Kickstarter also voted itself to become a Public Benefits Corporation [1] so you would hope they were already out in front of ensuring contributor rights are fairly represented in concert with other stakeholders.<p>[1] <a href="https://medium.com/kickstarter/kickstarter-is-a-pbc-heres-what-that-means-and-why-it-matters-d90b2389ea6c" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/kickstarter/kickstarter-is-a-pbc-heres-wh...</a>
Definitely wouldn't want to be part of a union. I represent myself, thanks.<p>Smaller and wide set of unions in an industry can be effective, but industry wide unions are effectively a monopoly on labor supply and bad for society. Look no further than the MTA in NYC.<p>Terrible cost overruns and bad governance of the subway system, for what? So employees can clock extra hours and get egregiously overpaid? No thanks.<p>Competitive markets produce societally best outcomes, as is proven time and time again throughout history. Competition applies to labor too, by the way
Good for them! It'd be nice to see a software engineering guild emerge in the coming years. Think about the benefits we could accrue; I for one would strongly prefer a real pension to a 401K.
I don't understand unions for tech workers. We're not living in shacks rented to us by the company and can't afford a bus ticket to a new city or school to start a new life.<p>We're making six figures here. Want more pay? Sit on your butt and do leetcode or practice interviews and network with other rich programmers. Move to a tropical island and work remote. Heck, you don't even need to go to college and just about anything you want to learn is a $9.99 class away or free on in video format.
How profitable is kick starter? I've not kept up, but it's certainly not discussed much these days<p>According to Wikipedia:<p>Net income:
$1.3 million after tax (2019)[1]: 1
Big no thanks to this.<p>If you hate where you work this much, improve yourself and work somewhere else.<p><pre><code> Replacing at-will with "just cause", progressive disciplining, with criteria for performance improvement plans.
</code></pre>
If you're three years into a career in tech (technical or not) and you haven't figured out that being PIP'd or indirectly told you're fucking up - making this language "nicer" isn't going to help anyone.<p>Adults don't give feedback in a transparent way and this is because they don't want to look discriminatory. Modern employment and HR policies have done great things, but they've made the waters for this kind of communication even more opaque and pushed incentives that way as well.<p>Being unable to effectively communicate in a competitive professional environment as an adult and unionizing to solve this problem is at best juvenile, even worse when you think about long-tail consequences in terms of babying future hires.<p>As someone who previously worked at Amazon and found it shitty, Amazon is a stupid point of comparison for unionizing in tech because it's a shit-show run like a hedge fund. However, as a heuristic, people who've spent more than two years at any kind of Amazon should be avoided IMO.
Love that someone in tech is finally getting unions in tech, don't love that it was kickstarter though. Their corporate culture is very toxic and I don't see them sticking around long term. It might be just me but my impression of kickstarter is that they are some of the worst offenders of 'maximum virtue signaling, minimum virtue'. That makes me inherently skeptical of a move like this.
Now we just need general purpose software engineering certifications with teeth so we can move away from this leetcode death spiral in interviewing, and mature as an industry
If you are into unionization and tech, it's worth exploring the platform co-op (worker co-ops) world a bit. An essential link list via their Facebook group page <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yL5-Q-uPgg1qGtxrKEYOXdsnLPlD6BZamTO3EWCsk4E/edit" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yL5-Q-uPgg1qGtxrKEYOXdsn...</a>
Really digging unions in tech. I for one would love to slack off for a few years as a semi-sabbatical/early-semi-retirement before I leave a job. Or at least to dial down my contributions without fear of being paid less :)<p>Just kidding, I think unions are pure evil, and the above is not even the worst one of the many reasons.
This is fantastic. Kudos to them. Copying some things they won, for the non-clickers:<p>- Minimum 3% annual CoL raises<p>- Profit-sharing bonuses<p>- Putting their current benefits in the contract, so management will have to re-negotiate if they want to make them worse.<p>- Replacing at-will with "just cause", progressive disciplining, with criteria for performance improvement plans.<p>Looking forward to more details & seeing how this plays out, especially as the market collapses (probably will end up looking like amazing timing on their part, btw).<p>Interestingly, for the people that like to paint unions as wokies, the progressive discipline item (if implemented well) actually _curbs_ 'cancel culture'. Because at-will employment is basically the enforcement mechanism for cancel culture.
Kickstarter may survive since they enjoy near monopoly status, but otherwise how can they compete given that high performers in tech are allergic to unions?
At first I thought those were people fighting for better working conditions. After reading the comments I've realized that most are activists trying to enforce cancel culture within the company.