7 ms·

Sadly since tech ate the economy software engineers are one of the only groups with any worker power and we're paid way too much to ever use it. EDIT: I was l

by m_ke 5y ago

Sadly since tech ate the economy software engineers are one of the only groups with any worker power and we're paid way too much to ever use it. EDIT: I was listening to some of the IATSE workers and it sounds like their working conditions deteriorated when Netflix and Amazon bought up Hollywood and shifted the industry from films to churning out long series for streaming. It made me really think about the impact that tech has had on the country in the last 15 years. Growing up in the early 2000s I was very bullish on tech being a force for good (thanks Google and "making the world a better place") but looking at the world that we created is sad to see. I went biking early in the morning a few times this week and came across a bunch of Uber drivers sleeping in their cars with jackets over their heads. All of their strikes and organizing hasn't worked out, they're not "employees" and because they're a global workforce it's hard for them to organize. A few Dev ops engineers at Uber walking off their job for a few days could lead to more change for the workers than all of the NYC drivers striking for weeks. Same goes for Amazon warehouse and delivery drivers. From all of the reporting that I've seen their working conditions are awful but because they're distributed it's hard for them to organize. I grew up on the poorer side of Queens and have high school friends who I can't talk out of falling for NFT and crypto scams. As much as I enjoy using Airbnb it has played a role in reducing the supply of housing and increased housing costs. My younger female cousins are addicted to Instagram and are clearly having body image problems, with some of them opting to get plastic surgery to achieve the typical filtered Instagram look. TLDR: Tech is quickly taking over most industries and consolidating power to a few large players, which makes it harder for what used to be middle class workers to organize and negotiate better working conditions. As the people building and running these tools we have way more leverage than most workers.

egypturnash 5y ago
So many of you are also convinced you are expert negotiators and 200x programmers who surely deserve, and can get, get more for your work than the average programmer, so unions would surely result in less money for you. Or at least I sure do see that sentiment in most discussions of unions on HN.
- zamadatix 5y ago
  I don't think HN represents the average tech worker so that may well be true. At the very least HN represents the tech worker either genuinely interested or personally invested in their job if not being entirely focused as a place for the top performers to share projects and information in the first place. Since by definition half of people can get more than the average if you apply either the above filters to define the average HN user then most people here probably would be right - they could get significantly more than their average peer.
  - robocat 5y ago
    > Since by definition half of people can get more than the average Median, not average. Salaries are nothing like a normal distribution. As the saying goes, Jeff Bezos walks into a bar and on average everyone in the bar is a billionaire.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - zamadatix 5y ago
      Average doesn't always refer to arithmetic mean but yes in this case particularly median.
- jandrewrogers 5y ago
  For the kinds of devs you are referring to, the kind that post on HN, I am skeptical that a union could materially improve the year-over-year wage increases they already see. At best their compensation trajectory wouldn’t change and unionization often causes wage compression in other industries (read: it would reduce their compensation). If you are one of those highly paid devs, everything about the calculus of unionization is unlikely to produce a positive expected return. Software is manifestly not in a race to the bottom; there are persistently more jobs than devs that can fill them if you are sufficiently skilled. In Europe, businesses encourage labor solidarity among software devs because it suppresses wages in a global environment where software wages are rising rapidly. Exceptional devs are shamed for believing their worth is so far above their peers, even if it is true. I don’t believe most wage gains in software in Europe would be happening if US tech companies weren’t in Europe pushing the wages upward. Unions focus on the compensation of the median ability worker. The issue in the software is that ability has something like a barbell distribution; workers at different ends of that barbell live in different worlds and are not interchangeable. The “median dev” barely exists as a useful abstraction.
analognoise 5y ago
Even software engineers are labor man. If it isn't livable for regular people, what the fuck is the point?
- m_ke 5y ago
  Sorry had to tend to something and didn't get to write more in my original comment but my point is exactly what you're saying. As software engineers we have a lot more leverage at Amazon than the warehouse workers, than the driver's at Uber, than the delivery drivers at seamless and instacart, at Netflix and Amazon than the IATSE workers. Uber engineers walking off for a day could do more for the gig workers than all of the strikes that they attempted in different cities.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    You have to convince software engineers they are labor instead of temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Some do end up wealthy. Most won’t (so says the data [1] [2]). Edit: In my experience, older folks are easier to sell on the idea because they’ve seen how the sausage is made and have had enough time to have possibility convert to reality. Younger folks are still…more optimistic than the data suggests is realistic. [1] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/mobile/computer-programmers.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/... [2] https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/ https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/
    - JKCalhoun 5y ago
      When you pass by the homeless (along nearly every freeway) it's hard not to feel very privileged. Even though not wealthy, still much, much better off than many.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - throwawaygh 5y ago
      > temporarily embarrassed millionaires At Amazon and Uber? The problem is that they aren't not millionaires; they're mkaing 250k-650k/yr. At those companies, even in extremely high CoL, you can pay the landlord his due and be a millionaire in 5-10 years.
r3trohack3r 5y ago
> I went biking early in the morning a few times this week and came across a bunch of Uber drivers sleeping in their cars with jackets over their heads. Out of curiosity, what city is this?
- m_ke 5y ago
  NYC, biking from Brooklyn to LIC.
onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
I agree - but I think you're grandizing engineers way too much. I highly doubt "a couple" or DevOps engineers at Uber not showing up to work would do anything at all. Maybe if the entire DevOps team striked.
jiveturkey 5y ago
> but because they're distributed it's hard for them to organize. How's that? In 1991, maybe. In 2021? If a movement like BLM can form today, if in the 1960s Dr. King could organize, then a seemingly simpler union organizing effort can't be excused due to distribution. To the extent that the problem is one of distribution at all, surely that's a pretty minor problem.
cjblomqvist 5y ago
Or, it's because in the US (because I assume you talk predominately about the US), there are institutions, laws, culture etc which has been pushing the US society in that direction (and/or being less able to handle the continuous change happening everywhere). I'm not sure why tech is the only thing to blame here?
cblconfederate 5y ago
The problem with tech is its highly monopolistic nature . Every tech sub-sector experiences a short period of chaotic growth and then The One gets chosen to dominate with the praises of the rest of the gang. The lack of competition in the tech sector is astounding on a global scale.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  Can you name one of these sectors? Cloud for instance has cutthroat competition. CRM software as well. Mobile phones also have pretty fierce competition.
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    Social networking/blogging whatever else fb does, mobile OS, desktop OS , web search, credit cards, online advertising, online videos, web mail, ... Maybe cloud hasn't found the clear winner yet
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
amelius 5y ago
> since tech ate the economy software engineers are one of the only groups with any worker power Except in the App Store, where developers are essentially powerless.

by m_ke 5y ago

egypturnash 5y ago

So many of you are also convinced you are expert negotiators and 200x programmers who surely deserve, and can get, get more for your work than the average programmer, so unions would surely result in less money for you. Or at least I sure do see that sentiment in most discussions of unions on HN.

zamadatix 5y ago
I don't think HN represents the average tech worker so that may well be true. At the very least HN represents the tech worker either genuinely interested or personally invested in their job if not being entirely focused as a place for the top performers to share projects and information in the first place. Since by definition half of people can get more than the average if you apply either the above filters to define the average HN user then most people here probably would be right - they could get significantly more than their average peer.
- robocat 5y ago
  > Since by definition half of people can get more than the average Median, not average. Salaries are nothing like a normal distribution. As the saying goes, Jeff Bezos walks into a bar and on average everyone in the bar is a billionaire.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - zamadatix 5y ago
    Average doesn't always refer to arithmetic mean but yes in this case particularly median.
jandrewrogers 5y ago
For the kinds of devs you are referring to, the kind that post on HN, I am skeptical that a union could materially improve the year-over-year wage increases they already see. At best their compensation trajectory wouldn’t change and unionization often causes wage compression in other industries (read: it would reduce their compensation). If you are one of those highly paid devs, everything about the calculus of unionization is unlikely to produce a positive expected return. Software is manifestly not in a race to the bottom; there are persistently more jobs than devs that can fill them if you are sufficiently skilled. In Europe, businesses encourage labor solidarity among software devs because it suppresses wages in a global environment where software wages are rising rapidly. Exceptional devs are shamed for believing their worth is so far above their peers, even if it is true. I don’t believe most wage gains in software in Europe would be happening if US tech companies weren’t in Europe pushing the wages upward. Unions focus on the compensation of the median ability worker. The issue in the software is that ability has something like a barbell distribution; workers at different ends of that barbell live in different worlds and are not interchangeable. The “median dev” barely exists as a useful abstraction.

analognoise 5y ago

Even software engineers are labor man. If it isn't livable for regular people, what the fuck is the point?

m_ke 5y ago
Sorry had to tend to something and didn't get to write more in my original comment but my point is exactly what you're saying. As software engineers we have a lot more leverage at Amazon than the warehouse workers, than the driver's at Uber, than the delivery drivers at seamless and instacart, at Netflix and Amazon than the IATSE workers. Uber engineers walking off for a day could do more for the gig workers than all of the strikes that they attempted in different cities.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  You have to convince software engineers they are labor instead of temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Some do end up wealthy. Most won’t (so says the data [1] [2]). Edit: In my experience, older folks are easier to sell on the idea because they’ve seen how the sausage is made and have had enough time to have possibility convert to reality. Younger folks are still…more optimistic than the data suggests is realistic. [1] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/mobile/computer-programmers.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/... [2] https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/ https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/
  - JKCalhoun 5y ago
    When you pass by the homeless (along nearly every freeway) it's hard not to feel very privileged. Even though not wealthy, still much, much better off than many.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    > temporarily embarrassed millionaires At Amazon and Uber? The problem is that they aren't not millionaires; they're mkaing 250k-650k/yr. At those companies, even in extremely high CoL, you can pay the landlord his due and be a millionaire in 5-10 years.

r3trohack3r 5y ago

> I went biking early in the morning a few times this week and came across a bunch of Uber drivers sleeping in their cars with jackets over their heads. Out of curiosity, what city is this?

m_ke 5y ago
NYC, biking from Brooklyn to LIC.

onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago

I agree - but I think you're grandizing engineers way too much. I highly doubt "a couple" or DevOps engineers at Uber not showing up to work would do anything at all. Maybe if the entire DevOps team striked.

jiveturkey 5y ago

> but because they're distributed it's hard for them to organize. How's that? In 1991, maybe. In 2021? If a movement like BLM can form today, if in the 1960s Dr. King could organize, then a seemingly simpler union organizing effort can't be excused due to distribution. To the extent that the problem is one of distribution at all, surely that's a pretty minor problem.

cjblomqvist 5y ago

Or, it's because in the US (because I assume you talk predominately about the US), there are institutions, laws, culture etc which has been pushing the US society in that direction (and/or being less able to handle the continuous change happening everywhere). I'm not sure why tech is the only thing to blame here?

cblconfederate 5y ago

The problem with tech is its highly monopolistic nature . Every tech sub-sector experiences a short period of chaotic growth and then The One gets chosen to dominate with the praises of the rest of the gang. The lack of competition in the tech sector is astounding on a global scale.

missedthecue 5y ago
Can you name one of these sectors? Cloud for instance has cutthroat competition. CRM software as well. Mobile phones also have pretty fierce competition.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  Social networking/blogging whatever else fb does, mobile OS, desktop OS , web search, credit cards, online advertising, online videos, web mail, ... Maybe cloud hasn't found the clear winner yet

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

amelius 5y ago

> since tech ate the economy software engineers are one of the only groups with any worker power Except in the App Store, where developers are essentially powerless.