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This write up sounds like it describes a very particular subset of companies. If you only want to work at the flashy unicorns in downtown San Francisco, you are

This write up sounds like it describes a very particular subset of companies. If you only want to work at the flashy unicorns in downtown San Francisco, you are signing yourself up for exploitation. Like any career, if you get off the beaten path there are plenty of pretty okay jobs out there. Especially if you have a marketable skill. This is software, if you have a brain and functional hands - you already own the means of production! I absolutely support unions - but you're going to personally be better off changing companies and working your career ladder and finding the spot for you than sticking around at an exploitative company just because they have a union.

sophacles 2y ago
A union doesn't have to be "workers for company X employees". It can be "web developers union" or similar - this is how the trades organize (see the pipefitters, and IBEW for some examples). Neat thing about this type of organizing is that the union provides training and standardization paths. Both of those make moving between jobs easier. They can also provide a standardized way of differentiating employee levels (e.g. union sets the standards for what a jr, sr, or whatever is). I'm not sure if that is good or not in tech, but it is a possiblility - and it's something that would definitely help employers too: rather than each company having to test each potential employee, a union certified X dev will have a certain skillset. Yes some X devs will be better than others, we're talking about humans here, but the minimum bars can be defined and the whole hiring process can become easier and more efficient. Theres some interesting compensation challenges to get the idea of unionization more accepted in tech tho: stock based compensation and bonuses can get really tricky - something that I suspect is the real reason unions don't catch on more in tech.
- whoisthemachine 2y ago
  I quite like the idea of a trade union or accreditation board for SWE. The idea that we all work by a shared set of standards and terminology is appealing.
  - rockemsockem 2y ago
    Sounds like a group that captures credentialing in the industry and then winds up using it to push their own flawed ideology on the entire industry. Because who else would actually be interested in being part of such a board. No thank you.
    - whoisthemachine 2y ago
      Civil, mechanical, electrical, and most other engineering disciplines have an accreditation board. I don't think they are pushing a "flawed" ideology in those disciplines. At least I don't see civil engineers constantly questioning why they would do load modeling for a bridge, like SWE's constantly question the value of unit testing. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABET
      - rockemsockem 2y ago
        Yeah and what are the numbers on how many employed engineers hold that accreditation? Just because it exists doesn't mean it's used. I know for a fact that aerospace, electrical, and mechanical engineers working on designing rockets, nuclear reactors, space capsules, and electric charging infrastructure do not need this credential. And so most of them do not have it.
        whoisthemachine 2y ago
        If they have an undergrad degree in any of those disciplines then their college has ABET accreditation.
        rockemsockem 2y ago
        IDK why, but I totally mixed up ABET with the professional engineering credentials where individuals get accredited as opposed to curriculums. I'm not sure ABET is the most relevant here? What would making CS programs accredited change?
- legitster 2y ago
  > It can be "web developers union" or similar - this is how the trades organize (see the pipefitters, and IBEW for some examples). This is also how unions exist in most of the rest of the world as well. We take it for granted how weird the US labor recognition process is. Most other countries following a long history of craft unionism. But in the US the laws were crystalized during a time of active conflict between traditional craft unions and socialist-inspired "industrial" unions. So all of the principles of the NLRB are this weird set of dated compromises. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_federation_competition_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_federation_competition_i... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craft_unionism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craft_unionism
- Terr_ 2y ago
  > something that I suspect is the real reason unions don't catch on more in tech. I think a bigger issue is the difficulty of measuring correctness and quantity of individual output. For a classic-style of union in manufacturing, the standardized widgets coming off an assembly line mean it's easier to determine which workers are being fired for actual-cause, versus the ones who need to be protected by the union because it's a kind of employer retaliation or stealth-downsizing.
  - sophacles 2y ago
    An awful lot of unions exist in spaces where "compare the widget to the template" is an impossibility. Some examples: SAE standardizes the labor cost for a given task, although an individual mechanic may go faster and slower than the proscribed hours. The same mechanaic will have different times for multiple instances of the same task based on details of the job. Police unions effectively require arbitration on an employee by employee basis, since police work is so highly situationally dependent. Creative unions like SAG and screewriters guild often don't have the notion of measuring quality of output. They exist to ensure various workplace rules (safety, breaks, sane environment, etc) and minimum compensation standards are followed. The union is not a template of how to be an assembly line worker - its a way to equalize the power between an employer and employees. The specifics of how one union negotiates its collective bargain don't dictate what a union for an entirely different group of people will negotiate.
    - pcthrowaway 2y ago
      > Police unions effectively require arbitration on an employee by employee basis, since police work is so highly situationally dependent. Are police unions real unions? Or just a vehicle for them to further avoid accountability for their wrongdoings?
BeetleB 2y ago
> This write up sounds like it describes a very particular subset of companies Indeed. 80 hours a week (or even 60): Never had to deal with that in over a decade across 3 jobs. In fact, I've never had to work a weekend (and if I did, it was either to fix my own screwup, or because I intentionally slacked off during the week and needed to make up for it). Slack/email off work hours? Just ask up front in the interview: "I turn off my laptop at the end of my work day, and don't install any work related items on the phone. Is that OK?" On call? Lots of jobs that either don't involve running an online/web service, or if it does is for some internal company tool where the cost of it being down is low. I've never had on call. However, I did interview at places that did, so the questions to ask in the interview: "What is the on-call rotation look like?" Typically it's one week per person, rotated by the number of people in the team. Team has 4 people? That's once every 4 weeks (too much for me). "How often are people called during on-call?" I interviewed in one place where they got 2 calls out of work hours in the whole year. I can live with that. "What's the process of evaluating those calls?" Do they just expect you to take care of it and move on, or do they have a process to analyze and prevent it from happening again? Some teams move too fast and there will always be calls - they don't want the hit in fixing things.
- mancerayder 2y ago
  Incredible idealism. If you work in infrastructure, even development, there's no such thing as shutting down at the end of the day or weekends. 'You never know' if someone senior gets agitated off hours because something is broken, and is expecting a big group on a zoom call
  - Edras 2y ago
    I do work in infrastructure and never had to work out of working hours unless I was oncall. Our on-call rotation is 12h a day for a week, because we have an oversea team taking over. I get oncall every 5 weeks. You can absolutely find places with good working condition and with a good salary
    - mancerayder 2y ago
cyrnel 2y ago
> you're going to personally be better off changing companies Job mobility for tech workers is a fluke of current economic conditions. If interest rates spike, or a recession happens, or a bubble bursts, this benefit would go away and you'd be stuck at that exploitative company or unemployed. Unionization and labor laws can make workers less disposable without substantially affecting growth (see: European tech hubs).
- lolinder 2y ago
  > make workers less disposable without substantially affecting growth (see: European tech hubs). Sorry, but you shot your argument in the foot with this example. The last two months of Europeans trying with great difficulty to replace US tech with local tech have shown just how little tech has grown in Europe relative to the US. Is that because of their labor laws? Unclear. But it's certainly not a shining example of success.
  - cyrnel 2y ago
    The effort to replace US tech is not anything similar to the European tech industry. US technology has a hegemony because we were first to the party, our economy is larger, and our laws are hostile to newcomers (lack of interoperability requirements, lack of enforcement of anti-trust laws, strong defense of DMCA laws, non-competes, and trade secret laws). I've worked in the EU tech sector. They have tons of startups that operate just like US startups: VC funded, hockey-stick growth, and hiring like crazy. Their stricter labor laws don't get in the way of that. The hyper-growth, VC-funded startup model is itself quite exploitative, but if it's still possible with stricter labor laws, then fears about them impacting growth are unfounded.
    - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
      >I've worked in the EU tech sector. They have tons of startups that operate just like US startups: VC funded, hockey-stick growth, and hiring like crazy. Which are those EU start-ups growing like crazy?
    - 2y ago
an0malous 2y ago
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sophacles 2y ago

A union doesn't have to be "workers for company X employees". It can be "web developers union" or similar - this is how the trades organize (see the pipefitters, and IBEW for some examples). Neat thing about this type of organizing is that the union provides training and standardization paths. Both of those make moving between jobs easier. They can also provide a standardized way of differentiating employee levels (e.g. union sets the standards for what a jr, sr, or whatever is). I'm not sure if that is good or not in tech, but it is a possiblility - and it's something that would definitely help employers too: rather than each company having to test each potential employee, a union certified X dev will have a certain skillset. Yes some X devs will be better than others, we're talking about humans here, but the minimum bars can be defined and the whole hiring process can become easier and more efficient. Theres some interesting compensation challenges to get the idea of unionization more accepted in tech tho: stock based compensation and bonuses can get really tricky - something that I suspect is the real reason unions don't catch on more in tech.

whoisthemachine 2y ago
I quite like the idea of a trade union or accreditation board for SWE. The idea that we all work by a shared set of standards and terminology is appealing.
- rockemsockem 2y ago
  Sounds like a group that captures credentialing in the industry and then winds up using it to push their own flawed ideology on the entire industry. Because who else would actually be interested in being part of such a board. No thank you.
  - whoisthemachine 2y ago
    Civil, mechanical, electrical, and most other engineering disciplines have an accreditation board. I don't think they are pushing a "flawed" ideology in those disciplines. At least I don't see civil engineers constantly questioning why they would do load modeling for a bridge, like SWE's constantly question the value of unit testing. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABET https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABET
    - rockemsockem 2y ago
      Yeah and what are the numbers on how many employed engineers hold that accreditation? Just because it exists doesn't mean it's used. I know for a fact that aerospace, electrical, and mechanical engineers working on designing rockets, nuclear reactors, space capsules, and electric charging infrastructure do not need this credential. And so most of them do not have it.
      - whoisthemachine 2y ago
        If they have an undergrad degree in any of those disciplines then their college has ABET accreditation.
        rockemsockem 2y ago
        IDK why, but I totally mixed up ABET with the professional engineering credentials where individuals get accredited as opposed to curriculums. I'm not sure ABET is the most relevant here? What would making CS programs accredited change?
legitster 2y ago
> It can be "web developers union" or similar - this is how the trades organize (see the pipefitters, and IBEW for some examples). This is also how unions exist in most of the rest of the world as well. We take it for granted how weird the US labor recognition process is. Most other countries following a long history of craft unionism. But in the US the laws were crystalized during a time of active conflict between traditional craft unions and socialist-inspired "industrial" unions. So all of the principles of the NLRB are this weird set of dated compromises. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_federation_competition_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_federation_competition_i... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craft_unionism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craft_unionism
Terr_ 2y ago
> something that I suspect is the real reason unions don't catch on more in tech. I think a bigger issue is the difficulty of measuring correctness and quantity of individual output. For a classic-style of union in manufacturing, the standardized widgets coming off an assembly line mean it's easier to determine which workers are being fired for actual-cause, versus the ones who need to be protected by the union because it's a kind of employer retaliation or stealth-downsizing.
- sophacles 2y ago
  An awful lot of unions exist in spaces where "compare the widget to the template" is an impossibility. Some examples: SAE standardizes the labor cost for a given task, although an individual mechanic may go faster and slower than the proscribed hours. The same mechanaic will have different times for multiple instances of the same task based on details of the job. Police unions effectively require arbitration on an employee by employee basis, since police work is so highly situationally dependent. Creative unions like SAG and screewriters guild often don't have the notion of measuring quality of output. They exist to ensure various workplace rules (safety, breaks, sane environment, etc) and minimum compensation standards are followed. The union is not a template of how to be an assembly line worker - its a way to equalize the power between an employer and employees. The specifics of how one union negotiates its collective bargain don't dictate what a union for an entirely different group of people will negotiate.
  - pcthrowaway 2y ago
    > Police unions effectively require arbitration on an employee by employee basis, since police work is so highly situationally dependent. Are police unions real unions? Or just a vehicle for them to further avoid accountability for their wrongdoings?

BeetleB 2y ago

> This write up sounds like it describes a very particular subset of companies Indeed. 80 hours a week (or even 60): Never had to deal with that in over a decade across 3 jobs. In fact, I've never had to work a weekend (and if I did, it was either to fix my own screwup, or because I intentionally slacked off during the week and needed to make up for it). Slack/email off work hours? Just ask up front in the interview: "I turn off my laptop at the end of my work day, and don't install any work related items on the phone. Is that OK?" On call? Lots of jobs that either don't involve running an online/web service, or if it does is for some internal company tool where the cost of it being down is low. I've never had on call. However, I did interview at places that did, so the questions to ask in the interview: "What is the on-call rotation look like?" Typically it's one week per person, rotated by the number of people in the team. Team has 4 people? That's once every 4 weeks (too much for me). "How often are people called during on-call?" I interviewed in one place where they got 2 calls out of work hours in the whole year. I can live with that. "What's the process of evaluating those calls?" Do they just expect you to take care of it and move on, or do they have a process to analyze and prevent it from happening again? Some teams move too fast and there will always be calls - they don't want the hit in fixing things.

mancerayder 2y ago
Incredible idealism. If you work in infrastructure, even development, there's no such thing as shutting down at the end of the day or weekends. 'You never know' if someone senior gets agitated off hours because something is broken, and is expecting a big group on a zoom call
- Edras 2y ago
  I do work in infrastructure and never had to work out of working hours unless I was oncall. Our on-call rotation is 12h a day for a week, because we have an oversea team taking over. I get oncall every 5 weeks. You can absolutely find places with good working condition and with a good salary
  - mancerayder 2y ago

cyrnel 2y ago

> you're going to personally be better off changing companies Job mobility for tech workers is a fluke of current economic conditions. If interest rates spike, or a recession happens, or a bubble bursts, this benefit would go away and you'd be stuck at that exploitative company or unemployed. Unionization and labor laws can make workers less disposable without substantially affecting growth (see: European tech hubs).

lolinder 2y ago
> make workers less disposable without substantially affecting growth (see: European tech hubs). Sorry, but you shot your argument in the foot with this example. The last two months of Europeans trying with great difficulty to replace US tech with local tech have shown just how little tech has grown in Europe relative to the US. Is that because of their labor laws? Unclear. But it's certainly not a shining example of success.
- cyrnel 2y ago
  The effort to replace US tech is not anything similar to the European tech industry. US technology has a hegemony because we were first to the party, our economy is larger, and our laws are hostile to newcomers (lack of interoperability requirements, lack of enforcement of anti-trust laws, strong defense of DMCA laws, non-competes, and trade secret laws). I've worked in the EU tech sector. They have tons of startups that operate just like US startups: VC funded, hockey-stick growth, and hiring like crazy. Their stricter labor laws don't get in the way of that. The hyper-growth, VC-funded startup model is itself quite exploitative, but if it's still possible with stricter labor laws, then fears about them impacting growth are unfounded.
  - FirmwareBurner 2y ago
    >I've worked in the EU tech sector. They have tons of startups that operate just like US startups: VC funded, hockey-stick growth, and hiring like crazy. Which are those EU start-ups growing like crazy?
  - 2y ago

an0malous 2y ago

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