What you say is true, however these things can be negotiated with a union.
All a union does is give centralized power to the employees. If employees need to be cut for survival or salaries need to be lowered temporarily than these are things that an employer can provide proof of to the union and together with employees as a union work something out.
A union prevents the laying off of employees as a profit boosting measure even when it IS'NT required for survival. That is wrong on every count.
The employees are a greater part of the company than shareholders, board members, owners and C-level executives combined. Employees are not sheep to be herded and they deserve a centralized voice.
Someone else made this point elsewhere in the thread but I think it's a good one: As engineers, we have the opportunity to move into management and become entrepreneurs at a rate much greater than traditional industries. I've moved between high level IC and senior management a lot in my career. I've also started my own company. I don't think that profile is unusual for senior people in our industry. As such I'm likely to look at solving problems from all sides and negotiating with a union to "prove" that I need to lay people off sounds extremely troubling from an operational and efficiency standpoint. As a high performing IC I'm never at risk of being laid off unless the company really is in existential danger. As a manager I need to be able to let under performers go or lower costs as needed.
> I don't think that profile is unusual for senior people in our industry.
This doesn't make much sense from a numbers perspective. If entrepreneurs and managers manage more than one person then at the very least there should be double the amount of engineers then there are leaders, meaning at best your statements apply to only a third of all software employees if managers all manage 2 people.
Usually this isn't the case. Managers manage up to 5 people so your statements apply to on average 1/6th of all employees.
>As such I'm likely to look at solving problems from all sides and negotiating with a union to "prove" that I need to lay people off sounds extremely troubling from an operational and efficiency standpoint.
The efficiency standpoint is equivalent to the corporate standpoint. There's an additional standpoint you failed to consider. The moral standpoint. A 47 year old father of 3 kids depends on his job as an engineer to support his kids then you come along and fire him to replace him with a kid fresh out of stanford because this kid knows reactjs and will code 12 hour days for half pay.
There is no question, the scenario above is more efficient but it is also ethically wrong. Managers need to take steps to help the employee improve and managers should have their power limited so they cannot fire a father of three just because they don't get along or the kid straight out of stanford is his cousin.
Engineers make up the majority and backbone of a company they are not sheep for you to herd, hire and slaughter based off of operational efficiency.
>As a high performing IC I'm never at risk of being laid off unless the company really is in existential danger.
Good for you. I admire managers who care about the people they employ over managers who are efficient. The best managers are the ones who take underperformers and make them great.
Honestly this is a pretty naive view of management. The moral solution is to do what's best for the team. It's also not ethical to keep someone due to their demographics. If someone is performing well, you keep them if you can afford them (and reward them well!). If they're not doing good, you let them go. That's the same if the employee is 21 or 51. Game theory plays a huge role in successful operations. Even from a ethical perspective, it's bad to make everyone suffer (or lose their jobs) just to save one poorly performing person.
> The best managers are the ones who take underperformers and make them great.
In my experience (successfully managing a large amount of people) you can't really turn around underperformers in most cases and expending the energy to do so is harmful to the rest of the team. You should focus on your best employees and let the underperformers go asap. As an IC I also appreciate this strategy as I strive to be a top performer.
This is an overly rude and personal reply, but I'll respond anyway.
Efficiency is important to the survival of a company. You're not taking an organizational view of the situation. If you're inefficient, your competitors will eat your lunch and the whole company will be looking for new jobs. It happens all the time. You have to run the organization in the most efficient state that you can. It's the only ethical thing to do (it's also your job description as a manager).
> Additionally in most cases keeping an underperformer does not actually harm the team. they're salaries don't change whether you fire or keep the underperformer. The only thing that changes is your budget.
You're grossly underestimating the cost of keeping someone who's not very productive employed. People get paid out of that budget, it's not for the manager to pocket themselves. If I can repurpose that salary to someone who works hard and performs well I'll do it every time because it's what's fair to that individual, the rest of the team and the company at large.
> One day you'll eat your own medicine.
The key to success is understanding the real mechanics behind business. It's not personal, it's just the reality of living in a world with limited resources and competition.
>This is an overly rude and personal reply, but I'll respond anyway.
Rude? Did you not think calling my view of management naive in your first line rude? Here's a better way to start your first line:
"I understand your opinions, but I disagree, here's why."
After your little declaration of my opinion "naive" of course the following reply would be rude. Not being able to see that indicates to me that your management skills are naive. Maybe operationally you perform, but I highly doubt people under you would call you a good leader. Maybe I'm wrong. Throw out an anonymous survey and see how much people like working for you.
>Efficiency is important to the survival of a company. You're not taking an organizational view of the situation. If you're inefficient, your competitors will eat your lunch and the whole company will be looking for new jobs. It happens all the time. You have to run the organization in the most efficient state that you can. It's the only ethical thing to do (it's also your job description as a manager).
Of course it's important. Slave labor is possibly the most efficient form of managing people with limited resources. But of course nobody does this anymore because it's not ethical. A company and economy can survive, function and compete with certain inefficiencies and these inefficiencies are already required by law.
We are humans, not computers, life isn't just about game theory. Studies on economics and many other things show that humans don't behave according to that theory. If you behave that way, the studies indicate that you are outside of the norm.
>You're grossly underestimating the cost of keeping someone who's not very productive employed. People get paid out of that budget, it's not for the manager to pocket themselves. If I can repurpose that salary to someone who works hard and performs well I'll do it every time because it's what's fair to that individual, the rest of the team and the company at large.
I am not underestimating anything. It varies by situation. Many, Many companies operate at rates of inefficiencies that are incredibly higher than your process of immediately canning all underperformers AND these companies survive. There are tons of examples in society. I mean the military, any company with a Union... come on.
Also I never said the budget is for you to pocket yourself. However it does make you look good from a political perspective to lower your financial expenses and increase performance at the expense of your employees.
That being said I am not advocating military levels of inefficiency. We aren't out to build an F-35. I am advocating enough inefficiency to protect people and give them time to search for another job, or give them time to improve. Even top performers suffer from burnout, are you going to fire a top performer due to that? In the long term terminating a top performer because of burnout is inefficient, the efficient and ethical solution here is to give him work at a rate where he won't burn out.
>The key to success is understanding the real mechanics behind business. It's not personal, it's just the reality of living in a world with limited resources and competition.
There are more than enough resources in the world for humans to act ethically. Your abilities will degrade with time and will eventually reach a point where you'd be a resource drain to the economy. This is true of all people as they get older. The ethical thing to do would be to care for these older people, the efficient thing to do is to exterminate them, but we don't do that and the united states is still the country with the highest performing GDP. There is room for ethics, business and success to happen side by side. Whether or not you'll eat your own medicine depends on the people who manage you... if they learned from and act as you do, you'll be eating it eventually.
I think it's because technology is incredibly powerful and code + hardware can act as not only organizational structure but as a sort of pseudo employee. When you code you are often designing and implementing business rules, thus acting in a managerial or executive capacity. Software also scales incredibly well. One person may be responsible for building a system that generates immense value (extreme example: Linux and Git both initially created by one person).
The level of responsibility and authority you have as the person responsible for a $10M system can be leveraged to move to different leadership career tracks. I think this bleeds out into the industry at large so VCs recognize that smart engineers make good financial bets.
My hypothesis is that this is a function of white collar office work, where one often works closely with management/leadership/mentors, and can build relationships, knowledge and skills that increase one's opportunities the further one progresses in their career, not only in terms of entering management, but also starting a small business or startup.
Unions historically stem from segregation between labor and bosses along multiple dimensions such as skills, day-to-day experience and class.
All a union does is give centralized power to the employees. If employees need to be cut for survival or salaries need to be lowered temporarily than these are things that an employer can provide proof of to the union and together with employees as a union work something out.
A union prevents the laying off of employees as a profit boosting measure even when it IS'NT required for survival. That is wrong on every count.
The employees are a greater part of the company than shareholders, board members, owners and C-level executives combined. Employees are not sheep to be herded and they deserve a centralized voice.