Each and every one of us deserves a union.
this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2024
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I'm in a union for my day job.
It's big. It's steeped in processes and safety checks, but it makes fewer mistakes and quietly wins.
Would recommend a union every day.
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I’ve been working in tech for close to thirty years now mostly with larger tech and financial companies. For my parent’s and grandparent’s generation, you could reasonably expect lifetime employment at the same company. Work well and you’ll be treated well.
This started to change when I began working in the 90s and especially after the 2001 and 2008 recessions. Since then, it’s gotten much worse.
Companies don’t want to treat all employees well anymore, just their top talent that they want to retain. Who cares what the rest think because they’re transient anyway and won’t be around for more than a few years. Build around your top people and view the others as interchangeable parts.
Don’t bother investing in the rest of your employees. Just hire when needed, fire those you don’t like, who aren’t a good fit, and who are too old. Firing is one of their top tools if they want a quick cost reduction to boost their stock price.
Maintaining the upper hand of the employee/employer power dynamic is much more desirable than properly treating the people who work for you. If the employees don’t like it, they know where the door is. They’re replaceable anyway. That’s why employees have lost the RTO battles.
As an older worker, I despise how cutthroat the corporate world is now. I feel like I’m about to be tossed out with the trash.
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but what’s stopping tech workers still at Google from unionizing?
I work in tech as well, and I think the biggest reason is workplace mobility. Working at Google famously makes it easy go get a new job.
When work has sucked for me, I went job hunting not trying to fix a broken system
Some situations look more favourable in the rearview, yes.
Well everyone is being told they are special and top talent until they aren't. Then it's to late since there is a stigma attached and others don't want their shadow cast in them.
This is interesting because firings I've been involved with nearly always cut the important staff first because they make the most. The more valuable, the more you get paid and therefore the more you save when they go.
cut the important staff first
Tell us your management are idiots without using those words.
The "dead sea effect" is detailed as a thing to avoid; your management seems to want to wade in it.
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I worked at a big company, after 16 years they let me and many of my coworkers go. I ended up at a late stage start up. They were starting to become more "corporate". Now I work at an early stage start up. They actually care. I am not sure I will ever take a job with a company that is publicly traded again.
My plan, if I leave the massive corporate entity I'm currently at is to find work at a place with 2 digit employee numbers.
Trying to get the right things done at a huge company makes government burocracy look like a model of efficiency.
Internally they're all like, "why can't we work like a startup?"...partially because of you, Mr. Senior VP of golden parachutes.
“While answering a question about whether any executives had been laid off or had their compensation lowered, he said that, since rolling layoffs began this year, a “higher proportion of directors and VPs have been impacted than levels one through seven.” He also suggested that having to make the cuts is punishment itself. “Part of leadership is also making the tough decisions that are needed.”
Lol, if only the people being fired had someone to fire, then they could punished instead of fired.
Sundar is not a good CEO
But he gave everyone a few extra one-time days off!
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As if Sundar gives a fuck.
Also I don't know if this counts as internalized racism but I think Indian CEOs are mostly yes men trying to implement as much rent seeking as possible. Adobe, Microsoft, Google. 3 major tech companies which have been heavily pushing subscriptions but haven't released any innovative product.
Being a bit closer to the C-Level of a larger company, I can assert that greed, lack of vision and jumping on bandwagons is not exclusive to one nationality.
Yes but I feel like my countrymen are much more prone to people-pleasing (or in this case board-pleasing) because of our culture. We're just expected to bow to authority.
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It's likely that their bonuses are based on share price and the layoffs pumped them.
Same for every company following their playbook, including mine.
That's what all companies do. It's always a surprise, and it's done that way in order to control the situation. That's why when you quit, it should also be a surprise. Fuck them.
Don’t work for evil
We have so many laid off engineers that if they were to band together to form a company with all the knowledge they have, I’m sure they’ll be better than the company they worked for.
If Sundar can take Google and destroy it like this, can we find when he was on the apprentice or was that all deleted scenes?
Why do the employees bother asking him questions that they already know the answer to in the pit of their stomachs?
I hate to think so many in the field of tech could be so naive of the world around them.
The same reason lawyers ask questions they know the answers to.
They aren't. When the answers are unsatisfying, as we know they will be, questions like this can be a precursor to convincing your coworkers to unionize.
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