New York Times tech workers form a union
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
It seemed like they had a dream job and they were really keen on recruiting every decent engineer they could find.
Sad to see how that all ended up.
I'm disappointed to hear they weren't much better than most [traditional] media companies when it comes to the digital approach, at least in HR.
The NYT is still in a whole other league over most media companies for their digital product and development.
Flipping things around, do you think a Pulitzer prize winning NYT editor would get the salary and respect they expect if they take up a job at a tech company writing marketing copy for their website?
Probably not the level of respect and deference they are accustomed to, but potentially higher pay?
You missed out on a unique life opportunity.
Maybe what you're thinking of. Most of this started after I left the company, but I saw some of the beginnings of it, and knowing Kathy Zhang (the organizer quoted in the union article), I would be very surprised if she didn't play a major role in a lot of what's described there.
Maybe I'm wrong, and perhaps abusive megacorps really do need unions in place as a check against corporate power (never worked for one). I guess time will tell.
Perhaps, I said, but private sector unions can't handle workplace friction as easily. Often the other side of the complaint is also in the union and the union is just like a shadow HR. It has to choose winners and losers.
Of course collective bargaining is another thing. It can be useful, especially when the jobs are pretty standardized.
If a union mandated that its members must be allowed to fix bugs before being put on a new project everyone I know would join in a heartbeat.
These are company problems and not employee problems. The employees have no incentive to care about this so unions are a way to get more power over the things that matter.
Same comments about management from all of them: directionless, self-defeating.
You are saying that an individual employee voicing their concerns to their manager has more sway than a union bringing that concern up to the executives.
That means you can't go to your bosses and say "I think I'm worth this much (more) money".
You also can't leave your job to get paid that much, because seniority at your new company means you will start at lower pay than you currently have.
Collective bargaining is usually around work rules and core issues. No non-VP+ individual has the ability to effectively bargain re health insurance.
All companies have pay scales. Even massive unionized bureaucracies like the Federal government have the ability to compensate critical employees or critical skills. (Although your definition of critical may not align with the entity)
If you changed companies though you started at the bottom, guaranteed, because if you get moved ahead of people in the new company it creates an utter shitstorm. Management at the new job basically has to hate their employees and themselves to do such a thing.
No. You're going to get what the union wants.
People complain endlessly about HOAs and their behavior. Being in a union is the same shit!
By the way, in my professional adult life, there has never been a situation where there was something reasonable that I wanted in my employment contract and didn't get it. Just ask! I wonder how many people out there want unions and are also the kinds of people who don't ask for things they need.
And if you want to use unions to get you things that are _unreasonable_ that's bad for everyone.
What about "stop putting me on call without compensation or I will leave the company"
Says the dude without kids and a mortgage who can afford a couple of months without a salary :)
End of the day, requiring such a high friction approach to addressing basic issues sets up incentives to take no action.
So what you are describing is a situation in which there is zero long-term pressure for the company to improve or change their practices, because there is a never-ending source of people to replace the ones leaving, and as long as they're fine with the churn (spoiler: they are), they'll just chalk it up to the system working as intended.
It doesn't have to be a bluff, programmers are still in high demand.
And I'm not even in Silicon Valley, and I have no degree. C'mon!
If the software has any level of complexity, an org does not want to incur the cost of training a newly hired engineer and waiting 3-6 months while they get up to speed.
btw, would you be prepared to strike if negotiations don't go well? That's the only tool a union has to keep the other side at the bargaining table. heh I doubt you can charge PTO to a strike so i wouldn't expect a paycheck.
At least Frank is fucked if their relationship ever sours though. Fucking Frank. Everyone wants to see that guy get injured.
Apparently you can pay them some of the highest salaries in the world, make their meals, do their laundry, give them unlimited time off, and they will still find a reason to complain.
Then again it’s the NYT, who has been completely overtaken by activists.
It's a function of detachment from reality, not a function of compensation or material comfort. You can make $1mm a year, earning the company practically nothing, and have a story in head where you're being cheated out of what is rightfully yours.
_Anyone_ who thinks they can get away with entitled behavior can build up a narrative in their head where they are denied benefits and even higher compensation they deserve.
No it's not, the relationship between the company itself and the employees is fundamentally hostile, the desires of the shareholders will, also, expand to fill up all of space-time if you let them. I'm not saying this out "everybody can be friends :D", just that each one keeps the other in check.
Also, a lot of the NYT is already unionized and the apocalypse you speak of hasn't happened.
So again, if they treat their employees well they have nothing to fear.
And the reporting, it would be nice to see the coverage of this by their own reporters or journalists.
I went on their homepage and 11 of the 12 opinion articles are written by non minority authors.
Can they do same here with unions and somehow get away with being anti union?
what is the logic here?
The most trodden down workers of the first world - poor, starving programmers - who for the most part voluntarily passed on high salaries so they could "be a force for the good" and by joining news outlets [1], are stadning up to the powers that be (no one).