Does this help set precedent that RTO can't be arbitrarily used to cut staff? Would be nice if there was like a policy if you started with WFH you can't just be arbitrarily forced into an office and the company would have to do proper layoff procedure. And if you started in office and shifted to WFH, companies would need to classify whether that was a temporary or permanent change.
there's not much that will generalize here. the NLRB has a lot of procedural powers around union campaigns and elections. there are a lot of things that, if a company does them in response to a union campaign, are considered to violate the employees' rights -- not their rights to good working conditions, just their right to decide whether or not to form a union in a fair environment.
usually this is doing things like making hours worse, enforcing rules more strictly, etc. in response to a union campaign. but they can also get in trouble for positive things like relaxing rules, giving raises, etc. and in a few funny cases they can even get in trouble for supporting the union.
in other words, if Grindr had, in response to unionization efforts, decided to placate employees by expanding WFH, they could have gotten in trouble in the exact same way.
In most "at-will" states I don't think that would work. A big part of being an employee is that the employer determines the times, places, and methods for completing the work you are assigned. If they say "we want you to work in the office now" your options are basically to do that, or quit.
No? It's a problem because there's no precedent for RTO. But, things like changing an employee's work location, hours among other things is constructive dismissal. And, if it can be shown to disproportionately affect a certain group (eg, "developers", or "developers for product x". The more disproportionate and more specific the stronger the case).
Or, if execs get caught/are dumb enough to say that it's intended to reduct head count. Then it may be an illegal layoff. (Afaik that one's mostly california)
> It's a problem because there's no precedent for RTO. But, things like changing an employee's work location, hours among other things is constructive dismissal.
RTO, after years of hiring remote only positions, IS changing an employee's work location. Grindr employees worked from home 5 days a week, across the US. Then the RTO would make engineers move to Chicago and go into an office 2 times a week. In what world is this RTO not changing employee's work location?
California might well be different; I don't know, and don't live there. Where I live, any employee can be fired for any reason, or no reason (protected class stuff excepted of course).
There's precident for "we're transferring you to the Chicago office, Bob" and Bob would just pack up the family from wherever they were living and move. This was common in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s at least for white collar jobs.
My completely uninformed assumption is that this (inverse) graph has something to do with it, since anybody who finds a “good thing” in any region would be increasingly unlikely to want to give it up: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USSTHPI
Not necessarily. The RTO move came immediately after the staff went public with a union drive; the complaint is less a generalized issue about RTO as a form of soft layoffs, and more that this specific soft layoff was a form of retaliation.
I remember being shocked at how BLATANT they were about using RTO as a cudgel to break up their employees’ unionization attempt, but then things went silent for more than a year (wheels of justice turn slow, and all of that).
“The labor board can order companies to change policies and reinstate employees with backpay, but it lacks the authority to force companies to pay punitive damages or hold executives personally liable for violations” - The angry primate part of my brain might want more (they were REALLY blatant about their union busting), but I’ll take it.
Not angry primate brain, but just normal parent brain. Why would a CEO not try to get away with this if all that happens is a little backpay and reinstatement? They will skirt any and every law they can if they won't be thrown into prison, and even then, well, it still happens.
It's astonishing me how bad the Grindr tech is and how abusive the company is and yet it still persists as the most popular gay hookup app. I mean this company was selling people's HIV status to advertisers and yet we still use it.
>It's astonishing me how bad the Grindr tech is and how abusive the company is and yet it still persists as the most popular gay hookup app.
I wonder why the other big apps don't use their own tech to make a separate gay hookup app. The only thing I can see, other than possibly anti-gay bias, is that they see the market as not being worthwhile financially due to other reasons.
I think it's due to the toxicity of dating apps in general. But Grindr gets more freedom to treat users poorly since the overall user success rate is better than on mixed sites like Tinder, at least in the short term. It's also tougher to find someone IRL without an app when you're in the 5%. They have a captive audience for now.
People keep using the apps because it's overwhelmingly the easiest way to date/whatever, which is a really high priority in the life of a lot of people, and they're going to use the apps with the best results even if it feels sort of shitty to do so.
That messages transition several months ago was one of the worst things they have ever done (and they have done a lot of poor updates).
Sucks that it still feels like a necessary evil just due to its user base. I continue to have conflicted feelings on paying for xtra. I hate it, but it's such a horrible experience without it.
That can only work when there's a commitment to treat customers well. Otherwise, it's just a user base waiting to be sold to the highest bidder. And that's most likely a dating giant that will use the brand in an attempt to milk profit from the users in the least pleasant way possible. It isn't a technical problem.
Frankly, given our demography, we can probably bootstrap the app and focus on minimizing the costs as much as we can. Then try to scale it accordingly with a focus on salaries, rather than investor payouts. It does sound possible in my head, other than grassroots marketing. Would need some people who has some experience in growing the customer base though. So yeah, treating the customer base with respect would be a priority.
To my understanding, everyone uses X because everyone else is on X. Give them the opportunity that you can see almost unlimited people on the grid, manage spam, and pic sharing, it might be possible. The last 2 aren’t easy problems to solve though. Getting the first few thousand users isn’t easy either, but practically free and not user hostile UX, would make a lot of people consider it.
If enough people don’t use it, than people will just download it and see that no one uses it and never open it again.
Really the only other app with a serious enough use is Scruff. By nearly every metric it is a better app and does some really good things. But even being on both and basically bouncing between the 2 most of my conversations end up on Grindr.
There is another web app that has gained serious traction for offering a… unique value proposition but I am purposefully not going to name it here so someone doesn’t look it up and see something they don’t want to see. (I will just say there is a reason it’s a web app instead of an actual app)
I am pretty sure we all know the web app you're talking about. It's gaining traction, but because of the direct nature of it, I don't see it becoming as big as Grindr. With regards to Scruff, I agree, and I'm not sure why it hasn't gotten the same attention as the former. Maybe the type of people it tries to attract?
I still think, if there was an app that was completely free, and optimized for cost reduction with very unobtrusive ads, it could get somewhere. Right now the pricing levels are atrocious, and there's a scratch for the people to stop using it because of it, in addition to hostile UX.
Does this help set precedent that RTO can't be arbitrarily used to cut staff? Would be nice if there was like a policy if you started with WFH you can't just be arbitrarily forced into an office and the company would have to do proper layoff procedure. And if you started in office and shifted to WFH, companies would need to classify whether that was a temporary or permanent change.
there's not much that will generalize here. the NLRB has a lot of procedural powers around union campaigns and elections. there are a lot of things that, if a company does them in response to a union campaign, are considered to violate the employees' rights -- not their rights to good working conditions, just their right to decide whether or not to form a union in a fair environment.
usually this is doing things like making hours worse, enforcing rules more strictly, etc. in response to a union campaign. but they can also get in trouble for positive things like relaxing rules, giving raises, etc. and in a few funny cases they can even get in trouble for supporting the union.
in other words, if Grindr had, in response to unionization efforts, decided to placate employees by expanding WFH, they could have gotten in trouble in the exact same way.
In most "at-will" states I don't think that would work. A big part of being an employee is that the employer determines the times, places, and methods for completing the work you are assigned. If they say "we want you to work in the office now" your options are basically to do that, or quit.
No? It's a problem because there's no precedent for RTO. But, things like changing an employee's work location, hours among other things is constructive dismissal. And, if it can be shown to disproportionately affect a certain group (eg, "developers", or "developers for product x". The more disproportionate and more specific the stronger the case). Or, if execs get caught/are dumb enough to say that it's intended to reduct head count. Then it may be an illegal layoff. (Afaik that one's mostly california)
> It's a problem because there's no precedent for RTO. But, things like changing an employee's work location, hours among other things is constructive dismissal.
RTO, after years of hiring remote only positions, IS changing an employee's work location. Grindr employees worked from home 5 days a week, across the US. Then the RTO would make engineers move to Chicago and go into an office 2 times a week. In what world is this RTO not changing employee's work location?
California might well be different; I don't know, and don't live there. Where I live, any employee can be fired for any reason, or no reason (protected class stuff excepted of course).
There's precident for "we're transferring you to the Chicago office, Bob" and Bob would just pack up the family from wherever they were living and move. This was common in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s at least for white collar jobs.
> This was common in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s
It's a consistently downward trend: https://www.freddiemac.com/sites/g/files/ynjofi111/files/sty...
My completely uninformed assumption is that this (inverse) graph has something to do with it, since anybody who finds a “good thing” in any region would be increasingly unlikely to want to give it up: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USSTHPI
> Where I live, any employee can be fired for any reason, or no reason (protected class stuff excepted of course)
Also protected activities.
Disproportionality matters if the policies had a disparate impact on a protected class.
Not necessarily. The RTO move came immediately after the staff went public with a union drive; the complaint is less a generalized issue about RTO as a form of soft layoffs, and more that this specific soft layoff was a form of retaliation.
Original title "Grindr Illegally Used RTO to Thwart Union, Forcing Out Half of Staff, US Labor Board Alleges" summarized to stay within title limits.
https://archive.today/F3gMp
I remember being shocked at how BLATANT they were about using RTO as a cudgel to break up their employees’ unionization attempt, but then things went silent for more than a year (wheels of justice turn slow, and all of that).
“The labor board can order companies to change policies and reinstate employees with backpay, but it lacks the authority to force companies to pay punitive damages or hold executives personally liable for violations” - The angry primate part of my brain might want more (they were REALLY blatant about their union busting), but I’ll take it.
Not angry primate brain, but just normal parent brain. Why would a CEO not try to get away with this if all that happens is a little backpay and reinstatement? They will skirt any and every law they can if they won't be thrown into prison, and even then, well, it still happens.
The app has been half-broken for a lot of this year too, and I guess this explains that.
It's astonishing me how bad the Grindr tech is and how abusive the company is and yet it still persists as the most popular gay hookup app. I mean this company was selling people's HIV status to advertisers and yet we still use it.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/04/grindr-users-see...
>It's astonishing me how bad the Grindr tech is and how abusive the company is and yet it still persists as the most popular gay hookup app.
I wonder why the other big apps don't use their own tech to make a separate gay hookup app. The only thing I can see, other than possibly anti-gay bias, is that they see the market as not being worthwhile financially due to other reasons.
I think it's due to the toxicity of dating apps in general. But Grindr gets more freedom to treat users poorly since the overall user success rate is better than on mixed sites like Tinder, at least in the short term. It's also tougher to find someone IRL without an app when you're in the 5%. They have a captive audience for now.
People keep using the apps because it's overwhelmingly the easiest way to date/whatever, which is a really high priority in the life of a lot of people, and they're going to use the apps with the best results even if it feels sort of shitty to do so.
That messages transition several months ago was one of the worst things they have ever done (and they have done a lot of poor updates).
Sucks that it still feels like a necessary evil just due to its user base. I continue to have conflicted feelings on paying for xtra. I hate it, but it's such a horrible experience without it.
Time for the HN people to get together and build a superior product? I think we could do better.
That can only work when there's a commitment to treat customers well. Otherwise, it's just a user base waiting to be sold to the highest bidder. And that's most likely a dating giant that will use the brand in an attempt to milk profit from the users in the least pleasant way possible. It isn't a technical problem.
Frankly, given our demography, we can probably bootstrap the app and focus on minimizing the costs as much as we can. Then try to scale it accordingly with a focus on salaries, rather than investor payouts. It does sound possible in my head, other than grassroots marketing. Would need some people who has some experience in growing the customer base though. So yeah, treating the customer base with respect would be a priority.
Honestly I am not sure it will matter, there are better services out there but many people don't switch over for one reason or another.
Many just because they don't want too, or don't want to manage more than 1 app.
We also see several new apps spring up and just never gain traction.
It has developed a stronghold because most still use it, and that likely just isn't changing anytime soon.
To my understanding, everyone uses X because everyone else is on X. Give them the opportunity that you can see almost unlimited people on the grid, manage spam, and pic sharing, it might be possible. The last 2 aren’t easy problems to solve though. Getting the first few thousand users isn’t easy either, but practically free and not user hostile UX, would make a lot of people consider it.
Right that’s largely the issue.
If enough people don’t use it, than people will just download it and see that no one uses it and never open it again.
Really the only other app with a serious enough use is Scruff. By nearly every metric it is a better app and does some really good things. But even being on both and basically bouncing between the 2 most of my conversations end up on Grindr.
There is another web app that has gained serious traction for offering a… unique value proposition but I am purposefully not going to name it here so someone doesn’t look it up and see something they don’t want to see. (I will just say there is a reason it’s a web app instead of an actual app)
I am pretty sure we all know the web app you're talking about. It's gaining traction, but because of the direct nature of it, I don't see it becoming as big as Grindr. With regards to Scruff, I agree, and I'm not sure why it hasn't gotten the same attention as the former. Maybe the type of people it tries to attract?
I still think, if there was an app that was completely free, and optimized for cost reduction with very unobtrusive ads, it could get somewhere. Right now the pricing levels are atrocious, and there's a scratch for the people to stop using it because of it, in addition to hostile UX.
I have a little blurb explaining “This is why Grindr sucks lately” in my bio on there, hahaha
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