This is getting to be a growing trend in Silicon Valley: employees demanding of their management and even CEOs certain action. Whether California a "right to work" state or not, I imaging employees demanding management do something that management doesn't want to do is grounds for dismissal. Are workers being let go for "standing up to management" like this?
I fully agree with you. Back when Google was doing it, I also thought it was a really dumb idea - you're essentially signalling "If you have these ideals, we want you working for us", which locks your company into a vision of the world that you can't change easily - and worse, it comes with other viewpoints that you may not necessarily want for your company, but your employees will bring.
For instance, if your company visibly and heavily promotes LGBT causes, civil rights, etc., and goes so far as to seek employees who are actively involved in such fights, don't be surprised if they turn around and form unions, or advocate for a more left-friendly workplace hierarchy. When you get a politically-motivated workforce, you can't pick and choose which parts of their politics they'll bring to the workplace.
It's not just SV. Power dynamics within orgs have changed and are changing.
Traditional Hierarchies are struggling because hyper-connecitivity within the org and to the outside world have increased exponentially. This diffuses power at every level within a hierarchy. You can't have power over someone 2 levels down if their network is as influential as your own.
I don't think we can make that statement yet. What we can say is that there is a huge amount of bloat in current technology companies along with huge perceived competition for employees, so many employees feel they are worth more than they are.
Most boom industries go through this. Then you get bad times, the fat gets trimmed, and a couple of lay offs later the employees realize that they are indeed fungible. Add a couple decades of maturity and they get a much more realistic view of work rather than "work is my life, and my life is work".
And sure, there may be a handful of essential staff, but the odds that you are a political activist masquerading as an employee while also being essential are nearly zero.
It's not just SV. Power dynamics within orgs have changed and are changing.
I mean, good luck doing that at Oracle or IBM for instance.
You can't have power over someone 2 levels down if their network is as influential as your own.
Yes you absolutely can. If the employee refuses to cooperate it's called insubordination and it's ground for firing. Now of course the employee can spin it anyway he wants and use his network of influence to make the employer look bad, but it has limits.
The fact that FB and Google workers make these demands is a indicator of how easy it is to replace them.
Money = power. If FB workers are valuable, they have political power they can use. There are many employees who are close to "Fuck you" money and many more who can just walk out and get similar job almost instantly.
Actually the fact that people make these demands suggest but they have the power. If the workers thought they didn't have the power, they wouldn't make the demands. There's a limit on the number of devs in tech, there's no limit on the number of jobs. There's a massive undersupply of tech workers. Facebook can get rid of their workers but there's limited ability to replace them from Amazon, Google excetera.
Company = company of people. Why should management have all the say and others should just shut up and do the work or leave? Why not have some shades of gray in between.
Because being an employee means you are expected to have a subordinate relationship with your employer in exchange for a money. Even in countries with strong worker protections, questioning management decisions that are completely unrelated to work conditions or legal matters is 100% ground for getting legally fired.
Now if it was the "culture" encouraged by management then I'm all for it, if it is done with the employer's blessing there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In some businesses it's perfect acceptable to discuss partisan politics at work, wedge issues, and employees can voice their opinions as to who the business should have as a client or not...
The conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley is that you want employees who are willing to think about and talk about what the company should do. Sometimes that means conversations management would prefer not to have, but conversations aren’t that expensive.
Comments
This is getting to be a growing trend in Silicon Valley: employees demanding of their management and even CEOs certain action. Whether California a "right to work" state or not, I imaging employees demanding management do something that management doesn't want to do is grounds for dismissal. Are workers being let go for "standing up to management" like this?
I think companies who have largely recruited and built their brand as virtue-signaling "lifestyle" are getting exactly what they deserved.
If your company constantly touts values, thought leadership, big ambitious ideas, etc, you can't respond with surprise when employees do the same.
I fully agree with you. Back when Google was doing it, I also thought it was a really dumb idea - you're essentially signalling "If you have these ideals, we want you working for us", which locks your company into a vision of the world that you can't change easily - and worse, it comes with other viewpoints that you may not necessarily want for your company, but your employees will bring.
For instance, if your company visibly and heavily promotes LGBT causes, civil rights, etc., and goes so far as to seek employees who are actively involved in such fights, don't be surprised if they turn around and form unions, or advocate for a more left-friendly workplace hierarchy. When you get a politically-motivated workforce, you can't pick and choose which parts of their politics they'll bring to the workplace.
It's not just SV. Power dynamics within orgs have changed and are changing.
Traditional Hierarchies are struggling because hyper-connecitivity within the org and to the outside world have increased exponentially. This diffuses power at every level within a hierarchy. You can't have power over someone 2 levels down if their network is as influential as your own.
I don't think we can make that statement yet. What we can say is that there is a huge amount of bloat in current technology companies along with huge perceived competition for employees, so many employees feel they are worth more than they are.
Most boom industries go through this. Then you get bad times, the fat gets trimmed, and a couple of lay offs later the employees realize that they are indeed fungible. Add a couple decades of maturity and they get a much more realistic view of work rather than "work is my life, and my life is work".
And sure, there may be a handful of essential staff, but the odds that you are a political activist masquerading as an employee while also being essential are nearly zero.
I mean, good luck doing that at Oracle or IBM for instance.
Yes you absolutely can. If the employee refuses to cooperate it's called insubordination and it's ground for firing. Now of course the employee can spin it anyway he wants and use his network of influence to make the employer look bad, but it has limits.
The fact that FB and Google workers make these demands is a indicator of how easy it is to replace them.
Money = power. If FB workers are valuable, they have political power they can use. There are many employees who are close to "Fuck you" money and many more who can just walk out and get similar job almost instantly.
Actually the fact that people make these demands suggest but they have the power. If the workers thought they didn't have the power, they wouldn't make the demands. There's a limit on the number of devs in tech, there's no limit on the number of jobs. There's a massive undersupply of tech workers. Facebook can get rid of their workers but there's limited ability to replace them from Amazon, Google excetera.
Company = company of people. Why should management have all the say and others should just shut up and do the work or leave? Why not have some shades of gray in between.
Because being an employee means you are expected to have a subordinate relationship with your employer in exchange for a money. Even in countries with strong worker protections, questioning management decisions that are completely unrelated to work conditions or legal matters is 100% ground for getting legally fired.
Now if it was the "culture" encouraged by management then I'm all for it, if it is done with the employer's blessing there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. In some businesses it's perfect acceptable to discuss partisan politics at work, wedge issues, and employees can voice their opinions as to who the business should have as a client or not...
What's the law against questioning a management decisions by sending a letter with objections?
The conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley is that you want employees who are willing to think about and talk about what the company should do. Sometimes that means conversations management would prefer not to have, but conversations aren’t that expensive.