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Tech workers (and workers in general) can and should be forming unions to protect their time, their benefits, their IP, etc. I constantly see developers say th
by turtledove 4y ago
Tech workers (and workers in general) can and should be forming unions to protect their time, their benefits, their IP, etc.
I constantly see developers say they are paid well but treated poorly by their employers (unpaid overtime, oncall rotations, receding benefits). A union fights for what people need, and we absolutely should be unionizing to advocate for all the workers.
- 0xbadcafebee 4y agoAlternative is to start demanding startups form co-ops. Probably heretical on HN as it flies in the face of the whole tech start-up dream, which is for a couple tech bros to get massively rich at exit after overworking and under-rewarding a few employees. But a co-op would fairly represent the interests of all the workers without the adversarial nature of a union. You could represent your own interest and take votes on company direction.
- EddieDante 4y ago> Probably heretical on HN as it flies in the face of the whole tech start-up dream, which is for a couple tech bros to get massively rich at exit after overworking and under-rewarding a few employees I feel like a substantial portion of HN is basically College Republicans who majored in CS.
- Layke1123 4y agoI think it's more likely that it's run by the Venture Capitalists and they help curate and drive the narrative more than not in an attempt to hopefully capture a small portion of people who can actually do software well and believe their stories.
- l33t2328 4y agoSmartish people who wanted the possibility of getting really rich used to go to wall street (as bankers, funds managers, etc), but tech is all the rage these days.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- EddieDante 4y ago[flagged]
- greedo 4y agoTemporarily embarrassed millionaires...
- airforce1 4y agoI think the video game "Dead Cells" was created by a co-op
- EddieDante 4y agoYes, a French co-op.
- turtledove 4y agoSee also The Glory Society, KO_OP, Lucid Tales, Triple Topping, Future Club, Soft Not Weak, Stray Bombay, Pixel Pushers Union 512, Hopoo, Chromatic Games, to name a few other coop games studios.
- ratww 4y agoIn my personal and limited experience of being present in Union meetings, tech startups (the kind of we see on HN) were consistently more cut-throat and stubborn than enterprise, consulting and other tech businesses, so I doubt we'll see that voluntarily. Lifestyle business are a better bet... are those startups?
- turtledove 4y agoTech coops are great, and we need more of them.
- tick_tock_tick 4y agoBut if I'm joining another startup I explicit don't want "But a co-op would fairly represent the interests of all the workers without the adversarial nature of a union. You could represent your own interest and take votes on company direction.". I know exactly what I'm signing up for and it's not to guarantee failure. The reason I joined is because someone else has the vision and the dream or I would have done it myself.
- 0xbadcafebee 4y agoWhy would you expect representing yourself to guarantee failure? And why do you think you need visions and dreams? It's just work that you get a say in.
- tick_tock_tick 4y agoI don't want a say in it for a startup.... Nothing slows a project or work down more then a big group making decisions. I want one or two lead people making nearly all the calls that's what I signed up. I would quit if they lost the vision and started taking huge amounts of employee input. If I didn't want this I'd work at a big company.....
- alexfromapex 4y agoI'm sure a lot of them exist but which one(s) are most popular so we can join?
- turtledove 4y agoCommunications Workers of America (CWA) and Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) are two working on unionizing workplaces at the moment.
- Terry_Roll 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hinkley 4y agoSoftware developers are top tier practitioners of Not Asking for Help When You Need It. We'll get unions about the same time it becomes normalized for developers to talk about seeing a therapist.
- turtledove 4y agoFor what it's worth, most of the devs I roll with these days have discovered therapy over the past couple years and are extremely thankful for it.
- hinkley 4y ago[Edit to preface] Well then maybe we're closer to unions than I thought. I know a guy who mentions his therapist regularly, and I overheard a conversation with a mutual friend about how he needed therapy for years (none of us disagree) but he didn't go until he worked with someone who was also open about it. He said something like wanting to be that guy for other people. He's an odd duck. Occasionally wise, but often plays the fool. One thing I've noticed about remote work is that I talk out loud to people so much less than I used to that when I do dive into a meaty conversation I tend to get a sore throat and afterward I feel like I dove on the conversation like a starving man on a sandwich. That's not strictly healthy. I think for some of us even a scheduled hour talking to someone per week would be good, especially now. And frankly my understanding of the New York Movie Therapist trope is that they are often portrayed somewhere between life coach and lunch buddy. The joke there being that people have gone to therapy for years without any real progress being made. Clearly not real, but then again jokes often grow from a seed of truth.
- ryandrake 4y ago> Software developers are top tier practitioners of Not Asking for Help When You Need It. They also all seem to arrogantly believe themselves to be in the top 10% of their peer developers, in terms of compensation, ability to negotiate, bargaining power vs employer, and other workplace attributes; and are therefore hostile to any system that could fairly represent the interests of all the workers. "I'm a captain of my industry, and am already paid so much more than my peer developers," software developers imagine, "A union could only make things worse for me!"