8 ms·

Why don’t labor issues resonate more with tech workers? I know that we’re not a monolith and are actually a heterogeneous mix of opinions, but there frequently

• DrillShopper 1y ago
  The vast majority of tech workers I know come from comfortable middle class suburban backgrounds, so I'm not surprised they're anti-union and anti-labor.
  • A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
    I will admit that the return to office push was the first time I actively considered forming a union or at least an org that would fight for that specific benefit. Covid changed me.
  • SirFatty 1y ago
    A lot of "comfortable middle class suburban" folks I know are in the trades. Hardly anti-union with that group.
    • gymbeaux 1y ago
      But they entered their field with the union already established. Humans won’t fight for a damn thing.
      • SirFatty 1y ago
        Ok? That has nothing to do with my comment pointing out that "comfortable middle class suburban" != anti-union and anti-labor.
    • DrillShopper 1y ago
      I know plenty of people in the trades that are anti-union - they're typically the ones in the "comfortable middle class suburban" category. They've worked a bit and maybe are contractors of their own. They complain about how much it costs to have a union crew and about how slow the work gets done. They do not think workers need more protections (look at Florida and other states prohibiting mandatory water breaks for worker protection), and actively complain about needing to carry Worker's Comp insurance and withhold taxes (which is why many of them pay under the table for non-union work, undocumented day laborers outside of Home Depot/Lowes seem to be their favorite choices). In fact they tend to be some of the most anti-union, anti-labor folks I know. I will grant that not every single person in the "comfortable middle class suburban" category is anti-union / anti-labor, but it's a pattern I see often enough that it is worth remarking on.
  • gibspaulding 1y ago
    Not even anti-union, but comfy enough not to feel the need for the effort/risk involved in unionizing. When you work in a trade where you could easily be killed or injured on the job the calculus is a bit different.
    • DrillShopper 1y ago
      It's never ceases to amaze me how much software folks think that their job cannot easily injure or kill them. All of the devs I know have no work/life balance, skip doctor's appointments because of work commitments, and several I know have had strokes or heart attacks at their desk while pushing to meet a deadline. Just because you likely won't be killed in a crane collapse or someone dropping a hammer doesn't mean that the workplace is safe and that working conditions are good.
      • const_cast 1y ago
        You’re quite right - working in an office kills you. It’s just mundane and slow, so we don’t really notice. But at the end of the day most people are dropping from heart disease, diabetes, obesity. Sitting 8+ hours a day is basically worse for you than smoking. Since it’s so, so slow I think we all have the belief that surely this will not happen to us. We will not be frog boiled, because surely we will notice once we are fat and hyperventilating going up the stairs. Surely, there will be some indication and we will turn the ship around. But looking around us, I don’t think so. Clearly people are getting frog boiled. And they get so beaten down, so worn, that eventually they do not fight it.
      • theamk 1y ago
        If that describes you, I advice you to look at other jobs ASAP. I've seen what you describe in Amazon - high pressure, constant thread of being fired, stress, no work/life balance, etc... Many other jobs are different. Sure, things are inefficient, but the expectations are not very high either. You come in, do your 7 hours of work (or don't even come in if you are remote), and go home. It's pretty hard to get fired, so as long as you are putting a nominal effort, you'd be fine. Some people are trying to get a promotion, or are just full of energy - they may work very hard, skip work/life balance and stress out. But it's all optional, if you are happy with your initial salary, you don't have to do it. (The major annoyance with this is if you are trying to actually get things done, like ship a product, there are just _so many_ people around who seem to work very slowly, and that cannot be relied on to deliver things in time... but this is all in your head, you only stress out about this if you choose to)
• mayday2028 1y ago
  [dead]
• anovikov 1y ago
  Because tech jobs are one of the few career lines that create a realistic path to passive income => becoming an "evil of capitalism". In fact, life outcomes that fall between "failure and poverty in old age" and "generational passive income from capital", are infrequent in the tech industry, at least from the people i know.
  • pseudocomposer 1y ago
    Those who fall between the two are usually those who didn’t have a family nest egg to start with (ie, their parents were factory workers rather than accountants).
  • alabastervlog 1y ago
    ... Unions would be a great way to fight for reductions in anti-moonlighting rules and over-broad IP claims, to protect and broaden that path.
• gymbeaux 1y ago
  In my experience everyone thinks “we’ve got a good thing here, let’s not ruin it.” Indeed the bar is so low that even with all the bullshit in the tech industry, we seem to have it better than most- on salary alone. Throw in “full remote” (although that’s disappearing) and it really can’t be beat, even when your boss yells obscenities at you every day.
  • hereonout2 1y ago
    I think I agree. Objectively we do have it better than most and tech is generally an extremely cushy job. Even here in Europe salaries can match Doctors and Lawyers but the barrier to entry is much lower and in my experience employment is still based on merit more than anything. Perhaps there's some element of "don't rock the boat" but maybe some guilt too. We really have lucked out. Not sure how comfortable I'd feel taking union action over my job that requires me to leave the house once a week but pays 3x a teachers salary.
• naming_the_user 1y ago
  From a personal perspective - I don't care that much about "labour issues" because it seems like a logically flawed avenue to explore to begin with. To be financially successful under any market system I can think of requires you, in a mathematical sense, to be close enough to the top within a company that you get a greater proportion of the profit than simply 1/employees. In simple terms - I can't employ a maid unless I earn more than a maid, a maid can never be paid enough that I would want to be a maid (being the maid's employer, or at least having that optionality, is strictly superior). Some jobs have comparative advantage, e.g. I might enjoy working on my car but know that a mechanic can do the same job in 1/10th the time. But a lot of stuff is just straight - I earn more than you, you do it for me, so I can get more things done.
  • smallmancontrov 1y ago
    No, it is not mathematically ordained that conditions must suck on the bottom of the pyramid in an absolute sense. In a relative sense, your argument isn't wrong, but in an absolute sense, the failure of our economy to bring modest levels of comfort on the bottom despite truly astonishing advances in fundamental capacity is a scathing indictment.
    • naming_the_user 1y ago
      In the absolute sense, from my perspective as someone who was born with not much (I often have a sense that this discussion is driven by people who were always fairly well off and see "the poor" as a different species) the primary issue is excessive regulation, resulting in things like property being hilariously expensive, so that it's difficult to afford a house or start a business. Wages and hours for low level jobs feel like a distraction, barely anyone needs more toys, the issue is that the necessary items for life are monopolised. So from my perspective the only thing that labour regulation can achieve is to basically just compress that experience, we still won't build more housing or make it easier to do so etc.
      • const_cast 1y ago
        > Wages and hours for low level jobs feel like a distraction, barely anyone needs more toys, the issue is that the necessary items for life are monopolised. They’re related. Unions aren’t just labor movements, they’re efforts to reduce the power of corporations. Monopolies form because they make a lot of sense for the people on top. Competition is cool, but mostly a fools errand. The true winners know how to work together to widen the gap between their in-group and everyone else. What’s evident to me about market theory is that it naturally tends to monopolies. To me, it is human nature. So therefore, we need extra structures, extra systems, to keep it in check.
• matkoniecz 1y ago
  The unions I have heard about or seen in action (in Poland or from news) either (1) demanded flat payment increases for all workers based on seniority etc. Which may make sense for factory workers but I am not enthusiastic about flat rates for programmers not taking into account actual experience/availability/output etc. Factory workers in many cases do job that can be easily rated and measured and do some specific amount of it. While measuring output of programmers is notoriously hard. I expect that union agreement of this kind would in fact benefit only lazy freeloaders not doing any work but having seniority. (2) are guilds that existed to keep jobs for members and to outlaw or ban hiring outsiders. I strictly prefer for exclusionary guilds to not exist and one of my big worries is that one would be setup, in area affecting me. One way or another, not necessarily an obvious self-naming itself as a guild. (3) are gangs existing to steal public money - for example, see coal miners in Poland. Main union achievements was to steal billions of public money to help lazy freeloaders doing work that was not worth doing or outright harmful. I do not support theft, also in terms of parasiting on public resources. Even if I would get some of proceeds of theft. (4) intended to achieve more free days, flexibility etc. On my freelancing agreements I sacrificed large part of earning to get about 100+ free days a year, very significant flexibility where and how and on what I work. So this part is achieved for me - and I am not sure how many other tech workers would actually prefer more free time over being paid more. I am not automatically against unions for tech workers but my first reaction and assumption is not that it will be positive or useful for me.
  • constantcrying 1y ago
    The union at my workplace is of the opinion that engineering jobs should be outsourced so that factory work can be kept onshore. Do you think I would join an organization like that? There is a clear conflict of interest between blue and white color workers and the more numerous blue color workers push the union to prioritize them.
    • cruzcampo 1y ago
      There should be a separate white collar workers union.
• flmontpetit 1y ago
  Self-advocacy for tech industry professionals largely manifests itself in the form of job hopping.
• dauertewigkeit 1y ago
  What makes solidarity between workers possible is the homogeneity of their labour. This condition is not present for tech workers. Labour market conditions are completely different from those of say, a meat processing plant or a factory assembly line.
  • vuggamie 1y ago
    There is more than enough homogeneity of labor in this industry. All workers should organize.
    • flmontpetit 1y ago
      The real homogeneity is class, thus the need for developing class consciousness in all workers.
    • int_19h 1y ago
      Seeing how the article link is to IWW, it might be interesting to bring up their take: not only all workers should organize, but they should organize in a single union cutting across industries to maximize their collective power vs holders of capital. IWW strives to become exactly that.
  • cratermoon 1y ago
    generative ai is rapidly homogenizing tech labor. By design.
    • dcre 1y ago
      Capital sowing the seeds of its own destruction! Where have I heard this before?
  • throw0101a 1y ago
    > What makes solidarity between workers possible is the homogeneity of their labour. Ethan Hunt play by Tom Cruise and Waitress #2 played by Jane Doe aren't very homogeneous with regards to pay and fame, but they're both part of SAG.
• constantcrying 1y ago
  [flagged]
  • masijo 1y ago
    You know, there's a lot more to the working class than just manual labor. Anyone that depends on a wage to live is a worker, and we all share the same struggles.
    • constantcrying 1y ago
      The same struggles, like the quality of the office coffee machine? Bike subsidies from the employer too low?
      • cruzcampo 1y ago
        [flagged]
        • constantcrying 1y ago
          >No, the same struggles such as being dependent on the whims of increasingly unhinged oligarchs, while democracy is being dismantled and the planet burns in the name of the stock market. Oh, I wasn't aware of that. Does not seem to apply to me though.
          • cruzcampo 1y ago
            Whether you see it or not, it does :-(
        • seneca 1y ago
          [flagged]
          • cruzcampo 1y ago
            [flagged]
• bethekidyouwant 1y ago
  Because you have to take more of men’s dignity before they collectivize against you
• AndrewKemendo 1y ago
  I’ve been a manager in tech for the last 11 years full-time Prior to that I was a military commander as a Major in the United States Air Force Before joining the AF I had jobs in construction, freelance web design and car stereo installation in high school The singular difference is the personality of tech workers is “I can do this faster and easier by myself - I have no desire to communicate with other people” It seems to stem from a large swath very technical people coming from isolated environments when they were children. Specifically ones in middle to upper middle class families, where the computer was their creative outlet and they were spending more time with a computer and understanding the computer than they were other people. They were able to get excited about and learn and get deep into a topic where you really didn’t need other people — you need to documentation you needed books and you needed time to experiment. Almost every single other job I’ve ever worked in you *need* other people in order to make progress. That is not true for writing really small functional and precise software which is the “job” of most swe. As a function of that the majority of SWE’s (and frankly this applies to most technical experts who have a very specific niche) have neither of the interest nor the belief that the organization is valuable in of itself as the organization and they are way more excited to jump companies in order to promote themselves because that is how they are incentivized and are happy to find themselves in that position. If you wanna actually make an organization that creates sustainable software, you need an entirely different way of thinking. you need to think organizationally you think you need to think about how to help people how to get things out of their way communication etc. etc. etc. all these things have nothing to do with“shipping code “ And for a lot of people who are good at programming they really genuinely could not care or have the capacity to understand about anything other than their narrow frame of view and they do not see their coworkers as part of their community they see them as competition.
  • BeFlatXIII 1y ago
    > have neither of the interest nor the belief that the organization is valuable in of itself as the organization and they are way more excited to jump companies in order to promote themselves because that is how they are incentivized and are happy to find themselves in that position. This will continue to remain true so long as expected pay bumps for job-hopping outpace loyalty raises.
• aaronbaugher 1y ago
  We tend to think like this, unconsciously if not outright: "I'm smarter than the next guy, so in a dog-eat-dog system I'll come out ahead. Organizing with a bunch of less-smart people would only hold me back." Plus, at the risk of too much head-shrinking, I've never gotten the impression that tech workers liked each other very much. There's a lot of disdain in the industry, for the guy who uses that language or framework or operating system that I think sucks. You don't see that so much with, say, truckers. There may be some good-natured rivalry based on truck brands or long-haul versus short-haul, but not the real disdain you see in tech.
  • paxcoder 1y ago
    [dead]
  • vintermann 1y ago
    I don't think that's it. I'm pretty damn red on economics, and I'm a software developer, but I'm not in a union because the unions I could join are not very good. Either they're more interested in selling me credit cards, or they're for policies which are disastrously bad for a software developer (e.g, paying into a pensions scheme which pays out nothing if you haven't been with the same employer for 7 years before retirement), or more commonly, both. I could join and try to influence them, but if I was good at that sort of thing, I probably wouldn't have been a software developer in the first place.
• dgrin91 1y ago
  Tech workers tend to get paid very well. That limits incentivization for unionization. Also there is a stigma that unions tend to be for the middle of the road workers with modest salaries. All the senior leaders with big salaries are not union, and everyone wants the big salary.
  • citadel_melon 1y ago
    It’s silly. MLB players are unionized and they make more money than tech workers. The reason why management don’t need a union is because they have much more say in determining their own wages.
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    • hilsdev 1y ago
      Apples and oranges
• dragonwriter 1y ago
  > Why don’t labor issues resonate more with tech workers? Because many tech workers don't see themselves as workers, with some justification, many having substantial capital investments alongside labor income, making them, in class terms, petit bourgeois or at least close enough to it to perceive their own interests in more bourgeois than proletarian terms. And even the tech workers that are clearly part of the proletarian intelligentsia tend see themselves (rightly or wrongly) on a path that leads into the bourgeoisie, with bourgeois interests.
  • flmontpetit 1y ago
    It's crazy how we've abstracted financial serfdom out of the status of being a property owner. Contrasted with renting it surely seems like independence, but whether the bank squeezes extra value out of you directly or through the proxy of a landlord, the end result is similar.
    • ramesh31 1y ago
      >Contrasted with renting it surely seems like independence, but whether the bank squeezes extra value out of you directly or through the proxy of a landlord, the end result is similar. The difference is public policy. Owning property in the US absolutely elevates you to a higher privileged status above renters. How many homeowners were being evicted from their homes after missing a couple mortgage payments during the pandemic? Precisely zero. While thousands of renters in red states had the sheriff at their throats within 60 days. That's all you need to know about class in this country.
      • flmontpetit 1y ago
        Fair, and owning certainly puts you in charge of your own quality of life. My dishwasher has been broken for three months and I'm still having to fight to get it fixed. When I own my own place starting from next July I'm just going to fix things like this on my own time and dime.
      • nh23423fefe 1y ago
• 0xbadcafebee 1y ago
  We make a lot of money. Money pays for healthcare, childcare, paternity/maternity leave, retirement, food, housing, transportation, in addition to recreation. Our "struggle" is invented. Oh, career burnout huh? So you're working yourself harder than you have to in order to make more money? Sounds tough. And small equity grants? Oh gosh, how dare they not give us even more money. People who don't make a lot of money struggle to afford all those things, and are worked to death despite it. They don't just have enough and want more. They literally don't have enough to live a life free of struggle. Unions exist because workers were literally being killed by their employers. What's a tech worker's biggest gripe? Being on-call? Not getting a bonus on top of their fat salary? The only time I've ever done a hard day's work as a tech worker was when I joined a shitty startup that was abusive with long hours. I left and joined a normal company and it was smooth sailing. The most painful part of the job is my tennis elbow, but hey, I have a corporate healthcare plan and a $1000 swivel chair. I don't see the point of a union in this environment.
  • 9rx 1y ago
    > We make a lot of money. Not compared to many unionized industries. Workers in professional sports and entertainment, for example, which fully embrace labor unions, make software developers look like they work for peanuts. > Unions exist because workers were literally being killed by their employers. Labor unions have formed when death was actually on the horizon because death was on the horizon, but labor unions today are almost exclusively a rich man's sport. The poor aren't poor enough to face certain death, but aren't rich enough to risk the consequences of not working (i.e. striking) for beneficial-but-not-life-threatning demands, so it is not a reasonable choice for them to make. Hence why you almost never find labor unions in low paying jobs. Tech doesn't like unions simply because, as a group, tech doesn't like people. That's what a union is, after all: A group of people who have decided to associate with each other.
    • matkoniecz 1y ago
      > Workers in professional sports and entertainment, for example, which fully embrace labor unions, make software developers look like they work for peanuts. I am pretty sure that union is not the most significant part why pay is high here.
• 9rx 1y ago
  > Why don’t labor issues resonate more with tech workers? They do! What doesn't resonate with many tech workers is working together with other people. Tech workers are largely used to working alone, and many even struggle in social situations more-so than in other industries, so when a labor issue arises they believe it is a problem they must solve on their own.
  • johngossman 1y ago
    The many people working in big tech are certainly used to working together and solving problems together. I think others on this thread are closer: generally high economic status and greater perceived career autonomy than in other industries
    • 9rx 1y ago
      They are used to working together to the extent that is necessary to further their own self-interest (i.e. get promoted). That competitive environment is not conducive to working together in a 'brotherhood' sense that a union requires, through. Industries with significantly higher economic status and autonomy are all over unions (sports, entertainment, politics, medicine, etc.), so that doesn't really explain it.
• psadauskas 1y ago
  Cory Doctorow wrote about this recently: The enshittification of tech jobs (27 Apr 2025) https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/27/some-animals/ https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/27/some-animals/ Particularly this part: > nestling comfortably alongside of the idea that "I don't need a union, I'm a temporarily embarrassed founder."
• praptak 1y ago
  Labour issues? I'm afraid that most tech workers still believe that improving the technology is enough for the society to thrive, not rethinking capitalism (or at least its current implementation).
• bee_rider 1y ago
  We’re convinced we’re be court wizards, not peasants, in a fantasy setting. Wizards join guilds, not unions.
• micromacrofoot 1y ago
  because generally tech workers are well compensated relative to other workers, the areas where this isn't true have had some movement in labor initiatives like the The United Videogame Workers
• zackmorris 1y ago
  The simplest answer tends to be the right one, so in the face of the inexplicable, the answer is usually ignorance. The tech track works great if one falls into line and doesn't rock the boat by questioning authority or trying to see the big picture. If one clings to original teenage fantasies like the idea that intellectual prowess and financial success eventually bring esteem and a social life. If one chooses to avoid becoming mired in dead end physical labor jobs like everyone else, even for a time, in worship of their own cleverness. But should the unthinkable happen, say, the loss of a loved one due to a hyper focus on work, or witnessing one's work being used to take from others, or waking up one day to find oneself disillusioned with the direction tech is going, then suddenly tech loses its luster. One starts to recognize it for what it is - just another way to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the few. Tech has come to symbolize sheltering from reality, like a state sanctioned drug. It's a way to pat oneself on the back and downplay the wisdom of those outside it. Blindly worshipping it to the exclusion of the other wonders of life is the surest way I know to separate oneself from the soul, other than money perhaps. In good conscience, I must add that the vast majority of tech today is phantom tech, not real tech. It serves to entertain and distract rather than be a labor-saving device. So in that sense, it's understandable that people invested in solving anything except any real problem have a disdain for the plight of labor.
  • mikrl 1y ago
    >The tech track works great if one falls into line and doesn't rock the boat by questioning authority or trying to see the big picture Is this true? I thought senior engineers were expected to push back as a matter of course, and staff engineers were expected to think in broad, business needs and translate that down to the code. An engineer who just shuts up and writes code, is so we are told, the first casualty in the age of AI.
    • zackmorris 1y ago
      Ya I mean I can't really comment on such a broad topic in a few sentences without generalizing and projecting from my own experience. I agree with you, that the best engineers weigh the business needs when working towards a solution. But I've also seen how the top problem solvers rarely get promoted beyond a certain level. A lot of us got into this to change the world, but ended up settling at middle management. It's kind of a learned helplessness. It's strange to see the best and brightest commanded by people who aren't necessarily dumb, they just view the work as almost a sunk cost rather than something that pays dividends if done right. So there's this constant constraining of ideas that rubs off on us and gradually diminishes our light. Until eventually we're just another cog in the machine, showing up day after day only to keep things running and not rock the boat. And making up stories about how critical we are to the process without seeing our own expendability. It's sad to say, but we're about to get tossed out and replaced by AI. I don't think that rising above being code monkeys is going to save us. So on that note, we're also about to get radicalized. Imagine spending one's entire life in discipline learning the most esoteric knowledge, hoping to get ahead someday, only to find out that there wasn't enough time. Having to watch the most vacuous blowhards become millionaires at the highest levels of power and casually destroy everything we worked towards.
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• ferguess_k 1y ago
  Tech workers, or white collars in general, believe in the law (I'm Not A Lawyer, as well as looking as the union as a solution) and sort of peaceful solution, without much violence.