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Comment by krainboltgreene | Hacker News Reader

Maybe this time tech workers will understand we need to unionize.

I think Union isn't the right word for what I want.

I want a co-op where the employee organization owns the company. Profits are bonuses for all the employees.

I don't want protection from company's goal of making the most money possible. I want the goal of the company to be the success of the employees.

This aligns incentives.

Baby steps.

US law makes this type of organization harder than it should be and a union is a good step towards what you're describing.

You can already form such a company. It would be called an LLP. It's common in other professions, not sure why it hasn't been a thing in software though.

It can be difficult for co-ops to access capital. Investors are extremely hesitant to invest money in an organization where the employees can simply vote to use that money to give themselves all raises.

There are other ways to achieve what you're after: stock options, profit-sharing agreements, or even just a generous bonus structure based on hitting revenue targets are all quite common.

And all of those things aren't enough, as demonstrated by every company that's doing them now. Beyond entry level dev jobs, most of Amazon's corporate employees are getting half or more of their comp in stock. Yet here we are.

Why? Because of layoffs? Thats not a reason to unionize. Maybe what we should be doing is asking our CEOs, GMs, product people, etc why we need to go on these hiring sprees in the first place, which seem to put the entire employee base in jeopardy when "times get tough.

If the goal of these layoffs is to "do more with less", then maybe we as technologists should find a way to do that ourselves.

>Why? Because of layoffs? Thats not a reason to unionize. Maybe what we should be doing is asking our CEOs, GMs, product people, etc why we need to go on these hiring sprees in the first place, which seem to put the entire employee base in jeopardy when "times get tough.

Yeah, for the most part, asking those questions is a great way to get fired in many, many companies, especially if you ask those questions in a forum or format that makes leadership look bad. I am not sure where I stand on unions for tech workers (I grew up in a union mining town where the union saved lives by driving safety measures, but also got fined by the union on the first day of my first job for refilling an ink tray because the shop steward thought I needed a lesson), but at the end of the day, unions provide a method for engaging with the business to negotiate and ask these questions without fear of arbitrary retaliation.

> Why? Because of layoffs? Thats not a reason to unionize.

This is one of many reasons to unionize because the reasons for layoffs may not be what we're being told.

How does that follow? Unionized companies also do layoffs.

In this case, the union could be forcing better treatment for the people laid off (notice, severance, timing, etc.) and also the people staying (no “do your job and your former coworker’s or you’re next”).

And they typically do them worse, e.g. purely by seniority.

No, that's not going to happen. First we are too independent, too many libertarians. But the main reason is I think we still feel like there are lots of opportunities to find jobs.

I'd love to pay 5% or something like that for job insurance that would cover me if the company died, or they start laying off people in a downturn. That would be 5% you don't have though.

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