[ditonal]

So tired of companies that raise hundreds of millions from some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world trying to pull the “we’re a startup” card. You’re not two dudes eating ramen in a garage and you don’t get to use that image to excuse your shitty behavior.

Also tired of the “other people in poverty are exploited even worse! You asking for basic labor protections shows your lack of empathy for them!”

I’m seriously having a hard time imagining any of this was written in good faith.

The real solution is, and always will be, collective bargaining. These VCs aren’t going to make sure you have healthcare. They could give it to you directly, or they could use their wealth and power to make sure the government gives it to you.

People ask “what can a union do? My office already has free kombucha”. Imagine if all the SWEs at all these VCs backed companies went on strike unless the laid off Convoy employees got six months of healthcare (it would have been in the initial employment contract). The money for this stuff would magically materialize. It doesn’t materialize because there’s no organization to advocate for it, it’s that simple.

[JumpCrisscross]

> tired of companies that raise hundreds of millions from some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world trying to pull the “we’re a startup” card

But they are one! If those wealthy people were getting perks in this failure, the way e.g. workers at Good got screwed, I'd agree with you. But if you're running with massive fixed costs and volatile revenue, knowing whether you're weeks or months from shutdown is difficult.

And again, people are assuming if he shut down six months ago everyone could have gotten severance. Convoy is $100+ million in debt. Wages are privileged; new severance obligations are not.

> real solution is, and always will be, collective bargaining

The closer solution is civic participation. How many people in Silicon Valley have written to their state elected to raise unemployment benefits? (Note: I'm not saying anyone deserves what's happening. But union participation in America is stubborn and dropping. We need another drum to beat.)

[slt2021]

I was with you until you mentioned unions.

tech is fundamentally incompatible with unions for several reasons:

  1. it will drive down the wages and give power to just another bureacracy
  2. Union participation does not differentiate between highly skilled (and sought after) tech worker, from mediocre tech worker who gets by using copilot and chatgpt
  3. I dont need union to negotiate with company on my behalf - I can negotiate by myself just fine
  4. If startup goes bust - I can easily find a job at another startup, probably will even get a pay raise - just because my skills are highly sought after and in demand. There is literally zero upside for me that union can do
  5. I dont want to share my specialist employee's power with faceless union burearacy

I know what it means to be a union worker - and trust me, it will never gonna work in software engineering

[sangnoir]

Here's a point by point rebuttal:

  1. Hollywood unions disprove this 
  2. Hollywood unions (SAG, DGA) disprove this
  3. Unions don't mean you can no longer negotiate. DiCaprio still does 
  4. One upside: Unions represent members who are no longer able to work
  5. Hollywood unions have some pretty specialized folk and it works well for them

As an individual - you only bargaining chip is your ability to do work. If you lose capacity to work - temporarily or otherwise - you lose the ability to negotiate. Unions don't suffer from that weakness.

The things you can negotiate for are capped at the value of your work. You can't forbid your employer from replacing you/your teammates with AI foe instance, but unions can, because the collective value of their output is beyond what the employers may gain from ML models. Not so on the individual level.

[slt2021]

You skipped the downsides of hollywood unionization:

Cost of hiring increases and there are fewer gigs around. Unionisation adds nontrivial transaction costs, so there will be fewer opportunities for new entrants, and fierce competition among existing workers for shrinking number of gigs.

For example look at how women actors get their cast roles with harvey weinstein studio - did union protect them from sexual predators?

Look at average unionized actor - very few are making big bucks, most are just surviving and have other day jobs.

UAW workers are still at the mercy of their employers, and are only dragging their companies down, while non-unionized automakers are taking over market share.

I am totally fine that my bargaining chip is my ability to work - it is the only austainable way. Otherwise there will be a lot of useless dead weights who dont contribute to the topline, and leech off of bottomline. (There is already unemployment for this use case).

Look at NYC MTA - all unionized and completely inefficient, unionisation can only work in monopoly situation.

Tech in the other hand is high growth particularly because all monopolies are being attacked by more flexible and lean startups.

Hollywood is not growing at all, while big tech is carrying the whole world

[nl]

> Hollywood is not growing at all

Well this certainly isn't true. Hollywood has grown hugely over the last 20 years (with a massive crash during COVID):

https://www.statista.com/statistics/271856/global-box-office...

It looks like it is on track to recover completely this year:

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/

[slt2021]

you are looking at the wrong stuff, box office revenues go to Motion Picture companies and Hollywood fat cats like harvey weinstein.

just look at labor data: it is not pretty. $28/hr mean pay in Hollywood! Much less in other areas.

There is a reason why successful actors prefer to become producers/directors: because it pays better to be your own boss, rather than be at a mercy of union. and you don't have to engage in high end prostituion and literally sell your ass to people like Weinstein and Epstein, just to get a role at a high profile movie.

https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes272011.htm

[JumpCrisscross]

SAG really is a gold-standard union. Critically, it has a monopoly to multiple buyers of its talent. (Sort of like the UAW.) Single-employer unions are more constrained.

[idiotsecant]

You're taking a remarkably short sighted position here. Blacksmiths and cobblers were once highly in demand workers as well. Do you really think writing code is such a special beautiful skill that it's immune to the same forces of automation?

Software development is a trade skill, like any other. We're in a very brief window of time where it's a very lucrative skill to have. Don't expect that to last forever. When that stops being the case you'll want something between you and the harder facts of life that you might have had the privilege of ignoring for a while. There's a reason people bled and died to make these organizations. The moment it's possible the capital class will grind you into a fine paste and sell you in tubes to make a few extra percent on the quarterly financials.

[eru]

> You're taking a remarkably short sighted position here. Blacksmiths and cobblers were once highly in demand workers as well. Do you really think writing code is such a special beautiful skill that it's immune to the same forces of automation?

No, but that's not required for the argument. Do you think any amount of unionisation would have forced society to keep lots of well paid blacksmiths and cobblers around?

(And if the answer to that is Yes, isn't that an argument against tolerating unions?)

[slt2021]

I am not at the mercy of my employer or capitalist class for that matter.

And I will be the first one to automate my job and reap the benefits of automation myself.

This is the way of life - if you cannot adapt - those more flexible, more adaptable, smarter, younger, hungrier - will eat your lunch.

There is no way any tech union can enforce monopoly, because there will always be new entrants ( ew grads) and offshore workers and immigrants willing to take the job, if union workers decide to strike.

In fact, I will be the first one to create outsourcing and offshoring consulting company to help companies fight unionisation.

This is the way of capitalism, the way of life. Smarter, faster, nimbler will get larger piece of the pie.

If union is willing to get $xxx mln in labor costs from a company, I will happily help this company fight unionisation for a fraction of that - to drive unions out of business while pocketing the profits by myself

[idiotsecant]

I hate to break it to you but if your job is automatable it won't be you reaping the benefits, it will be the people who have the most capital to deploy automating. That ain't you buddy, sorry. Your world view is basically peak HN techbro-iterianisim. I hope you never get the opportunity to experience exactly how wrong you are.

[slt2021]

it shows that you have zero experience in automation, because no high value job is fully automatable.

Human augmented+automation will always be more superior/flexible/valuable and large corporations with a lot of capital will never be able to be as flexible and nimble for all customers and all their use cases, as a small player like myself can be

[eru]

I want to agree with you, but:

> it shows that you have zero experience in automation, because no high value job is fully automatable.

That's sort-of a tautology. What used to be a high value job can become a lower value job with some automation, and then be automated completely later.

Up to about a hundred years ago, many reasonably well-off people in the US and Europe used to have domestic servants. Those jobs could go to fairly high levels of skills and value. Nimbleness was rewarded. (But to be fair, they also could go down to pretty menial labour.)

Nowadays even really well-off people barely have any domestic servants. Instead they have dishwashers and vacuum cleaners and order their food delivered to their doorstep, and perhaps hire a part time cleaner for a few hours a week.

[kortilla]

You sure make a lot of declarations about who is right and wrong and the poster is literally talking about their job. Is it possible you want unions in software so badly that you’re blind to successful models that work without them?

Physicians and Lawyers have been around forever and they don’t unionize.

[slt2021]

technically they dont unionize, but they have cartel that regulates supply of specialists to the market (State Bar for lawyers and State Medical Board for doctors).

the reason why healthcare is such a mess and so expensive - is because Medical Board artificially limits supply of doctors to the market, by allowing very very few Medical Residencies perspecialty. This severely limits supply of doctors, keeps their pay high and leads to ever increasing cost of medical care for patients

[eru]

> The real solution is, and always will be, collective bargaining.

As long as I can opt-out of your collective bargaining (both as a worker and as a founder), I don't care what you bargain for.

[kortilla]

Raising lots of money doesn’t mean it’s a sustainable business. I don’t think you know the colloquial definition of startup in Silicon Valley.

Raising millions doesn’t mean making millions either. If you took a bunch of investor money and just paid it all out to your employees and closed up shop that’s a misappropriation of funds.

> Imagine if all the SWEs at all these VCs backed companies went on strike unless the laid off Convoy employees got six months of healthcare

Why would they do that? I’m not going to go on strike because other employees are incapable of understanding the risks of joining an unprofitable company that is default dead. If you want 6 months of paid healthcare, quote it and demand it as a signing bonus before you start.

Startups blow up. It’s your responsibility to prepare for it. Established companies blow up too. Sometimes you even just get fired because you suck.

SWEs have zero excuse to not have saved enough money to pay for cobra for six months if things fall apart.

[cma]

> Imagine if all the SWEs at all these VCs backed companies went on strike unless the laid off Convoy employees got six months of healthcare (it would have been in the initial employment contract).

Congress made secondary strikes illegal a long time ago. Maybe it would still be OK since that wouldn't technically be cross-industry; I'm not sure.

[vidarh]

There was a time when US unions striked despite being met by a risk of people getting outright murdered. Without hyperbole, the 8 hour working day was won with blood. The question needs to be whether you think a strike is right and morally justified, and worth the potential consequences, not whether it is legal.

[eru]

Leisure and comforts like the eight hour workday are what economists call a 'normal good'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_good

> In economics, a normal good is a type of a good which experiences an increase in demand due to an increase in income, unlike inferior goods, for which the opposite is observed. When there is an increase in a person's income, for example due to a wage rise, a good for which the demand rises due to the wage increase, is referred as a normal good. Conversely, the demand for normal goods declines when the income decreases, for example due to a wage decrease or layoffs.

It's entirely expected that people will want to consume more comfort and safety at their income increases.

If you compare different countries, you will find that these kinds of things track with income much more than with history of union activism.

For a striking example see https://pseudoerasmus.com/2017/10/02/ijd/ which is an article on the divergence between Japan and India. Japan has a long history of labour repression, especially compared to India. But by and large Japanese workers have a it a lot better today than workers in India, especially if you go by what's happening in reality and not just by what's promised on paper.

And that difference tracks with the difference in incomes between the two countries, but stands in stark contrast to what we would expect from your sketched theory of union activism driving these things.

[vidarh]

"Will want to" yes. But it was not being offered until after that extensive union activism despite decades of demands. To the point that people died for it. May 1st is the international day for labour demonstrations because of the US union fight for the 8 hour day. The demand long preceded a rise in income allowing people to risk walking over it, or be able to afford to offer to take less pay for less work.

It took decades from the demand was there until it became normalised to offer it, with concession after concession won as direct and explicit outcomes of industrial action.

That good conditions are offered far more easily when a working population is in a financial position to walk if it's not offered is entirely unsurprising and irrelevant. That you can't possibly win the same level of outcomes when the financial position of employers doesn't allow it is also entirely unsurprising and irrelevant.

Nobody expects magic. Nor does anyone suggest that there aren't other factors also at play.

[eru]

Different income levels between countries already suffice to explain most of the variation we see in things like actual provided worker safety etc.

History of union activism is an explanatory variable that doesn't add much to the mix, and if anything is rather contradictory and noisy in the end.

[vidarh]

Given we can look back at history and see direct causal links between industrial action and subsequent improvements, there is no way to take this seriously.

I have no doubt you're right that it correlates neatly with different income levels, but I find it comical that you think that addresses the issue.

I also note that you claimed working hours as a normal good whose demand would rise with income but ignored the point that the demand far preceded the economic ability to bargain for it with money, and that the demand was not constrained by lack of money. The notion that it fits your description at all is bizarre.

EDIT: I'll also note that after having had time to skim the article you linked, it does not appear to even attempt to make an argument aligned with yours. The author very specifically points out significant confounding factors, such as whether or not unions resistance in the specific given conditions affected productivity negatively or hindered productivity improvements.

A union certainly can make a wrong tradeoff - Indian unions prioritised keeping the intensity of the work down, at the cost of reducing their then-future ability to demand higher incomes. But they were only able to have that negative effect on future wages because their activism had a substantial effect on working conditions and by extension productivity.

That their goal was short sighted does not change that if anything it is a demonstration of the substantial impact unions do have.

That there is a risk that a too successful union can end up having an adverse effect by accident is nothing new either - it's if anything one of the historical conflicts within the labour movement in terms of outlook on the approach between seeing it as about conditions at individual workplaces or tied to local concerns vs. inherently a political and society-wide and international concern.

[s1artibartfast]

Im not sure I agree with your normal good characterization. It only applies to goods purchased with money - not ones purchased with time, blood, or death.

Someone with more income might exchange more money for time/comfort, if all things are held equal including the price.

I think the inverse is true when you consider exchanging things other than money for more comforts.

That is to say, people will pay more money because they have more of it the higher their income (because the marginal value of each dollar goes down)

Asking would you be willing to risk your life for more comfort, that answer changes. The higher your income/comfort/happiness, the less willing you are to risk your life for more comfort.

The less people have to work, the less they are willing to risk their lives for more free time.

Who would risk death protesting for more leisure: someone working 80, 40, 20, or 2 hours?

[vidarh]

> . The higher your income/comfort/happiness, the less willing you are to risk your life for more comfort.

And indeed both the level of union membership and the militancy of union actions supports that. Union membership cratered in developed countries and conditions have improved, and labour conflicts have gone from being outright armed in some cases in the past to being mostly relatively tame and regulated affairs.

[idiotsecant]

Ok, so it's illegal. Now what? Strike anyway.