Hundreds of Facebook employees walk out as Zuckerberg plans town hall tomorrow
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
Right now engineers have incredible leverage. What do they gain by a union.
Don’t like what Facebook is doing. Quit and work elsewhere. There’s plenty of jobs available
If the engineers’ leverage is so great, why have they been unable to enact policies they support?
Plenty of bodies to replace those who leave, for sure, but they're not about to start hiring random offshore types.
Which is, of course, their choice.
The only reason FB takes marching orders from such organizations is lobbying by their own employees.
That's not necessarily desirable for somebody that currently has a compensation package that's far above the average.
I've never seen or heard of a union that handles this differently, even if they are "democratic institutions", so I wonder if there are any examples where you bargain collectively, but you don't get the negative side-effects of equal pay for unequal work, promotions based on time spent instead of contributions, essentially tenure for underperformers etc.
That doesn't happen in the SAG. Talent are expected to be paid a floor, but no ceiling is mandated. There's certainly stories in the news all of the time about incredible contracts getting signed by big stars.
https://www.wrapbook.com/essential-guide-sag-rates/
> you don't get the negative side-effects of equal pay for unequal work, promotions based on time spent instead of contributions, essentially tenure for underperformers etc.
Given that a hypothetical software engineer union would be a brand new entity with no historical baggage to older, more archaic or corrupted unions, certainly its members can work to design an updated system that addresses some of these issues. Why, if tech is supposed to be about innovation, must a union representing its workers must necessarily be tethered to the same faults as older institutions?
I don't really follow that tech is about innovation, but that aside: I'm not saying a union would have be the same as all the other unions, I'm asking why it wouldn't and how to ensure that.
The SAG is interesting, but I don't know whether it's very comparable to tech. I'm not anti-union, but I wouldn't join a union, I work too closely with them to believe that it's in my personal best interest. For the average (non-tech) worker, that's different, they'll most likely benefit. But they're also in a very different position than tech people, with very different hiring markets.
Because a significant percentage of its hypothetical membership feel the same way you do about those problems.
> and how to ensure that.
Become a member. Vote for the union policies you think are important. Become a union leader. Etc.
Witness how many times the policeman who killed George Floyd had complaints against him and was protected by his union.
As one example, look at training and employment. It takes three years to become a police officer in Germany or France. Once you are one, you are employed for life (after a probation period). A lot of the training is focused on legal work, de-escalation and so on. Is there still excesive use of force? Yes. Still racial profiling and protection of your felllow officers? Yes and yes. Do you have to be affraid of police? No. Does police have to be afraid of the population? No. Are there exceptions to this? Yes, as always.
Anohter, very big difference, between France germany and the US is, that in france there are two police organisations (Police and Gendarmerie), in Germany a federal one and one per state. All are follwing the same regulations with only minor differences between the states in germany, and differences in area of responsibility. Compare that to the US with city-based police departments, sherrifs departments, sate police and so on. The former makes it easier to implement common standards, the latter makes it harder.
But we divert a lot from the topic, don't we?
Hard to say if it is the most important but it is a pretty important factor. See https://www.joincampaignzero.org/ for all research that indicates the unions are a key stumbling block.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15248774
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8498324
commandlinefan 3 months ago [–]
Well, there’s a lot of philosophizing on here about what a hypothetical future with unionized programmers might look like; some good, some bad. We already know what a future without one will look like: open offices, JIRA ticket quotas, unpaid overtime, permanent contract work, whiteboard coding interviews, penalties for experience and education and zero training.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22359605
And a rather prophetic comment:
LarryDarrell 10 months ago [–]
My worry is that without premature organization, the next recession is going to make the "tech worker shortage" a permanent thing of the past. We'll never have as much negotiating power as we do now.
If say there was a Tech Workers Union/Guild/Association, we might have been able to protect the older workers at IBM, or the outsourced workers at Disney. Maybe there could be a push back against open offices and poorly implemented Agile. As it is, we're just better compensated workers floating from job to better job.
Everything else you're saying is essentially bad faith readings of legitimate industry concerns that I deign to respond to unless evidence of non-trolling becomes manifest. Perhaps you genuinely have bought into the propaganda that unions are intended to protect mediocrity, or are ignorant that unions exist in industries where stark differences in worker performance exist (the SAG and professional athletes' unions), or believe that a union made up of software engineers- the supposed innovators of this age, making the world a better place, etc.- are doomed to repeat the same failures as past unions. And here I thought tech can disrupt and reinvent anything.
But I will mention that those issues you've caricatured aren't even the potentially most killer features of a union specifically for the software industry: anti-discrimination and anti-harassment. HR departments are notorious for protecting companies instead of individual workers, so an independent body that can provide the individual with legal representation and support would be useful in an industry notorious for ageism and issues with gender and race. Would Susan Fowler have endured as many indignities if there was a SWE labor union that had her back? We won't know until there's one to protect those who suffer from similar mistreatment in the future. And yes, such a union would be expected to protect workers from such abuse no matter how many bugs they fix in a month- that is how equality before the law should be, and a union is a way to ensure that labor laws are respected.
You do realize all of these things are standard at any large tech company already?
Commoditizing labor into pay bands is standard HR policy for all large companies (see levels.io). And people who get promoted tend to have more seniority with the company.
I’ve also worked at multiple FAANG companies, and low performers are absolutely not fired. You’d basically have to steal something or molest a coworker before they even think about firing you.
I don’t think any companies do stack ranking any more in terms of firing. Layoffs are the only times you’d have to worry. And that comes down to politics as well no matter what.
Obama managed fine without ever relying on Twitter.
So long as you think there's at least one person who he reaches by social media that he wouldn't reach with traditional media, it seems you are obligated to conclude that banning him from social media would reduce his reach, or in other words, trouble him getting his message out.
I'm sure he could still easily get huge messages out, but would have much more trouble getting out minor messages of the kind he uses Twitter for.
You're assuming that the convention of neutrality in these programs would be upheld, but it's just a convention and iOS already violated it a long time ago in the mobile space. It was after all, once a convention that tech platforms didn't attempt to decide the correctness of what people said, on the grounds that they were just platforms and not publishers.
Additionally the issue here isn't specific to some vague category of tech companies. This is happening because of activist employees like those at Facebook. They can and do crop up anywhere, they can and do impose very nasty demands. It's not merely about de-platforming their opponents, but also forcibly platforming their allies.
For example, Kickstarter's employees unionised in order to force Kickstarter to keep supporting a fundraising project that was openly advocating violence against conservatives. This broke all the rules of the site, which is why it got taken down, but such details didn't matter to Kickstarter's activist workforce - who via unionisation were successful in their goal of converting Kickstarter into a fundraising platform for leftist violence.
There's a clear pattern in which hard left employees seek to both erase their enemies and also make their allies immune to the usual rules. This behaviour is tribalistic and destructive. Judging from history it ends in total cultural cold war, and possibly even hot war. At some point people have to say enough is enough, and that not every company has to get into every fight because a few employees walked out.
I guess tech executives are hamstrung by Californian law and can't simply fire employees who don't turn up to work. This is just one more factor making Silicon Valley unattractive as a place to set up new businesses: set up shop in California and before you know it, you'll have ended up with some hyper-aggressive leftist employees trying to take over your company.
The problem here is in letting a handful of social media companies have an outsized impact in our democracy. That's not worth booting Trump off Twitter.
And yes, this would reduce his reach. So would a newspaper or TV channel not publishing something he said, and yet we'd be incredibly weirded out if newspapers and TV channels were required to publish every mundane thing the President sends their way.
> The University of California, for example, had a policy known as the Speaker Ban codified in university regulations under President Robert Gordon Sproul, mostly, but not exclusively, targeting Communists. One rule stated that "the University assumed the right to prevent exploitation of its prestige by unqualified persons or by those who would use it as a platform for propaganda." This rule was used in 1951 to block Max Schachtman, a socialist, from speaking at the University of California at Berkeley.
2. Unions and professional organizations, and really all organizations intended to consolidate power for one group over another, have both good points and bad. Obviously, unions have played an important role in improving worker safety and security, and that's great. But they've also contributed negatively in some ways. Not wishing to organize under as part of a union is not necessarily irrational; it may just be a different weight applied to the varies effects said organizations have.
False. Professional organization give licensure. The union represents those who have licenses and or work for an agency where majority of those license holders work.
> 2. ...Obviously, unions have played an important role in improving worker safety and security, and that's great. But they've also contributed negatively in some ways...
You can add a "not having a union" in that sentence and flip those contradictory sentences and they still don't mean anything. It's not about not wishing to organize. It's about coming up with a few set goals that the union can represent. Then the members vote on what else is there that is important to majority of the members. Unions work like a democracy. There's some shortcomings but the overall outcome is beneficial to the people being represented.
Incorrect!
Most doctors are probably solo or group practice. This means one or a few doctors work together in a business that they own. This business then contracts with hospitals to provide services. Kaiser Permanente is different in that it hires doctors directly, but it is the minority.
The AMA (American Medical Association) is not a union and does not negotiate on behalf of doctors. It is more a lobbying and advocacy group.
As most of these professionals aren't employees, collective bargaining doesn't make a lot of sense. Where they are, in the cade of hospitals, collective bargaining is very much a thing.
EDIT: In western Europe, we all live with things the nions achieved in the later 19th, early 20th century. in Germany, things like paid sick leave, vacation, labour hours, week-ends, etc... are all things union fought for, really hard, to get. As the world changes, which it did back then, employees need to have their say in how things will be handled. Last time, it was through unions. If these unions are up to the tasks regarding digitalization is disputable. But that employees, this time around white collor ones, need their voices to be heard is a given.
I never was in a union as an employee, being white collor made that always a difficult choice. And unions tend to play political and power games. Which I don't like. the alternative so, doesn't seem to be better.
The problem is that "other things" come out of it too. Being required to pay someone for an hour of time to vacuum the carpet around your display at a trade show or plug in a lamp (because you're not allowed to do it yourself). People being threatened with physical violence (or actually being subject to it) because they don't agree with the union. These things do happen and, to many people, they are a serious concern.
> There's some shortcomings but the overall outcome is beneficial to the people being represented
That is a matter of opinion, and also ignores what's best for society as a whole (which also matters to a lot of people). Just because something is best for the workers doesn't mean it's the best choice for a functioning society.
I'm not arguing for or against unions here, just point out that they're not all rainbows and birthday cakes. Deciding to consider the facts and come up with your own opinion doesn't mean you're a bad person, or irrational.
I take about six weeks. I stay home whenever I’m sick.
Even if you assume I work 60 hours a week, I still make quite a bit more than I would in Germany. Even including health care.
So yes, my per hour rate is better in Silicon Valley.
This has never not been the case. Number of unions? 0.
Some of my co-workers from my previous employer are currently still on classes paid for by that previous employer.
Levels.fyi has median German comp at $95k (net $61k), median SF comp at $236k (net $151k). We'll just use your numbers for the time spent:
Berlin: 52 - 6 - 2 - 4 = 40 weeks = 40 * 5 * 8 hours. Net hourly wage = $38/hr
SF: We will assume they work full 52 weeks, and they work 10 hours a day, and every day of the week = 52 * 7 * 10 hours. Net hourly wage = $41/hr
Okay, so if they never take a day off and they work 10 hours every day they still make more. Now that's being generous to your claim.
Of course, one could attempt to construct an organization that doesn't have these flaws, but I suspect the greater part of possible participants desire these things I call flaws. So, given institutional oppression vs. the natural oppression of the markets? I choose the natural oppression. We will both swim in the stormy ocean and luck and strength and perseverance will choose one of us. So be it.
So the concept of a union for me personally means I'll be paid less, be surrounded by unfireable underperformers and have zero incentive to improve my craft.
I also truly don't understand how you can allow politics to be so deeply embedded in your work.
The president of the United States is threatening military violence against its own citizens and you criticize people for being "political"? Seriously?
Some of these rioters set fire to occupied buildings with children inside and prevented emergency services from accessing the location. In other words, property destruction and attempted murder.
Do you propose this behavior should be met with praise and not violence?
Someone was nearly stoned to death on the street with bricks by rioters for protecting a business.
That said, violence by police against civilians is far worse. It shouldn’t happen in response to property damage, but it especially shouldn’t happen unprovoked — and we’ve been seeing a lot more of that than violence from protesters.
That doesn't mean police are "less bad". It means they fucked up badly, and then rioters and looters are responding badly to a bad situation (including with attempted murder, rape, assault, property destruction, arson, etc).
In fact, numerous businesses owned by black people were unfortunately torched during the rioting. What part of that is justice? Further, what good does it do to black neighborhoods to have their houses burnt down, critical supplies interrupted in the middle of a pandemic and other such egregious behaviour?
Anarchists are using this situation to cause chaos and destruction.
First, violence by police is always worse than violence by civilians, full stop. They took an oath to protect and serve their communities in a job they knew could be dangerous, so they are obligated to go above and beyond in preventing violence and deescalating conflict. If necessary, they must be willing to suffer physical trauma in order for civilians to be safe. This is an axiomatic belief for me; if you can’t meet me on it, we’re going to have to agree to disagree.
I think everyone recognizes that the protests have caused far more violence than the murder of George Floyd alone. But the best way to prevent further violence would have been to immediately arrest the officers (as any civilian would have been) and hold them accountable. As it stands now, the other three officers who helped restrain him and prevent bystander intervention have not even been arrested. It seems to me that police and politicians across the country are willing to accept thousands of arrests, thousands more injuries and millions of dollars worth of property damage all to protect four officers who should absolutely face trial.
That brings me to “acceptable” and “unacceptable” rioting. There are no doubt people using the protests as cover to sow chaos, or to do “riot tourism” — we’ve all seen videos of that. That is not okay. But plenty of rioting is happening because a group of people have been crying out in every which way that they are drowning and nothing seems to help. I’ve seen even staunch conservatives acknowledge that Floyd’s death was beyond the pale. And it’s not just him: it’s Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many others. And those are just the deaths that make the news — that’s a small subset of all the times when someone was “just” beat up, or profiled, or arrested for no good reason. Plenty of black people feel that society is not honoring its contract with them; given that, can we really blame those protesting for feeling that they don’t need to honor their contract with society?
Prosecutors are supposed to be making those decisions on behalf of the state or federal government.
The police did everything in their power (immediately firing them). It's up to prosecutors to do the rest.
Do you think police generally support what happened?
I do believe police generally support what happened.
So you've pointed out what the police have been up to, and why people are out rioting.
But torching a residential building with children inside as a response? How is that okay?
"But the children!" It was vacant. Nice try, though.
No one is condoning this specific act, but I'm not going to damn everything else because if it. That's absolutely silly.
Torching black-owned businesses? Looting critical supplies from pharmacies, supermarkets and other retailers? Stoning people nearly to death in the street? Murdering a federal officer in California?
Where's the line? What's acceptable?
FWIW, the vast majority of protesters involved are not involved in the aforementioned acts.
You can comply peacefully with everything they ask of you. That's because of the threat of violence. "No, we can't make this person come with us to present them to a judge, if they don't want to, they must be let go. No Violence!" sounds crazy.
"No violence, ever" just means "property should not exist as a concept".
As an example, firing rubber bullets at innocent people causing harm and arresting journalists.
That doesn't mean it's justified to burn down an occupied building with children inside and prevent fire crews from accessing it. That's diabolical.
How much more "context" do you need? You don't go around dispatching the military to shoot at your own citizens, not in a state governed by the rule of law. No amount of civil unrest will let an accountable government get away with that.
> Do you propose this behavior should be met with praise and not violence?
Please don't put words in my mouth.
It's a simple question, and I never implied your response either way.
Do you think violence by police or military is justified when individuals are setting fire to occupied buildings?
Frankly, I don't know why I'm having to say this. I'm just stating the obvious here.
The police are obviously totally overwhelmed, and like it or not the military has the legal authority to operate domestically and without them being there more people could've died.
I don't understand your position. There's an occupied building on fire, with children inside. Protesters are attacking fire crews. What is the ideal outcome? I didn't see a fireman with his knee on anyone's neck. Why attack them, if not to cause destruction and murder people?
Arson against residential buildings is terrorism. That's it.
Anyways, you're ignoring the bigger picture, the mountain of bodies that led to this situation in the first place. The civil unrest we're seeing wouldn't have happened at all if policing across the country was done in a sane manner. The numerous reports of unjustified police violence in the midst of this crisis is already making things worse, and there's no need for the military to add to that.
Yes. Do you have ANY examples in history where protests were met with violence didn't end poorly? Hell, America celebrates the Boston Tea Party in school.
Civil disobedience is an American obligation.
I see so many more people with this viewpoint than can statistically all be “top performers”.
Given the low likelihood that any given person is a top performer, isn’t it better to organize in such a way that we all benefit?
Even assuming (which is an incredible leap of logic) that a union for people who are famously a highly-paid and highly-competitive sector would want to "pay everyone the same" (which, frankly, no union on the planet actually does; the absolute worst in that vein is pay based purely on seniority), it would be vastly more likely that the union would be able to bargain with employers to increase that average salary—perhaps not to match the very top, but well above what it was before the union was formed.
This rewards ineptitude, punishes high performance and punishes children.
The worst thing about unions is protecting low performers, though.
Unions fight for what their members want them to fight for. Some unions fight for things i wouldn't want. Some unions fight for things that i would want in some jobs but not in the tech industry. It doesn't follow that just because one union did X all unions would do X.
Good uses of a Union: maintain a high professional standard and high pay
Bad uses of a Union: protect incompetent members and get involved in political issues of interest to only a subset of union members. The threshold for getting involved in a political issue should be a minimum of 4/5s of members if not even higher.
Single issue organizations are much better. You don't need to agree on how to run the justice system to promote safe drinking water, so don't use the Safe Water Now organization to weight in on prison reform or police laws. Start a new, unrelated org if you want to do that.
They're fairly strong in Canadian provinces.
These are are often people who are powerful in the sense that they have alot of whats required to counter the broken issues in tech.
The problem is that the judgement is to do with perceived 'impact'. No normal person is going to be prevented from saying 'when the looting starts the shooting starts', you prevent trump from saying this because its 'dangerous'. The situation is awful. Its a cluster fuck of people with too much power welding it in unprincipled ways.
Fb employees walking out in some display of outrage at the companies behaviour when what they should ACTUALLY do is NOT WORK FOR FACEBOOK I don't understand. These are not impoverished coal miners with no choice where to work. Get a different job you idiots. Stop working for an obviously not ethical company. You're part of the problem, don't pretend to be virtuous by 'protesting', you're achieving nothing apart from making yourself look stupid.
You're calling engineers irrational for not subscribing to an implementation detail before identifying the key deliverables.
Unless goals are set and understood upfront before unionizing, then all they'll end up organizing is a pay raise.
To give them credit they're making a political statement at work when we're told not to talk politics at work.
This is why they're being dismissed while Tim Bray received mostly applause.
Why is bringing them to the workplace a good idea? I mean we always talk about inclusion. What about people who have diverse political opinions.
[0] Yes, this gets complicated. Yes, it has been complex for a long time. Yes, law is mostly settled on this. Yes, lawyers are expensive.
Don't work there. Quit.
The next time, it may be your own opinions that they’ll censor: Facebook has far more reach, and has much less journalistic pretensions than any of Murdoch’s properties... you really really don’t want them to start getting involved in politics.
Like, if the President of the United States is saying something that's factually incorrect and might cause people e.g. not to register to vote (because they expect every Californian will be getting a ballot), is that context not also significant?
Or, hypothetically -- but really if you think at this point that this is a stretch, come on -- if Trump claims without evidence on November 3 that he was the victim of massive voter fraud and the election was stolen, and calls for his supporters to take up arms against their state and local governments, should that be broadcast without context or commentary?
This isn't about Trump. We have a robust mechanism to remove elected officials - not corporations.
We need to think real hard about what we want in 5 years and beyond from now... not just what we want now. Breaching the divide of platform and publisher for anything beyond light moderation to keep the platform usable, no matter how well intentioned, is bound to have a devastating result on future political expression.
Call it what you like; we're not coping very well with unrestricted dissemination of disinformation. Folks have gamed it at the highest levels.
Funny how folks get defensive when criticism of their addiction is put forward. You can always tell.
You'd think Americans, out of all countries, would understand this.
I don't see why it's wrong for facebook to stay out of it other than reporting violent language to relevant law enforcement. Seems like assault is already a felony.
If you're the owner of the platform, and prominently inject your POV, thats starting to get problematic. I understand the impulse to do that, but people aren't thinking about the 2nd order effects.
I'm still not seeing how this is a big deal. What are the second-order effects?
Classical liberalism has never been a majority position. The reason it exists is due to smart people thinking hard about the problem of governance, and imposing its rules top-down. But maybe thats just me being european.
Unless you believe truth can easily be determined, there is no tweak that Zuck and Jack can do to fix their platforms. At least Zuck is honest about it.
Honest question. Is Reddit any different? Hacker News? Your average bulletin board?
"Social media" is a misnomer, in reality it's skinner boxes for humans
The situation on the ground has changed a lot in the last few months.
I am not sure how much real leverage they will have from the walkout.
As a matter of calculation, the timing isn't ideal. None of them seem to be saying it is a matter of calculated timing to leverage their market value though.
Working people of all countries unite. Seize the means of production!
You realize that means your business too?
"But please seize my business last"?
You know that Marx isn't against all business right? It's the extreme inequality that's the problem.
So, like most small business owners we'd be seized well after the 1% (and even the 5%).
My efforts are small, I've only removed one microscopic cog from the Great Machine.
I felt my other choice was "status quo". I found it unacceptable to do nothing.
Many employers give away the means of production via RSUs, and the standard advice is to sell them and buy index funds so that you're diversified across multiple means of production.
Don't know if Marx would approve, but it seems clearly better to me that Microsoft workers can own some Amazon and vice versa, so if one company goes down the workers don't end up losing everything (as they would if they only owned the company they work for).
People are asking these social media companies to put themselves in an impossible position.
People are acting just plain crazy these days. I hope it ends soon.
If Apple died I'd be sad. Likewise Stitchfix and Digital Ocean and Github and Airbnb. Hell, maybe even Microsoft a little bit. But not Facebook or Google.
If I started a company one of my goals would be to create a lasting culture providing enough real value that at least a few people other than the employees would be sad when it died.
Too long have abhorrent actions by Donald Trump gone completely unchecked by major platforms and, if Facebook won't even do the token step of doing something about a clearly racist and disgusting message, then they are truly spineless and complicit.
Donald Trump is a bad president IMO, but there are far worse people (and their spokespeople) active on social media. The inconsistent standard makes this seem more like virtue signalling, which isn't quite "giving a shit about the state of the world".
EDIT: Corrected a typo. I think Trump is a bad president.
And, for what it's worth, I'm gay and a part of a minority and I am privileged to live somewhere where there's little repression for who I am. I absolutely want to see people pushing back on countries that have terrible leaders who would repress my life: if you're going to shrug then say "well that's just policy", that honestly sucks.
I'd take "virtue signalling" any day over whatever this response from Facebook is.
We reached here because we had complete freedom of speech. And you are against that very thing, the irony
That is up to you. It is not up to them.
If they're as opposed to violence as they say, it shouldn't matter if it's a leader or not.
Why blame the platforms? What have the society, people, leaders done about it? He is the elected president after all. Hint: maybe there is a very large chunk of population that agrees with him. This might disgust you but I don't know what the fix is if a huge number of people are "backward"