Comment by jodrellblank
6 years ago
> "Poor performers get paid more, top performers get paid less. No thanks, I can negotiate for myself."
The two retorts to this are: 1) it's selfish arguing. "Fuck you got mine" style, dismisses what happens to everyone else as long as you're OK. Which may be fine for you, but why should the rest of us agree that you being wealthier is the thing we all want?
2) You negotiating against the resources of a multi-million dollar company who can hire any legal or negotiating team of experts against you? Can you, really?
> "Additionally unions protect incompetent employees, which I don't want."
Unions don't have to protect incompetent employees, but they can demand that the employee be proved incompetent and not falsely accused of incompetence and sacked without "trial" - which could happen to you. Unions protect exploited, abused, unfairly treated employees too, which you might become one day.
> "I want to negotiate my own pay and benefits, and it's worked out excellent for me. A union only serves to harm my interests."
Voting sure is worse than having me as dictator, isn't it? Democracy only serves to harm my interests. Surely you will agree that's a good reason for FaceBook to suppress talk of Democracy and voting in nation-wide FaceBook chat?
>dismisses what happens to everyone else as long as you're OK
Not really, because it's not like tech low performers are in poverty. Tech salaries bottom out at $60-70k in most places in the US. $60k is far from poverty and far from nothing.
>Which may be fine for you, but why should the rest of us agree that you being wealthier is the thing we all want?
Well, the collective in this case has already agreed that I should be paid the market rate that I successfully negotiate. Unionisation is extremely unpopular in tech.
>You negotiating against the resources of a multi-million dollar company who can hire any legal or negotiating team of experts against you
Negotiating isn't 1:1. If you are an effective negotiator and perform well then you're usually negotiating multiple offers and using them as leverage against each other. In reality, it's less "David vs Goliath" and more like "Goliath vs Goliath vs Goliath". If a company refuses to meet my expectations, I move on. No harm done.
>Unions protect exploited, abused, unfairly treated employees too, which you might become one day
I willingly give up those rights. No, really. My current employer can terminate my contract for any reason with minimal notice required. I don't really care, because I know they won't do that as long as I continue to deliver value. In return for those contract stipulations, I am paid more.
But you seem to gloss over the inconvenient facts about police and teachers unions.
In fact, teachers unions regularly protect sexual predators. [1]
Similarly, police unions regularly protect officers who commit heinous abuses of power.
>Democracy only serves to harm my interests
Maybe I just think a bloated organisation that protects incompetent employees shouldn't be the moderator of so-called "democracy".
If I have a problem within an organisation, I make my thoughts clearly heard with management. If management refuses to listen and the issue is serious enough, I leave.
For example, I once worked for an undisclosed company who refused to allocate resources to fix security issues impacting our customer's privacy. I pushed the issue as high as it would go in the chain of command and left when it was clear they refused to do anything.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390443437504577547...
> "I willingly give up those rights. No, really."
And by so doing, you give them up for others too.
> "the collective in this case has already agreed that I should be paid the market rate that I successfully negotiate."
Is there any reason to think you + (more resources, more experienced people, more leverage) could NOT negotiate a higher rate? That you are the best imaginable negotiator, despite having no specific training and only practising once every few years?
> "I don't really care, because I know they won't do that as long as I continue to deliver value"
/r/LeopardsAteMyFace will be there for when the company decides it's in their interest to eat your face.
> "In reality, it's less "David vs Goliath" and more like "Goliath vs Goliath vs Goliath"."
It's more like (Goliath + Goliath + Goliath) vs you; remember when "the Department of Justice alleged that Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, and Pixar had violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act by entering into a series of bilateral "No Cold Call" Agreements to prevent the recruitment of their employees [...] The alleged intent of this conspiracy was "to reduce employee compensation and mobility through eliminating competition for skilled labor.""? - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
> "I pushed the issue as high as it would go in the chain of command and left when it was clear they refused to do anything."
I refer back to your claimed excellent negotiating skills, and suggest that a better negotiator - or a large percentage of the employees "united" in some way - would have much more chance at effecting change, and that this is evidence that individual action is weaker than you wish/imply it is. To be clear, when the employer had the power to ignore you until you quit, leaving the injustice to be perpetuated against the customers, you didn't win.
> But you seem to gloss over the inconvenient facts about police and teachers unions.
I think this is an irrelevant diversion; that the courts sometimes lets guilty people go free is not a reason to ditch the legal system, that unions have people who do bad things in them, or that some unions are bad, is not a reason to reject the principal of uniting to make larger negotiating blocks to balance power dynamics which are almost entirely on the employer's side, with tactics like dividing and conquering - setting all employees on individual permanent competition with other employees.
>2) You negotiating against the resources of a multi-million dollar company who can hire any legal or negotiating team of experts against you? Can you, really?
I take it you've never actually gotten an offer with a large tech company. You're negotiating against some HR rep or hiring manager not some blacks ops negotiating team. Teams of lawyers cost a lot of money and paying them $40k to save $20k is stupid for a company.
>Unions protect exploited, abused, unfairly treated employees too, which you might become one day.
At the cost of also protecting the incompetent as they look very similar to those who are abused. Working with incompetent people is something engineers really dislike.
A well paid tech employee can invest their money, spend less, start passive income streams, etc. They have many options to hedge against future issues that don't include having to put up with idiots.
>Voting sure is worse than having me as dictator, isn't it? Democracy only serves to harm my interests. Surely you will agree that's a good reason for FaceBook to suppress talk of Democracy and voting in nation-wide FaceBook chat?
Governments are a necessary evil many would say, Democracy is simply the least bad of many bad options. Unions are not necessary.
> You're negotiating against some HR rep or hiring manager not some blacks ops negotiating team.
"some HR rep", you say dismissively. Are they not an extremely competent professional negotiator? They can't out-negotiate a (typically young, inexperienced, antisocial) programmer? Perhaps they should be fired and replaced with someone who can? Someone who will quietly make a no-poach agreement with competing companies, say.
> "Teams of lawyers cost a lot of money and paying them $40k to save $20k is stupid for a company."
The teams of lawyers have already been there, drafting the employment contracts in favour of the company, rewriting the hiring policies in favour of the company, adding the terms and conditions which say "anything you do on your own time on your own equipment belongs to us" and "you can't work anywhere we think is a competitor for years after leaving us" and so on.
> "Unions are not necessary."
Unions came as a response to employer abuse. "many would say" they are very necessary. Either way it's a step from "not necessary" to "they shouldn't be allowed".