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> When I talk to colleagues in tech about unions I hear a lot of misconceptions, seemingly based in stereotypes about what unions are for and who they serve Ag

> When I talk to colleagues in tech about unions I hear a lot of misconceptions, seemingly based in stereotypes about what unions are for and who they serve Agree, things that a union can address: - Pay transparency, Have detailed info about pay bands, and ensure some new hire from a hot company doing the same job as you is not making 2-3x your salary. - Broken promotion process, at my company promotion is completely broken with really talented engineers leaving all the time as they are not getting promoted(alot of politics at play etc), a union can ensure promotions are granted in an even process. - Age discrimination, This one will affect everyone as we all will get older. Alot of companies abuse this one under the guise of "culture fit". A union will ensure that talented older engineers are not discriminated against either while working and being fired for being too old or at the interview process under culture fit nonsense. - Interviews, I think most people can agree that tech interviews are pretty broken. They are designed to be extremely hard to encourage people to stay in their position and it usually takes months of practice to be able to pass one. Unions could fix this broken process. - Working with bad actors, When google started work on a secret search engine with the chinese govt. googlers were outraged, a union could ensure its members do not work in any way with a govt that does not support common human rights.

Shish2k 6y ago
> Unions could fix [tech interviews] Is the problem really “we know how to fix tech interviews, but the upper management don’t like it”? Going by HN discussion I thought that the problem was “There are tens of totally different interview methods, everybody thinks one method is obviously the best and all the others suck, but nobody can agree on which one method that is”, and I’m not sure how a union would fix that :P
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  Well, as much as people hate certification and standardization in this industry, even something as simple as "a tech union or the IEEE or Triplebyte produces a standard algorithms /data structures interview exam, candidates take that once and are certified for at least 5-10 years, and technical interviews then become more domain-specific or at least less academic", could be a nice alternative to the status quo. Go through the Leetcode gauntlet once and get credentialed then, instead of every single time you want to change a job, with multiple prospective employers.
  - erklik 6y ago
    > Go through the Leetcode gauntlet once and get credentialed The issue here is thinking that the Leetcode gauntlet matters at all in most jobs. A certification for Leetcode shouldn't matter when all I do is HTML, CSS, and JS to call various APIs. I do agree with the general idea that some certification could prove some base level knowledge, where furthur testing beyond that could take place. The issue lies in deciding what is "base level knowledge".
    - Apocryphon 6y ago
      Sure, but many of the Silicon Valley tech companies still prioritize Leetcode, and have that in common, which means a candidate will have to do it over and over again. Might as well turn that into a credential so the interviewers at least have to ask candidates to do something relevant to their work for the "show me how you think" whiteboard problem-solving sections of the interview.
delaynomore 6y ago
I worked in a unionized IT shop for 6 years (now in SV) and here's my take: Pay transparency: union mandated pay band helps - no 2x/3x pay for the same position that's for sure. Though I do think this problem could be solved without a union. It's really about opening up compensation information. Broken promotion process/age discrimination/interviews: First of all, broken processes are not going to get better with a union. They will still be broken, just in different ways. Union favors/protects seniority therefore the promotion process will still push out high performing employees because they need to "wait for their turn". In fact the running joke we had about promotion was that you could only get promoted if someone: 1. Dies 2. Retires 3. Quits Age discrimination happens less than in SV tech companies but not by design. In general the workforce in a union shop is older but you also have a lot of low performing lifers counting their days to retirement. On the other hand, interview is far less rigorous since the key factor is "likability" (aka culture fit). Many interviews took place just to satisfy a policy when a pre-determined candidate was already chosen. Will I ever work for a unionized IT shop again? Not a chance.
- subsubzero 6y ago
  Thanks for this interesting bit of info. To be fair I think none of these issues has to have a union to solve it, its just the majority of tech companies are really not fixing these major issues and most likely will never fix them. > but you also have a lot of low performing lifers counting their days to retirement I see this as a huge issue with unions. But I feel you have the same folks in large tech companies, they fall into a large team, the company is profitable so its not looking for layoffs, the person/s fall under the radar and they contribute as little as possible.
- htrp 6y ago
  Will you stay at the unionized shop though?
  - delaynomore 6y ago
    Yes - if it's setup like Google's union. It's optional and at this point, simply does not have enough clout to make any significant changes to affect my experience :)
ThrowawayR2 6y ago
> "...ensure some new hire from a hot company doing the same job as you is not making 2-3x your salary" Given the number of young people in software and entering software, seniority based pay and losing the ability to job hop for increased salary is pretty much the last thing on earth they would want. It would also kill the company's ability to hire top talent by being able to offer more money.
- subsubzero 6y ago
  My example is based in real life, we hired a engineer from facebook and they matched his comp, which me and a few co-workers found out was 2.5x what we made. This person did the same job as us and contributed nothing out of the ordinary, he was also the same level as us which really stung. Stuff like this is rampant across tech and having secret pay bands and not upping your pay for existing hires(to match market) as its too high of an increase per corporate(also another real life example) just sucks. Especially when the CEO's net worth goes up 5x in the few years at the company.

Shish2k 6y ago

> Unions could fix [tech interviews] Is the problem really “we know how to fix tech interviews, but the upper management don’t like it”? Going by HN discussion I thought that the problem was “There are tens of totally different interview methods, everybody thinks one method is obviously the best and all the others suck, but nobody can agree on which one method that is”, and I’m not sure how a union would fix that :P

Apocryphon 6y ago
Well, as much as people hate certification and standardization in this industry, even something as simple as "a tech union or the IEEE or Triplebyte produces a standard algorithms /data structures interview exam, candidates take that once and are certified for at least 5-10 years, and technical interviews then become more domain-specific or at least less academic", could be a nice alternative to the status quo. Go through the Leetcode gauntlet once and get credentialed then, instead of every single time you want to change a job, with multiple prospective employers.
- erklik 6y ago
  > Go through the Leetcode gauntlet once and get credentialed The issue here is thinking that the Leetcode gauntlet matters at all in most jobs. A certification for Leetcode shouldn't matter when all I do is HTML, CSS, and JS to call various APIs. I do agree with the general idea that some certification could prove some base level knowledge, where furthur testing beyond that could take place. The issue lies in deciding what is "base level knowledge".
  - Apocryphon 6y ago
    Sure, but many of the Silicon Valley tech companies still prioritize Leetcode, and have that in common, which means a candidate will have to do it over and over again. Might as well turn that into a credential so the interviewers at least have to ask candidates to do something relevant to their work for the "show me how you think" whiteboard problem-solving sections of the interview.

delaynomore 6y ago

I worked in a unionized IT shop for 6 years (now in SV) and here's my take: Pay transparency: union mandated pay band helps - no 2x/3x pay for the same position that's for sure. Though I do think this problem could be solved without a union. It's really about opening up compensation information. Broken promotion process/age discrimination/interviews: First of all, broken processes are not going to get better with a union. They will still be broken, just in different ways. Union favors/protects seniority therefore the promotion process will still push out high performing employees because they need to "wait for their turn". In fact the running joke we had about promotion was that you could only get promoted if someone: 1. Dies 2. Retires 3. Quits Age discrimination happens less than in SV tech companies but not by design. In general the workforce in a union shop is older but you also have a lot of low performing lifers counting their days to retirement. On the other hand, interview is far less rigorous since the key factor is "likability" (aka culture fit). Many interviews took place just to satisfy a policy when a pre-determined candidate was already chosen. Will I ever work for a unionized IT shop again? Not a chance.

subsubzero 6y ago
Thanks for this interesting bit of info. To be fair I think none of these issues has to have a union to solve it, its just the majority of tech companies are really not fixing these major issues and most likely will never fix them. > but you also have a lot of low performing lifers counting their days to retirement I see this as a huge issue with unions. But I feel you have the same folks in large tech companies, they fall into a large team, the company is profitable so its not looking for layoffs, the person/s fall under the radar and they contribute as little as possible.
htrp 6y ago
Will you stay at the unionized shop though?
- delaynomore 6y ago
  Yes - if it's setup like Google's union. It's optional and at this point, simply does not have enough clout to make any significant changes to affect my experience :)

ThrowawayR2 6y ago

> "...ensure some new hire from a hot company doing the same job as you is not making 2-3x your salary" Given the number of young people in software and entering software, seniority based pay and losing the ability to job hop for increased salary is pretty much the last thing on earth they would want. It would also kill the company's ability to hire top talent by being able to offer more money.

subsubzero 6y ago
My example is based in real life, we hired a engineer from facebook and they matched his comp, which me and a few co-workers found out was 2.5x what we made. This person did the same job as us and contributed nothing out of the ordinary, he was also the same level as us which really stung. Stuff like this is rampant across tech and having secret pay bands and not upping your pay for existing hires(to match market) as its too high of an increase per corporate(also another real life example) just sucks. Especially when the CEO's net worth goes up 5x in the few years at the company.