Right before COVID-19 stay at home order in Chicago, a bunch of improvisers who preformed at the popular i.o theater put together a list of demands which basically asked for a bunch of changes to make the lives of performers better. They were not going to perform until those changes were made.
The owner didnt respond for a few days and then said, "Hey! Heard you. Great valid concerns. But I'm actually shutting the theater down." i.o was closed for some period of time (1+ year) and then came back. The changes asked for were not made. Performers were happy just to get on stage again.
I think about that a lot when I see people making demands. Sometimes companies can/will just say no or worse find some reason to let the person go. It's frustrating but as the individual its so hard to get any meaningful change when you have no real power.
This is why I think Executives are terrified of remote work. If the local theater doesn't want to meet my demand I have a global theater and someone will be always willing to leverage their competitive advantage to secure talent that would typically not be in their talent pool. People are no longer trapped by their geography or situation and Executives are terrified of losing that control.
That's why the time to make demands and organize was when this current tech boom was just getting started, when engineer salaries started to really pick up and before bootcamps and massive new waves of CS grads where in swing.
By organizing across the field, software engineers would have been able to have more input into the rate of engineer growth (which would have hurt bootcamps but generally lead to higher quality engineers, and avoided over hiring), compensation (which likely would have hurt some of the people making insane FAANG salaries, but lifted up most others), professional licensing (i.e. maybe you just do that leetcode/project/etc gauntlet once to get licensed, not for every new application), enforced professional ethics (as a profession we agree to limits on the kinds of exploitative work we do) etc, etc.
The problem is that anyone even suggesting this back then (and there were a few people) would be downvoted into oblivion. Engineers found rewarding, high paying, prestigious work easily and virtually everyone thought that was an eternal truth.
> Right before COVID-19 stay at home order in Chicago
>Sometimes companies can/will just say no or worse find some reason to let the person go.
This just seems like a story of good/bad timing, not a story of the theater owner taking a hit just to make the performers suffer. A "never let a tragedy go to waste" story if you will. Plenty of theaters, and other businesses (a lot of entertainment), shut down for long periods during the pandemic.
I mean isn't that default position? Everyone has to go into situations like this with eyes open.
If there was no risk to striking or demanding better working conditions, it wouldn't be as rare as it is.
I think everyone is aware that by default "the companies" have more power than the individual or the worker class.
What's unusual is that in 2021 the balance shifted for a little while for the privileged tech worker class. So it's notable that this brief blip was in fact a blip and not the start of a trend.
I don't know how hackernews feels about this given that many here often acts like they are enterpreneurs-in-training, CEOs-in-waiting. Those that secretly (or not so secretly) can't wait to repress others because "<Shrug>, capitalism" rather than working towards a more equitable future (the word itself considered dirty by many here).
Your key point is the last sentence. Individually we have no real power. That's because we are going against corporations and economic systems and governments, which are not individuals. The only way to have a meaningful chance at action is collectively.
Making the demand is a reason. Whenever you ask your boss for a raise, it comes with the implication that if you don't get it, you'll leave. Even if you don't, they know you're not happy, so there's an argument to making the decision for you.
Another way to interpret this story is that the performers were whining and thought they had a bad deal, but when faced with consequences they realised it actually wasn’t a bad deal for them.
Words and words. Actions are actions.
I just don’t buy it. To be clear this is claiming that the CEOs are sitting behind a desk stroking a cat, thinking “now I will crush the labor movement and make all my workers feel less secure”.
This is just not a problem that Pichai is facing.
Occam’s Razor points to the very simple, non-conspiratorial answer that it really is just stock-price driven (ie market-driven) thinking (one could say “lack of actual strategic thinking”). “The job of Alphabet is to provide solid growth in share price Q on Q for investors, with minimal fluctuations to spook them”, seems a more likely thing for CEOs to be saying, after hearing this from their CFOs.
The idea that Google would struggle as hard as it did to meet its aggressive hiring goals over the last few years, then axe strong engineers just to make others scared, really stretches my credulity.
I think you’re applying a “conspiratorial” vibe that isn’t necessary - employers are naturally incentivized to keep employees insecure and underpaid (relative to what they’d be paid if they organized, at least). It sounds like you’re knowledgeable on these topics, so I’d be surprised if you disagreed with any of these assertions:
1. Big tech would be willing to burn billions of dollars to crush any chance of tech unions forming.
2. Big tech is known to collude (even to conspire! ) to keep tech wages depressed.
3. Big tech’s biggest cost, by a huge margin, is labor; any reductions there could easily dwarf other shareholder-appeasing cost cutting measures.
4. Tech worker salaries have skyrocketed since they lost their collusion lawsuit, and the general sense among big tech workers was (in most cases) “they need me more than I need them, I could find another amazing job no problem by just responding to one of the many recruiters badgering me on LinkedIn”.
Speaking just for google, 6 months ago all the internal forums were obsessed with the idea that SWEs were underpaid, that google should give raises to match inflation, and that google no longer paid top of market. Today I’m pretty sure 100% of the top posts on the biggest internal forum are about layoffs - how random they seemed, how anxious people are to see if they’re going to be cut, and how vastly their perception of the company has changed. If this writer’s take is close, it seems like it kinda worked.
You realize more than a decade ago a cartel of tech companies (two of which being Google and Apple) literally had no poach agreements in order to suppress salaries right?
> I just don’t buy it. To be clear this is claiming that the CEOs are sitting behind a desk stroking a cat, thinking “now I will crush the labor movement and make all my workers feel less secure”.
This would be a more credible claim if big tech companies, specifically, hadn't been caught doing basically exactly this, in the not-so-distant past.
So big tech has 220,000 layoffs and there is not the merest hint of a blip in the unemployment rate.
This is not a tragedy - these people are going to find jobs, good jobs. In fact it's quite likely that they will go into roles which might do something other than online advertising. You know, something useful.
Guess tech workers should have unionized when they had the chance. As if capital was going to let the most powerful group of workers that's ever existed continue to slip their noose
I had a manager namecheck the layoffs as a reason they don't need to move on addressing any of our team's concerns about working conditions. Same manager invoked the Nuremburg Defense the other day. Trying times.
Would be interesting to see if there is a strong relationship between the companies doing layoffs and the companies who did WFH en masse and might be thinking a layoff will “encourage” their compliance to come back to the office.
I’ve never worked for Big Tech, I’ve never even worked in one of the big tech hubs (Bay Area, anywhere in California, Seattle, Austin, NY, etc.), but I do have a hefty 6 figure salary because of the tech workers in those areas. My worry is my company will start to look at laying us off so they can replace us with laid off tech workers at a much lower rate.
does this imply the lay-offs were a product of collusion at the executive level across the entire sector? If anyone could find evidence of that it would be extremely news-worthy.
If I might adorn my hat of tin-foil for a second; at a big corp I used to work at, I heard execs predicting this outcome back in early 2022 in combination with being incredibly relaxed about the employment market being extremely hot at the time.
It would be difficult to prove active collusion, its more like institutionalized collusion, and I doubt that's a crime.
e.g. the same consulting firms are hired by all companies, and they will give the same advice when dealing with falling revenues, plunging stock prices etc.
I mean, it's not the first time that SV execs have colluded. See also infamous Eric Schmidt / Steve Jobs non-poaching agreement that leaked.
But I also don't think explicit collusion is actually necessary. Once one does it, the others can follow without fear of losing staff to the others. Meta and Twitter started the fire, the others can just toss in some logs.
So it has the effective material results as if there was a conspiracy, without the need for it.
doesn't imply that to me. this is not the first market down turn. this is not the first time companies have shed employees in anticipation of a market down turn. this is also not the first time to use this type of situation to unload less desirable employees. it also provides for companies with cover with the unions (especially those just formed).
no collusion necessary to be familiar with history
Prisoners dilemma. Who needs to say it when everyone knows it's in everyone's interests to play the game. I feel that a lot of these layoffs are really the result of delusional hiring euphoria vs malicious anti-employee strategies, but I wouldn't say that companies would avoid "needless" spending when they could be adjusted for a no-net-los outcome.
It may look like collusion, but in fact tech leadership (VCs/Founders/execs/CEOs) makes wildebeast look like lone wolves. I've seen very little evidence of independent thinking with that crowd, which is funny because a lot of them will identify as some flavour of libertarian or heterodox.
“Never attribute to malice, that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.”
Over-hiring, over-salarying and not anticipating the consequences of a pandemic and post-pandemic on business might qualify as “incompetence”
The thing that bothers me is this tone I'm seeing online and in particular in this discussion where people presume that a salary is owed no matter what, and that withdrawing that salary (as in a firing) is somehow always morally corrupt. I'm Gen X, so when I say "we weren't raised with the expectation that the world owed us anything", I mean it.
"An instance of Hanlon’s razor being proven wrong is the mafia. Prior to the 1960s, the existence of the mafia was considered to be a conspiracy theory. Only when a member contacted law enforcement, did police realize that the malice being perpetrated was carefully orchestrated." (I was not aware of this!)
I have a recent counter razor: "Never attribute to malice or stupidity what is better explained by self-interest"
Many of these orgs laying off thousands have fallen into the depths of a moral maze -- where rational thinking is just impossible and all that's left is self-preservation.
> “Never attribute to malice, that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.”
In the cutthroat randian landscape of the US business, it is the opposite:
“Never attribute to incompetence, that which can adequately be explained by malice.”
Incompetence, neglience, oversight etc are concepts frequently employed by the corporations to escape not only public opinion backlash, but also actually escape legal consequences in a courtroom.
I agree, firms thought the era of cheap money (10+ years) combined with ramped up demand caused by pandemic would last for a good while longer. They forgot about Galton's reversion to the mean...
This is exactly what they're doing. The big players have gotten together in a room somewhere and tried to figure out how to push wages down, and they decided to just all fire a bunch of people at the same time. Every industry in the country engages in systematic and widespread price fixing (eggs, insulin, rent...) and this is just an example. They want to push wages down, push prices up, and that's how they make profit.
The idea that tech giants dont collude to push down wages is, frankly, fanciful. We know about non-compete agreements and such- this is industry standard practice.
The article didn’t do a very good job providing evidence to make the case for its premise that big tech is trying to keep employees afraid.
Overall I think the article itself was a poorly written screed that just threw in lots of anecdotes and assertions but didn’t really have any meat to it.
For example, what do climate change etc have to do with unionization? Unions are supposed to be vehicles for worker protections, not ESG.
Also, the simple answer is, that shareholders, particularly large influential institutional shareholders, are demanding unreasonable and unsustainable quarterly growth from tech esp as the rest of the economy is sliding into recession. The short term shortsighted way to do that is to cut ongoing costs, and employees are the biggest cost in that bucket at tech companies. No need for a conspiracy when everything is pretty transparent already.
The corporate ghouls at our company just announced a non-negotiable RTO, but notably, no layoffs.
Since company execs seem to be like a flock of sheep - one gets spooked and they all run in the same direction - I'm betting my company can't afford to do layoffs, even though they'd want to follow suit.
From what I hear in the grapevine, we've had a devil of a time trying to hire over the past couple of years.
Agree with this but its less about unions and more about resetting the empoloyer/employee dynamic after a period of time the employees clearly had an upperhand. they are tired of allowing flexible work and giving 2 yoe people 300k. they want power back.
its not about evil-y stroking a cat, or meeting in a smoke filled room. its as easy as just reading the moment in time and taking advantage.
TC at Big Tech is generally dominated by equity at the outlier end. Everywhere else it doesn’t look like pay is all that different to 5 or even 10 years ago. So either the effects haven’t shown up yet or else this was just an opportune time to stack rank and yank.
If you go on levels.fyi you’ll find that fixed cash (“base”) is the same mid-100s to mid-300s that it was the throughout the last decade for L3/new-grad and L7/L8/principle/staff respectively.
Discretionary cash (“bonus”) is the same 10k-100k, though 100k is rare and always was.
Fixed equity (“initial grant”) is about what it’s been.
People making crazy money were always doing it with discretionary equity (“long-term incentive” or LTI). That’s where you get engineers making 7 figures, and those people are not remotely worried about being laid off, or getting hired through a hiring freeze somewhere else with another great package. It would be pretty nice to be one of those people :P
Too many people got into software without being truly passionate about it because money, Big Tech absorbed a bunch of people who crammed the standardized test but weren’t really producers, and a soft macro situation is a great excuse to clear cut for tech CEOs looking at weak market caps and need to show shareholders and the street that they’re doing something.
I very much doubt that the folks left have lost much bargaining power, but time will tell.
[+] [-] AlwaysRock|3 years ago|reply
The owner didnt respond for a few days and then said, "Hey! Heard you. Great valid concerns. But I'm actually shutting the theater down." i.o was closed for some period of time (1+ year) and then came back. The changes asked for were not made. Performers were happy just to get on stage again.
I think about that a lot when I see people making demands. Sometimes companies can/will just say no or worse find some reason to let the person go. It's frustrating but as the individual its so hard to get any meaningful change when you have no real power.
[+] [-] shmatt|3 years ago|reply
Could the same owner shut down for a full year without thinking twice, just to avoid giving people a few more bucks an hour in 2023? I doubt it
[+] [-] dubcanada|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeffwask|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] time_to_smile|3 years ago|reply
By organizing across the field, software engineers would have been able to have more input into the rate of engineer growth (which would have hurt bootcamps but generally lead to higher quality engineers, and avoided over hiring), compensation (which likely would have hurt some of the people making insane FAANG salaries, but lifted up most others), professional licensing (i.e. maybe you just do that leetcode/project/etc gauntlet once to get licensed, not for every new application), enforced professional ethics (as a profession we agree to limits on the kinds of exploitative work we do) etc, etc.
The problem is that anyone even suggesting this back then (and there were a few people) would be downvoted into oblivion. Engineers found rewarding, high paying, prestigious work easily and virtually everyone thought that was an eternal truth.
Now it's way, way too late.
[+] [-] godelski|3 years ago|reply
>Sometimes companies can/will just say no or worse find some reason to let the person go.
This just seems like a story of good/bad timing, not a story of the theater owner taking a hit just to make the performers suffer. A "never let a tragedy go to waste" story if you will. Plenty of theaters, and other businesses (a lot of entertainment), shut down for long periods during the pandemic.
[+] [-] wheats|3 years ago|reply
When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run,
There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;
Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one
But the union makes us strong.
[+] [-] deanCommie|3 years ago|reply
If there was no risk to striking or demanding better working conditions, it wouldn't be as rare as it is.
I think everyone is aware that by default "the companies" have more power than the individual or the worker class.
What's unusual is that in 2021 the balance shifted for a little while for the privileged tech worker class. So it's notable that this brief blip was in fact a blip and not the start of a trend.
I don't know how hackernews feels about this given that many here often acts like they are enterpreneurs-in-training, CEOs-in-waiting. Those that secretly (or not so secretly) can't wait to repress others because "<Shrug>, capitalism" rather than working towards a more equitable future (the word itself considered dirty by many here).
Your key point is the last sentence. Individually we have no real power. That's because we are going against corporations and economic systems and governments, which are not individuals. The only way to have a meaningful chance at action is collectively.
[+] [-] Ferret7446|3 years ago|reply
Biting the hand etc. You have to be the one who's bringing the goods to the table, or be prepared to have your bluff (or lack of sense) called.
[+] [-] dehrmann|3 years ago|reply
Making the demand is a reason. Whenever you ask your boss for a raise, it comes with the implication that if you don't get it, you'll leave. Even if you don't, they know you're not happy, so there's an argument to making the decision for you.
[+] [-] cloutchaser|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MuffinFlavored|3 years ago|reply
or in your case (and many other cases), even a collective group of individuals still had little to no bargaining power
[+] [-] wdr1|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mensetmanusman|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theptip|3 years ago|reply
This is just not a problem that Pichai is facing.
Occam’s Razor points to the very simple, non-conspiratorial answer that it really is just stock-price driven (ie market-driven) thinking (one could say “lack of actual strategic thinking”). “The job of Alphabet is to provide solid growth in share price Q on Q for investors, with minimal fluctuations to spook them”, seems a more likely thing for CEOs to be saying, after hearing this from their CFOs.
The idea that Google would struggle as hard as it did to meet its aggressive hiring goals over the last few years, then axe strong engineers just to make others scared, really stretches my credulity.
[+] [-] bbor|3 years ago|reply
1. Big tech would be willing to burn billions of dollars to crush any chance of tech unions forming.
2. Big tech is known to collude (even to conspire! ) to keep tech wages depressed.
3. Big tech’s biggest cost, by a huge margin, is labor; any reductions there could easily dwarf other shareholder-appeasing cost cutting measures.
4. Tech worker salaries have skyrocketed since they lost their collusion lawsuit, and the general sense among big tech workers was (in most cases) “they need me more than I need them, I could find another amazing job no problem by just responding to one of the many recruiters badgering me on LinkedIn”.
Speaking just for google, 6 months ago all the internal forums were obsessed with the idea that SWEs were underpaid, that google should give raises to match inflation, and that google no longer paid top of market. Today I’m pretty sure 100% of the top posts on the biggest internal forum are about layoffs - how random they seemed, how anxious people are to see if they’re going to be cut, and how vastly their perception of the company has changed. If this writer’s take is close, it seems like it kinda worked.
[+] [-] azemetre|3 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
[+] [-] yamtaddle|3 years ago|reply
This would be a more credible claim if big tech companies, specifically, hadn't been caught doing basically exactly this, in the not-so-distant past.
[+] [-] bjornlouser|3 years ago|reply
Not sure why you think that given that labor is their biggest expense. They have been known to collude
https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/silicon-valleys-...
[+] [-] JackFr|3 years ago|reply
This is not a tragedy - these people are going to find jobs, good jobs. In fact it's quite likely that they will go into roles which might do something other than online advertising. You know, something useful.
[+] [-] Phlarp|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gilbert_vanova|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xt00|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] irrational|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Clent|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Quarrelsome|3 years ago|reply
If I might adorn my hat of tin-foil for a second; at a big corp I used to work at, I heard execs predicting this outcome back in early 2022 in combination with being incredibly relaxed about the employment market being extremely hot at the time.
[+] [-] pm90|3 years ago|reply
e.g. the same consulting firms are hired by all companies, and they will give the same advice when dealing with falling revenues, plunging stock prices etc.
[+] [-] cmrdporcupine|3 years ago|reply
But I also don't think explicit collusion is actually necessary. Once one does it, the others can follow without fear of losing staff to the others. Meta and Twitter started the fire, the others can just toss in some logs.
So it has the effective material results as if there was a conspiracy, without the need for it.
[+] [-] roncesvalles|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnrob|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dylan604|3 years ago|reply
no collusion necessary to be familiar with history
[+] [-] samstave|3 years ago|reply
They denied it and it was later proven out.
[+] [-] adra|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] martythemaniak|3 years ago|reply
Basically, don't attribute to malice etc...
[+] [-] pmarreck|3 years ago|reply
“Never attribute to malice, that which can adequately be explained by incompetence.”
Over-hiring, over-salarying and not anticipating the consequences of a pandemic and post-pandemic on business might qualify as “incompetence”
The thing that bothers me is this tone I'm seeing online and in particular in this discussion where people presume that a salary is owed no matter what, and that withdrawing that salary (as in a firing) is somehow always morally corrupt. I'm Gen X, so when I say "we weren't raised with the expectation that the world owed us anything", I mean it.
EDIT: A better discussion of Hanlon's over here: https://fs.blog/mental-model-hanlons-razor/
"An instance of Hanlon’s razor being proven wrong is the mafia. Prior to the 1960s, the existence of the mafia was considered to be a conspiracy theory. Only when a member contacted law enforcement, did police realize that the malice being perpetrated was carefully orchestrated." (I was not aware of this!)
[+] [-] gilbert_vanova|3 years ago|reply
Many of these orgs laying off thousands have fallen into the depths of a moral maze -- where rational thinking is just impossible and all that's left is self-preservation.
[+] [-] jacknews|3 years ago|reply
As far as I can tell there's is no actual downturn in the market, this is all anticipation.
And so it's a 'movement' even if it's not a diffuse, or actual conspiracy.
[+] [-] unity1001|3 years ago|reply
In the cutthroat randian landscape of the US business, it is the opposite:
“Never attribute to incompetence, that which can adequately be explained by malice.”
Incompetence, neglience, oversight etc are concepts frequently employed by the corporations to escape not only public opinion backlash, but also actually escape legal consequences in a courtroom.
[+] [-] imwillofficial|3 years ago|reply
Probably made popular by powerful
[+] [-] dougSF70|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fallingfrog|3 years ago|reply
This American Life did an episode where they did a deep dive on a famous incidence of price fixing (it was some chemical in chicken feed). https://www.thisamericanlife.org/168/the-fix-is-in
The idea that tech giants dont collude to push down wages is, frankly, fanciful. We know about non-compete agreements and such- this is industry standard practice.
[+] [-] efitz|3 years ago|reply
Overall I think the article itself was a poorly written screed that just threw in lots of anecdotes and assertions but didn’t really have any meat to it.
For example, what do climate change etc have to do with unionization? Unions are supposed to be vehicles for worker protections, not ESG.
Also, the simple answer is, that shareholders, particularly large influential institutional shareholders, are demanding unreasonable and unsustainable quarterly growth from tech esp as the rest of the economy is sliding into recession. The short term shortsighted way to do that is to cut ongoing costs, and employees are the biggest cost in that bucket at tech companies. No need for a conspiracy when everything is pretty transparent already.
[+] [-] noorkersz|3 years ago|reply
why hasn't apple needed to do this? how are they keeping 'tabs' on 'worker power'?
[+] [-] gumby|3 years ago|reply
> “Controlling labor costs via periodic layoffs is like breathing for Silicon Valley: cyclical, necessary for life,” Malcolm Harris
The current wave of layoff is unusual, hence being extensively discussed on sites like HN.
[+] [-] m3kw9|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] btbuildem|3 years ago|reply
Since company execs seem to be like a flock of sheep - one gets spooked and they all run in the same direction - I'm betting my company can't afford to do layoffs, even though they'd want to follow suit.
From what I hear in the grapevine, we've had a devil of a time trying to hire over the past couple of years.
[+] [-] alberth|3 years ago|reply
Essentially, over the last 2-years, many companies Expense growth outpaced their Revenue growth.
This is direct result of how Wallstreet holds companies accountable for EPS.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/operatingleverage.asp
[+] [-] ffggvv|3 years ago|reply
its not about evil-y stroking a cat, or meeting in a smoke filled room. its as easy as just reading the moment in time and taking advantage.
[+] [-] benreesman|3 years ago|reply
If you go on levels.fyi you’ll find that fixed cash (“base”) is the same mid-100s to mid-300s that it was the throughout the last decade for L3/new-grad and L7/L8/principle/staff respectively.
Discretionary cash (“bonus”) is the same 10k-100k, though 100k is rare and always was.
Fixed equity (“initial grant”) is about what it’s been.
People making crazy money were always doing it with discretionary equity (“long-term incentive” or LTI). That’s where you get engineers making 7 figures, and those people are not remotely worried about being laid off, or getting hired through a hiring freeze somewhere else with another great package. It would be pretty nice to be one of those people :P
Too many people got into software without being truly passionate about it because money, Big Tech absorbed a bunch of people who crammed the standardized test but weren’t really producers, and a soft macro situation is a great excuse to clear cut for tech CEOs looking at weak market caps and need to show shareholders and the street that they’re doing something.
I very much doubt that the folks left have lost much bargaining power, but time will tell.
[+] [-] newobj|3 years ago|reply
The only question is if the cost of the churn exceeds the savings by re-hiring out of that pool of laid off workers.