...right?
We 10x engineers are so special that we are waving off offer after offer and that will never end.
Not only will that never end, but luckily I’m so perfect that I’ll never experience a disability or need any accommodation that I can’t just code or build myself.
I mean even then, certainly you had a good enough exit at your first company (like anyone good) that you could basically retire whenever.
I mean, you know it boils down to this: just be a better software engineer and you’ll never have to NEED a union. The only people that need unions probably suck at algorithms and think Kubernetes is too hard.
Live in emacs or starve is my motto
Our work is closer to tool and die makers, we make money printers that keep running without our day-to-day involvement.
Let's take S3 as an example. AWS S3 was started with 10 engineers or so (according to Andy). AWS S3 is now an organization with over 800 SDEs alone, that headcount costs well over $300MM per year (still excluding all the SDMs, Ops, QAs, PMs, TPMs, DCAs, etc also involved). That headcount made sense as the product exploded with new features, hardware, regions, etc etc... but the "greenfield" new feature development pace is likely an S-curve, and we are now on the slowing side that will only continue to slow.
How many SDE hours/year are needed for S3's steady state operation? How do companies compensate skill for rapid growth, and then transition to their steady-state needs? What changes in terms of headcount and/or compensation, if anything?
(Of course this isn't about S3, the same questions apply to any software product)
How would unions operate in this environment? It seems quite different than, eg Boeing's manufacturing unions with the long lead times and relatively stable production volume/labor needs.
(There are also interesting questions for shareholders - what happens if S3 lays off 90% of their SDEs? Where would those people go, what would they be most valuable working on - how "safe" is S3's revenue as competitors and startups hire their layoffs?)
A relevant book that recently came out but I have not read is You Deserve a Tech Union by Ethan Marcotte
It was ridiculously bad. I've never worked with less talented people. One of my coworkers did nothing, at all, for 2 years. But with 17 years of experience, he couldn't be fired.
I carried the team, but they couldn't pay me what I was worth or promote me. I left as soon as I could.
Kind of tangential but that seems like a resume stuffer at best and stolen valor at worst.
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1706 ("Treasury Department Releases First-Of-Its-Kind Report on Benefits of Unions to the U.S. Economy")
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/10/us-union-wor... ("Feel the benefit: union workers receive far better pay and rights, Congress finds")
https://newrepublic.com/post/175274/gallup-poll-two-thirds-a... ("Poll: Majority of Americans Support Unions and Support Strikes | A new Gallup poll shows Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of labor unions.")
https://www.axios.com/2023/04/27/unions-tech-industry-labor-... ("Push to unionize tech industry makes advances")
https://www.axios.com/2022/06/15/microsoft-union-truce-techs... ("Microsoft, meanwhile, announced last year that it would not stand in the way of any workers who wanted to unionize.")
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/microsoft-first-labor-union-vid... ("Microsoft recognizes its first U.S. labor union as video game testers organize")
> Microsoft president Brad Smith has twice in recent weeks told me that Microsoft is simply doing what it sees fit for its own relationship with workers and not trying to push others. However, labor leaders see Microsoft's move as a potential model for others.
> "I won’t say that it was completely easy for Microsoft to do this but they did it," Christopher Shelton, president of Communications Workers of America, the union organizing at Activision, told Axios.
(last I checked, Microsoft owns Linkedin, but I could be mistaken; I am not uneducated on the challenges and downsides to organizing, but am also not so uneducated and inexperienced to think the power imbalance doesn't require improvement; maybe an individual can do better solo occasionally, but that's luck and not what the data shows)
Between mid 2020 and early 2022, tech was the place investors were willing to pay any money even at a ridiculous P/E. It wasn’t because the value proposition suddenly shifted to tech but money was plentiful and looking for places to go and tech was the place that could give you high return.
Fast forward, US Fed has decided there is too much inflation and consumers need to slow down so they are shrinking their balance sheet. Investors suddenly are getting 8% return basically without any risk. Why would you invest in tech and all the volatility when you can get that return. Suddenly companies that could raise money and rollover their debt in peanut interest expenses are seeing money has dried up.
There is one and only one responsible for this mess. Central Bankers. They had absolutely no idea what they were and are talking about including very basic things such as where would inflation and interest rate go in short term. In 8 months, they went from “we need deflation and we foresee low interest till 2024” to largest inflationary environment since 1980s and highest interest rates. And of course they face no consequences. #EndTheFed
On my own I have been able to negotiate stock as well. Unions won't touch that.
Not MS, but I was at a big tech co that recently did layoffs, and a lot of the Super Senior Staff Distinguished Wizard SWEs, who I always wondered "What exactly do you do?" got laid off.
So, laying off people in the US and hiring in India?
Maybe security will be the next big thing? All these juniors churning out code using frameworks but not understanding what's really going on under the hood might introduce more security vulnerabilities. Not to mention all the disgruntled, jobless developers who might turn to hacking to make ends meet.
I guess people who are really into software development may want to consider moving into consulting, management or teaching. I also noticed a lot of bs jobs opening up dealing with regulations and compliance.
I remember when I joined the industry in 2012, being a developer was very special; you would interact directly with the company directors, you could choose all your tools and frameworks or even build your own from scratch. You could also decide to focus on back end or front end as there was no clear separation in responsibilities. I guess that's the downside of joining an industry which essentially didn't exist 50 years ago; you never know how it's going to end up. It's not like being a lawyer or doctor which has remained high status and high pay for thousands of years.
There's a whole social architecture designed around propping up lawyers' and doctors' pay by constraining the supply of graduates and imposing artificial requirements. On the other hand, software developers tend to be extremely compliant and willing to work overtime for free, not interested to unionize, you don't even need a degree (very low bar to entry), etc... The highly compliant, overworked ones force the rest of us to match them in their degree of compliance and overwork to remain competitive. It's really a sad race to the bottom.
Is this standard business communication lingo for layoffs?
And secondively, teams/orgs get bloated and keeping them larger than they should be hinders their progress.
Companies have cut back on recruiters a while ago, so I guess they stopped money on linkedin.
I wonder what areas will be impacted next.
Is it just me or does this suck a lot? Thousands of people unsure about their fate, refreshing their calendar, checking for... the lack of an invite? So much added stress and anxiety.
Surely they could send two versions of the email, specifying to each person if they are affected or not.
> within the next hour
This is great. One hour? Last time we had layoffs I was watching my calendar daily for weeks! There was no timeline at all. I had anxiety every morning logging into work. I think that was a huge part of the burnout I'm currently experiencing.
> creating value for shareholders of MSFT
I laughed at this part. If being grateful about increasing shareholder value (without a mention of increasing value for users) is a common attitude there, that explains quite a lot about why LinkedIn is the way it is.
There it is
There are too many great software engineers for bad management to use.
When product and software management works well, one side effect is the realisation that we don't need to be so many software engineers.
But that is just experience the ladt 20 years.
Is it normal for a CEO like Satya Nadella not to write this email? Kind of off-putting that MSFT is keeping its hands clean here. Mohak and Tomer aren't making this decision.
Conversation probably started by Satya asking the LinkedIn CEO to just reduce X$ expenses and the LinkedIn leadership made these specific changes.
Second, ones that increase the information about a market (transparency) so that all participants can make better decisions.
To that second end I would really love to see governments force companies to report headcount on a per role basis and anonymized compensation data about each of these roles on a monthly basis.
That way would could more easily contextualize posts like this one.
There is still an argument that, if you truly want top talent, then that top talent might actually want to live in high COL locations like NY or whatever.
They also outsource because they think they can take advantage of lax labor and/or environmental regulation in other countries. We should impose tariffs to level the playing field when countries don’t have these sort of regulations.
Competition keeps us honest and innovating, it shouldn’t be avoided, it just needs to be fair and non-exploitive.
You can describe effectively the same software engineering job in a way that sounds completely different. "close a project" of the old team, etc.
Funny that some people think "if we work in the office more, companies won't outsource jobs as much".
I guess you can now have RTO in India though?
Force RTO in the US, replace those who leave with less expensive resources.
You're totally right, though. If the data shows that RTO has negligible benefit — or even, say, just a marginal 5-10% benefit — then the logical move is to force RTO for the most expensive headcount (since a 5% boost there will be the most valuable) and then hire globally-remote headcount for all the rest.
That... really feels quite grim, the more I think about it. Time to go stare at my early-retirement spreadsheets and see where I can squeeze out some more velocity for myself, I suppose.
Yes, while the average software engineer in India might earn 7-10x less than in the US, this isn't the case within major tech companies.
But construction and retail? Really?
We are paid multiples of what people working in those sectors are being paid :/
Learn to describe your experience and goals as a story that makes sense and is compelling.
Most white collar work would benefit from experience in software or data, whereas lifting 2x4s into place may not.
I genuinely don't understand that you can, with a straight face, say that juniors with copilot can do the same work as seniors. Typing up the code is like what, 25% of time spent - during a good week!
You have not a fucking clue how good you have it. If you did, you would be too embarrassed to write a comment like this.
What you're saying is completely untrue where I live (Australia). My sister in HR earns more than me. My cousin who is a truck driver can save more money than me due to lower cost of living in rural areas and access to cheap real estate (which is not an option for me as a software dev)... My dad boasts about my truck driver cousin's achievements (as he has been able to buy his own house) and he rightly thinks I've been a gullible fool for having chosen software development as a career. I was a top dev. Now out of work for a few months. I worked for a company backed by Y Combinator. I was an early employee on a $4 billion market cap cryptocurrency project. I'm also a top percentile open source developer with thousands of stars. It's all worthless.
No no. I think you're the one who should be embarrassed. After what I've been through, I have no shame nor pride left to feel such emotions.
They don’t pay a million dollars but still pretty reasonable. Then again I don’t have super high expenses so ymmv
Even if what you’re saying is true about the SWE job market which I doubt what SWE would completely switch career paths to become a plumber and not just find a related IT position?
You aren't doing layoffs.
You're adjusting to a new market to maximize current opportunities.
You have to always look at the bright side.
Shroff and Cohen definitely deserve like a blowhard gold star for that. Rarely do you see such voluminous perniciousness that so effectively masks the real world consequences of ending peoples gainful employment. Real skill. Take notes.
"We don't have room for bystanders, we don't have room for people who want to stand on the sidelines,"[1]
[1]https://finance.yahoo.com/news/citigroup-outlines-layoff-pro...
Theres virtually no other business that yields so much revenue from only ~10 people (5 on court players and 5 bench players).
If Lebron decided to not show up to a bunch of games, this would have massive repercussions for the entire league & TV contracts.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/11/irs-says-microsoft-owes-an-a...
If the corporate tax would increase then it might be cheaper to litigate.
An actor usually spends a few weeks working on a movie and then the studio profits in perpetuity off that work. Tom Cruise finished filming Top Gun: Maverick years ago, but people are still streaming, renting, and purchasing that movie bringing in massive profit for the studio.
This is also true of the original Top Gun, released ~37 years ago. Very little software has that kind of long-term earning power, further supporting the idea that software work is not all that unique as work goes.
Me and many others are cool with socialism. Are you?
Average Indian earns $571/mo. Even if devs earn 2x average you’d be able to hire at least 3 for just the average SF/NYC rent a developer in the US has to pay let alone taxes, benefits, etc.
Not particularly good for the country or economy long term; is the end game to destroy the US and start over paying people here $571/mo?
And guess what - those bros in the us that wanted to be onsite to be creative will now have to communicate clearly with their remote colleagues in india whether they like it or not. But the idiots took away the rights of those in the us while those above them gave zero shits about them anyway and moved lots of jobs abroad.
The winers here? Indians. Good luck and enjoy scuttlebutt, if still employed, suckers.
- Builders, truck drivers, plumbers and miners do get paid a lot in Australia. Miners are typically paid a lot more than even the best software developers.
- Australia's economy is founded on immigration and a constant influx of wealthy foreigners are propping up the property market which inflates property prices and rents... Especially in big cities where developers are forced to live for jobs.
- It's almost impossible to get funding in the software industry. The very few channels of funding available in large urban centers are extremely risk-averse and seem artificial. By the time you qualify to get funding, you already don't need it anymore.
It's a perfect storm. Almost as if all the economic forces were specifically aligned to maximize harm against software developers. I had actually left for Europe (which has its own issues) but after the big crypto crash, I had to come back and it was even worse than when I left because now there were many immigrants competing for tech jobs and driving down wages and those same immigrants also helped to drive up house prices and rents... Double slap in the face.
Socialism is an incredibly broad term in practice, a typical sound bite dictionary definition hints at this:
a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
Isn't that trending towards a definition of communism? Socialism could mean a lot of different things; economic protectionism is a market inefficiency designed to champion things like jobs over corporate profits, and was a policy choice made by some socialist governments in the latter 20th century.
Boeing is a big company with a lot of inefficiency, but there clearly was inefficiency due to union rules. For one thing, layoffs went by seniority, not merit.
Staff couldn't even be disciplined without going through the union rep and everything was based on seniority... with no other reason.
That business no longer exists... its competitors that were non-unionized are still thriving.
Very few intelligent, educated people are part of unions, so they have no idea how they actually work. As I am against extortion, I am against unions.
How is it extortion, legal or otherwise?
Whereas the employee is free to go to work for some other company at any time.
The rules are not in balance.
I genuinely don't know why employers do not hire non-union employees in such circumstances; I think most of us assume they "can't", but would like to hear from someone who actually knows.
Which is to say, most ongoing services in a capitalist country are provided under the “threat” that if you break the deal you agreed to, you’ll have to look elsewhere to get that service going forward.
Are you implying not having access to semiconductors built elsewhere or goods built elsewhere wasn’t a net positive for the US?
The idea that software development was immune to this inevitable change is nonsensical.
A few major breakout successes become historical and bought long after the fact, but the majority do not.
Most books almost certainly lose money for the publisher. It's more complicated from the author's perspective given that people write books for a variety of motivations but, certainly, most books are doing well to earn out their advance which can easily be only $1,000 or so.
But, as you say, even those that sell "well enough" initially fall off pretty quickly. And some sorts of titles such as non-fiction about current tech stacks or software versions have a very limited shelf life.
2. Unions rarely, if ever, negotiate rights only for their own workers. The massive union protests prior to COVID asking for minimum wage increases didn’t ask for minimum wage increases only for union workers. They asked for federal and in some cases statewide increases in minimum wage which would affect all workers.
3. A lot of the research shows that higher union salaries also translate into higher non-union salaries, so union efforts also very directly help non union workers.
China. India. Japan. Korea. Pretty much all of Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. Unions are prevalent in Northern Europe [1]. That's it. That's the exception.
Outside Northern Europe, countries with great workers' rights [2] have between one in four and one in six people in unions.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_comparisons_of_t...
And how do you propose we align around such things? It seems like you’d need to organize your labor pool and possibly position yourself to bargain collectively, perhaps?
If you read my magnum opus, Chronos Shuffled, you would see that individual negotiation by an enlightened majority will reach the same common goal if... um... everyone individually pursues the exact same agreed upon goals...
...shit.
This is the distraction I'm talking about. Unions, in this century, have been effective at one thing: dividing voters from organizing around labor reforms in law.
For one, get tech workers to vote. Ironic detachment from politics still appears to be a thing for many in our industry. After that, this is political organization 101. For all the tech unions we do have, I haven't seen them try to expand workers' rights broadly. Because why would they. That's the competition.
What divisiveness? Most news I hear about unions paints them as a negative without backing anything up.
> We need workers’ rights for everyone. Not just those who are in a union.
Agreed, but we have to start somewhere. If unions are able to push for some type of labor benefit, then good for them.
Unions are fundamentally about putting workers and management into separate categories. (And unionized workers on a pedestal above others.) In an industrial context, this makes sense. In a start-up, it does not.
By definition of function, employees and shareholders are at diametrically opposed incentives if the organization prioritizes return on capital over all other things.
If you are in an organization, where in the majority of the ownership is held by the people who have funded it, then at the starting point, it is already adversarial unless you are an equal partner in equity.
Since the vast majority of organizations are set up as such, and unless you have a controlling interest in the organization from a legal stock perspective, then you are in a position of no power to start with, and it will continue that way until you become a significant shareholder.
Unions are required to provide the collective action necessary to counter the overwhelming legal power of shareholders in the current structure.
Don't you look for the best deal when you buy things?
That's how markets work.
Yes
>Was the not joining an option for either of them?
Yes
> From what I know you cannot play in NBA nor you can play in Hollywood w/o being a union member.
That isn't true. It is much harder in Hollywood than in the NBA, but some people decide to not join or leave the union. Jon Voight is the most famous example that comes to mind. He continues to work despite quitting SAG-AFTRA. It is also more common for actors who live in cities where non-union productions are more common (outside of LA and NYC).
Can you expand on this, what is "harder" exactly? They don't enjoy the benefits of the union or they cannot get high paying roles? Also, are you implying Jon Voight is not a SAG member, if so, I'd like to see your sources because from what I can find he is a member while being in dispute with it (also shows how great the unions are).
And as far as NBA goes, not being a member is irrelevant as you are still paying dues and obey union regulations, fun fact I've found looking for this: Michael Jordan was not a member of the union and does seem to do better than LeBron James, e.g. there are those "Jordan" shoes which seem to do much stronger than "LeBrons".
It’s disappointing but not surprising
Some of these people truly, truly believe that they are so gifted and so talented that the work opportunities will simply never dry up.
He's definitely been underpaid in the past, but I'm not seeing it in his current contract.
By what logic?
There are costs to increasing the cost of a layoff. It means corporations will rely on credentialism more, and take fewer risks. I'd rather live in a world where you can jump into software without a college degree, but maybe have to save a little money at your very well paying job than one that only hires college grads with a 3.5 GPA but you get a generous severance package.
Assuming your experience is representative of every company (I don't think it is) then every company lays off 10% of their workforce every 2 years.
Assume a random distribution (I don't think this is true) that means the average worker get laid off once every twenty years. So you're looking at 2 lay offs a career. Savings should be sufficient for this. Policies or agreements like this just make good hirs cheaper, and bad hires more expensive.
Do you think the LinkedIn people will get their pensions fully paid out?
I know of some factories that shut down for annual maintenance for several months every year, and they lay everyone off. There is another factory (same company) that works opposite months of the year so in theory people are laid off and just switch between the two factories, but depending on schedule and work needs you can be out of work for a while.
I also know big projects often hire union labor (electricians, plumbers), and lay them off at the end of the project. I have no idea what the terms of this are.
Voting is literally just the bare minimum bottom of the barrel scraping. You have to also agitate for things to be on the ballot, and there is plenty of pressure to be applied outside of the purely electoral lens. A union gives people a direct benefit for organizing while trying to improve conditions for workers in general.
Businesses care about profits - not quality.
Planning months in advance is done all the time, but it is hard. It is always easier to plan if you can look at the current most urgent project list and pick the top item. if you have to plan what will be on top in a few months that is a lot harder.
> Whereas the employee is free to go to work for some other company at any time.
And generally the employer is free to fire people at any time. And to forbid employees from working elsewhere.
I don't think your examples hold up to scrutiny.
> And to forbid employees from working elsewhere
That's simply not true.
Who said anything about that? Scab labor is an extremely common thing. How you come to the conclusion that "the company is not allowed to hire other people to replace the striking workers", I'm entirely unsure. For two very popular examples, both in the air travel industry, both pilot's strikes and ATC strikes have had "other people hired to replace striking workers", with varying degrees of notoriety (being at Boeing, I can't imagine you being entirely unaware of either).
> That's simply not true.
Many employment contracts have "no moonlighting" clauses. Only two states specifically forbid them: Washington, and Washington DC (and Washington's policy only affects lower-paid workers) (https://sbshrs.adpinfo.com/blog/7-faqs-about-moonlighting-po... and https://www.rocketlawyer.com/business-and-contracts/employer...)
Collective bargaining is pretty much the only tool workers have to even begin to correct the power differential between employer and employee. Ideally, it allows employees and employers to negotiate on more equal terms than is otherwise possible.
No, it isn’t. There is the individual threat of quitting. And there are the courts.
1. An individual quitting at a company where they are one single cog doesn't impact the company in any measurable way.
2. The court system in the west gives an asymmetric level of power toward the corporation, an individual has neither the time, the money, or the ability to navigate an ongoing protracted lawsuit with a corp that dwarfs them in all three aspects.
At l3 & l4 - when you factor in benefits (including health care costs), 401k matching, payroll taxes - it's probably 1/5th or less.
https://www.levels.fyi/offer/4bb28696-b3a9-430e-af6b-87e139b...
Google L4 SWE in BLR: 64k
https://www.levels.fyi/offer/3631ce80-f5fa-41e3-bd22-192a98a...
Google L3 SWE in Bay Area: 236k
https://www.levels.fyi/offer/8cb64099-ffcf-437f-baa3-a88ae7d...
Google L4 SWE in Bay Area: 260k
https://www.levels.fyi/offer/4468e21b-6650-4e6c-948b-e90ea1d...
That's a difference between 4x and 6.5x
I think that your 3x difference is definitely a lower bound, and it'll be closer to 6.5x than to 3x or 4x most of the time (though I don't see aggregated data per-company, per-region in levels.fyi (but I didn't bother logging in)
I mean, even if it does, it’s not that big of a deal. Fewer people propping up a ponzi scheme of a real estate market that tries to soak up as much surplus as it can get its hands on
Also, fewer incentives to remain in the US with its shitty excuse of a health care system and public school system
Edit: and shitty life expectancies in the US as well compared to developed countries. Also shitty work culture
According to what exactly?
It's one of a few reasons I prefer in person work.
Cheat code: most engineers in India will agree to work US hours if they're compensated accordingly. "Compensated accordingly" is still well below even the lowest US engineering salaries, and still in the top 1% income percentile in India.
Anyone who ignores that is falling victim to "how it used to be" not "how it is now" - just like the American car manufacturers who slept on the horrible but improving Japanese manufacturers decades ago.
The ATC was a special case. It was illegal for them to strike, they struck anyway, so Reagan fired them.
"It shall be unlawful for any employer willingly and knowingly to utilize any professional strikebreaker to replace an employee or employees involved in a strike or lockout at a place of business located within this state. 1134.2."
I've personally used both to extract concessions from employers.
In any case, my general point is that we need more protections in law for workers. Unions are a good way to distract from that.
An actor who refuses to join the union will have a harder time getting work because people generally don't want to deal with these headaches. However, actors can certainly have careers without being in the union. This is easier in places like Chicago or Atlanta were there is still a decent amount movie/TV production, but a lower percentage of the work is union work.
Jon Voight is a "fees-paying non-member". He is not part of the union. He has to pay dues whenever he wants to work union jobs.[1] Same as your NBA example.
I think you are mistaken about Michael Jordan. He opted out of union's shared licensing agreement[2] which is just one of the many benefits of the union. Have you found something that says he completely left the union?
[1] - https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/voight-gets-nom-i...
[2] - https://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/01/sports/sports-of-the-time...
This does not make membership an option, does it then? This is exactly the reason programmers like myself oppose the unions. Bringing up SAG in this context seems to be counter-productive to me but you can do that if you think this increases union's support somehow.
So I was wrong on the Jordan's membership, then who was playing in NBA without being a member if you say it's possible?
Yes it does. You are just redefining the meaning of "choice" now. There is always going to be pros and cons to any choice including this one. What do you want the non-union membership to look like? There are obviously going to be downsides to not joining the union or else there would be no reason to join the union and if there was no reason to join the union, it wouldn't exist.
They are already not as generous as they could be (for example, Google on January 20th boasted about accelerated vesting for the notice period of US employees that would be laid off... But employees in other regions didn't get the same terms)
...and they are going to get worse and worse, with future layoffs
Yep, that's what happens when you have labor laws that dictate the terms. It cuts both ways.
1- the laws dictate minimum terms for the agreements, they don't put ceilings on the maximums
2- the regions in which employees got shafted in that way aren't the regions in which employment laws are stricter
Again, you're ignoring that countries with terrific worker protections have, on average, low union penetration. The one is uncorrelated with the other. In America, unions principally serve as a distraction. We periodically throw a few industries a bone while most workers get zero protection.
The fact of the matter is, God gave us Sunday off and unions gave us Saturday off. Unions were the reason child labor was banned in the U.S. We have worker’s comp and the 40 hour work week was standardized. None of those things would’ve resulted from the benevolence of profit maximizing corporations.
Unions are inefficient--only those represented get benefits. And they're unnecessary. Most countries with good worker rights have low union penetration. Unions in America are a dead end. They let electeds toss a bone to the ten percent of Americans in a union while delaying broad reforms.
Congress won't function until the cohorts who vote for representatives unwilling to champion broadly popular policy or labor protections dies out. That's going to take a hot minute, even assuming a death rate of 1.8M voters over the age of 55/year.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/what-you-need-to-kn... (Control-F "Figure 1")
Congress is divided, but still generally productive [1]. Expanding labor protections simply isn't a political priority. Also, this can be done at the state and local levels.
> Do you know how many worker hours will be exhausted in suboptimal labor conditions waiting for Congress to pass human labor protections?
About as many as there are laid off writers? Ten percent of Americans are in unions [2]. Doubling union membership in a year has less effect than waiting ten years to pass protections into law.
[1] https://datainnovation.org/2023/01/visualizing-congressional...
https://hir.harvard.edu/the-east-asian-miracle-where-did-ada...
It's basically Ha-Joon Chang's whole deal-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Samaritans:_The_Myth_of_Fr...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/hajoon-c...
Protectionism hurts yourself just like trade sanctions and embargoes hurt the other guy.
What ends up happening is that countries cannot jump start industries that are already established and competitive in other countries. For countries to get into the renewable energy game, for example, they need to subsidize local industry and put a good bit of government capital on the line to the get to a point where they're productive at globally acceptable levels.
Countries don't need to pick _the_ cheapest products from around the world; getting good-enough local work that provides high value-add and keeps foreign currency reserves from going overseas is something that's objectively preferred by most of the global population. Most people are most definitely willing to accept +/- 15% cost of living changes in order to live in places with good employment and quality tax-funded services and infrastructure over having cheap imported crap.
But it happens every time.
> For countries to get into the renewable energy game, for example, they need to subsidize local industry and put a good bit of government capital on the line to the get to a point where they're productive at globally acceptable levels.
If it was profitable to invest the capital, there's plenty of capital eager for something profitable to invest in. Having the government forcibly extract tax money and use it to invest pretty much guarantees it will be a lousy investment.
Currently, Washington State imposed a massive gas tax of $.50/gallon. The state is investing a big chunk of that into hydrogen electrolysis plants. The only people who are going to make money off of this are the contractors getting rich off of the construction projects. The state is pretty much guaranteed to get a negative ROI off of it.
That's not how it works in many jurisdictions: if a company does a round of layoffs and exceeds the terms ... those are the new terms going forward for that company.
I already provided a link that proved this wrong. I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here, but that other commenter is right, you aren't engaging in this conversation in good faith.