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In my opinion, you might have an overly optimistic view of unions. And you might also be ignoring the downsides of unions. I get that unions were/are necessary

In my opinion, you might have an overly optimistic view of unions. And you might also be ignoring the downsides of unions. I get that unions were/are necessary for things like mining workers or so, but SWE is quite different. I'd expect a union to be net-negative in our sector.

Apocryphon 3y ago
Systemic problems require systemic solutions. For over a decade now we’ve seen a steady supply of blog articles, studies (e.g. https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/in-open-offices-workers-chat-70-less-are-less-productive-and-email-more/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/in-open-offices-work...), and choruses of comment threads all agreeing that coders do not like open offices. Yet all of this is empty sentiment because managements don’t seem to care; they might not even notice. Now, a union might not be the solution to this. I already mentioned alternatives. Maybe there should just be more general participation in the ACM/IEEE and give it lobbying power. But the principle is that some sort of collective action seems to be in order, because there’s collective disgruntlement, yet the issue is still unaddressed.
- dlivingston 3y ago
  Who makes the decision on office layout? Like specifically, what is the name of the role in a company that does this? Further, has anyone talked to one of these persons before on changing the office layout to a developer-friendly design? I've really wanted to do this but I'm not sure who in my company I would talk to about it.
- rmbyrro 3y ago
  From my personal point of view, expecting a union to force large corporations into modifying their office layout is irrational.
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    So is complaining on blogs uselessly for over a decade while expecting things to change. And the overall point isn’t simply that unions will fix open offices so much as some sort of solution rooted in collective action is required. It’s also an illustration that as a professional class, software engineers and tech workers in general really don’t have as much power in their industry as their comp and perks would illustrate. Especially in times of economic pullback.

Apocryphon 3y ago

Systemic problems require systemic solutions. For over a decade now we’ve seen a steady supply of blog articles, studies (e.g. https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/in-open-offices-workers-chat-70-less-are-less-productive-and-email-more/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/in-open-offices-work...), and choruses of comment threads all agreeing that coders do not like open offices. Yet all of this is empty sentiment because managements don’t seem to care; they might not even notice. Now, a union might not be the solution to this. I already mentioned alternatives. Maybe there should just be more general participation in the ACM/IEEE and give it lobbying power. But the principle is that some sort of collective action seems to be in order, because there’s collective disgruntlement, yet the issue is still unaddressed.

dlivingston 3y ago
Who makes the decision on office layout? Like specifically, what is the name of the role in a company that does this? Further, has anyone talked to one of these persons before on changing the office layout to a developer-friendly design? I've really wanted to do this but I'm not sure who in my company I would talk to about it.
rmbyrro 3y ago
From my personal point of view, expecting a union to force large corporations into modifying their office layout is irrational.
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  So is complaining on blogs uselessly for over a decade while expecting things to change. And the overall point isn’t simply that unions will fix open offices so much as some sort of solution rooted in collective action is required. It’s also an illustration that as a professional class, software engineers and tech workers in general really don’t have as much power in their industry as their comp and perks would illustrate. Especially in times of economic pullback.