8 ms·

Exactly the reason why there aren't any Software Developer Unions these days.

by irfanka 9y ago

m-j-fox 9y ago
You're kidding, right? Programmers are decently paid but should strike for a 40-hour work week.
- wooter 9y ago
  no thanks. look at what collective/forced/politicized bickering over hours has done to the job market everywhere its been tried. look at the corruption. i enjoy my freedom to negotiate my terms as I, as an individual, and my employer see fit.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    Sure you do...now. You might find yourself in very different circumstances in the future.
  - deong 9y ago
    I lived and worked in Iceland for five years, and they have a virtually 100% unionization rate. It's handled at the industry level rather than individual companies, but when you start a job, you are pretty much automatically enrolled in the union relevant for your work. A little money comes out of your paycheck, and the union is there in case you have problems. The unions also provide other benefits. For example, most of them own summer houses that any member can reserve to go spend a weekend away. You rarely hear the average Icelander on either side of the worker/manager divide complain about them at all. Everyone more or less views them as beneficial. Once or twice a year they make headlines when one group of workers or another feels aggrieved and it escalates to a brief strike in some small sector of the economy, but on the whole, I don't think many Icelanders would trade their system of employment for ours. Like so many other areas, I think the problem is that we in the US are just so very much worse at running our society and country than most other comparable countries. Look at health care. No one liked the ACA; no will will like the AHCA or whatever the Republicans pass. The problem isn't that it's impossible to do a decent job at a health care system. The problem is that we specifically suck. Put us in charge of anything, and we'll turn it into something awful that doesn't work, but provides some brief period of outsized shareholder value.
    - jacobsenscott 9y ago
      The population of the US is 100x more than Iceland. There are a lot of well run small cities in the US. Iceland's policies would never scale up.
      - Retra 9y ago
        Why not?
        sqeaky 9y ago
        "It wouldn't scale up" is common conservative response to progressive or liberal comparisons that involve suggestions of doing it (anything) some other way. So while the EU plugs away making incremental improvements each year we keep jumping around in fits and spurts forward and backward. There is still a strong belief of American Exceptionalism even in fields where we are clearly inferior. Look at Healthcare Europe figured something out that we didn't and their is cheaper and better.
        Retra 9y ago
        Well, there could be legitimate reason that it couldn't scale up, but... "necessity is the mother of invention" and I don't feel it should be left at that. (Particularly on HN, where people seem to take inordinate pride in their ability to find ways of scaling things up.)
        delazeur 9y ago
        Right. If someone is going to make that argument, they should be expected to at least explain why something won't scale up.
        jacobsenscott 9y ago
        Iceland is demographically homogenous (over 90% Icelandic), and 64% of their population lives in one city. It is fairly easy for that kind of grouping of people to reach agreement on things because they have a lot of common interests, and a shared history and culture. As you "scale up" in diversity, population, and geographic distribution the set of things people can agree on falls off dramatically.
  - objclxt 9y ago
    You are mixing up blue collar and white collar unions. Go look at the film industry, and the Writers / Directors / Screen Actors Guilds. The WGA doesn't stop screenwriters from negotiating their own terms. Do you think someone like JJ Abrams is getting paid the WGA set fees? That Tom Cruise works SAG and Equity rates? Of course not. The point of the guilds in these industries is to set minimum standards for pay and benefits. It is designed to stop studios from exploiting people desperate to work in the industry. I majored in film and many of my classmates have gone on to work in Hollywood - I don't know anyone of them who would say their unions aren't a good thing.
    - alasdair_ 9y ago
      >It is designed to stop studios from exploiting people desperate to work in the industry. Would you say that it works? My understanding is that these unions make it more difficult for new people "desperate to work in the industry" to actually break into the industry.
      - Kalium 9y ago
        What do you think "protecting them from exploitation" means?
  - delazeur 9y ago
    You are never going to be able to negotiate for yourself on an equal footing with a corporation, but unions can achieve a close approximation.
- uxp100 9y ago
  When I was hired I became the best paid person I knew. I think it would be pretty hard to unionize, but damn if I ain't pissed that that wage fixing scandal wasn't a bigger deal. I work at one of the guilty companies, and I would be happier if I felt like most workers even knew it happened. (even though this was not wage fixing for the average engineer, but for certain high profile roles.) That's something a worker's organization would help with, even if I don't feel like I need them in wage negotiation.
  - throwaway40483 9y ago
    To this day, I'm still puzzled by the fact that the wage fixing incident didn't blow up in the press. Amazing..
    - tracker1 9y ago
      "Some massively rich companies colluded to keep their 5%-er employees from making even more..." Not that I disagree that it was a huge deal, it's hard to gather greater sympathy/empathy from people that tend to make less than half of those aggrieved.
      - pc86 9y ago
        Exactly. If you're making $35k a year, all that story meant to you was "a bunch of billionaires colluded so someone making 5x what I make couldn't make 5.5x what I make."
        sqeaky 9y ago
        It gets worse when you think about how often those "screwed" people that make 5x the median income of an area, make software that replaces 10,000 jobs. This software often comes in an app store and is given away for free with an ad at the bottom.
      - walshemj 9y ago
        no it depressed the entire industry's wages
- jhall1468 9y ago
  I work 40 hours a week. Sometimes I work 45, and I usually offset it by cutting it shorter the next week. I have no need (or desire) to "strike" just because some businesses/orgs/teams are garbage.
  - andreyf 9y ago
    No competent programmer I know has to work 40 hours a week to have their needs met. The best ones charge rates would allow them to have their needs met working <10 hours a week.
    - jhall1468 9y ago
      First of all, what does that have to do with ANYTHING being discussed in this thread? Second, any "programmer" working 10 hours a week and charging enough to live comfortably on that isn't a programmer, they are a consultant.
      - sqeaky 9y ago
        I am a consultant that writes software, does that mean I am not a programmer. If wasn't supporting a whole raft of people who aren't my kids I could get by on 10 hours a week. Most of these people will be self sufficient in the fall. Then we will see I can get fewer hours. Charge hourly, produce good work(actually work those hours you charge) and spend enough time learning to stay proficient in your niche of the craft. This recipe won't make you a millionaire quickly, and it won't get you a house in the bay area, but it has given me great financial freedom in the Midwest.
      - andreyf 9y ago
        It has this to do with this thread: programmers who say they don't need to unionize because "their needs are being met" in return for "40 hours a week" don't understand the basic economics of their craft of what being compensated fairly means, and that's something a union could help them with. I've heard more than one case of a big company saying "thanks for that optimization that will save us >$15M/yr for at least a decade, here's a ~$10k bonus!". The few engineers who care to engage in the negotiations which yield their true market value end up making several times that of the average. Yes, some of them are exceptional engineers, but some are not, and the only real distinction is being able to find and negotiate optimal market rates for their work.
- irrational 9y ago
  Why would I strike for that? I'm salaried and typically work about 30-35 hours a week. I sit right next to my boss and he has no complaints about my hours or my work so I would be crazy to ask to work more hours. I'm actually shocked at how much they pay me for such enjoyable work.
- wand3r 9y ago
  The 40 hour work week is arbitrary. It was made for railroad workers who had high workplace accident rates and worked 6-7 days a week. Many died because pre-implementation they worked at night w/o sufficient electric lighting as it was not widespread yet. After the war; WWI iirc, the framework was applied to other industries. So if you don't want to work 40 hours, don't. I have much less sympathy for a software engineer who has better leverage than a kid who works at McDonalds and couldn't earn a living wage working 60 hours. The fact that you could strike and not really sacrifice much; and if it failed find another job, puts you in a great position. Unions are good for protecting those that can't afford to protect themselves and are at a disatvantage. SE is not IMO a vocation that needs to organize.
  - s73ver 9y ago
    "SE is not IMO a vocation that needs to organize." The games industry disproves your theory.
    - sqeaky 9y ago
      I think game dev is the way it is because so many romanticize game development. A ton of grads fresh out of college want to get in and are competing for a the limited (but large) amount of work it takes to make a game. The big a-hole studios realize this and charge sub-prime wages because after they burn a dev out there will be another to replace them still starry-eyed from a childhood playing games. I have read several stories of people leaving game deve for a nice boring job writing insurance software for more money and fewer hours. Many could be doing it the other way around, write software for a lame, but lucrative, insurance company, then make a small lifestyle business writing indie games with a few friends.
      - wand3r 9y ago
        Also, I think it is hard to get product market fit. You pretty much have to release a whole game before you know if it's successful. Unless you are established it is much harder to bootstrap. You can release a level and optimize but games are super hard. I agree there is the romantic factor in play as well. You have a lot of supply of devs and a random walk of success stories.
fivestar 9y ago
Intelligent people capable of negotiating their pay in a market such as that for software development would only be encumbered by unions. Are there warts? Sure there are. Nothing is perfect.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  But software devs don't have a professional structure either, as doctors, lawyers, and engineers do, and arguably the industry is the worse for it. Are there warts? Sure there are. Nothing is perfect. Isn't that equally true for collective undertakings?
- Symbiote 9y ago
  Maybe have a look at the list here: https://www.tuc.org.uk/britains-unions https://www.tuc.org.uk/britains-unions * Association of Educational Psychologists * British Air Line Pilots’ Association * FDA ("The union for senior public sector managers and professionals") * Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association * Prospect, the professionals' union There are a lot more listed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-list-of-active-trade-unions-official-list-and-schedule/trade-unions-the-current-list-and-schedule https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-list-of-ac...
  - walshemj 9y ago
    And Norman Tebbit was the president of BALPA and for non UK the FDA is th union for V senior Civil Servants including MI6
- IntelMiner 9y ago
  That's an incredibly insulting and dismissive framing of the issue. Unions are important in many industries, including software development. You and your employer may have a good method of negotiating your pay, but that doesn't make it universal Belittling the presumed intelligence is completely unnecessary
- delazeur 9y ago
  Oh, come on. It has not been that long since we found out that major tech companies were colluding to suppress SWE salaries. Have you already forgotten?
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
Ya, that EA spouse thing totally didn't happen: http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html
- hyperbovine 9y ago
  The plural of anecdote is not data.
  - Retra 9y ago
    Yes it is.
  - Apocryphon 9y ago
    When did witness testimony become inadmissible evidence?
- rmc 9y ago
  I don't think any union has come out after that?
avar 9y ago
This is US-specific, in some European countries at least you're automatically part of some union by law if you're a software developer. They don't tend to do collective bargaining, but they're there.
walshemj 9y ago
There are plenty of unions that represent it/dev workers I.A.T.S.E and the CWA in the USA spring to mind Prospect in the Uk and IG Medien in Germany

Exactly the reason why there aren't any Software Developer Unions these days.

m-j-fox 9y ago

You're kidding, right? Programmers are decently paid but should strike for a 40-hour work week.

wooter 9y ago
no thanks. look at what collective/forced/politicized bickering over hours has done to the job market everywhere its been tried. look at the corruption. i enjoy my freedom to negotiate my terms as I, as an individual, and my employer see fit.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  Sure you do...now. You might find yourself in very different circumstances in the future.
- deong 9y ago
  I lived and worked in Iceland for five years, and they have a virtually 100% unionization rate. It's handled at the industry level rather than individual companies, but when you start a job, you are pretty much automatically enrolled in the union relevant for your work. A little money comes out of your paycheck, and the union is there in case you have problems. The unions also provide other benefits. For example, most of them own summer houses that any member can reserve to go spend a weekend away. You rarely hear the average Icelander on either side of the worker/manager divide complain about them at all. Everyone more or less views them as beneficial. Once or twice a year they make headlines when one group of workers or another feels aggrieved and it escalates to a brief strike in some small sector of the economy, but on the whole, I don't think many Icelanders would trade their system of employment for ours. Like so many other areas, I think the problem is that we in the US are just so very much worse at running our society and country than most other comparable countries. Look at health care. No one liked the ACA; no will will like the AHCA or whatever the Republicans pass. The problem isn't that it's impossible to do a decent job at a health care system. The problem is that we specifically suck. Put us in charge of anything, and we'll turn it into something awful that doesn't work, but provides some brief period of outsized shareholder value.
  - jacobsenscott 9y ago
    The population of the US is 100x more than Iceland. There are a lot of well run small cities in the US. Iceland's policies would never scale up.
    - Retra 9y ago
      Why not?
      - sqeaky 9y ago
        "It wouldn't scale up" is common conservative response to progressive or liberal comparisons that involve suggestions of doing it (anything) some other way. So while the EU plugs away making incremental improvements each year we keep jumping around in fits and spurts forward and backward. There is still a strong belief of American Exceptionalism even in fields where we are clearly inferior. Look at Healthcare Europe figured something out that we didn't and their is cheaper and better.
        Retra 9y ago
        Well, there could be legitimate reason that it couldn't scale up, but... "necessity is the mother of invention" and I don't feel it should be left at that. (Particularly on HN, where people seem to take inordinate pride in their ability to find ways of scaling things up.)
        delazeur 9y ago
        Right. If someone is going to make that argument, they should be expected to at least explain why something won't scale up.
        jacobsenscott 9y ago
        Iceland is demographically homogenous (over 90% Icelandic), and 64% of their population lives in one city. It is fairly easy for that kind of grouping of people to reach agreement on things because they have a lot of common interests, and a shared history and culture. As you "scale up" in diversity, population, and geographic distribution the set of things people can agree on falls off dramatically.
- objclxt 9y ago
  You are mixing up blue collar and white collar unions. Go look at the film industry, and the Writers / Directors / Screen Actors Guilds. The WGA doesn't stop screenwriters from negotiating their own terms. Do you think someone like JJ Abrams is getting paid the WGA set fees? That Tom Cruise works SAG and Equity rates? Of course not. The point of the guilds in these industries is to set minimum standards for pay and benefits. It is designed to stop studios from exploiting people desperate to work in the industry. I majored in film and many of my classmates have gone on to work in Hollywood - I don't know anyone of them who would say their unions aren't a good thing.
  - alasdair_ 9y ago
    >It is designed to stop studios from exploiting people desperate to work in the industry. Would you say that it works? My understanding is that these unions make it more difficult for new people "desperate to work in the industry" to actually break into the industry.
    - Kalium 9y ago
      What do you think "protecting them from exploitation" means?
- delazeur 9y ago
  You are never going to be able to negotiate for yourself on an equal footing with a corporation, but unions can achieve a close approximation.
uxp100 9y ago
When I was hired I became the best paid person I knew. I think it would be pretty hard to unionize, but damn if I ain't pissed that that wage fixing scandal wasn't a bigger deal. I work at one of the guilty companies, and I would be happier if I felt like most workers even knew it happened. (even though this was not wage fixing for the average engineer, but for certain high profile roles.) That's something a worker's organization would help with, even if I don't feel like I need them in wage negotiation.
- throwaway40483 9y ago
  To this day, I'm still puzzled by the fact that the wage fixing incident didn't blow up in the press. Amazing..
  - tracker1 9y ago
    "Some massively rich companies colluded to keep their 5%-er employees from making even more..." Not that I disagree that it was a huge deal, it's hard to gather greater sympathy/empathy from people that tend to make less than half of those aggrieved.
    - pc86 9y ago
      Exactly. If you're making $35k a year, all that story meant to you was "a bunch of billionaires colluded so someone making 5x what I make couldn't make 5.5x what I make."
      - sqeaky 9y ago
        It gets worse when you think about how often those "screwed" people that make 5x the median income of an area, make software that replaces 10,000 jobs. This software often comes in an app store and is given away for free with an ad at the bottom.
    - walshemj 9y ago
      no it depressed the entire industry's wages
jhall1468 9y ago
I work 40 hours a week. Sometimes I work 45, and I usually offset it by cutting it shorter the next week. I have no need (or desire) to "strike" just because some businesses/orgs/teams are garbage.
- andreyf 9y ago
  No competent programmer I know has to work 40 hours a week to have their needs met. The best ones charge rates would allow them to have their needs met working <10 hours a week.
  - jhall1468 9y ago
    First of all, what does that have to do with ANYTHING being discussed in this thread? Second, any "programmer" working 10 hours a week and charging enough to live comfortably on that isn't a programmer, they are a consultant.
    - sqeaky 9y ago
      I am a consultant that writes software, does that mean I am not a programmer. If wasn't supporting a whole raft of people who aren't my kids I could get by on 10 hours a week. Most of these people will be self sufficient in the fall. Then we will see I can get fewer hours. Charge hourly, produce good work(actually work those hours you charge) and spend enough time learning to stay proficient in your niche of the craft. This recipe won't make you a millionaire quickly, and it won't get you a house in the bay area, but it has given me great financial freedom in the Midwest.
    - andreyf 9y ago
      It has this to do with this thread: programmers who say they don't need to unionize because "their needs are being met" in return for "40 hours a week" don't understand the basic economics of their craft of what being compensated fairly means, and that's something a union could help them with. I've heard more than one case of a big company saying "thanks for that optimization that will save us >$15M/yr for at least a decade, here's a ~$10k bonus!". The few engineers who care to engage in the negotiations which yield their true market value end up making several times that of the average. Yes, some of them are exceptional engineers, but some are not, and the only real distinction is being able to find and negotiate optimal market rates for their work.
irrational 9y ago
Why would I strike for that? I'm salaried and typically work about 30-35 hours a week. I sit right next to my boss and he has no complaints about my hours or my work so I would be crazy to ask to work more hours. I'm actually shocked at how much they pay me for such enjoyable work.
wand3r 9y ago
The 40 hour work week is arbitrary. It was made for railroad workers who had high workplace accident rates and worked 6-7 days a week. Many died because pre-implementation they worked at night w/o sufficient electric lighting as it was not widespread yet. After the war; WWI iirc, the framework was applied to other industries. So if you don't want to work 40 hours, don't. I have much less sympathy for a software engineer who has better leverage than a kid who works at McDonalds and couldn't earn a living wage working 60 hours. The fact that you could strike and not really sacrifice much; and if it failed find another job, puts you in a great position. Unions are good for protecting those that can't afford to protect themselves and are at a disatvantage. SE is not IMO a vocation that needs to organize.
- s73ver 9y ago
  "SE is not IMO a vocation that needs to organize." The games industry disproves your theory.
  - sqeaky 9y ago
    I think game dev is the way it is because so many romanticize game development. A ton of grads fresh out of college want to get in and are competing for a the limited (but large) amount of work it takes to make a game. The big a-hole studios realize this and charge sub-prime wages because after they burn a dev out there will be another to replace them still starry-eyed from a childhood playing games. I have read several stories of people leaving game deve for a nice boring job writing insurance software for more money and fewer hours. Many could be doing it the other way around, write software for a lame, but lucrative, insurance company, then make a small lifestyle business writing indie games with a few friends.
    - wand3r 9y ago
      Also, I think it is hard to get product market fit. You pretty much have to release a whole game before you know if it's successful. Unless you are established it is much harder to bootstrap. You can release a level and optimize but games are super hard. I agree there is the romantic factor in play as well. You have a lot of supply of devs and a random walk of success stories.

fivestar 9y ago

Intelligent people capable of negotiating their pay in a market such as that for software development would only be encumbered by unions. Are there warts? Sure there are. Nothing is perfect.

anigbrowl 9y ago
But software devs don't have a professional structure either, as doctors, lawyers, and engineers do, and arguably the industry is the worse for it. Are there warts? Sure there are. Nothing is perfect. Isn't that equally true for collective undertakings?
Symbiote 9y ago
Maybe have a look at the list here: https://www.tuc.org.uk/britains-unions https://www.tuc.org.uk/britains-unions * Association of Educational Psychologists * British Air Line Pilots’ Association * FDA ("The union for senior public sector managers and professionals") * Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association * Prospect, the professionals' union There are a lot more listed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-list-of-active-trade-unions-official-list-and-schedule/trade-unions-the-current-list-and-schedule https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-list-of-ac...
- walshemj 9y ago
  And Norman Tebbit was the president of BALPA and for non UK the FDA is th union for V senior Civil Servants including MI6
IntelMiner 9y ago
That's an incredibly insulting and dismissive framing of the issue. Unions are important in many industries, including software development. You and your employer may have a good method of negotiating your pay, but that doesn't make it universal Belittling the presumed intelligence is completely unnecessary
delazeur 9y ago
Oh, come on. It has not been that long since we found out that major tech companies were colluding to suppress SWE salaries. Have you already forgotten?

seanmcdirmid 9y ago

Ya, that EA spouse thing totally didn't happen: http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

hyperbovine 9y ago
The plural of anecdote is not data.
- Retra 9y ago
  Yes it is.
- Apocryphon 9y ago
  When did witness testimony become inadmissible evidence?
rmc 9y ago
I don't think any union has come out after that?

avar 9y ago

This is US-specific, in some European countries at least you're automatically part of some union by law if you're a software developer. They don't tend to do collective bargaining, but they're there.

walshemj 9y ago

There are plenty of unions that represent it/dev workers I.A.T.S.E and the CWA in the USA spring to mind Prospect in the Uk and IG Medien in Germany