidifying our conditions and strength.

[kodah]

I think the problem unions face in tech is that, for most developers, salary isn't an issue. Benefits probably aren't an issue either. What people in tech want to unionize to do is a bar far higher than the average union, they want to steer the direction of the company, they want to pick and choose what they work on, etc... all while struggling with the idea that tech is a very diverse landscape in terms of politics, and the language of people who create unions don't speak kindly to them all.

[erlich]

The market sorts out wages and conditions. I will assume you are not talking about developers because they have so many choices at all different salary ranges that are higher than many other industries.

Contractors in minimum wage roles would be the only candidate for unions.

[Apocryphon]

You must not have heard about the situation at many large video game studios. Can be pretty dire there.

[andrewmutz]

Why are unions necessary at tech startups? From my experience, these companies pay and treat their employees very well.

[slively]

This argument that “if you don’t like it you can leave” is just too simple, and not in good faith. There are more options in the world than staying and going, and there’s more to it than not liking a job. I encourage you to stop thinking so black and white and have the courage to live in the grey area, because that’s where reality lies.

It’s amazing how easy it is for all of us to just take for granted that we are powerless at work and the only way to gain power is to create a company and disempower others.

Is it so hard to imagine doing it differently?

[Apocryphon]

Even if you believe companies should not be democracies, and should be autocracies, what if there's incompetent autocrats at the top who are objectively hurting the company? Should the average employee rollover and pray that the board raises a fuss? What if management holds the majority shares?

It is completely baffling that people who otherwise decry the government as a pack of dictatorial bureaucrats turn a blind eye when corporations internally act the same way, complete with lavish amounts of wasteful spending.

[billyhoffman]

It’s really easy to leave a company If you become disheartened or don’t agree with their direction. It’s virtually impossible to leave your country.

[cyphar]

Sure, it's easy unless:

* You are dependent on your employer for your work visa; * You are dependent on your employer for your health insurance (US-specific problem); * You have don't have much experience in industry and thus will not easily be able to find a similar job; * You don't have enough savings to be able to be unemployed for a period of time while you find another job (doubly so if you have dependents or you have a non-compete agreement which would make you unemployable for a significant amount of time); * You have a criminal record that makes hiring far more difficult; or * There are few competitors in the space where you have expertise (or the few competitors you do have wouldn't hire you for one reason or another).

There is a very large number of people which would fall under at least one of the above points.

[erlich]

They are good points.

But unions also risk making it harder for these people to find jobs in the first place.

[Apocryphon]

Yeah, yeah, the right of exit and all that. But that's still overlooking that companies, especially the most successful ones, start to resemble the exact same kind of institutions that those who are the most pro-private sector decry.

[anamexis]

I am curious what you find enraging about this article.

He clearly didn't want to go join another company – he joined Mapbox because he shared its early vision, and thought that original vision was worth fighting for.

[erlich]

He provides no ideas that would help the company succeed and find profitability. Only vague mention of returning to open source and that focusing on cars is bad because it bad for the environment.

The company raised a huge amount of cash and needs to make money to survive. The mistake was probably raising too much money.

So somehow, he thinks that the projects his colleagues „believe in“ are going to be more profitable than what they are currently working on. Do they have a business plan? Have they spoken to customers? It’s just so naive.

And it’s important to note that while they raised and spent a huge amount of money, they sucked up all the talent and probably prevented other competitors from emerging in the space. So we shouldn’t feel so sorry for them. They were privileged to have so much money available to them when others didn’t.

But I won’t lie, it’s always nice to have VC money dumped into open source work while it lasts.

[anamexis]

> He provides no ideas that would help the company succeed and find profitability. Only vague mention of returning to open source and that focusing on cars is bad because it bad for the environment.

That doesn't strike me as the point of the blog post. He's not trying to tell us all the things he would have done differently, he's telling us what went wrong and why he left.

[Apocryphon]

He does go into his anti-car personal views a bit much, but he also suggests that focusing on auto tech is a dead end because Google and Apple dominate that for the mapping space. Is he wrong?

> Do they have a business plan? Have they spoken to customers? It’s just so naive.

If things are going downhill, isn't it more naive to believe that the current people overseeing that have the right idea?

[M2Ys4U]

>He provides no ideas that would help the company succeed and find profitability.

He didn't provide any ideas in this blog post, but that doesn't imply he doesn't have any ideas.

[worik]

> setting up a union is a hostile action

No it is not.

All stake holders matter. Some stake holders have power, some do not. Unions (when they work) balance that.

[int_19h]

Companies should be democratic and worker-owned; every single one of them.

And yes, you're right - setting up a union is a hostile action towards owners of the capital. And we need more such hostile actions to give control over capital to the people who actually use it to produce wealth, as opposed to the moochers who collect economic rent from it by virtue of abstract ownership claim.

[devmunchies]

from the article:

> A company like Mapbox hadn’t ever unionized before, so it seemed like an exciting experiment

Regardless of one's views on unionization, in this scenario as an underdog competing with 2 multi-trillion dollar companies in the space (Apple and Google), this "exiting experiment" reasoning seems especially reckless, irresponsible, and naive.

IMO, at such a small company like mapbox, it's akin to mutiny.

[Apocryphon]

Oh no, mutiny in tech? Not as if that hasn't been a good move before (e.g. the Traitorous Eight, or the ousting of Jobs).

[devmunchies]

> Traitorous Eight

employees who left and started a competitor? how is that mutiny?

> ousting of Jobs

technically, the board had the voting power, and he wasn't even CEO. Generals removing a lieutenant isn't mutiny. If anything, he was planning a coup (mutiny) himself.

[Apocryphon]

Desertion isn't mutiny now? Acquiring Jobs' splinter cell, and making him a general, isn't rewarding his attempted mutiny?

[devmunchies]

either way, your examples resulted in employees leaving and starting a competitor, which were net positive for the industry. They didn't create a union. They grew the industry as a whole which was better than any union could do at the time.

[Apocryphon]

You are right in saying they created a net positive, and I am right in asserting that mutiny is not always a bad thing, which you are wrong on.

[spamizbad]

The thing is these companies use humanist language in their mission statements, recruitment pitches, and marketing. Every time someone says their startup is "going to change the world" or "revolutionize how we do X" they are tapping into the humanist well to promote their business.

I would be far less sympathetic to the author if Mapbox avoided humanist language in their marketing and recruitment of personnel. But that's the language the company chose. Turns out if you say shit like "We are using technology to better the world" people are going to actually hold you to it!

Anyway, I feel like there's sort of this culture clash going on in the tech industry between Gen-X cynicism - where all that flowery humanist language is delivered with an unsaid "wink and a nudge" and millennial earnestness, where they take people at their word.

If you're a founder seeking to avoid this kind of stuff I would recommend not gilding the lily and be very up-front about what kind of business you're trying to build. Strip out faux-humanism from your mission statement and avoid it when recruiting. If the people doing the purchasing of your product are under 40 however you'll probably need to keep it in your marketing however. Do this in the beginning and not when you've already hired hundreds of employees.

[Aeolun]

> I would be far less sympathetic to the author if Mapbox avoided humanist language in their marketing and recruitment of personnel

I think this is why I can still sort of respect Amazon. They’re very clear about who they are and what they stand for.