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Tech workers (across all disciplines) need to unionize to combat this kind of thing. As has been pointed out below, HR that is staffed and incentivized by the c

Tech workers (across all disciplines) need to unionize to combat this kind of thing. As has been pointed out below, HR that is staffed and incentivized by the company management only serves the interests of the management. A union is the only structure that can actually win demands for workers by organizing workers to withhold their labor. It's not a panacea, and there are several historical examples of union leadership betraying the trust of workers and neglecting the demands of the most marginalized members (such as the UAW in 1941), but a union correctly structured and rooted in worker solidarity is the only proven way to fight management on these kinds of issues.

TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
The problem is that workers don't have leverage like they used to due to globalization and a general labor surplus. We need to think of something that would work better than a union.
- unityByFreedom 10y ago
  What? It's literally your right to vote to join a union. If a majority of coworkers vote for one, you've got a union. Look up the National Labor Relations Act.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Not only is this true, but the NLRA also bars employer retaliation against concerted actions by employees both to organize and also to take actions in protest of work conditions. It's a huge exception to at-will employment. I had no idea about any of this stuff until I started talking to the Tech Solidarity people. I'd always thought the reason nobody goes on strike is that you'd simply be fired for doing so. But, no! That was dumb of me! Striking --- really, most forms of employee protest against working conditions --- is protected federally. I'm particularly interested in how these laws interact with the employment laws for salaried workers. In addition to it being unlawful (in most cases) to fire an employee for striking, it's also (usually) legally risky to dock a salaried employee's pay.
    - jbronn 10y ago
      While technically true, the enforcement is up to the Department of Labor. Do you honestly believe that Puzder (now Acosta) is really going to enforce these rules? It's the whole reason they were chosen for the position in the first place.
      - tptacek 10y ago
        No, enforcement is not up to the Department of Labor. If you're terminated for organizing and protesting against working conditions, your recourse includes the courts. People should, of course, talk to labor lawyer before organizing. Tech Solidarity is working with several now, and collecting employment contracts from the best-known tech companies in order to provide standardized organizing advice.
        jbronn 10y ago
        Really? Alright I'll bite. They only promulgate the regulations that are enforced. And if you're being pedantic enough to insist it's the DoJ, then my point still stands under one led by Sessions.
        tptacek 10y ago
        Check out the statutes. The 8(a)(1) unfair labor practices have liquidated damages associated with them. You can sue in civil court over them. Again, talk to a lawyer. I think you're going to find that you are not in fact required to convince the Trump administration of your rights.
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    - Alex3917 10y ago
      > the NLRA also bars employer retaliation against concerted actions by employees both to organize and also to take actions in protest of work conditions. I also learned about this from the Tech Solidarity people. The key here though is that actions are only protected if they're taken collectively by multiple employees. A single employee protesting can still be fired without recourse.
  - santaclaus 10y ago
    Ehh, when my previous workplace was voting to unionize I wasn't able to vote because I was a remote worker, and didn't have the disposable income to fly in and vote... being disenfranchised is a drag.
- tptacek 10y ago
  Software developers have incredible leverage right now, perhaps more than any cohort of employees in the country, and while most don't have salary to organize around, there are plenty of other practices --- transparency and liquidity of equity compensation being a great example --- that generate a broad base of support across the whole industry. People hear the term "union" and they think "shop rules" and "union contract salary". There's no reason that's what has to happen. Substitute "professional association" for "union" and you've got all the degrees of freedom you could want for us all to profit from organization without over-complicating our work lives.
  - Eridrus 10y ago
    So what organising principles should a software developer union have? It's easy to say they could be anything we want it to be, but I'm not sure there's a real consensus on any particular principle. Lots of people who talk about unions seem to value privacy protections for consumers, but there are clearly software developers writing this software who have a different view. Ubers reputation has been trash for almost as long as Uber has existed, I feel like most people are there to get rich, do you expect those people to go on strike for a grievance that doesn't affect them?
    - knucklesandwich 10y ago
      Without a fair equity package, none of those employees are going to get any kind of payout from an exit. And given the number of fundraising rounds Uber has undergone: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/funding-rounds https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/funding-rounds and their difficulty in actually turning a profit: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/uber-loses-at-least-1-2-billion-in-first-half-of-2016 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/uber-lose... it seems a little questionable that anyone from the rank-and-file is going to get rich at Uber. A union is what gives you the ability confront management about these kinds of things.
    - TheCoelacanth 10y ago
      There are a lot of labor practices that most software developers would agree on changing: unpaid overtime, unreasonable on-call requirements, lack of transparency in equity compensation, unreasonably short windows for exercising vested stock options after leaving the company.
- cf 10y ago
  Yes but in this particular instance Uber recruits heavily in the Bay Area. If all workers in the Silicon Valley office refused to work and discouraged others to work for Uber it could be quite effective.
- matchagaucho 10y ago
  It's either unionize or a class action lawsuit. Silicon Valley tends to prefer the latter. Many IT roles already fall under collective bargaining units (CBU), particularly in the public sector. If stories like Susan's become common, and there is blatant gender discrimination, then the Government will have no choice but to acknowledge a private-sector CBU and Union.
unityByFreedom 10y ago
That speaks to me. After salary negotiations, HR within companies has never done anything for me when I approached them. They seemed to be there only to defend the boss and register me as a complainer. It took me several jobs and this post to learn that.
- rosser 10y ago
  > HR within companies has never done anything for me when I approached them.... The thing you need to keep in mind about HR is this: they aren't there to help you, to have your back. They're there to protect the company from you. Incidental to that, they've traditionally managed the benefits the company is either required or chooses to give you, and acts as a place for you to take concerns such as sexual harassment. But even in those cases, their duty is to the company, not to any individual employee.
  - luckydude 10y ago
    Yep. And I think it takes a while for that to sink in for young people. They are more idealistic and assume that things are set up to be beneficial to everyone. They aren't. HR is there to make sure there is no blowback on the company and they do a lot of shitty things to make that true.
  - unityByFreedom 10y ago
    I believe there are some good HR groups out there who truly do look out for the long term interests of their companies. I think what's good for me, if I'm a hard worker, is also good for the company. Certainly I'm my best advocate. Even a union couldn't do everything for me.
  - pm90 10y ago
    How does one protect oneself in cases of sexual impropriety then? This seems like a pretty dangerous flaw. To be completely honest I've always felt that HR has been the "police" of the workplace, there to keep issues like this from getting out of control (as it most certainly did in the case of OP). Now I feel much more exposed...
mariojv 10y ago
Are there any real efforts around this? A quick Google search doesn't show anything obvious. I'm also curious if there are any historical examples of "white collar" workers unionizing.
- knucklesandwich 10y ago
  There's plenty of currently existing unions for professional trade workers. The SEIU, IFPTE, CWA, IBEW, etc. are American unions which represent scientists, engineers, legal assistants, technicians, physicists, nurses, etc. Largely these careers have low union density (as a result of poor uptake of unions throughout the US), but there are plenty of countries (for example many Nordic countries) where its much more common to see these professions unionized. If you're interested in learning more about how to do this, I suggest you look into one of the following orgs: - Tech Workers Coalition (https://techworkerscoalition.org/ https://techworkerscoalition.org/) based in the Bay Area who holds a monthly organizing meeting in SF - Tech Solidarity (https://techsolidarity.org https://techsolidarity.org), which has been holding meetings in a bunch of metropolitan areas for educating tech workers about organizing
- st3v3r 10y ago
  The Director's Guild, Writer's Guild, and Screen Actors Guild, along with the various professional athlete unions, would be good examples of how it could be done.
home_boi 10y ago
I'm of the opinion that the average software engineer in the USA is already overpaid and underworked with excellent benefits and low incentive to unionize. I'm simplifying it a bit but if you don't like your job, just grab a copy of Cracking the Coding Interview and apply to big companies. The big companies pay very well, have good benefits and interview everyone because of the need for a high head count
- knucklesandwich 10y ago
  First of all, it should be all tech workers that unionize, not just software engineers. And you should talk to some of your fellow workers and ask if they all think they're being fairly compensated. Even aside from the issue of salary, tech workers are rarely given a fair stake in ownership in the company, and their equity grants often come with lots of clauses to deprive them from what little stake they have. I suggest you seek out other opinions if you believe tech workers are under-worked. Perhaps this is the case at your job, but the majority of tech workers I know and have worked with are tired of having to put in hours on nights, over the weekends, etc. They're tired of "unlimited vacation" policies not actually guaranteeing them any time to take a vacation. I've had a boss prevent me from leaving at 10PM once before. I mean its not exactly a new realization that many of the most trendy perks for tech companies are ruses to get workers to stay extra hours at the office, that tech companies pursuing the youngest workers often leads to a culture where there's little differentiation between work and company time, etc. Not to mention that tech workers are often asked to do dubiously ethical things by management. We're asked to automate away the positions of other employees, asked to be lax on security or privacy standards, etc. Whether or not you believe there are any demands to make, I kind of find it bizarre to suggest that workplace democracy is something tech workers shouldn't demand.
  - um_ya 10y ago
    Unions originated as a way to commoditise labor. It has since grown into a way to keep out freelance competitors, and to force employers into doing things (both of which I don't agree with). In terms of commoditsing labor, tech is a very skill specific profession with no cookie cutter employee to sell, which makes it a bad candidate for unions.
parent_dead_on 10y ago
Right on brother (sister?)! Most in the industry are believing the management story and working their asses off for a dream that's rarely realized. And when it is, they don't see nearly the payout their more business savvy peers do. The model might be closer to doctors and lawyers than auto workers, but it's clear to me that industry wide solidarity could result in great standard of living and working condition improvements.
weberc2 10y ago
I think if this post teaches us anything, it's that the system works very well, at least for well-performing software engineers. In this case, Susan found a better job with a different company where she presumably won't have to face the same levels of confusion and mistreatment. Unionization seems to come with its own cultural (and procedural) baggage, so I'm wary of invoking needlessly.
- kennywinker 10y ago
  Suffers in kafkaesque work environment for a year... gets new job. The system works!
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pnathan 10y ago
I am utterly persuaded at this point that the software industry workers need a union. Software engineering hiring practices are profoundly flawed; this is something a union could address at an industry level. It's also deeply problematic for me to take home $fat_paycheck when, say, $sales_guy two tables over is paid minimum wage + commission (disclaimer: I have no knowledge of this occurring at my current company; it happened to a sales guy I know, however). A company of people work together, and should share in the returns as they cover each other's deficiencies. I'm comfortable asserting that while there are issues with traditional unions, it's possible to improve and make better organizations.
- hueving 10y ago
  >A company of people work together, and should share in the returns as they cover each other's deficiencies. This is not an economically rational way to behave, so it's not sustainable for a company to do this and keep talent for high market-value positions. People are compensated based on the minimum required to get them to join and stay at the company, so their compensation is going to be driven by the market value of people with their skills. Very small companies may be able to afford to pay every employee the cost of a principle software engineer (or whatever the highest position they have is), but this falls apart extremely quickly if the company needs lots of customer support positions or lots of sales people. They end up having to cut compensation to all of the high-end positions and subsequently lose anyone good enough to get jobs that pay market rate. The majority of companies don't have the profit margins to throw away an extra $100,000 or whatever it takes per employee annually to pay everyone the top position market rate. >It's also deeply problematic for me to take home $fat_paycheck What do you say to people that spend years of their life getting advanced degrees in math/physics/CS/whatever that make them experts in the subject matter the company is working on? "That sounds hard, here's the same paycheck as the undergrad working next to you who knows almost nothing in the field."
  - pnathan 10y ago
    You're jumping to conclusions I didn't advocate for... There's no reason one person who contributes one thing gets to scrape by and one person who contributes another gets to live like a prince. Sales pay the bills of SW devs; SW devs make what Sales sells. Both should be comfortably compensated.
arjie 10y ago
Good luck. I'll never join. I know what you guys want (because enough of you have stated it on HN): no more H1Bs and to make sure I never find a job again because I'm a foreigner. I'll scab that union till kingdom come.
- knucklesandwich 10y ago
  Actually I'd prefer if my country would just naturalize you instead of running you through an exploitative guest worker program that hedges your visa status on continued employment. I have absolutely no desire to prevent you from getting a job (and I'd like the union to have a spot for you and ensure you share in the benefits we create by collectively bargaining).
  - arjie 10y ago
    Sure, you might. But any such union will have a large number of disaffected people and as HN has shown, a large number of these people blame H1B workers. Their problem is that this visa exists. My problem is getting naturalised. Our incentives are not aligned and they've made that clear. I want no part of it and I will actively participate in union busting to the greatest of my ability for this reason. I don't think you can achieve greater than 2% penetration amongst employed engineers and I know that your system will threaten the 1.7% of engineers who are H1B workers. I think I'm in a reasonable position here and I'm not about to weaken myself. And I think everyone else is going to work through the same calculus. Sorry, it's not you. It's who are likely going to be your comrades.
    - knucklesandwich 10y ago
      No comrades of mine would see guest workers or immigrants as a threat. I wouldn't join a union that didn't stick up for all workers, regardless of their citizenship status. Maybe we have different perspectives on how popular the anti-immigrant position is in tech (and how many neo-reactionary/dark enlightenment dipshits there are), I guess I'd just ask that you keep an open mind about this and make a decision if and when workers approach you to join a union. I certainly wouldn't knock you for opposing a group that doesn't have your interests at heart, but the union I want to form would take solidarity seriously and would explicitly go to bat for women, people of color, lgbtqia people, disabled people, and immigrants.
wz1000 10y ago
> It's not a panacea, and there are several historical examples of union leadership betraying the trust of workers and neglecting the demands of the most marginalized members (such as the UAW in 1941), but a union correctly structured and rooted in worker solidarity is the only proven way to fight management on these kinds of issues. Thats why the IWW exists, and they desperately need members. They refuse to cooperate with big business and government, and are based on decentralized worker solidarity and principles of direct action, not the capture of state power. If a union derives its power from the state, it is easily corrupted and subverted. https://iww.org/unions/dept500/iu560 https://iww.org/unions/dept500/iu560 https://techcrunch.com/2012/11/01/want-to-unionize-developers-focus-on-workplace-democracy/ https://techcrunch.com/2012/11/01/want-to-unionize-developer...
- mysticmarvel 10y ago
  Good god... I just Google'd the IWW. Their website looks, at a glance, like a militant extreme left group. From the hard white-and-red on black colour scheme through to a photo of two people in fatigues carrying AK-style weapons next to an advert for a highly politically charged event. If they want more members, they might want to tone down the "militant" imagery. I'm uncomfortable being associated with that.
  - wz1000 10y ago
    The IWW has a long history, and pioneered the American labour movement, being practically the first union to admit women and blacks. It has not been a stranger to government repression in this period, and is decidedly anti government and view all political solutions with distrust. Instead they advocate for direct action. If you don't have anti-authoritarian/anarchist leanings, you probably won't fit in with the philosophy of the IWW. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everett_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everett_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Everest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Everest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_Outrage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_Outrage http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/27/us/27hill.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/27/us/27hill.html?_r=0
- knucklesandwich 10y ago
forgottenpass 10y ago
Tech workers (across all disciplines) need to unionize to combat this kind of thing. First they need articulable set of goals, based on a sound principled base. With such a base, to unionize or not is an implementation detail. But a union without guiding principles would be exactly the morally bankrupt negotiation tool unions are often accused of being. A union should never be more important to the unionized than the ideals it implements. Because if it ever is, the workers no longer control the union, the union controls the workers. To that point, I have yet to see "tech" at large, or even software engineers seriously discuss principles for the purpose of a principled professional life. I hear complaints about individual things that are negative on the face have moralistic reasoning applied after the fact. But no guiding vision. Just like we assume the people in movies poop [0] even though we never see it, an "obviously" unacceptable thing happening leads to have conversations resting on unspoken assumptions that someone solved what a professional environment is off-screen. If we want demands for what a work environment should be like to be taken seriously, we have to figure it out. Upfront, on-screen, and to create something people can believe in. to combat this kind of thing fight management on these kinds of issues. Can you articulate what the KIND of issues are? The category can easily be labeled with synonyms for "bad" and easily have things like a misogynistic work environment placed within the category, but WHAT IS the category. What are the defining lines? If every developer took the time to figure out what they believe in, or adopted the (e.g.) ACM Code to their professional life, it might not even take a union. [0] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NobodyPoops http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NobodyPoops

TheAdamAndChe 10y ago

The problem is that workers don't have leverage like they used to due to globalization and a general labor surplus. We need to think of something that would work better than a union.

unityByFreedom 10y ago
What? It's literally your right to vote to join a union. If a majority of coworkers vote for one, you've got a union. Look up the National Labor Relations Act.
- tptacek 10y ago
  Not only is this true, but the NLRA also bars employer retaliation against concerted actions by employees both to organize and also to take actions in protest of work conditions. It's a huge exception to at-will employment. I had no idea about any of this stuff until I started talking to the Tech Solidarity people. I'd always thought the reason nobody goes on strike is that you'd simply be fired for doing so. But, no! That was dumb of me! Striking --- really, most forms of employee protest against working conditions --- is protected federally. I'm particularly interested in how these laws interact with the employment laws for salaried workers. In addition to it being unlawful (in most cases) to fire an employee for striking, it's also (usually) legally risky to dock a salaried employee's pay.
  - jbronn 10y ago
    While technically true, the enforcement is up to the Department of Labor. Do you honestly believe that Puzder (now Acosta) is really going to enforce these rules? It's the whole reason they were chosen for the position in the first place.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      No, enforcement is not up to the Department of Labor. If you're terminated for organizing and protesting against working conditions, your recourse includes the courts. People should, of course, talk to labor lawyer before organizing. Tech Solidarity is working with several now, and collecting employment contracts from the best-known tech companies in order to provide standardized organizing advice.
      - jbronn 10y ago
        Really? Alright I'll bite. They only promulgate the regulations that are enforced. And if you're being pedantic enough to insist it's the DoJ, then my point still stands under one led by Sessions.
        tptacek 10y ago
        Check out the statutes. The 8(a)(1) unfair labor practices have liquidated damages associated with them. You can sue in civil court over them. Again, talk to a lawyer. I think you're going to find that you are not in fact required to convince the Trump administration of your rights.
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  - Alex3917 10y ago
    > the NLRA also bars employer retaliation against concerted actions by employees both to organize and also to take actions in protest of work conditions. I also learned about this from the Tech Solidarity people. The key here though is that actions are only protected if they're taken collectively by multiple employees. A single employee protesting can still be fired without recourse.
- santaclaus 10y ago
  Ehh, when my previous workplace was voting to unionize I wasn't able to vote because I was a remote worker, and didn't have the disposable income to fly in and vote... being disenfranchised is a drag.
tptacek 10y ago
Software developers have incredible leverage right now, perhaps more than any cohort of employees in the country, and while most don't have salary to organize around, there are plenty of other practices --- transparency and liquidity of equity compensation being a great example --- that generate a broad base of support across the whole industry. People hear the term "union" and they think "shop rules" and "union contract salary". There's no reason that's what has to happen. Substitute "professional association" for "union" and you've got all the degrees of freedom you could want for us all to profit from organization without over-complicating our work lives.
- Eridrus 10y ago
  So what organising principles should a software developer union have? It's easy to say they could be anything we want it to be, but I'm not sure there's a real consensus on any particular principle. Lots of people who talk about unions seem to value privacy protections for consumers, but there are clearly software developers writing this software who have a different view. Ubers reputation has been trash for almost as long as Uber has existed, I feel like most people are there to get rich, do you expect those people to go on strike for a grievance that doesn't affect them?
  - knucklesandwich 10y ago
    Without a fair equity package, none of those employees are going to get any kind of payout from an exit. And given the number of fundraising rounds Uber has undergone: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/funding-rounds https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/funding-rounds and their difficulty in actually turning a profit: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/uber-loses-at-least-1-2-billion-in-first-half-of-2016 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/uber-lose... it seems a little questionable that anyone from the rank-and-file is going to get rich at Uber. A union is what gives you the ability confront management about these kinds of things.
  - TheCoelacanth 10y ago
    There are a lot of labor practices that most software developers would agree on changing: unpaid overtime, unreasonable on-call requirements, lack of transparency in equity compensation, unreasonably short windows for exercising vested stock options after leaving the company.
cf 10y ago
Yes but in this particular instance Uber recruits heavily in the Bay Area. If all workers in the Silicon Valley office refused to work and discouraged others to work for Uber it could be quite effective.
matchagaucho 10y ago
It's either unionize or a class action lawsuit. Silicon Valley tends to prefer the latter. Many IT roles already fall under collective bargaining units (CBU), particularly in the public sector. If stories like Susan's become common, and there is blatant gender discrimination, then the Government will have no choice but to acknowledge a private-sector CBU and Union.

unityByFreedom 10y ago

That speaks to me. After salary negotiations, HR within companies has never done anything for me when I approached them. They seemed to be there only to defend the boss and register me as a complainer. It took me several jobs and this post to learn that.

rosser 10y ago
> HR within companies has never done anything for me when I approached them.... The thing you need to keep in mind about HR is this: they aren't there to help you, to have your back. They're there to protect the company from you. Incidental to that, they've traditionally managed the benefits the company is either required or chooses to give you, and acts as a place for you to take concerns such as sexual harassment. But even in those cases, their duty is to the company, not to any individual employee.
- luckydude 10y ago
  Yep. And I think it takes a while for that to sink in for young people. They are more idealistic and assume that things are set up to be beneficial to everyone. They aren't. HR is there to make sure there is no blowback on the company and they do a lot of shitty things to make that true.
- unityByFreedom 10y ago
  I believe there are some good HR groups out there who truly do look out for the long term interests of their companies. I think what's good for me, if I'm a hard worker, is also good for the company. Certainly I'm my best advocate. Even a union couldn't do everything for me.
- pm90 10y ago
  How does one protect oneself in cases of sexual impropriety then? This seems like a pretty dangerous flaw. To be completely honest I've always felt that HR has been the "police" of the workplace, there to keep issues like this from getting out of control (as it most certainly did in the case of OP). Now I feel much more exposed...

mariojv 10y ago

Are there any real efforts around this? A quick Google search doesn't show anything obvious. I'm also curious if there are any historical examples of "white collar" workers unionizing.

knucklesandwich 10y ago
There's plenty of currently existing unions for professional trade workers. The SEIU, IFPTE, CWA, IBEW, etc. are American unions which represent scientists, engineers, legal assistants, technicians, physicists, nurses, etc. Largely these careers have low union density (as a result of poor uptake of unions throughout the US), but there are plenty of countries (for example many Nordic countries) where its much more common to see these professions unionized. If you're interested in learning more about how to do this, I suggest you look into one of the following orgs: - Tech Workers Coalition (https://techworkerscoalition.org/ https://techworkerscoalition.org/) based in the Bay Area who holds a monthly organizing meeting in SF - Tech Solidarity (https://techsolidarity.org https://techsolidarity.org), which has been holding meetings in a bunch of metropolitan areas for educating tech workers about organizing
st3v3r 10y ago
The Director's Guild, Writer's Guild, and Screen Actors Guild, along with the various professional athlete unions, would be good examples of how it could be done.

home_boi 10y ago

I'm of the opinion that the average software engineer in the USA is already overpaid and underworked with excellent benefits and low incentive to unionize. I'm simplifying it a bit but if you don't like your job, just grab a copy of Cracking the Coding Interview and apply to big companies. The big companies pay very well, have good benefits and interview everyone because of the need for a high head count

knucklesandwich 10y ago
First of all, it should be all tech workers that unionize, not just software engineers. And you should talk to some of your fellow workers and ask if they all think they're being fairly compensated. Even aside from the issue of salary, tech workers are rarely given a fair stake in ownership in the company, and their equity grants often come with lots of clauses to deprive them from what little stake they have. I suggest you seek out other opinions if you believe tech workers are under-worked. Perhaps this is the case at your job, but the majority of tech workers I know and have worked with are tired of having to put in hours on nights, over the weekends, etc. They're tired of "unlimited vacation" policies not actually guaranteeing them any time to take a vacation. I've had a boss prevent me from leaving at 10PM once before. I mean its not exactly a new realization that many of the most trendy perks for tech companies are ruses to get workers to stay extra hours at the office, that tech companies pursuing the youngest workers often leads to a culture where there's little differentiation between work and company time, etc. Not to mention that tech workers are often asked to do dubiously ethical things by management. We're asked to automate away the positions of other employees, asked to be lax on security or privacy standards, etc. Whether or not you believe there are any demands to make, I kind of find it bizarre to suggest that workplace democracy is something tech workers shouldn't demand.
- um_ya 10y ago
  Unions originated as a way to commoditise labor. It has since grown into a way to keep out freelance competitors, and to force employers into doing things (both of which I don't agree with). In terms of commoditsing labor, tech is a very skill specific profession with no cookie cutter employee to sell, which makes it a bad candidate for unions.

parent_dead_on 10y ago

Right on brother (sister?)! Most in the industry are believing the management story and working their asses off for a dream that's rarely realized. And when it is, they don't see nearly the payout their more business savvy peers do. The model might be closer to doctors and lawyers than auto workers, but it's clear to me that industry wide solidarity could result in great standard of living and working condition improvements.

weberc2 10y ago

I think if this post teaches us anything, it's that the system works very well, at least for well-performing software engineers. In this case, Susan found a better job with a different company where she presumably won't have to face the same levels of confusion and mistreatment. Unionization seems to come with its own cultural (and procedural) baggage, so I'm wary of invoking needlessly.

kennywinker 10y ago
Suffers in kafkaesque work environment for a year... gets new job. The system works!
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pnathan 10y ago

I am utterly persuaded at this point that the software industry workers need a union. Software engineering hiring practices are profoundly flawed; this is something a union could address at an industry level. It's also deeply problematic for me to take home $fat_paycheck when, say, $sales_guy two tables over is paid minimum wage + commission (disclaimer: I have no knowledge of this occurring at my current company; it happened to a sales guy I know, however). A company of people work together, and should share in the returns as they cover each other's deficiencies. I'm comfortable asserting that while there are issues with traditional unions, it's possible to improve and make better organizations.

hueving 10y ago
>A company of people work together, and should share in the returns as they cover each other's deficiencies. This is not an economically rational way to behave, so it's not sustainable for a company to do this and keep talent for high market-value positions. People are compensated based on the minimum required to get them to join and stay at the company, so their compensation is going to be driven by the market value of people with their skills. Very small companies may be able to afford to pay every employee the cost of a principle software engineer (or whatever the highest position they have is), but this falls apart extremely quickly if the company needs lots of customer support positions or lots of sales people. They end up having to cut compensation to all of the high-end positions and subsequently lose anyone good enough to get jobs that pay market rate. The majority of companies don't have the profit margins to throw away an extra $100,000 or whatever it takes per employee annually to pay everyone the top position market rate. >It's also deeply problematic for me to take home $fat_paycheck What do you say to people that spend years of their life getting advanced degrees in math/physics/CS/whatever that make them experts in the subject matter the company is working on? "That sounds hard, here's the same paycheck as the undergrad working next to you who knows almost nothing in the field."
- pnathan 10y ago
  You're jumping to conclusions I didn't advocate for... There's no reason one person who contributes one thing gets to scrape by and one person who contributes another gets to live like a prince. Sales pay the bills of SW devs; SW devs make what Sales sells. Both should be comfortably compensated.

arjie 10y ago

Good luck. I'll never join. I know what you guys want (because enough of you have stated it on HN): no more H1Bs and to make sure I never find a job again because I'm a foreigner. I'll scab that union till kingdom come.

knucklesandwich 10y ago
Actually I'd prefer if my country would just naturalize you instead of running you through an exploitative guest worker program that hedges your visa status on continued employment. I have absolutely no desire to prevent you from getting a job (and I'd like the union to have a spot for you and ensure you share in the benefits we create by collectively bargaining).
- arjie 10y ago
  Sure, you might. But any such union will have a large number of disaffected people and as HN has shown, a large number of these people blame H1B workers. Their problem is that this visa exists. My problem is getting naturalised. Our incentives are not aligned and they've made that clear. I want no part of it and I will actively participate in union busting to the greatest of my ability for this reason. I don't think you can achieve greater than 2% penetration amongst employed engineers and I know that your system will threaten the 1.7% of engineers who are H1B workers. I think I'm in a reasonable position here and I'm not about to weaken myself. And I think everyone else is going to work through the same calculus. Sorry, it's not you. It's who are likely going to be your comrades.
  - knucklesandwich 10y ago
    No comrades of mine would see guest workers or immigrants as a threat. I wouldn't join a union that didn't stick up for all workers, regardless of their citizenship status. Maybe we have different perspectives on how popular the anti-immigrant position is in tech (and how many neo-reactionary/dark enlightenment dipshits there are), I guess I'd just ask that you keep an open mind about this and make a decision if and when workers approach you to join a union. I certainly wouldn't knock you for opposing a group that doesn't have your interests at heart, but the union I want to form would take solidarity seriously and would explicitly go to bat for women, people of color, lgbtqia people, disabled people, and immigrants.

wz1000 10y ago

> It's not a panacea, and there are several historical examples of union leadership betraying the trust of workers and neglecting the demands of the most marginalized members (such as the UAW in 1941), but a union correctly structured and rooted in worker solidarity is the only proven way to fight management on these kinds of issues. Thats why the IWW exists, and they desperately need members. They refuse to cooperate with big business and government, and are based on decentralized worker solidarity and principles of direct action, not the capture of state power. If a union derives its power from the state, it is easily corrupted and subverted. https://iww.org/unions/dept500/iu560 https://iww.org/unions/dept500/iu560 https://techcrunch.com/2012/11/01/want-to-unionize-developers-focus-on-workplace-democracy/ https://techcrunch.com/2012/11/01/want-to-unionize-developer...

mysticmarvel 10y ago
Good god... I just Google'd the IWW. Their website looks, at a glance, like a militant extreme left group. From the hard white-and-red on black colour scheme through to a photo of two people in fatigues carrying AK-style weapons next to an advert for a highly politically charged event. If they want more members, they might want to tone down the "militant" imagery. I'm uncomfortable being associated with that.
- wz1000 10y ago
  The IWW has a long history, and pioneered the American labour movement, being practically the first union to admit women and blacks. It has not been a stranger to government repression in this period, and is decidedly anti government and view all political solutions with distrust. Instead they advocate for direct action. If you don't have anti-authoritarian/anarchist leanings, you probably won't fit in with the philosophy of the IWW. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everett_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everett_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Everest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Everest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_Outrage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_Outrage http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/27/us/27hill.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/27/us/27hill.html?_r=0
knucklesandwich 10y ago

forgottenpass 10y ago

Tech workers (across all disciplines) need to unionize to combat this kind of thing. First they need articulable set of goals, based on a sound principled base. With such a base, to unionize or not is an implementation detail. But a union without guiding principles would be exactly the morally bankrupt negotiation tool unions are often accused of being. A union should never be more important to the unionized than the ideals it implements. Because if it ever is, the workers no longer control the union, the union controls the workers. To that point, I have yet to see "tech" at large, or even software engineers seriously discuss principles for the purpose of a principled professional life. I hear complaints about individual things that are negative on the face have moralistic reasoning applied after the fact. But no guiding vision. Just like we assume the people in movies poop [0] even though we never see it, an "obviously" unacceptable thing happening leads to have conversations resting on unspoken assumptions that someone solved what a professional environment is off-screen. If we want demands for what a work environment should be like to be taken seriously, we have to figure it out. Upfront, on-screen, and to create something people can believe in. to combat this kind of thing fight management on these kinds of issues. Can you articulate what the KIND of issues are? The category can easily be labeled with synonyms for "bad" and easily have things like a misogynistic work environment placed within the category, but WHAT IS the category. What are the defining lines? If every developer took the time to figure out what they believe in, or adopted the (e.g.) ACM Code to their professional life, it might not even take a union. [0] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NobodyPoops http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NobodyPoops