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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 characteri

• 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
            Tech is more like "reverse ageist" instead of being egalitarian.
    • veilrap 6y ago
      While your personal anecdote may vary, my personal anecdote does seem to indicate that tech is a pretty meritocracy directed industry. Maybe this is a Silicon Valley / CA trait given thing like non-compete clauses being non-enforceable.
    • throwawaysea 6y ago
      Personally, I would be more amenable to a statement like "tech is not an absolute meritocracy". Many industries are however, roughly meritocratic. While talent may not be perfectly recognized or rewarded, it often eventually is - simply because it makes good business sense. When you have easy to recognize signals of merit and value, like in the tech industry where work can be more objectively evaluated, it makes it easier to implement a meritocratic culture.
  • deleted 6y ago
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  • CPLX 6y ago
    If you think professional sports leagues and the movie business base opportunities and compensation on seniority I don't know what to tell you. Those fields are almost completely unionized. There's no obvious reason to think that the market for high skilled technical workers would be substantially different.
    • missedthecue 6y ago
      If you don't think the UAW or ILWU bases opportunities and compensation on seniority I don't know what to tell you
      • Apocryphon 6y ago
        Why would an SWE union be forced to follow the trends set by other unions? I thought tech was supposed to march to the beat of its own drum. Think different.
      • CPLX 6y ago
        Of course they do. The difference is between commodity labor and creative, talent-driven, or IP based production, and it seems clear which is a better metaphor for software engineers.
  • qppo 6y ago
    Some unions negotiate practices regarding seniority for good and bad reasons. Others don't. A software workers union wouldn't necessarily do that, unless its membership voted for it. Which might make sense, because of rampant age discrimination - but there's nothing inherently tying that to promotion.
  • TT3351 6y ago
    Whenever I see "meritocracy" used like this, my hair stands on end. From Wikipedia: "Although the concept has existed for centuries, the term "meritocracy" is relatively new. It was used pejoratively by British politician and sociologist Michael Dunlop Young in his 1958 satirical essay The Rise of the Meritocracy, which pictured the United Kingdom under the rule of a government favouring intelligence and aptitude (merit) above all else, being the combination of the root of Latin origin "merit" (from "mereō" meaning "earn") and the Ancient Greek suffix "-cracy" (meaning "power", "rule")... In this book the term had distinctly negative connotations as Young questioned both the legitimacy of the selection process used to become a member of this elite and the outcomes of being ruled by such a narrowly defined group."
    • username90 6y ago
      Meritocracy starting out as leftist satire doesn't mean the concept doesn't have merit.
      • anthuswilliams 6y ago
        Yes, it does. Unless its defenders have shown good reasons as to why the points raised by the satirists are inapplicable. Which they haven't. The assignation of "quality" in people is a corrupt and folkloric reflection of the preferences of those in power, and that phenomenon is becoming ever more pronounced as industries consolidate.
        • username90 6y ago
          The fact that a person can just study programming on their free time for a few years and then get a job paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year is proof that at least in some cases meritocracy works. All you need is proof that you are great at programming, doesn't have to know anyone or have any kind of prestigious background to do it. That is what I did. I studied programming for a bit, started getting among the top in online programming competitions, applied to Google and got a really high salary. Anyone who is intelligent enough can do it if they have a computer with internet access. People sometimes counter with something along the lines of: > Just because you could do it doesn't mean others can do it, you are just an exception! Yeah, exactly, other people are dumb so they can't become among the best of the world in these competitions within a year. If they could they would easily get similar jobs as I did though, there was no luck or privilege in what I did just talent. So the problem isn't that meritocracy doesn't work but that merit for these tech jobs is so unevenly distributed.
• ardy42 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. Some existing blue-collar unions have work rules like that, but I think it's a fallacy that a tech worker union would necessarily work exactly the same. To say so would be like condemning (say) Apple (as a business) by using examples from Radio Shack. I think the main reasons for tech workers historical opposition to unions was: 1. Tech workers had rare, in-demand skills which gave them market power not enjoyed by most workers who have unionized. This is by far the biggest reason. 2. The influence of narratives different genres of free market propaganda. I think the concept of a impersonal self-regulating free market has a special intellectual appeal to the kind of people who like to design technical systems, and a lot of the mass-market works that espouse it are written for the benefit of the capitalists that benefit most acutely from that system. This is a secondary reason, but makes the first reason far more effective. 3. The influence of startup culture, which (temporarily!) creates jobs that blend worker and capitalist. Relatively few people find themselves in these kinds of roles, but they've gotten enormous amounts of publicity relative to other tech jobs.
  • tekdude 6y ago
    Yes, people always assume that only one type of union exists, and that it can only really work for low-skill interchangeable workers. That this belief is so widespread is actually a testament to the effectiveness of anti-union messaging... However, not all unions operate on that model. One major example: the Screen Actors Guild > According to SAG's Mission Statement, the Guild sought to: negotiate and enforce collective bargaining agreements that establish equitable levels of compensation, benefits, and working conditions for its performers; collect compensation for exploitation of recorded performances by its members, and provide protection against unauthorized use of those performances; and preserve and expand work opportunities for its members. (Wikipedia [0]) Actors have a lot of freedom to do what they want... For example: they can work on a big budget movie and make millions, or they can take the minimal fee and do a small low-budget artsy film. They can also write/direct/produce the movies that they act in. The guild's contracts just require that they be treated and compensated certain ways (both up front + residuals) for their acting roles. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_Actors_Guild https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_Actors_Guild
• door99 6y ago
  Unions are not perfect and unionized workers often have a complicated relationship with their union, but fundamentally a Union is just a democratic organization representing workers. The policies are set by the union on behalf of the interests of workers, however imperfectly. Without a union, the policies are set by management and there is no institutional power that workers have collectively against policies they don’t like.
• matsemann 6y ago
  Are unions in the US really like that, or is it a one-off being used to spread fud? Or could it be like a judge in sports, you only notice it when the judge makes the wrong call, but all the correct ones are ignored? My union in Europe doesn't really do that much in my day-to-day work. As a skilled worker in demand we're generally treated very well. But for the broader questions they are nice to have. For instance they recently spear-headed the abolishing of anti-competitive contracts. That's something a lone worker probably cannot achieve. When I graduated they said what I should expect to be paid. Which was useful as I really didn't have that much information (compared to the companies), and it also helped to anchor the pay as no graduates would settle for lower. And the union could reveiew the contracts and see what we should push back on before signing. That in itself probably helps keeping everything straight, as the companies know they cannot get away with abusive contracts so they won't even bother trying.
  • dorkinspace 6y ago
    > Are unions in the US really like that, or is it a one-off being used to spread fud? Yes, they are. I've been working a booth at a convention showing off some tech and asked a passing worker for an extension cord. The response was that they asked on the radio, but the only person available to perform this role was on lunch so it'd be at least 45 minutes until I could get an extension cord. I have had this happen in many different situations when working with union members. Anecdotally, I do not want to be a part of any union that has these types of rules.
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    • blueline 6y ago
      > or is it a one-off being used to spread fud you replied to this with a one-off anecdote to spread fud
      • ghaff 6y ago
        Anyone who has ever worked events will tell you that is hardly a one-off anecdote.
• deleted 6y ago
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• aaron-santos 6y ago
  Why would tech workers who vote on union rules, vote for a seniority advancement system? Makes no sense. Either the assumptions or the conclusion are wrong.
• panic 6y ago
  A union is just an organization which represents the interests of workers. If we don't want BS work rules, we don't have to have them. Instead, we could have things like: 1. abolition of non-compete agreements 2. ownership of code we write when we're not at work 3. standards for privacy and security enforced by working engineers and not by management Maybe your list is different than mine, but if you can think of anything we might want that goes against the profit motive of corporations, a union (or a guild, or whatever you want to call it) is a proven way to get these things. The Writer's Guild of America guarantees the screenwriters of a movie are credited, for example -- imagine all software had a list of the people who made it!
  • chrisseaton 6y ago
    > A union is just an organization which represents the interests of workers. A union isn't just that, though is it? It's also a beast in its own right, with its own politics and power struggles and debates and meetings and people taking a paycheck from your union dues. A union doesn't even necessarily act in your interests. It acts in the interests of the majority of members, who may be out to actively harm your interests. And versus its own survival a union is never going to put your interests first. Why would it? > If we don't want BS work rules, we don't have to have them. Right but what if your colleagues what these BS work rules? What if you're junior and they want pay by seniority?
    • deleted 6y ago
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    • polygotdomain 6y ago
      This perspective is frustrating, as it paints unions as an entirely negative endeavor. They're not and there are trade offs. Those trade offs may be a net positive or a net negative, but only highlighting the negative doesn't do any good. >with its own politics and power struggles and debates and meetings... A union doesn't even necessarily act in your interests. It acts in the interests of the majority of members If your going to chastise the process of advocating for your views then complain that somehow they don't get taken into account then I don't know what to tell you. If your concerned that the interests of other members are outweighing yours, then participate. If you don't want to deal with it, don't join the union. >people taking a paycheck from your union dues Oh my gosh, contributing to something that you get value from... what a crazy concept. If you don't get value from the union, then see above; change it or don't join. >Right but what if your colleagues what these BS work rules? Why does the assumption automatically go towards "unions would be TERRIBLE"? Most devs don't like to put up with BS, so why do you think a union made up of devs would somehow institute a ton of BS rules just because it's a union. Again, if you don't want BS union rules, then make sure the union doesn't institute them by actually participating. >What if you're junior and they want pay by seniority? I hate to break it to you, but that's called the real world. At the end of the day, a union is about shifting the balance of power and advocating for the things the union sees as valuable. What are the things you'd change about tech employment if you could? How could a union be more effective at achieving those changes? A union doesn't have to just be focused on pay scales and bureaucracy.
• m463 6y ago
  Someone in a thread months ago said unions wouldn't be like that - it would be more like hollywood unions like the writers guild. On the other hand I wonder if it might have inadvertent effects on other things, like maybe free software.
• noarchy 6y ago
  Are the "BS work rules" that unions might introduce really that much worse than what gets imposed on the average software shop these days? Scrum ceremony, planning by committee, etc, at times is the kind of bureaucracy that brings productivity down.