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I'm so happy for folks who have unions and have gained benefits. I know that in the Software Engineering space we think we're all ninja elite 100x rockstar deve

• VirusNewbie 3y ago
  I’m going to go down fighting keeping unions out of software. It’s the hill i’ll gladly die on. You’re welcome to go work at a software union shop, like Boeing. Writing low quality software that kills people, great job security even if you are at fault for peanut pay. I’ll take my non union job any day.
  • mmole 3y ago
    This was definitely written by Jeff Bezos on a burner account
  • deleted 3y ago
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  • deprecative 3y ago
    That's fine, you can want to be treated like shit if you like it. I know I'd greatly prefer not being under draconian rules and getting things like OT pay so that when I'm forced to work 80-hour weeks I actually benefit from it. You do you.
    • sparrish 3y ago
      [flagged]
    • VirusNewbie 3y ago
      Lol ok buddy. I guess i'm 'treated like shit' since I have to work 45 hours a week for my free coffee, food, massages, and large stock comp just so I can afford my giant house and tesla.
      • deprecative 3y ago
        Boss gave you two Oreos instead of one and you think you're hot shit despite them taking thousands. Makes sense bucko.
        • VirusNewbie 3y ago
          I’m comparing my job to union jobs in software. You think unions are the answer. I know they aren’t. What does my boss’s paycheck have to do with my argument? How does your comment convince me i’m not way better off than you and other union NPCs?
          • deprecative 3y ago
            Oh, you're that kind of intellectually vapid person who says "NPCs". We're done here. Enjoy life.
  • asdff 3y ago
    Nothing like beating on the airplane to make your point, otherwise known as a mode of travel statistically safer than even merely walking.
    • p1necone 3y ago
      I agree with your point, but there's a nit I like to pick when the statistics of airline safety comes up. Comparing safety by deaths/injuries per distance travelled between different modes of transport does not make sense to me. To prove the point imagine some hypothetical mode of travel that can take us to the nearest star - alpha centauri. Now imagine that 50% of people that travel via this mode of transport die, thats obviously not a risk anybody would be willing to take right? But if you use the same statistics as we use for aircraft safety it looks amazing, better than anything else by far. Am I saying that aircraft are unsafe? Not at all - they're still very safe relative to other modes of transport, but the statistics that we commonly calculate to compare them seem totally meaningless to me. Comparing deaths per distance travelled only makes any sense when comparing modes of travel that actually go similar distances. I also acknowledge that this is somewhat of a regional nitpick - it makes a lot more sense to compare aircraft with e.g. cars in the United States because taking an aircraft vs taking a car to travel between different states is actually a choice that many people are making. Whereas I live in a small country where there's very little overlap between aircraft trips and car trips.
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  • miffy900 3y ago
    > You’re welcome to go work at a software union shop, like Boeing. > Writing low quality software that kills people, great job security even if you are at fault for peanut pay. I’ll take my non union job any day. Boeing primarily manufactures and designs airplanes. The odds of dying while being a passenger on an airplane is about 1 in 200,000. Compare that to being a cyclist, which is 1 in 3,500. Or a pedestrian which is 1 in 485. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/how-safe-is-flying-heres-what-the-statistics-say/knzczab06 https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/how-safe-is-flying-heres... Putting your stupendously bad comparison aside, I'd say most software devs/programmers don't really need to unionise, aside from video game devs. 80+ hour work weeks, constant burn out, consistently underpaid compared to most other devs who just program boring line of business apps; they just get treated very poorly.
• whatshisface 3y ago
  Engineers have always walked a fine line between labor and capital because while on one hand they own nothing and do not manage anybody, they are also individually valued and work directly within (in a sense being at the core of) the planning functions of companies.
  • lapcat 3y ago
    If you can get laid off, then you're not capital.
    • whatshisface 3y ago
      Managers generally aren't part of unions because their job is to represent the interests of capital. I didn't invent it that's just how it has been for a hundred years.
      • lapcat 3y ago
        CEOs have their own union, but they're called boards of directors. :-) They sit around deciding each other's compensation and giving each other golden parachutes.
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      • ydlr 3y ago
        Allowing supervisors to be fired for union activity is one of the most insidious parts of the Taft-Hartley Act. It has been very effective in creating disunity among workers -- which most managers definitely are.
    • nvm0n2 3y ago
      But anyone can get laid off. CEOs get fired all the time, self employed contractors get fired from contracts. So then nobody is "capital". This is correct: the distinction between workers and capital doesn't exist outside of Marxist theory. We are all workers, and when we join or form companies, we are uniting.
• chasd00 3y ago
  > we don't want to get benefits. Software engineers are the most coddled bunch out there. Our benefits are so far beyond the pale it’s embarrassing.
  • cm2012 3y ago
    Seriously, like big tech has like 6 month standard paternity packages now. Try getting that at any other career in the USA.
    • deprecative 3y ago
      Most developers don't work for big tech. Y'all in that SV bubble.
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  • throwaway914 3y ago
    I have a pretty awful view of this: In the less complex jobs, they struggle to get things like paternity leave and time off. We have those. We should be looking at those ridiculous things we think we don't deserve and organizing to get them. We could be a leading example for the industries that come behind us. Paid time off is common in softwareland. Let's make it mandatory "you must take 4 weeks off minimum a year". We know "unlimited time off" is a guilt-tripping farce. If 1 software dev can add billions of dollars of value to a company, we should be getting these ridiculous things. These things that seem like coddling us. Maybe even a formula for "if i added x% profit, I deserve y% of that" I think hollywood is ahead of us on compensation formulas imo.
    • hakfoo 3y ago
      We can't do Hollywood style compensation because we rely on actually functional computers which are obviously incapable of Hollywood math. More seriously, we need to make sure the entire team is getting the goodies. Even your fairy-tale 1000x developers depend on good ops/infrastructure, support and QA and clever management; if they can only hire on McStaff warm bodies, they're massively hobbling those "ridiculously compensated" devs.
• mym1990 3y ago
  In 2022 only about 12% of those employed in the US were part of a union...so you are pretty far off from being the only one not 'gaining benefits'.
  • deprecative 3y ago
    I never claimed exclusivity in being treated poorly as labor.
• bontaq 3y ago
  The part I've been trying to explain to coworkers is that the union isn't just for software engineers at the company, but for the support staff as well. We have it good but I have seen support and sales staff get bullied pretty hard. Sure you might not even get a raise with a union, but perhaps those same benefits of remote work when needed, unlimited vacation, and an hour lunch can be extended to every worker at the company. The most expensive workers teaming up with the least expensive to give them more power is a good thing, I think.
  • gochi 3y ago
    Funny enough, that's probably the worst way to convince engineers due to the belief that is rooted in this field which is both rockstar qualities and a false sense of security due to companies (so far) overpaying to reduce talent pools. So bringing up support staff and sales usually results in the mindset that they should just switch fields. Instead talk about sports unions, like the NFL Player Association, and that usually gets them re-evaluating all they've been previously understanding about unions.
    • ThrowawayR2 3y ago
      Funny how proponents have to talk about sports or actors' unions to sell developer unionization because we aren't sports players or screen actors. Try talking about what actual engineering unions do instead, like the SPEEA. (Frankly, I can't think of any unions of engineering professions aside from the SPEEA in the US and I couldn't find any in a casual Google search. Anyone know of any? And if there aren't any, well, people might want to think really hard about why.)
      • deprecative 3y ago
        > And if there aren't any, well, people might want to think really hard about why. The Conservative's demonization of unions for the last several decades seems to have worked quite well.
  • nvm0n2 3y ago
    And I've seen support and sales staff bully software engineers, often for being too white or male for their liking. So they should unionize on our behalf, for fairness and justice?
• lapcat 3y ago
  Software engineers often have a strange attitude, thinking they don't need unions, when pro athletes who make $millions per year all have unions. There's a myth that with unions, everyone will make the same compensation, but that's not even remotely true in pro sports. The reason to have a union is that no matter how much money you make, the owners of the business have more money and power. Collective bargaining is a counterweight to the power of ownership. And it's not just about money, it's about working conditions. For example, labor unions could fight back against back-to-the-office demands, whereas without a union, employees are forced to individually consent or lose their job.
  • toldyouso2022 3y ago
    A union turns into a guild fast. I don't want programming to be monopoly of people with a degree, slave to the cartel's rule, programming is a human right and it must remain absolutely free! A programmers union is too dangerous in this world, especially in these times
    • tomlockwood 3y ago
      What evidence is there that unions turn into guilds? There were more guilds in preindustrial times and modern unions haven't become guilds.
    • unshavedyak 3y ago
      I view unions like i view government. It's possible, sometimes likely, that a government becomes a horrid entity for control over people. However. Governments, and perhaps Unions, are by definition (correct me if i'm wrong?) an entity that is by the people and for the people. Some for-profit company or individual has no ethical obligation to treat workers correctly, fairly, etc. So if we remove unions and government, what power do individual people have? To that idea then, people need a gov/union to have a voice - but govs and unions also need to be built with an extreme attention to oversight. Which we usually fail to implement correctly. Nevertheless it's the only tool we have - to give individuals power by distributing agreement. So to me the question isn't for or against gov/union, but rather how we can build them to scale and last. Especially in the face of pressure to corrupt. Happy to hear opinions on where this is wrong, though.
• amaunions 3y ago
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