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> The alternative is to live under the petty tyranny of employers, hopping from job to job I generally understand your point but the reality a union pitch has

> The alternative is to live under the petty tyranny of employers, hopping from job to job I generally understand your point but the reality a union pitch has to provide a better answer for is that job hopping works out pretty well. I went from $28/hr part time to $350k TC, base $200k+ over 5 years of job hops early career and remote LCOL. For one, there’s not a lot of tyranny there and I don’t think a union would have brought me that comp. I know many other similar experiences from individuals who work this route too. For two, I did it via an ethical but transactional relationship with my employers. Unions still work on an old school mentality that a fair long term relationship is worth locking in. I’m aware the music might stop in eng comp at some point, and I’ve planned/risk managed for that too. If all unions can offer tech jobs is banding together and rise up the median conditions for everyone, while as a solo operator I can lock in early retirement, that’s a hard sell. For what it’s worth, I’m quite pro-union for jobs where it makes sense. But there is nothing in your argument that makes sense for a SWE hunting life-changing comp, which is quite doable still. Why put my family at risk to help everyone else go along to get along a bit better than the previous contract, if I can solve our lifetime financial future in a few years?

bwestergard 3y ago
Yes, you are in a distinct but important group among software developers that would not be particularly well served by firm-specific union contracts. You should support these efforts because they certainly don't harm your prospects, and they pave the way for a hiring hall model. Your situation is more like that of an established Hollywood actor or musician. And the collective bargaining model that makes sense for them - a hiring hall - would also make sense for your segment of the software sector (and startups). Many film/album productions are effectively run like startups, and it makes no sense to bargain a firm specific contract each time. Likewise with construction work, where the hiring hall model is widespread.
- dogman144 3y ago
  I’m not clear how I wouldn’t get my prospects harmed. More union -> less ease of hiring and negotiating for solo operators, less companies that will hire journeyman vs union shops. That tyranny of job hopping is available to everyone. I’m not special (having spent every day with my engineering skills haha) I just beefed up on negotiating and risk tolerance. Also I cant imagine how a startup scales if unions get involved. Or I guess another way - I do not understand your conclusion that a hiring hall (what is this…?) helps me at all. * Edit, clarifying: the crux I don’t understand from union tech people is it’s not like we’re miners, stuck in the same valley in WV by a variety of conditions, so might as all band together and fight Duke Energy. Or actors, tied to a few cities for their industry with a significant “on-prem” requirement. In tech, a new job and a better opportunity is a Signal/Slack DM or a LinkedIn search away. Close down one laptop and ship it back, open another shipped by an employer -> new future. IMO this is how it works going forward and only more so as fully digitized companies continue. I don’t see how a union helps here, and doesn’t add friction to me surviving in that medium. I feel that if I bought into the union perspective that the relationship with an employer is one worth shaping and locking in, it’s missing the point of a hyper-transactional, individualist economy that’s only getting more so. That to me is supporting an approach based on a faulty core premise, which seems very risky, excluding any benefits from the job hopping thing.
  - cristiancavalli 3y ago
    > it’s missing the point of a hyper-transactional, individualist economy that’s only getting more so. This runs counter to the fact that we have seen a massive increase in labor organization and union activity over the last 5 years so I would consider rethinking that perspective. https://www.employmentlawworldview.com/recent-data-confirms-surge-in-union-activity-in-us-workplaces-us/ https://www.employmentlawworldview.com/recent-data-confirms-... https://news.gallup.com/poll/510281/unions-strengthening.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/510281/unions-strengthening.asp... > it’s not like we’re miners, stuck in the same valley in WV by a variety of conditions, so might as all band together and fight Duke Energy. Yes but your are subject to an increasingly consolidated group of employers that are all generally described as “near monopolies” by the stock market analysts themselves and as we saw with the credit tightening cycle startups only are a viable counterweight as an employer when credit is cheap. You are also increasingly subject to competing with people who live on and require far less money to live in the places they work outside of western developed nations. Any handwaving about “superior quality from the US” is just whistling past the graveyard as monopolistic corporations don’t have to care about quality. Anecdata: any post on HN complaining about a major corporations support — they don’t have to care about quality when they own the market. https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-n... “The US economy is at least 50% more concentrated today than in 2005, they write.” https://www.axios.com/2022/05/26/new-paper-finds-monopolies-contribute-to-inflation https://www.axios.com/2022/05/26/new-paper-finds-monopolies-... > Also I cant imagine how a startup scales if unions get involved. And yet data to that effect has been collected and found no visible impact on small business: https://www.princeton.edu/~davidlee/wp/unionbf.pdf https://www.princeton.edu/~davidlee/wp/unionbf.pdf
    - dogman144 3y ago
      An increase in labor activity correlates to the hyper-individualized, commoditized economy - as a reaction to it, yes. Will it impact it? I don’t think so. We are an information-product economy. The outcome of it is Product A/Business A can get swapped out by a few clicks from the user to Product B/Business B. And in the process the hyper-organized, powerful Union A can’t do anything about it. Yes, there are all sorts of economist side-channels you can get into on this topic, but suffice to say the user-choice and de-frictioning around that choice has never been so powerful, and unions are from an age and of an approach from before this happened. Maybe to your point, B2B software will get impacted by organized labor, ie where there are consequential vendor lock-ins. But from that angle - do I sign a vendor agreement with a union shop, and the likely delays and quirks on product features and support? I’m not sure I would. To my earlier point, the same dynamic benefits employees, why let a union slow that? As long as the user has as strong a choice on dictating revenue as it does currently, I’m not sure what point you’re making? Labor is a reaction but on the supply side, and no impact on the demand side which is what I’m referring to as the driver. To your second, you’re looking at a domestic employment market when the reality is an international one. I didn’t mention once my American-ness protects my income. But my global-ness and commitment to keeping that perspective, plus learning other (human) languages, does. In large I feel your response missed the point I’m making.
dehrmann 3y ago
> old school mentality that a fair long term relationship is worth locking in Part of the secret sauce of silicon valley is CA doesn't allow non-competes, so there's a lot of employee churn. Too much or too little are both bad, but some churn spreads ideas across the industry, leveling up everyone's game. I understand that some people want the stability of a lifer, but in innovative industries, this is a negative, and I'd rather see a better social safety net from the government to make people comfortable with taking risks and changing jobs.
- dogman144 3y ago
  This is an interesting perspective. Same page, I specifically have not taken risks bc my PPO healthcare would drop out, I can jump for comp but there is a floor of safety I need to maintain. With a startup, you’re dropping comp and healthcare, which was a bridge too far.
  - dehrmann 3y ago
    It's a little surprising a Republican who supports universal health care (maybe there just aren't any) hasn't played it up as a pro-business policy.
  - projectazorian 3y ago
    > With a startup, you’re dropping comp and healthcare, which was a bridge too far. Every startup I've worked for had a PPO option. (One didn't originally but then added a PPO as soon as they raised a Series A.)
    - dogman144 3y ago
      Founding one is a bit different ballgame on that front.
ryandrake 3y ago
> I generally understand your point but the reality a union pitch has to provide a better answer for is that job hopping works out pretty well. I went from $28/hr part time to $350k TC, base $200k+ over 5 years of job hops early career and remote LCOL. Job hopping tends to work out great early in one's career, but most everyone will plateau. My very first job hop netted me a +33% increase, my next was +20%, but the increase always trends downward. I'm 20 years into my career now, and my last job hop was maybe +0.2%. It's no longer worth it to move. Also, $350K TC in 5 years is astoundingly good, like almost unbelievably good. Congratulations but you must know that makes you an enormous outlier. I don't even make close to that after over 20 years and in a HCOL area.
- dogman144 3y ago
  Great feedback, and you raise a good point about plateauing. To start on the anomalous experience aspect, I know a lot of people on the same path, largely it comes from in-demand tech skills with a talent gap - think SRE, security engineering vs slamming very crowded JS-based SWE roles, paired with the pre-IPO venture pay. If it’s series C+, you’ll get 18mo of stability, and then jump for comp. Most people I know not hitting this TC won’t go to these types of companies. Another key part is thinking on 3-5 yrs vs job to job. You can get into killer companies by layering where you go first and what you work on, vs shooting for that company in the first job app. If you’re not a tech talent who can hit the hard interviews immediately, this is a great path. Re: planning/risk management on that, as specifically the pre-IPO pay part might change with the economy, my paths are: - arbitrage LCOL and remote tech for as long as I can, but then hit the tech cities for roles where the seniority/comp makes it worth living there as you can still get ahead (as in, out of the “golden treadmill” range of great comp but it’s NYC and childcare is $3k/mo hypotheticals), plus my career positioning tees me up to take a shot at those roles. - tech executive paths. If you have a modicum of social skills, people networking, and an eye for how the business makes revenue, this is in play and also pay continues to climb to astronomical levels. - lifestyle management: there is no recurring fixed expensive in my life that a $70k/yr tech job won’t cover, and having this managed makes the above planning remotely possible. Put all this together - life changing comp is in tech and 10 yrs playing it buys you a future to do just about anything you want after. Only reason I bring all this up in detail vs letting blind leak into hacker news is I can’t see how a union helps that path and more so doesn’t actively hurt it. As I said somewhere else, believe me I’m not a generational tech talent. I had a non-tech career before this, had to retrain, all that. But perhaps that background helped me see how wild the opportunity in tech is? By the time you hit those 0.2% raises… you could be not working while the rest of the world descends into AI-enabled unemployment etc etc

bwestergard 3y ago

Yes, you are in a distinct but important group among software developers that would not be particularly well served by firm-specific union contracts. You should support these efforts because they certainly don't harm your prospects, and they pave the way for a hiring hall model. Your situation is more like that of an established Hollywood actor or musician. And the collective bargaining model that makes sense for them - a hiring hall - would also make sense for your segment of the software sector (and startups). Many film/album productions are effectively run like startups, and it makes no sense to bargain a firm specific contract each time. Likewise with construction work, where the hiring hall model is widespread.

dogman144 3y ago
I’m not clear how I wouldn’t get my prospects harmed. More union -> less ease of hiring and negotiating for solo operators, less companies that will hire journeyman vs union shops. That tyranny of job hopping is available to everyone. I’m not special (having spent every day with my engineering skills haha) I just beefed up on negotiating and risk tolerance. Also I cant imagine how a startup scales if unions get involved. Or I guess another way - I do not understand your conclusion that a hiring hall (what is this…?) helps me at all. * Edit, clarifying: the crux I don’t understand from union tech people is it’s not like we’re miners, stuck in the same valley in WV by a variety of conditions, so might as all band together and fight Duke Energy. Or actors, tied to a few cities for their industry with a significant “on-prem” requirement. In tech, a new job and a better opportunity is a Signal/Slack DM or a LinkedIn search away. Close down one laptop and ship it back, open another shipped by an employer -> new future. IMO this is how it works going forward and only more so as fully digitized companies continue. I don’t see how a union helps here, and doesn’t add friction to me surviving in that medium. I feel that if I bought into the union perspective that the relationship with an employer is one worth shaping and locking in, it’s missing the point of a hyper-transactional, individualist economy that’s only getting more so. That to me is supporting an approach based on a faulty core premise, which seems very risky, excluding any benefits from the job hopping thing.
- cristiancavalli 3y ago
  > it’s missing the point of a hyper-transactional, individualist economy that’s only getting more so. This runs counter to the fact that we have seen a massive increase in labor organization and union activity over the last 5 years so I would consider rethinking that perspective. https://www.employmentlawworldview.com/recent-data-confirms-surge-in-union-activity-in-us-workplaces-us/ https://www.employmentlawworldview.com/recent-data-confirms-... https://news.gallup.com/poll/510281/unions-strengthening.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/510281/unions-strengthening.asp... > it’s not like we’re miners, stuck in the same valley in WV by a variety of conditions, so might as all band together and fight Duke Energy. Yes but your are subject to an increasingly consolidated group of employers that are all generally described as “near monopolies” by the stock market analysts themselves and as we saw with the credit tightening cycle startups only are a viable counterweight as an employer when credit is cheap. You are also increasingly subject to competing with people who live on and require far less money to live in the places they work outside of western developed nations. Any handwaving about “superior quality from the US” is just whistling past the graveyard as monopolistic corporations don’t have to care about quality. Anecdata: any post on HN complaining about a major corporations support — they don’t have to care about quality when they own the market. https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-n... “The US economy is at least 50% more concentrated today than in 2005, they write.” https://www.axios.com/2022/05/26/new-paper-finds-monopolies-contribute-to-inflation https://www.axios.com/2022/05/26/new-paper-finds-monopolies-... > Also I cant imagine how a startup scales if unions get involved. And yet data to that effect has been collected and found no visible impact on small business: https://www.princeton.edu/~davidlee/wp/unionbf.pdf https://www.princeton.edu/~davidlee/wp/unionbf.pdf
  - dogman144 3y ago
    An increase in labor activity correlates to the hyper-individualized, commoditized economy - as a reaction to it, yes. Will it impact it? I don’t think so. We are an information-product economy. The outcome of it is Product A/Business A can get swapped out by a few clicks from the user to Product B/Business B. And in the process the hyper-organized, powerful Union A can’t do anything about it. Yes, there are all sorts of economist side-channels you can get into on this topic, but suffice to say the user-choice and de-frictioning around that choice has never been so powerful, and unions are from an age and of an approach from before this happened. Maybe to your point, B2B software will get impacted by organized labor, ie where there are consequential vendor lock-ins. But from that angle - do I sign a vendor agreement with a union shop, and the likely delays and quirks on product features and support? I’m not sure I would. To my earlier point, the same dynamic benefits employees, why let a union slow that? As long as the user has as strong a choice on dictating revenue as it does currently, I’m not sure what point you’re making? Labor is a reaction but on the supply side, and no impact on the demand side which is what I’m referring to as the driver. To your second, you’re looking at a domestic employment market when the reality is an international one. I didn’t mention once my American-ness protects my income. But my global-ness and commitment to keeping that perspective, plus learning other (human) languages, does. In large I feel your response missed the point I’m making.

dehrmann 3y ago

> old school mentality that a fair long term relationship is worth locking in Part of the secret sauce of silicon valley is CA doesn't allow non-competes, so there's a lot of employee churn. Too much or too little are both bad, but some churn spreads ideas across the industry, leveling up everyone's game. I understand that some people want the stability of a lifer, but in innovative industries, this is a negative, and I'd rather see a better social safety net from the government to make people comfortable with taking risks and changing jobs.

dogman144 3y ago
This is an interesting perspective. Same page, I specifically have not taken risks bc my PPO healthcare would drop out, I can jump for comp but there is a floor of safety I need to maintain. With a startup, you’re dropping comp and healthcare, which was a bridge too far.
- dehrmann 3y ago
  It's a little surprising a Republican who supports universal health care (maybe there just aren't any) hasn't played it up as a pro-business policy.
- projectazorian 3y ago
  > With a startup, you’re dropping comp and healthcare, which was a bridge too far. Every startup I've worked for had a PPO option. (One didn't originally but then added a PPO as soon as they raised a Series A.)
  - dogman144 3y ago
    Founding one is a bit different ballgame on that front.

ryandrake 3y ago

> I generally understand your point but the reality a union pitch has to provide a better answer for is that job hopping works out pretty well. I went from $28/hr part time to $350k TC, base $200k+ over 5 years of job hops early career and remote LCOL. Job hopping tends to work out great early in one's career, but most everyone will plateau. My very first job hop netted me a +33% increase, my next was +20%, but the increase always trends downward. I'm 20 years into my career now, and my last job hop was maybe +0.2%. It's no longer worth it to move. Also, $350K TC in 5 years is astoundingly good, like almost unbelievably good. Congratulations but you must know that makes you an enormous outlier. I don't even make close to that after over 20 years and in a HCOL area.

dogman144 3y ago
Great feedback, and you raise a good point about plateauing. To start on the anomalous experience aspect, I know a lot of people on the same path, largely it comes from in-demand tech skills with a talent gap - think SRE, security engineering vs slamming very crowded JS-based SWE roles, paired with the pre-IPO venture pay. If it’s series C+, you’ll get 18mo of stability, and then jump for comp. Most people I know not hitting this TC won’t go to these types of companies. Another key part is thinking on 3-5 yrs vs job to job. You can get into killer companies by layering where you go first and what you work on, vs shooting for that company in the first job app. If you’re not a tech talent who can hit the hard interviews immediately, this is a great path. Re: planning/risk management on that, as specifically the pre-IPO pay part might change with the economy, my paths are: - arbitrage LCOL and remote tech for as long as I can, but then hit the tech cities for roles where the seniority/comp makes it worth living there as you can still get ahead (as in, out of the “golden treadmill” range of great comp but it’s NYC and childcare is $3k/mo hypotheticals), plus my career positioning tees me up to take a shot at those roles. - tech executive paths. If you have a modicum of social skills, people networking, and an eye for how the business makes revenue, this is in play and also pay continues to climb to astronomical levels. - lifestyle management: there is no recurring fixed expensive in my life that a $70k/yr tech job won’t cover, and having this managed makes the above planning remotely possible. Put all this together - life changing comp is in tech and 10 yrs playing it buys you a future to do just about anything you want after. Only reason I bring all this up in detail vs letting blind leak into hacker news is I can’t see how a union helps that path and more so doesn’t actively hurt it. As I said somewhere else, believe me I’m not a generational tech talent. I had a non-tech career before this, had to retrain, all that. But perhaps that background helped me see how wild the opportunity in tech is? By the time you hit those 0.2% raises… you could be not working while the rest of the world descends into AI-enabled unemployment etc etc