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If they are smart, they should: right now they have a lot of power in the workplace because there is demand for them. This is a problem tech business owners hav

by wfo 9y ago

If they are smart, they should: right now they have a lot of power in the workplace because there is demand for them. This is a problem tech business owners have identified: programmers have too much power on the job relative to their bosses. They require good wages, they require too many benefits, they complain and sue when they are sexually harassed, they demand equity and to be treated well and refuse to accept the company asserting total ownership of their person in their contract, like non competes, binding arbitration, corporate ownership of every thought they have on the job or off. Could you imagine a company tracking every movement of every programmer at all times and automatically firing those who fail to "perform" according to certain metric? Does your eye linger too long on a comment relative to your peers? Fired. Did it take you too long to write this method this one time? Fired. This is the reality for Amazon warehouse workers and it could be for you, easily. But there is a solution (from the prospective of employers) for this "problem": every time you hear someone talk about "teaching everyone to code" or "the STEM shortage" (which absolutely does not exist -- there is a shortage of qualified programmers willing to work for $12/hr, a shortage of hard science PhDs willing to do menial lab work for 10$/hr) this is coded language for "let's make millions more programmers so that they become so commonplace they become a commodity and may be treated as such". As it turns out, programming is not that hard, anyone could do it if they learned. And they are learning. Programmers would be smart to unionize before this strategy succeeds, not after, it will be much easier while they still have power. But this requires social and political intelligence, and for programmers (who lean Libertarian up until the moment they get laid off or abused by their boss) to put their egos aside and disabuse themselves of the notion that they succeeded only because they are so much more brilliant than everyone else.

deleted 9y ago
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dkhenry 9y ago
Your comment shows the real divide on unionization and its not about someone's political ideology, its fundamentally about how they view the profession. If like you said programmers should unionize before the army of $12/hour programmers arrives then what you are claiming is that software development could be done by someone who was trained and willing to accept $12 per hour. Essentially you are making the claim they are a common laborer much like a construction worker or delivery driver ( both of whom make more then $12/ hour ). If however you view software development as a profession requiring intelligence and a deep understanding of the subject matter then you don't care about the $12/hour laborers because they will never be able to replicate the work of a qualified professional. The people who don't want a union aren't resisting it because they want to live in some libertarian wet dream, they are resisting it because they see their profession as something that can't be reduced to common labor and they don't see a labor union as able to provide any benefits, as indeed they don't when you are dealing with a profession. The push to get people to unionize is not about workers rights its about putting technology professionals in the place business owners want them in. No one likes the idea that software is eating the world and there is a limited group of people , who are not the traditional power brokers, who are very well positioned to capitalize on that. They would much rather that software development become a commodity so they can continue their model of capital vs labor.
- _jal 9y ago
  This is very close to my thinking. I've joked before that, in order for a tech union drive to work, it would have to be recast as some sort of medieval-guild-style exploitation of secret knowledge power-play/conspiracy to get the libertarians on board.
- tptacek 9y ago
  Absolutely the most common objection to labor organization is that it's something associated intrinsically with low-status commodified occupations. But that's a fallacy. Most of the classic professions are organized. They're usually organized around professional associations and not "labor unions", and their collective bargaining concerns things other than their wages. But those are distinctions without differences. Yes, tech workers aren't going to create the Tech Teamsters. That's an easy question to put to rest. But that doesn't dispose of the issue. Tech workers should organize, now, when their market power is at its zenith. There's a good discussion to have about what the resulting organizations look like. But there's less of a tenable argument about whether they should try at all. Clearly, it seems to me, they should.
  - dkhenry 9y ago
    organizations are very different from labor unions. I think software engineering would be well served by a professional association, but they have the problem of having deep connections to higher education institutions and licensing boards. I don't think our industry would be well served by the same kind of educational gate keeping that limits the availability of Doctors and Lawyers ( like what the NSPE, or IEEE try to push )
    - tptacek 9y ago
      I agree with you that professional organizations are a better model than AFL-style unions. I agree with you that academic gatekeeping is a bad fit for tech workers (coincidentally, I have just one semester of college). I think we need to be careful not to let ourselves, as a community of people sharing an occupation in this market, get derailed by the connotations of the word "union".

by wfo 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

dkhenry 9y ago

Your comment shows the real divide on unionization and its not about someone's political ideology, its fundamentally about how they view the profession. If like you said programmers should unionize before the army of $12/hour programmers arrives then what you are claiming is that software development could be done by someone who was trained and willing to accept $12 per hour. Essentially you are making the claim they are a common laborer much like a construction worker or delivery driver ( both of whom make more then $12/ hour ). If however you view software development as a profession requiring intelligence and a deep understanding of the subject matter then you don't care about the $12/hour laborers because they will never be able to replicate the work of a qualified professional. The people who don't want a union aren't resisting it because they want to live in some libertarian wet dream, they are resisting it because they see their profession as something that can't be reduced to common labor and they don't see a labor union as able to provide any benefits, as indeed they don't when you are dealing with a profession. The push to get people to unionize is not about workers rights its about putting technology professionals in the place business owners want them in. No one likes the idea that software is eating the world and there is a limited group of people , who are not the traditional power brokers, who are very well positioned to capitalize on that. They would much rather that software development become a commodity so they can continue their model of capital vs labor.

_jal 9y ago
This is very close to my thinking. I've joked before that, in order for a tech union drive to work, it would have to be recast as some sort of medieval-guild-style exploitation of secret knowledge power-play/conspiracy to get the libertarians on board.
tptacek 9y ago
Absolutely the most common objection to labor organization is that it's something associated intrinsically with low-status commodified occupations. But that's a fallacy. Most of the classic professions are organized. They're usually organized around professional associations and not "labor unions", and their collective bargaining concerns things other than their wages. But those are distinctions without differences. Yes, tech workers aren't going to create the Tech Teamsters. That's an easy question to put to rest. But that doesn't dispose of the issue. Tech workers should organize, now, when their market power is at its zenith. There's a good discussion to have about what the resulting organizations look like. But there's less of a tenable argument about whether they should try at all. Clearly, it seems to me, they should.
- dkhenry 9y ago
  organizations are very different from labor unions. I think software engineering would be well served by a professional association, but they have the problem of having deep connections to higher education institutions and licensing boards. I don't think our industry would be well served by the same kind of educational gate keeping that limits the availability of Doctors and Lawyers ( like what the NSPE, or IEEE try to push )
  - tptacek 9y ago
    I agree with you that professional organizations are a better model than AFL-style unions. I agree with you that academic gatekeeping is a bad fit for tech workers (coincidentally, I have just one semester of college). I think we need to be careful not to let ourselves, as a community of people sharing an occupation in this market, get derailed by the connotations of the word "union".