Good. If only tech workers had the spine to do the same after finding out their CEOs had conspired to suppress their wages and targeted those who wanted to leave...
It's very hard to complain about wages when you make $200k+ on flexible 40 hrs/week with free food. From the outside, tech workers would look entitled.
The fact is very few software developers make 200k+ (even adjusting for geographic CoL) but we all think someday we will and don't want to change the current system that allows that belief.
To me, working collectively isn't 100% about compensation. It's also having a fair footing at negotiations on things like time off, overtime, family leave, vacation, retirement, health care, etc. It's also about adversarial processes like performance reviews, age/gender/race discrimination etc. Those are all things that some of us can overcome individually, but it'd be a lot easier if we could ease up on viewing ourselves as mercenaries and actually work together.
I make 200K+ and Mark Zuckerberg makes 35 Billion. There is no sane reason for this kind of BS.
I don't see my generation of engineers tolerating clowns like Zuckerberg the way the previous generation tolerated Larry Ellison and Bill Gates. It's a different world. Expectations are different. The only thing he brings to the table is mindless ambition. It's highly overrated and damaging and the world does not need it at this point. He and his ilk will be taken down.
We need more Linus Torvalds, Jimmy Wales and Sal Khan's who are capable of thinking that their creations are more than just about world domination at any expense.
I'm confused what your point is. What's PC about the previous statement? You seem to agree with them. Are you mad you aren't making more, or that Zuck isn't making less?
We could unionize, you know? It would DEFINITELY mean outlier cash wages on the high side would go down as we normalize benefits. Right now the Valley is very focused on the needs of young, affluent, educated men who can take significant career risk. If we unionized, things like reasonable *ternity leave and a minimum standard of health care would appear, as would formalization of vacation rules ("unlimited vacation" is common but actually means "no vacation just dispensations from your founder for good behavior"), etc.
And we need less people like Linus Torvalds, thanks. It's possible to be good at tech and NOT be an insufferable asshole riding atop a human pyramid like some rendition of 300's Xerxes.
> I make 200K+ and Mark Zuckerberg makes 35 Billion. There is no sane reason for this kind of BS.
I don't understand your argument. It's insane for Mark Zuckerberg to make more than you, but it's not insane for you to make more than, say, a school teacher?
The point is that the very rich are making huge multiples of the rest of us. $200k in SF is probably double what a unionized teacher makes in the same area.
hmm, would you rather have a larger paycheck with dues taken out, still increasing your take home pay?
Thats whats actually on the table - wage collusion has artifically deflated wages. Unionization would fight against that artifical deflation and bring wages up closer to market value.
As long as union fees are less than the increase in your wage, why would you prefer to make less money overall just to not support a union?
So stop doing that and let Nature take its course. If something exists that you don't like and your behavior helps cause it to exist, you're part of the problem.
There is no information anywhere that says the employer is doing anything by doing that that will help them get what they want. There is a lot of literature that says its a bad idea - for their own enlightened self interest. We do automation of things. If there is no multiplier inherent in that, we should not be there to start with.
I'll caveat this with the statement that there may be things where it's just inherently that way, in the way that a surgeon must be there or human life is in the balance. Pushing your CRUD changes isn't likely to tip the scales on human life one way or the other. I've been in sprints where the fate of the company hung in the balance; I worked those hours. In the end it failed because it was going to fail anyway. It was worth doing, but this was cases where we knew it would fail if we didn't.
There's no need for collective action. There is a need for many, many people to recognize what codependency is and adjust their behavior. I know all the "But I..." in the list. BTDT. But the truth is that until you stop, it won't.
You need to weigh this perspective with the alternative point of view, that the US tech industry wouldn't have developed as quickly or be as world leading as it is if it wasn't for what has been accomplished because of the long hours. I don't disagree with you entirely, but I think we ended up in a good enough spot that it's much more productive to focus on the future than dwell on the past.
What gets me is the dichotomy between "big tech" and everyone else employing programmers/designers/UXers doing exactly the same kind of work but for 1/3-1/2 the pay. But hey, when those companies have quarterly EPS above $5, they might start paying better, too.
Did the U.S. tech industry actually have long hours during the period when it became world-leading? The U.S. was dominant in technology by the 1970s, and as far as I understand the '50s-'70s tech work culture, it was more of a professional engineering culture. 9-to-5 jobs, everyone wore a tie, etc.
As it is known now, there sort of wasn't a "tech work culture." People just topped out at fairly low salaries relative to now. People were mostly "lifers". There was very little hope of a replacement job. I had relatives caught up in the early 1970s aerospace bust and they were out of work for a while and had to retool.
As a view into it, see "Moon Machines" - that's what it looked like as a child to me.
A lot of the "work long hours" thing is cargo culting / social signalling to project the image of "high performance." The first step is admitting you're not John Carmack. I have tendencies that way; I'll get caught up in something at home on the weekends and completely lose track of time.
But it must be managed. I know better than to do that at work. You have to let the work breathe ( a metaphor for letting all your cognitive processes catch up after a burst ).
It's fun to do... beer/coffee-fueled sprints far into the night but it's not very responsible nor sustainable. I learned this looking carefully at what I'd done in those.
"You need to weigh this perspective with the alternative point of view, that the US tech industry wouldn't have developed as quickly or be as world leading as it is if it wasn't for what has been accomplished because of the long hours."
I do not believe that for a second. And even if it were true, how does that justify not paying for those hours?
"but I think we ended up in a good enough spot that it's much more productive to focus on the future than dwell on the past."
Those who refuse to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.
"What gets me is the dichotomy between "big tech" and everyone else employing programmers/designers/UXers doing exactly the same kind of work but for 1/3-1/2 the pay. But hey, when those companies have quarterly EPS above $5, they might start paying better, too."
If the company is doing well, it makes absolutely no sense that the people who did the actual work to make that happen don't share in it.
The unseen factor in companies is how risk is priced. Our perceptions of capital have gotten extremely self-referential - cash is its own good thing for lottery winners.
If you're Apple, the probability of another iPhone is low. For MS, it's Windows. Dunno what really qualifies for Google, but Yahoo seems to be struggling.
I strongly recommend empathy with the positions of those you oppose. It is, IMO, the only path to understanding. Chances are they're not psychotic.
Some of the strongest and most successful unions in the U.S. right now are in the entertainment industry. Screen actors, professional sports players, heck even many screen writers make well above the U.S. median income.
Stepping outside of employee groups that are explicitly defined as unions, you find professional associations that work collectively to support high earning potentials. Most doctors, for example, are board-certified by ABMS, even if they work as employees of large corporations. Lawyers are members of the bar. Realtors can only call themselves "realtors" if they are members of the National Association of Realtors. Etc.
I live in LA and have had actor friends tell me that being in the screen actors guild is not very helpful unless you are lucky enough to get a regular role on a series or a big role in a movie. If you're still climbing the ladder, there aren't enough jobs that are union jobs to make it worthwhile. They extra money you make from them is offset by how few of them you're able to get. It sounds similar to our field where there are some high-profile high-paying jobs, but the majority are not those.
I thought anyone with a license from the state to practice real estate is a realtor. I could check with my father who has been doing real estate since he was laid off from an engineering position >20 years ago, but I am fairly certain that is how it works in New York. Maybe other states are different.
It's the word "realtor" specifically--it's covered by a trademark.
> Isn’t the definition of REALTOR® anyone who has a real estate license?
> No. The definition of a REALTOR® is a real estate professional who is a member of the National Association of REALTORS® and subscribes to its strict Code of Ethics. The marks should not be used inadvertently and improperly to denote a vocation or business. A good rule to follow is if the term “Member” cannot logically be substituted for the term REALTOR®, then the term should not be used. Appropriate substitutions might include the phrases “real estate broker,” “real estate agent,” “real estate salesperson,” “property manager,” etc.
Or maybe the employers are counting on that complacency to enable their exploitation of the people who don't make that much money, and don't have those benefits.
i think what actually happened is the people who run the place realized it's better to pay the very exceptional few $200k+ so that the rest of the peons getting paid 80k have something to hope for.
Technology workers tend to value interesting problems more than money. In my case, my motivation has always been trying to make a positive impact on the world rather than money. I have turned down plenty of job offers, including ones that pay better than I am paid now. I even spent two years unemployed because I felt that that being an independent OSS that worked for free allowed me to have a greater impact on people's lives than I could have at any of the jobs that had been offered to me during that time.
That gamble paid off because it enabled me to help lay the groundwork for adoption of ZFS by major Linux distributions at a time when the amount of development to make ZFS production ready on Linux was more than employers were willing to stomach. The integrity of the world's data is better off because of it and in hindsight, nothing else that I could have done would have had such an impact. My OSS development had started as a hobby, but at some point, I began to realize that it could make a positive impact on the world and focused entirely on it, with ZFS taking the bulk of my time. That serendipitously resulted in job offers where everything I do would be OSS and I could continue working on the ZFSOnLinux code as part of it, which I had not anticipated.
I was lucky enough to have supporting parents that I could fall back on for me to pursue that. Not everyone does and a certain amount of money is definitely important, especially for those with dependents. If people who need it find they are not compensated well, they can find an employer that does compensate them well. Trying to force an employer that does not value you like they should to behave otherwise instead of finding one that does is masochistic.
> Trying to force an employer that does not value you like they should to behave otherwise instead of finding one that does is masochistic.
I think that you overestimate the ability of workers to exert an influence by switching jobs, but also, and perhaps more seriously, assume that the only strategies for workers getting fucked over are individual strategies. Collective struggles are what can change things on a more fundamental level, and great gains have been won through the organised withdrawal of labour.
Organized labor creates an opportunity for collusion between management and the union leadership. My grandfather was a union worker who his colleagues selected to represent them. Management offered him the opportunity to make several times what he makes as part of a deal that would give the others negligible increases. He declined, but I have met union workers who complain that the union leadership and management collude. Knowing what happened to my grandfather, I do not doubt it. If you have an employer that intentionally undervalues you, they are going to aim to use the union to ensure that they continue to do that. If collectively people overvalue themselves, they tend to get their positions terminated by outsourcing.
If people think they are underpaid, they should each ask management to correct it. If management does not value all or some of them enough to do that, those that are undervalued are better off leaving for greener pastures.
That being said, after a certain amount of income, more income does not equal happiness. Rather than be a slave to trying to get more, I am inclined to ask myself if what I am doing is worthwhile, if what I make is over the minimum required for happiness and if what I make is fair under the Nash Equilibrium. If all are yes, I am fine with it. Others might be happier if they do that too. If they are working in an industry that pays below what is necessary for happiness (and this probably increases with dependents), they should find another career.
"I have met union workers who complain that the union leadership and management collude."
I won't quibble with this and don't doubt it exists (though I don't know how widespread it is, and would suspect it is not widespread) .. but there is a simple solution:
Vote out the corrupt management and vote in better ones! Unions operate democratically. If people are unhappy, show a little engagement with the process and do something about it.
If the problem is that people put in charge cannot be trusted, how do you avoid voting in the next corrupt union leaders? Also, if they collude and you decide to be a rabble rouser, they could likely just have you fired to maintain the status quo.
If I were a Verizon employee and thought what I earned was unfairly low, I would opt to find another employer or if that is not possible, consider a change of career. Propping up a lousy company by letting them have access to my abilities is not worth it. If everyone left for greener pastures under such circumstances, they would correct things or go out of business.
Well, frankly speaking, that's a silly remark. If you vote in people you know and trust, it doesn't seem likely that your mates you've gotten to know, placed your confidence in will be corrupted only just as soon as you've voted them in. And if they are, vote them out!
As for the latter remark, the world you're describing, frictionless job movement as a means of changing business practices and business-worker relations, obviously has very little relationship to the world we actually live in, or we'd never have these discussions at all.
This is a bit like saying "the government is corrupt so lets we'd be better off without it". Better with union representation than without, though better with unions who actually represent their members than corrupt unions.
The union exists at the point of confrontation (or negotiation) between employer and employees, and there is every reason for the employer (who doesn't want to negotiate) to undermine the unions. This can lead to both actual corrupting influences, and constantly spreading the idea that the union is corrupt, is a 'drag' or a 'burden', in order to undermine its strength.
The last thing I'm saying is that current union structures are ideal and devoid of corruption (and what little I know about US unions, the case is worse over there), but that organised, collective struggle is what wins gains for workers and that unions are often the best vehicles for to push those struggles forward.
I would not bet too much on the ability of collective struggles to solve individual problems. I still think that this is at the heart of Boris Pasternak's "Doctor Zhivago". both the movie and the book. And it has taken on the patina of timelessness and universality in my experience
> Or in other words, both conditions already happen automatically. That's kinda the whole point of capitalism.
Not necessarily. Two scenarios come to mind:
1) Collusion among employers. This necessarily disrupts the "ideal" marketplace. It has happened, does happen, and will continue to happen. The result is, perhaps, fair wages that are not truly competitive. The employees are captive (depending on their financial abilities) in the local market and forced to accept unfair or uncompetitive wages for their work or go without.
2) An abundance of workers can result in competitive, but unfair wages by driving down the pay needed to keep an office or business staffed below fair (I read fair as alternatively what the job is actually worth or what is needed to live). An employer can offer a competitive rate 50 cents above others in the area, but that doesn't mean it's a fair wage.
> Technology workers tend to value interesting problems more than money.
You're projecting. I want to be paid fair market compensation for the hours of my life I'm spending at work and not with my family.
Your employer values money over anything else, so while workers are ignoring their value, they are doing what they can to drive your costs down.
Look at the white collar jobs that have stagnated in terms of compensation or were outright eliminated in the past decade.
> If people who need it find they are not compensated well, they can find an employer that does compensate them well. Trying to force an employer that does not value you like they should to behave otherwise instead of finding one that does is masochistic.
What if you aren't compensated well because employers have realized they can pay below market value for your labor? What if that becomes an industry trend because other employers have no incentive (strikes, worker solidarity) not to and every incentive to cut costs?
What if you live in a market that isn't tech hub? Offers for $30k-$60k/yr for a job you'd be paid $90k-120k/yr in SF for isn't unheard of.
We're in a boom and we get to enjoy relatively high wages and good working conditions. That won't last forever.
Last year, I turned down an opportunity to co-found a startup where I had been promised >$1 million a year in compensation (many times more than I make), but I would not have been spending my time at work on OSS. I declined because getting things done for the greater good is worth more to me than any sum of money.
The Nash equilibrium suggests that focusing on the greater good is the best for everyone. Not to mention, I find focusing on the greater good to be more rewarding than the blind pursuit of wealth.
Re-read up on what was being done. CEO's were blocking the ability for workers to switch jobs by agreeing to not make offers to those who wanted to leave. You would have been essentially black-balled.
The incident involving CEOs colluding was handled by the legal system, not coercion through strikes. Refusing to compete on employee compensation is also rather different than refusing to pay as much as people should get.
It also appears to be the case that Verizon's employees are overpaid rather than underpaid:
The total benefits for a Verizon technician on Long Island are $160,000 a year while the median for this region (across all professions) is about $50,000. Until today, I had never heard of a job for a technician that reached 6 figures.
These high salaries might have triggered Verizon's change of focus to wireless from wired and investment in 5G. The strike is probably going to accelerate Verizon's shift to wireless, which requires fewer employees and is non-unionized.
Ah this is such a fascinating mindset. Do you think that if software professional worked together they could not achieve a) Fair compensation b) Interesting problems c) Dedicated time for ALL software professionals to contribute to OSS?
Imagine if there were an entire profession of people just like you dedicating time to OSS? Imagine where we could be now in that reality...
At the risk of stratification bias, I do not know anyone who has chosen money over the ability to do interesting things. Recruiters also like to pitch how interesting their problems are.
Alternatively: technology workers have historically come from affluent backgrounds where they can absorb small deviations in wages.
Other supporting evidence: the popularity of privately held company stock on an unspecified valuation and solution schedule being considered not only a reasonable trade for real money, but in fact demanded.
the real test if they have a spine is if they take their talent elsewhere rather than congregating around digital water coolers. Look, most of us have been guilty of it one time or another but in the end the simple truth is, the hardest part is going after another job.
> Verizon said that the average annual salary and benefit package for an associate in their Eastern region is $130,000. In the New York City/Long Island region, Verizon technicians currently have an average total wage-and-benefit package worth in over $160,000 a year.
> Verizon said that the cost of medical coverage for an East employee and one or more family members currently averages nearly $20,000 a year. In one of the company's East plans, the annual cost for this coverage is over $23,000 a year. The company said these costs are higher than the national average for family healthcare coverage of about $16,800.
These are well-paying union jobs. The problem is not the union, or Verizon itself. The problem is the constant Wall Street pressure on companies whose workers are unionized and enjoy good pay and benefits. From the perspective of investors, having a division that returns under a billion dollars in net income annually on tens of billions of dollars of invested capital is a huge drag on the whole company.
I never would have expected Verizon to pay technicians that well. That level of compensation on Long Island is roughly 3 times the median for the region.
In 2006 I made $28 an hour working as a Verizon business customer service rep. Prior to that I worked at Comcasst doing the same thing for about $20 an hour($12 hourly rate plus commission) after being there for four years.
Overall both jobs bored me to tears and prompted me to learn how to code. Now happily a coder for a living.
