I'm curious if considering the increasingly unforgiving ways that tech is going about its labor reduction, people would be more open to unionizing. Specifically, if there are going to be layoffs with a company that is unionized, the company would have to negotiate with the union and the union can demand things like: - When the company starts hiring again, laid off employees would get preferential treatment and would have to receive an offer before going back to recruiting anyone. - Severance packages would need to be negotiated (continuation healthcare, amount of payout, etc) - Many layoffs target engineering "quality of life" teams like developer experience teams who make life easier for the engineers - this would have to be negotiated as well. - The amount of people being laid off is also up for negotiation. If you're not sure, click "See Results" and comment with why.
The idea is all fine and dandy but the process of unionizing (especially under these megacorp tech monopolies) would be hellish. One look at the Activision-Blizzard attempts to unionize showed me the lengths these companies would go through to union-bust
There will be nonstop Union busting
Please go to another industry with unions. I want to continue earning big $$$ and accept the risks involved with that.
Ever since COVID killed a million Americans, many in the service industry, there’s been an unprecedented wave of unionization across the US. Before 2020, union busting was a simpler process, but at the current scale of unionization, I don’t think corporations are going to have an easy time now. In fact, NLRB just pushed for a nationwide injunction on Starbucks to stop union busting. At this rate, even as Starbucks has fought tooth and nail every step of the way, It seems likely that Starbucks workers will be unionized nationally soon. And tech workers have significantly more bargaining power than baristas… yet it seems will have a lot less actual power than them.
How’s a union barista’s TC compare to non-union FAANG 10x engineer?
That’s a great question, so let’s compare labour share of income between Starbucks and Google, which shows how much workers are getting* relative to gross profits. Starbucks - $35k average pay * 350k workers -> $12.3 billion Google - $250k * 180k workers -> $45 billion Starbucks - $4.5 billion operating income + $12.3 billion -> $16.8 billion gross profit Google - $78.7 billion + $45 billion -> $123.7 billion Starbucks labor share of 12.3/16.8 or 73% Google labor share of 45/123.7 or 36% In other words, Googlers are being paid 2x less than Starbucks workers relative to how much gross profit each company makes. More simply: if Starbucks had as much profit as Google with as many workers as Google, their employees would be paid $500k instead of Google’s $250k. *equity complicates this, I included equity in average Google comp to give a conservative estimate. In reality, Googlers would probably make even more with Starbucks level of labor share.
Unionize and then union should work with law makers to make policies to make layoffs harder. Minimum an year of severance, immunity from layoff for particular reasons. For every layoff, CEOs and ELTs to be reset. Etc
Great! Then tech in the US will perform like tech in Europe and we will all be taking 70% pay cuts.
Tech performance in Europe is not good? Better wlb isn’t good? What’s wrong in Europe?
No, I don’t want to pay the union fee.
Union will basically demand better accountability from leaders. Currently, they just grift from one failure to another while doing no real work.
No…. That will only change companies to hire more contractors and less FTE… so you will be damn….
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unionizing means saying bye to $$$ and stasis
ur stupid
Amazon is right. Union means catering to the lowest common denominator. The ones who will benefit are the lowest performers, the higher performers get dragged down.