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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

I can't tell if this is sarcastic or not. There is a huge reason big tech can afford those compensation packages for employees, and the vast majority of companies can simply not afford that.

As someone who's been both a union member and on the management side, it's frustrating when all sides don't realize that unions don't magically make money available to distribute to employees. There is certainly the argument that money needs to be distributed more equitably, but in a lot of cases (having seen this directly) there is simply not much money to move around.

Certainly, I'd love it if Google's never-ending money spigot was available to all.

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I wasn’t being sarcastic, NY Times is publicly traded too and is fully capable of the model where annual share grants are equal to the base salary, as opposed to a tiny sprinkle you’re supposed to be grateful for in leu of none at all.

Their tech team isn't that big, their $8bn marketcap could handle the share grants.

I had been critical of how wages haven't kept up with expenses for 30 years, while enamored by big tech compensation packages. In my analysis, big tech compensation packages are only reaching parity with the model of what wages would look like if they kept up with expenses, in which case I still shouldn't be impressed or worry about a comparison to what other fields are making. If value can be rationalized, and collective bargaining can extract it, then do that, I’m into it now since we’re close.

According to Google, the NY Times has a profit margin of 6-10% in most quarters. They're not exactly rolling in cash. Not to mention, there's a bunch of other teams at the NY Times that presumably want raises too. What's the justification for giving a raise to developers, but not to the writers that produce the company's main product?

I'm sure the tech guild would be happy for the writers' union to win contract raises too. I don't know why you think they wouldn't be.

Is there enough money to afford the proposed pay raises? 6% profit margin isn't much. Granting the proposed pay raises to both groups could easily put the company in the red.

Not sure where your 6% figure comes from, but you can easily find the 2023 Annual Report which states the following:

> Adjusted operating profit margin (adjusted operating profit expressed as a percentage of revenues) increased to 16.1% in 2023, compared with 15.1% in 2022.

You might also look into the NYT's recent history of stock buybacks while denying raises to their lowest-paid employees. The money is there.

There are a host of other real expenses that need to be paid that "adjusted operating profit" doesn't account for. I'd be really surprised if total net profit was more than 50-65% of that.

Point taken. I'd still maintain that the stock buybacks are egregious and need to stop.

To emphasize: that point I can totally agree with. While I don't know the details of all the reasons this union is striking, I can certainly imagine lots of good, plausible reasons, and stock buybacks (if they are egregious) would be at the top of the list.

I was just pushing back against using "big tech comp packages" as some sort of baseline for what unions should be pushing for. It is completely unrealistic and people who say stuff like this hurt their own cause by not living in reality.

https://www.google.com/search?q=ny+times+profit+margin

In June it was 10.6%, in March it was 6.9%

share compensation doesn’t use cash

It does use cash unless the company dilutes the stock by adding more shares. And if they dilute stock, they're effectively taking money from the existing shareholders. There's no free lunch.

being a public company with a liquid market is a license to print shares and the market can decide if it wants to stick around at a similar company valuation

my primary observation is that the world NY Times was formed or floated shares in didn't have the same shareholder tolerances that exist now

tech companies are controlled by one or two key founders, which wouldn't fly at one point, with rampant dilution

they rely on the appetite of the market, and in some other risk on stock markets around the world, even more extremes are seen to fit the appetite of the market

nobody is suggesting its a free lunch, if the market tolerates it then its available to attract talent competitively, or for talent to collectively bargain to extract that value

with the dilution not occurring all at once, I bet you’d be surprised what shareholders would tolerate

The board of the directors represents the shareholders, and they would likely not approve of any significant dilution. Again, the money has to come from somewhere. Either from revenues, or from the existing shareholders. The latter would just tell the union to pound sand, unless the Times is genuinely struggling to recruit talent (not likely).

> while enamored by big tech compensation packages.

The thing I think that is highly ironic is that a huge reason you are "enamored with big tech pay packages" is that they're enormous, and a huge reason they're enormous is they sucked up a ton of the revenue that used to go to newspapers.

I think fair equity grants are a great idea, but as another commenter said I don't see why this should in any way be specific to the tech team. What I think is just darn right silly is to compare compensation packages at any newspaper with big tech. It's simply unrealistic to think that there is enough money at other companies to pay those extremely high salaries.

Here's a very easy exercise for you: I haven't looked it up, but I'd be definitely willing to bet per-employee average compensation at, say, Google or Facebook is higher than per-employee revenue at the NYT.

yes, that used to go to newspaper and overhead costs that don’t scale like newspaper

the current structure mandates that other teams have to advocate for themselves, and we’ll find out whats worth what

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