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The tech solidarity is at odds with the progressive causes. I would probably join a solidarity group, but I would not join one that pushed causes other than 'te

The tech solidarity is at odds with the progressive causes. I would probably join a solidarity group, but I would not join one that pushed causes other than 'tech worker interests'

ThrustVectoring 9y ago
Yeah, same here. I'm not willing to stick my neck out for putting tech money into progressive causes (or conservative causes, for that matter). I'm willing to stick my neck out for better working conditions, retirement plans, professionalism standards, and fairness in equity compensation.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- eropple 9y ago
  And do you think that you can really do that without working with other people? I'm not the biggest fan of Tech Solidarity, but they understand, at least, that we (folks who work, as opposed to folks who own) are more in it together than we're not. Labor history bears this out; they can read a map.
  - ThrustVectoring 9y ago
    Of course not. I simply recognize that pushing political agendas both alienates natural economic allies, and opens the door to co-opting the organization for things of no benefit to tech workers as a class. Like, I don't give a fuck if people understand broad overarching concepts of solidarity and togetherness. Maybe I'm just a huge sperg, but what I want is concrete work on making tech work better. Make a flyer explaining stock compensation and how shady employers will structure things to screw you over, and publicize the shit out of it so that employers can't claim ignorance. Name-and-shame employers for having equity compensation terms so bad that they grants are effectively worthless. Something.
- pjc50 9y ago
  > I'm willing to stick my neck out for better working conditions, retirement plans, professionalism standards, and fairness in equity compensation. That is a progressive cause, no?
  - krakensden 9y ago
    No, we're too rich.
  - lmm 9y ago
    Traditionally yes, but it's not one that modern progressives seem to have much interest in.
  - fortythirteen 9y ago
    Progressives like to think they're the only ones who care about that when, in reality, everyone except the strictest libertarian wants all of those things. What frustrates me personally is the inability of many progressives to rationalize anything other than Marxist/socialist means for those ends and then act as if everyone who doesn't believe in those means doesn't share those end goals.
    - pjc50 9y ago
      > rationalize anything other than Marxist/socialist means What does this actually mean?
      - fortythirteen 9y ago
        Using tech industry working conditions as an example, progressives, on average, see the solution in unionizing (more bureaucracy, and the key breeding grounds for Bolshevik-like movements). They tend to dismiss the more incentive-based approach of ending the abuse of the H1-B system, which is the key market driver for artificially low wages and poorer working conditions. This is because doing so is at odds with the post-modernist ideal of a borderless society.
        9y ago
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  It's not politics if there isn't horse trading. Single issue pressure groups that do not form alliances with other groups do not achieve anything meaningful.
  - ThrustVectoring 9y ago
    It's not horse trading if the very first thing you try to do is try to help out other groups. That's not forming alliances, that's selling your organization into chattel slavery. Find the points where some dedicated work can help out tech workers as a class and push on them. Then once you have something worth trading for, sell it dearly and hold out for something worthwhile. IMO something like a volunteer writer to put out educational material relevant to working conditions in tech is probably the best bang-for-buck. Teach people how and why to job-hop and negotiate, make it concise, informative, and helpful, and put up a standard link to organization and request to sign up for the mailing list. Bog-standard growth-hacking, except peddling a professional organization rather than some startup's SaaS product.
kiliantics 9y ago
Why not? Workers have a lot of power when they are organised as groups. Tech workers especially, since it is such a valued industry right now. If you organised with other tech workers, you could push for change with a lot more success than with other groups, so it makes sense to use that power to get change in every sphere of society you care about. Would you have the time/energy to work as part of all the different groups you care about? Would all those separate groups ever have the same size and power as one big group of combined interests? No. This is a terrible strategy to get the changes you want. All the important social changes of the past - workplace safety, worker benefits, weekends, overtime, maternity leave, etc. - were achieved not individually by specially focused groups of organised workers. They were done through the actions and demands of mass movements of workers across industry lines. When you say "such-and-such group should only focus on the specific issues that affect them" then you are playing into the divide-and-conquer strategy of the ruling class and ensuring that you will gain less overall in the struggle against them.
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > All the important social changes of the past - workplace safety, worker benefits, weekends, overtime, maternity leave, etc. - were achieved not individually by specially focused groups of organised workers. So were a lot of other not-so-great things, like per-country immigration quotas (which we still have to this day), Puerto Rican colonialism (vestiges exist to this day as well, though at least the genocide stopped in the 1970s), - heck, even internment camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II. Organized labor lobbied heavily for all of those, because they protected the interests of white workers. The problem with talking broadly about "solidarity" is that it's all contextual - who are you standing in solidarity with, and who are you standing in solidarity against? For people in minority groups and historically marginalized and disenfranchised people, it's not always clear that "solidarity" means solidarity with their interests - historically, it often means the exact opposite. I'll probably get downvoted for pointing this out in a thread that's literally a PR piece advocating unionization of the tech industry, but it needs to be said.
  - crdoconnor 9y ago
isopropal 9y ago
I don’t think you have fully considered what the word “solidarity” means here. The whole notion of solidarity is at odds with a sole focus on tech worker interests.
- beaconstudios 9y ago
  then the term "solidarity" loses meaning when prefixed with "tech worker", unless you mean a specific political subset of tech workers. But then that's not "tech worker solidarity" because you are separating out leftist tech workers from centrist or rightists.
fletom 9y ago
This isn't about the interests of tech workers, it's about our responsibility to society as a group of people who have been handed a lot of power. In a world with so much inequality and suffering, don't you think that's important?
- thescribe 9y ago
  I disagree with the premise that inequality is a bad thing, other than practicing a trade my goals are probably not your goals.

The tech solidarity is at odds with the progressive causes. I would probably join a solidarity group, but I would not join one that pushed causes other than 'tech worker interests'

ThrustVectoring 9y ago

Yeah, same here. I'm not willing to stick my neck out for putting tech money into progressive causes (or conservative causes, for that matter). I'm willing to stick my neck out for better working conditions, retirement plans, professionalism standards, and fairness in equity compensation.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
eropple 9y ago
And do you think that you can really do that without working with other people? I'm not the biggest fan of Tech Solidarity, but they understand, at least, that we (folks who work, as opposed to folks who own) are more in it together than we're not. Labor history bears this out; they can read a map.
- ThrustVectoring 9y ago
  Of course not. I simply recognize that pushing political agendas both alienates natural economic allies, and opens the door to co-opting the organization for things of no benefit to tech workers as a class. Like, I don't give a fuck if people understand broad overarching concepts of solidarity and togetherness. Maybe I'm just a huge sperg, but what I want is concrete work on making tech work better. Make a flyer explaining stock compensation and how shady employers will structure things to screw you over, and publicize the shit out of it so that employers can't claim ignorance. Name-and-shame employers for having equity compensation terms so bad that they grants are effectively worthless. Something.
pjc50 9y ago
> I'm willing to stick my neck out for better working conditions, retirement plans, professionalism standards, and fairness in equity compensation. That is a progressive cause, no?
- krakensden 9y ago
  No, we're too rich.
- lmm 9y ago
  Traditionally yes, but it's not one that modern progressives seem to have much interest in.
- fortythirteen 9y ago
  Progressives like to think they're the only ones who care about that when, in reality, everyone except the strictest libertarian wants all of those things. What frustrates me personally is the inability of many progressives to rationalize anything other than Marxist/socialist means for those ends and then act as if everyone who doesn't believe in those means doesn't share those end goals.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    > rationalize anything other than Marxist/socialist means What does this actually mean?
    - fortythirteen 9y ago
      Using tech industry working conditions as an example, progressives, on average, see the solution in unionizing (more bureaucracy, and the key breeding grounds for Bolshevik-like movements). They tend to dismiss the more incentive-based approach of ending the abuse of the H1-B system, which is the key market driver for artificially low wages and poorer working conditions. This is because doing so is at odds with the post-modernist ideal of a borderless society.
      - 9y ago
crdoconnor 9y ago
It's not politics if there isn't horse trading. Single issue pressure groups that do not form alliances with other groups do not achieve anything meaningful.
- ThrustVectoring 9y ago
  It's not horse trading if the very first thing you try to do is try to help out other groups. That's not forming alliances, that's selling your organization into chattel slavery. Find the points where some dedicated work can help out tech workers as a class and push on them. Then once you have something worth trading for, sell it dearly and hold out for something worthwhile. IMO something like a volunteer writer to put out educational material relevant to working conditions in tech is probably the best bang-for-buck. Teach people how and why to job-hop and negotiate, make it concise, informative, and helpful, and put up a standard link to organization and request to sign up for the mailing list. Bog-standard growth-hacking, except peddling a professional organization rather than some startup's SaaS product.

kiliantics 9y ago

Why not? Workers have a lot of power when they are organised as groups. Tech workers especially, since it is such a valued industry right now. If you organised with other tech workers, you could push for change with a lot more success than with other groups, so it makes sense to use that power to get change in every sphere of society you care about. Would you have the time/energy to work as part of all the different groups you care about? Would all those separate groups ever have the same size and power as one big group of combined interests? No. This is a terrible strategy to get the changes you want. All the important social changes of the past - workplace safety, worker benefits, weekends, overtime, maternity leave, etc. - were achieved not individually by specially focused groups of organised workers. They were done through the actions and demands of mass movements of workers across industry lines. When you say "such-and-such group should only focus on the specific issues that affect them" then you are playing into the divide-and-conquer strategy of the ruling class and ensuring that you will gain less overall in the struggle against them.

chimeracoder 9y ago
> All the important social changes of the past - workplace safety, worker benefits, weekends, overtime, maternity leave, etc. - were achieved not individually by specially focused groups of organised workers. So were a lot of other not-so-great things, like per-country immigration quotas (which we still have to this day), Puerto Rican colonialism (vestiges exist to this day as well, though at least the genocide stopped in the 1970s), - heck, even internment camps for Japanese-Americans during World War II. Organized labor lobbied heavily for all of those, because they protected the interests of white workers. The problem with talking broadly about "solidarity" is that it's all contextual - who are you standing in solidarity with, and who are you standing in solidarity against? For people in minority groups and historically marginalized and disenfranchised people, it's not always clear that "solidarity" means solidarity with their interests - historically, it often means the exact opposite. I'll probably get downvoted for pointing this out in a thread that's literally a PR piece advocating unionization of the tech industry, but it needs to be said.
- crdoconnor 9y ago

isopropal 9y ago

I don’t think you have fully considered what the word “solidarity” means here. The whole notion of solidarity is at odds with a sole focus on tech worker interests.

beaconstudios 9y ago
then the term "solidarity" loses meaning when prefixed with "tech worker", unless you mean a specific political subset of tech workers. But then that's not "tech worker solidarity" because you are separating out leftist tech workers from centrist or rightists.

fletom 9y ago

This isn't about the interests of tech workers, it's about our responsibility to society as a group of people who have been handed a lot of power. In a world with so much inequality and suffering, don't you think that's important?

thescribe 9y ago
I disagree with the premise that inequality is a bad thing, other than practicing a trade my goals are probably not your goals.