16 ms·
Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte
- reocha 3y agoWith the recent vfx unionization at marvel and the QA unionization at ZeniMax, I hope we see more efforts to organize tech workers.
- aknfxb3m 3y agoIn my country we had mandated unions for tech workers in various states. I paid the compulsory annual fee plus an additional fee that I didn't understand and can't properly explain what it was for. Not once in 23 years in IT have they done anything for me. Not a single time. Every time we pushed for raises and someone contacted the union, nothing came back. When the company was not updating our salaries against inflation (that's a thing here), the union made a deal in our behalf so the increase would be bellow inflation. Multiple times. I'd like to see unions working but they are a joke. EDIT: Just remembered that we constantly had issues with overtime and they didn't care either.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- piva00 3y agoFrom what you described it sounds very, very similar to my experience with unions in Brazil. The ones for IT specifically, they all suck and that system is definitely not how unions should work... For some reason I always felt those IT unions in Brazil were not actually run by any worker but by cadres from the employers. On the other hand, unions here in Sweden are definitely worth being part of, they have your back as an employee, and have helped many people I know personally.
- orwin 3y agoI might be misinformed here, but aren't unions part of the board for LLCs in Sweden? Or is it in Germany? (which, I mean, if you want limited liability, it's a good idea to have real oversight).
- piva00 3y agoAs far as I know that applies to Germany, don't remember similar legislation existing in Sweden.
- the-smug-one 3y ago>I always felt those IT unions in Brazil were not actually run by any worker but by cadres from the employers. That's a yellow union: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_union These are, for some reason, popular in Denmark.
- altacc 3y agoSounds like a bad union and in many places unions are badly run. Did people keep voting for the same ineffective union reps? I don't think about what a union can do for me personally, rather what it can do for the collective and hope that benefits me directly. I'm in a union and they have forced yearly mandatory base rate raises for all and the negotiation to be just after the company announces their yearly profit. My salary keeps going up without me doing anything and occasionally I have a performance review to increase the salary beyond the mandatory minimum rise. Fundamentally unions require either a good relationship and respect from the company; or be willing to enforce that respect via direct action. In order for that to happen the country has to have decent employment laws.
- simonw 3y agoWhich country?
- ketchupdebugger 3y agoDo you get to vote for union reps? If they aren't doing the job can't you just vote them out?
- aknfxb3m 3y agoI have no idea. Maybe? Either we can't or nobody bothers to notify workers that they are happening.
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoTech workers are usually so buried, heads hunched over the keyboard, focused on the latest project, that they aren't even aware they are being used. They straiten their back one day, look around, and realize they've been working for 20 years and getting nowhere. They got good enough raises, but forgot inflation, and it was really nothing.
- infecto 3y agoIn what country? Software engineers have some incredible pay for pretty low effort in the last 15years. Even before that it was a pretty decent living for most of the time pretty non-unique software. We are talking about them as an exploited working class, wild to me.
- kdmccormick 3y agoIMHO our profession's adherence to ethics and technical standards is shockingly low compared to others. If a civil engineer was asked to build a bridge that will probably be unsafe, I think they and their colleagues would have the power to refuse (right?). If a software engineer is asked to ship a feature that's probably insecure then... IDK, gotta get it to prod, move fast and break things, right? I wonder if unionization could help us do a better job of collectively saying "no" to awful product demands.
- marcinzm 3y agoYour civil engineer would also end up in jail or bared from working in the area if they made a mistake and has pretty strict criteria for becoming a civil engineer.
- tourmalinetaco 3y agoThis sounds like more of an argument for a software safety commission than for a union.
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoA whole lot of software just supports a business, and a non-critical business at that. If my buggy software takes down, say, pets.com, well, first, the world won't end because pets.com is down for 8 hours, and second, pets.com wasn't going to succeed even if my software was perfect. That kind of software isn't like building a bridge; it's more like building a birdhouse. Nobody's going to die if it collapses. (OK, a bird might.) Some software is critical. Safety critical, or running critical financial processes, handling medical info, and so on. That software does have technical standards.
- vasco 3y ago[flagged]
- robertlagrant 3y agoIt's a person whose never decided to try and lose weight writing a weight loss book.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- quickthrower2 3y agoOr perfect vision person talking about contact lenses
- badcppdev 3y agoI guess the trouble is that we don't have any self-admitted exploited workers. Everyone is a temporarily embarrassed Founder/CTO. With thanks to Steinback - https://hellyesjohnsteinbeck.tumblr.com/post/23486952183/commonly-misquoted-socialism-never-took-root-in https://hellyesjohnsteinbeck.tumblr.com/post/23486952183/com...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jandrewrogers 3y agoAt least in the US, the average software developer does eventually become a millionaire, working a pretty cushy job. If that is "exploitation" then most people would be like to be exploited like that.
- pc86 3y agoThe average software developer makes $110k/yr, and there's a clear differentiation between having a million dollars (or millions) in your 20s and 30s compared to retiring with $2-3 million in a 401k that you need to live off of for four decades.
- mmmmmbop 3y ago$2-3 million in a 401k by retirement age is still 30-40x the median amount. [0] [0] https://www.bankrate.com/retirement/average-401k-balance-by-age/#:~:text=65%2B,%2470%2C620 https://www.bankrate.com/retirement/average-401k-balance-by-...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- iteria 3y agoI just keep thinking about the fact that literally everyone in my family makes less than that. To say that a developer _only_ makes 110K is high level privilege in many places including tech hubs. 110K is more than a whole household makes in my metro area. The average dev out earns dual income family. This is why I spend a lot of think wondering what could a union even do for me? I work in comfort. If I work long hours that's my decision because I can always get another high paying less stressful job. Over my career I've taken very high paying jobs with high stress for the money and also chill lower paying jobs. Every job I've ever had I've outearned my both my working parents.
- spacecadet 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- FuriouslyAdrift 3y agoHas no one heard of the CWA? They were huge back when I live in California. Granted that was quite a long time ago and when telco's were a major power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Workers_of_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Workers_of_Amer...
- LetTheSmokeOut 3y agoCWA is a big part of the tech unionization effort today: https://code-cwa.org/ https://code-cwa.org/
- wsintra2022 3y agoI was once a card carrying member of the CWA, communication workers union, I was an apprentice studying telecoms and systems engineer. They helped me out during my dumb teenager gets caught drunk driving days. Instead of getting the boot, I got counselling for my drinking issues and sent on driver training courses. If I didn’t have the union behind me who knows…
- alphazard 3y agoDon't unions work best in fields where quality is very uniform and expertise counts for very little? I'm thinking about low skilled jobs that can be mastered in months or years. Unions create salary progression, and benefits for seniority where there is otherwise no reason for them to exist. When no one does anything better than anyone else, it makes sense to negotiate as a block, individuals have no power. Now compare that to tech where the 80/20 rule is patently obvious to anyone in the field. The best engineers are worth literally 10x the worst engineers, but often get paid only 2-3x as much. 20% of the field, with 80% of the negotiating power, wants employers to find better and better ways to pay proportional to value-add, not to increase the floor salary, or working conditions across the board.
- monocasa 3y agoUnions have a lot of different forms. SAG-AFTRA is in a field with extreme striation for instance. There's still plenty of individual negotiation.
- itsoktocry 3y ago>The best engineers are worth literally 10x the worst engineers Uh, I'm pretty sure the best employees in any field are worth 10x what the worst employees are, whether you're writing code, assembling a car or gutting fish. The economics of labour suggest unions are most valuable where there's a monopsony buyer of labour. Big Tech might fit that bill, especially when we know they colluded to depress salaries.
- flerchin 3y agoThe best airline pilot lands the plane the same as the worst.
- tartuffe78 3y agoWith a few notable outliers...
- digitalsushi 3y ago
- cjdrake 3y ago[flagged]
- antiunion111 3y ago[flagged]
- 0xbadc0de5 3y agoHard pass. I can do better without a union than with one, and I refuse to subsidise those who can't.
- millzlane 3y agoIn this system, who would you subsidize?
- nxm 3y agoLikely the terrible/slacking developers
- hospitalJail 3y agoThe goal isnt to strike or anything, its to raise money, lobby the government, and give ourselves some sort of regulatory capture. Look at the medical cartels for the playbook. Make it illegal to outsource work, make the barrier to entry high, etc... Sure its terrible for the nation, but everyone else is doing it. We don't want to be last.
- BowBun 3y agoIt's a lot like insurance - you might be fine right now, and you may be fine for your whole life, but what if you aren't? There are so many scenarios where you can fall out of favor and where collective bargaining is the only lever you have to pull against a large company. The chances are relatively small for an individual, but with the # of people involved, it happens a lot (we see HN post about workplace retaliation and employment litigation all the time). And then, of course, there's the argument that those that truly need the unions could be your kids, your relatives, people you care about. I don't think you need to be so concerned about subsidizing others; we all already benefit from that. This stance of being so protective of your labor should be reserved for employers and the Capital class, not weaponized against fellow workers to throw them under the bus.
- anildash 3y agoSo what you really want to do is subsidize _managers_ who can't?
- duxup 3y agoI know European Union work quite differently than in the US. My experience with unions in the US like the teachers unions where conditions are still poor, pay is poor, and everything based on seniority rather than skill, you’re stuck with whatever the union negotiates regardless if you’re in the union or not …. I want nothing to do with that.
- alexb_ 3y agoPublic unions are a completely different beast than private unions.
- duxup 3y agoIs there a good example I should know about?
- alexb_ 3y agoAll police unions
- lesuorac 3y agoThe problem with a police union is that management (i.e. Captains + & Commissioners) are part of the union. It'd be like if Gary Bettman ran the NHLPA.
- supertimor 3y agoAll the entertainment unions (IATSE, WGA, SAG, DGA, and I think even some athlete unions, etc), do not base their pay off of seniority and also don’t cap their pay. So higher skilled players can absolutely still negotiate terms and pay when accepting a job. The workers in these unions just have access to more protections.
- hospitalJail 3y agoFYI, if you look at teachers $/hr, its pretty extraordinary. What people forget is that teachers are part time workers, with full time pay.
- hnisforfascists 3y ago[flagged]
- nhumrich 3y agoWhat about a union that spans companies something akin to the directors guild of america, whom almost all Hollywood creatives are apart of? I think it's purpose is very similar to how software engineers work on practice.
- advisedwang 3y agoLabor law makes it difficult to achieve, sadly. The NLRA only provides for bargaining units within one employer. Unless you can get an industry wide coalition to voluntarily recognize your union, it is not happening.
- MaysonL 3y agoTherefor, labor law needs to change, no?
- advisedwang 3y agoIt's hard to envision such a drastic (and labor friendly) change passing in a climate where the much milder PRO Act couldn't get passed when an allegedly labor friendly party and leader controlled both houses and the presidency. The path to winning such changes - whether through changing the law with the political process or simply forcing employers to bargain with industry wide strikes - requires much more powerful labor movement. The path to that is simply to build whatever power is possible. Right now the labor movement just trying to get organizing and union membership on the upswing, and I think that's the necessary step from where we are today.
- hospitalJail 3y agoThe Physicians have a cartel, Pharmacists have a cartel, why can't we create our own cartel? The only way this would work, is if we entrench ourselves into US politics and spend hundreds of millions of dollars of bribery/lobbying money. Sure its definitely going to be bad for the rest of US citizens, but if the medical field is going to extort us, why can't we join in?
- lr4444lr 3y ago100% agree. I think it is because we can't get out act together to create a professional organization to gatekeeps credentialing, so that we can "police our own". Hence, the whole tech interview drama, because there is no uniform metric of quality, because anyone can call himself an "engineer". I think if we fix that problem, we'll get most of the benefits of unionization downstream.
- Tade0 3y agoThis is more or less what's happened in my country, which is a popular outsourcing destination. Contractors enjoy lower taxes and any attempt at ending these privileges failed, because otherwise the brain-drain that's going on would be much worse.
- brightball 3y agoI see no reason or benefit to unionizing tech workers.
- hnisforfascists 3y ago[dead]
- zaphar 3y agoI don't know whether we deserve a union or not. I do know that I emphatically do not want or need one. I make the amount of money I need. I have my pick of jobs if I feel undervalued by the place I work. Under no circumstances do I want to be forced to pay dues into a union that is unlikely to represent me in the company or politically. Since I have no need or desire there is no reason for me to consider the question.
- afavour 3y ago> I have my pick of jobs if I feel undervalued by the place I work Definitely something that is in no danger of changing at any point in the future! What a relief for all of us! We already have ample evidence that tech giants colluded to depress the salaries of their workers. I can understand being wary of unions but to suggest they’d provide absolutely nothing feels like a failure of imagination.
- baron816 3y agoIt will change if it becomes harder for companies to hire and fire people, or become less competitive.
- zaphar 3y agoSoftware engineer is not the only job I've every had. I've been the janitor sweeping floors, I've been the guy on the assembly line. I've literally supported my family by working day labor with no certainty of continued employment. I have always been able to find a place and prove myself worthy of the pay without sacrificing my health, or family time. I've quit jobs when I no longer felt like it was the right place for me. I don't think it's anyone's responsibility but mine to ensure that I can provide for my family. I have all the self-dignity I need to stand up for myself and my family. I have built the support structures I need to survive rocky periods. None of what I've done is out of reach for anyone else. So yes, I think a certain amount of self-responsibility and self-reliance is good for you. I don't buy into the idea the most important dynamic is relative power between employees who may or may not share my values and an employer. Instead I buy into the idea that self-respect, self-reliance and community support structur is far more important and I would rather focus on that than trying to balance the power dynamic at a particular workplace.
- MrPatan 3y agoI don't read that title the same way other people read that title
- skymast 3y ago[dead]
- yowlingcat 3y agoI found it an interesting omission that the author completely failed to discuss H1B. There will be no tech union for the same reasons there is are no corporate unions for white collar labor. A significant amount of the core population are capitalists who are angling for middle management and executive roles, and/or founder roles, and the companies source competent intellectual labor internationally. There is often no reason the demand cannot go offshore, and value of offshore talent doesn't just come from labor arbitrage anymore.
- slibhb 3y ago> After the 2016 presidential election, the tech industry saw a surge of activism when workers began to recognize the work they had produced could potentially be abused to harm people. This is one more reason to be skeptical of tech unions. Often, they aren't interested in securing higher pay and better conditions; they're about politics.
- anildash 3y ago"Politics" is when people fight for more human rights for others, but when companies try to destroy others' lives or livelihoods, that's _not_ politics, right?
- consz 3y agoIt’s absolutely incredible to me how much animosity unions have in the US and how self defeating the typical programmers attitude is (maybe this is just selection bias for HN?) — and I say this as someone who’s definitely not a laborer. But if I was one, I would hope I wouldn’t vote against my own class interests like it appears developers often do. Luckily, even speaking openly against my own interests here is zero risk, I feel Americans are too far gone in their position against unions for it to ever be an issue for me personally.
- idiotsecant 3y agoIts a mix of crabs in a pot and 'f u I got mine' syndrome. I've largely given up trying to convince HN readers that tech work in the future will be the modern equivalent of bricklaying and will need its own protection for workers. Workers enjoy a high demand now and think that will always be the case but blacksmiths and telegraph operators thought so too.
- booleandilemma 3y agoAnd the best time to set such a union up is while we're in a strong position. Why wait until we're competing with AI?
- ryandrake 3y agoExactly. Crabs in the pot. "How dare you suggest lifting everyone up. Only I should be lifted up!" A lot of HN thinks they are Captains Of Industry who would somehow make less money in a union. The rest point to the least-pleasant union they can think of and declare "They are all necessarily like that one."
- bluGill 3y agoUnions have not helped their cause over here. They have regularly enforced paying bad people more than good people because the only measure they allow is years on the job. They regularly prevent people who want to move into management from doing so (not to be confused with people who don't want to!) be not allowing anything learned to count for your management role. They regularly discourage learning something more. They regularly yell that doing better work just helps your employer and will not help you. Unions don't have to be that way, but all the examples I have of unions are places I would not want to work. Thus why would I want a union in my job?
- djha-skin 3y agoLaborers need a union because their work is not differentiated. Anyone can dig a ditch. Most people can put grocery carts away. With a little training, most people can even drive a bus. Because of this, market forces drive businesses to treat them inhumanely and pay them so little money that they can't support a family on it. On the other hand, engineers are highly differentiated. I'm a DevOps engineer. I'm probably one of the most highly paid engineers in my company. I can assure you, the market is not something that I'm afraid of. Engineers do not need a union. If they get good at their jobs, they are highly differentiated. I'd go further and say that unions would be detrimental. I remember my sister working at a grocery store and having to pay union dues cut and it would cut into her paycheck. A necessary evil perhaps for that field, but in ours would be overhead and cost that didn't need to be there. It would probably just make me poorer.
- bluGill 3y agoDitch diggers may need a union, but if the ditch is dug with a manual shovel they won't get one because as soon as they organize the boss will fire them and hire someone else. A ditch digger who operates a backhoe needs a union and can get one because you can't hire just anyone to operate a backhoe (I can operate one, but I'll spend the first several days randomly pulling levers until what I want happens does - don't put me close to something important for the first week as I'll destroy it moving the wrong way - after a month I'd be good, but that is a month of paying me while not getting your ditches dug) Grocery workers rarely have a union, and when they do they rarely go on strike because the workers don't really have enough skills to not be replaced. It only works at all because every clerk going on strike at once is hard to replace.
- screye 3y agoAmerican scale and polarization make it impossible to have moderate conversations around social tools like unions. A union doesn't need to be a mediocrity enforcing, all-encompassing beaurocracy. Programmers don't need a union to ensure fair pay or minimum hours. Our concerns are different, and a limited union can help. Eg: 1. Programmers need to be given 6 months heads up before big change in employment situation. (RTO, city change, etc). 2. On call hours on weekends need to be compensated as overtime. 3. Unused vacation must be compensated as overtime by year end. This also means that unlimited vacation policies should come with miminum compensable vacation days. 4. Standard minimum maternity & paternity leave policies. Also, additional compensation if layoff occurs after notice of mat/pat leave or soon after mat/pat leave. 5. All meetings from noon-1pm should have compensated food. 6. Any meetings after 11pm (of contracted timezone) should be compensated as overtime. 7. If an employee has to live more than a 1 hour rush-hour commute from work AND a company cannot find nearer housing for them at some standard rental amount, then the commute should be fully paid for. None of these are unreasonable and all will benefit everyone. You can have students get union membership in undergrad. Universities can enforce entry permissions to career fairs on union compliance. Now, absolute power corrupts absolutely. As vital as unions are, limiting their powers to valid areas is just as vital. That portion I still don't have figured out.
- vasco 3y agoThose are law in many countries, you do not need unions for that, you need a social democracy.
- ughitsaaron 3y agoIt's unclear to me how social democracy could be achieved without a labor movement.
- djha-skin 3y ago1. I got cut from my company during the holidays in 2016. I had a job less than a month later and was double paid for some days while the severance overlap with the new job. 2. This one is interesting to me, but also might be mildly insulting to a laborer fighting for it because they actually get tired at the end of a day's work. On call is stressful, but it's first world stressful. Furthermore, you can usually do something about it to make sure that the app gets more stable over time. 3. Again this would be interesting, but I feel no loss. The company gives me an opportunity to use the vacation days, and if I am cut from the company mid-year I am paid for the vacation days I didn't use for that year. Although at my current company This is all theoretical anyway because I am given unlimited vacation days. I know unlimited vacation days are bad and come with their own caveats, but hey, if you don't want unlimited vacation days to become the norm, Don't legislate around vacation days. 4. I'm actually pretty comfortable with this one for maternity, but men really don't need much paternity. Most of the five weeks paternity leave I was given I just screwed around and home. I need 3 days, tops. 5. Our work is flexible enough nature that we can just eat at 1:00 most of the time. 6. If your company is having you do meetings at 11:00 p.m. you can just switch companies. 7. The commute is fully paid for. You knew what you were signing up for when you started the job and they fully pay for it in your salary.
- anarticle 3y agoI would argue that in the US it will not work. An only acceptable model might be co-determination where workers have direct representation on the board. You can look across the board for barely functioning unions in the US, they are in some cases nearly adversarial with the people they are representing. We must remember that any structure will require money to function, and I don't think paying a bunch of people who don't do what I do to "represent me" is for me. As people who are certainly making above average wages, we are now juicy targets for make-work organizers and griftlords who want to tell us how we should run our businesses and lives and to cut them in. The purpose of labor is scale, and in software we don't have the same overheads. As for our industry, we are not very uniform in what we do and so it will be hard to define. This is very different to say, trades, or services that are well defined. Of course we want to think we are special so maybe it isn't true and I'm wrong. My guess is if you talked to five senior software engineers (to be explicit: someone who has been working for 10y) in software you'd have five different novels of war stories. We are by far one of the highest paid and most coddled workers of all time. There is no kombucha on tap at the job site where you're laying bricks. (Marshalltown forever!) Don't give me lines about "solidarity with workers" when you're the same people ordering doordash/instacart/grubhub. Those models ship money from your neighborhood and area directly into ultracapitalist hands. No one strip mined you into a six figure job. I have belonged to several unions, most of which could not do anything for me contractually and yet I still paid a large amount of my then tiny checks because I was "part of the system". Not part enough to benefit. Maybe it's sour grapes on my part! We must swim with the tides, and maybe the industry will change.
- GoodJokes 3y ago[dead]
- sershe 3y agoUntil recently, tech had a large number of jobs and a shortage of competent workers - these workers don't need unions pretty much by definition. What kind of workers need a unions, esp. US-style unions? 3 types (I could give a ton examples for each, but I'd only give one in the interest of brevity): 1) Incompetent workers. If I wanted to chill at the expense of my coworkers or taxpayers, unions would be awesome for me. E.g. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/31/the-rubber-room https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/08/31/the-rubber-roo... , many more examples, also e.g. police unions. 2) Exclusionary workers. If there are too many workers for the number of jobs, it'd be cool if I could exclude all those pesky other workers, to the fullest extent that it's socially acceptable. While my favorite example is union racism during the Great Migration, as an immigrant I'd like to give honorable mention to Cesar Chavez running literal patrols to physically intimidate undocumented immigrants: https://www.ambitiouscollective.com/blogs/news/history-cesar-chavezs-history-of-anti-mexican-sentiment https://www.ambitiouscollective.com/blogs/news/history-cesar... For me as a tech worker, it would be pretty nice to prevent outsourcing and extra immigration - selfish and evil, yes, but pretty nice, go unions! 3) Unnecessary workers. If my job was unneeded, it would still be nice to keep it and have someone else (consumers, taxpayers) pay me. Lots of examples, e.g. https://tunnelingonline.com/why-tunnels-in-the-us-cost-much-more-than-anywhere-else-in-the-world https://tunnelingonline.com/why-tunnels-in-the-us-cost-much-... " the number of workers assigned in the tunnel in New York is significantly more than other parts of the country and as much as 4 times more than tunnel workers assigned to comparable projects in Europe" 3a) Honorable mention, since this is HN after all - workers unnecessary due to innovation. If unions had power 200 years ago, we'd still be driving horse buggies - https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/11/california-bill-to-ban-driverless-autonomous-trucks-goes-to-newsoms-desk https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/11/california-bill-to-ban-dri... You could sit down to design messed up, pernicious, evil incentives all day, and you couldn't come up with anything close to what unions already are. Some say "well, most historians agree that during one period of history, unions achieved great things and improved lives on the net!" to which my response is "so did nuking civilians; and?"
- adrianovaroli 3y agoMany of the top replies are about "I'm a top programmer, why would I need a union? change my mind" And, you don't. Not right now. When you're just "a common worker" you do. Because your bosses have convinced you everybody has to be a top programmer or they can die in a ditch even when it's impossible. It's called Stackhanovism.
- freediverx 3y ago[dead]