from Hacker News

Kickstarter’s staff is unionizing

by tmm on 3/19/19, 6:04 PM with 695 comments

by yibg on 3/20/19, 12:55 AM
I'm not against unions in general or in principle, but some implementations are not great.
I suspect like some folks here, my personal (negative) interactions with unions have turned me off of unions in general. I worked at an unionized shop when I first graduated and while I recognize some of the positives the union brought, there were also many downsides.
Some examples:
- Nepotism. We had an open position we couldn't fill for over a year because one of the union leader's son was graduating soon and that position was reserved for him.
- General complacency. Raises and promotions for the most part weren't based on performance, but rather tenure. Many people start off ambitious but end up just doing the minimum over time because there is no reward in trying too much.
- Strange (from my perspective) rules. I couldn't have more than one CAD going at one time, and because CAD is backlogged the turn around time was super long. This meant for long stretches of time I couldn't do any work. But I also couldn't leave. I read a lot of wikipedia pages during this time.
Eventually I got super bored, didn't see any growth potential and wasn't learning much so I left.
I assume not all unions are like this, but I do hear things similar to this from others (many on this thread) quite often as well.
by ace_of_spades on 3/19/19, 9:15 PM
To make this discussion maybe a little bit more solution oriented, what would be your solution to problems of labor mistreatment? Or do you suggest that nothing like that exists?
I recently came across an interesting talk by Richard Wolff at Google [1] which suggests that a great solution would be the democratization of the work place in the form of worker coops. It’s actually a tried and true model that works well in a variety of contexts. It would probably solve the problem you outline as well as make labor mistreatment a lot less common.
1: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ynbgMKclWWc
by nerder92 on 3/19/19, 11:09 PM
As a EU citizen, it always surprise me how the popular retoric about unions is to associate it with lazyness. I think is just undermining of what union actually really are.
I personally found this as a first step toward a perception shift about tech from which we can all benefit.
Unions for instance can help fight this constant non extra paid "after-hours" working culture that force you to do all-nighters and all this kind of crazy shits just because the industry is seen as a bunch of nerds that are that passionate about programming that stay long hours just for the sake of love/passion for the job itself.
by cableshaft on 3/19/19, 6:44 PM
If Kickstarter can do it, the game industry can do it! Come on, game industry, it's your time to unionize!
by lacey on 3/20/19, 1:40 AM
I haven’t had a large number of interactions with unions but I have seen some things that definitely turn me off of them, e.g. requiring two or three people from as many different unions to set up a booth at a conference because multiple skills are required and the unions negotiated with the venue to have each step done by union employees with those specific skills. So eg the people assembling the structure couldn’t plug in computers and the people who plugged in computers couldn’t assemble the booth structure.
What I have heard a couple times now from relatives of union members is that senior people who know union leadership sometimes end up on “disability”, meaning there is nothing wrong with them but they don’t work and get paid. They have doctors in the loop to certify the disability. I have no idea if this is actually widespread.
My own personal reluctance with joining a union is that I feel like I do pretty well negotiating for myself.
Having said that, perhaps a tech worker’s union could result in 30-hour four-day workweeks with reasonable minimum vacation, and that would be worthwhile if it became the industry norm.
by msghacq on 3/19/19, 7:10 PM
It will be interesting to see what this does for developer salaries at Kickstarter. If, as a top performer, I get penalized by joining the union then obviously Kickstarter looks less attractive to me. For unions in our industry to work they are going to have to be very explicit about how they are going to raise developer salaries.
by nanokilo on 3/19/19, 6:42 PM
If this works out, this has the potential to be huge for the industry. I would love to see more unionization in tech, and this could be a first step in that direction.
by bwestergard on 3/19/19, 6:51 PM
This is fantastic news.
I'm one of the software engineers who was fired for organizing a union at a SF/DC based startup last year. The National Labor Relations Board found in our favor and we won a large cash settlement. But what we wanted was a union. Seeing others pick up the torch is extremely gratifying. Below are some links to news coverage of our case.
https://gist.github.com/bwestergard/a77744dc6f3095fd3fb769dd...
If anyone has questions about the process, I'm happy to answer what I can.
by joejerryronnie on 3/19/19, 7:35 PM
Well, there goes the high salaries, flexible working hours, and generous RSU grants for tech employees. Have fun fighting and scraping for 2% raises, paying exorbitant union fees for questionable benefits, and dealing with the nepotism and personal politics of your union leaders. And thanks in advance for adding to the unfunded pension liability crisis.
by CodeSheikh on 3/19/19, 7:36 PM
Unions in tech companies is a very interesting idea. A lot of people never speculate this idea because lets be honest most of them get paid really well or visa workers are simply too scared to join such "abominable" unions etc etc. If any one can start materialize unions would be the workers at FAANG companies. And I am pretty sure rest will follow suit. As a tech worker, I see this as a positive change. As a CTO, this should scare me. As an honest CTO, I would see this as a balanced change for my subordinates and slightly shifting the power dynamics towards them.
by tomohawk on 3/19/19, 7:48 PM
I wish them well, but having family members and friends work in unionized workplaces, it's not something I would ever do.
It always seems to degenerate into an "us vs them" sort of thing whenever I talk to them about where they work. Why would I ever work some place where things are so adversarial?
You also end up with this 3rd party involved in everything, creating all kinds of "rules" to make things "fair". Want to go on vacation? To make things "fair", the most senior people get to pick their times first, and the new guys get the not-so-good times. Don't care about the union's bullshit "industrial action" and just want to work and earn some money? Get used to being called a "scab". You get the point - it becomes more about knuckling under to what the union wants than getting work done or having a career.
by msghacq on 3/19/19, 7:11 PM
"America’s political climate is changing; among other things, the 2016 presidential election brought up the issue of wealth inequality in this country and made people consider more closely the structural forces that define class here."
What on earth does the 2016 election have to do with wealth inequality (or unions for that matter)? Inequality has been on the rise for decades and Clinton was also a member of the 1%. This seems like a non-sequitur.
by fareesh on 3/19/19, 7:16 PM
> America’s political climate is changing; among other things, the 2016 presidential election brought up the issue of wealth inequality in this country and made people consider more closely the structural forces that define class here.
What is a structural force that defines class in America?
by baby_wipe on 3/19/19, 6:57 PM
So if they succeed, does that mean nobody can work for Kickstarter unless they are part of the union?
by perlgod on 3/19/19, 7:19 PM
Never understood the desire for unions in the tech industry. Thankfully the USA has plenty of right-to-work states.
by czbond on 3/19/19, 7:10 PM
Why are tech company staff wanting to unionize? For the most part, aren't tech staff reasonably to well paid - with good working conditions and moderate hour expectations (say 40-50)?
by gbear605 on 3/19/19, 6:30 PM
This is a big move on their part. If it’s successful for them, it could inspire a lot of others. I’m curious what their reason for unionizing is. Wanting more reasonable hours, perhaps?
by hackerpacker on 3/20/19, 5:13 AM
" first major tech company "
I don't think that is even remotely an accurate statement, unless EVERY company with a website is now a "tech company".
I took a peek at the data object in https://www.kickstarter.com/team
And to me it looks like an art company, with very little focus on tech.
"favorite category" counts by # team members Art: 32 Film & Video: 29 Design: 27 Publishing: 15 Games: 14 Technology: 8 Music: 5 Comics: 3 Food: 3 Photography: 2 Theater: 2 null: 2 Journalism: 1
# of backed projects by "favorite category" Film & Video: 6264 Design: 2372 Games: 2325 Art: 2238 Technology: 1228 Publishing: 777 Theater: 310 Music: 181 Food: 119 Comics: 44 Photography: 28 Journalism: 5 null: 0
I would add that I find it incredibly ironic for a "creative" company to have such rigid categories for what it deems "creative".
by gtirloni on 3/19/19, 7:38 PM
Maybe the US has a different experience with unions but in Brazil, they are simply hated. They were made mandatory by law and very rarely (never?) step in to help employees.
It's only at big factories that they show up when more than X number of people are fired and do a big show out of that. Meanwhile, all the employees not working for big factories paid their union fees and saw nothing back. It's often a platform to launch their political careers.
Luckily, they are not mandatory anymore and now employees have to opt-in which was a great change. They have to work to earn respect and those fees back... but I'm not seeing much movement in that direction. So far they have been going the legal route, trying to cancel the changes to the law (and have lost).
In theory, the concept of unions is great but in practice, at least here, it was a terrible thing, from my IT bubble perspective.
by annexrichmond on 3/19/19, 9:04 PM
What's still unclear to me from the article is what problems employees at Kickstarter is facing for lack of a union and how, precisely, organizing a union will address those problems.
Maybe I'm being presumptuous but being a tech company and all aren't the employees are already relatively pampered?
by themagician on 3/19/19, 7:01 PM
Prediction: if whoever is leading the charge is even moderately successful in getting employees to rally, they will be offered in job in management (at Kickstarter or somewhere else) at twice their current pay and the whole thing will crumble.
by jeffreybaird on 3/19/19, 8:55 PM
Congratulations Kickstarter! I hope this becomes a trend in the tech industry. A union is not only about getting better pay, or more vacation - it is about having a voice in the future of the company.
by Apocryphon on 3/19/19, 6:55 PM
Kickstarter was founded as a public benefit corporation, so they've always been friendly towards social consciousness. Are there any other tech companies that are PBCs or worker co-ops?
by goldcd on 3/19/19, 8:58 PM
My humble take is that unionization is valuable as a counter-balance in a company and can benefit it and all within. Let's take extreme examples: 1) CEO sees a blip coming in the quarterly income results. CEO disposes of enough people to reduce costs, hit profit target and claim their bonus. CEO is better off, company is worse off. Repeats each quarter until the CEO retires. 2) CEO tries to focus company by laying off unionized employees in legacy area. Union blindly prevents this, company is stuck on legacy path, company suffers and so ultimately do the employees when it all implodes.
The problem in both cases is simply due to a misalignment of personal goals/compensation within the company.
When it's "working right" The CEO can defend their "not randomly firing employees" as being too expensive due to their unionized status. Converse is that the union can accept that some employees need to go to be replaced with other employees in another field to reflect the world changing (and help relocate/pay off/re-train as needed).
In summary - plans rarely work out and ideally there's an internal buffer/slush-fund to cover this. When you're publicly traded, there's always going to be somebody demanding you cash in this buffer to the shareholders in the short term. Unionization provides a nice external buffer.
by laspegren on 3/19/19, 8:08 PM
The merits of unionization aside, I don't understand how Kickstarter is referred to as a major tech company. There are only 140 ish people listed on The Verge site.
by BerislavLopac on 3/22/19, 11:10 AM
I think that the main problem with unions for software developers, especially at this particular time, is that tech recruitment is very much a sellers' market at the moment. Most of the companies have a lot of troubles finding quality developers of all levels, remuneration is growing to absurd levels and short-term contracting is almost a norm rather than an exception. For a moderately experienced developer, changing jobs is both a) trivial, and b) often the best way to ensure promotion and pay rise.
Unions were designed for a market where employers were taking advantage of job scarcity and insecurity, and where changing jobs often meant difficult re-training for new equipment and methodologies, which was often provided by unions. That does not exist today, at least in the software industry; a solid GutHub account is a much better certification than any training or even a university diploma.
My point is that, for the majority of software people, traditional unions can barely give any benefits over the power they can have themselves. And for the best people it can even provide disadvantages by lowering the standards.
by CalChris on 3/19/19, 7:48 PM
Crunchbase says they were founded in 2009 and have 50-100 employees. They are pre-IPO and 10 years old. Maybe if employees were more owners I think (not knowing the inside story) this might have been less of an issue. Secondary grant?
https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/kickstarter
by burtonator on 3/19/19, 7:51 PM
The biggest challenge we have with unions is game-theoretic.
Specifically, the issue of defection.
The company can make it very easy for users to defect or FORCE them to defect.
They can give bonuses to people not in the union (with plausible reasons for the bonuses so it's not illegal) or do what Walmart does and simply shut down the entire store in that location to prevent the union forming.
We need some way to solve this problem ...
by apl002 on 3/19/19, 7:00 PM
what are the pros/cons of unionizing? I dont know jack about this
by TheMagicHorsey on 3/20/19, 9:16 AM
Given my experience with unions, I’ll quit when the union forms at my employer.
Unions increase the importance of political skills over performance. If you do work but are bad at politics you’ll do worse in a union shop. Plus the nepotism and collusion between management individuals and union leadership to the detriment of shareholders, customers, and young workers is disgusting.
The only people who benefit are old underperformers in management and union leadership. They form coalitions of mutual support and screw the rest of us.
Screw unions. They are for useless people that don’t trust their own abilities.
They are only useful if the oligarchs block market competition for labor. But we aren’t there yet ... and we can be vigilant by supporting action taken against instances of collusion. Unions are no cure. They are like caking dung on the wound.
by the_bear on 3/19/19, 7:04 PM
Is anyone aware of an example where (a) a really small company unionized and/or (b) a workforce unionized without any real demands?
I run a 17 person company and I've heard employees mention that they think all companies should be unionized even if there aren't currently any problems that the union would seek to address. I strongly support the big tech companies unionizing and so it would be hypocritical of me to be opposed to it for my own company, but at the same time it seems like the overhead for such a small company would be really significant and I'm not sure what it would accomplish given that I'm not aware of current employees having any demands that we haven't satisfied already.
Even if nothing comes of it, I think it's an interesting thought experiment.
by philwelch on 3/19/19, 7:11 PM
With apologies to Isaac Asimov, I did not realize they were ionized to begin with :)
by dismalpedigree on 3/19/19, 9:33 PM
There are 2 types of unions (in general). There are skilled trade unions (plumbers, electritians, etc) and strictly labor unions (TSA, agriculture laborers, etc). If they are unionizing as a skilled trade union and the union is thus ensuring training and quality of the labor, then i think it is a great idea. If they are unionizing as a strictly labor union, then i see no value to either management or the employees in the long term. From reading the article, it looks like it is likely the later instead of the former.
by imnotlost on 3/19/19, 7:54 PM
Just make free (paid in pizza) overtime illegal at the federal level and most of the work-life-balance issues would go away.
Add federal minimum vacation time too, 20 days at least.
"but but my margins!!!"
by madrox on 3/19/19, 7:48 PM
One thing this article didn't cover was how kickstarter's management reacted to this news and why it's happening now. Are there issues at kickstarter that will be addressed through collective bargaining? Was this move considered necessary in order for leadership to take developer concerns seriously? I'd love to know more.
by laurex on 3/19/19, 9:42 PM
Wonder how much their management troubles played into this https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/daveyalba/kickstarter-p...
by JTbane on 3/19/19, 7:44 PM
Unionizing is still good because at the end of the day you can be fired for any reason.
by sodosopa on 3/20/19, 1:43 AM
I grew up in a blue collar union family, dad was a Teamster Master Steward and my mom was a Secretary in the printers' union. I don't know how well it translates to larger tech companies.
by syntaxing on 3/19/19, 7:32 PM
Is there such thing as "tech" that makes unionizing easier? AI that helps with the paperwork, some sort of app the allows structure organization easier, etc?
by baybal2 on 3/19/19, 8:15 PM
> If recognized, Kickstarter would be the first major tech company with union representation in the United States.
What has happened with Microsoft's union?
by maxxxxx on 3/19/19, 6:45 PM
I wish the US would adopt the German model where unions are for whole sectors. That way it's a level playing field for all companies.
by citilife on 3/19/19, 8:44 PM
Based on the comments in the article, it's not really clear why the unionization is taking place?
Anyone with an insider knowledge want to elaborate?
by barbecue_sauce on 3/20/19, 12:44 AM
The article only says "staff". Does this include developers and technical operations, or is it just office staff?
by subpixel on 3/19/19, 11:19 PM
This on the same day that the CEO steps down, for the second time. Sounds like a lot is going on over there.
by oh_sigh on 3/19/19, 8:38 PM
What would tech unionizing realistically look like in the US? Lets say, at some FAANG company?
by BerislavLopac on 3/22/19, 10:23 AM
Unions, like charity, mean that the government has failed in its job.
by badcede on 3/19/19, 7:49 PM
Nice of the hipsters to be the test case like this.
by sarim on 3/19/19, 11:08 PM
Who else read unionizing as un-ionizing?
by mesozoic on 3/19/19, 11:29 PM
This should go well. Good time to be a Kickstarter competitor I figure.
by samstave on 3/19/19, 9:11 PM
#GoFundMy Benefits
by CryptoPunk on 3/20/19, 2:34 AM
This is the end of Kickstarter as a dynamic company.
by Schnitz on 3/19/19, 7:38 PM
Nice!
by edoo on 3/19/19, 7:43 PM
I've been in a union before. The work ethic wasn't good. They had seminars on how to work less and push back against complaints. They directed the members to engage in behavior that was best for the union while bad for the workers and the company. The union itself is a big business, what would they think of unionizing the union? Unions allow substandard work for equal pay. That tends to hold back the major opportunities for individual success.
by anonymousJim12 on 3/19/19, 7:23 PM
Incoming screed in libertarianese about why unions are bad by Paul Graham on twitter in 5..4..3..2..
by iceninenines on 3/19/19, 11:02 PM
We also need more tech co-ops so employees can profit more fairly from their crucial work, because a pittance of low-priority employee shares doesn't really count.
by normal_man on 3/19/19, 7:51 PM
The anti-union rhetoric in America is staggering. You like weekends? Then stop ragging on unions.
by soheil on 3/19/19, 7:19 PM
kinda ironic, a platform that relies on a community of people and donors and leans on the socialist side of the spectrum is hit by a socialist leaning ideology.
by justaman on 3/19/19, 7:08 PM
Software developers are a far cry from auto workers or even teachers. Its interesting to see the differences between early SV startups 10-15 years ago that would brag about the benefits of working for them and now. Things like ping pong tables, free dry cleaning, and daycare would be things people would go out of their way for years ago.
Can someone explain what the Kickstarter employee's hope to gain? “promote our collective values: inclusion and solidarity, transparency and accountability; a seat at the table,” sounds very left wing in an already left wing company in a left wing area.
by Toine on 3/20/19, 1:11 AM
I'm astonished by the reaction of some people here. They seem to live in a alternate reality where every CEO is kind, doesn't try to reduce labor costs at every opportunity, doesn't treat his employees like cattle, etc. 20th century unions had their issues of course, but using extreme cases of dysfunctional unions is not a argument to totally disregard unions as a concept.
by holymacaral on 3/19/19, 6:57 PM
I have long thought crowdfunding is ripe for disruption. We should not need a middleman to send people money over the internet. It can be accomplished via a smart contract and creator listings could be self-hosted (think openbazaar). It could also fix the censorship issue inherit to these platforms.
With Patreon raising prices and now this, maybe someone will crowdfund an alternative.
by dec0dedab0de on 3/19/19, 7:25 PM
I think there needs to be an overall IT union, with apprenticeships and the whole thing. Make new people do QA testing, or tech support as they work on their other skills and level up. Get mandatory overtime to finish a project, then get laid off and collect unemployment until the Union needs you again. Just like carpenters and glaziers and all.
EDIT: Instead of replying to everyone individually. Over the last ~15 years I've held jobs from tech support to network engineer to full stack developer. In each of them I have noticed that recent college grads are almost always clueless, and basically have to start from scratch. These are kids with massive student loan debt that could have started working earlier and learned through an apprenticeship.