I don't want to sound unsympathetic, but a lot of these companies massively over hired over the last couple of years. While others were losing their jobs during the pandemic tech employees were in higher demand than ever. In fact, I'd argue the demand for tech workers has been so high over the last couple of years that a lot of people who really shouldn't have got a job based on their experience were able to do so.
I'd also note that the severance packages most tech companies have been offering their employees have been very fair, and with tech skills being almost universally valuable across industries it's not hard for good tech workers to quickly find tech jobs if they're happy to work outside of the tech sector.
If people want to form a union then fine, but I'm not sure what you expect. Spotify isn't profitable. With the cost of capital rising and a potential recession looming they obviously need to be financially cautious otherwise everyone at the company will eventually lose their job.
Without unions, employees are disposable. Companies hire them when money is plentiful and throw them away when it's convenient. It clearly benefits the employers and investors to operate that way.
With a union, employees aren't so dispensable, and companies have to take a longer term view when hiring because they can't get rid of employees on a whim. Despite being more stable for everybody, it's extra difficulty for the company and it balances out their power over employees.
It's a meme at this point that Google is probably developing 5 new chat apps to replace the 10 they recently killed. But then everyone gets up in arms when Google trims it's workforce by 6%, one which as grown by 100+% since 2016. If everyone wasn't looking for anything to signal 'recession!', no one would bat an eye at these big tech companies doing small staffing course corrections.
this misguided and only purpose it serve to make these company die sooner.
Main problem these company took benefit of cheap interest rates and overhired. hiring for promotion and ego. hiring not sake of true business growth.
Saw entire teams and orgs at two big tech companies sitting idle..senior and staff engineers have no commit in over a year. ok..maybe they doing design work or something else to drive efficiency or cross org optimization.
but no, even college level hires have no commit or other meaningful work. reasonable question: what they do? especially when team own no critical service and even have no support burden..why 7 engineers plus 3 managers?
meanwhile managers getting increasing hc and fighting territory battle.
this was massive grift. a union only make the grift last longer. real solution: remove dead weight.. massive bureaucracy..go back to entreprenurial root of company and what it vision.
I'm not sure that collective bargaining would be helpful for most tech workers -- there's such a large diversity in individual skills and productivity that negotiating for yourself seems to make more sense.
you'd rather work harder and for less money than work with people who phone it in?
I don't really buy the meritocracy argument that 'good devs get paid more'. It hasn't really panned out in my experience, except for less than 1%, probably closer to .1% of devs who are really, truly exceptional AND will fight aggressively for their keep.
Outside the US, labour costs are already quite low though.
Although I agree, they're going to get even lower. To quote Neal Stephenson:
> the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity
unionization is one thing, but i think i'd prefer to just do away with the conflict of interest (between owner/manager/employee) from the get-go and push for more employee-owned businesses instead
kypro|3 years ago
I'd also note that the severance packages most tech companies have been offering their employees have been very fair, and with tech skills being almost universally valuable across industries it's not hard for good tech workers to quickly find tech jobs if they're happy to work outside of the tech sector.
If people want to form a union then fine, but I'm not sure what you expect. Spotify isn't profitable. With the cost of capital rising and a potential recession looming they obviously need to be financially cautious otherwise everyone at the company will eventually lose their job.
jlarocco|3 years ago
Without unions, employees are disposable. Companies hire them when money is plentiful and throw them away when it's convenient. It clearly benefits the employers and investors to operate that way.
With a union, employees aren't so dispensable, and companies have to take a longer term view when hiring because they can't get rid of employees on a whim. Despite being more stable for everybody, it's extra difficulty for the company and it balances out their power over employees.
matwood|3 years ago
birdymcbird|3 years ago
Main problem these company took benefit of cheap interest rates and overhired. hiring for promotion and ego. hiring not sake of true business growth.
Saw entire teams and orgs at two big tech companies sitting idle..senior and staff engineers have no commit in over a year. ok..maybe they doing design work or something else to drive efficiency or cross org optimization.
but no, even college level hires have no commit or other meaningful work. reasonable question: what they do? especially when team own no critical service and even have no support burden..why 7 engineers plus 3 managers?
meanwhile managers getting increasing hc and fighting territory battle.
this was massive grift. a union only make the grift last longer. real solution: remove dead weight.. massive bureaucracy..go back to entreprenurial root of company and what it vision.
overgard|3 years ago
drewrv|3 years ago
gfdsgfsdgfs|3 years ago
MAGZine|3 years ago
I don't really buy the meritocracy argument that 'good devs get paid more'. It hasn't really panned out in my experience, except for less than 1%, probably closer to .1% of devs who are really, truly exceptional AND will fight aggressively for their keep.
t-writescode|3 years ago
nivenkos|3 years ago
Although I agree, they're going to get even lower. To quote Neal Stephenson:
> the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity
andrekandre|3 years ago
paulcole|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
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