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https://www.theverge.com/23732782/kickstarter-union-organizing-good-enough-job-excerpt>
"From his desk in Kickstarter’s Greenpoint office, Taylor Moore got out a pad
of Post-its and started making a list of names. It was the fall of 2018, and
Kickstarter, then a nine-year-old startup, had built a reputation as a
different kind of tech company. Its founders vowed to measure success by the
number of creative projects they helped bring to life, not the size of their
profits. The company had reincorporated as a “public benefit corporation,” a
legal designation that obliged the company leadership to consider the impact of
their decisions on society, not just shareholders. But Moore’s list of names
was the first step toward another potential distinction: he wanted Kickstarter
to be the first white-collar technology workforce to unionize in US history.
Moore, who is also a podcaster, loved working at Kickstarter. “In the early
days, there was a rule that you couldn’t hire anyone unless they also had a
creative side hustle or significant creative projects,” he told me. “The
mission statement [to democratize culture] wasn’t bullshit. The founders and
the early hires believed it.”
But it had been a rough year and a half for the company. In July 2017, Perry
Chen, the company’s principal founder and former CEO, abruptly replaced Yancey
Strickler to become Kickstarter’s interim CEO because he felt things were
becoming “too bureaucratic.” In March, Chen quietly dropped the interim label.
In the months after he took over, roughly 40 percent of the staff departed,
including seven of the eight members of the former executive team.
Chen was on a mission to help Kickstarter “live up to its potential,” but for
the rank-and-file employees, what had once felt like a democratic company was
beginning to feel more dictatorial. Workers complained of erratic changes to
product road maps and misguided attempts to boost office morale, perhaps best
exemplified by the time Chen brought in people dressed up as dinosaurs for a
week to wander through the office making animal noises. The stunt was intended
to infuse the office with some of the creative quirkiness of the startup’s
early days, but the roars fell on deaf ears."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
