How to go to war with your employer | Hacker News Reader

How to go to war with your employer

drewdevault.com

33 pointssamename35 comments

Just something I've noticed here on this site: the sentiment is highly "pro-employer" (kinda like the wsj). It makes sense really, considering who finances the infra for this website. Not surprised this article was flagged

The post connects two things I didn't consider before: collective action and internal tooling

Something that I've seen: management mandates that everyone use shitty tooling. Using collective action to challenge this and put a fire under management's ass to make internal tooling not shit isn't a bad idea imo

Really, I'm just happy I see an article here that speaks positively about organized labor and the adversarial relationship between employer and employee. The only flaw with this article is that it spends too much time talking about HR and not enough about litigation

> You don’t like agile/scrum and want to interact with it from the other end of a six foot pole and/or replace it with another system

Honestly, if you disagree with fundamental ways your company operates, it’s usually a lot less effort and a lot less stressful to find a new job that is aligned better with how you like to work.

I think one mistake a lot of job candidates make is accepting offers too quickly before making sure there’s a mutual culture fit.

The same mistake is made by a lot of employers: not making sure there’s mutual culture fit from the employer’s perspective prior to extending an offer.

On the contrary I think there’s almost certainly something that annoys you and could be improved about your position were it not against policy

One time I was on a team developing a desktop client in a division of a major public cloud. We had endless process inherited from our division built around ensuring cloud services (of which we created 0) were of sufficient uptime and security.

God how I wished I could find a way around the hours of pointless red tape involved in getting my job done. How many times did I write security documents explaining that our new product is not a cloud service and thus XYZ does not apply?

Another example, my current role has a laptop refresh policy. These usually make sense except my laptop is a crap 2019 MacBook Pro which struggles with what I do. I’m not set for a refresh for another 1.5 years. I think there’s likely a route to improving my job performance and using a faster laptop, that don’t start by quitting my job.

Re laptop, how about: it broke, into lots of tiny shattered pieces.

It doesn’t have to break into many little pieces. Just get some food under the keys. Productivity denied!

accepting offers too quickly OR being homeless: It's the choice for a lot of candidates. Having a choice of opportunities is not common for most.

A rare opinion on HN. Most people here are hot commodities. I agree with you.

Someone in that position shouldn't be "going to war" with their employer.

On the contrary, as workers' rights are being attacked constantly by employers, workers should fight back.

If you install Linux on your work laptop because it allows you to work more efficiently, then you are doing your job better and making more money for the business; they have no right to object to this and you have a very defensible position for exercising agency in this respect.

From my experience, this is becoming an area where you have no traction. Companies have increasingly complex security and record retention policies, your choice to use Linux (when the company is a sea of Windows machines) creates more work for your IT group to support. So guess what their blanket answer is going to be?

Also, if you need privileged access to get things done and the IT team can’t install nanny software on your computer, you have created a big security threat.

Yeah I know you Mr Hacker are responsible and would never fall victim to malware, because you personally audit all packages and their dependencies you download (eye roll).

But imagine you are in charge of security for a company and some argumentative contrarian insists on running the sole Linux machine in your corp network. Potentially your entire business or reputation is at risk because of this guy’s unilateral decision. Wouldn’t it be reasonable to tell them to stop?

I think we've been fortunate so far that Windows has so many low-hanging vulnerabilities that Linux hasn't been targeted as much.

I think this is a delusional take. The fact of the matter is you do not have any leverage at all and your only option, like everyone else's, is to be a political entity operating in the confines of the system to effect change. This author is acting like some kind of primadona who is above it all and such a sneaky snake because he totally knows HRs game and is going to tattle to them to get his boss fired.

> the fact of the matter is you do not have any leverage at all …

What evidence do you have to believe this?

The only leverage any employee has (non-union, in the US) is purely political.

All employment is “at will” in Tech, you can be fired for any reason. The only thing preventing you from being fired is your capacity to create value for the company (as seen in the company’s eyes)

Unless you’re truly irreplaceable, you don’t have much leverage by default.

> All employment is “at will” in Tech, you can be fired for any reason

Wrong. The reason cannot be discriminatory

An important distinction to make, one that can cost a great deal if not made

Technically you’re right.

Except in the US there are about 100 ways employers can still fire you even if the underlying reason is discriminatory.

They just can’t expose the real reason in writing and they make up other reasons (or no reason at all).

Edit: and just to be perfectly clear, I don’t applaud companies who discriminate (I myself am a minority frequently discriminated against). Just pointing out the unfortunate reality that non-discrimination laws are extremely weak and ineffective in the US when it comes to hiring/firing.

Sometimes you can project leverage even when you only have a little. Being sure to use the language of the business, and framing problems in ways that make sense to the stakeholders, implies that you have some organizational experience and power -- and that you won't be easily brushed off.

You can get pretty far by creating an impression that you have a mandate for what you're trying to do. Having a higher-level individual contributor position seems to create that impression in itself, at least at my company.

Yeah I'm not a nihilist about impacting change. There are lots of things you can do to change things because companies are just people and not every single thing is a hard decision from on high, there is leeway and room to lead. I just take issue with framing it as wielding your leverage and acting like an outsider of the company looking in and being in conflict with the company.

> The fact of the matter is you do not have any leverage at all

You do have leverage though, that's a point that this article makes. It costs time and money to onboard people. Also you can unionize, and acquire even more leverage

You're making a pretty strong claim and just assert it to be "the fact of the matter", reminiscent of an opinion column from a newspaper

Note though that the marginal value of an employee is typically < the average value, and that managers may value control more than profits.

If your company is not asking you to do the things that are most likely to make it money then I'd worry about your long-term job security. In my experience, most employees lack the context to understand what the best way to make their company money is. Therefore this argument seems flawed. However, if you have a better way to make money for your company than your boss does, then you should be promoted. A good company listens to bottom-up feedback and adjusts its approach accordingly.

Why was this flagged?

This is not a good article. It basically thinks about the employer in Marxist-like ways (class relations, owner of means of production etc).

Within the legal framework, here is what you have to do: whatever your employer asks you to do. No, if your employer believes that Linux isn't right for their business, or that you can't work from home, you are not supposed to do that.

I think smart employers will give a lot of agency to engineers to make some of these decisions, but it's not your call. If you want to make these decisions, become an employer yourself.

You're basically saying that workers should be cogs devoid of reflexion and agency.

Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I've edited my comment. I do believe what i wrote, tho. It was not meant as a personal attack.

Yes, I was reacting to the name-calling part ("this is such drivel") which is against the site guidelines. Since you took that out (thanks!) I've taken the flags off the post.

Thank you as well. Have a nice weekend!

They get to decide what they’re willing to pay for. If I’m not willing to sell that to them, the answer is to walk away peaceably, not “go to war.” My customer is not my adversary.

If they (employers) can change the terms of contract, why shouldn’t the worker as well?

What contract terms do employers change? The US has strong contract laws that would make that quite expensive for the employer.

Please edit out swipes and name-calling from your comments here, as the site guidelines ask. Your post doesn't need that first bit.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think that was heavy handed, dang, but I changed it.

"This is such entitled drivel" is precisely the sort of thing the HN guidelines ask users not to post:

"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I appreciate your taking it out! and have turned the flags off on the GP.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com