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I find this interesting because I don't fully understand how tech became so opposed to unions. Many in our industry are quite jaded about the poor behavior of l

by abeppu 6y ago

I find this interesting because I don't fully understand how tech became so opposed to unions. Many in our industry are quite jaded about the poor behavior of large corporations. Perhaps there are also reasons to be distrustful of unions. But mostly we accept working with or doing business with the former, and entirely eschewing the latter. Why have we decided that untrustworthy, sometimes poorly managed organizations are acceptable when operating in the interests of shareholders, but not when operating in the interests of workers? (Note: I have never been part of a union, so this question is asked from position of ignorance.)

newfangle 6y ago
Distrust? I just dont need one. I already make an absurd amount of money, work less than 40 hours a week, and get vacation whenever i want.
donatj 6y ago
For me it's that it's forced. I don't like anything being forced upon me. If I could both keep my job and not be in the union, I'm fine with you unionizing. I just don't want to be forced to be a member or forced to give a chunk of my paycheck.
- aaron-santos 6y ago
  As long as the free rider problem forces me not to have the option to join a union it seems like we're in the same predicament.
gedy 6y ago
I think a lot of it is that in-demand, well paid workers don't have patience for the BS work rules that unions are notorious for. It might be unfair characterization, but "you can't change/test that code, that's role X", and other such bureaucracy can be really draining.
- eplanit 6y ago
  Unions are the antithesis of a meritocracy. Try promoting based on seniority over merit in a tech. business, and I doubt you'll stay competitive for very long. I don't know if kickstarter counts as a pure "tech company". They use technology, but they don't create it. Their customers are activists, so it's not surprising that their employees are, too.
  - door99 6y ago
    > Unions are the antithesis of a meritocracy. Try promoting based on seniority over merit in a tech. Tech is absolutely not a meritocracy.
    - darkwizard42 6y ago
      Tech is often more of a meritocracy than other fields/industries. It is quite possible for a talented engineer to rise quickly out of university but nearly impossible for a talented surgeon or industrial engineer without a decade+ of effort.
      - bigbubba 6y ago
        The tech industry has a bias for youth, which is mutually exclusive with experience. I don't know much about the medical industry, but I wager surgeons face less ageism once the gray hairs start coming in. With that age comes experience younger surgeons simply couldn't have. Maybe that makes them better surgeons, or maybe not. But it seems to me that ageism in tech complicates comparisons to fields which value experience instead of youth.
        darkwizard42 6y ago
        My point was that the OPPOSITE is true in most other fields. If you don't have grey hairs, you simply are not considered for the top jobs at all in certain industries. YOE (years of experience) is nearly everything for some professions, tech is surprisingly quite robust in that regard.
Apocryphon 6y ago
Highly-paid professionals tend to assume that if they don't like their current job, their skills would be in demand enough that they can easily find another job. This assumes that current tech industry labor conditions will continue indefinitely, which seems unsustainable. There's also a strong libertarian or at least individualist strain of thought in both Silicon Valley culture and in engineering which presumes that those high salaries are because of one's inherent 10x rockstar ninja abilities, and not because of market conditions. Also often a trend towards apoliticism, wanting to just be left alone to code and not engage in the dirty tribalist business of politicking. Finally, there's a widespread conception that "unions have failed, unions just can't work." This despite that labor unions did work in the past, do continue to work outside of the U.S., and somehow an industry focused on disruption and innovation is unable to improve on unions.
newen 6y ago
The real explanation is decades of widely prevalent anti-union propaganda. People hear something enough times and they tend to believe it. Walmart workers don't have unions either, for the same reasons, but I'm sure people here are cringing at being compared to Walmart workers.
renewiltord 6y ago
Easy. I'm not anti-immigrant and I know large groups of disgruntled software engineers (precisely the union-fans) are. So I need to reduce their power. So I'm anti-union.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  I know your big fear is that SWE unions would push for anti-immigrant protectionism, but a cursory glance at HN reveals that the industry workers are disgruntled about everything from ageism to unpaid crunchtime to lack of compensation transparency to technical interviews to open offices (now a moot point) to HR inability to prevent sexism or racism. All issues that could potentially be more compelling to an actual SWE union than lobbying against H-1Bs and other nativist policies. Do you have any evidence that the Kickstarter Union has done anything in the direction you're talking about?
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    Admittedly, I did weaken a little when my friends told me about their experience at Caviar. It did feel like collective bargaining would have served them well. But yesterday I saw 1280 comments renewing my resolve¹. No, I will not build a big bomb and put it in the hands of a capricious mob. It sort of reminds me of the Sierra Club in SF. I recall it being some sort of enviro org but now all they discuss is housing and all the outdoors guys are sad about it. I'm sure when your organization is parasitized and similarly subverted, you will feel sad too. But not all the tears of your founding members will undo the harm done. No, better the bomb remain unbuilt². ¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24702393 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24702393 ² And I went to the Chase Bank near Avalon Street in San Francisco the other day. Avalon Street wasn't called Avalon, originally. The story of how it became Avalon, how another became Peru, and yet another became Excelsior provides a nice backstop to any weakening of my resolve. Unions are a Brazen Bull.
    - Apocryphon 6y ago
      If you're unhappy with a direction of an organization, you may feel a moment of sadness, but then you can go and find likeminded people unhappy with the direction of the group and found a new one. fwiw, I don't see many comments in that thread calling for labor unions.
solidasparagus 6y ago
It doesn't replace one untrustworthy, poorly managed organization with another. It just means involving a second untrustworthy, poorly managed organization with its own goals in my contract negotiations. Some might say that unions are better, but that has not been true historically in the US - they have a long history of corruption, power-grabbing, leadership with incentives that aren't aligned with the best interests of their union members, extreme resistance to change that would fix problems, centralizing so that your workplace's specific concerns are irrelevant to the union (since your workplace makes up such a small percentage of the union), protecting crappy employees based solely on seniority, and generally stagnating the company (sometimes making it less competitive). When I think of strong unions in the US, I think of police, teachers, federal employees, and professional sports. Not exactly examples of unions as positive forces. Europe has a totally different union model that is interesting and seems to work better, but it isn't really an option in the US.
- abeppu 6y ago
  > Europe has a totally different union model that is interesting and seems to work better, but it isn't really an option in the US. Can you say more about what prevents a union in that model from being formed in the US?
  - bhupy 6y ago
    There's a Freakonomics episode that talks about this -> https://freakonomics.com/podcast/secrets-german-economy-steal/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/secrets-german-economy-stea... TL;DR, the prevailing theory is that it's cultural. > SUEDEKUM: Culturally, there is a sense [that] you have to be flexible when circumstances change, when new challenges arise. This is deeply embedded in the German approach of doing things. > MARIN: That is part of a cultural thing: people trust each other. > This culture, Marin says, also manifests itself in management style. Her research has shown that German C.E.O.’s are more willing to grant decision-making power to lower management. And that, she argues, improves quality. Because those are the managers who have the best sense of what customers want. This requires C.E.O.’s to have quite a bit of faith in their managers. > You may be surprised to learn that German workers willingly accept a wage lower than the one their union negotiated. But they’d learned from history. Specifically, from their own history at the end of the Cold War.
moocowtruck 6y ago
I've been working with a tech union for 15 years, and it's been horrible. I could sit here for hours listing out all the ridiculousness...but a small taste, grievance for being woken up from slumber too abruptly. Whats that? I'm playing star ocean and I cant talk right now middle of boss fightz. How do public companies deal with unions when the workforce gets to where it no longer really needs to accomplish things? Maybe I've just been involved with bad union experiences..
- andy99 6y ago
  > How do public companies deal with unions when the workforce gets to where it no longer really needs to accomplish things? Ask the manufacturing sector
  - moocowtruck 6y ago
    didn't they all move away from US ?
dpc_pw 6y ago
Unions are just another idea that sounds great on paper, only if you don't consider second and third order effects. They don't serve the workers, they serve themselves (like pretty much any organization). Tech workers are in so much demand that they don't really suffer such a disparity of negotiating power, like workers in other industries. Many software companies offer equity, which makes employers the shareholders. What's good for shareholders is also good for a lot of tech employees. Also, barriers to entry in software are almost 0. If you can't get someone to treat you well, you can have your own software company paying your bills in 6 months, or VCs funding your startup. Given all that I personally think the downsides of unions in tech would be much higher than the upsides. I would rather see more laws universally protecting intellectual workers like e.g. non-enforcability of non-compete clauses and alikes.
- throw_m239339 6y ago
  > Tech workers are in so much demand that they don't really suffer such a disparity of negotiating power, like workers in other industries. In USA that is, things can be very different abroad.
  - radu_floricica 6y ago
    Any country where tech workers are mistreated as a rule?
    - bhupy 6y ago
      China. they've got the notorious "9-9-6" hours. "9 AM to 9PM, 6 days a week".
      - criddell 6y ago
        Are there a lot of labor unions in China?
        pseudalopex 6y ago
rriepe 6y ago
People who want money are opposed to unions. The people who want power sorely want unions. Kickstarter and now Spotify have both been about editorial control. Not hours. Not wages. Not roles.
dnautics 6y ago
Unions are particularly effective when labor is commoditized and fungible. Less so when labor is not exchangeable (suppose it hinges on the question of if a guild more like a union or a cartel?). Programmers like to think they are unique and irreplaceable. Some of them are. Others, probably not so much.
jackcosgrove 6y ago
How are you defining tech? If you include IT workers and programmers in certain non-technology companies, I think their position could be improved by unionization. If you include engineers working for technology companies, unionization is less needed. This group has good working conditions on the whole. Personally when I have been frustrated with corporate work-life, it is usually for reasons that unionization would make worse (office politics, byzantine procedures, unproductive coworkers). Using the second, narrower definition above, tech workers are paid well and we get to sit in comfortable chairs in air-conditioned offices all day long. I mean, if you work for a startup company it will probably lose money and yet you are paid, sometimes handsomely. It's not as if management is exploiting you if you keep getting paid while the startup is steadily going bankrupt. Maybe I've just been lucky, but I have felt fairly treated by management. If management is not trying to fleece workers, why add the process of a union?
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  > tech workers are paid well and we get to sit in comfortable chairs in air-conditioned offices all day long One should definitely be thankful for the blessings and privileges one gets, but painting it in those terms overlooks that tech workers still have a lot of grievances. Maybe they're not as important as ones experienced by workers in other industries, but they're still valid. After all, we see articles on burnout and psychological stresses on HN every week. > If management is not trying to fleece workers, why add the process of a union? In addition to the general improving labor conditions issues that get brought up, I think unions could be interesting experiment in tech. The tech industry portrays itself as cutting-edge, progressive (not necessarily politically, but as a cultural outlook), empowering. Yet I've definitely seen situations where there was just constant alienation between employees and management over the latter's business decisions and product prioritizations. In those cases, what leverage can workers hold over management, besides just leave? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23535292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23535292
- walshemj 6y ago
  for one how do you know if your being paid fairly appraisal systems are fair (recall Microsoft sack ranking). And I know for a fact that there will be discrimination on grounds of age, sex, race and disability based on experience in the uk tech industry. There's also the issue of representation at grievance and discipline hearings.
GhostVII 6y ago
Personally, I don't want unions because my job is awesome as it is - absurd salary, great benefits, interesting problems, etc. I don't really see what a union could give me, I don't need more money and I work reasonable hours. Also I've seen how unions can completely paralyze the hiring and firing process (ex. Ontario teachers union and their horrible standardized job interviews).
alexashka 6y ago
It's the ideal of maximum personal freedom. Anything that infringes upon personal freedom in any way is seen as a negative. This is not a tech ideal so much as a capable person's ideal, because capable people are by definition surrounded by people less capable than they are and often dream of nothing more than to rise above them, through merit and hard work. Merit and hard work gets you places in tech, hence anyone remotely capable is mostly satisfied with the status quo.
scsilver 6y ago
We dont need a union, we need a stronger professional organization with appropriate licensing/apprenticeship, akin to other engineers, doctors, accountants, lawyers ect.
- missedthecue 6y ago
  Increased barriers to entry for SWE?
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    If you could replace the whiteboarding technical interview rigamarole with a rigorous certification exam, say it has to be retaken only every 8-10 years so one's skills stay fresh but not every 1-3 years or however often most engineers change jobs now, why not? Besides the sudden drop in content on HN written by people venting.
  - scsilver 6y ago
    Yeah, make it an FE and PE and we will get some stability in our lives and be allowed to focus on case studies rather than solving abstract puzzles in a hazing ritual. Early in the career the low barrier is great, later in the career, other engineers have much more reasonable career growth.
creato 6y ago
A lot of the pro-union push is coming from largely the same set of people that are big activists on social issues/politics, and the union push feels in part like a power grab to gain leverage on those issues. I simply don't agree with the activists on some of the issues they are activists about. On the issues I do agree, I still don't feel that union pressure is the right way to go about it.
kodablah 6y ago
> I don't fully understand how tech became so opposed to unions I suspect it's due to the fact that while unions help the whole, they can remove the individual leverage during negotiations for salary and working conditions that many, especially seniors, want to preserve. Unions are often seen as a step towards developer commoditization which, like hour tracking, puzzle-based interviews, and other practices that de-individualize devs, is frowned upon by many. Some people just don't want to have to bargain collectively. Granted, while some unions allow all sorts of single-employee exceptions, one can bet a company would choose to treat the goose and the gander the same when given guidelines on what the lowest common denominator is. > Many in our industry are quite jaded about the poor behavior of large corporations Yeah, but not _their_ organization, or they'd go elsewhere (jobs are not currently very constrained).
throwawaysea 6y ago
> Why have we decided that untrustworthy, sometimes poorly managed organizations are acceptable when operating in the interests of shareholders, but not when operating in the interests of workers? The thing is, acting in the interests of shareholders is often acting in the interests of workers as well. Many workers are compensated using stock (RSUs/options/etc) which makes them shareholders. Even if that weren't true, for publicly-traded companies, employees are free to invest their compensation into company stock if they so choose and can then both vote on shareholder resolutions and share in the company's success (or failure). And even if that weren't the case, acting in the interest of shareholders helps sustain jobs and create space for raises by attracting investment. With unions, there are a few major issues I see, at least in the US implementation of unions: - First, they often institute parallel management systems and sets of rules that govern the business. It can make work more complex/rigid. These rules also often tend to favor employee traits like tenure. Over time they turn into something of a pyramid scheme, with the newer employees indirectly subsidizing more senior employees. - They can create unnecessarily inefficient labor. For instance, I've heard stories from friends in manufacturing about how only certain employees are allowed to perform certain mundane tasks under the guise of 'safety', even though anyone could do it. It can be infuriating to hold work or delay customers due to rules like this. - Unions erode individualism and localized control in favor of institutional control. Unions can become a conduit for implementing political stances as a result. For example, the NEA (largest teachers union in America) has taken a public stance on supporting critical race theory, including introducing factually incorrect/biased material like the NYT's "1619 project" into classrooms (https://neaedjustice.org/the-1619-project-resource-page/ https://neaedjustice.org/the-1619-project-resource-page/). [Note I am not looking to debate this point here, but am just offering it as an example of activism using a union as a way to route political stances broadly, instead of allowing independent localized control] - Unions erode competition in the market. This is especially problematic for public sector unions, where taxpayers have no choice but to fund a particular public organization. In general, I do not favor unions having exclusive rights to labor at a company. If there were multiple unions competing alongside non-union workers, that would be a more balanced/healthier situation. Ultimately I am not sure why unions have special provisions under the law. Workers seeking unionization are all free to form their own company renting out their labor services to customers. They get to act as a group, and negotiate as a group, but are still subject to choice and competition. Under this model, for those who don't agree with a union for whatever reason, they have the freedom to sell their labor as individuals or as a company. This seems like a much better situation than having large number of workers subject to tyranny of the majority within the bounds of an exclusive union contract.
sershe 6y ago
Unions seem to be great for generally interchangeable workers. Where there's room for personal achievement (or non-achievement), I cannot imagine any good use for them. E.g. I'd like to do more work and be paid more and rewarded more, with none of the union pay grades BS. I'd like people to be fired based on incompetence, not seniority. The only situations when I can imagine my outlook changing is if I become incompetent at my job, or lazy and useless (e.g. I've coasted at a job that I disliked for 6 months or so once, and then left; I imagine for some people it might be cool to coast for 6 years instead under union protections)
indigochill 6y ago
I'm in a mandatory union in my country. But I'm a software engineer and it's an "office worker" union, so needless to say they take on a lot of stuff that's totally irrelevant to me. But because I'm required to be in the union, I get "represented" anyway and "get" to go on strike and take a substantial pay cut to "support my peers", none of whom I'll work with or have similar life situations to mine. To be clear, though, I have no issue if some people think they can improve their bargaining position by being in a union. That should be what a union is, after all. Where I do object to unions is when they come to dominate their field and turn actively hostile to outsiders who don't play their game or, as in my case, arrange things so that people who don't care to be represented by them have to be regardless in order to work in their area. I am jaded by large/exploitative corporations, but my way of dealing with that is to not work for large/exploitative corporations.
- refurb 6y ago
  This is an insightful comment. I would argue that most people don't have an aversion to the idea of unions, but more to their practical application (at least in the US). Just like any large organization, things can go off the rails and move far away from the original intended purpose. But at the same time, you only really hear about the bad unions. The ones that fairly represent their members and partner with management to find common ground (obviously this is dependent on good management as well)? Those don't get talked about much.
LatteLazy 6y ago
I've always done well by being judged and rewarded as an individual. I've been on teams with people who were lazy or entitled or just bad at their job and didn't care enough to change. I don't want negotiate as a block with those people because if get less of I did. And frankly, I'd rather not work with them at all, because they're just a pain in the arse to deal with. I think unions make sense when every worker is basically the same (on a production line for instance). That's because you don't have any leverage otherwise. Right now, my leverage is "give me my bonus or I'll go elsewhere and the only other guy on this team can't code or troubleshoot for shit and takes every nfl game day off sick". At best, a union would make me share my bonus with him. At worst it would insist he got a bigger one as he's been in this role for years (hint, that's a BAD thing) and I'm newer.
- leto_ii 6y ago
  > Right now, my leverage is "give me my bonus or I'll go elsewhere and the only other guy on this team can't code or troubleshoot for shit and takes every nfl game day off sick" This attitude to me seems terribly short-sighted. Currently tech workers are privileged and can live with the illusion that they are not replaceable. The nature of capitalism however is to instrumentalize human beings and reduce them to what they can produce/consume. Nobody in particular cares about how special you are. If at some point in the future your job becomes less valuable your individual leverage will evaporate. At that point it would be good to have a union to fall back on.
  - LatteLazy 6y ago
    Maybe, but you're asking me to give up a lot of money now on the off chance I might get something back in the future. And I don't plan to be at any employer more than a few years anyway. Also, if the whole industry is being offshored or replaced with AI, the union won't be any use as they'll have no leverage either...
    - leto_ii 6y ago
      Not saying that the whole industry will be replaced, just that tech stacks might change, paradigms might change (see going from mainframes to PCs) etc. It would suck to find yourself unemployable in your mid-50's, let's say. It also kind of sucks to always have to keep up with the newest trends - perhaps at some point in your life you would actually want to do smth else than program all the time. In a world of atomized workers, even the ones who can run fast on the treadmill are only good as long as they can run fast. If the treadmill changes or they get tired they're out. Unions help because they have political power. They can make it so that societies are also about people, not just about efficient allocation of capital.
greggman3 6y ago
This is what you'll get with unions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5a_00YVVkQ&feature=youtu.be&t=1020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5a_00YVVkQ&feature=youtu.be... My experience with unions. Monitor breaks at CES. Go get another, try to carry to booth. Get stopped because "only union people are allowed to carry equipment inside the convention center". Try to plug in some equipment. Get stopped because "only union electricians are allowed to plug in equipment in the convention center" I know others who have add similar experiences in the aerospace industry where responsibilities were divided up and person A is not allowed do any work outside of their designated job. For example, your job is to write UX features, some else's job is to unit tests. You're not allowed to write unit tests. Why I would I want that?
- telesilla 6y ago
  Unions can also offer goods things like group bargaining, healthcare and moral support such as SAG/AFTRA and other Hollywood-style guilds. The only downside is you can't do cheap work on the side, but that benefits those who choose not to or cannot join these guilds.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- sebmellen 6y ago
  That's a fantastic video. I'm commenting mostly to save the link for later, but I cannot imagine unions trying to mesh with the tech world. Can you imagine having a "frontend developers union" which disallowed backend work (or vice versa)? What a nightmare.
  - pietrovismara 6y ago
    That's not how unions work at all and especially not the union described by OP's article. Can you imagine strongly opposing something that would benefit you, because you don't understand it nor take the time to?
m12k 6y ago
Especially the video game industry should take a good long look at how Hollywood uses guilds to create saner work conditions for its various production crew. It's a very different thing to work at a 'stable' company with sustained engineering and maintenance, and then getting hired for part of a project at a one-big-project-ever-two-years production company, that might not exist a couple years from now. The sooner the games industry realizes they are actually in the latter category and organize accordingly, the better. Then maybe we can stop having these horror stories of mass layoffs when production ends, that comes from thinking you are in the former category.
- x87678r 6y ago
  Hollywood unions are one of the main reasons most movies are not made in LA any more.
  - m12k 6y ago
    Sure, and tax havens are the most popular place to have the top of your corporation's ownership hierarchy. Doesn't mean it's good for society at large or the people working there.
    - Apocryphon 6y ago
      And speaking of tax havens, it's also likely why a lot of movies are now made in cities like Vancouver is because those places decided to give favorable tax incentives for films to be shot there. So it's not really because of unions.
627467 6y ago
Several have mentioned that contemporary tech workers (mostly?) are privileged and have leverage in negotiations that allows them to individually gain what others in other industry can only get through unions. Part of that leverage comes from having lots of options. And why is there lots of options? Because "anyone" can start a tech company. The main mean of production of a tech outfit is the tech workers themselves. Companies don't own the workers. A steelworker can only do what they are skillfully specialized to do by using capital goods own by the company. Hence they can't negotiate with their feet (leaving) while a tech worker can. Tech workers can work (remotely) for virtually any company in the world. A farm worker can't. All this may change in the future, but with some privileged tech workers (I'm not one of them) being able to retire in their 30s and 40s now I don't see why as a whole the industry is incentivized to unionize.
- skitout 6y ago
  If you are super handsome, rich, smart and young, it is easier for you than most people to find another girlfriend / boyfriend... but you still want to have influence of the big decision inside your couple, you don't want to be abused...
  - 627467 6y ago
    Following that metaphor: the way I see US tech sector is akin to people in their twenties, prioritizing individual experiences and growth and postponing settling with anyone for now. Plus: who do you unionse with in a couple? If the point is to avoid abuse from the other part? If I want to have big say in an organization I become a shareholder (ie. Buy the ring) which, for many tech workers that is true (through stock grants/options).
    - Apocryphon 6y ago
      People grow up and their options become constrained. This industry will too. And will you then regret not having made different choices earlier? Shareholder voices have become increasingly weakened in recent years, and not just at Facebook either. https://www.wsj.com/articles/control-geeks-tech-founders-want-ipo-investors-not-their-input-1491236464 https://www.wsj.com/articles/control-geeks-tech-founders-wan... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/27/business/dealbook/lyft-ipo-shareholders-pinterest.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/27/business/dealbook/lyft-ip...
PeterStuer 6y ago
Many reasons: - The typical 'pains' felt in the lopsided power relation between employer and employee were and often still are cushioned by the adequate compensation in a market where the sought after skills were in short supply - Tech attracts an atypical more autism spectrum biased employee pool. This correlates with meritocratic believes. - Tech culture is one that has always idolized 'passion', so objecting to bad working conditions and habits was not just seen as rocking the boat, but a character flaw of those that lacked passion. - Tech workers very often see their employee status as temporary, just putting some bread on the table while they will create their own SaaS business 'real soon now' and be on the other side of the relation - Tech has a habit of inducing very young workers, and churning through them. This is no just HR strategy but group enforced by incorporating youth (and single/ non-family) oriented spaces symbolically in the workplace (Foosball tables, slides ...) Note that on the Employer side of the spectrum tech companies have no qualms about joining their collective bargaining and lobbying associations
- pjc50 6y ago
  > Tech attracts an atypical more autism spectrum biased employee pool. This correlates with meritocratic believes. This made me wince; while it's not straight up wrong it's a collection of generalisations about humans jammed together that deserves a slightly more delicate unpacking. Like opening an Amazon box and finding your electronics just fall out with no foam peanuts or other protection.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - PeterStuer 6y ago
    You are right that that is a delicate issue and could deserve a long treatise on its own. I tried to qualify it sufficiently, but it is easy to caricature as the first reply to my post already seems to do in a callous way. It was most certainly not meant in any way to be derogatory, as I myself don't think of any of this in a negative way at all.
- brushfoot 6y ago
eel 6y ago
I just don't see the value of unions in tech right now. I make decent money. My hours are consistent at 40 per week. If the employer employee relationship sours, there are 100s of other companies, and it's easy to switch jobs compared to other industries.
deleted 6y ago
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fsociety 6y ago
Mainly from bad experiences with unions not in tech. It’s funny when people say, no no no the old unions are bad but the new ones will be better. Are you sure? At the end of the day, if you need to go against the decision of a union vote you are completely screwed and out of your own agency. That’s not a situation I want to find myself in.
intended 6y ago
The ethos of SV and the original libertarian thought that pervaded early firms also opposed unions. The early success of the firms, especially in days when growing fast in unchartered waters was all that mattered, it was a great refutation of the idea that you needed unions to take care of workers, and appeared to support the ideals of early founders. The ideal has not weathered well - it works if you are on the cutting edge, where the degree of constraints are much lower. But for the rest of the bell curve, some form of collective bargaining seems to be useful. Maybe part of the reason is that, at the bleeding edge frontier, people who can work there are few and far between. This gives them market power and so can command/negotiate price. Anyway, as long as everyone thinks of tech as the bleeding edge, its hard to make the case for unions. Plus: America has a history of unions being a politicized topic, so it tends to result in strong views.
segmondy 6y ago
Do you know any union worker making $350k? or $500k? With unions, you ain't gonna get that. As much as I like unions for somethings, I'm not a fan. I'm in Detroit area. I have heard horror stories of many people who work in the car industry and do crazy things and can't easily get fired because of unions. Once I was downtown a few years ago, and they were shooting a movie and they needed to reshoot a scene, but a semi truck was parked on the street, they had to hold off the scene till the next day because they couldn't just move the truck. There was a specific job role that could drive the truck according to the union rules and the drivers were done working for the day. Imagine union pegging a developer to only working on backend code, or middleware or frontend or only on a specific language.
- sarcher 6y ago
  SAG-AFTRA and DGA have members in that range. I'm guessing Equity has some as well. The AMA isn't technically a union, but performs similar functions.
DeonPenny 6y ago
Because in tech its easy to just move jobs or negotiate on your own. Unions would just have government in you businesses, and make it harder for workers. Not to mention programmers are cheap and wont pay the union fees. I know I wouldn't I'd just avoid unionized companies.

by abeppu 6y ago

newfangle 6y ago

Distrust? I just dont need one. I already make an absurd amount of money, work less than 40 hours a week, and get vacation whenever i want.

donatj 6y ago

For me it's that it's forced. I don't like anything being forced upon me. If I could both keep my job and not be in the union, I'm fine with you unionizing. I just don't want to be forced to be a member or forced to give a chunk of my paycheck.

aaron-santos 6y ago
As long as the free rider problem forces me not to have the option to join a union it seems like we're in the same predicament.

gedy 6y ago

I think a lot of it is that in-demand, well paid workers don't have patience for the BS work rules that unions are notorious for. It might be unfair characterization, but "you can't change/test that code, that's role X", and other such bureaucracy can be really draining.

eplanit 6y ago
Unions are the antithesis of a meritocracy. Try promoting based on seniority over merit in a tech. business, and I doubt you'll stay competitive for very long. I don't know if kickstarter counts as a pure "tech company". They use technology, but they don't create it. Their customers are activists, so it's not surprising that their employees are, too.
- door99 6y ago
  > Unions are the antithesis of a meritocracy. Try promoting based on seniority over merit in a tech. Tech is absolutely not a meritocracy.
  - darkwizard42 6y ago
    Tech is often more of a meritocracy than other fields/industries. It is quite possible for a talented engineer to rise quickly out of university but nearly impossible for a talented surgeon or industrial engineer without a decade+ of effort.
    - bigbubba 6y ago
      The tech industry has a bias for youth, which is mutually exclusive with experience. I don't know much about the medical industry, but I wager surgeons face less ageism once the gray hairs start coming in. With that age comes experience younger surgeons simply couldn't have. Maybe that makes them better surgeons, or maybe not. But it seems to me that ageism in tech complicates comparisons to fields which value experience instead of youth.
      - darkwizard42 6y ago
        My point was that the OPPOSITE is true in most other fields. If you don't have grey hairs, you simply are not considered for the top jobs at all in certain industries. YOE (years of experience) is nearly everything for some professions, tech is surprisingly quite robust in that regard.

Apocryphon 6y ago

Highly-paid professionals tend to assume that if they don't like their current job, their skills would be in demand enough that they can easily find another job. This assumes that current tech industry labor conditions will continue indefinitely, which seems unsustainable. There's also a strong libertarian or at least individualist strain of thought in both Silicon Valley culture and in engineering which presumes that those high salaries are because of one's inherent 10x rockstar ninja abilities, and not because of market conditions. Also often a trend towards apoliticism, wanting to just be left alone to code and not engage in the dirty tribalist business of politicking. Finally, there's a widespread conception that "unions have failed, unions just can't work." This despite that labor unions did work in the past, do continue to work outside of the U.S., and somehow an industry focused on disruption and innovation is unable to improve on unions.

newen 6y ago

The real explanation is decades of widely prevalent anti-union propaganda. People hear something enough times and they tend to believe it. Walmart workers don't have unions either, for the same reasons, but I'm sure people here are cringing at being compared to Walmart workers.

renewiltord 6y ago

Easy. I'm not anti-immigrant and I know large groups of disgruntled software engineers (precisely the union-fans) are. So I need to reduce their power. So I'm anti-union.

Apocryphon 6y ago
I know your big fear is that SWE unions would push for anti-immigrant protectionism, but a cursory glance at HN reveals that the industry workers are disgruntled about everything from ageism to unpaid crunchtime to lack of compensation transparency to technical interviews to open offices (now a moot point) to HR inability to prevent sexism or racism. All issues that could potentially be more compelling to an actual SWE union than lobbying against H-1Bs and other nativist policies. Do you have any evidence that the Kickstarter Union has done anything in the direction you're talking about?
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Admittedly, I did weaken a little when my friends told me about their experience at Caviar. It did feel like collective bargaining would have served them well. But yesterday I saw 1280 comments renewing my resolve¹. No, I will not build a big bomb and put it in the hands of a capricious mob. It sort of reminds me of the Sierra Club in SF. I recall it being some sort of enviro org but now all they discuss is housing and all the outdoors guys are sad about it. I'm sure when your organization is parasitized and similarly subverted, you will feel sad too. But not all the tears of your founding members will undo the harm done. No, better the bomb remain unbuilt². ¹ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24702393 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24702393 ² And I went to the Chase Bank near Avalon Street in San Francisco the other day. Avalon Street wasn't called Avalon, originally. The story of how it became Avalon, how another became Peru, and yet another became Excelsior provides a nice backstop to any weakening of my resolve. Unions are a Brazen Bull.
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    If you're unhappy with a direction of an organization, you may feel a moment of sadness, but then you can go and find likeminded people unhappy with the direction of the group and found a new one. fwiw, I don't see many comments in that thread calling for labor unions.

solidasparagus 6y ago

It doesn't replace one untrustworthy, poorly managed organization with another. It just means involving a second untrustworthy, poorly managed organization with its own goals in my contract negotiations. Some might say that unions are better, but that has not been true historically in the US - they have a long history of corruption, power-grabbing, leadership with incentives that aren't aligned with the best interests of their union members, extreme resistance to change that would fix problems, centralizing so that your workplace's specific concerns are irrelevant to the union (since your workplace makes up such a small percentage of the union), protecting crappy employees based solely on seniority, and generally stagnating the company (sometimes making it less competitive). When I think of strong unions in the US, I think of police, teachers, federal employees, and professional sports. Not exactly examples of unions as positive forces. Europe has a totally different union model that is interesting and seems to work better, but it isn't really an option in the US.

abeppu 6y ago
> Europe has a totally different union model that is interesting and seems to work better, but it isn't really an option in the US. Can you say more about what prevents a union in that model from being formed in the US?
- bhupy 6y ago
  There's a Freakonomics episode that talks about this -> https://freakonomics.com/podcast/secrets-german-economy-steal/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/secrets-german-economy-stea... TL;DR, the prevailing theory is that it's cultural. > SUEDEKUM: Culturally, there is a sense [that] you have to be flexible when circumstances change, when new challenges arise. This is deeply embedded in the German approach of doing things. > MARIN: That is part of a cultural thing: people trust each other. > This culture, Marin says, also manifests itself in management style. Her research has shown that German C.E.O.’s are more willing to grant decision-making power to lower management. And that, she argues, improves quality. Because those are the managers who have the best sense of what customers want. This requires C.E.O.’s to have quite a bit of faith in their managers. > You may be surprised to learn that German workers willingly accept a wage lower than the one their union negotiated. But they’d learned from history. Specifically, from their own history at the end of the Cold War.

moocowtruck 6y ago

I've been working with a tech union for 15 years, and it's been horrible. I could sit here for hours listing out all the ridiculousness...but a small taste, grievance for being woken up from slumber too abruptly. Whats that? I'm playing star ocean and I cant talk right now middle of boss fightz. How do public companies deal with unions when the workforce gets to where it no longer really needs to accomplish things? Maybe I've just been involved with bad union experiences..

andy99 6y ago
> How do public companies deal with unions when the workforce gets to where it no longer really needs to accomplish things? Ask the manufacturing sector
- moocowtruck 6y ago
  didn't they all move away from US ?

dpc_pw 6y ago

Unions are just another idea that sounds great on paper, only if you don't consider second and third order effects. They don't serve the workers, they serve themselves (like pretty much any organization). Tech workers are in so much demand that they don't really suffer such a disparity of negotiating power, like workers in other industries. Many software companies offer equity, which makes employers the shareholders. What's good for shareholders is also good for a lot of tech employees. Also, barriers to entry in software are almost 0. If you can't get someone to treat you well, you can have your own software company paying your bills in 6 months, or VCs funding your startup. Given all that I personally think the downsides of unions in tech would be much higher than the upsides. I would rather see more laws universally protecting intellectual workers like e.g. non-enforcability of non-compete clauses and alikes.

throw_m239339 6y ago
> Tech workers are in so much demand that they don't really suffer such a disparity of negotiating power, like workers in other industries. In USA that is, things can be very different abroad.
- radu_floricica 6y ago
  Any country where tech workers are mistreated as a rule?
  - bhupy 6y ago
    China. they've got the notorious "9-9-6" hours. "9 AM to 9PM, 6 days a week".
    - criddell 6y ago
      Are there a lot of labor unions in China?
      - pseudalopex 6y ago

rriepe 6y ago

People who want money are opposed to unions. The people who want power sorely want unions. Kickstarter and now Spotify have both been about editorial control. Not hours. Not wages. Not roles.

dnautics 6y ago

Unions are particularly effective when labor is commoditized and fungible. Less so when labor is not exchangeable (suppose it hinges on the question of if a guild more like a union or a cartel?). Programmers like to think they are unique and irreplaceable. Some of them are. Others, probably not so much.

jackcosgrove 6y ago

How are you defining tech? If you include IT workers and programmers in certain non-technology companies, I think their position could be improved by unionization. If you include engineers working for technology companies, unionization is less needed. This group has good working conditions on the whole. Personally when I have been frustrated with corporate work-life, it is usually for reasons that unionization would make worse (office politics, byzantine procedures, unproductive coworkers). Using the second, narrower definition above, tech workers are paid well and we get to sit in comfortable chairs in air-conditioned offices all day long. I mean, if you work for a startup company it will probably lose money and yet you are paid, sometimes handsomely. It's not as if management is exploiting you if you keep getting paid while the startup is steadily going bankrupt. Maybe I've just been lucky, but I have felt fairly treated by management. If management is not trying to fleece workers, why add the process of a union?

Apocryphon 6y ago
> tech workers are paid well and we get to sit in comfortable chairs in air-conditioned offices all day long One should definitely be thankful for the blessings and privileges one gets, but painting it in those terms overlooks that tech workers still have a lot of grievances. Maybe they're not as important as ones experienced by workers in other industries, but they're still valid. After all, we see articles on burnout and psychological stresses on HN every week. > If management is not trying to fleece workers, why add the process of a union? In addition to the general improving labor conditions issues that get brought up, I think unions could be interesting experiment in tech. The tech industry portrays itself as cutting-edge, progressive (not necessarily politically, but as a cultural outlook), empowering. Yet I've definitely seen situations where there was just constant alienation between employees and management over the latter's business decisions and product prioritizations. In those cases, what leverage can workers hold over management, besides just leave? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23535292 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23535292
walshemj 6y ago
for one how do you know if your being paid fairly appraisal systems are fair (recall Microsoft sack ranking). And I know for a fact that there will be discrimination on grounds of age, sex, race and disability based on experience in the uk tech industry. There's also the issue of representation at grievance and discipline hearings.

GhostVII 6y ago

Personally, I don't want unions because my job is awesome as it is - absurd salary, great benefits, interesting problems, etc. I don't really see what a union could give me, I don't need more money and I work reasonable hours. Also I've seen how unions can completely paralyze the hiring and firing process (ex. Ontario teachers union and their horrible standardized job interviews).

alexashka 6y ago

It's the ideal of maximum personal freedom. Anything that infringes upon personal freedom in any way is seen as a negative. This is not a tech ideal so much as a capable person's ideal, because capable people are by definition surrounded by people less capable than they are and often dream of nothing more than to rise above them, through merit and hard work. Merit and hard work gets you places in tech, hence anyone remotely capable is mostly satisfied with the status quo.

scsilver 6y ago

We dont need a union, we need a stronger professional organization with appropriate licensing/apprenticeship, akin to other engineers, doctors, accountants, lawyers ect.

missedthecue 6y ago
Increased barriers to entry for SWE?
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  If you could replace the whiteboarding technical interview rigamarole with a rigorous certification exam, say it has to be retaken only every 8-10 years so one's skills stay fresh but not every 1-3 years or however often most engineers change jobs now, why not? Besides the sudden drop in content on HN written by people venting.
- scsilver 6y ago
  Yeah, make it an FE and PE and we will get some stability in our lives and be allowed to focus on case studies rather than solving abstract puzzles in a hazing ritual. Early in the career the low barrier is great, later in the career, other engineers have much more reasonable career growth.

creato 6y ago

A lot of the pro-union push is coming from largely the same set of people that are big activists on social issues/politics, and the union push feels in part like a power grab to gain leverage on those issues. I simply don't agree with the activists on some of the issues they are activists about. On the issues I do agree, I still don't feel that union pressure is the right way to go about it.

kodablah 6y ago

> I don't fully understand how tech became so opposed to unions I suspect it's due to the fact that while unions help the whole, they can remove the individual leverage during negotiations for salary and working conditions that many, especially seniors, want to preserve. Unions are often seen as a step towards developer commoditization which, like hour tracking, puzzle-based interviews, and other practices that de-individualize devs, is frowned upon by many. Some people just don't want to have to bargain collectively. Granted, while some unions allow all sorts of single-employee exceptions, one can bet a company would choose to treat the goose and the gander the same when given guidelines on what the lowest common denominator is. > Many in our industry are quite jaded about the poor behavior of large corporations Yeah, but not _their_ organization, or they'd go elsewhere (jobs are not currently very constrained).

throwawaysea 6y ago

> Why have we decided that untrustworthy, sometimes poorly managed organizations are acceptable when operating in the interests of shareholders, but not when operating in the interests of workers? The thing is, acting in the interests of shareholders is often acting in the interests of workers as well. Many workers are compensated using stock (RSUs/options/etc) which makes them shareholders. Even if that weren't true, for publicly-traded companies, employees are free to invest their compensation into company stock if they so choose and can then both vote on shareholder resolutions and share in the company's success (or failure). And even if that weren't the case, acting in the interest of shareholders helps sustain jobs and create space for raises by attracting investment. With unions, there are a few major issues I see, at least in the US implementation of unions: - First, they often institute parallel management systems and sets of rules that govern the business. It can make work more complex/rigid. These rules also often tend to favor employee traits like tenure. Over time they turn into something of a pyramid scheme, with the newer employees indirectly subsidizing more senior employees. - They can create unnecessarily inefficient labor. For instance, I've heard stories from friends in manufacturing about how only certain employees are allowed to perform certain mundane tasks under the guise of 'safety', even though anyone could do it. It can be infuriating to hold work or delay customers due to rules like this. - Unions erode individualism and localized control in favor of institutional control. Unions can become a conduit for implementing political stances as a result. For example, the NEA (largest teachers union in America) has taken a public stance on supporting critical race theory, including introducing factually incorrect/biased material like the NYT's "1619 project" into classrooms (https://neaedjustice.org/the-1619-project-resource-page/ https://neaedjustice.org/the-1619-project-resource-page/). [Note I am not looking to debate this point here, but am just offering it as an example of activism using a union as a way to route political stances broadly, instead of allowing independent localized control] - Unions erode competition in the market. This is especially problematic for public sector unions, where taxpayers have no choice but to fund a particular public organization. In general, I do not favor unions having exclusive rights to labor at a company. If there were multiple unions competing alongside non-union workers, that would be a more balanced/healthier situation. Ultimately I am not sure why unions have special provisions under the law. Workers seeking unionization are all free to form their own company renting out their labor services to customers. They get to act as a group, and negotiate as a group, but are still subject to choice and competition. Under this model, for those who don't agree with a union for whatever reason, they have the freedom to sell their labor as individuals or as a company. This seems like a much better situation than having large number of workers subject to tyranny of the majority within the bounds of an exclusive union contract.

sershe 6y ago

Unions seem to be great for generally interchangeable workers. Where there's room for personal achievement (or non-achievement), I cannot imagine any good use for them. E.g. I'd like to do more work and be paid more and rewarded more, with none of the union pay grades BS. I'd like people to be fired based on incompetence, not seniority. The only situations when I can imagine my outlook changing is if I become incompetent at my job, or lazy and useless (e.g. I've coasted at a job that I disliked for 6 months or so once, and then left; I imagine for some people it might be cool to coast for 6 years instead under union protections)

indigochill 6y ago

I'm in a mandatory union in my country. But I'm a software engineer and it's an "office worker" union, so needless to say they take on a lot of stuff that's totally irrelevant to me. But because I'm required to be in the union, I get "represented" anyway and "get" to go on strike and take a substantial pay cut to "support my peers", none of whom I'll work with or have similar life situations to mine. To be clear, though, I have no issue if some people think they can improve their bargaining position by being in a union. That should be what a union is, after all. Where I do object to unions is when they come to dominate their field and turn actively hostile to outsiders who don't play their game or, as in my case, arrange things so that people who don't care to be represented by them have to be regardless in order to work in their area. I am jaded by large/exploitative corporations, but my way of dealing with that is to not work for large/exploitative corporations.

refurb 6y ago
This is an insightful comment. I would argue that most people don't have an aversion to the idea of unions, but more to their practical application (at least in the US). Just like any large organization, things can go off the rails and move far away from the original intended purpose. But at the same time, you only really hear about the bad unions. The ones that fairly represent their members and partner with management to find common ground (obviously this is dependent on good management as well)? Those don't get talked about much.

LatteLazy 6y ago

I've always done well by being judged and rewarded as an individual. I've been on teams with people who were lazy or entitled or just bad at their job and didn't care enough to change. I don't want negotiate as a block with those people because if get less of I did. And frankly, I'd rather not work with them at all, because they're just a pain in the arse to deal with. I think unions make sense when every worker is basically the same (on a production line for instance). That's because you don't have any leverage otherwise. Right now, my leverage is "give me my bonus or I'll go elsewhere and the only other guy on this team can't code or troubleshoot for shit and takes every nfl game day off sick". At best, a union would make me share my bonus with him. At worst it would insist he got a bigger one as he's been in this role for years (hint, that's a BAD thing) and I'm newer.

leto_ii 6y ago
> Right now, my leverage is "give me my bonus or I'll go elsewhere and the only other guy on this team can't code or troubleshoot for shit and takes every nfl game day off sick" This attitude to me seems terribly short-sighted. Currently tech workers are privileged and can live with the illusion that they are not replaceable. The nature of capitalism however is to instrumentalize human beings and reduce them to what they can produce/consume. Nobody in particular cares about how special you are. If at some point in the future your job becomes less valuable your individual leverage will evaporate. At that point it would be good to have a union to fall back on.
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  Maybe, but you're asking me to give up a lot of money now on the off chance I might get something back in the future. And I don't plan to be at any employer more than a few years anyway. Also, if the whole industry is being offshored or replaced with AI, the union won't be any use as they'll have no leverage either...
  - leto_ii 6y ago
    Not saying that the whole industry will be replaced, just that tech stacks might change, paradigms might change (see going from mainframes to PCs) etc. It would suck to find yourself unemployable in your mid-50's, let's say. It also kind of sucks to always have to keep up with the newest trends - perhaps at some point in your life you would actually want to do smth else than program all the time. In a world of atomized workers, even the ones who can run fast on the treadmill are only good as long as they can run fast. If the treadmill changes or they get tired they're out. Unions help because they have political power. They can make it so that societies are also about people, not just about efficient allocation of capital.

greggman3 6y ago

This is what you'll get with unions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5a_00YVVkQ&feature=youtu.be&t=1020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5a_00YVVkQ&feature=youtu.be... My experience with unions. Monitor breaks at CES. Go get another, try to carry to booth. Get stopped because "only union people are allowed to carry equipment inside the convention center". Try to plug in some equipment. Get stopped because "only union electricians are allowed to plug in equipment in the convention center" I know others who have add similar experiences in the aerospace industry where responsibilities were divided up and person A is not allowed do any work outside of their designated job. For example, your job is to write UX features, some else's job is to unit tests. You're not allowed to write unit tests. Why I would I want that?

telesilla 6y ago
Unions can also offer goods things like group bargaining, healthcare and moral support such as SAG/AFTRA and other Hollywood-style guilds. The only downside is you can't do cheap work on the side, but that benefits those who choose not to or cannot join these guilds.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
sebmellen 6y ago
That's a fantastic video. I'm commenting mostly to save the link for later, but I cannot imagine unions trying to mesh with the tech world. Can you imagine having a "frontend developers union" which disallowed backend work (or vice versa)? What a nightmare.
- pietrovismara 6y ago
  That's not how unions work at all and especially not the union described by OP's article. Can you imagine strongly opposing something that would benefit you, because you don't understand it nor take the time to?

m12k 6y ago

Especially the video game industry should take a good long look at how Hollywood uses guilds to create saner work conditions for its various production crew. It's a very different thing to work at a 'stable' company with sustained engineering and maintenance, and then getting hired for part of a project at a one-big-project-ever-two-years production company, that might not exist a couple years from now. The sooner the games industry realizes they are actually in the latter category and organize accordingly, the better. Then maybe we can stop having these horror stories of mass layoffs when production ends, that comes from thinking you are in the former category.

x87678r 6y ago
Hollywood unions are one of the main reasons most movies are not made in LA any more.
- m12k 6y ago
  Sure, and tax havens are the most popular place to have the top of your corporation's ownership hierarchy. Doesn't mean it's good for society at large or the people working there.
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    And speaking of tax havens, it's also likely why a lot of movies are now made in cities like Vancouver is because those places decided to give favorable tax incentives for films to be shot there. So it's not really because of unions.

627467 6y ago

Several have mentioned that contemporary tech workers (mostly?) are privileged and have leverage in negotiations that allows them to individually gain what others in other industry can only get through unions. Part of that leverage comes from having lots of options. And why is there lots of options? Because "anyone" can start a tech company. The main mean of production of a tech outfit is the tech workers themselves. Companies don't own the workers. A steelworker can only do what they are skillfully specialized to do by using capital goods own by the company. Hence they can't negotiate with their feet (leaving) while a tech worker can. Tech workers can work (remotely) for virtually any company in the world. A farm worker can't. All this may change in the future, but with some privileged tech workers (I'm not one of them) being able to retire in their 30s and 40s now I don't see why as a whole the industry is incentivized to unionize.

skitout 6y ago
If you are super handsome, rich, smart and young, it is easier for you than most people to find another girlfriend / boyfriend... but you still want to have influence of the big decision inside your couple, you don't want to be abused...
- 627467 6y ago
  Following that metaphor: the way I see US tech sector is akin to people in their twenties, prioritizing individual experiences and growth and postponing settling with anyone for now. Plus: who do you unionse with in a couple? If the point is to avoid abuse from the other part? If I want to have big say in an organization I become a shareholder (ie. Buy the ring) which, for many tech workers that is true (through stock grants/options).
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    People grow up and their options become constrained. This industry will too. And will you then regret not having made different choices earlier? Shareholder voices have become increasingly weakened in recent years, and not just at Facebook either. https://www.wsj.com/articles/control-geeks-tech-founders-want-ipo-investors-not-their-input-1491236464 https://www.wsj.com/articles/control-geeks-tech-founders-wan... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/27/business/dealbook/lyft-ipo-shareholders-pinterest.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/27/business/dealbook/lyft-ip...

PeterStuer 6y ago

Many reasons: - The typical 'pains' felt in the lopsided power relation between employer and employee were and often still are cushioned by the adequate compensation in a market where the sought after skills were in short supply - Tech attracts an atypical more autism spectrum biased employee pool. This correlates with meritocratic believes. - Tech culture is one that has always idolized 'passion', so objecting to bad working conditions and habits was not just seen as rocking the boat, but a character flaw of those that lacked passion. - Tech workers very often see their employee status as temporary, just putting some bread on the table while they will create their own SaaS business 'real soon now' and be on the other side of the relation - Tech has a habit of inducing very young workers, and churning through them. This is no just HR strategy but group enforced by incorporating youth (and single/ non-family) oriented spaces symbolically in the workplace (Foosball tables, slides ...) Note that on the Employer side of the spectrum tech companies have no qualms about joining their collective bargaining and lobbying associations

pjc50 6y ago
> Tech attracts an atypical more autism spectrum biased employee pool. This correlates with meritocratic believes. This made me wince; while it's not straight up wrong it's a collection of generalisations about humans jammed together that deserves a slightly more delicate unpacking. Like opening an Amazon box and finding your electronics just fall out with no foam peanuts or other protection.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- PeterStuer 6y ago
  You are right that that is a delicate issue and could deserve a long treatise on its own. I tried to qualify it sufficiently, but it is easy to caricature as the first reply to my post already seems to do in a callous way. It was most certainly not meant in any way to be derogatory, as I myself don't think of any of this in a negative way at all.
brushfoot 6y ago

eel 6y ago

I just don't see the value of unions in tech right now. I make decent money. My hours are consistent at 40 per week. If the employer employee relationship sours, there are 100s of other companies, and it's easy to switch jobs compared to other industries.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

fsociety 6y ago

Mainly from bad experiences with unions not in tech. It’s funny when people say, no no no the old unions are bad but the new ones will be better. Are you sure? At the end of the day, if you need to go against the decision of a union vote you are completely screwed and out of your own agency. That’s not a situation I want to find myself in.

intended 6y ago

The ethos of SV and the original libertarian thought that pervaded early firms also opposed unions. The early success of the firms, especially in days when growing fast in unchartered waters was all that mattered, it was a great refutation of the idea that you needed unions to take care of workers, and appeared to support the ideals of early founders. The ideal has not weathered well - it works if you are on the cutting edge, where the degree of constraints are much lower. But for the rest of the bell curve, some form of collective bargaining seems to be useful. Maybe part of the reason is that, at the bleeding edge frontier, people who can work there are few and far between. This gives them market power and so can command/negotiate price. Anyway, as long as everyone thinks of tech as the bleeding edge, its hard to make the case for unions. Plus: America has a history of unions being a politicized topic, so it tends to result in strong views.

segmondy 6y ago

Do you know any union worker making $350k? or $500k? With unions, you ain't gonna get that. As much as I like unions for somethings, I'm not a fan. I'm in Detroit area. I have heard horror stories of many people who work in the car industry and do crazy things and can't easily get fired because of unions. Once I was downtown a few years ago, and they were shooting a movie and they needed to reshoot a scene, but a semi truck was parked on the street, they had to hold off the scene till the next day because they couldn't just move the truck. There was a specific job role that could drive the truck according to the union rules and the drivers were done working for the day. Imagine union pegging a developer to only working on backend code, or middleware or frontend or only on a specific language.

sarcher 6y ago
SAG-AFTRA and DGA have members in that range. I'm guessing Equity has some as well. The AMA isn't technically a union, but performs similar functions.

DeonPenny 6y ago

Because in tech its easy to just move jobs or negotiate on your own. Unions would just have government in you businesses, and make it harder for workers. Not to mention programmers are cheap and wont pay the union fees. I know I wouldn't I'd just avoid unionized companies.