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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Good for them. The structural change needed in our industry is for labor (or, to use a term we're apparently more comfortable with, "talent") to reassert itself, and for tech giants to reconcile themselves to the fact that they're accountable not just to their shareholders but to their employees. I hope this gets nasty, and that these FB employees ultimately find recourse in the NLRA.

We forget that this industry is still young. It's probably not even in its adolescence. When I started working, there was no such thing as an Internet giant. There was Intel and Microsoft and 30 different PC clone vendors and a bunch of small software shops competing to get their boxes on the shelves at Microcenter. A lot of ideas we take as axioms --- for instance, the idea that developers can't organize to coerce changes in their working environment --- haven't earned that status, and deserve to be challenged.

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> The structural change needed in our industry is for labor (or, to use a term we're apparently more comfortable with, "talent") to reassert itself, and for tech giants to reconcile themselves to the fact that they're accountable not just to their shareholders but to their employees.

My read on this was that the conflicts is as much between different groups within the "labor" than between management and labor. And within the article it seems that other employees are the ones really pushing for this to be shut down, while managements response is "they haven't actually broken any rules."

Other employees requesting management to shut down a group asking for diversity suggests that there is a problem with diversity. They think that they're a majority and that management would be receptive to such a request.

Of course management refuse to take action. They're already under public scrutiny and it seems the rebels have just expressed their desire to speak, they haven't spoken yet, so it would be a little harsh to crush them so soon.

The idea that a bunch of highly paid conservative software developers would unionize and get the NLRB involved is rich.

Collective bargaining can be used to leverage other assets, besides money.

Why?

We're all generally well-paid (even with respect to the value we create). But this whole message board is practically dedicated to the ways in which our industry pisses us off, from confiscatory IP clauses to open offices to death march projects. Who's to say labor can't organize simply for a better shop to work in? That's not unprecedented.

Because conservatives are anti-union and anti-NLRB.

Edit: why the heck am I being downvoted? I'm literally just explaining what I assumed the GP was referring to.

Only Nixon could go to China. Sometimes in America you see the strangest political bedfellows.

Nixon.

Yes. Another example is Clinton and welfare reform. Politics is weird that way.

Same thing with Reagan and Russia. But I think it's perfectly understandable. If Team Red is for X and Team Blue is against X, then it takes someone with street cred on Team Blue to make X happen, because they're the only one who can get Team Blue to stop the kamikaze opposition to X.

I agree about the irony. I think it's pretty sad that in the last 12 months, the two major tech/labor stories have been about conservative employees pushing back against supposedly-liberal corporations. But, whatever. A wakeup call is a wakeup call. I think these FB people can succeed, and should succeed.

The key word being supposedly. None of these "liberal" corporations have been left-liberal in terms of workers' rights or well-being. They want a rainbow of representation among the top-10% stratum of elite professionals to whom they pay enough to not need food stamps.

The party platform isn't the beliefs of every member of the party. Indeed, it's be absurd if every member of either party agreed with every line from a multi hundred page platform.

FB is monopoly at this point. Very few people there are irreplaceable. If this was was a startup you might have more leverage. Mr. Amerige probably doesn't have much here. Mr. Amerige is probably making good money. If he gets fired good luck trying to get another job. Companies hate controversy.

Trump won because of Facebook. I don't know why these guys are complaining.

> Very few people there are irreplaceable

Ah, but they're not replaceble fast enough. It's hard to get a scab up to speed quick enough. It could take weeks before someone's able to come in at short notice and replace a sysadmin. Hence the employees could take the website down for an hour or so...

> If he gets fired good luck trying to get another job. Companies hate controversy.

But they love skills.

> Trump won because of Facebook. I don't know why these guys are complaining.

You tar with rather a broad brush. Is it really so inconceivable that there are conservatives who disapprove of Trump and the far-right? Is it really so inconceivable that there are long-time liberals who don't agree with significant aspects of current liberalism?

Modern liberals should be wary of a hardline "us-vs-them" mindset lest they come to discover that there are more of "them" than there are of "us".

for one, American right wing conservatism is strongly anti-union and anything that diminishes the employers agility to conduct business as they see fit, so the idea of a bunch of well paid conservatives banding together to collectively argue against their employers is very ironic.

But is conservatism against regulating monopolies?

Facebook seems to be a natural monopoly. People only want one social network, and they want everyone they know to be on it. If it's a natural monopoly it should be regulated and, like other utilities, required to provide service to everyone.

I associate unions with homogenized labor, stratus of equivalent positions, but we’re all too unique 10x butterflies for that. I mean, what part of your career arc would have been better served in a unionized environment?

Who says it has to be an according-to-Hoyle union? The NLRA covers all concerted organized action. Start a professional association. The doctors and lawyers have them. We don't get one? Why?

That’s interesting. I figure we’re more like PEs than MDs or JDs.

There's the ACM and IEEE already though?

The ACM is an academic association. The IEEE should be more important professionally than it is; one problem with the IEEE is that you have to have a related bachelors degree to join.

Developers should start a new organization that represents the interests of employees of the technology industry.

Those things mostly exist to collect membership fees and run conferences.

Unions are one way. Guilds are another.

For people who are supposedly so highly paid the majority of my peers can't afford children. The rent of a two bedroom flat/house and the price of daycare means the household needs to earn close to $600,000/y for two children. That's maybe the top 10% in most companies. If a class in society can't afford to reproduce itself it is underpaid regardless of how many trinkets it can afford compared to the median.

People forget how much of entertainment is unionized. Like, Lebron James and Aaron Rodgers are members of their unions. Tom Cruise is a member of a union. Steven Spielberg is in a union.

Your retirement and your healthcare would probably be better in a union.

I still think the vast majority of software engineers are either 1) Thankful (if they take a few minutes to consider the unique time in history in which they are employed) that given their relatively modest education investment, they are making the salaries they are. And these are probably your non-high-ranking-university CS majors, those without a college degree, L.A. majors, etc or 2) Graduates of top C.S. programs who are making really great salaries.

What real incentive do they have to unionize even along a professional path? I just don't see having their political views stifled at work to be a big motivator.

It's a cart/horse position problem. If we had to go to school for 7-10 years to be a doctor or lawyer, then of course, we'd want the protection and insurance of a professional licensing organization. But if I can make half the money of a doctor or lawyer without all the hassle, then why bother?

Who said they're all conservatives?

I'm a liberal and I'd join this group in a heartbeat.

I like your thought process... embrace, extend, extinguish.

same here. some liberals are so fanatic that they can't hold a dialogue with a person of opposing views. I've got a friend who stopped speaking with their father because of Brexit.

I have no issues being friends with right wing people, even if they're more extreme. I just don't very often discuss politics with them, but we hang out a lot.

What if they weren't conservative?

The history of unions in the US is based around highly paid incumbents forming “good ole boy networks” when people [of color] started migrating from agricultural areas into big cities and accepting lower pay.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1913/06/the-neg...

The history of almost every institution in America is that of non-blacks forming overt and covert alliances to arrest the progress of black people. For over a decade after the civil rights act, mortgage lending was organized to keep black people out of "white" neighborhoods. Shall we do away with the 30 year fixed mortgage?

Sure, it's funny, but shush, they're coming around to unions being good!

Who says that these software engineers have to be necessarily "conservative"? I'll be perfectly frank. I'm a liberal. I've voted Democratic as long as I've had the right to vote. But I look at what's happening to politics the West Coast with a mixture of disgust and horror. People are losing their jobs for saying the wrong things, donating to the wrong causes, or because they've offended the wrong people. And far from being concerned at the excesses of this politics, activists are gleeful, and are saying that these are just desserts for "oppressors".

It's possible to be a liberal and be less than 100% on board with defining everything in terms of intersectional oppression. It's possible to be a liberal, and still think the left has gone too far. It's possible to be a liberal and think that people should only be punished for actions, not beliefs. And I believe that the people standing up at Facebook are, by any standard outside of San Francisco, liberals.

People are losing their jobs for saying the wrong things, donating to the wrong causes, or because they've offended the wrong people.

They aren't. At least, not any more than previously when they mostly also weren't.

yeah I fail to really connect the dots between people that want to be islamophobic and transphobic with labor relations.

If anything I'd say the organized actions by googlers against military contracts shows the actions you seem to be looking for much better.

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