In 2013, so many people still search for a site instead of writing the URL - <AUTHOR> http://journalism.basilesimon.fr/2013/11/why-on-earth-do-you-search-instead-of-typing-the-url/

<comment><USER2> People do it because it is quick and easy. If Google is your homepage, then when you start typing stuff in, it goes into the search box and not the address bar. Typing 'facebook' and pressing return is pretty damn quick and saves some of the clicking and mouse moving. I know lots of people who do this. My parents don't really understand the address bar, for example.

As a side note, the author's arrogance is irritating. He can't think of a reason why people do something, so he declares it 'irrational', 'dumb', 'stupid' and 'highly illogical'. Perhaps he should have paused and considered that there could have been a reason behind the actions of so many people.

<comment><AUTHOR> The Google homepage seems like a very valid point. But when you open a new tab, you are typing in the address bar - and the autocompletion is enabled.

Ah, the irritative arrogance. I am quite happy about it because it led to a fair amount of exchanges about what I wrote, including yours. What I really can't understand is - and my point of view is very likely to be biaised by my own experience - why do people do not go for the fastest and what seems to me the easiest way? I'm very sure you can help me with that.

<comment><USER2> People don't know the easier ways, and they stick with what works for them?

My experience is mostly with my parents and other more elderly relatives, who are fine with googling stuff but haven't really got the hang of what an address bar even is.

As for 'when you open a new tab', I don't think my parents even understand or use tabs. Also, for older people, precision mouse movements to click into the (relatively small) address bar are fiddly (and then you have to delete the text that is already there...), whereas the big search result boxes are much easier to click on. Speaking of which, they will often click on the top advert for a website rather than the search result. They don't see the difference, and they both take them to the website...

I stand by my points about your arrogance. Failing/not bothering to see other peoples' points of view, or even considering the possibility of your own lack of knowledge, is not an attribute to be proud about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Well its funny when it goes wrong

"I want the old facebook back"

[http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-want-the-old-facebook- back](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-want-the-old-facebook-back)

[http://readwrite.com/2010/02/10/facebook_wants_to_be_your_on...](http://readwrite.com/2010/02/10/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login)

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't do this with well-known sites like Google and Twitter, but sometimes I deliberately search a website's name even when I think I know what its URL is. This helps me avoid landing on a similar but unrelated -- and possibly fraudulent -- website, especially if the website I'm looking for uses an unconventional domain name. Too often, it's impossible to remember whether the startup I just heard about uses .com, .net, .io, _get_ name.com or name _app_.com.

Fortunately, with modern browsers, the difference is only between typing "websitename" in the address bar and typing "websitename.TLD" in the same bar. So if I'm not 100% sure what your TLD is, I just hit Enter and the browser shows me the search results.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I've made a habit of this too -- what is the _advantage_ for me in typing in, say, python.org when there's a risk I might be misremembering it as python.com?

I believe there's also a slight security advantage, in that search engines will index and respect redirects to HTTPS (even without HSTS), and if I click through the search engine link, I stay on SSL for the entire transaction since the search query itself is HTTPS. This protects me against a man-in-the-middle when possible, and also saves me the annoyance of getting an SSL error when not. (I am also training myself to type [https://](https://) instead of [http://](http://), but the search-engine route is way more usable.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just starting doing it a couple of years ago when browsers began to support searching from the address bar. Why do it do it? Sometimes I don't know the exact URL of a site (is it .org or .net), sometimes I want to avoid entering scam sites, sometimes I am just lazy and want to type less.

</comment><comment><USER7> Using the search engine is the safe way - sometimes the link I remember is wrong (say, sitename.com instead of sitename.org) and is held by some squatter peddling spyware downloads; but if I type 'sitename' in google, then it brings me to the proper site.

It doesn't do it 100% perfectly, but it certainly does it better than I do myself.

And why would I ever write any domain name (other than my own servers) at all? If I see a link, then I click the link; If I remember a link then autocompletion remembers it as well - I just hit 'n'+enter in the address/search bar to go to news.ycombinator.com.

</comment><comment><USER8> Didn't Opera have 'omnibox'-like features already _way_ earlier than 2008? At least I've been using it for over a decade and it seems like ages ago I ever visited a search page directly instead of searching via the address bar. The only time I'd do it now is to get the correct url to enter in Opera's 'Manage Search Engines' dialog.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can't find it on Wikipedia. If you do, please let me know so I can update the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The reason I think this happens is because two of the main browsers (IE and Chrome) have a major interest in maintaining the status quo. They might even possibly be making it more advantageous for users to search for a website instead of navigating directly to it on it's URL. The more searches, the more ad revenue.

<comment><AUTHOR> If it was their intention, why introducing autocompletion - a functionality which, if used correctly, allows to avoid search engines for queries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For us software engineers, the details of how something is implemented become more important than the goals they serve. Navigating to a site using a URL is such a detail. Main stream people only care about the end goal. Searching for a site name is "simpler" than entering a cryptic URL.

<comment><AUTHOR> When talking about webpages consulted on a regular basis (like facebook, for example), thanks to the 'omniboxes', there is no such thing as URLs anymore, don't you think? The browser does all the work in a few keyboard hits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is mostly from people mistaking the search box for the address box and just putting in the URL there and not knowing there's an extra step in this that they could avoid.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think that search engines are commonly used instead of URLs in countries where the occidental alphabet is not the standard one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Did not think about that. It would be worth exploring the difference in the top searches in, say Europe/US and in Asia or the Gulf.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I almost never go to search engines. Even if I have to, I just type the query into the URL bar.

</comment><comment><USER14> Uhm, should we apologize to you or something?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nah, just telling me how do you behave when it comes to typing URLs will do the job :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> people just hate writing www. and .com as simple as that</comment>


How social-media platforms dispense justice - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/business/2018/09/08/how-social-media-platforms-dispense-justice <comment> loup-vaillant > _Internet firms in America are shielded from legal responsibility for > content posted on their services. Section 230 of the Communications Decency > Act of 1996 treats them as intermediaries, not publishers—to protect them > from legal jeopardy._

> _When the online industry was limited to young, vulnerable startups this > approach was reasonable._

That's the wrong way to look at it. The size of the company should not matter here. It's how they operate that should determine which regulation applies to them. There are only two reasonable alternative:

Either they are _intermediaries_ , in which case they should have the duty to indiscriminately intermediate whatever they are asked to intermediate. This means no centralised moderation. Maybe allow moderation at the sub-community level (as Reddit does with its subforums), but no centralised censorship, except _maybe_ upon reception of a warrant.

Or they are _editors_ , in which case they should have full legal responsibility of the content, and suffer full legal consequences of whatever illegal speech they allowed.

I believe such a clean dichotomy is the only way to ensure free speech in the face of such centralised services. 'Cause I think the likes of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter… would rather choose the "intermediary" path than risk taking legal responsibility for their enormous user base.

<comment><USER3> This implies no suggestions algorithms and news feeds either. If these sites are pure intermediaries, then running machine-driven editorializing by controlling and suggesting the content people see is not a neutral act - <USER2> algorithms are biased and they choose how they act.

Imagine a phone company which selectively didn't send calls to you because it's automated checkers determined you weren't interested. If you got nothing but telemarketing, well, now they're no longer a pure transit are they?

Social media owners are already editors and they're trying to shirk their responsibility.

<comment> loup-vaillant > _This implies no suggestions algorithms and news feeds either._

Yep, it does.

<comment><USER4> Frankly, I'm surprised this doesn't get more attention.

At present, Twitter, et al are in an incredibly weird position. They claim to be "public spaces" which is the foundation of the lawsuit against Trump blocking people _and_ making company announcements SEC-compliant. Further, they claim to be "neutral" but apply "quality filters" and flag bad (but not illegal!) content. But then Twitter revokes the blue checks for poor behavior and they all ban people for bad (but not illegal!) behavior. at least claim they weren't playing as editors.

So they're only the particular thing to a particular audience when they need to be but something else when it's more convenient.

I don't see how the reasoning fits together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The root incentive to moderate is to keep the government from intervening or preventing people turning against the platform. Government starts interfering and people turn against them when there is a moral panic[1].

In democratic societies the best way for the social-media platforms to achieve their goal is to muffle moral panics directly. That's different goal from the moderation that government and public want from them (criminal or hidden actor propaganda.)

I predict that the attention will be directed towards throttling sudden spikes in moral panic inducing content. Legitimate moderation will be just small part of the moderation effort. Most of the energy goes into protecting the sensibilities of "proper" society.

There will be limiters for the reproduction number of any kind of controversial thinking. It will be just easier and cheaper.

[1]: Moral Panics [http://criminology.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/978019...](http://criminology.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.001.0001/acrefore-9780190264079-e-155)

</comment><comment><USER6> It will to see how the platforms fare once they have to exercise editorial control over their content.

It will be especially interesting to see how their assumed competitive advantage over 'traditional media' holds once it is subject to a massive increase in overhead, which surely follows from having an army of moderators.

I wonder if they will start to ebb, consolidate, and find a place alongside other media. Those that are scarcely profitable right now (Twitter for instance) should be the early indicators.

<comment> village-idiot Honestly, I'm surprised that social media is a thing. It appears to make its users miserable, especially twitter and Instagram, and some of them barely break even.

<comment><USER7> You could say the same about heroin. Or even alcohol, really. Taking immediate pleasure at the price of pain later is a failure mode of human brain; we all fall for it, to smaller or greater extent.

<comment> village-idiot Good point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >"Although most of the moderators work for third-party firms, the growth in their numbers has already had an impact on the firms' finances."

I was kind of surprised to read this. Wouldn't content policy be much more coherent if these were employees of the company? I'm curious why they elected to use third-party firms. I understand that localization is an issue but this a global company with deep resources so I'm doubting that could be it.

<comment><USER9> _I 'm curious why they elected to use third-party firms._

Plausible deniability, and no liability for the long term effects on the mental health of those exposed to extreme imagery. Knowing these companies almost certainly a tax dodge of some sort is involved too.

<comment><USER8> Sure plausible deniability sounds about right for these folks. However I would hope that the mileage on that is limited to single use. I'm sure they will use this excuse to point blame elsewhere during their next crisis but I doubt it will work for the one after that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [http://archive.is/MMWqL](http://archive.is/MMWqL)

</comment><comment><USER11> Now these platforms hide behind "external fact checkers", "black box algorithms", etc. The real problem is that every fact is theory-laden, a lesson learned from the history and philosophy of (natural) sciences.

Today, we are in a state of disputing facts, because people are disputing theories behind stating such facts. Let me give you an example: a reporter finds two dead bodies. The fact that two dead bodies discovered may not be under dispute. The moment, one says that these two were killed, the other says that these two committed suicide--you see, two theories (homicide vs suicide) are presenting the phenomenon in two different ways.

Further accept that these two were indeed killed. Now look at possible reasons behind these deaths. Multiple people offer often competing, contradictory, reasons behind these deaths.

Basically, there are no facts. What we call facts are theory-laden facts that are agreed up on by all sides; in other words, all side agree on the underlying theory (say, homicide).

<comment><USER12> There are facts. You said yourself "The fact that two dead bodies discovered may not be under dispute." That's the fact. Everything else you said isn't a fact, it's a hypothesis. Just because people don't know the difference between a fact and a hypothesis/conclusion doesn't mean there are no facts; unless you want to go full ontological skeptic and dispute that it is possible to ever know anything (never go full sophist!).

The real issue is that we have a breakdown of good faith in civil conversation. That makes society impossible. At the point where you argue that there are not two bodies in front of me, even though there are two bodies in front of me, I might as well stop arguing with you and instead start punching you. Then you can argue that your pain is just theoretical.

<comment><USER13> > _There are facts. You said yourself "The fact that two dead bodies > discovered may not be under dispute." That's the fact. Everything else you > said isn't a fact, it's a hypothesis. Just because people don't know the > difference between a fact and a hypothesis/conclusion doesn't mean there are > no facts;_

The distinction between fact and hypothesis is a red herring.

First, unless one has verified something themselves, with their own eyes or carefully checked primary sources, there are no facts, just reporting of things claimed to be facts.

In other words, there are no "two bodies in front of you" and you're not being denied by some fellow you discuss with while you're both looking at them. Just reporting that such two bodies exist somewhere, that one believes and the other doesn't. And more often than not, the reporting is of even more abstract things, like statistics (collected with who knows what methodology, and presented and baked to prove who knows what point, using all the tricks one can use to lie with statistics).

Second, supposedly physical-domain facts can be fake as well. "This man was shot by person X" (leaving no room to hypothesis) while X might not have done it, or might have been framed - even if there were witnesses attesting that X did it and even a court found it so (many people have been later found innocent e.g. by DNA or further research decades after the fact, victims of over-jealous prosecutors, false testimony, setups, facial similarities, racist bias, and so on). Despite their guilt being not a hypothesis but a fact with "evidence", it was still bogus.

Second, pure hypothesis is often presented as fact, and people are called out for not believing it, all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > or a photo alleging that Donald Trump wore a Ku Klux Klan uniform in the > 1990s (leave it up but reduce distribution of it, and inform users it's a > fake).

If they're so concerned about misinformation, why would they leave a fake photo up, even with a disclaimer? Nah, I must be reading too much into this, surely this is a policy they apply evenly, and they'd do the same with a similarly fake photo of Obama.

<comment><USER15> Not sure if you're being sarcastic. I assume they would do the same for doctored photos of Obama. Removing content entirely should only be reserved for when serious crime is likely to occur, I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Social media companies must be allowed to do policing this way only if they abide by the national laws pertaining to freedom of expression. I mean, if a company wants to list as a social media company where people share information, and they also do policing, they must be answerable to local courts if they take down posts using their judgement which goes against the established freedom laws of the land, without hiding behind the garb of being a private enterprise etc and saying that its their prerogative to manage their platform as they please. I don't know if such a thing is already in place.

The companies are having a knee jerk reaction to the misuse by public, and like all KJR this is heading the wrong way. The fact that the companies whose primary aim it to maximize profits are taking it upon themselves to do these sort of ethically and legally questionable activities itself will lead to bad ramifications.

One obvious solution to controlling fake news is to remove the invisibility cloak of users by forcing them, by law, to use government issued ID to authenticate their accounts. This should make people more responsible before sharing misinformation. However, the fragility of technology that would lead to abusing authenticated user accounts is a big enough concern to put the onus on the companies.

I don't care if the companies "employs executives who are thoughtful about the task of making their platforms less toxic while protecting freedom of speech" or use third party authenticating sources, or some fancy AI/ML, but unless they are forced to abide by the laws, things will only worsen. Whether they like it or not, social media companies are now entangled in social and legal aspects and have to deal with all that comes with it. They have enjoyed exponential growth in profits, now its time to get real.</comment>


New Revealing paper on High Frequency Trading - <AUTHOR> http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1641387

<comment><USER2> Scientific papers about politically controversial topics that involve billions of dollars of money flowing around in firms that can potentially hire the author later, need to be taken with a grain of salt. A large grain of salt. Sad but true. You can't trust science papers about politically controversial, money-impregnated topics the way you can almost sorta sometimes trust science papers about completely noncontroversial topics.

I have no particular reason to distrust the author or the paper. Only general reasons to distrust the topic.

<comment><USER3> These conclusions, however, are also consistent with about 70 or more years of economics investigation by members of the austrian school. In fact, is whole economic cycle, that ended in 2008 was predicted by austrians in specific in 2001 and in general as far back as the 1920s.

So, this isn't just some single paper with an unexpected conclusion. It is important also because it supports an understanding of economics that is under constant political attack in our society.

<comment><USER4> _...is whole economic cycle, that ended in 2008 was predicted by austrians in specific in 2001..._

[Citation needed.]

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure what 2001 prediction lzw could be referring to, but the Austrian school definitely sounded an early warning on the housing bubble. See this article from 2004 for instance: <http://mises.org/daily/1533>

Or, Ron Paul addressing the House in July 2002: [http://www.ronpaul.com/2008-09-26/ron-paul-on-the-housing- bu...](http://www.ronpaul.com/2008-09-26/ron-paul-on-the-housing-bubble- july-2002/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Based on my experience building HFT systems and communicating with others doing HFT, the results of this study sound about right. HFT traders are essentially just market makers, meaning that they generally place orders on both sides of the market in an attempt to profit from short-term mean reversion.

<comment><USER7>
        HFT traders are essentially just market makers

The systems you worked on may have fitted into both groups, but your grouping isn't quite right.

High frequency trading is a broad term that encompasses anything that involves computerised algorithms interacting with a market, and with short position holding periods.

MM is a set of strategies which generally requires HFT if you're to be competitive with it on electronic markets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The author makes use of a dataset of trades from major exchanges annotated with which parties were "HFT". Besides the definition of "HFT" being very unclear, deciding if a trade was executed by an HFT firm (even by what he defines as a HFT trader) is very hard to determine.

The author utilizes the Market Participant ID (MPID) to try to determine the underlying firm for a trade, but this is not reliable. It is very common for many many firms to share a single MPID for "tier aggregation" since fees are calculated by MPID and the fees exchanges charge improve with higher volume. This means that many firms (HFT and not) can share a single identifier. Also, many large banks have a single MPID for all their flow, which may include HFT proprietary trading as well as non-HFT flow. He notes these flaws, but I am not sure he realizes how pervasive these arrangements are in the marketplace.

Even if he was able to determine the underlying firm for each trade, there is no rolodex of HFT traders. The author makes a valiant attempt using firm websites and such, but this process is somewhat error prone.

</comment><comment><USER9> There's a lot of FUD surrounding the topic of high frequency trading (lowercase). Much more important to stability and sanctity of markets is transparency and effective regulation. Traders by design are trained to find inefficiencies to exploit -- that's how they make money. If some traders have discovered that by having computers trade really quickly, they can get an edge - well, that's kind of the point of trading. I think this paper is right to point out that high frequency trading has little to no impact on the overall marketplace.

</comment><comment><USER10>
      The only function of economic forecasting
      is to make astrology look respectable.

        -- J K Galbraith:

<comment><USER4> What is the relevance of the quote? Near as I can tell, the article is not engaging in economic forecasting, they are simply looking at historical data.

(Note: I haven't read all of the paper, so please correct me if the details involve forecasting.)

<comment><USER10> Part of the point is that it is looking at historical data, and that most academic economics results look at historical data, and historical data does not, for example (as I understand it), enable predictions of the crashes of 1929 or 2008.

This paper is fundamentally talking about "normal" trading conditions, and the continuing danger is that results like this will be used to bolster the contention that HFT is in fact a good thing, whereas when the market crashes it might be an incredibly bad thing.

I'm not saying it is or it isn't, I'm just saying that there seem to be a lot of assumptions that aren't being made explicit, those assumptions might not be valid, and when they're not valid, all predictions go out the window.

Hence the quotation.

I should add that perhaps this is no surprise. A claim I've seen made is that the information economists need to be accurate is fundamentally undiscoverable. Hence the article I lunk to earlier:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1686077>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> At least in the abstract this study doesn't seem to differentiate between market making and more agressive HTF strategies, furthermore the firms involved and strategies they are running aren't listed. The potential bias in both these factors is enormous. Given there is significant empirical evidence that at least some HFT strategies have involved market manipulation and in one notable example, the temporary total destabilisation of the entire market I'm extremely dubious as to the origins and motivations behind this paper and the data used.

That the author appears to run a high-freq quant fund hardly helps: <http://www.linkedin.com/pub/jonathan-brogaard/22/b04/b60>

<comment><USER4> _Given there is significant empirical evidence that at least some HFT strategies have involved market manipulation and in one notable example, the temporary total destabilisation of the entire market..._

[citation (or even a few google keywords) needed]

<comment><USER12> Try these keywords: "flash crash" HFT

<comment><USER4> The first page of google results provides no _empirical evidence_ that either HFT involves market manipulation or that HFT caused the flash crash. All it provides is speculation.

<comment><USER11> Ask and ye shall receive. [http://www.zerohedge.com/article/its-not-market- its-hft-crop...](http://www.zerohedge.com/article/its-not-market-its-hft-crop- circle-crime-scene-further-evidence-quote-stuffing-manipulation-)

If detailed, fully sourced graphs, demonstrating deliberate use of quote stuffing to essentially jam markets isn't good enough for you I suggest you consider carefully your own bias.

<comment><USER4> How do the graphs demonstrate _deliberate_ use of quote stuffing, let alone market manipulation or a link between HFT and the flash crash?

Rather than repeating myself, I'll link to my own comment on that exact article explaining why I'm almost certain those graphs are not deliberate.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1564445>

Also from your FT article: _Regulators such as the SEC are still puzzling over exactly what caused the flash crash._

(Full disclosure: I work in HFT.)

<comment><USER11> Are you kidding me? Are you honestly denying there's no connection between the stuffing of the order book with hundreds of thousands of orders and the crash? Please. As for whether it's deliberate - I think you're right in the sense that something acted in a way which its creators did not intend if you think quote stuffing is a legitimate trading strategy we're clearly poles apart in what purpose we believe markets are meant to serve. I hear a lot of about how HFT creates liquidity and reduces volatility without much reference to quite what time periods they're talking about, what you don't hear them say is what it does to liquidity volatility, particularly in nervous markets and around announcements. I've done HFT too, I understand the game, the difference is I realise it's at best an illegitimate quirk of technology and at worst legalised front-running and the turning of the execution environment into a trading weapon.

<comment><USER4> _Are you honestly denying there's no connection between the stuffing of the order book with hundreds of thousands of orders and the crash?_

Perhaps you missed it, but most of the graphs in your link are from July. The flash crash was May 6. So unless you want to assert that the flash crash caused the weird graphs, no, I don't see the connection. That's not to say you couldn't find similar graphs on May 6 - I guarantee that you could. In fact, you can find graphs like this almost every day (pre and post crash) if you look hard enough. And yet, we don't have flash crashes every day. We've only had two (the first was in 1962 [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870395760457527...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703957604575272791511469272.html) ).

So yeah, I do expect you to do more than point out an everyday occurrence and then assert that it (and not thousands of other things, including things which don't happen every day) caused a once-in-a-lifetime event. I expect, I dunno, correlations at the very least. Maybe even a mechanism, rather than just a theory that "I don't understand everyday event A or once in a lifetime event B, they must be related."

<comment><USER11> I didn't think you were abtuse enough not to read what I linked to. But then it is hard to get someone to understand something when it's not in their interest to do so. [http://www.nanex.net/20100506/FlashCrashAnalysis_Part4-1.htm...](http://www.nanex.net/20100506/FlashCrashAnalysis_Part4-1.html)

Detailed analysis of the precise trading events that led to the crash. With data.

<comment><USER4> Your first link had graphs from July. Your new link has similar graphs from May 6. Also note that your new link agrees with what I said:

"Quote stuffing is also not a rare occurrence and these sequences are seen frequently on a daily basis; they are easy to find once you know what to look for."

Compare that to what I said: "That's not to say you couldn't find similar graphs on May 6 - I guarantee that you could. In fact, you can find graphs like this almost every day (pre and post crash) if you look hard enough."

I've seen Nanex's graphs. I don't see how they come even remotely close to explaining why crop circles (which occur everyday) caused the flash crash. Again, what is the mechanism? A DOS attack? If so, then how come we don't have a flash crash every day?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Let's assume for a second that the author is correct and that correctly- executed HFT systems are generally a non-issue. Even with that core assumption, there is still the significant question as to what happens HFT systems misbehave (either due to suboptimal algorithms, bugs or a lack of adhering to stock trading good practices), which is the allegation that NANEX makes (<http://www.nanex.net/20100506/FlashCrashAnalysis_Intro.html>).

Obviously, that isn't the subject matter that this paper is covering, but it definitely seems to be making an attempt to paint HFT as a Force for Good in the marketplace (or at least dispel attempts to paint it as a Bad Thing), and in my mind as a software developer, even more than impacts when things are Working As Intended, the bugs are what scare me.

</comment><comment><USER14> Three most salient points of the paper offer an almost direct counter to HFT's biggest critics:

\- HFT activity has no impact on market volatility and may event decrease it.

\- The authors find that there is no evidence of abusive front running.

\- HFT plays an important role in price efficiency and the price discovery process.

</comment><comment><USER15>
       Trading = Zero sum
       Investing != Zero sum</comment>


Pd2pg: Open-source tool for PagerDuty analytics with Postgres - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/blog/pagerduty-analytics-with-pd2pg

<comment><USER2> Awesome to see this. We have a similar tool we built here at Heroku called "rearview" but right now the source has a bunch of heroku-specific cruft like out oauth service baked in.

We should release it too. Intelligent pager analysis is the key to operational improvement!</comment>


A "joke" in the glibc manual - <AUTHOR> https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/770966/bbbbcee062e7e5a7/ <comment><USER2> One thing I hate more than jokes in code, is people trying to remove "problematic" jokes/terminology from a project they have never contributed to.

<comment><USER3> But since the people contributing to the project are presumably the people adding the "problematic" jokes/terminology to the project, who then do you propose should try to remove them if you bar people who haven't contributed?

<comment><USER2> Realistically what would be the percentage of total potential contributors that you are barring from contributing? Nobody can't say for sure, but my guess it is probably a single digit number. Even if you fix that someone else will be offended from another thing. When you try to enforce cleansing the community it is more likely to lose existing contributors that put that jokes in. People should be told if their behaviour is not optional in order to improve, but don't go stir up pointless drama in which you have no personal involvement with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The main joke is the people complaining.</comment>


What is in your .vimrc - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/164847/what-is-in-your-vimrc <comment><USER2> These vimrc posts are not always very useful. Actually, it should be reminded that each line in vimrc may have bad side-effects. It may increase Vim instance loading time, and increase editing footprint, or slowdown processes like highlighting and scrolling.

Moreover, and probably worse, each specific configuration increases the distance between your daily Vim-fu and the one you'll have to use on another user or another machine. And these occasions have been, in my experience, those when great Vim-fu was the most critical (eg. trying to keep your hand on a dying server on a flooded connection, or showing off your skills on your boss's Mac during plane trip). All this holds for bashrc too. The closest to the default is the best, to some extent.

I take vimrc posts as good occasions to proofread mine and remove all unused stuff. I just commented out a very weird "set notagbsearch" which was probably killing my <ctrl>-].

<comment><USER3> I like your style. Care to share yours?

<comment><USER2> Vim 7 in terminal exclusively:

I have the classic things about backspace, black background, statusbar, hlsearch, autocomplete, etc.

Then I have a few shortcuts on <Function keys>, because these cannot override other bindings. The most important is <F9> linked to pastetoggle.

I also have some specific settings for my current main language (Python).

I try to avoid rebinding normal keys because it can kill you when you get used to your tweaks and have to use another instance, but one thing I do is _imap <ins> <Nop>_, because I hate being suddenly thrown in replace mode.

Plugins I have grep.vim linked to <F3> and I'm currently trying NERD_commenter.vim on <F6>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good ones I've come across (with useful comments):

<https://github.com/sjl/dotfiles/blob/master/vim/.vimrc>

<https://github.com/cloudhead/dotfiles/blob/master/.vimrc>

<https://github.com/rtomayko/dotfiles/blob/rtomayko/.vimrc>

<https://github.com/nvie/vimrc/blob/master/vimrc>

<https://github.com/vgod/vimrc/blob/master/vimrc>

<https://github.com/spf13/spf13-vim/blob/master/.vimrc>

<comment><USER5> a whole packaged deal at <https://github.com/astrails/dotvim>

tons of extensions and custom bindings. good README.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't have much to add to the thread except for:

        set undofile

which will allow for persistent undo, i.e. undoing changes even after closing a file.

<comment><USER7> I also "set undodir=/tmp" so that it doesn't litter my working directory with persistent undo files.

<comment><USER8> I prefer a variant of that. You can specify more than one place (that is, first choice, second choice, etc.) with a comma-separated list. I do this:

        " Vim 7.3, now with persistent undo
        set undofile
        set undodir=$HOME/.vim_undo,/tmp

That way, if I've remembered to create a _.vim_undo_ folder, they go there (best option). Otherwise, _/tmp_. (You can do the same thing when specifying places for swap and backup files.)

As the comment suggests, the undo feature is only 7.3 or better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Insert single characters: Press 's' in normal mode and the next character you type will be inserted at the cursor and put you back in normal. Press 'S' (Capital S or shift+s) and the character will be inserted after the cursor like 'a' append. This is also repeatable, so you can insert a character and then do '5.' to insert it 5 times, still leaving you in normal mode afterwards. Being repeatable is the reasoning I read for it being a function. I picked this up from the Vim wikia site awhile ago.

        " Insert single char (repeatable)
        function! RepeatChar(char, count)
            return repeat(a:char, a:count)
        endfunction
        nnoremap <silent> s :<C-U>exec "normal i".RepeatChar(nr2char(getchar()), v:count1)<CR>
        nnoremap <silent> S :<C-U>exec "normal a".RepeatChar(nr2char(getchar()), v:count1)<CR>

Press 'F5' to run the file you're editing, assuming it has a shebang.

        " Run current file if it has a shebang
        function! <SID>CallInterpreter()
            if match(getline(1), '^\#!') == 0
                let l:interpreter = getline(1)[2:]
                exec ("!".l:interpreter." %:p")
            else
                echohl ErrorMsg | echo "Err: No shebang present in file, canceling execution" | echohl None
            endif
        endfun
        map <F5> :call <SID>CallInterpreter()<CR>

I don't actually use this one a lot, but it can be handy. F10 to switch between the line numbering modes, in Vim versions that have relative line numbering (>= 7.3)

        " Toggle line numbering modes
        " Default to relativenumber in newer vim, otherwise regular numbering
        if v:version >= 703
            set relativenumber
            let s:relativenumber = 0
            function! <SID>ToggleRelativeNumber()
                if s:relativenumber == 0
                    set number
                    let s:relativenumber = 1
                elseif s:relativenumber == 1
                    set relativenumber
                    let s:relativenumber = 2
                else
                    set norelativenumber
                    let s:relativenumber = 0
                endif
            endfunction
            map <silent><F10> :call <SID>ToggleRelativeNumber()<CR>
        else
            set number
        endif

</comment><comment><USER10> This is an _ugly_ hack I came up with to layout my windows how I like them. I have NERDTree and Taglist in a horizontally split window to the left and MiniBufExplorer across the top of the screen. See <http://yfrog.com/h7sg7fp>

      autocmd VimEnter * call<SID>LayoutWindows()

      function! s:LayoutWindows()
        execute 'NERDTree'
        let nerdtree_buffer = bufnr(t:NERDTreeBufName)
        execute 'wincmd q'
        execute 'Tlist'
        execute 'wincmd h'
        execute 'split'
        execute 'b' . nerdtree_buffer

        let mbe_window = bufwinnr("-MiniBufExplorer-")
        if mbe_window != -1
          execute mbe_window . "wincmd w"
          execute 'wincmd K'
        endif

        execute 'resize +20'
        execute 'wincmd l'
      endfunction

<comment><USER11> That does it! I've read about both these extensions before, but tomorrow morning I'm taking the time to set them up on my machines. The setup looks like exactly what I've been wanting. Split windows only go so far, and still doesn't let me easily have more than a few buffers visible at once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Managed using the "homesick" command-line utility to propagate changes to all my working machines:

[https://github.com/Pewpewarrows/dotfiles/blob/master/home/.v...](https://github.com/Pewpewarrows/dotfiles/blob/master/home/.vimrc)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Here is a link to _homesick_ for others:

<https://github.com/technicalpickles/homesick>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's a shame that SO doesn't allow these types of questions anymore. They are very useful for beginners who want to know how experienced users actually use the tool.

The fact that they cannot be answered objectively doesn't make them less useful, and contrary to what is stated in the FAQ, the question and answers model is perfectly suited to this type of question.

<comment><USER14> It's because it's more like a discussion than a question. And it's more suited here anyway: <http://superuser.com/>

<comment><USER13> Not really: "What's in your .vimrc?" is a question.

Don't get me started on the idea to have separate "sites" for every topic. It creates a lot of noise, confuses beginners and serves no practical purposes that tags can't fulfil.

<comment><USER15> StackOverflow, and it's family of sites, aim to answer questions that can have a single "most correct" answer. While "what's in your .vimrc"-style questions are undoubtedly helpful, they are beyond the scope of SO et al.

<comment><USER13> Yes, and they shouldn't, which is my point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm not sure how many man-hours were lost to fatfingering :wq as :Wq or :w as :W, but a simple alias has solved that particular bit of grief:

       cnoreabbrev Wq wq
       cnoreabbrev W w

The rest of my .vimrc mostly belongs to the guy I caught the vim addiction from, but sets some useful defaults: <https://github.com/duggan/dotfiles/blob/master/.vimrc>

<comment><USER17> Using :x kinda solves the :Wq issue

<comment><USER18> By the way :X is _encrypt_. Now guess how I know that... :)

<comment><USER17> I DID NOT know that and I withdraw my advice above :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I work with multiple files a lot, so I'm always navigating between split screens and across buffers.

      " Split windows/multiple files
      " use <Ctrl>+s to split the current window
      nmap <C-S> <C-W>s
      " use <Ctrl>+j/<Ctrl>+k to move up/down through split windows
      nmap <C-J> <C-W>j
      nmap <C-K> <C-W>k
      " use <Ctrl>+-/<Ctrl>+= to maximise/equalise the size of split windows
      nmap <C--> <C-W>_
      nmap <C-=> <C-W>=
      " use <Ctrl>+h/<Ctrl>+l to move back/forth through files:
      nmap <C-L> :next<CR>
      nmap <C-H> :prev<CR>

Note these use the same 'hjkl' navigation keys.

</comment><comment><USER20> The most important thing I've learnt recently regarding Vim config is Pathogen. <https://github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen>

With it it's much easier to keep plugins separate and encourages putting your own tweaks in custom plugins.

</comment><comment><USER21> generally speaking, this .vimrc is most core config file that had a most use for me, been messing around with it before, and finally i use janus carl and huda <https://github.com/carlhuda/janus> (had to thanks to them) for their distro of the .vimrc configuration, it include just all what i need for my macvim, it has a good plugins and configurations to where i can start of developments.

for others that don't want to mess around with vimrc configs (although its fun)just give it a shot and hopefully, and will happifly accept an contribution

git clone git://github.com/carlhuda/janus.git

(don't forget to rake it after)

</comment><comment><USER22> I forked a great vim_config for ruby/rails coding and made a few tweaks of my own.

<https://github.com/wallace/vim_config>

</comment><comment><USER23>
      "	Shift-Alt-S    -- (C++) - change the current    word/identifier in a quoted
      " string to an ostream expression.
      " For example, put the  cursor on on the 'xxx' in:
      "       cout << "value = xxx\n";
      " hit Shift-Alt-S and it changes to:
      "       cout << "value = " << xxx << "\n";
      inoremap <S-A-s> <Esc>lbdei" << <Esc>pa << "<Esc>bb
      inoremap ^[S     <Esc>lbdei" << <Esc>pa << "<Esc>bb
       noremap <S-A-s>      lbdei" << <Esc>pa << "<Esc>bb
       noremap ^[S          lbdei" << <Esc>pa << "<Esc>bb
      onoremap <S-A-s> <C-c>lbdei" << <Esc>pa << "<Esc>bb
      onoremap ^[S     <C-c>lbdei" << <Esc>pa << "<Esc>bb

</comment><comment><USER24> This is one of my favorite bits from my .vimrc. It lets you use !find with location list:

      function! g:Find(...)
          let subexpr = 'substitute(v:val, ".*", "\"&\" 0: found", "")'
          let found = join(map(split(system('find ' . join(a:000, ' ')), '\n'), subexpr), "\n")
          exec 'lgete "' fnameescape(found) '" | lop'
      endfunction

      command! -nargs=+ Find call g:Find(<f-args>)

The :Find command above passes its arguments to `find`.

I use splits heavily, and these mappings for navigating and resizing splits are indispensable:

      nnoremap <C-K> <C-W>k
      nnoremap <C-J> <C-W>j
      nnoremap <C-H> <C-W>h
      nnoremap <C-L> <C-W>l
      nnoremap _ 3<C-W><LT>
      nnoremap + 3<C-W>>

</comment><comment><USER25> Interesting bits:

make sure I'm scrolling visual lines, not real lines

        noremap j gj
        noremap k gk

ctrl+l/h for changing tabs

        noremap <C-l> gt
        noremap <C-h> gT

Search improvements:

        set incsearch
        set hlsearch

Best theme ever (very objective of course):

        let g:inkpot_black_background = 1
        colors inkpot

Making sure tmp files are stored in only one location, not all around the system:

        if ! isdirectory(expand('~/vimtmp'))
            call mkdir(expand('~/vimtmp'))
        endif
        if isdirectory(expand('~/vimtmp'))
            set directory=~/vimtmp
        else
            set directory=.,/var/tmp,/tmp
        endif

</comment><comment><USER26>
      nnoremap \ta <Esc>:tab ball<CR>

Now you can run `vim foo bar baz` and then when open just type `\ta` and it will open them cleanly in three different tabs. Why they renamed a command "tab ball" I will never know.

<comment> X-Istence See :he ball for why the command is named the way it is, ball as in buffer all ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I made a little convention of marking 's' and 'd' as the top and bottom of a range of lines. Then I define several handy utilities like:

      "	Shift-Alt-Z    #-comment range 's,'d
      inoremap <S-A-z> <Esc>:'s,'ds/^/#/g<CR>:noh<CR>
      inoremap ^[Z     <Esc>:'s,'ds/^/#/g<CR>:noh<CR>
       noremap <S-A-z>      :'s,'ds/^/#/g<CR>:noh<CR>
       noremap ^[Z          :'s,'ds/^/#/g  <CR>:noh<CR>
      onoremap <S-A-z> <C-c>:'s,'ds/^/#/g<CR>:noh<CR>
      onoremap ^[Z     <C-c>:'s,'ds/^/#/g<CR>:noh<CR>

</comment><comment><USER27>
      " Automagically save files when focus is lost
      autocmd BufLeave,FocusLost silent! wall

      " Highlight whitespace at the end of a line
      highlight ExtraWhitespace ctermbg=Black guibg=Black
      match ExtraWhitespace /\s\+$/
      autocmd BufWinEnter * match ExtraWhitespace /\s\+$/
      autocmd InsertEnter * match ExtraWhitespace /\s\+\%#\@<!$/
      autocmd InsertLeave * match ExtraWhitespace /\s\+$/
      autocmd BufWinLeave * call clearmatches()

      " Disable man key
      nnoremap K <nop>

</comment><comment><USER28> While the flexibility and portability of Vim is quite attractive, I doubt I could really retrain myself to use the modal interface. Are there packages/scripts/whatever that would allow one to use Vim in the way that one would use a more "normal" text editor?

<comment><USER29> You might be interested in Cream:

<http://cream.sourceforge.net/>

<comment><USER30> It's worth mentioning that Cream is completely Vim underneath, however, by default it uses the Common User Access interface for user input like most modern editors.

It is also possible to enable traditional Vim input using expert mode, CUA is retained in insert mode making it very easy for anyone not familiar with Vim to get started and transition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> My favourite two lines (found in another .vimrc long time ago).

       set switchbuf=useopen,usetab

Files opened from buffer if exists. Handy for command-t plugin.

       autocmd BufReadPost * normal `"

Remembers the cursor position of files.

</comment><comment><USER32> I go with whatever the default is. I've logged on to hundreds of *nix machines in just the past few years, and it's completely not worth the effort to try and maintain a concurrent configuration.

<comment><USER25> I've got `cd .dotfiles ; hg pull ; hg up` in my bash to solve this (+ ssh agent to not require logins all the time)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> from those answers:

        nore ; :
        nore , ;

Do this now. Probably not the vimrc line that has saved me the most time... but definitely saved me the most pinky pain.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you use for leader?

<comment><USER34> :

<comment><USER35> That's awful, 2 keystrokes for <leader>? Use \ for leader, or , for leader and \ for ;

<comment><AUTHOR> That's no better, I think. There is no standard location for \

Try using <space> instead. The default binding is useless for the largest key.

<comment><USER35> Why does it matter if there's no standard location? Do you use the ; command that often in vim anyway that this would be an issue if it were mapped to \?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ymmv but it unfortunately matters for me. I switch between my work PC and personal Macbook daily. The different positions for \ drive me crazy, but as least it's rarely used on Macs due to sane file paths. Using a moving key in Vim is a bad idea.

<comment><USER35> I just can't imagine prioritizing many commands over the <leader> key, which gets a load of use from me. Try space then, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I map semicolon to <Esc>, and ctrl-l to insert a semicolon in insert mode.

<Esc> is one of the most frequent commands, no reason it should be on one of the farthest keys.

<comment><USER36> Or bind Caps Lock to <Esc>:

         $ xmodmap -e "clear lock"; xmodmap -e "keycode 0x42 = Escape"

<comment><USER23> I'm hooked on Caps Lock being an additional Ctrl. That helps for emacs-style bindings too (like bash).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> See also: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/154097/whats-in-your- emac...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/154097/whats-in-your-emacs)

</comment><comment><USER38> imap jj <Esc>

<comment><USER39> No need to create an alias avoid hitting escape:

      C-c works in most cases
      C-] works always

<comment><USER40> I prefer not having to press Ctrl. I also map jj to Esc.

<comment><USER41> I remap my Caps lock key to escape. That's one of the first things I do in a new machine.

<comment><USER39> I just remap CAPS to Control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> <https://github.com/brianholderchow/vim-bhclo>

</comment><comment><USER43>
      dfranke@ancalagon:~$ ls ~/.vimrc
      ls: cannot access /home/dfranke/.vimrc: No such file or directory

</comment><comment><USER44> <https://github.com/skalnik/vim_config>

</comment><comment><USER45> I keep mine at <http://amix.dk/vim/vimrc.html>

</comment><comment><USER46> I keep mine here

<http://www.jedberg.net/vimrc>

<comment><USER47> That link errors out. I think you meant to post this: <http://www.jedberg.net/jedberg_vimrc>

<comment><USER46> Yep you're right, but it won't let me edit. :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I don't have one, I have a .nexrc

</comment><comment><USER49> There are some invaluable little snippets in there.

</comment><comment><USER50> Cobwebs: syntax on; set ts=4; set sw=4; set ai;

Keep it simple :)</comment>


Major union launches campaign to organize video game and tech workers - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-01-07/major-union-launches-campaign-to-organize-video-game-and-tech-workers <comment><USER2> I would strongly consider supporting a video game union, if only to help formalize the things that the good shops do and bring those practices industry wide.

Personally I haven't done a day of overtime in seven years and I feel reasonably compensated but there are clearly other places out there that are still exploiting their workers.

Improving worker input into production schedules and creating clear guidelines around overtime compensation time would probably reduce companies that rely on "crunch time" too much. Over time is ok if the work needs to be done, but workers should have a reasonable expectation of knowing how much of a break they'll get after. Not that it's some random (small) number in their managers' head.

There are plenty of other workplace issues aside from over time and wages that a union could help address.

Increasing transparency and input from workers into company finances and road maps, improving hiring practices, creating more opportunities for young new grads to break in, increasing diversity.

Standardizing crediting would be one close to my heart.

One time I was laid off from a company along with hundreds others due to various company issues, and eventually the project I was working on made it to market. I made it into the credits, but instead of having a "software engineer" title and naming the significant feature area I worked on, I was reserved in a long list of "Special Thanks".

This sort of thing is totally unacceptable. Would be an area addressable by an industry union.

<comment><USER3> > creating more opportunities for young new grads to break in

Just going to point out, everywhere, I have ever heard of a union it generally made it harder for new people to come in, not easier, by increasing the commitment an employer is expected to make to an employee, and by making it harder to remove employees that need to be removed but can't because of their seniority with the union.

<comment><USER4> _Just going to point out, everywhere, I have ever heard of a union it generally made it harder for new people to come in, not easier_

My observation has been the opposite. I believe because the unions have an interest in increasing their membership, not letting it atrophy and decrease due to time and deaths. A union that doesn't have a growing membership is a union that will disappear.

In fact, some unions I've seen have teams of people (including lawyers) whose sole purpose is taking illegal immigrants working in their industry and getting them properly documented and teaching them English for free so that they will eventually join the union.

Where I have seen this is in carpenters, bartenders, maids, food service, stagehands, and a few others. The industries you've seen may be different.

<comment><USER5> Worth noting that if they didn't do this, then those same people would be easily exploitable competition in their profession, so it's probably self- interest even for the individual existing union members, as well as the union itself to bring them inside the system.

<comment><USER6> Yep, it benefits everyone except exploitative employers that hire illegal immigrants to treat them poorly

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I read all of this as "Major union seeks to extract rent from an additional sector".

I agree that putting developers on death marches is antithetical to everything that is human, but it's not like you don't have options in this industry... Tech work isn't like coal mining where your health is legitimately at risk on a daily basis, and where the number of alternative options available to the average worker is low to non-existent.

Just yesterday we were all ogling over the salaries offered to engineers by the various top dogs in the valley. Anyone who works in tech on one of these salaries, and then turns around to complain about their collective rights... It all just feels incredibly childish to me.

<comment><USER8> Let's use Facebook as an example. The median employee salary is $240,000 [1], but Facebook makes an average of $1,620,000 in revenue per employee [2]. Why is it okay for a company to extract a so much more money from an employee than they pay them, but not okay for employees to band together to get paid what they're worth?

[1] [https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-median- pay-240000-2...](https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-median- pay-240000-2017-2018-4/)

[2] [https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-companies-revenue- emplo...](https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-companies-revenue- employee-2017-8)

<comment><USER9> 1\. Using revenue comparison is incorrect. Profit is more complicated because you have to add back in compensation (and if necessary be able to know when r&d comp is capitalized and be able to break out r&d versus sg&a if you only talking about comp for particular groups of employees) but it is the correct per-employee stat to compare.

2\. Median employee salary is wrong, you should look at average salary if you are comparing it to an average (revenue) figure.

3\. You should correct for benefits and taxes. I don't know what they are, but salary is only part of the cost of an employee.

I know you are trying to make a quick point, but FB has margins ~40% and all- in employee costs can be 50% higher than salary. Assuming the median comp is close to average, then it's possible FB is making appr. $700K or so per employee in profit and paying out appr. $300K which doesn't sound quite as bad.

<comment><USER10> That sounds insanely bad.

Why should they get 40% margins? Form a union, demand more money.

<comment><USER11> >> Why should they get 40% margins? Form a union, demand more money.

Why should they pay you more? Form the next FB and pay your employees 3x what they currently pay.

Pretty ridiculous response, right?

<comment><USER10> Because if they don't then the union has the capability to severely harm the company.

This is why we need unions.

<comment><USER12> Which is basically blackmail. Unions tend to make things worse in the long run.

If you don't like the company find a job that gives you a better deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There are plenty of examples where unions can be a constructive force in securing good working conditions while promoting good business practices. Given the poor reputation of video game development work this could be a really positive development. That being said, the last time I had a unionized job I was pretty disappointed with the results. They consistently failed to secure cost of living adjustments, and the one time I got a pay bump was to ensure that I would be ineligible for an increase in the federal overtime threshold.

<comment><USER14> USA has a pretty bad track record when it comes to unions. In theory they are great, but in practice they get implemented really poorly.

I think we need to examine how other countries do unions because I agree, the one union I was in for a short time (teachers' union in California - I was basically forced to join even though the job was only temporary) felt like a ball and chain around my ankle taking a cut of my pay more than I felt like it was empowering me.

<comment><USER15> Employers tend to be a lot more hostile to unions in the US. This manifests with deliberately spread FUD about unions (e.g. the ridiculous Walmart video), covert attempts to sabotage, depiction of schoolteachers as terrorists (by the Kentucky governor) and, in one rather extreme case, aerial bombardment of striking workers.

<comment><USER16> Beyond that, you can't really compare US unions to European ones because of the virulent anti-communism of US politics. In Europe, following the war, left wing coalitions of socialists, communists, and left liberals secured major parliamentary victories for workers. In the US, by contrast, sector-wide bargaining was banned, strikes were limited, and anyone with vaguely Marxist sympathies was purged from politics, the labor movement, and many industries through state intimidation and violence. Any comparison of unions across countries, and the shortcomings of American ones, has to be understood through this historical lens.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, it's a great feedback loop: pass piles of laws making unions ineffective, then watch as workers complain about how their unions are ineffective. Add propaganda videos (a la walmart) to the mix, and stir.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How Americans can be so anti-union by default is really beyond me when looking at the facts at the ground:

* A culture of overwork (especially in the game industry).

* No vacation.

* No parental leave.

* No sick leave.

* At-will-employment (which inherently causes massive under-reporting of things like sexual harassment in the workplace due to the fear of losing ones livelihood, and please spare me the "actually it's already illegal!", very few people are willing/capable of mounting a messy legal case on their own).

...and so on.

What do you actually have to lose?

<comment><USER19> You are making seriously sweeping allegations, could you not? It's hard to have a serious discussion when someone goes generalizing 300 million people and all of their jobs.

>* No vacation.

>* No parental leave.

>* No sick leave.

All three of these are provided, I don't have a union.

>At-will-employment (which inherently causes massive under-reporting of things like sexual harassment in the workplace due to the fear of losing ones livelihood, and please spare me the "actually it's already illegal!", very few people are willing/capable of mounting a messy legal case on their own).

It's 2020, any allegation of sexual harassment is treated incredibly seriously across the board. Yea, I have no doubt it's a major headache. But an accusation of sexual harassment is a serious thing, it shouldn't be something we ever allow to be filled out anonymously, thrown in a complaint box, and assumed as true. It could lead to a firing and possibly criminal charges, lets not try and pretend that's not serious.

Part of why your comment bothers me so is that you are generalizing all Americans. The game industry may make sense to have a union, but you simply call out all Americans as being anti-union, as if it's something unfathomable. Different professions have different circumstances, not all of them need a union.

<comment><USER20> > All three of these are provided, I don't have a union.

You said it right, they are provided. In Europe they are not provided: they are your right and it cannot be taken away by your employer. Also an anecdote doesn't invalidate something that is true for a vast majority of the american workforce. But even if it was just a single person, it would still be a tragedy and a problem to solve.

<comment><USER19> >Also an anecdote doesn't invalidate something that is true for a vast majority of the american workforce.

You just love your wide sweeping claims don't you? No it is not true for the vast majority of the american workforce.

>You said it right, they are provided. In Europe they are not provided: they are your right and it cannot be taken away by your employer.

Can we please not move the goal posts, I thought this was a union discussion? If everyone in the U.S should have 4 weeks vacation, 4 months maternity leave, however much sick leave is deemed appropriate, that can be done at the legal level. You do not need unions to exist to do that!

<comment><USER10> > that can be done at the legal level. You do not need unions to exist to do > that!

Unions allow workers to wield political power collectively as well. Union endorsements are valuable, union money, union member donations. Instead of having billionaires like Bezos or the Koch brothers buying up media and giving millions to candidates to push their agenda, ordinary people can be heard.

Why do you think so many old school union people were outright socialists?

<comment><USER21> > ordinary people can be heard You mean _unions_ can be heard; the ordinary > people who make up the unions may not agree with the stance of the union.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As much as I don't like the idea of unionizing tech workers in general, game development does seem like it's suffering from the kind of industry-wide coordination failure unions are built to address. Every source I've ever seen is unhappy with months-long crunch time - are there any serious arguments that it's a good development model?

<comment><USER23> Many well known game developers disagree with this notion [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIvHkaV6Ri8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIvHkaV6Ri8) that this is a huge problem. All the sources you see seem unhappy because those stories get the most attention, but it doesn't mean that those things are occurring often or everywhere.

<comment><USER24> John Carmack is not a "game developer", John Carmack is an independently wealthy man who sometimes develops game engines (or VR tech, as the case may be).

Picking your random, above-99th-percentile literally-owns-multiple-Ferraris outlier and using him to discredit people who might be pulling $50K-$60K a year as line employees is downright disingenous.

<comment><USER23> John Carmack got to where he is by being a game developer. If you discount all wildly successful people in a field that is known to be a winner takes all environment then you won't have that many successful people to listen to.

<comment><USER24> John Carmack got to where he is by _owning a game development company_. That does not imply he didn't work at it and it doesn't imply that he didn't work hard but the difference between capital and labor is obvious and that is precisely what a union seeks to address.

(He's also a genius. And good for him for that. Most people aren't.)

<comment><USER23> He talks about this in the video. In his own experience in his studios he never noticed someone being unfairly pressured to work more than they wanted, and he had colleagues who worked 9 to 5 and who did just fine. He also claims that from people in the industry he spoke to, most people under these situations choose to work overtime because they value their work a lot, and that he doesn't buy into social engineering arguments that people are pressured into doing it because otherwise they'd get fired.

<comment><USER25> well, if he's right then people might just reject the union. if his experience is biased and/or anecdotal, we'll find out the truth. either way, no point in trying to undermine or discredit grassroots unionization efforts.

<comment><USER22> The article isn't describing a grassroots unionization effort. The CWA, a large external organization which expects to benefit from the creation of game developer unions, is pumping in an unknown amount of resources and funding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Early in my career I was interested in game development because I had dabbled in graphics programming personally and it seemed like more fun than other types of development.

A cursory look into opportunities showed that the schedules were grueling and driven by the market, which expects new flashy titles quite often but the demand for the new titles tails off relatively quickly. Worse, it's not like a spreadsheet where you can just fix some bugs, add some new features, then charge people for upgrades. You're constantly rewriting everything.

So I made the decision to not go into that market.

Software development skills are fairly fungible. I'd advise people to not go into game development unless they have a real passion for it and don't mind the demands upon them that are derived from the market forces.

<comment><USER27> Game development has probably changed since you looked.

I don't know of anyone who is rewriting everything between releases and even new games at new companies are built on top of existing tech 99% of the time.

The market has also changed, the big money games are almost all games-as-a- service with multi-year lifespans. For better or worse there is a lot of 'fix bugs, add some features, charge people for upgrades'.

The schedules are definitely getting better as the (remaining) industry talent matures and games are less driven by putting something in a box and moving on to the next title. I'm not saying it is perfect (by any means, and some things are worse) but it is not the same industry as it was 10 years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The big tech companies work together to suppress worker's wages. [1] Why is it so ridiculous for workers to work together to increase them?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation)

</comment><comment><USER29> Have you considered what your career will be like at age 48? 55? 62?

It's true that software developers are well compensated and in high demand, that demand tapers off rapidly after 40, when ageism comes up.

If you want to go into management, then it's climb the corporate ladder, and get promoted until you can't do your job.

What if you want to stay an IC? Become the lone developer who can support a legacy react application, while 99% of the team is working on whatever the latest CS languages?

A labor union for software developers would be an insurance policy for our futures.

Something to consider.

<comment><USER30> This seems like an argument against unions. I certainly don't want to live in a world where somebody is guaranteed a wage or a job due to age or seniority. This just seems really entitled.

It's up to you to create value, regardless of age.

<comment><USER29> That's a straw man argument oft used by anti-labor unions.

Think of it this way, you want to create value. But you have NO say in the definition of value, the calculation of that value, and little influence as to what percentage of that value you get to claim as your own.

Your livelihood is directly controlled by something you have very little influence over. You have to TRUST the company is going to act in your best interest and value your contributions.

A labor union would give you the bargaining ability to have that say.

Unions aren't above abuse, but neither are non-union jobs either.

I'm offering a perspective as someone with ~20 years experience in industry lucky enough to have been relevant for so long.

<comment><USER22> A labor union gives union leaders bargaining ability. Even if we assume that leaders are properly aligned with the employees as a whole, which is not something I think can be taken for granted, I'm not sure I want a handful of representatives with no personal relationship to me deciding how valuable my work is.

<comment><USER31> > I'm not sure I want a handful of representatives with no personal > relationship to me deciding how valuable my work is

This is precisely the situation that most non-unionized workers already have, except that no one is even nominally trying to advocate for their interests.

The theory that corporations should be beholden exclusively to shareholders and not to all stakeholders took over completely, and has failed workers spectacularly (it's been great for capital, unsurprisingly). Having union representatives with bargaining ability is just a means for the most important stakeholders, workers, to exert any influence in a situation where they currently have none.

<comment><USER30> How does anyone say that the US tech industry has "failed workers spectacularly" with a straight face?

If any industry has _not_ failed the workers, it's the tech industry.

The idea that some union rep can negotiate a better outcome for me than I can is, frankly, pretty laughable.

<comment><USER29> > The idea that some union rep can negotiate a better outcome for me than I > can is, frankly, pretty laughable.

What is your employer match for your 401k?

What is your annual deductible for health insurance for yourself? For your partner? Kids?

How large is your pension fund? Terms?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Game developers are like actors in Hollywood. Massive supply of candidates so the pay is not that great. It's a cool and challenging work but everyone would prefer it than "boring" programming jobs which actually pay much better and don't require crunching.

<comment><USER33> actors have a long standing, powerful and successful union.

<comment><USER34> Yeah I don't get why people bring up Hollywood in union discussions. Virtually every position in the film industry is unionized, even the semi-obscure ones like storyboard artists.

<comment><USER35> The film unions are the perfect thing to bring up because they are the most like video games. Thus both the good and bad from those unions are likely to apply. Apply the rules for a coal miners to video game workers and the union will die quickly as workers realize the rules coal miners need are not helpful for their situation. Apply the rules for the actors union to video game workers and you have a chance of success.

<comment><USER34> I meant in reference to the argument that "so many people want to do the job, ergo companies have little incentive to treat employees well." The point being: the film industry has a huge potential workforce yet still manages to have functional unions.

<comment><USER35> For some definition of functional. In hollywood actors commonly should really be called waiters with an acting hobby. The union is not able to get their members a living wage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I work as a programmer in the AAA games industry, and I think there are a lot of underexplored options for what collective bargaining could look like. Something such as a trade guild could benefit developers a lot without necessarily requiring things that would irk a more neoliberal-inclined HN reader.

One thing that comes to mind is guarantees about crediting. A worker in the industry is more or less at the whim of the developer/publisher if they're included in the credits. There's a good chance you've played a game or two where the person implementation a core feature wasn't credited because they were not there for the entirety of development (eg: changed jobs, health leave, laid off, etc.).

</comment><comment><USER37> Can't say for video game industry. But software engineers are both in hot demand and well compensated, as such, I personally and the people I know are mostly content and not likely to join an union.

<comment><USER38> I wouldn't rule it out. Professional athletes have great unions. Hollywood screenwriters, actors, and directors have great unions (or guilds). Couldn't software engineers benefit from a similar organization?

<comment><USER30> No. Not if you understand how unions work.

Professional sports leagues have unions because they are necessary. There is exactly 1 league, and you're required to sign exclusivity contracts with your team. You are owned by your team. You play for them, or you don't play at all. You move your family to whatever shitty city bought your rights. Only rarely does a player get any say, unless they're a superstar with a special contract. They're also very prone to injuries that can take them out during their narrow prime earning window, and that risk needs to be hedged. As does the risk of permanent damage, including brain damage, by being required to play when it is not safe. And NBA players actually got paid very poorly before the union. Far worse than software engineers. They had no leverage.

There are many reasons for players to have unions, and none of them apply to software developers.

The Hollywood situation was similar. New actors were locked up in bad contracts. But generally, all of Hollywood is a mess of negotiations, unconventional and confusing compensation structures, scheming lawyers, and conflicts of interest all over the place. These also don't really apply to software developers.

We don't have agents, royalties, multi-year exclusivity, or a huge population willing to fight for scraps and slave for free in hopes of getting a big break (game development - which has much more in common with Hollywood - being an exception).

Unions are not free. The layer of bureaucracy that they introduce is a huge cost, and one that many companies cannot bear. Startups definitely can't. Then you have to account for the widespread abuse by employees in unions. Your salary has to subsidize everybody who decides they're going to be lazy and take a free ride by exploiting union rules. Those people are everywhere in unions. And it's completely rational. Most people will do the minimum required for the maximum take, especially when there is no risk to doing so.

Sometimes, this cost is worth it. But, if we ranked industries in need of a union, I can't really think of anything that would have _less_ need for a union than software development.

<comment><USER38> > There are many reasons for players to have unions, and none of them apply to > software developers.

There are analogs to some of the things you listed.

For example, _exclusivity contracts_ sounds a lot like non-compete agreements.

 _You play for them, or you don 't play at all_ sound like employment agreements where the employer demands rights to everything you create during your time of employment.

 _You move your family to whatever shitty city bought your rights_ sounds a lot like being transferred to some place you don't want to go.

<comment><USER39> They're analogs in only the most surface way though. There's no "Computer Science Draft" where companies get to pick you and lock you into a contract that you must accept no matter which company it is.

Sure, things like non-competes and inventions clauses are restrictive, but not even within the ballpark of the restrictions on most sports contracts. Most leagues make it literally impossible for you to "change jobs" to a different team AT ALL for years at a time, while at the same time reserving the right for them to transfer you to any other job they want.

Sure, Google or whoever might try to transfer you to a different office, but you have the option to quit and try to find another job in the same city. Most athletes, if they're being traded from LA to Boston can either A. Move as commanded or B. Retire completely forever unless they move to another country. Being forced to quit and find a new job in the same industry sucks, but it's better than forced retirement...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Unions can and have brought worker benefits, but I don't want them in my (Software dev) job. Or at least I don't want to have to be part of an union.

My experience is obviously a small sample size but both times I worked at a place with an Union the experience has been terrible. Seniority based promotions, the general lack of ownership and accountability and massive bureaucracy killed any motivation for me.

I enjoy my job, I think I'm fairly treated and am well compensated. And this has been true every non union job I've been at. I just don't see the value of an union for me.

</comment><comment><USER41> I can't really see tech workers joining a union, game industry makes more sense as it's notoriously terrible and there's nothing but horror stories about the working conditions.

<comment><USER42> People in the game industry are tech workers.

<comment><USER43> Yes, but they are really part of the Entertainment industry, more specifically. Unionization is very much part of that industry, so maybe game developers should recognize that and try to join/expand those unions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I don't understand how a union would function in the video game industry. I don't work at a video game company myself, but I have some friends that do. The typical life-cycle of a video game is:

\- A small group of developers work on the core physics engine, graphics engine, and high-level game design.

\- When the core game engine is sufficiently developed, the number of artists and game designs greatly increases to generate the art, sound, and level designs for the game.

\- As the game reaches an alpha stage, the number of QA testers is dramatically increased.

\- After the game is released, almost all of the QA and art people are let go, with a small number retained to work on DLC. A core group of software developers will be kept to be begin work on the next game, and the cycle repeats.

How does a union function when much of the workforce is only going to work for the company for less than 2 years? Many QA testers work for less than year.

</comment><comment><USER45> As a tech worker (game industry or not), what should I expect when/if I join a union? A 3-minute googling only gave me very vague answers like higher salary and better workplace safety.

Is there a potential pro and con somewhere?

e.g. If I get better compensation, would the union take a percentage cut from it? Or it's a fixed union deduction?

<comment><USER46> It entirely depends on the structure of the union so you'd want to look at specific examples.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> If unions seek to serve industries of the future, are they prepared to demonstrate how they have radically overhauled themselves compared to how they have operated from the last 100 years?

Disruption is leaving no industry or group operating according to the economies of the past safe.

It would be interesting to see what a new union, designed from the ground up would look and operate like for the knowledge worker age, instead of an industrial worker age.

</comment><comment><USER48> Unions aren't perfect and neither are corporations. But it's never fair to have the industry be single sided where corporations are organized and workers are not. For fair negotiations both workers and corporations need organized planning.

</comment><comment><USER49> I thought unions were for low skilled workers that are easily replaceable. If you do this with higher level skill jobs, I think there is a strong risk of stagnating the growth of the industry by forcing companies to hire a certain way. Higher skill jobs are already in a position of good compensation and companies understand those employees are valuable. This includes programmers and such, but perhaps not artists (unfortunately). I can see a union for game artists and non-programming roles, as those would basically be lower skill level that can be easily replaced.

<comment><USER35> Unions are for high skill jobs where there is worker solidarity. If you are low skill your attempt to unionize will be met by strikebreakers happy to take your job. If you don't have worker solidarity you cannot unionize because those who feel they are better won't want the inability of the lesser to pull them down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> "So what does 'CODE' stand for?"

"The Campaign to Organize Digital Employees."

"And what does that tell you?"

"That someone really wanted the acronym, 'CODE'."

</comment><comment><USER51> What will unions do with Open Source development?

Let's say the unions get huge wins, make huge gains, and unionize essentially all programmers. They decide to call a strike. What happens to Linux development? What happens to tons of other OSS development? If a strike only affects closed-source software, that's an incentive for users to go Open Source, but it's also an incentive for unions to try and destroy it.

This isn't like the auto industry union vs shadetree mechanics, which was never a conflict because shadetree mechanics are fundamentally not a threat to the auto industry and its unions because the shadetree mechanics of the world can't make their own credible car as a hobbyist project.

The "shadetree mechanics" of the OSS world have made large chunks of a software ecosystem as a bunch of interconnected hobbyist projects, which is a distinct threat to the software industry's UAW-equivalent's ability to exert pressure on companies that make and sell software.

</comment><comment><USER52> Collectively bargaining will help voice concern about the rising cost of healthcare benefits.

Getting employers to care about the rising cost of healthcare benefits will get lobbying to happen to make a change.

Until employees push back on rising plan costs, not much will change.

</comment><comment><USER53> For what it's worth, here's the direct link to the Communication Workers of America's CORE campaign website: [https://www.code-cwa.org/](https://www.code- cwa.org/)

</comment><comment><USER54> No thank you. I don't want a union "representing" me or seizing part of my paycheck. Furthermore, if you examine history, all this will do is send jobs and opportunities elsewhere.

<comment><USER55> +1

Also, I have dreams of developing video games in my garage some day. I don't want to deal with the video games equivalent of a screen-actors guild telling me I can't give away my games for free or that I need to adhere to some outdated regulations regarding what friends I can ask to compose music for my game and how much I can pay them for it.

<comment><USER54> Good luck getting "permission" from a union to operate a "non-union" game dev shop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Working for MSP's a large companies demanding 24/7 on-call with computers waking you, even after managers explicitily stating they expect 70 hour weeks.

It is time.

</comment><comment><USER57> Why do we need to organize people making 300K+. We already have massive bargaining power. Unionization will only reduce an individual's leverage

<comment><USER58> The average video game developer makes a lot less than the average tech worker. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone lower than a Director hitting $300k from what I figure.

Glassdoor indicates a "Senior Software Engineer" at Blizzard (considered one of the better companies, afaik) makes between 63k-126k. A "Game designer" makes 33k-72k. Video game industry also works long hours with a lot of crunchtime. And this doesn't even get into EA, or the other megalithic companies that push out dozens of titles every quarter.

The video game industry gets away with working their engineers harder and for less money, because people generally _like_ building video games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Verizon already has a contract with CWA -- maybe Oath and Verizon Media folks should give them a call.

</comment><comment><USER60> For the most part, I have never felt threatened by offshore workers. I am more productive, and my code is typically better quality. However the general quality has been improving. I can see a day where a unionized programmer is just too expensive, and difficult to work with compared to un-unionized offshore workers.

<comment><USER6> There are many many many games developped outside the US. Some of the biggest game companies aren't even American at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I'm curious how this would impact indie game companies.

</comment><comment><USER62> I'm rather bored with people not in the games industry opining about what the games industry should do.

Source: >10 years in games

</comment><comment><USER63> Here is a direct example of unions slowing down the little guy in the entertainment industry:

[https://youtu.be/LRVwlif6th0?t=171](https://youtu.be/LRVwlif6th0?t=171)

Niko has to cut costs to make low budget films and the union mandates someone watch the camera feed for the director, completely unnecessarily in the modern era. The film industry is notorious for the boundaries around union and non- union work. Gary Oldman's decline of a role in Star Wars used union rules as an answer:

>Oldman's spokesman is reported to have told the newspaper: "Gary was excited and looking forward to working on the film. The snag is that the movie is being made without members of the Screen Actors Guild. It means Gary would have been working illegally overseas. Out of respect and solidarity with the other members, he could not and would not consider violating the rules of his union."

Unions bring many complications and seeing them as a universal good is a problematic perspective.

<comment><USER64> I generally agree. What we _do_ need is better worker protections and consumer protections. Get rid of no-competes. Get rid of right to work statutes. Add mandatory retirement contributions. Add mandatory and standard severance packages.

<comment><USER62> > Get rid of right to work statutes

I would not call taking away a worker's right to work a benefit for a skilled worker.

<comment><USER65> "Right to work" is one of those legal principles that follows a dystopian naming scheme. It was lobbied for by the owner class because it allows freeloaders to benefit from collective bargaining without paying membership dues in the union representing them. This weakens the union, with the eventual goal of eliminating the union (and the benefits it negotiated for workers) altogether.

<comment><USER66> Your alternative puts workers in a straitjacket of _having_ to belong to a union to work certain places. You say it's for their good. But all I see is the straitjacket.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Looks like, within minutes, most of the anti-union FUD has already been covered here:

Tech workers make a lot of money so they don't need unions.

Tech workers have lots of options and can get a new job so they don't need unions.

Computer work isn't physically demanding therefore unions aren't useful.

Nobody in tech wants to be told by their union what they should work on.

Unions only give older people seniority and pay increases.

Lots of places don't have crunch time, therefore no tech companies need unions.

In some unions, all employees are locked into that union and have to join, therefore unions won't work in tech companies.

You might get a bad union rep or the union might fail to get a great outcome for its members, so it doesn't make sense to try.

I don't think I saw "I am a master negotiator and can negotiate better comp for myself than a union could" yet, but give it time...

<comment><USER68> It's not FUD if it's true.

</comment></comment><comment> ur-whale When the unions move in is usually the bell toll for most industries.

<comment><USER69> Do you have any source or examples of this?

<comment> ur-whale US auto industry is a good example.

Hollywood is another - many productions companies have fled offshore largely because of unions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> A union only works if everyone joins it, and that's not even close to happening in tech.

<comment><USER71> It works with group by group elections. So for example if 50% of Activision software engineers in Irvine vote to unionize, then Activision will have to bargin with the union for contracts for all the software engineers they have in Irvine.

That's quite a low bar to start. All it take is one site with abusive management and they may make enough of their employees willing to get the ball rolling. If the union improves their conditions, other people may start to see it as a more viable option and it can spread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Video games need it badly, i thought technology people secured wages and benefits via negotiation and Talent?

<comment><USER24> There's high supply of "technology people" in the space because a lot of people want to make games, but you have to remember that not everybody who works at a game developer is a programmer. An artist being asked to crunch for $45K a year and who doesn't have too many other options deserves some representation, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is good. I probably won't bother engaging with people who disagree.

Also going to say to the "i can organize a better deal myself" types. Google and other companies with a combined market cap of trillions spent years illegally conspiring to keep you wages lower.

You can't compete with that.

The current situation is an artifact of extreme demand. We already have worse protections than the average worker. When things start to turn they will get bad.

I want proper overtime laws and proper pay for oncall. If you work overtime or oncall for a salary, factor that in and then recalculate your hourly rate. Not as great.

The games industry is a good example of the future of tech. They have a surplus of workers and they routinely treat them like garbage. This is _after_ years of negative publicity and pushback. That's what it took to even get things improved to the point where spouses aren't writing open letters to EA about how awful their conditions are.

<comment><USER73> > _We already have worse protections than the average worker._

Is that why the average worker gets paid _massively_ less than we tech workers do?

<comment><USER10> Pay is only part of the equation.

We work extra hours, we don't get extra money. We go oncall, we don't get extra money.</comment></comment></comment>