6 ms·

Why Most Software Engineers Lose Nothing by Unionizing

126 points by ern 8y ago

markbnj 8y ago
I am neither a principle engineer at a big "N" company, nor am I a high frequency trader, but I kind of hope I am not an "IT peon" either.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  Most likely you are from the view of your CEO.
  - markbnj 8y ago
    Most definitely not :).
- Avshalom 8y ago
  I mean I don't know your situation but "I kind of hope I am not an "IT peon" either" is exactly how people who do have bargaining power end up peons to people with more power and/or information.
  - markbnj 8y ago
    My sarcasm probably wasn't clear, but I am merely mocking the author's trichotomy.
    - Avshalom 8y ago
      ... implying that it is so fundamentally unsound that simply disagreeing with it counts as mockery. but again whatever evidence you may have in your individual situation: the belief that "I'm getting a good deal" is exactly how a mark gets conned.
      - markbnj 8y ago
        Of course it's fundamentally unsound. It's not even a reasonable abstraction for reality.
pm90 8y ago
The argument seems to be that: * 95 (no, sorry 99%) of Software Engineers are IT peons and * therefore don't lose much by unionizing; however * if you're one of the few lucky ones being recognized for what they do and making enough in compensation, don't bother It seems to me that the biggest problem in this theory is the first assumption is wrong (at least the numbers are wildly off). Most software engineers tend to be highly compensated, work in fairly independent teams, are recognized for their contributions so don't have much to gain from unionizing.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  A subset of software engineers work in the Bay Area, the rest do not and are not highly compensated. Therefore it makes sense for most software engineers to unionize and let the “highly compensated” fend for themselves. Besides software engineers, there are plenty of sysadmins, help desk folks, and other technology professionals outside of developers who are also not highly compensated who would benefit from unionizing along with software engineers who aren’t outliers.
  - krupan 8y ago
    I'm a software engineer not in the Bay Area. It's true that my salary is not as high as it could be in the Bay area, but for my location my colleagues and I are highly compensated. The fact is, relative to most of the world, all software engineers are outliers.
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      You are free to your opinion. I am of the opinion that there are enough IT professionals out there who are undercompensated and/or treated poorly that unionization isn’t only feasible, but a superior option for those workers. Do you work more than 40 hours a week consistently as a salaried employee and not compensated for that time? Wage theft. Are you on call and not compensated for being on call or when you have to respond outside of business hours? Wage theft. Software engineers are not the only category of IT worker. You believing you’re highly compensated does not mean others are, and does not negate their right to seek a more equitable labor arrangement. Feel free to stand aside while others fight for better working conditions for themselves and the majority of their peers. > The fact is, relative to most of the world, all software engineers are outliers. (Relative to most of the world, developed country workers are highly compensated; that is no excuse for allowing worker rights to be clawed backwards, unless you’re prepared to attempt to live in the first world on a third world income)
ptero 8y ago
I felt the article is underwhelming, to put it mildly. It drones on and on, seemingly repeating the same point. Under different guises article says that if you are a low-level code monkey with no freedom or an "IT peon" doing menial tasks, unionizing can give you job security (so you can be sure that you can keep doing those boring things forever) and maybe raise your salary, too. That is probably a true statement. But this setup is BORING. The article claims this setup describes 95% of software engineers and I think this is nonsense. IMO at least half of the software engineers either have some project freedom and can pretty easily switch employers if they find themselves under abusive management. And this could be at risk if unionized: no firing often means greatly reduced hiring, too. Please count me out. My 2c.
krupan 8y ago
What a dismal picture the author paints of our world: "most software engineers are low-status workers whose jobs their bosses would gladly ship overseas, and who live under the surveillance described above. They’ll be fired as soon as their performance dips, or a cheaper worker comes on the market, or they piss the wrong person off. The adversarial climate exists. Again, nothing to lose." What world is this author living in? Maybe 10 years ago, maybe, a lot of software jobs were like this. Everything I've experienced lately is that companies can't hire enough software engineers. You are not going to be fired if your performance dips a little. You are too hard to replace. Interestingly, this is very similar to the situation that Paul Graham described here: http://www.paulgraham.com/unions.html http://www.paulgraham.com/unions.html I mean really this whole post basically says, "unions kinda suck, but your job already kinda sucks, so why not try a union?" How...inspiring? Honestly, if you really feel that down about your career a union isn't going to fix it. It's probably time to try a different field.
- StephenAmar 8y ago
  Classic mchurch. He's had bad experiences with some companies in the bay area. You can read his (many) rants about Google for instance.
  - murderfs 8y ago
    It turns out that if you spend all of your time at work posting on mailing lists about your T7-9 vision instead of actually doing your work, your performance reviews suffer. Who would have thought?
    - meowface 8y ago
      Creating at least 45 Wikipedia sockpuppet accounts [1] probably doesn't correlate with optimal performance, either. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Suspected_Wikipedia_sockpuppets_of_Mike_Church https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Suspected_Wikipedia_s...
- manigandham 8y ago
chrisco255 8y ago
Unionization doesn't work well in high tech because traditionally the industry has changed so fast that a union would torpedo any company that fully embraced them. I think the tech industry also has among the most relaxed, easy going environments with some of the best perks.
- bjourne 8y ago
  Wait until you hit the far side of 40.
exabrial 8y ago
No we lose fking everything. I just spent an evening to an electrician in his second year, excited the electrical union his giving him 8 whole days of vacation. His pay increases are on a fixed scale. And because senior members of the union are unemployed if he loses his job, those guys get hired first. And if you're unemployed and you take a non union sideproject you're moved to the back of the bus. Run far far away from unionization.
nkurz 8y ago
Meta: This article has been flagged a few times. Could those who are flagging it explain why they feel it is inappropriate for this site?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- s17n 8y ago
  Could be that the author is a well known crank?
  - manigandham 8y ago
    That alone is irrelevant to the content and sets a bad precedent for this site.
    - pvg 8y ago
      It's often fairly relevant who has produced some piece of content. But if you want to go purely by content, you'd probably also conclude the author is either unserious or a crank. A post that is ostensibly about unionization suddenly addresses the reader so: Real talk: that meth-addicted, drunk scumbag does not care one whit for your pretty face, buddy. And this is merely the beginning of a multi-paragraph digression that is some heady melange of fantasy and humble-brag about how the author knows kung fu.
- jf- 8y ago
  This article has now been flagged, killed, resurrected and is now flagged again. It seems there's a core group who really hate it and don't want it discussed.
- clouddrover 8y ago
  A good addition to the Hacker News platform would be a requirement to provide justifications for flagging an article and make them visible to all users. That way we wouldn't have to speculate (though I'm sure there'd still be speculation on if the stated reasons are the "true" reasons).
wildfray 8y ago
I’ve actually been in this exact situation quite a few times. I finally found a safe space to work where I’ve been able to prove to myself that I actually am a skilled developer. PIPs have no appeal process. Many developers are forced to work on menial bugs while simultaneously being promised more freedom “soon”. Every company is constantly hiring because every company has drastically high turnover. Burnout is a very real thing in the field, and it shouldn’t be considered the norm.
Cyclone_ 8y ago
"If you’re the typical, low-status, open-plan programmer, forced to interview for his own job every morning in “Daily Scrum”, then all the bad things that unions can bring have already happened at your job" Seems like a rather cynical take.
dirtyoldmick 8y ago
except their jobs
Nasrudith 8y ago
Personally I think that if organized labor is to have a chance to be remotely successful in Software engineering it needs to break away from the old assumptions that don't hold any more including commoditization. They might have some luck if they established sufficient ground floors (limiting crunch time and death marches, setting rules for what they can be expected to be required for late changes - bonuses for rushes being fine, etc.) instead of uniformity. I am not familiar with the fine details of labor but I suspect the Screen Actors Guild would be a better fit as a template. The actors are anywhere from minor extras to superstars.
- briandear 8y ago
  Totally agree. While I am traditionally anti-union (I have seen too many rubber-room situations and ridiculousness,) SAG or the WGA are actually good models for software engineers. It recognizes minimums, but doesn’t have maximums and “merit” is determined by whatever the market is willing to pay. So a superstar first time writer can make millions of their script warrants it, while journeyman script re-writes are assured getting paid scale. The teachers unions are exactly the opposite: you get more pay for seniority and the implication is that seniority necessarily means “more valuable” when that isn’t necessarily the case. Although I am economically very far right, I could get behind a WGA model for software devs. I would be happy to join such an organization. But a teachers union style union.. no way.
matchagaucho 8y ago
There are many good reasons to unionize, but aligning the argument with Jira and daily standups may not carry much weight. The #1 reason is that HR no longer represents the best interests of employees. They serve to protect the company, leaving employees with zero representation.
jknoepfler 8y ago
a highly professionalized industry in which individuals have massive bargaining power and draw gigantic salaries, where furthermore we culturally are able to open source parts of the means of production (engineers have unprecedented levels of ownership over the fate of their labor) is literally the last place I would think to unionize. color me naive, though.
- heyjudy 8y ago
  You're probably right. It's janitors and other low-skill/low-pay workers who need and benefit from unionization most because I've seen the results of union-busting environments: janitors working 16 hours a day without benefits and living in their cars.
jellicle 8y ago
> And, if you work in a federally-funded research lab that pays for your graduate education, and that allows you to publish papers, attend conferences, and perform original research on working time, then you probably don’t need a union. These research labs are mostly unionized. That's why they have good benefits, working conditions, etc.
heyjudy 8y ago
It's unfortunate most IT/engineering people buy into anti-union propaganda blindly. The fact is that organized labor, for better or worse, equals fairer pay than anarcho-capitalist gratituity. See also: Robert Reich, Richard Wolff.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
bhawks 8y ago
As a child of two union parents and married to a union worker, it is clear to me that the only contact the author has had with unions is in his dreams. Unions constantly have to deal with internal corruption (and often don't...). The seniority system is much more arbitrary than anything approximating meritocracy. Better hope that you've saved enough if/when the union decides to strike because you are going to have to suck it up even if you don't think it's worth it. You better buy in to all the politics your union supports because your dues go to it. Enjoy watching the union protect the most incompetent worker who will go on to put lives at risk with his drinking problem. Just don't count on the union going to bat for you against the company, if they don't like you they'll hang to out to dry. The author is out of his depth.
- bhawks 8y ago
  Disappointed but not surprised that folks are down voting instead of replying. The unionization discussion focuses way too much around compensation instead of on union-employee relations. People just assume unions are all roses in this department (the author likens them to some street fighting Batman) when in reality they're flawed and have incentives that work against workers too. If you don't think there's nepotism and favoritism in unions then you've probably never worked in one. Unions pick and choose the workers they stand up for, it's not some romantic all for one and one for all story. In my experience you should trust the union just about as much as hr or management. If you're not on the same side as them in whatever issue, watch your back.
  - bjourne 8y ago
    The "As a child of two union parents ..." argument in relation to unionization is the equivalent of the "As a mom of two children ..." argument in relation to child psychology. I also have two parents who are members of a union but that doesn't make me an expert!
    - yellowapple 8y ago
      Perhaps not, but it does give you exposure to a wealth of first-hand information. I don't think the mother-of-two-children's opinion is worthless relative to a child psychologist, either; both have insights that are valuable in different ways.
awinter-py 8y ago
Pessimistic = realistic here. Companies manage knowledge workers like they're fred winslow taylor and it's 1930. Managers & ed policy wonks are both trying to make programming blue collar (though for different reasons). Nobody knows how the next recession will affect programmers. If adtech collapses will compensation follow? Why aren't more companies using offshore tech labor? Can't comment on the union stuff but we should be wary of thinking devs are exceptional. Expensive labor isn't always valuable labor; as detroit learned in the 80s.
- erik_seaberg 8y ago
  I was involved in a few outsourcing attempts. If you write a big check for a no-name company under a different legal system, you're going to get ripped off mercilessly ("deliverables" that don't even compile). If you open a serious branch office and interview and hire a team of your own, you might have a chance.
  - matwood 8y ago
    Don’t forget, and pay properly. Even places that are cheaper than the US are highly competitive for quality workers. For many companies it’s less hassle and overall TCO cheaper to hire in the US.
jf- 8y ago
Software developers will be non-unionised until there are so many of us that supply outpaces demand. Then we’ll form cartels to demand better pay and conditions, much like everyone else.
username90 8y ago
Unions are usually equivalent to non poaching agreements, they set a price and most companies agrees to not pay significantly above that while most workers agrees to not work if they are paid significantly below that. It ensures that everyone is paid a mediocre salary, so if you want American engineer salaries to look like European ones start a union!
elihu 8y ago
One of the problems that most unions try to address is that companies will often fire employees for union organizing if they can get away with it (generally they can make up some secondary excuse, like poor performance). In some unions, firing happens by seniority; the company can only fire employees in the reverse order they joined. In software development, we obviously don't want to have to work with under-performing coworkers, so we need some way to remove those people that isn't based on seniority. If it can't be at management's discretion either, then what's a good solution? I think one answer may be to have a union-negotiated peer-review process -- you can be laid off or fired if your coworkers don't vouch for your work, or consider you indispensable. Depending on the process, this could work okay or it could be awful. At best, it would seem to encourage a sort of Lord-of-the-Flies atmosphere and some unpleasant office politics. Another approach would be market-based. Maybe projects within the company are allocated some sort of virtual currency units which can be claimed by employees when they finish units of work. Employees with a surplus of currency units but not enough time to finish their tasks by themselves can put bounties on subtasks. Worker's pay should be proportional to their credit surplus; if it's not, they can have their pay reduced or they could be asked to leave. This would less political and less personal, but working out the details could be tricky and it doesn't address the problem of highly productive people that no one wants to work with because they treat people badly. I expect there are other possible solutions. How does the Screen Actor's Guild, and screenwriter's and athletic unions deal with this problem?
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > In some unions, firing happens by seniority; the company can only fire employees in the reverse order they joined. No unions prohibit individual firing for cause (though they tend to require process for it); union contracts may require layoffs to be conducted by seniority, and companies not covered by union contracts may use allocation of what is notionally a not-for-individual cause layoff as a PR cover for targeted firings, but it is simply not the case that union contracts (at least commonly) require firing by seniority.
  - elihu 8y ago
    Thanks for the clarification.
stmfreak 8y ago
Unions were great for workers at one point. But for the majority of my life, they seem to have taken worker’s rights to the point that it is consistently enticing for CEOs to at least attempt to offshore huge amounts of jobs. No matter how terrible the results, they keep trying because unions kill companies in the USA. I would like to avoid that happening to software jobs.

126 points by ern 8y ago

I am neither a principle engineer at a big "N" company, nor am I a high frequency trader, but I kind of hope I am not an "IT peon" either.

maxxxxx 8y ago
Most likely you are from the view of your CEO.
- markbnj 8y ago
  Most definitely not :).
Avshalom 8y ago
I mean I don't know your situation but "I kind of hope I am not an "IT peon" either" is exactly how people who do have bargaining power end up peons to people with more power and/or information.
- markbnj 8y ago
  My sarcasm probably wasn't clear, but I am merely mocking the author's trichotomy.
  - Avshalom 8y ago
    ... implying that it is so fundamentally unsound that simply disagreeing with it counts as mockery. but again whatever evidence you may have in your individual situation: the belief that "I'm getting a good deal" is exactly how a mark gets conned.
    - markbnj 8y ago
      Of course it's fundamentally unsound. It's not even a reasonable abstraction for reality.

pm90 8y ago

The argument seems to be that: * 95 (no, sorry 99%) of Software Engineers are IT peons and * therefore don't lose much by unionizing; however * if you're one of the few lucky ones being recognized for what they do and making enough in compensation, don't bother It seems to me that the biggest problem in this theory is the first assumption is wrong (at least the numbers are wildly off). Most software engineers tend to be highly compensated, work in fairly independent teams, are recognized for their contributions so don't have much to gain from unionizing.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
A subset of software engineers work in the Bay Area, the rest do not and are not highly compensated. Therefore it makes sense for most software engineers to unionize and let the “highly compensated” fend for themselves. Besides software engineers, there are plenty of sysadmins, help desk folks, and other technology professionals outside of developers who are also not highly compensated who would benefit from unionizing along with software engineers who aren’t outliers.
- krupan 8y ago
  I'm a software engineer not in the Bay Area. It's true that my salary is not as high as it could be in the Bay area, but for my location my colleagues and I are highly compensated. The fact is, relative to most of the world, all software engineers are outliers.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    You are free to your opinion. I am of the opinion that there are enough IT professionals out there who are undercompensated and/or treated poorly that unionization isn’t only feasible, but a superior option for those workers. Do you work more than 40 hours a week consistently as a salaried employee and not compensated for that time? Wage theft. Are you on call and not compensated for being on call or when you have to respond outside of business hours? Wage theft. Software engineers are not the only category of IT worker. You believing you’re highly compensated does not mean others are, and does not negate their right to seek a more equitable labor arrangement. Feel free to stand aside while others fight for better working conditions for themselves and the majority of their peers. > The fact is, relative to most of the world, all software engineers are outliers. (Relative to most of the world, developed country workers are highly compensated; that is no excuse for allowing worker rights to be clawed backwards, unless you’re prepared to attempt to live in the first world on a third world income)

ptero 8y ago

I felt the article is underwhelming, to put it mildly. It drones on and on, seemingly repeating the same point. Under different guises article says that if you are a low-level code monkey with no freedom or an "IT peon" doing menial tasks, unionizing can give you job security (so you can be sure that you can keep doing those boring things forever) and maybe raise your salary, too. That is probably a true statement. But this setup is BORING. The article claims this setup describes 95% of software engineers and I think this is nonsense. IMO at least half of the software engineers either have some project freedom and can pretty easily switch employers if they find themselves under abusive management. And this could be at risk if unionized: no firing often means greatly reduced hiring, too. Please count me out. My 2c.

krupan 8y ago

What a dismal picture the author paints of our world: "most software engineers are low-status workers whose jobs their bosses would gladly ship overseas, and who live under the surveillance described above. They’ll be fired as soon as their performance dips, or a cheaper worker comes on the market, or they piss the wrong person off. The adversarial climate exists. Again, nothing to lose." What world is this author living in? Maybe 10 years ago, maybe, a lot of software jobs were like this. Everything I've experienced lately is that companies can't hire enough software engineers. You are not going to be fired if your performance dips a little. You are too hard to replace. Interestingly, this is very similar to the situation that Paul Graham described here: http://www.paulgraham.com/unions.html http://www.paulgraham.com/unions.html I mean really this whole post basically says, "unions kinda suck, but your job already kinda sucks, so why not try a union?" How...inspiring? Honestly, if you really feel that down about your career a union isn't going to fix it. It's probably time to try a different field.

StephenAmar 8y ago
Classic mchurch. He's had bad experiences with some companies in the bay area. You can read his (many) rants about Google for instance.
- murderfs 8y ago
  It turns out that if you spend all of your time at work posting on mailing lists about your T7-9 vision instead of actually doing your work, your performance reviews suffer. Who would have thought?
  - meowface 8y ago
    Creating at least 45 Wikipedia sockpuppet accounts [1] probably doesn't correlate with optimal performance, either. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Suspected_Wikipedia_sockpuppets_of_Mike_Church https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Suspected_Wikipedia_s...
manigandham 8y ago

chrisco255 8y ago

Unionization doesn't work well in high tech because traditionally the industry has changed so fast that a union would torpedo any company that fully embraced them. I think the tech industry also has among the most relaxed, easy going environments with some of the best perks.

bjourne 8y ago
Wait until you hit the far side of 40.

exabrial 8y ago

No we lose fking everything. I just spent an evening to an electrician in his second year, excited the electrical union his giving him 8 whole days of vacation. His pay increases are on a fixed scale. And because senior members of the union are unemployed if he loses his job, those guys get hired first. And if you're unemployed and you take a non union sideproject you're moved to the back of the bus. Run far far away from unionization.

nkurz 8y ago

Meta: This article has been flagged a few times. Could those who are flagging it explain why they feel it is inappropriate for this site?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
s17n 8y ago
Could be that the author is a well known crank?
- manigandham 8y ago
  That alone is irrelevant to the content and sets a bad precedent for this site.
  - pvg 8y ago
    It's often fairly relevant who has produced some piece of content. But if you want to go purely by content, you'd probably also conclude the author is either unserious or a crank. A post that is ostensibly about unionization suddenly addresses the reader so: Real talk: that meth-addicted, drunk scumbag does not care one whit for your pretty face, buddy. And this is merely the beginning of a multi-paragraph digression that is some heady melange of fantasy and humble-brag about how the author knows kung fu.
jf- 8y ago
This article has now been flagged, killed, resurrected and is now flagged again. It seems there's a core group who really hate it and don't want it discussed.
clouddrover 8y ago
A good addition to the Hacker News platform would be a requirement to provide justifications for flagging an article and make them visible to all users. That way we wouldn't have to speculate (though I'm sure there'd still be speculation on if the stated reasons are the "true" reasons).

wildfray 8y ago

I’ve actually been in this exact situation quite a few times. I finally found a safe space to work where I’ve been able to prove to myself that I actually am a skilled developer. PIPs have no appeal process. Many developers are forced to work on menial bugs while simultaneously being promised more freedom “soon”. Every company is constantly hiring because every company has drastically high turnover. Burnout is a very real thing in the field, and it shouldn’t be considered the norm.

Cyclone_ 8y ago

"If you’re the typical, low-status, open-plan programmer, forced to interview for his own job every morning in “Daily Scrum”, then all the bad things that unions can bring have already happened at your job" Seems like a rather cynical take.

dirtyoldmick 8y ago

except their jobs

Nasrudith 8y ago

Personally I think that if organized labor is to have a chance to be remotely successful in Software engineering it needs to break away from the old assumptions that don't hold any more including commoditization. They might have some luck if they established sufficient ground floors (limiting crunch time and death marches, setting rules for what they can be expected to be required for late changes - bonuses for rushes being fine, etc.) instead of uniformity. I am not familiar with the fine details of labor but I suspect the Screen Actors Guild would be a better fit as a template. The actors are anywhere from minor extras to superstars.

briandear 8y ago
Totally agree. While I am traditionally anti-union (I have seen too many rubber-room situations and ridiculousness,) SAG or the WGA are actually good models for software engineers. It recognizes minimums, but doesn’t have maximums and “merit” is determined by whatever the market is willing to pay. So a superstar first time writer can make millions of their script warrants it, while journeyman script re-writes are assured getting paid scale. The teachers unions are exactly the opposite: you get more pay for seniority and the implication is that seniority necessarily means “more valuable” when that isn’t necessarily the case. Although I am economically very far right, I could get behind a WGA model for software devs. I would be happy to join such an organization. But a teachers union style union.. no way.

matchagaucho 8y ago

There are many good reasons to unionize, but aligning the argument with Jira and daily standups may not carry much weight. The #1 reason is that HR no longer represents the best interests of employees. They serve to protect the company, leaving employees with zero representation.

jknoepfler 8y ago

a highly professionalized industry in which individuals have massive bargaining power and draw gigantic salaries, where furthermore we culturally are able to open source parts of the means of production (engineers have unprecedented levels of ownership over the fate of their labor) is literally the last place I would think to unionize. color me naive, though.

heyjudy 8y ago
You're probably right. It's janitors and other low-skill/low-pay workers who need and benefit from unionization most because I've seen the results of union-busting environments: janitors working 16 hours a day without benefits and living in their cars.

jellicle 8y ago

> And, if you work in a federally-funded research lab that pays for your graduate education, and that allows you to publish papers, attend conferences, and perform original research on working time, then you probably don’t need a union. These research labs are mostly unionized. That's why they have good benefits, working conditions, etc.

heyjudy 8y ago

It's unfortunate most IT/engineering people buy into anti-union propaganda blindly. The fact is that organized labor, for better or worse, equals fairer pay than anarcho-capitalist gratituity. See also: Robert Reich, Richard Wolff.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

bhawks 8y ago

As a child of two union parents and married to a union worker, it is clear to me that the only contact the author has had with unions is in his dreams. Unions constantly have to deal with internal corruption (and often don't...). The seniority system is much more arbitrary than anything approximating meritocracy. Better hope that you've saved enough if/when the union decides to strike because you are going to have to suck it up even if you don't think it's worth it. You better buy in to all the politics your union supports because your dues go to it. Enjoy watching the union protect the most incompetent worker who will go on to put lives at risk with his drinking problem. Just don't count on the union going to bat for you against the company, if they don't like you they'll hang to out to dry. The author is out of his depth.

bhawks 8y ago
Disappointed but not surprised that folks are down voting instead of replying. The unionization discussion focuses way too much around compensation instead of on union-employee relations. People just assume unions are all roses in this department (the author likens them to some street fighting Batman) when in reality they're flawed and have incentives that work against workers too. If you don't think there's nepotism and favoritism in unions then you've probably never worked in one. Unions pick and choose the workers they stand up for, it's not some romantic all for one and one for all story. In my experience you should trust the union just about as much as hr or management. If you're not on the same side as them in whatever issue, watch your back.
- bjourne 8y ago
  The "As a child of two union parents ..." argument in relation to unionization is the equivalent of the "As a mom of two children ..." argument in relation to child psychology. I also have two parents who are members of a union but that doesn't make me an expert!
  - yellowapple 8y ago
    Perhaps not, but it does give you exposure to a wealth of first-hand information. I don't think the mother-of-two-children's opinion is worthless relative to a child psychologist, either; both have insights that are valuable in different ways.

awinter-py 8y ago

Pessimistic = realistic here. Companies manage knowledge workers like they're fred winslow taylor and it's 1930. Managers & ed policy wonks are both trying to make programming blue collar (though for different reasons). Nobody knows how the next recession will affect programmers. If adtech collapses will compensation follow? Why aren't more companies using offshore tech labor? Can't comment on the union stuff but we should be wary of thinking devs are exceptional. Expensive labor isn't always valuable labor; as detroit learned in the 80s.

erik_seaberg 8y ago
I was involved in a few outsourcing attempts. If you write a big check for a no-name company under a different legal system, you're going to get ripped off mercilessly ("deliverables" that don't even compile). If you open a serious branch office and interview and hire a team of your own, you might have a chance.
- matwood 8y ago
  Don’t forget, and pay properly. Even places that are cheaper than the US are highly competitive for quality workers. For many companies it’s less hassle and overall TCO cheaper to hire in the US.

jf- 8y ago

Software developers will be non-unionised until there are so many of us that supply outpaces demand. Then we’ll form cartels to demand better pay and conditions, much like everyone else.

username90 8y ago

Unions are usually equivalent to non poaching agreements, they set a price and most companies agrees to not pay significantly above that while most workers agrees to not work if they are paid significantly below that. It ensures that everyone is paid a mediocre salary, so if you want American engineer salaries to look like European ones start a union!

elihu 8y ago

One of the problems that most unions try to address is that companies will often fire employees for union organizing if they can get away with it (generally they can make up some secondary excuse, like poor performance). In some unions, firing happens by seniority; the company can only fire employees in the reverse order they joined. In software development, we obviously don't want to have to work with under-performing coworkers, so we need some way to remove those people that isn't based on seniority. If it can't be at management's discretion either, then what's a good solution? I think one answer may be to have a union-negotiated peer-review process -- you can be laid off or fired if your coworkers don't vouch for your work, or consider you indispensable. Depending on the process, this could work okay or it could be awful. At best, it would seem to encourage a sort of Lord-of-the-Flies atmosphere and some unpleasant office politics. Another approach would be market-based. Maybe projects within the company are allocated some sort of virtual currency units which can be claimed by employees when they finish units of work. Employees with a surplus of currency units but not enough time to finish their tasks by themselves can put bounties on subtasks. Worker's pay should be proportional to their credit surplus; if it's not, they can have their pay reduced or they could be asked to leave. This would less political and less personal, but working out the details could be tricky and it doesn't address the problem of highly productive people that no one wants to work with because they treat people badly. I expect there are other possible solutions. How does the Screen Actor's Guild, and screenwriter's and athletic unions deal with this problem?

dragonwriter 8y ago
> In some unions, firing happens by seniority; the company can only fire employees in the reverse order they joined. No unions prohibit individual firing for cause (though they tend to require process for it); union contracts may require layoffs to be conducted by seniority, and companies not covered by union contracts may use allocation of what is notionally a not-for-individual cause layoff as a PR cover for targeted firings, but it is simply not the case that union contracts (at least commonly) require firing by seniority.
- elihu 8y ago
  Thanks for the clarification.

stmfreak 8y ago

Unions were great for workers at one point. But for the majority of my life, they seem to have taken worker’s rights to the point that it is consistently enticing for CEOs to at least attempt to offshore huge amounts of jobs. No matter how terrible the results, they keep trying because unions kill companies in the USA. I would like to avoid that happening to software jobs.