Hacker News Reader

Comment by czbond | Hacker News Reader

Why are tech company staff wanting to unionize? For the most part, aren't tech staff reasonably to well paid - with good working conditions and moderate hour expectations (say 40-50)?

View on HN

Well, when the Kickstarter staff unionized, they said "The goal of our union is to have a formal seat at the table to negotiate with management. We’re negotiating to promote our collective values, and ensure Kickstarter is around for the long haul. We care about preserving what’s great about Kickstarter and improving what isn’t.” In the last year, employees at Google and Microsoft have begun to agitate collectively to end sexual harassment and their companies’ respective involvements in the military-industrial complex and overseas censorship. Employees at Amazon and Salesforce have also implored their executives to stop selling technology to the US government. All of these requests could have more impact if made with a union behind them. All of this information was in the article linked in this post.

> For the most part, aren't tech staff reasonably to well paid - with good working conditions and moderate hour expectations (say 40-50)?

That can vary wildly. And just like other industries, there can be management abuses - like demanding regular, unpaid overtime, substandard wages, sexism, unreasonable behavior, etc. Think about all the basically permanent contractors working for tech companies that might not have healthcare or other benefits, etc.

Allowing company management to organize and act as a collective while not doing so as an employee puts you at a disadvantage in every negotiation and conflict.

50's too much and 40 should include an hour of breaks. Noncompetes and very broad claims of inventions and copyright by employers need serious push-back until they're rare or illegal, and organized labor can do that.

Also it'd be nice if some of the more powerful workers here could organize and help lobby for things like parental leave and minimum vacation for all workers, including those without so much clout.

Non-competes are illegal in California. If your contract contains one, the non-compete clause is null and void

One down, 49 to go, I guess. (probably there are a few other states where they're illegal, but it's far from all of them)

EDIT: and there's still the "if you write a novel in your free time on your own hardware we can try to claim it if we feel like it" clauses that are so common.

Reasonably well paid doesn't alway hold compared to the cost (and supply) of housing in the bay area; new grads are often forced to share bedrooms even though they make $110k+. (This isn't entirely tech companies' fault -- homeowners are not incentivized to allow housing growth to match new jobs, and California has been through many booms and busts in the past, so it is conservative in building out new capacity.)

Moderate hour expectations don't always hold during "crunch time"; Facebook and Google have large swaths of their employee base who are subject to the schedules of the large annual developer conferences (F8, Google Cloud Next, Google I/O). There have been internal mandates where employees were forced to work weekends for entire quarters.

> Reasonably well paid doesn't alway hold compared to the cost (and supply) of housing in the bay area; new grads are often forced to share bedrooms even though they make $110k+.

Yes, this is true, but I wonder if anyone is going to someday connect the dots between "crazy high average salary" and "high housing prices". Simply raising wages doesn't in and of itself make housing more affordable... it kicks off a feedback loop. When it's not unheard of for tech workers to make $250K-$500K per year (ostensibly to make it easier to buy those million dollar homes!), don't be surprised when housing prices spiral out of control.

I think folks have, but it's hard for any one group to break the loop:

Local government mostly represents native San Franciscans who, understandably, do not want to give up their home so that "other people" can live there (even if, by utilitarian standards, more of those other people can live there).

Folks who moved to the Bay Area in search of employment in tech (both immigrants and Americans who are not "native San Franciscans") who desire more housing are not always represented in local government. (In some local meetings, folks shoot down your opinion if you aren't born in SF.)

For CEOs/management, telecommuting and remote sites can make your company less nimble / competitive. Remote workers get left out of "serendipitous microkitchen discussions", and coordinating across sites/time zones is more work than just having one big all-hands in one big campus. (Can be mitigated by starting with a remote-first culture, but this is very hard to bolt on to an existing company.)

Finally, companies can't exactly reduce their hiring (number of roles) or salaries in collaboration with their neighbours to reduce housing prices.

Maybe not at Kickstarter and mature startups specifically, but tech is notorious for having bad hours during crunch time, weekend work and all-nighters. Plus even the best-funded of startups there can be corruption and abuse that HR will not help employees with, see the experience of Susan Fowler. A union serves to provide individual workers with leverage with collective protection.

Depends on where you're at, I've heard at some big companies you're going to work 70 - 80 hours and be on call.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com