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So what you're saying is a union would try and prevent companies interviewing candidates to weed out the ones that can't code, would block its members from work

So what you're saying is a union would try and prevent companies interviewing candidates to weed out the ones that can't code, would block its members from working in open offices regardless of their preferences (some people like them), protect workers who fix one bug per month just as much as those who fix ten and then ... the last parts I don't even understand really. Are you claiming that companies deliberately penalise education? That's not true at any company I've ever worked at.

Apocryphon 6y ago
I believe those original posts meant that employees often penalize engineers who come from nonstandard backgrounds in favor of those who come from well known universities with top CS programs. This was less common in the past, especially when there were many self-taught engineers in the era when CS was less common as a degree, but credentialism has become more popular in recent years and those from elite schools are often preferred especially over bootcamp grads. Everything else you're saying is essentially bad faith readings of legitimate industry concerns that I deign to respond to unless evidence of non-trolling becomes manifest. Perhaps you genuinely have bought into the propaganda that unions are intended to protect mediocrity, or are ignorant that unions exist in industries where stark differences in worker performance exist (the SAG and professional athletes' unions), or believe that a union made up of software engineers- the supposed innovators of this age, making the world a better place, etc.- are doomed to repeat the same failures as past unions. And here I thought tech can disrupt and reinvent anything. But I will mention that those issues you've caricatured aren't even the potentially most killer features of a union specifically for the software industry: anti-discrimination and anti-harassment. HR departments are notorious for protecting companies instead of individual workers, so an independent body that can provide the individual with legal representation and support would be useful in an industry notorious for ageism and issues with gender and race. Would Susan Fowler have endured as many indignities if there was a SWE labor union that had her back? We won't know until there's one to protect those who suffer from similar mistreatment in the future. And yes, such a union would be expected to protect workers from such abuse no matter how many bugs they fix in a month- that is how equality before the law should be, and a union is a way to ensure that labor laws are respected.

Apocryphon 6y ago

I believe those original posts meant that employees often penalize engineers who come from nonstandard backgrounds in favor of those who come from well known universities with top CS programs. This was less common in the past, especially when there were many self-taught engineers in the era when CS was less common as a degree, but credentialism has become more popular in recent years and those from elite schools are often preferred especially over bootcamp grads. Everything else you're saying is essentially bad faith readings of legitimate industry concerns that I deign to respond to unless evidence of non-trolling becomes manifest. Perhaps you genuinely have bought into the propaganda that unions are intended to protect mediocrity, or are ignorant that unions exist in industries where stark differences in worker performance exist (the SAG and professional athletes' unions), or believe that a union made up of software engineers- the supposed innovators of this age, making the world a better place, etc.- are doomed to repeat the same failures as past unions. And here I thought tech can disrupt and reinvent anything. But I will mention that those issues you've caricatured aren't even the potentially most killer features of a union specifically for the software industry: anti-discrimination and anti-harassment. HR departments are notorious for protecting companies instead of individual workers, so an independent body that can provide the individual with legal representation and support would be useful in an industry notorious for ageism and issues with gender and race. Would Susan Fowler have endured as many indignities if there was a SWE labor union that had her back? We won't know until there's one to protect those who suffer from similar mistreatment in the future. And yes, such a union would be expected to protect workers from such abuse no matter how many bugs they fix in a month- that is how equality before the law should be, and a union is a way to ensure that labor laws are respected.