
A Year of Tech Solidarity - stablemap
https://civichall.org/civicist/a-year-of-tech-solidarity/
======
SoylentOrange
I feel like tech workers are already highly engaged, just very selectively
with the causes that matter to the tech world. A good example of this is EFF.
EFF has a huge presence both in the community and at every industry event I've
ever been to. Most tech people I know donate to them.

There is also the FSF, numerous hacker camps and conferences aimed at women
(Grace Hopper Celebration, etc).

I'm very skeptical on the need for a broad coalition of tech professionals.

~~~
tptacek
EFF and FSF aren't politically neutral in the broader sense. EFF is broadly
libertarian, and FSF is, from what I can tell, generally leftist. Neither of
those are bad things in and of themselves, but you should be aware before
deciding to collaborate with them.

~~~
Alex3917
Also the EFF is aimed at protecting the rights of people who communicate
electronically, and the FSF is aimed at protecting the rights of people who
use software. Neither is aimed at protecting tech workers.

------
thescribe
The tech solidarity is at odds with the progressive causes. I would probably
join a solidarity group, but I would not join one that pushed causes other
than 'tech worker interests'

~~~
ThrustVectoring
Yeah, same here. I'm not willing to stick my neck out for putting tech money
into progressive causes (or conservative causes, for that matter). I'm willing
to stick my neck out for better working conditions, retirement plans,
professionalism standards, and fairness in equity compensation.

~~~
pjc50
> I'm willing to stick my neck out for better working conditions, retirement
> plans, professionalism standards, and fairness in equity compensation.

That _is_ a progressive cause, no?

~~~
fortythirteen
Progressives like to think they're the only ones who care about that when, in
reality, everyone except the strictest libertarian wants all of those things.

What frustrates me personally is the inability of many progressives to
_rationalize anything other than Marxist /socialist means_ for those ends and
then act as if everyone who doesn't believe in those means doesn't share those
end goals.

~~~
pjc50
> rationalize anything other than Marxist/socialist means

What does this actually mean?

~~~
Bartweiss
Throwing around 'Marxist' seems extreme here, but I think I recognize the
sentiment. There are a lot of ways to improve the position of workers, and
historically progressivism has been interested in some and opposed to others.

Two examples:

If you want to improve salaries, you can do that via unionization and lobbying
for guaranteed raises. That's a popular leftist approach. You can also do that
by advocating for bonuses based on personal achievement or corporate profit.
The left has generally been disinterested in that, and has indirectly opposed
it by advocating for higher taxes on bonuses.

If you want to expand worker influence on how companies are run, you can found
co-ops, establish worker's councils, and so on; these are popular leftist
programs. You can also give meaningfully-large stock grants to large numbers
of employees - equity-granting startups are worker-owned every bit as much as
co-ops. This isn't a leftist initiative at all, and has been indirectly
opposed by calls to heavily tax options and capital gains even when they're
being given in lieu of salary.

I don't especially want to debate any of those as policies; it's just a
demonstration of what some leftist and non-leftist roads to labor power look
like.

~~~
crdoconnor
>If you want to improve salaries, you can do that via unionization and
lobbying for guaranteed raises. That's a popular leftist approach. You can
also do that by advocating for bonuses based on personal achievement or
corporate profit. The left has generally been disinterested in that, and has
indirectly opposed it by advocating for higher taxes on bonuses.

The reason they are disinterested in bonuses based upon personal achievement
is because it is guaranteed to be used as a tool for favoritism and divide and
rule, which ultimately just lowers worker compensation.

It will only work if the measure is objective, which is almost always
impossible.

~~~
justin66
The counterexample to both these points is a union like the Screen Actors
Guild, which allows superstars to be compensated accordingly and does not
depend on something like objective measures of achievement. If I were a tech
worker in a union I'd want it to go in that direction, as opposed to something
like the traditional UAW.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
Absolutely agree. They also run a multiemployer defined benefit plan, which
might be worthwhile to set up. That, alongside defining and pushing for
developer-friendly working conditions.

------
Alex3917
It's interesting that the efforts to kick money out of tech are getting more
traction than the efforts to unionize, even though unionization is by far the
less extreme option.

------
xupybd
I'm not sure we need more progressive activism in tech. After the way the
James Damore thing was handled I'm starting to think maybe tech workers are
safer keeping their political beliefs between them and the ballot box.

I think people should be free to hold any political belief, but are wise to
separate work and politics.

~~~
kiliantics
Work and politics are inherently connected though. "Not being political" in
the workplace is a political stance in itself - it's taking the position that
the current state of politics is perfectly agreeable to you.

James Damore was made an example of, yes, because he went against the politics
of the status quo. He made the mistake of not organising with others and
building power as a group that challenges the status quo. This is why
unionising is important: a demand from a mass worker movement that can pose a
real threat to the status quo is the only demand that has a chance of being
met.

~~~
jakebasile
> "Not being political" in the workplace is a political stance in itself -
> it's taking the position that the current state of politics is perfectly
> agreeable to you.

No, not being political in the workplace means someone values their stable
income more than they value the need to talk about their opinions.

Even though their opinions might almost completely agree with what their peers
think, it's abundantly clear that deviating even slightly from the orthodoxy
within tech can be disastrous to one's ability to pay for their home and food.

edit: I can no longer delete this, but I would if I could. I'm not defending
nor condemning any partisan stance. I am not stating my own opinion on any
matter at hand. I'm giving what I think could be a reason for someone not
wanting to be politically active.

~~~
wpietri
> No, not being political in the workplace means someone values their stable
> income more than they value the need to talk about their opinions.

Support of the status quo is a political choice. There is no neutral.

Also, the option to "stay out of politics" is something not afforded to
everybody. As a financially comfortable white guy with in-demand skills, I can
do it. But if you are on the sharp end of any of America's ingrained biases,
you may not be able to.

See, for example, all the women now able to come forward about workplace
harassment. Their speaking out, their striving for workplaces where they are
free of abuse: those are inevitably political actions. So too is ignoring or
resisting that movement.

~~~
gaius
_Support of the status quo is a political choice. There is no neutral._

The "status quo" is "the person who was elected gets to be President". It's OK
for you not to believe in democracy per se, or in a specific flavour of it,
that's Freedom. But let's call a spade a spade shall we?

~~~
ubernostrum
_The "status quo" is "the person who was elected gets to be President"._

He gets to be President until he's impeached, loses an election, or is
declared unable to discharge his duties using the procedure in the 25th
Amendment.

And... that's it. He doesn't get a guarantee that nobody will criticize him or
his agenda. He doesn't get a guarantee that nobody will try to rally
legislative support to prevent his agenda being enacted. He doesn't get a
guarantee that nobody will use the courts to challenge his executive orders.
He doesn't get a guarantee that the courts will allow any executive order he
issues. He doesn't get a guarantee that state and local governments will
assist federal initiatives. He doesn't get a guarantee that large donors will
support him or his preferred candidates and causes.

There are many, many ways to challenge a sitting President without removing
him from office. You don't have to challenge him, but the fact that you choose
not to is a political choice, not an apolitical one, since it constitutes
acceptance of and complicity in whatever he manages to do as a result of not
being challenged.

Neutrality and "apolitical" stances are _never_ neutral or apolitical. They
always constitute acceptance of whatever will happen in the absence of your
explicit action, since if you didn't want that stuff to happen _you had an
opportunity to challenge it and actively chose not to_.

~~~
gaius
_it constitutes acceptance of and complicity in whatever_

I'm not sure you really believe that, here's an experiment to find out: did
your feelings about Hillary change at all as a result of the Weinstein thing?
Do you feel complicit in all Weinstein's deeds? Or substitute any of the many
Hillary-supporters caught up in scandals now.

Just as an experiment of course.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>I'm not sure you really believe that, here's an experiment to find out: did
your feelings about Hillary change at all as a result of the Weinstein thing?
Do you feel complicit in all Weinstein's deeds? Or substitute any of the many
Hillary-supporters caught up in scandals now.

I've been feeling particularly smug, after all these corruption and graft
scandals, to be on my #BernieWouldHaveWon train.

~~~
zimpenfish
> I've been feeling particularly smug, after all these corruption and graft
> scandals, to be on my #BernieWouldHaveWon train.

Oh, cool, do you have some actual evidence about the alleged HRC corruption
and graft scandals that you can share?

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Donna Brazile wrote a whole book about it. Money meant for down-ballot races
was being funneled to the HRC campaign, and both HRC and Obama had left the
DNC in heavy debt. From the stories, it sounds like the Party didn't like
Obama much more back in 2008 than they liked Bernie in 2016, and as a result,
they basically rejected Obama's attempts to reconcile and merge his
electioneering efforts back into the Party. This basically fucked them over
completely on down-ballot races.

The Democratic Party sounds like a terrific lesson in the Iron Law of
Institutions, and right now, much of the American Left (that is, actual left,
social-democratic and leftward) is behaving the same way, too.

~~~
zimpenfish
> Donna Brazile wrote a whole book about it.

Her claims that the DNC rigged the primaries were quickly shot down as
bullshit and she walked them back the very next day.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Maybe so, but nonetheless, it shows how the DNC has traditionally been a
device for funneling money from ostensible _members_ of the Democratic _Party_
, to whichever presidential campaign is on at the time. If you ever wondered
why the Democrats lost so many down-ballot seats, the basic answer is: because
they sent all their money to Hillary, Obama, and then Hillary, _including_ the
money meant for the down-ballot races. Pay nothing, play not at all, lose by
default.

~~~
zimpenfish
>>> Donna Brazile wrote a whole book about [HRC corruption] >> Her claims were
bullshit and she walked them back. > Maybe so, but nonetheless, it shows [...]

No, look, you can't say "this proves it", have that proved to be bullshit, and
just go "maybe so but" and carry on with your disproven argument!

------
megaman22
For the most part, its safer not to stick your head up. There's a real
chilling effect in action, and for the sake of your career, it's better to
keep your opinions to yourself, lest the torches and pitchforks be directed at
you.

~~~
pmoriarty
People in other countries routinely face much greater threats of reprisal than
those faced by most activists in the US.

In other countries you have people resisting in the face of totalitarian
regimes which brook no dissent under threat of death or torture for activists
and their families. Yet people still resist.

As far as I'm aware, we're still far from a state of affairs where joining a
union in the US means facing those kinds of risks. Yes, it might affect your
career negatively -- but it might also affect it positively, as there are
among us people who actually look at union membership as something to be proud
of rather than hide.

Yes, there are libertarians and economic conservatives who froth at the mouth
at the very mention of a union, but I haven't heard of many of them actually
going as far as killing people for joining unions in recent decades.

So what kind of risks are you realistically going to face if you join a union?

~~~
watwut
That escalated quickly. From chilling effect for the sake of the career to
torture and killing.

~~~
soundwave106
In late 19th to early 20th century in America (and some other places), union
membership actually _could_ be a life or death proposition. Back then,
violence went so far, particularly around mining industries, at times to
literally be called as warfare and battles.

Examples:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_Wars)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Labor_Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Labor_Wars)
etc.

At this point in America, push-back against organized labor (or in fact most
other activism) doesn't reach this level. In some countries, however, activism
of any kind is still potentially on this level of risk.

------
75dvtwin
Culture is something that top senior leadership is responsible for. And in
that regard, they also have to lead by example.

If senior leadership represent mono-political-views, and their actions are
representative of their views, then the rest of the organization will act the
same and we feel the need to act the same.

So if (or rather 'when') senior leadership in US tech company (or a non tech
company, like a bank) was mocking Trump and his supporters, you can be sure
that employees not sharing those views, would be feeling unsafe (in the sense
of keeping their job/promotion opportunities/word-of-mouth effects).

Anti-Trump crowd tends to call their views and

policies 'progressive',

their positions on labor force/visa as 'inclusive'

their unacceptance of opposing view as 'fight against bunch of '..isms''.

\--

A side point..

It is unfortunate that politicians, their media propaganda arm, (and trial
lawyers) take such an active role in 'wordsmithing' that, they pollute the
meanings of the words. To the point, those words feel 'dirty' or 'less
impactful' to be used (because they are now 'loaded' ).

~~~
idlewords
The idea that top leadership is responsible for culture is exactly what makes
organizing in tech so exasperating.

Tech workers can have their own culture, their own priorities, their own views
on what is ethical, important, and valuable in life. And they can come
together in defense of those values in a way that senior management must
understand, accept, and respect.

That ability to come together, organize, and prevail is something people gave
their lives for. It mattered to them and should not be something we give up.

~~~
donw
Perhaps a better way to phrase things is that top leadership is responsible
for creating a set of environmental conditions where the right culture can
thrive and grow.

A not-insignificant chunk of that is in choosing the right people, which is
more than just selecting for raw ability.

It's a mix of having enough skills to contribute, and having the ability to
rapidly adapt and upskill on top of that, but it's also being collaborative
and working to strengthen the organization at all levels, and being kind and
considerate of others.

The way that you structure your organization has a huge impact on all of those
things.

Stack ranking? Kiss collaboration goodbye. You've just put every team member
at odds with their peers for their very survival.

Purely top-down performance reviews? People will put more effort into being
visible to their managers than in being helpful to their peers.

And so on it goes with interviews, onboarding, etc.

All of these things matter hugely, and they all very much flow from the top of
the organization.

~~~
blackbagboys
You're missing the point of organizing, which is to ensure that if the workers
don't like the culture, they can force the top leadership to make changes to
the "environmental conditions"

~~~
gt_
I agree. They are also missing the conflictions with top leadership first
being responsible for making money. I think the points made here are fine and
good, but not exactly helpful.

------
wav-part
I think it need to be resaid: Do we make world a better place by progressing
technologically/scientifically or socially ? There is really not much time for
both. No offence to those who do later, but I like to believe that we do
former here. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Working together for a tech is beautiful endeavour completely oppositie to a
political movement.

~~~
pjc50
Technical progress without social progress is the standard road to dystopia.
At best this is China. At worst it's Saudi Arabia: glittering cities of the
mega-wealthy built by slaves.

You cannot say that something is "better" without considering how you're
evaluating that and for whom it's better.

~~~
quotemstr
I object to the postmodern relativism embedded in your comment. "Better" can
be universal in science and technology. Cleaner energy, faster processors, and
less disease are not socially constructed forms of bullshit. These
improvements are real.

Technical progress, in fact, is the _only_ progress. Moral fashions comes and
go, but we remember new scientific principles and how to apply them. Far too
often, I see people try to slow the development of technology to suit the
current moral fashion. That infuriates me: technology improves the human
condition far more than moralizing ever has, and slowing technology
development creates incomprehensible amounts of human misery.

~~~
matt4077
How was the invention of chemical weapons "universally better"?

And where would you rather life: In a world with the technology of today, but
the value system of 1438. Or in a world with today's system of law and human
rights, but with the technology of 1438?

~~~
quotemstr
Any scheme that would have blocked chemical weapons research would also have
blocked the green revolution. We're never worse off for having more basic
knowledge about the universe. If you don't like chemical weapons, do something
about people using them. Don't try to keep people ignorant.

Re dates: moral fads always look like moral progress from the inside. That
doesn't make it so. I hope that our ancestors are kinder to us than we are to
our own predecessors.

~~~
matt4077
Yeah, now you're doing some sort of logical yoga, with an added dose of maybe-
identured-servitude-was-actually-great-relativism.

Also, if I did "something about people using [chemical weapons]" wouldn't many
of the things I would do qualify as useless non-technical progress? After all
it's not technology that stops the US from dropping Sarin on ISIS, but the
Chemical Weapons Convention.

------
dtornabene
Absolutely shocked, shocked there is such a dearth of understanding, let alone
endorsement of an organizing push in the tech sector on HN. fwiw I'm actually
farther to the left of mace, and I disagree substantially with some of his
positions, but there are few issues in such dire need of exposure and support.
Here's to another year of work and a deeper foundation laid. Cheers to those
of you doing this work, you are noticed, your work is not in vain.

~~~
dang
Such perceptions of HN are, as far as I can tell, in the eye of the beholder.
People with different politics just find different samples to consider
representative (e.g.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15585780](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15585780),
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%2013110004&sort=byDate...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%2013110004&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)).

The statistical distribution known as HN isn't consistently political. But
there is a contrarian dynamic. As soon as a theme appears, other commenters
start posting objections to it. Once those appear, then contradictions of the
contradictions show up (often with comments that begin "I can't believe that
HN..." or some such). Circle of life on the internet.

~~~
dtornabene
while I appreciate who you are, I've also been on this site almost since the
very beginning. I almost never comment, and didn't start commenting for
literally years because of the quite obvious political/economic biases of the
main contributors, which has seemed in the long run to have held rather
steady. There are outliers, of course, but I'd be willing to bet that the
proportion of highest voted commenters identifying as pro-labor, let alone
critical or hostile to capital, is going to be vanishingly small. especially
given that it was originally called Startup News (or something along those
lines). Grahams politics are also well known, and I've actually asked him,
myself, directly, about them at a well known conference.

I'm also a little weirded out that someone who seems as
scientifically/mathematically literate as you would link to a couple of
comments as if the story of HNs political biases would be summed up or even
broadly illuminated that way.

Again, I know who you are, I know what a pain in the ass the work you do here
is, I just think that maybe you're a bit too close to the sun to see this one.
My 2 cents.

~~~
tptacek
I'm _the_ highest voted commenter on the site, by a weird and embarrassing
margin, and I'm pro-labor (though not anti-capital).

~~~
dtornabene
which is not by itself indicative of anything other than regard for your
opinions on security? Really man? I get that you want to go to bat for dang
here, but way to sidestep my point, I said quote "the proportion of the
highest voted commentors that are pro labor or hostile to capital will be
vanishingly small." There's a fair amount of semantics around what that could
mean in practice, but one person, _who themselves complains about HN social
/political biases on twitter on the regular_ does not a majority make.

edit: not to mention I noted in my post to dang that there will be outliers,
which, again, you clearly are at an internet forum originally and still
largely dedicated to startups, a demographic slice not exactly well known for
their love of labor rights.

------
peoplewindow
I've enjoyed Ceglowski's talks but he says a lot of things that just are
clearly wrong in this article.

 _" When you have a monopoly you can’t really have a consumer boycott,"
Ceglowski said. "People can’t realistically not use Google or Facebook at this
stage"_

What? People can't not use Google or Facebook? I use Bing sometimes, it works
fine, and of course you only really need to use search engines at all if your
job requires it. And lots of people don't use Facebook, or used to use it and
no longer do. This statement is just so clearly and factually false it is
disappointing.

 _For progressives like Ceglowski, organizing tech workers is ... about
pressuring companies to do better on a range of issues, from sexual harassment
in the workplace, to user privacy and security, to election integrity_

"Election integrity" presumably meaning that he wants the tech industry to
control what people see about politics and politicians, lest they accidentally
vote for the wrong guy.

As for doing more on progressive agendas ... the big tech firms are all
notoriously controlled by an extremist "progressive" agenda already. How
exactly does this guy expect Google to do even more than it already does on
things like privacy and security, or sexual harassment in the workplace? They
fired Damore for having the audacity to point out that years of bending over
backwards to recruit more women had failed to make much difference because
women don't study CS at the same rate - a verifiable _fact_ that upset a bunch
of fundamentalist feminists.

The idea that the tech industry needs to unionise to force tech firms to be
even more Clintonite, globalist and to try and control elections is
tremendously disturbing. My respect for this guy has plummeted.

~~~
tptacek
No, the _tech labor force_ needs to _organize_ to force tech firms to _operate
in ways that respect the majority of their employees_ , rather than ignoring
them entirely.

~~~
quotemstr
That sounds good, but in practice, such organization will amount to the
destruction of the meritocracy and the elevation of a certain set of political
views to the status of job requirements.

A tech union would, I think, inevitably devolve to the kind of organization
that denies the existence of skill differentials.

~~~
the_good_matty
You say this as if tech is currently a meritocracy.

~~~
quotemstr
It's closer to a meritocracy than practically any other field. I firmly reject
the postmodern war on quality and the dismissal of merit as an illusion or a
form of oppression. Impact matters.

~~~
tptacek
This is a field that in 2017 still deploys vast amounts of new PHP code, and
in which the most successful new database offering of the last 5 years has
been MongoDB. You've got a very tough row to hoe to support the argument that
it's a "meritocracy".

