You are watching a classic 21st century robbery in action, where lawyers are robbing corporations and employees under some pretense of magical justice.
Counting the downvotes on comments, HN has sharply taken a socialist turn and lawyers are the new superheroes saving people from Evil startups. In other news Bernie Sanders hates Uber despite using it nearly 100% of time.[1]
You could have at least used "startups" instead of "corporations" if you wanted to appeal to emotion. Socialist or capitalist, who would cry over a "corporation"?
> You are watching a classic 21st century robbery in action, where lawyers are robbing corporations and employees under some pretense of magical justice.
You misspelled "labor regulations" at the end of you sentence. Labor rights > corporate rights.
Discounting the tripe "You go girl" tone of the article, there is no divine law asserting that there ought to be only two forms of (W2/1099) employees. The labor laws should change in tune with evolution in technology. However given the current dysfunctional congress, and from experience with other Patent/Immigration laws this won't happen any time soon. Had it been about Patent/IP litigation and any other lawyer the tone of the article would be different.
This is parasitic legal rent seeking at its worst, let's call a spade a spade.
Here is an WSJ article that calls for change in labor laws.[1]
Rentseeking refers to trying to get compensation for economic activity that would happen without you. What this lady is doing is not rent seeking, because the economic transactions at issue (treating workers as employees), would not happen without her lawsuits.
More generally, just because new technology exists doesn't mean that the law needs to change. Technology in this case has made engaging in certain work relationships easier, but hasn't created new work relationships. People have been freelancing as maids or drivers long before you could use an app to hire them to do those jobs. And the factors that fact typically used to figure out the treatment of workers still make perfect sense in the Uber context. E.g., Uber's drivers do have a lot of schedule flexibility. On the other hand, they impose tight service standards and tie them to their brand. How Uber's employees should be treated can thus be decided by applying the existing principles and factors.
The labor protection versus employment freedom debate is much older than Silicon Valley, and the debate today doesn't really involve any new concepts. The WSJ was pushing for weaker labor laws decades ago, for the same reasons as it is now. Of course they're donning the mantle of disruption now--that's standard procedure when you're trying to relitigate a settled debate. But that's just a rhetorical device.
This is parasitic legal rent seeking at its worst, let's call a spade a spade.
Or, its someone fighting organizations profiting illegally by flouting labour laws that have protected workers from corporate exploitation for decades.
"Fighting organizations" is a rhetorical device used by lawyers to fool general public and people like you.
The reality today is that there is a large lobby of litigators actively trying to keep any change in labour/Patent laws from happening. [1]
I own no shares of Uber Inc. and any other companies involved in these litigations. But the reality is that by framing this incorrectly as David (The attorney) vs Goliath (Uber et. al.) fight the article is just pushing your emotional buttons. At end of the day litigation is not going to magically create jobs out of thin air. Uber will eventually shift to autonomous cars or will go bankrupt or might end having chinese drive the cars via video conference. It's easy to blame Uber for the mess that is the employer provided insurance.
Its not the Uber which created that problem, its the legislative gridlock which is at fault. But its cooler these days to hate Uber for all that ills the hapless middle class in USA.
The way that inappropriate laws get fixed in the US is that new laws get passed, not that people violate the laws that seem irrelevant to them. I have no objection to Uber lobbying for laws to introduce a new class of employees (and I have absolutely no objection to Uber or anyone else making life hard for the taxi lobby). I do have a strong objection to Uber deciding to treat employees in a way prohibited by law because they, on their own, think it makes more sense.
"Legislative gridlock" is a weak excuse. Plenty of legislation gets through, from PPACA (which had, and continues to have, widespread objection) to USA FREEDOM (even if you claim PATRIOT's expiration was the result of "deadlock", the replacement came a day later) to JOBS (specifically legalizing things that startups wanted to do!) to allowing people to unlock their cell phones (not really a Big Foo priority). If the people really want Uber and Airbnb -- which they seem to -- why can't they just get a law passed? And why can't all these innovative, well-funded startups figure out how to disrupt and fix something as obviously dysfunctional as our political system?
My worry is not so much with these particular ways they're breaking the law; it seems like this is probably reasonable (though I'd still like someone other than Uber to consider it). My worry is with the loss of the rule of law, and the precedent that we're not going to care about whether the law is followed. It's certainly true that Uber et al. aren't the first companies to break laws, but this seems like a qualitative change in what laws are being broken and what the impact on society is, and a democratic society should be able to have an opinion on it.
The fact that the core problem is more systemic than a specific company and set of grievances doesn't mean there isn't value in litigation.
Would forcing Uber to pay into state disability and worker's comp fix all of the problems our country has with labor / insurance / etc? Absolutely not. But at an absolute minimum, would it improve life somewhat in the short term for current Uber drivers? Probably.
Employer provided insurance is a mess. Ideally, we would have only the most basic labor laws, but a guaranteed income or similar safety net to make up for it.
But we don't have that. What we have is an awkward balance where employer provided benefits are a big part of the safety net. While that remains the case, it's really important to make sure that companies follow the rules.
Yes, I completely agree. Travis Kalanick should have just watched and followed "I am just a bill"[1] video for instructions regarding changing labor law, prior to founding Uber.
Let's call a spade a spade. Can anyone point to Uber showcasing their love for their employees? All I see is the opposite. I mean they are actively looking to replace them with self driving cars. They could care less about their 'contractors'.
Which is kind of the point, they aren't warm fuzzy come work for us, we're a family, you're a valued employee.
If you work as a driver for Uber you're a contractor, they could give a fuck whether you drive for them lyft, whatever, they don't care. Want to only work from 2am to 3am on Saturday nights? Knock yourself out. Didn't show up on time at 9am? Don't care. Oh, you're in South Africa this week and aren't taking any shifts? That's fine too. If there's work, work if not, fuck you.
To Uber you are the 'self' in the self driving car a machine to be replaced by a slightly cheaper model. That smells an awful lot like contractor and not a lot like employee. The only reason developers are employees is because contract developers are more expensive than employees who don't realize sodas aren't actually that expensive for adults with real skills.
> The only reason developers are employees is because contract developers are more expensive than employees who don't realize sodas aren't actually that expensive for adults with real skills.
Uh, no. Being an employee has a lot of rights that a 1099 person doesn't have, like the right to unionize, the ability to collect unemployment insurance if the company you're working for goes under, being a part of a health insurance pool for lower medical costs, access to the Family and Medical Leave Act rights, etc. There are a lot of things that employees get that aren't just "free sodas".
I've contracted and had access to all those things, though I don't see the point of unionizing as the sole employee in my own business... Nor would I see any point in rights under the 'Family and Medical Leave Act' when I could take as much time off as I liked and pay myself whatever I wanted to during said leave.
I agree that the labor laws have an "impedance mismatch" with the on-the-ground reality and I tried to spell out what that was in another comment [1]. Basically, laws shouldn't be discontinuous like this -- where all the rules sharply change when you just 50.001% look like a contractor (or the opposite). It should be more like "as you start to look more like an employee, you must adhere to more of a certain requirement".
Thanks, most privacy activists conveniently forget this argument. In most cases, the absolute approach taken by most privacy activists ends up hurting Students/Patients/Customers etc. since Universities/Hospitals & Insurers/Companies cite privacy laws to escape from the burden of accountability. At the same time the entities are free to mine their own data under guise of "Performance enhancement".
Essentially stringent privacy laws often have adverse effect where activities that might be of public benefit Research on Rare diseases/Teacher Accountability/Class action lawsuits are curtailed.
"hey, that money in your bank account, we can just automatically take our taxes from it, because we're not really taking it from you, we're just taking it from the bank."
>> You are clearly not familiar with how IRS functions. IRS can and often times does automatically freeze bank accounts if they suspect tax evasion.[1]
The reality is that when it comes to user data the analogy is even weaker, since most user data is transactional in nature. Hence both parties can assert their rights. This is particularly of importance in medical data. Where there are no laws that assure patients of his ownership of his own data.[2]
In reality when it comes to information/data the ownership argument is on a shaky legal grounds. And in some cases data ownership might be counterproductive.
Yeah without US support of NATO there wouldn't be a Switzerland just nuked out mountains flying post WW 3 soviet flag. Or maybe they would fare better considering their sham pro-hitler neutral actions that saw millions of jews perish during holocaust.
Frankly I don't see why HN commenter are so pro tiny European countries which are almost always have sustained due to US military support and are choke full of nativist/racists (Check out white sheep kicking black sheep poster). Be thankful for generous US citizens spending to keep world safe otherwise Europe and Asia would wake up to the next World war within months.
other visitors consider your hateful, ignorant and uninformed post not worthy a comment, but I'll bite - you are wrong, sir, and probably know it.
Plus that funky part about generous US - the world these days would be a much better place if US would just mind their matters for a while. Switzerland couldn't care less about US either, americans are not preferred expats here now (good luck opening a bank account here due to US government foreign policies for expats).
As for tolerance, Switzerland has by far the highest amount of foreigners from whole Europe, and yet it's much safer than any other european country, all religions mixed (ie very strong buddhist community) etc. World could learn a thing or two from this place ;)
Yes Switzerland has by far highest number of foreigners because of its essentialy Xenophobic immigration system rather than anything else. Using that as an example to show how welcoming it is completely deluded. USA offers birthright citizenship and in near future will offer a path to millions of undocumented immigrants. While USA had its own problem it's light years ahead when it comes to countries like Switzerland, where kids whose parents have lived decades in the country and were born their have no path to citizenship.
As far as swiss banks are concerned the world is actually worse off because of corrupt wealth hidden in their accounts. If anything Americans should be happy that one cannot simply open a swiss bank account.
Thanks for this beautiful comment. I especially liked this part "Keep splitting the housing into smaller and smaller units, make the renters share housing, constantly increase prices at more than the rate of inflation"
This has been my exact experience in Manhattan, where a 3 Bed apartment got converted into 5 Bed. After we refused to pay additional rent. Interestingly in Mumbai my apartment building (a Co-op where we own) decided to demolish / rebuild and reduce the playground associated with the building. This allowed us to raze the 6 storey building built in 1960 into a 12 storied one. As a result, we now have an apartment in the same co-op with equivalent sq. footage and were paid additional money plus rent while the building was being rebuilt. Since it was a Co-op we could shop around for a developer who offered us the best deal. The current building will at least sustain till another 50 years. I have never found this happening in US. Since either the building did not have enough free space to expand upon adjacent to them or restriction on height increase.
I think majority of these articles are being written by developers who always assumed that Apple would never move away from Objective C. By introducing Swift Apple has now directly threatened their unique skill set. In my opinion Apple recognized the threat from React Native / Cordova / RoboVM and had long term vision to introduce a new programming language that would allow Python/C++/Java developers to easily develop for iOS.
If you are interested in getting into Swift programming, don't let these article fool you into getting discouraged. This article is simply spreading Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.
In some cases, you can patent a major application for that algorithm and then license that patent. From what I know Larry and Sergey patented PageRank for Web Search. My advisor has patent on a Graph Cuts algorithm for image segmentation, which is licensed by Cornell. If you have a fast matrix multiplication algorithm e.g. for use in Fully Connected layers for Neural Nets. You can patent that application. When FB hired people from NYU to work on deep learning, the acquisition involved getting a fast fourier transform optimized version of convolutional layers. Not sure how big of a component it was.
Counting the downvotes on comments, HN has sharply taken a socialist turn and lawyers are the new superheroes saving people from Evil startups. In other news Bernie Sanders hates Uber despite using it nearly 100% of time.[1]
[1] http://thehill.com/policy/technology/250480-bernie-sanders-s...