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I certainly wouldn’t join a union (and a “guild” would not be legally distinguishable from one). I don’t want a levelling effect in our industry. I don’t want

I certainly wouldn’t join a union (and a “guild” would not be legally distinguishable from one). I don’t want a levelling effect in our industry. I don’t want gatekeeping either. We aren’t interchangeable cogs, and people who do better than average should not be held down. Promising people with nontraditional backgrounds should not be prevented from entering the field. Despite what people claim, unions would definitely hold people down and lock out new people. Things are going really well for us actually, compared to people in other professions. That’s partly the case because our industry has been able to remain dynamic and innovative. Much of the success we’ve seen was built by people with nontraditional professional backgrounds and would not have happened if we got bogged down by gatekeeping and credentialism. When the pie stops growing and we need to fight management over how to divide it, maybe a union will be attractive. But right now the pie is growing rapidly and workers are getting a huge amount of it in the form of both cash and stock. I’m all for continuing with this free, dynamic, and incredibly successful model. By the way, unions don’t make layoffs a thing of the past. Look at what happens in the auto industry. The beat thing we can do for laid-off tech workers is ensure that we keep our industry dynamic, so there will continue to be new employers to work for.

steele 4y ago
I want a leveling effect, but I don't live on a US coast...
grensley 4y ago
My guess is 80% of developers think they're above average.
- darkerside 4y ago
  Depending on the distribution, they may be correct
xref 4y ago
> We aren’t interchangeable cogs Turns out we largely are, just like in most other industries. Probably like to think we’re irreplaceable snowflakes. But we’re not. > people who do better than average should not be held down Ah yes that old chestnut, that unions mandate No Employee May Achieve Above Average
- twblalock 4y ago
  No, I meant that above average achievement is not rewarded. (And in that case, why would anyone try harder than the bare minimum?) One of the first things a union would do is decouple compensation from performance and introduce a standard compensation structure for all workers, segmented by job level. (And somehow the people who are personal friends of the union leaders seem to rise in job level faster than the others…) The kind of people who are attracted to that kind of structure are not the ones who build successful industries, and they are demoralizing to have as coworkers.
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    Counterpoint: Hollywood.
    - nr2x 4y ago
      Some of the most famous and wealthy people on earth are in the same union!
  - ropable 4y ago
    > One of the first things a union would do is decouple compensation from performance and introduce a standard compensation structure for all workers, segmented by job level. (And somehow the people who are personal friends of the union leaders seem to rise in job level faster than the others…) This argument is a strawman, and really is a worsr-possible-case caricature of union activity. I've worked in a number of workplaces having a unionised workforce my entire professional career (~25 years, private industry and government) and I've never observing anything like the scenario you describe. Ambitious, talented people are promoted and improve their compensation. Average-performance clock-punchers reach a certain level and stop. Poor performers are managed out of the organisation. Union membership is no ticket to a cushy job for life. I'm not denying that the worst-case scenario could happen, but it's by no means a given. IMO this kind of fundamentalist opinion is unhelpful, and doesn't reflect the reasonable balance of priorities and opinions which people have out there in a modern society.
juve1996 4y ago
I don't see how this position is tenable after seeing what generative AI can do for code. > Things are going really well for us actually, Not right now anymore. Have you seen the layoffs? Things went well because of years of cheap cash. The music is stopping and there will be even more layoffs before this is all done.
- twblalock 4y ago
  I forget who wrote this, but there was a famous CS-related paper from a while back that made the point that when we automate the easy stuff, the only remaining problems are the really hard ones that require human expertise and domain knowledge to solve. So there will always need to be human software engineers. AI being able to code is going to be like what happened when construction workers started using power tools: now that one man can saw boards as fast as 5 others with handsaws, wouldn't we see a lot less demand for carpenters? What happened is that per-worker productivity went up because of the new tools and the construction materials and techniques they use were adapted to take advantage of that, there was still plenty of work, and we can build better things faster than before. In software, imagine how much more effective engineers can be if the grunt work could be more automated. People loved autocomplete and smart IDE features and graphical debuggers because they made coding more productive. A lot of those things already do write some code. AI provides a much better version of that. People whose only contribution to software is the grunt work of writing simple code might need to worry, but there is a lot more to working as a software engineer than grinding code. These AIs are also repeaters of existing solutions -- maybe they can solve simple problems that have pre-existing solutions in their training corpus, but an AI is not going to be able to create the next Redis or Kubernetes or AWS simply by recombining existing text. Regarding layoffs: Even after all the layoffs most companies still have more employees than they did in 2020. Many of the people being laid off today joined since then. They will get other jobs, maybe not in a few weeks like what used to be possible, but still. This is not like 2001 when entire companies were going out of business and laying off 100% of their employees. A lot of the the American tech industry developed when interest rates were higher than they are now. What we had in the past decade was not normal, and in some ways it was pretty crazy -- investors didn't care if companies were sustainably operated, and now they do, and that's good for the long-term health of the industry. Tech is not immune from the business cycle, because nothing really is, but this really is not as bad as previous downturns. Even if it gets worse before it gets better, the tech industry is fundamentally strong and will handle it.

steele 4y ago

I want a leveling effect, but I don't live on a US coast...

grensley 4y ago

My guess is 80% of developers think they're above average.

darkerside 4y ago
Depending on the distribution, they may be correct

xref 4y ago

> We aren’t interchangeable cogs Turns out we largely are, just like in most other industries. Probably like to think we’re irreplaceable snowflakes. But we’re not. > people who do better than average should not be held down Ah yes that old chestnut, that unions mandate No Employee May Achieve Above Average

twblalock 4y ago
No, I meant that above average achievement is not rewarded. (And in that case, why would anyone try harder than the bare minimum?) One of the first things a union would do is decouple compensation from performance and introduce a standard compensation structure for all workers, segmented by job level. (And somehow the people who are personal friends of the union leaders seem to rise in job level faster than the others…) The kind of people who are attracted to that kind of structure are not the ones who build successful industries, and they are demoralizing to have as coworkers.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  Counterpoint: Hollywood.
  - nr2x 4y ago
    Some of the most famous and wealthy people on earth are in the same union!
- ropable 4y ago
  > One of the first things a union would do is decouple compensation from performance and introduce a standard compensation structure for all workers, segmented by job level. (And somehow the people who are personal friends of the union leaders seem to rise in job level faster than the others…) This argument is a strawman, and really is a worsr-possible-case caricature of union activity. I've worked in a number of workplaces having a unionised workforce my entire professional career (~25 years, private industry and government) and I've never observing anything like the scenario you describe. Ambitious, talented people are promoted and improve their compensation. Average-performance clock-punchers reach a certain level and stop. Poor performers are managed out of the organisation. Union membership is no ticket to a cushy job for life. I'm not denying that the worst-case scenario could happen, but it's by no means a given. IMO this kind of fundamentalist opinion is unhelpful, and doesn't reflect the reasonable balance of priorities and opinions which people have out there in a modern society.

juve1996 4y ago

I don't see how this position is tenable after seeing what generative AI can do for code. > Things are going really well for us actually, Not right now anymore. Have you seen the layoffs? Things went well because of years of cheap cash. The music is stopping and there will be even more layoffs before this is all done.

twblalock 4y ago
I forget who wrote this, but there was a famous CS-related paper from a while back that made the point that when we automate the easy stuff, the only remaining problems are the really hard ones that require human expertise and domain knowledge to solve. So there will always need to be human software engineers. AI being able to code is going to be like what happened when construction workers started using power tools: now that one man can saw boards as fast as 5 others with handsaws, wouldn't we see a lot less demand for carpenters? What happened is that per-worker productivity went up because of the new tools and the construction materials and techniques they use were adapted to take advantage of that, there was still plenty of work, and we can build better things faster than before. In software, imagine how much more effective engineers can be if the grunt work could be more automated. People loved autocomplete and smart IDE features and graphical debuggers because they made coding more productive. A lot of those things already do write some code. AI provides a much better version of that. People whose only contribution to software is the grunt work of writing simple code might need to worry, but there is a lot more to working as a software engineer than grinding code. These AIs are also repeaters of existing solutions -- maybe they can solve simple problems that have pre-existing solutions in their training corpus, but an AI is not going to be able to create the next Redis or Kubernetes or AWS simply by recombining existing text. Regarding layoffs: Even after all the layoffs most companies still have more employees than they did in 2020. Many of the people being laid off today joined since then. They will get other jobs, maybe not in a few weeks like what used to be possible, but still. This is not like 2001 when entire companies were going out of business and laying off 100% of their employees. A lot of the the American tech industry developed when interest rates were higher than they are now. What we had in the past decade was not normal, and in some ways it was pretty crazy -- investors didn't care if companies were sustainably operated, and now they do, and that's good for the long-term health of the industry. Tech is not immune from the business cycle, because nothing really is, but this really is not as bad as previous downturns. Even if it gets worse before it gets better, the tech industry is fundamentally strong and will handle it.