What happens if the NY Times tech staff strikes on election night? | Hacker News Reader

What happens if the NY Times tech staff strikes on election night?

washingtonpost.com

34 pointstysone70 comments

We'll miss out on an insightful analysis of how the huge amount of votes for Harris are a big problem for the Harris campaign? Scary...

Big Media thought-pieces on how Big Media is important, and/or over, and/or somehow indifferent are... over?

A harrowing piece on the democracy-threatening trend of campus protests? A curious and thoughtful interview with an anti-trans activist? A 3D infographic about tunnels that israel uses as justification to bomb a school or hospital?

No, but would you accept an above-the-fold photo of Trump at a McDonald's instead?

We'll miss Bedbug Bret writing whiny op-eds about how people aren't allowed to be mean to him on Twitter and how those tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians deserved to die

Imagine how much disarray the dems will be in if there is no one to report on the dems being in disarray.

Aside from never, ever, ever using the NYT for elections after "the needle" debacle in 2016, I have been utterly unimpressed with the NYT more broadly. Their average, day-to-day journalism--and especially their political journalism--has been little better than gossip at best and actively hostile to healthy democracy at worst. To the extent they were ever anything special and not simply the beneficiary of huge market bias, they lost that years ago.

What was the needle debacle?

A false sense of precision, like saying “93.274% chance” when your error margin is +/- 10%.

If they went from 99% to 0% in 1 hour, their error margin was around 100%...

The margin of error on any poll or estimate is itself an estimate.

With ~60 elections under the country's belt, the 1% chance occurring isn't that shocking.

8pm - Hillary shows as having a 99% chance of winning the presidential election. 9pm - Hillary has a 0% chance of winning.

Turning rapidly changing and imprecisely known information into a widget was just one of their astonishing number of problems, but, more than anything, it symbolized to me their absolute arrogance that they were the source of societal trends rather than merely teasing out hints from incomplete data like any other peon.

I was hoping this would be an analysis of exactly what would happen and how NYT would handle it, but it's not. It's very one-sided of what the union claims will happen. I'm much more curious about the what the NYT has planned just in case.

What would you like to know? Stress testing happens well in advance, content's on enterprise CDNs.

Legacy systems are probably the greatest risk, the "if engineers with critical knowledge of those systems aren’t there" part rings true there.

I'd like to know how that impacts their reporting strategy and what their contingency plan is for it. I'm also curious if they've considered hiring outside or international assistance to fill the gaps; not sure the NLRB considerations but easier to ask forgiveness than permission? Have they considered riding it out and seeing what happens?

I'm just curious of the inside thinking of management with how to deal with this unique situation.

Great questions, stuff in the newsroom is handled by a separate union, the NewsGuild - funny you mention the NLRB, they just filed suit against NYT related to the strike: https://www.axios.com/2024/10/22/nyt-newsguild-labor-charge-...

On a technical side NYT certainly haven't considered "riding it out" but instead boring, predictable contingency and fallback. The TechGuild union membership is not mandatory (neither is striking). Hiring strikebreakers in NYC is illegal.

https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/newyorkcity/latest/NYC...

https://archive.is/VAB7W

The trouble with the strike option is it either exposes your leverage. Good or bad.

To plays devils advocate a little, what happens if the union does strike and the NYT carries on like or mostly-like normal? That could show the weakness of the strike.

I think that was part of the parent commenter's point

If the tech staff strikes and everything keeps working, they must be a good tech staff.

Things go wrong: why do we pay you? Things don't go wrong: why do we pay you?

| source: washingtonpost.com

nice try, guys

Some related material:

‘We Can't Do Our Jobs Without the Tech Guild’

https://www.nyguild.org/post/we-cant-do-our-jobs-without-the...

Don't see the point of entertaining continuing to employ a workforce that threatens to sabotage you on the biggest night of the year for your company.

I mean, that goes both ways. The union doesn't see a point to negotiating with a brick wall, either, and a strike is intended to generate leverage to push negotiations forwards. That's how the whole system works.

> “Currently in management’s counter, they have proposed a one-percent general wage increase,” said Svorcan-Merola, who pointed out that publisher Sulzberger’s total compensation increased by more than 50 percent in 2023, per publicly available records. “So we think [one percent] is a little bit low.”

> The union doesn't see a point to negotiating with a brick wall

They're free to work somewhere else, no ones forcing them to stay.

Sure. They're also free to strike, a technique that's a lot more likely to get them at least some of what they're asking for.

The same applies for Boeing. They're free to give in. Production could restart today!

Continue to employ them, force them to strike on the "biggest night of the year for your company" (i'm thinking do some pay cuts or something more) - then let the striking workers watch on as nobody cares and realise that you no longer have any bargaining power.

How is that sabotage? Not doing work != making stuff break

perhaps we'd reevaluate our sense of the grey lady's importance even more than we have already been?

Who's "we"?

the collective public

Speaking for a lot of people, huh?

ITT: A bunch of techies who would never have the guts to unionize running down their colleagues who did for flexing their leverage over their employer.

does newer generation even care about big media? all the news comes from x or tiktok or youtube.

What an utter relief it would be if NYT was unable to report completely useless minute-to-minute updates. Who gives a shit?

“The second issue is return-to-office policies. Though Times management has told the bargaining unit that it has no plans to change the current hybrid-work model, Goran Svorcan-Merola, a software engineer who is on the Tech Guild’s bargaining committee, said that management wants to reserve the right to eventually have tech employees in the office five days a week. “It’s not the standard around the tech industry,” he said.”

More of this RTO bullshit from upper management? For a tech team?! Ugh. Solidarity with the Tech Guild.

Hard to imagine a unionized content business staying relevant in what’s about to come.

We'll check another website, no biggie

Exactly this.

The NYT ceased being the paper of record a long time ago.

[Citation missing]

It's hard to get past their cheerleading for the Iraq war, for example.

It really wasn't. It wasn't difficult for anyone to get past their cheerleading for the Iraq War other than Judith Miller, who (for her service) was given a fake job at a fake conservative paper for a time that I'm sure paid her enough to retire comfortably. The Cheneys and Bushes are media and political darlings. No one paid a price for going with the herd, and doing what the administration demanded.

It was and is difficult for people who failed to cheer on the Iraq War.

The NYT has always been on the administration's side when asked, and "corrects" the record about 5 years after it could make a difference for anyone. Everyone involved gets cush editor-in-chief jobs at "liberal" magazines, or professorships at quarter-million dollar J-schools.

That doesn't make it not the paper of record.

ok, what DOES make it the paper of record?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_of_record

...which says that it's based on reputation. I presume the previous poster's opinion is that the NYT is no longer deserving of that reputation. It's weird that you asked for a citation of their opinion.

One person's opinion doesn't make it not the paper of record. It's more like a state change that requires some critical mass.

And the more recent example of "Screams without words".

https://web.archive.org/web/20240817191751/https://www.semaf...

Shit they aren't even the "New York Times" anymore because they officially made their focus national and have jack shit for New York coverage.

Even if every single news site went down on election night, it would be fine. People aren't gonna die if they don't find out who won the election until the next day or even the next week.

If every single news site went down, I would expect Trump to declare himself winner and put into motion a coup.

I mean, that happened without sites going down.

Correct.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_coup

Follow that train of thought out of the station. With either candidate or entity.

And then...

Directs the military to strike on [target] and the military says "Not my Commander" and no strike is carried out.

There is no Coup unless the powers are transferred.

It cannot happen.

Trump tried it already. I couldn't envision Harris even attempting it.

Not all coups are military.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_coup

Harris doesn't need to "attempt it", she somehow became the Democratic choice without a single vote for her, replacing the man who said it'd be ridiculous after all the millions of votes he got

Did the delegates not vote at the Democratic convention?

That's like saying the Chinese had a vote

Like it or not (I don't!), primaries are internal functions of membership organizations. The law has found this again and again. In these contests, it is the party delegates who are given the right to choose the party nominee.

A candidacy is not an elected position.

> the military says "Not my Commander"

The President remains Commander in Chief for several months, from November until late January.

(And now enjoys absolute immunity for official acts performed under that hat.)

In such a case, it'd be a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-coup

The results of this election will not be knowable the night of the election anyway. There are way too many people currently preparing too many different ways to challenge the results regardless of what actually happens.

Finding out the winner on election night is really just a modern illusion. Media "calls" have zero legal weight, and they rely on predictable geographical voting patterns and large enough win margins to build confidence on the outcome before all the unofficial tallies are in. That's way more difficult these days.

The fastest state to certify actual official results takes 2 or 3 days (Delaware), and most states are closer to 2 or 3 weeks.

Given the disinformation campaign that will take place (at the very least from russian bots flooding social media), I would much prefer all sources of information be fully available throughout the election. Of course this is their highest leverage moment, but it is also critical for the future of the country (at the very least). It is somewhat akin to ambulance drivers choosing to go on strike on Memorial day weekend. I am not a fan of the tactic, since they could strike any other time and get the same thing, perhaps striking 2 days more than they would have to at this time.

Then management might want to offer a compelling deal before the day of, right? Ideally high leverage strike doesn't even have to be carried out.

It might be a biggie for NYT management, that's how labor negotiation works.

Nothing at all, not even a little bit lol.

NYT makes for great papier mache though, nice pictures, but that's aboooout it, for over a hundred years already somehow.

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