7 ms·

Not sure why people are opposed to unions in software dev - the basic function of a union is to equalise the power imbalance between employer and employee. Now

Not sure why people are opposed to unions in software dev - the basic function of a union is to equalise the power imbalance between employer and employee. Now, people who question the need for unions in dev, I understand where they're coming from. Software development is rather unusual in its lack of unionization, and IMO, that's because no-one has properly figured out how to commoditise our labour yet. We're the modern equivalent of medieval guilds of craftsmen - we get paid far above the median precisely because we can't yet be commoditized or automated. Yet. IOW The lack of a need for unionization in developers shows how lucky we are.

wiz21c 8y ago
spot on
fucking_tragedy 8y ago
Labor is increasingly commoditized in software development. Compensation has not kept up with increases in CoL expenses, productivity and profits over the last decade.
carlmr 8y ago
Most people that work in trades can't be automated yet either (at least at a reasonable price). Commoditization is kind of difficult to imagine for what is essentially general problem solving (which is what software development essentially is). Some are just better at it than others.
simonh 8y ago
There is an alternative to unionisation, in the form of professionalisation and certification much like doctors, accountants, legal professionals, surveyors, etc. Its not the same thing, but ends up having similar effects through professional associations. Basically posh unions. The British Computer Society could become something like that over here, I suppose. One route towards that might be people int he games industry here joining say the BCS en-masse and pushing it in that direction. I'm not even sure the BCS, on the whole anyway, would resist such a move.
- AndrewDucker 8y ago
  In the UK the BMA _is_ a union for doctors.
  - simonh 8y ago
    And the Royal College of Nurses for Nurses, my wife is a member. Both organisations are publicly perceived more as 'professional associations' though and have more cachet than trades unions usually do. Both have the Queen as their royal patron. they also both have a very active role in promoting best practice and professional development. That's the sort of angle I'd go for. Organise coding camps and conferences, provide guidance on professional development, establish an online library, promote certifications. Make it a useful resource, not just a campaigning outfit. To get traction it needs to have a credible claim to provide value to employers as well as employees. If an employer does respect their employees, values them and wants to attract valuable talent, they should see this organisation's activities as complementing their own goals more than they clash with them. That's the sweet spot to aim for. It is a tricky thing to pull off though.
  - jphoward 8y ago
    And possibly the most unpopular union in the UK, too. I've parted ways with them, as have most of my friends. It's not because I disagree with their decisions, as much as they are completely impotent. I do empathise; the BMA are stuck between a rock and a hard place, in that their members want better work conditions, pay rises that actually match inflation (shock horror), but the government just say no. The difference between the other unions and the BMA, though, is the BMA go back to their members and say "the government said no, sorry", whilst the others say "so be it", and the strikes commence. I'm not quite sure how I'd improve the situation if I was a BMA representative; it's complex. However, there is literally no reason currently to pay the membership fee.
    - ck425 8y ago
      Didn't junior doctors go on a record long strike recently. I was under the impression that the BMA took a reasonable amount of action.
Shivetya 8y ago
okay, regardless of my views on unions, contracts between unions and employers do not prevent lay offs. they would determine the order of who gets laid off in most cases but they don't prevent them. lower wage earners covered by unions generally don't see the level of service the true blue collar sees. plus there are many positions in this layoff that may never have qualified for participation in any union. unionization won't fix the game industry
xDest 8y ago
The layoffs in this case are not happening in software development but in sales and administration.
jasonkester 8y ago
the basic function of a union is to equalise the power imbalance between employer and employee. ... which is why good developers are so against unions. The power balance is so skewed in the direction of the employee in the software industry that it would be insane to throw that away and form unions. The industry would be happy to pay us all 70k a year with 3% raises based on seniority, and sure, maybe the bottom third of the talent pool would benefit from that. But the rest of us would see tens of millions of dollars chopped off of our expected lifetime income.
- purity_resigns 8y ago
  > The power balance is so skewed in the direction of the employee in the software industry Maybe for the folks at the very top, the Rockstars of yore. Bloomberg ran this yesterday. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-11/apple-black-site-gives-contractors-few-perks-little-security https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-11/apple-bla... At least in Germany, there are quite a few EU local body shops pushing the power balance in employers' favor.
  - thedufer 8y ago
    I did not get the feeling that the Bloomberg piece was about devs. Did I miss something? They specifically called out Apple Maps, which requires a lot of data cleaning.
    - purity_resigns 8y ago
      In the US, maybe contractor/body shops are rarer around dev work? Mostly around the Department of Defense. My point was that employers' ability to pull in lots of short term employees weakens their negotiating power. At least in Germany.
      - singhrac 8y ago
        I think the point of the parent comment is that we're discussing software engineers, who certainly have a different negotiating power than the (presumably nonengineering) contractors mentioned in the article.
Spooky23 8y ago
Tech is boom bust, and nobody ever sees the boom end. The problem is that large segments of the workforce have a relatively short shelf-life.
dleslie 8y ago
Look at the credits for many major AAA titles and you'll see that a huge amount of work is done overseas in asset factories. Talent is a commodity. Automation is here and has been for quite some time. The skill required to produce assets and code for games has fallen through the floor thanks to good tools that do much of the heavy lifting. Games was never lucrative for the lowely employees, and it's certainly not going to be in the future.
Cthulhu_ 8y ago
Right now for software development as a whole, unionization isn't necessary - we (if I'm allowed to speak for others) aren't exploited, forced to work 80+ hours / week, underpaid, etc. Generally speaking. Game development however is a whole different ball game. The problem with game development is that there's a TON of people that would love to do it (because they love games), which makes for an easily exploitable labor force. Don't want to work 80 hours / week? Fine, everyone else does, and there's ten others that would love your job. Of course, this is about the US which is also lacking in basic employee protection laws. The US is teeming with active cases of slavery (prison workers, unpaid overtime, sub-minimum wage payment to be stipended with tips, easy to fire people at very short notice without any compensation, etc), and no unions are around anymore to stand up for it - because companies can afford to fire anyone trying to, and there's plenty of desperate people to fill in the ranks. Free market.
- notSupplied 8y ago
  Yeah you can't have a conversation about unions without also mentioning the state of labor laws in the US, which are far behind those in of the EU. The things that I believe in: minimum wage, overtime pay for anyone below a director-level salary, healthcare benefits if working more than X hours per week, are all accomplishable legislatively, as have been done in Europe. Doing so has the added benefit helping every industry at once, not just the ones organized enough to unionize. There are also things I DON'T want: Unions fighting for job security of the lowest performers, making it nearly impossible to fire for incompetence or conduct layoff when the business struggling. I believe employment should compensate fairly...but fundamentally at-will. I'm also not a fan of the element of coercion in American unions--that if sufficient people unionize in your company, your employer will become union exclusive and you MUST join the union or leave your job.
bliblah 8y ago
It's quite simple. The people with most influence and income feel like they have nothing to gain from unionizations and feel that regulations would only stifle their livelihoods. I know plenty of people that are making 6 figure salaries and simply can not relate to the plight of the average employee.
tivert 8y ago
> Not sure why people are opposed to unions in software dev - the basic function of a union is to equalise the power imbalance between employer and employee. That's a good question. It may have something to do with the solitary nature of the work encouraging an individualistic attitude and a predilection for mechanistic ideologies (like those focused market economics, any of which have strong anti-union streak). Startup success stories may also prime developers to think of themselves as future business owners rather than as life-long workers.

wiz21c 8y ago

spot on

fucking_tragedy 8y ago

Labor is increasingly commoditized in software development. Compensation has not kept up with increases in CoL expenses, productivity and profits over the last decade.

carlmr 8y ago

Most people that work in trades can't be automated yet either (at least at a reasonable price). Commoditization is kind of difficult to imagine for what is essentially general problem solving (which is what software development essentially is). Some are just better at it than others.

simonh 8y ago

There is an alternative to unionisation, in the form of professionalisation and certification much like doctors, accountants, legal professionals, surveyors, etc. Its not the same thing, but ends up having similar effects through professional associations. Basically posh unions. The British Computer Society could become something like that over here, I suppose. One route towards that might be people int he games industry here joining say the BCS en-masse and pushing it in that direction. I'm not even sure the BCS, on the whole anyway, would resist such a move.

AndrewDucker 8y ago
In the UK the BMA _is_ a union for doctors.
- simonh 8y ago
  And the Royal College of Nurses for Nurses, my wife is a member. Both organisations are publicly perceived more as 'professional associations' though and have more cachet than trades unions usually do. Both have the Queen as their royal patron. they also both have a very active role in promoting best practice and professional development. That's the sort of angle I'd go for. Organise coding camps and conferences, provide guidance on professional development, establish an online library, promote certifications. Make it a useful resource, not just a campaigning outfit. To get traction it needs to have a credible claim to provide value to employers as well as employees. If an employer does respect their employees, values them and wants to attract valuable talent, they should see this organisation's activities as complementing their own goals more than they clash with them. That's the sweet spot to aim for. It is a tricky thing to pull off though.
- jphoward 8y ago
  And possibly the most unpopular union in the UK, too. I've parted ways with them, as have most of my friends. It's not because I disagree with their decisions, as much as they are completely impotent. I do empathise; the BMA are stuck between a rock and a hard place, in that their members want better work conditions, pay rises that actually match inflation (shock horror), but the government just say no. The difference between the other unions and the BMA, though, is the BMA go back to their members and say "the government said no, sorry", whilst the others say "so be it", and the strikes commence. I'm not quite sure how I'd improve the situation if I was a BMA representative; it's complex. However, there is literally no reason currently to pay the membership fee.
  - ck425 8y ago
    Didn't junior doctors go on a record long strike recently. I was under the impression that the BMA took a reasonable amount of action.

Shivetya 8y ago

okay, regardless of my views on unions, contracts between unions and employers do not prevent lay offs. they would determine the order of who gets laid off in most cases but they don't prevent them. lower wage earners covered by unions generally don't see the level of service the true blue collar sees. plus there are many positions in this layoff that may never have qualified for participation in any union. unionization won't fix the game industry

xDest 8y ago

The layoffs in this case are not happening in software development but in sales and administration.

jasonkester 8y ago

the basic function of a union is to equalise the power imbalance between employer and employee. ... which is why good developers are so against unions. The power balance is so skewed in the direction of the employee in the software industry that it would be insane to throw that away and form unions. The industry would be happy to pay us all 70k a year with 3% raises based on seniority, and sure, maybe the bottom third of the talent pool would benefit from that. But the rest of us would see tens of millions of dollars chopped off of our expected lifetime income.

purity_resigns 8y ago
> The power balance is so skewed in the direction of the employee in the software industry Maybe for the folks at the very top, the Rockstars of yore. Bloomberg ran this yesterday. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-11/apple-black-site-gives-contractors-few-perks-little-security https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-11/apple-bla... At least in Germany, there are quite a few EU local body shops pushing the power balance in employers' favor.
- thedufer 8y ago
  I did not get the feeling that the Bloomberg piece was about devs. Did I miss something? They specifically called out Apple Maps, which requires a lot of data cleaning.
  - purity_resigns 8y ago
    In the US, maybe contractor/body shops are rarer around dev work? Mostly around the Department of Defense. My point was that employers' ability to pull in lots of short term employees weakens their negotiating power. At least in Germany.
    - singhrac 8y ago
      I think the point of the parent comment is that we're discussing software engineers, who certainly have a different negotiating power than the (presumably nonengineering) contractors mentioned in the article.

Spooky23 8y ago

Tech is boom bust, and nobody ever sees the boom end. The problem is that large segments of the workforce have a relatively short shelf-life.

dleslie 8y ago

Look at the credits for many major AAA titles and you'll see that a huge amount of work is done overseas in asset factories. Talent is a commodity. Automation is here and has been for quite some time. The skill required to produce assets and code for games has fallen through the floor thanks to good tools that do much of the heavy lifting. Games was never lucrative for the lowely employees, and it's certainly not going to be in the future.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago

Right now for software development as a whole, unionization isn't necessary - we (if I'm allowed to speak for others) aren't exploited, forced to work 80+ hours / week, underpaid, etc. Generally speaking. Game development however is a whole different ball game. The problem with game development is that there's a TON of people that would love to do it (because they love games), which makes for an easily exploitable labor force. Don't want to work 80 hours / week? Fine, everyone else does, and there's ten others that would love your job. Of course, this is about the US which is also lacking in basic employee protection laws. The US is teeming with active cases of slavery (prison workers, unpaid overtime, sub-minimum wage payment to be stipended with tips, easy to fire people at very short notice without any compensation, etc), and no unions are around anymore to stand up for it - because companies can afford to fire anyone trying to, and there's plenty of desperate people to fill in the ranks. Free market.

notSupplied 8y ago
Yeah you can't have a conversation about unions without also mentioning the state of labor laws in the US, which are far behind those in of the EU. The things that I believe in: minimum wage, overtime pay for anyone below a director-level salary, healthcare benefits if working more than X hours per week, are all accomplishable legislatively, as have been done in Europe. Doing so has the added benefit helping every industry at once, not just the ones organized enough to unionize. There are also things I DON'T want: Unions fighting for job security of the lowest performers, making it nearly impossible to fire for incompetence or conduct layoff when the business struggling. I believe employment should compensate fairly...but fundamentally at-will. I'm also not a fan of the element of coercion in American unions--that if sufficient people unionize in your company, your employer will become union exclusive and you MUST join the union or leave your job.

bliblah 8y ago

It's quite simple. The people with most influence and income feel like they have nothing to gain from unionizations and feel that regulations would only stifle their livelihoods. I know plenty of people that are making 6 figure salaries and simply can not relate to the plight of the average employee.

tivert 8y ago

> Not sure why people are opposed to unions in software dev - the basic function of a union is to equalise the power imbalance between employer and employee. That's a good question. It may have something to do with the solitary nature of the work encouraging an individualistic attitude and a predilection for mechanistic ideologies (like those focused market economics, any of which have strong anti-union streak). Startup success stories may also prime developers to think of themselves as future business owners rather than as life-long workers.