| ▲ | spullara 11 hours ago |
| I am skeptical there is any customer benefit from unionization and it makes me concerned that MTG Arena might not be around for long term. As a big customer, I am worried about my investment in the platform with this announcement. MTGO still exists, I wish it had a better client. |
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| ▲ | advisedwang 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > I am skeptical there is any customer benefit Unions aren't really there for customer service. Nonetheless, there's often times where the worker demand benefit customers too: Nurses fight for better nurse:patient ratios, benefiting patients too; teachers fight for the resources for them to teach well; starbucks baristas fight for a work pace that allows them to actually engage customers like the brand used to offer. etc |
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| ▲ | sabedevops 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Stability of development, features etc is to the customer's benefit. |
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| ▲ | tjwebbnorfolk 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Have Magic customers been clamoring for Magic's employees to unionize for the past 30 years? This benefit you purport strikes me as purely hypothetical and possibly wrong: if they can't downsize when they need to, they could go out of business completely. |
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| ▲ | awesome_dude 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Unions rarely form because everyone is being treated well (humanely) and/or paid appropriately. The extreme is, are you only happy when your products are created in sweatshops, or, worse, by slaves? |
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| ▲ | spullara 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | since some of their gripes are "use ai" and "rto" I don't think we are talking about a sweatshop. |
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| ▲ | glance9835 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Found the Pinkerton bot account lmao. It's confusing why tech people are so suspicious of unions. We all benefit from unions even if we're not in them... |
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| ▲ | nonethewiser 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You say he's a bot because he's suspicious of unions, yet you acknowledge plenty of tech people are suspicious of unions. Seems like you dont think he's a bot at all and you're just trying to delegitimize his viewpoint without actually confronting it. | |
| ▲ | tjwebbnorfolk 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's likewise confusing when people think unions are always A Good Thing no matter what in all circumstances. I'm glad the employees are exercising their rights to organize. Whether this turns out to be good for the business and for customers remains to be seen over time. | | |
| ▲ | BizarroLand 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | Any time people want to unionize, it's good for the customers even if it means the business goes under. Sure, they won't get to be customers any longer if that happens, but at least it will increase the likelihood that the products they have available are not the cause of other people's suffering. |
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| ▲ | satvikpendem 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not sure about "all." High earners generally do not benefit from unions as they can make more negotiating their own labor value versus participating in collective negotiation which is more likely to drag their compensation down towards the average, even if it's still higher than average. | | |
| ▲ | mjr00 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | > High earners generally do not benefit from unions as they can make more negotiating their own labor value versus participating in collective negotiation which is more likely to drag their compensation down towards the average, even if it's still higher than average. High earners benefit from unions if union rules are made which benefit high earners. The most well-known example of a high-earner union is SAG-AFTRA and they provide benefits to established performers, the big one being name exclusivity. e.g. even if your real life birth certificate says your name is "Tom Cruise" you cannot advertise your name as "Tom Cruise". Obviously, actors are still negotiating their own pay. Another good one is the NFL Players Association which capped the rookie pay scale in 2011 to ensure the salary cap was going more toward veterans, people already in the union. However they still independently negotiate their compensation. I don't know what people would want out of a tech union specifically but the idea that "union = payscale based on seniority" just plain isn't true. | | |
| ▲ | satvikpendem 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Tech workers are fungible while actors or athletes are not though, so they should better be compared to more blue collar worker unions and here it is the case that wages are generally normalized. | | |
| ▲ | mjr00 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Tech workers are fungible while actors or athletes are not though Strongly disagree with this, and I'm in 'tech management' now so I'm not saying this out of self-preservation. Tech workers are similar to athletes in skill disparity IMO. A handful of superstars makes a massive difference. Look at those superstar AI developers who are allegedly getting 8 or 9 figure compensation from Meta etc. They're still technically "just" tech workers. | | |
| ▲ | satvikpendem 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | Those 8 and 9 figure employees are the exception that proves the rule, as I am talking about the vast majority of tech employees who largely fall within the middle of the normal curve. Athletes as well are far fewer in number and simply cost less overall (less than 2000 in the entire NFL). | | |
| ▲ | mjr00 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Those 8 and 9 figure employees are the exception that proves the rule ??? This doesn't make any sense. There's a hell of a lot more background actors, which you can call fungible, than there are Tom Cruises, but they're all covered by SAG-AFTRA. "Tech workers are fungible except for the ones that aren't" is tautological and doesn't support your argument. | | |
| ▲ | satvikpendem 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | Sure it does. I'm talking about the majority of tech employees who are fungible while you for some reason are talking about the few that aren't, I'm not sure why they're relevant to this debate. I'm sure there are some very rich tradespeople but they have unions too for the regular worker. And as I said, it's more appropriate to treat tech unions like blue collar unions over specialized unions like actor or athlete ones. And if we do so, wages will be depressed. | | |
| ▲ | mjr00 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Sure it does. I'm talking about the majority of tech employees who are fungible while you for some reason are talking about the few that aren't, I'm not sure why they're relevant to this debate. Because I gave examples of unions which contain and are beneficial to high wage earners, and you dismissed them as irrelevant because tech employees are "fungible" except for the ones who aren't. Except those unions also contain far more "fungible" employees (background actors, backups, practice squad players) than they do star actors and quarterbacks, so it's a close comparison. There's currently 2,314 members of the NFL Players' Association but only 32 starting NFL quarterbacks. Fungible means all employees are the same, that's the exact definition of fungibility. If certain employees have a measurably different impact on delivery, that is the definition of non-fungible. Just because most employees deliver near-average performance does not change this--it's tautologically expected! | | |
| ▲ | satvikpendem 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | Nit picked, I suppose. Regardless of the word I used (maybe it's my mistake), my overall point does not change that tech unions will depress wages for high earners. | | |
| ▲ | mjr00 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Nit picked, I suppose. It's not a nitpick. There are some industries and jobs where employees truly are fungible. There's never going to be a security guard or Starbucks barista or janitor who does such an amazing job that they're able to negotiate significantly higher wages than their peers because of how much value they deliver. "Software developer" is not that kind of job, at least not right now. > my overall point does not change that tech unions will depress wages for high earners. And this goes back to the original point which is that unions only depress wages for high earners if the unions negotiate terms which depress wages for high earners. As has been pointed out in the thread there are many existing examples of unions for collections of high-earning employees. | | |
| ▲ | satvikpendem 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | You can believe that software unions will be like the actor and athlete ones but I will continue to believe that they are more like blue collar unions, with software unions in Europe as an example that currently exist. In other words, I have no reason to believe "unions negotiate terms which depress wages for high earners" will not be the case. |
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| ▲ | awesome_dude 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Athletes have a far bigger curve than you're aware of | | |
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| ▲ | fragmede 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The Bar association for lawyers, and the MD licensing system are another two examples of a trade having a union. | | |
| ▲ | satvikpendem 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | Those act more like cartels to keep their own wages high while in reality there is a doctor shortage for example. |
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