4 ms·

Unions?

Almost want to send this as anonymous since I don't want to get banned from Amazon :P. But I am curious as to what you all think (professionals and otherwise) of a software engineering union? I mean, salary is not exactly a problem for (most of) us. But we've had companies coordinating to lower salaries, and we've had companies coordinating to mass fire employees strategically. So what do you all think of workers coordinating to prevent those scenarios? I mean the last beginning of the year mass layoff had substantial cause for concern for many of us. Just curious. Edit: Honestly, still kind of scared s**less I might get flagged red by every job board on the planet after this.

stop50 3y ago
Im pro union, but i live live in a country that has good unions, labor laws and judges.
pleasantpeasant 3y ago
Tech workers have desperately needed a union for years now. And now look at how many well paid tech workers are being laid off or fired and now tech companies are re-hiring the same tech workers at a lower wage or as a contract worker with no benefits. "Tech salaries dropped 3 percent year over year, from $161,000 to $156,000. Adjusted for inflation, salaries decreased 9 percent, from $141,000 in 2022 to $129,000 in mid-202" In 6 months they've already managed to depress tech wages by almost 10% It's sad to think that being a W2 employee is becoming a real perk. A privledge that only the best connected techies seem to get.
- polyphony123 3y ago
  But don't worry! Your wages may be going down, and your co-workers may have been laid off, but your "opportunity" is going up right now! You can work twice as hard! That's it. Just more work. Same/less pay. We won't commit to anything if you work hard though, just vaguely hint that it's an opportunity.
- bburnett44 3y ago
  But isn't that after wages went up by like 50%? Sure in the past 6 months we're down but if you look at the past 5 years we're up a ton
starbase 3y ago
Because unions tether the best employees' compensation to the worst, and because company ownership (generally prohibited for union members) is a large fraction of TC for many SWEs, and because an additional layer of management and bureaucracy has negative value to most SWEs, few to none of the best engineers would join. As a result, the union would be known as a place that caters to midwits and incompetents.
- julian-a-avar-c 3y ago
  If you don't mind me sharing my opinion. I think that a union is just an entity that represents the workers. And not all unions of all trades have to work the same way. I think we should encourage entrepreneurship. But I also don't want the entire industry to keep on disregarding and overhiring (I see it as gambling on the economy with people) and then mass layoff workers. I'm not the best if tasked with such a question, I just do coding, I feel there must be a middle ground, and that's why I'm here :D What makes you less optimistic about it?
  - starbase 3y ago
    > I think that a union is just an entity that represents the workers. In theory, yes. In practice, a union brings with it economic incentives to do more than just represent the workers. Many of its incentives are in conflict with the wellbeing of individual workers, the company, and the economic wellbeing of the jurisdiction in which they operate. > What makes you less optimistic about it? Corruption, bureaucracy, institutional inertia, incentives for rent seeking, and loss of agency for the individual worker.
    - polyphony123 3y ago
      Depends on the union and how it's organized and ran. Also, do you really think the corruption of the union will EVER outsize the corruption of the corporation? In most unions if I want to fire the head of the union, we just don't vote for them. I can't fire Zuckerberg for being a piece of shit.
soueuls 3y ago
I am all for people to join a union, but I am personally against it, I don't want to be part of something like this, it's contrary to my personal beliefs. Also, no, I don't think you will get red flagged everywhere for such a question.
- julian-a-avar-c 3y ago
  You have no idea how grateful I am to hear someone say that last part. God, curiosity can be such a nerve wreck.
subtlepseudonym 3y ago
Software unions are a good idea. Many SWEs don't need collective bargaining to command high salaries, so the value of unions is in providing better job security. Forming a union at a software company is likely to be an uphill battle though. There is a lot of misinformation about unions, like the assumption that unions _must_ govern comp. And years of high salaries have enabled many SWEs to make investments or purchases such that they no longer depend upon a salary for their living; they're no longer working-class and unions hold no benefit for them.
schneems 3y ago
A thing I’ve considered: tying a Union mission to open source contribution. Remember when all those companies had free lunch and 20% contribution time? Then over the years those lunches got harder to find and slowly that 20% time got turned into 0% time. I could leave the lunches, but would love for a larger org that can help fight to build up the contributor pipeline and sustain maintainers. Would that interest you? What types of education or open source perks might?
- julian-a-avar-c 3y ago
  This is very interesting food for thought imo. I mean, I've mentioned that the only thing I want is for large companies not to do deals behind our back that might affect us negatively on purpose. But let's talk about my ideal world. I think allowing developers to work on open source (or eat a second lunch if they prefer) would be a tremendously good idea, not just for all the mental freedom it would give to developers, but also because it would help propel the _entire_ industry forward. Imagine if _half of every single dev_ did OSS during that time. What a world that would be.
julian-a-avar-c 3y ago
Some further discussion for those interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/17b0otb/comment/k5hw0zi/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/17b0otb/commen...
andrewguy9 3y ago
Unions are about digging in and fixing terms between management and labor. Our industry is different than any other. The factory floor we work on is in our editors. The man on the assembly line building cars is a part of the machine. We are the people that builds the machine. We don’t want to lock terms between management and labor, because as we’ve built up our tooling, we’ve changed the game repeatedly. When I got started, I was writing c/c++/assembly. I had to write my own standard library for every project. I was allocating and freeing all my buffers. I had a qa guy, an ops guy, a dba supporting me. Then I was a Java guy. We realized the DBA wasn’t needed anymore. I didn’t have to allocate and free. I could now use other people’s software through packages. I got way more productive. Made more money for the company, and I got paid more for it. Then I was a python guy. We realized all this OO crap was a waste of time. We realized the QA guy could be replaced with better tooling and monitoring. The dev ops and cloud revolutions replaced my ops guy with APIs I could manage. I got way more productive. Made the company more money, and I got well paid for it. Now we stand in front of the AI revolution. I don’t know what my job will look like. But it won’t look like what I’m doing now. I’m using copilot a lot, and I’m way more productive. I can turn around UI for the first time! I’m hoping these new Ai features we’ll make my company a lot of money. I should get some of it. I’ve seen a lot of people age out when the technology changed. I’ve seen a lot of people make good money for their work. What scares me more than the next technology pushing me out, is an industry that stagnates around “the way we do it”. Today we are on the road to infinity. But if we stop moving forward we are on the road to stagnation.

Unions?

stop50 3y ago

Im pro union, but i live live in a country that has good unions, labor laws and judges.

pleasantpeasant 3y ago

Tech workers have desperately needed a union for years now. And now look at how many well paid tech workers are being laid off or fired and now tech companies are re-hiring the same tech workers at a lower wage or as a contract worker with no benefits. "Tech salaries dropped 3 percent year over year, from $161,000 to $156,000. Adjusted for inflation, salaries decreased 9 percent, from $141,000 in 2022 to $129,000 in mid-202" In 6 months they've already managed to depress tech wages by almost 10% It's sad to think that being a W2 employee is becoming a real perk. A privledge that only the best connected techies seem to get.

polyphony123 3y ago
But don't worry! Your wages may be going down, and your co-workers may have been laid off, but your "opportunity" is going up right now! You can work twice as hard! That's it. Just more work. Same/less pay. We won't commit to anything if you work hard though, just vaguely hint that it's an opportunity.
bburnett44 3y ago
But isn't that after wages went up by like 50%? Sure in the past 6 months we're down but if you look at the past 5 years we're up a ton

starbase 3y ago

Because unions tether the best employees' compensation to the worst, and because company ownership (generally prohibited for union members) is a large fraction of TC for many SWEs, and because an additional layer of management and bureaucracy has negative value to most SWEs, few to none of the best engineers would join. As a result, the union would be known as a place that caters to midwits and incompetents.

julian-a-avar-c 3y ago
If you don't mind me sharing my opinion. I think that a union is just an entity that represents the workers. And not all unions of all trades have to work the same way. I think we should encourage entrepreneurship. But I also don't want the entire industry to keep on disregarding and overhiring (I see it as gambling on the economy with people) and then mass layoff workers. I'm not the best if tasked with such a question, I just do coding, I feel there must be a middle ground, and that's why I'm here :D What makes you less optimistic about it?
- starbase 3y ago
  > I think that a union is just an entity that represents the workers. In theory, yes. In practice, a union brings with it economic incentives to do more than just represent the workers. Many of its incentives are in conflict with the wellbeing of individual workers, the company, and the economic wellbeing of the jurisdiction in which they operate. > What makes you less optimistic about it? Corruption, bureaucracy, institutional inertia, incentives for rent seeking, and loss of agency for the individual worker.
  - polyphony123 3y ago
    Depends on the union and how it's organized and ran. Also, do you really think the corruption of the union will EVER outsize the corruption of the corporation? In most unions if I want to fire the head of the union, we just don't vote for them. I can't fire Zuckerberg for being a piece of shit.

soueuls 3y ago

I am all for people to join a union, but I am personally against it, I don't want to be part of something like this, it's contrary to my personal beliefs. Also, no, I don't think you will get red flagged everywhere for such a question.

julian-a-avar-c 3y ago
You have no idea how grateful I am to hear someone say that last part. God, curiosity can be such a nerve wreck.

subtlepseudonym 3y ago

Software unions are a good idea. Many SWEs don't need collective bargaining to command high salaries, so the value of unions is in providing better job security. Forming a union at a software company is likely to be an uphill battle though. There is a lot of misinformation about unions, like the assumption that unions _must_ govern comp. And years of high salaries have enabled many SWEs to make investments or purchases such that they no longer depend upon a salary for their living; they're no longer working-class and unions hold no benefit for them.

schneems 3y ago

A thing I’ve considered: tying a Union mission to open source contribution. Remember when all those companies had free lunch and 20% contribution time? Then over the years those lunches got harder to find and slowly that 20% time got turned into 0% time. I could leave the lunches, but would love for a larger org that can help fight to build up the contributor pipeline and sustain maintainers. Would that interest you? What types of education or open source perks might?

julian-a-avar-c 3y ago
This is very interesting food for thought imo. I mean, I've mentioned that the only thing I want is for large companies not to do deals behind our back that might affect us negatively on purpose. But let's talk about my ideal world. I think allowing developers to work on open source (or eat a second lunch if they prefer) would be a tremendously good idea, not just for all the mental freedom it would give to developers, but also because it would help propel the _entire_ industry forward. Imagine if _half of every single dev_ did OSS during that time. What a world that would be.

julian-a-avar-c 3y ago

Some further discussion for those interested: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/17b0otb/comment/k5hw0zi/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/17b0otb/commen...

andrewguy9 3y ago

Unions are about digging in and fixing terms between management and labor. Our industry is different than any other. The factory floor we work on is in our editors. The man on the assembly line building cars is a part of the machine. We are the people that builds the machine. We don’t want to lock terms between management and labor, because as we’ve built up our tooling, we’ve changed the game repeatedly. When I got started, I was writing c/c++/assembly. I had to write my own standard library for every project. I was allocating and freeing all my buffers. I had a qa guy, an ops guy, a dba supporting me. Then I was a Java guy. We realized the DBA wasn’t needed anymore. I didn’t have to allocate and free. I could now use other people’s software through packages. I got way more productive. Made more money for the company, and I got paid more for it. Then I was a python guy. We realized all this OO crap was a waste of time. We realized the QA guy could be replaced with better tooling and monitoring. The dev ops and cloud revolutions replaced my ops guy with APIs I could manage. I got way more productive. Made the company more money, and I got well paid for it. Now we stand in front of the AI revolution. I don’t know what my job will look like. But it won’t look like what I’m doing now. I’m using copilot a lot, and I’m way more productive. I can turn around UI for the first time! I’m hoping these new Ai features we’ll make my company a lot of money. I should get some of it. I’ve seen a lot of people age out when the technology changed. I’ve seen a lot of people make good money for their work. What scares me more than the next technology pushing me out, is an industry that stagnates around “the way we do it”. Today we are on the road to infinity. But if we stop moving forward we are on the road to stagnation.