I 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

I 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.