Comment by ColonelSanders | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ColonelSanders | Hacker News Reader

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> Why? The stigma of culture war and political battles aside, why shouldn't employees take part in making business decisions in general?

Basically, no.

That's what's management is for.

They can become manager's if they want to impact that, though.

Are they qualified to understand what they're talking about? If they have a disagreement, is there a reason why they wouldn't raise it via proper channels rather than effect other things that are vital to the organization?

Are they big picture thinkers that have taken the time to digest the system, uninfluenced by social pressures? Some people don't care about their organization's goals, their coworkers, and decide to act out for their own vanity, at everyone else's expense.

And that is one reason why management exists. To answer your question, while they may be wrong, there's a purpose in shielding decision making away from those who lose sight of the org's goals.

The point of the union is when management makes decisions, which can be unfair and uncaring to the worker, that their rights, safety, and livelihood also are represented with fairness. The alternative I offered to you was, in an organization large enough, they could request to move to a different project.

Saying that they can become managers is like saying they can become the president of the U.S. The point is that you cannot become a manager at all if you disagree with management in the first place (and that doesn't mean you don't have the chops). Also the number of management seats are limited. The number of union seats has no upper limit.

> Saying that they can become managers is like saying they can become the president of the U.S.

I don't think that analogy is proportional, since that'd make a manager at a furniture store on par with a head of state. But I get it, there isn't unlimited management roles. Because if there were, everyone would be on their own.

If you want to influence and shape business decisions - you want to be a manager.

How do you become one? By showing competence as an employee and joining a lower management position. Successes are how they climb the ladder. Yes, they definitely can innovate, and they can also play it safe.

People in upper management also hop between companies and have similar positions.

I think you don't understand what I said. You can't climb the ladder if you disagree with management. And that's not because you have no talent and management has the talent. There is no such correlation.

Is this clear now or do you need more help to understand?

I've written about this previously [0]. There is no shortage of companies with sound products, good teams, and bad management that prioritizes short-sighted thinking in their business strategy. I've definitely seen organizations with senior and staff engineers much more respected than me call out leadership for ignoring critical technical limitations, or failing to prioritize important things, only to lead to bad business decisions that ultimately doomed their companies. Sometimes those at the top don't see big enough of pictures.

I do believe that there's multiple problems that unions can address, and one of which is giving workers more say in how their companies are run and in what they're building.

Obviously, not all management is made up of pointy-headed bosses, and Dilbert shouldn't necessarily lead the company. There are definitely places where engineering-first cultures fail. But the status quo is made up of organizations where employee disagreement is reduced to a few pointed questions and awkward moments at all-hands, and if management fails then those employees are cut and execs get to leave with plushier severance packages. And while unions' primary purpose should be to protect the lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy, they can potentially be a tool to empower employee decision making. Or at least, to provide a check against management unilaterally making decisions even when the rank-and-file disagree.

Sure, you can just say people can leave, or companies with bad management cultures should deserve to fail. But that just seems like defeatism. It seems like a form of capitalism that promotes throwaway, wasteful behavior. If the employees had valid concerns, but management ignored them, doesn't it seem like a shame for an organization to decline and the product to die because of their mistakes. What about the customers?

Even if unions aren't the best tool for this, an industry that's so obsessed with innovation and disruption and experimentation- coming up with schemes like holacracy for instance- should at least try to address this problem. Bring back board-level ombudsmen, at least. [1]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22381563

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22367243

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