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I thought this was interesting because if knowledge workers like journalists can do so, why not programmers, or what ever term you'd prefer to be called?

• rhizome 9y ago
  They could, and there have been rumblings about doing so for many years, including among sysadmins. It emerged from many corners: layoffs of the first dot com crash, unrealistic deadlines, afterhours work, general crappy management support, underpayage, etc. I think generally the attitude is "why would I want to be paid less?"
• untog 9y ago
  It is interesting that programmers (as a whole) seem resistant to it. It's often described as being unnecessary, but when you go one or two posts down HN you find people decrying long hours, open plan offices, weekend callouts, etc. etc. I suspect it's just that when the going is good, people don't really think they need a union. If the prophecies come true and AI starts writing code for us, you can bet people will suddenly be interested in unionisation.
  • ProAm 9y ago
    > It is interesting that programmers (as a whole) seem resistant to it. Mostly because our working conditions are not bad, we are more or less paid fairly, there are a lot of options to move around. Also it'd be bad if we had other people negotiating on our behalf, for what we probably feel is less pay than we are worth, and the concept of seniority would ruffle and stop a lot of newer grads from getting higher paying jobs over people that have been working already for 25 years in the industry.
    • untog 9y ago
      > the concept of seniority would ruffle and stop a lot of newer grads from getting higher paying jobs over people that have been working already for 25 years in the industry. That's not a required part of a union. I think one of the misconceptions people have is that if you have a union it looks and operates exactly like one on a Ford factory floor. If you formed a union it could do exactly what you want it to do, and not do the things you don't want it to do. If you wanted a union to do nothing other than negotiate payment for overtime and a new Macbook every year you could just do that.
      • frandroid 9y ago
        I used to think that as well. The problem is that if you don't have an arbitrary employment security clause (seniority, aka LIFO), employers can find ways to fire you/lay you off arbitrarily for union activity under the cover of other reasons (e.g. unrealistic performance goals). I don't know how to resolve this problem. But without LIFO, you can be guaranteed that most people who use the union for its intended purpose doesn't have much of a future at the company.
      • mywittyname 9y ago
        The people with political influence in the union might not be those whose views align with the more technically proficient members of the group. I anticipate a developer union being another vector for leeches to grasp onto productive developers and (indirectly) siphon off their well earned money. I've seen the types of developers that thrive in political climates. They manage to get paid way too much money to make poor decisions about subjects they read the wikipedia article on just before the meeting. I honestly believe these are the types that will rise through the union ranks and will use their power for harm and personal enrichment. Union interviews will be all be standardized and will consist of: drawing UML diagrams, naming 24 design patterns in 30 seconds, and white-boarding a blockchain Rubik's CryptoCube solver implementation. Points will be deducted if the solution is not an abstract OOP design that can extend to n-dimensional Rubik's CryptoCubes.
        • Daishiman 9y ago
          > Union interviews will be all be standardized and will consist of: drawing UML diagrams, naming 24 design patterns in 30 seconds, and white-boarding a blockchain Rubik's CryptoCube solver implementation. So, like today's retarded interviewing environment for most SV companies?
      • elihu 9y ago
        I think that's an interesting discussion worth having -- supposing a tech union existed, what would we want it to negotiate for? Some possibilities I can think of are: better pay, less work hours or paid overtime, better benefits, more vacation time, minimum office size / screen size / cubicle wall height, a cap on the ratio of employee pay to CEO pay, a right to say no to work that violates a professional code of conduct without risk of reprisal, access to training material, pay transparency, prohibitions against overly-broad intellectual property assignments and a right to work on non-competing projects in one's free time, prohibitions against anti-compete clauses, and mandatory prior notification of layoffs. I imagine most people who work in tech would have a different list, but there would be some overlap.
    • vvanders 9y ago
      Gamedev is the only sub-industry that comes to mind that could see a large benefit from a union. That said burnout is so high and there's so many people beating down the door for a job that its never really materialized.
  • icelancer 9y ago
    >> It is interesting that programmers (as a whole) seem resistant to it Software developers and people in IT are probably two orders of magnitude more likely to be libertarian / anarcho-capitalist and conservative in economic views than your average union worker in another field. That's definitely a large impact as well.
    • earthtolazlo 9y ago
      I think this is the gist of it. Most of the arguments I’ve seen against unionization seem to appeal to the inflated egos that a lot of developers possess.
      • Karunamon 9y ago
        That's a bit unfair, isn't it? Arguments with regard to dues, easy mobility, necessity, agility, and so forth don't seem at all ego-driven.
        • Avshalom 9y ago
          Aside from dues: electricians, plumbers, carpenters... all sorts of highly skilled laborers both have unions and are basically freelancers, every bit as mobile as you could want.
      • Avshalom 9y ago
        And a lot of "oh God what if people who had been working there for 30 years made more than me"
    • mcguire 9y ago
      Unlike most Americans, software developers feel themselves to be temporarily embarrassed billionaires.
      • icelancer 9y ago
        Heh, I'm sympathetic to the libertarian viewpoint in many ways, but I enjoyed this comment all the same.
  • Dirlewanger 9y ago
    I think part of it is because the gap between the skill floor and ceiling is absolutely gargantuan. Unions work best when the skill gap is narrow, and ascension to different levels easily measurable. The more I think about it, software engineering is almost completely antithetical to the idea of unions. Traditional engineers have so much structure around their fields because the laws of physics govern a large part of their craft. Not so with SE.
    • bbddg 9y ago
      You think the laws of physics don't apply to software engineering?
      • maehwasu 9y ago
        They're not the fundamental constraint in work output differences. IQ/ability gaps matter way more than they do in programming than they do in construction work.
        • santoriv 9y ago
          Let's not forget that there are unions for highly skilled labor as well. When I was a classical musician I belonged to a very robust and very helpful musician's union. Everyone I know _always_ had a preference for union gigs as they usually paid better and ensured that you didn't have to deal with all sorts of nonsense from your employer (like rehearsals running overtime, not getting paid in a timely manner, blind auditions, etc). Professional classical musicians require a great deal more training (and talent) than programmers to get to the level where they can make a living doing it.
          • mcguire 9y ago
            Blind auditions are bad? I thought they would be preferred by the musicians.
            • santoriv 9y ago
  • xienze 9y ago
    I think the realistic among us realize that creating a software developer’s union would lead to dramatically increased offshoring. Actors, plumbers, etc.? Can’t offshore those, so the dynamic between workers and management is a little different. Software development, you can offshore the hell out of that. Shoot, look at automobile workers, granted there’s still a sizable amount in this country but nothing like it used to be — and I think unions had a lot to do with that (“we’re paying them how much? Just make em in Mexico”).
    • Apocryphon 9y ago
      Can you truly offshore the hell out of software developers? That was the big fear of the late '90s and '00s, but despite the rise of software salaries (and the knock on effects on the business expenses in Silicon Valley), that didn't seem to come to pass.
  • cookiecaper 9y ago
    Unions are romanticized a lot in the current culture, but we shouldn't just pretend that they're purely positive. The union is a middle man between the employee and the employer. Unions can and do extract dues, impose their own rules and stipulations, and add friction and bloat to employment. If you don't like the restrictions or the rates that have been negotiated, you have a lot less freedom to move around and do something about it. If you cross the union, well, good luck. I'm not trying to argue that unions are wholly bad either, but there's a trade-off to be had here. It's not as simple as "people dislike unions because they're too dumb to realize that they want one".
  • kelnos 9y ago
    My feeling is that a lot of knowledge workers look down on unionizing as a "blue collar thing" (ignoring the fact that actors, writers, orchestral musicians, etc. are all often in unions as well).
• ng12 9y ago
  Why do we need a union in a seller's market? If I'm unhappy with my job I can quit and get a new one in a week. It's not about being a knowledge worker. Screenwriters are unionized because there are many more people who want to write than there are gigs, therefore there's a high potential for abuse.
  • lr4444lr 9y ago
    For the sake of argument, you could ask for protected work hours, overtime, etc. I don't think we need it for this industry, mind you, but more so because there's no monopsony on the labor market from a select few large employers, not because of the supply and demand.
    • FussyZeus 9y ago
      Also don't forget it would make it much easier for individual engineers to argue back at Management about employing dark patterns, or directives to make apps/websites addictive and generally harmful. For as much as people like to gripe about LinkedIn and their variously deceptive practices, marketing heads and executives don't write code. There are engineers in there making that stuff happen.
      • ng12 9y ago
        Do you think that's because the developers lack power or it's because they don't really care?
        • s73ver_ 9y ago
          Some of both. I'd imagine those that cared enough, and felt confident enough in finding another job left, whereas those who weren't in such a position shut up about it.
      • paxy 9y ago
        What makes you think engineers are against these practices?
• e1ven 9y ago
  I've talked to people in the past who associate a union with factory work, and they don't feel like it applies to them. I sometimes point out that every movie star they've ever heard of is a member of a union. I think part of the problem comes from the decline in unions in the US over the last few decades. New industries aren't unionizing, and older unions are being undermined where possible.
  • ng12 9y ago
    The unions aren't for the A-list, they're for the struggling actors who would get paid minimum wage otherwise (or worse, you'd see a lot of "unpaid internships").
    • untog 9y ago
      Sure. But a lot of the A-list started as struggling actors. It helps everyone in the industry over the long run.
      • ng12 9y ago
        Right, but there are no struggling software engineers. Even college kids won't touch an internship for less than $20/hour, much less be forced to take a gig for "exposure".
        • geofft 9y ago
          Are the "struggling actors" actually unemployed, or just not getting the roles they want? I don't know many people in the industry who can't find a job in programming (that pays better than the LA Times pays their journalists), but I know lots of people who are struggling to find a good job that matches their skills more accurately than "can program" and helps their career, and also lots of people who have had trouble keeping a good job once found because of layoffs / inability to deal with bad management or bad coworkers other than quitting / etc.
          • 9y ago
• problems 9y ago
  I'm a programmer who's currently in a union position - I want out. I pay dues and get basically nothing for them, as developers we're generally in decent negotiating positions. Unions are great when you're not in that position, but just an extra cost when you are.
  • CogitoCogito 9y ago
    > I'm a programmer who's currently in a union position - I want out. Why not quit and find a non-union job?
  • geofft 9y ago
    I've always been in a fine negotiating position for pay, but I've never felt like I had any negotiating position for things like getting a cubicle or office instead of an open floor plan, getting IP rights to things I do in my spare time that are not related to my own job but related to something my employer is doing somewhere, running an interview process that doesn't suck for both candidates and interviewers, etc.
• elihu 9y ago
  I think a lot of people are worried that being part of a bad union would be worse than no union at all, and existing unions don't seem like an obvious fit for tech jobs. If there were a well-run union for tech workers that is responsive and accountable to its members and has a mission to negotiate in favor of goals that I share then I'd be interested in joining.
• backtoyoujim 9y ago
  that is a question for the The National Labor Relations Board. ask about the overtime thing, too
• neuland 9y ago
  I will quit from any employer that forces all programmers to negotiate as a unit, because I believe that compensation should be based purely on your individual skills and the market. I also believe that forced collective bargaining is unconstitutional, because it requires people to associate with a group that they don't want to associate with. If a group of people wish to collectively bargain with their employer, that's wonderful. But, they can leave me out of it, and I can do without whatever pay schedule and benefits they manage to extract from the employer. IMO the real issue with current law is that collective bargaining agreements must apply to all employees in a bargaining unit.
  • frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
    Except collective bargaining won't exist without that law. The free rider problem will destroy any possibility of collective bargaining. That's why I think it's disingenuous to say: If a group of people wish to collectively bargain with their employer, that's wonderful. But, they can leave me out of it, and I can do without whatever pay schedule and benefits they manage to extract from the employer. Well you can't really 'opt out' of the benefits of their negotiation in that way, and for the same reason you can't opt out of the union. You're not talking about a future with some unions where people can also choose to go it alone, you're talking about a future with no unions at all. At least be honest about that.
    • JoshTriplett 9y ago
      Not necessarily true. If enough people find the union valuable, believe in its aims, and want to participate in it, then the employer can't afford to lose or alienate the union employees, so the union has negotiating power (proportional to the employees that participate). If enough people don't find the union valuable, don't believe in its aims, and don't want to participate in it, then the union will correctly have less negotiating power because it represents fewer people. People should be free to voluntarily associate with groups that represent them and their interests.
      • neuland 9y ago
• pjmlp 9y ago
  Programmers have unions in some European countries, for example IG Metal in Germany.
• arca_vorago 9y ago
  I think the tech group that ought to unionize is sysadmins. We run the world yet get shit on by management left and right, and it's high time to take some of that power back. LOPSA is innefective and does nothing and doesn't count in my book. Of course unions in general have become what they were formed to prevent in many ways, and need massive amounts of reform internally themselves.
• kzrdude 9y ago
  Um what? I'm already in a union.
• ucaetano 9y ago
  > I thought this was interesting because if knowledge workers like journalists can do so, why not programmers, or what ever term you'd prefer to be called? Because unions have no standing across international borders.
• Apocryphon 9y ago
  Michael O. Church: "Software engineers aren't a privileged set. They're just less fucked than the rest of the U.S. Former Middle Class." https://www.quora.com/Why-do-software-engineers-make-so-much-With-so-many-students-pursuing-careers-in-software-engineering-today-do-you-see-salaries-going-down-significantly-in-the-future-If-so-by-how-much/answer/Michael-O-Church https://www.quora.com/Why-do-software-engineers-make-so-much...
• oh-kumudo 9y ago
  Because Programmers as a profession can be easily outsourced? Can't really think a profession, where location is as unimportant as programming. Union will drive employers away, which is a fact. To prevent this, there has to some regulation in place, where forbid employers to hire unlicensed programmers from doing programming job. Pretty much the whole programming culture will need to be overhauled for union to be a real option.
• j4ship 9y ago
  we cant come together on a frontend framework ... there are so many important things we do not agree on, programmers are very particular people , what is great for one , is crap for another. We are also anti group think, i dont want to be part of a frat , or a group or a union and I dont want to pay union dues. Unlike actors we are people that can think for ourselves and we like to be atonomous. Think of the idea of the 10x'er ... Even if you were a 3x'er wouldnt you not want to be mixed with a group of shitters ... basically programmers is a broad spectrum that many outside and some inside the industry really dont grasp ... hence why you say "or what ever term you'd prefer to be called' I prefer to be called employed , with clear terms that my employer enforces ... you can take your bureaucratic , middle man bs and shove it. Thats my opinion on unions , not you personally ... i just hate unions and all bureaucratic liberal constructs, its always a waste and hurts the hardest working becomes a corrupt group.
• yakitori 9y ago
  Most of the news industry is unionized. LA Times was an anomaly.