> You have seen how little it takes these companies to layoff employees.
This is a reasonable ask. It's easily addressable - build a notice period into the offers (for example, if you've been with the company more than a year, you get at least 4 weeks notice).
The problem with any sort of exclusive guild is that it becomes more difficult to break into, which is bad for a growing industry.
Who will enforce that? The policies are made by companies themselves and they can change them whenever/however they want with no employee welfare in mind. We as individual employees don't have any power influencing or enforcing those policies.
The idea behind organized workforce is to balance the power dynamic between employer and employees. It's harder for employer to ignore the demands of an organized workforce than individual employees.
The employer can't unilaterally change the terms written in the offer letter. That would be clear breach of contract. Any state or federal court in the US can enforce this. I'm not sure how it works in other countries.
Again, which entity forces the employer to write these terms in the offer letter in the first place? Govt or courts can't. If you as the person interviewing asks for these terms, employer can just say no and move on to next person in queue.
In other countries the notice periods are written in law. But then again, do we really want to wait(& trust) for the govt which is heavily lobbied by FAANG to legislate this? Isn't it more efficient to organize and demand your terms from the employer.
No entity forces startups to convert ISO's to NSO's when early employees leave the company, but they did it because it made their offers more competitive. The legal default was ISO's that expire quickly.
It's the same. If companies hear loud and clear from both their employees and from people they want to hire, they will do it if they want to compete.
Heck, any smart company might do it voluntarily to make it harder for their employees to be poached by other companies that only offer a fire-at-will employment (the legal default).
A few posts on Medium/Substack might catalyze this change.
>> If companies hear loud and clear from both their employees and from people they want to hire, they will do it if they want to compete.
Yes definitely they will.."today". Companies don't need to do anything special if supply overtakes demand. We feel we are special today only because IT is still relatively a new field and the demand still outweighs supply.
But the rate at which universities across the world are churning out CS grads and the increasing focus on automation, supply will definitely overtake demand. And when that happens we will end up in the same predicament as other professions. At that point, companies don't have to cave in to the demands from their employees or the people they want to hire.
Having a union isn't going to change this. If most of the voting members are "new CS grads bring churned out", you'll have the same dynamics inside the union.
I will rather trust the democratically elected union leaders who are also my co-workers than the management. I don't really know what else to say at this point. It's just weird taking side of the management.
Couldn’t agree more. Our interests as employees is far different from management and the C-suite. Don’t forget that board members currently have a legal obligation to provide value to investors and no obligation to do the same for their employees.
It’s one of the reasons we see layoffs during a time of record profits. It’s easy to turn humans out to boost the profit margin and the stock value.
In fact, the legal default is that ISOs convert to NSOs, but the vast majority of startups force-expire them. Indeed we have seen that if no entity forces a startup to allow an employee-friendly policy to go forward, the company would rather fuck the employee and blame it on "it's the law," even if it isn't.
This is a reasonable ask. It's easily addressable - build a notice period into the offers (for example, if you've been with the company more than a year, you get at least 4 weeks notice).
The problem with any sort of exclusive guild is that it becomes more difficult to break into, which is bad for a growing industry.