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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 po

• 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.
• hallihax 8y ago
  > The power balance is so skewed in the direction of the employee in the software industry I really don't think this is nearly as true today as it was say, 20 years ago. Anecdotal evidence, sure - but my experience is that developers are crying out for unionisation, but have a bunch of rock-star crap in their heads which tells them that they're somehow going to release a groundbreaking new game or app that changes their lives completely, rather than acknowledging the more likely reality that they'll be constantly getting screwed by an industry that will automate their job away as soon as it becomes even vaguely possible.
  • gnulinux 8y ago
    How do you automate software development?
    • hallihax 8y ago
      The same way you automate any other job: break it up into easily-definable processes and then automate those.
      • gnulinux 8y ago
        Yeah no, I don't buy that sorry. If a company tries to automate a good SWE's job to save $100k they are just digging their graves. What easily definable parts are there in SWE? From my point of view, the only reason USA tech industry is so much better than EU tech industry is because US companies realized the success of a company is strongly linked to its product's quality which can only be made by hiring better, more educated and more experienced engineers. Going back and trying to reduce engineering cost is backwards and no one will be able to survive like that in this competitive industry.
        • hallihax 8y ago
          > If a company tries to automate a good SWE's job to save $100k they are just digging their graves. Everybody says that about highly skilled work. Humans excel at making skilled jobs obsolete. You don't need a perfect replacement for human skill / creativity. You just need an acceptable basic replacement to which you can attach bells, whistles, and marketing. Nobody is going to hire a rock-star when a session musician will still fill your bar - and you don't hire a session musician if a jukebox satisfies your customers enough to keep buying pints. > What easily definable parts are there in SWE? Most software developers are not software engineers. Most software is not a feat of engineering. > From my point of view, the only reason USA tech industry is so much better than EU tech industry is because US companies realized the success of a company is strongly linked to its product's quality which can only be made by hiring better, more educated and more experienced engineers. If your argument is that EU developers are dumber and less experienced than their US counterparts, then it's not much of an argument. > Going back and trying to reduce engineering cost is backwards and no one will be able to survive like that in this competitive industry. The problem is you're viewing 'software development' as the industry. But that's not how the rest of the world sees or interacts with it. Developers are not interchangeable. Software products are not interchangeable. Within each industry, jobs and processes which can be automated, will be. Most software developers do not work in the games industry. They are not creating new products. They aren't being creative (or at least, not particularly creative). The skills required to implement most software are generally already a few years behind where the technology actually is.
• intended 8y ago
  As mentioned previously here on HN - the coder pool is binomially distributed. Theres the extremely high end coders who will get job offers falling out of the sky, and then there is everyone else. Further, this is only in America - in the EU and the rest of the world, coders don't get rock star salaries. I'd say unions are definitely for everyone else - and especially for people in the Video Games industry.
  • adenadel 8y ago
    I know I'm being overly semantic, but what you've described is a Bernoulli distribution :)
    • singhrac 8y ago
      To nitpick some more, I think the parent comment meant a bimodal distribution :)
    • intended 8y ago
      I got it wrong, and it’s not overly semantic - words have meanings, and even I felt something was weird once I hit submit. As the other poster mentioned, it’s bi-modal.
  • AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
    in the EU and the rest of the world, coders don't get rock star salaries. Isn't it a part of the reason why Google (Amazon, Netflix, Apple) has emerged in the US and not in the rest of the world?
    • notSupplied 8y ago
      It seems likely that the dominance of American tech could be due to how they pay their engineers. It is not as clear that America dominates game development, nor that it is due to paying devs rockstar level compensation.
    • Yoric 8y ago
      Why would that be? I personally suspect that it's more due to a larger/richer base of potential clients/consumers.
• nottorp 8y ago
  This does not apply to the gaming industry. There are so many enthusiastic kids willing to work for peanuts that the salaries there are pretty low.
  • ptyyy 8y ago
    According to Glassdoor (which I realize is not the most accurate source), Blizzard Software Engineer median pay is $88,500 which is definitely peanuts in Irvine, CA. That's the rough equivalent of less than $60k here in Charlotte, which is below market rate for entry level.
    • emasirik 8y ago
      Those kinds of rates are what kept me from applying, despite a lifelong enjoyment of their games. A highly competitive process to get my foot in the door for a pay cut? No thanks.
  • noobiemcfoob 8y ago
    It still applies to the gaming industry, but to your point, the bargaining power of high talent programmers is suppressed by eager programmers (not mutually exclusive groups).
  • notSupplied 8y ago
    Yeah since this is Hacker News, we tend to focus on the software engineers, who have lots more negotiating leverage compared to say, a PFX artist.
• batty_alex 8y ago
  > 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. Talk about an inflated sense of ego there. Do you not consider the fact that people make less may have nothing to do with where they stand in the talent pool? You're suggesting there's some sort of logical relationship between income and talent. Does it? Are you sure it's not your own cognitive bias at work? Scared that your own workers will unionize? I hate to break it to you, but your workers deserve the right to collectively bargain with you for what they consider to be fair. They are people and they deserve to be treated like humans, not your own expendable labor force. > But the rest of us would see tens of millions of dollars chopped off of our expected lifetime income. Who's the "rest of us"? You're arguing that we should all not organize because a handful of people might get rich. I hate to break it to you, but that dog-eat-dog mentality isn't helpful for workers or humanity. We're all in this together, it's not just jasonkester's world you live in. We're all humans living together, not just a salary attached to hands with programming ability.
  • marcinzm 8y ago
    >Talk about an inflated sense of ego there. Do you not consider the fact that people make less may have nothing to do with where they stand in the talent pool? You're suggesting there's some sort of logical relationship between income and talent. Does it? Are you sure it's not your own cognitive bias at work? In the US, we live in a mostly capitalistic society and have a mostly free market. If talent was not tied to salary then companies would hire cheaper engineers rather than paying the current high rates. They don't because, in general, better engineers cost more money. Better here means they provide more value to the company which may involve them having better people skills. Doesn't apply to everyone but there is a decent correlation or else someone would be exploiting the opportunity shamelessly. edit: In fact, if you believe what you say then you should be able to create a great employee owned consulting business by taking advantage of the disparity between talent and salary.
  • mbell 8y ago
    > You're suggesting there's some sort of logical relationship between income and talent. Yes, there is. If you have the talent then in the current landscape you can work for about anyone you want and demand about anything you want. Talent is in _extreme_ demand in the software world right now.
• moosey 8y ago
  Apple makes 400k per employee in profit, as an example. I imagine you will see similar numbers for Amazon, when you look at their reinvestment numbers. Sounds good, but still when someone uses your production to expand their business, it's still your work, and that number is a tax on your work. I don't doubt we'll see similar very large numbers at Google. Our unwillingness to unionize allows them to run away with so much of our valuable work it's insane. There isn't a single engineer at Apple that should be making less than $350-400k. They might, if they had a union.
  • jasonkester 8y ago
    The thing is, the union won't end up negotiating a baseline rate of $400k for everybody. It'll be a lot closer to what all those salary surveys come back with as their "market average" rate. So, $70k. You, on the other hand, absolutely can negotiate directly with Apple to receive a $400k total comp package. They hire thousands of engineers a year in that range.
  • Cthulhu_ 8y ago
    The profit a company makes does not equate to the value of each individual employee or what their salary should be. I'm not worth $400K / year, even if I was able to get through their hiring process.
  • AlexTWithBeard 8y ago
    Would it be fair for engineers in Apple to get 400k, while the same engineer in, say, Microsoft would only get half as much? While engineers are important, they are not the key to huge Apple's success. Engineers working for Apple are not much smarter than those at Microsoft. But Windows Phone is dead, while IOS is alive. Traders in Bear Sterns were much worse than traders in JPMorgan, but the former collapsed, while the latter stayed. Sun engineers are probably much more bright than those in Oracle, but it's Oracle who bought the Sun, not the other way round. As much as I hate to admit that, the management makes a lot of difference and a good manager is worth his weight in gold literally.
    • moosey 8y ago
• lghh 8y ago
  > The industry would be happy to pay us all 70k a year with 3% raises based on seniority Why do you assume that's what is going to happen alongside unionization?
  • marcinzm 8y ago
    Please see batty_alex's reply in this same thread which neatly showcases that version of pro-unionization people. Clearly some people see unionization as a means to make everyone "equal" and to remove any individual differences in pay except seniority. For the greater good, of course.
    • batty_alex 8y ago
      I don't appreciate the incendiary remarks and you putting words in my mouth. I said none of those things. I pointed out fallacies in an argument and asked what was wrong with leveling the playing field. You neatly showcased a knee-jerk anti-worker response. I hope your coworkers know how you'd gladly sell them out so that you can increase your salary. Look, bud, you're fighting against your own interest and you don't even know it. I really hope you find some empathy for people who are less "equal" than you. Peace, brother.
• donaldknuth123 8y ago
  Given that we already know FANGs have colluded to suppress engineer wages in the past how can you possibly imagine that unionizing would decrease wages? You must be a founder.
• mavelikara 8y ago
  You seem to suggest that unionized industries all have lower pay. How does movie industry, professional sports industry etc have unions and still have their principals paid at the high end of the wage spectrum?
• typon 8y ago
  Tech companies represent some of the largest concentration of wealth in the world...what power imbalance are you talking about?