6 ms·

The solution is to unionize. I really don't understand why we don't have an IT union, especially for network ops and engineering - it's a very logical aspect of

by debacle 14y ago

The solution is to unionize. I really don't understand why we don't have an IT union, especially for network ops and engineering - it's a very logical aspect of the industry to standardize and unionize.

killface 14y ago
I think the reason we haven't is many-fold: - We all believe we're above average in our field, and unions would hold us back. - We all know people who have skated by on incompetence, and wouldn't want a union to protect their jobs. - Our field moves quickly, and we don't want a union that would hamper our ability to make quick moves. - Union is a dirty word, especially when the mind disease of libertarianism is more prevalent among tech workers. I think the easier way to solve this is for IT/computer workers to stop being paid salaries, and get paid hourly. If it weren't for a special exemption from congress that was passed in the 90s, we would be paid hourly as a matter of law. I know I've been treated MUCH better since I switched to consulting. Employers value your time when they have to pay for those extra 2 hours of meetings each day, when they have you work a Saturday, or stay a couple hours late to push to the finish line. In addition, things like software efficiency upgrades where I can show 10 hour savings for 3 hours of cost are suddenly on the table, where on a salary you're not a "team player" if don't just put in the extra hours for free to save the company some bucks.
- codewright 14y ago
  >I know I've been treated MUCH better since I switched to consulting. This has been my experience as well. My time was considered more valuable, people respected my input and expertise more, I was treated with more courtesy. The works.
  - LearnYouALisp 14y ago
    Isn't that funny? You could be the same person with the same experience as you had in a company somewhere, and in one place it's undervalued and in a new place it's fairly valued (hopefully).
    - codewright 14y ago
      I had less experience then than I do now, despite that, still had a better run of it. Maybe I was just better at picking my work when I was a consultant. Hard to tell.
    - tonyedgecombe 14y ago
      I've seen it in the same company. At a previous employer I trippled the hourly rate and was amazed at how the same customers treated me completely differently. These customers seemed to be valuing my time by how much they paid for it.
- qdog 14y ago
  I think it's mostly the first one. I've met a lot of people with huge egos who think they are above the problems, and so far there is enough work. Someday, though, that might change, who knows when, though.
  - GabrielF00 14y ago
    My grandfather was an aeronautical engineer who spent most of his career at one company - he joined early enough that he was friendly with the founder. That didn't stop them from laying him off right before he would have been able to collect his pension. (They did this with their other older engineers as well). This was around the end of the cold war when that whole sector was shrinking. Say what you will about unions, but they do exist for a reason.
- mcguire 14y ago
  I don't want to weigh in on the union issue, but those last two paragraphs are spot on. I worked for IBM as a contractor a number of times and you are describing exactly the differences between those of us who were hourly and the salaried regular employees. On the other hand, I wouldn't recommend working for IBM at all; there are reasons my resume reads like a list of major software project disasters of the '90's and it has a suspicious dearth of shipping products.
sageikosa 14y ago
Are you going to force people to join?
- debacle 14y ago
  No, I wouldn't see any reason to. Having a union that endorses members will create a professional body that is superior to non-unioned workers, making being part of the union a clear advantage.
  - sageikosa 14y ago
    I'm not following how being a member of a union would make me any better than a non-union worker; thus I am not seeing the clear advantage of membership being a positive endorsement to me. "Having a union that endorses members" doesn't lead directly to the creation of "a professional body that is superior to non-unioned workers". IT/IS workers are usually considered "superior" (and thus more marketable) based on the degree of their knowledge and the effectiveness of their problem solving skills, to which membership in a collective bargaining society adds neither. Perhaps rather than forcing people to join, you want to force employers to exclude non-members? So that rather than being "under management's thumb" I can be under the "union's protection"?
    - padraigm 14y ago
      I think your parent's point was that if the union can guarantee that its members are high-quality, it will have a lot of leverage to negotiate with employers. A union taking that approach doesn't need to stipulate that employers only employ union workers or anything like that; it simply says "all of the best people work for us - if you want to hire them, you have to agree to our terms (re. salary, benefits, working conditions, etc).
      - sageikosa 14y ago
        "Having a union that endorses members will create a professional body that is superior to non-unioned workers" looks (to me) like an assertion that the value is in the union endorsement (and that it thus create the professional body), as opposed to the workers themselves. As I've asserted, information workers are valued for their knowledge and problem solving skills, so unless this hypothetical union were going to certify people as having certain knowledge and problem solving skills and include/exclude members based on that certification (or give them a grading level), it will be meaningless as a value indicator to any employer. If I think the level they give me is too low, I won't be likely to stay associated with them. If employers think they rate people too high, they'll avoid them also. If the "professional" union is just a middleman, I'd prefer not to have it, and I'm fairly certain sure employers wouldn't either. Of course, professional bodies (outside of trade organizations) exist like this, but they are called consulting companies.
huhtenberg 14y ago
I hate unions and everything about them. You don't like working conditions in the company - leave. You don't like conditions in your industry - switch specialty, go elsewhere. Too lazy to switch or too gifted to leave? Well, sure, OK, let's instead arm-twist and blackmail employer. Given, there are circumstances when you can't leave or switch. Say, if you are a miner in a small mining town. One employer, one skill set, no possibility of re-training. But unions are essentially an artifact of the 19th century.
- knieveltech 14y ago
  The very concept of work/life balance is an artifact of unionization. You hate everything about unions? Fascinating. How many have you worked for? Edit: upon reflection my original comment left a lot on the floor so I'm circling back to pick some of it up. Here's what a "typical" union experience looks like: The union hall staffs individuals that find work for you. The bulk of back-office paperwork and other hassles (including wage negotiation) are handled on your behalf by the hall. When you first hire on it's typically as a pre-apprentice (no prior experience) or apprentice (some applicable experience to the trade). OJT and training/certification materials are provided for you. Your coworkers are trained, experienced craftsmen. All applicable safety guidelines are rigidly enforced. From day 1 you are presented with the kind of benefits package that is no longer available to your average worker. In addition to credible health insurance this includes pension, annuity, on the job training and certification, and death benefits. In addition to your wage you are guaranteed additional compensation for overtime and hazardous work. By way of comparison, working in the trades for a non-union shop is at best a crapshoot. There's no guarantee SS and other taxes are being taken out correctly or at all. I've known several subcontractors who've gotten royally screwed by the IRS come tax time when they found out that they (unexpectedly) owed thousands in taxes. Safety guidelines are routinely ignored, it's nothing to get shorted on your paycheck (or go weeks without pay), benefits are typically non-existent, no guarantees of overtime, and you're working sink or swim with whoever the boss could scrape together to form a crew, typically for less money than you'd make in a union shop and that's after dues. General contractors also tend to maintain a good-ol-boy network, so you go rocking the boat about substandard pay or unsafe working conditions and it's a very real possibility that you could find yourself blackballed in your area. TL;DR: Union: guaranteed pay, safe working conditions, training provided for career advancement, benefits, retirement plan. Non-union: good luck, buddy. Full disclosure: I worked in the trades (both union and non-union) for several years before changing career tracks to become a programmer. I do not regret my time with the Union and would go back in a heartbeat if for some reason coding was no longer a viable career option.
trhtrsh 14y ago
Unionization really only makes sense in industries where work is very much to spec, and many people perform the same function, to the same standard of quality, and there is no reason or benefit to exceed that quality. Otherwise, a unionized work force becomes a market for lemons, with everyone driving average quality down.
- debacle 14y ago
  Yes, because there aren't national unions for professional engineers, doctors, lawyers, actors, writers, professional athletes, or teachers. The main role of a union is to provide for collective bargaining agreements.
  - namdnay 14y ago
    The unions for doctors and lawyers aren't really the same thing as "normal" unions. They're more advocacy based. The unions for teachers exist because teachers are (wrongly IMHO) considered by their employer to be in the parents poster's category. If teachers weren't considered a commodity I think they would have less need for unions. And professional athletes unions are usually restrained to sports where the employers are a cartel (or even a single entity). The cartel phenomenon is similar in the case of actors.
    - hkmurakami 14y ago
      And professional athletes unions are usually restrained to sports where the employers are a cartel (or even a single entity). The cartel phenomenon is similar in the case of actors. Interesting point about the employer cartel, since the SV Tech Giants (Google, Apple, etc.) were outed as colluding to keep salaries down and not poach employees from one another earlier this year. Maybe that is a starting point for grounds to consider unionizing? Maybe?
      - namdnay 14y ago
        I agree, if the companies collude to keep salaries down there is no reason employees should not collude to keep them up.
lambersley 14y ago
Completely disagree! I work in a unionized IT environment and I would accept a reasonable offer to go back to IBM. Unions further complicate the relationship between employer and employee. It created "us vs. them" in every single implementation of unions. In the traditional 'Employee Relations' model, you could at least find a handful of good employers that value people. Not so the case in unionized environments. Employers' hands are forced to treat every employee as equal; the amazing, the good and the horrible all get the same treatment.

by debacle 14y ago

killface 14y ago

I think the reason we haven't is many-fold: - We all believe we're above average in our field, and unions would hold us back. - We all know people who have skated by on incompetence, and wouldn't want a union to protect their jobs. - Our field moves quickly, and we don't want a union that would hamper our ability to make quick moves. - Union is a dirty word, especially when the mind disease of libertarianism is more prevalent among tech workers. I think the easier way to solve this is for IT/computer workers to stop being paid salaries, and get paid hourly. If it weren't for a special exemption from congress that was passed in the 90s, we would be paid hourly as a matter of law. I know I've been treated MUCH better since I switched to consulting. Employers value your time when they have to pay for those extra 2 hours of meetings each day, when they have you work a Saturday, or stay a couple hours late to push to the finish line. In addition, things like software efficiency upgrades where I can show 10 hour savings for 3 hours of cost are suddenly on the table, where on a salary you're not a "team player" if don't just put in the extra hours for free to save the company some bucks.

codewright 14y ago
>I know I've been treated MUCH better since I switched to consulting. This has been my experience as well. My time was considered more valuable, people respected my input and expertise more, I was treated with more courtesy. The works.
- LearnYouALisp 14y ago
  Isn't that funny? You could be the same person with the same experience as you had in a company somewhere, and in one place it's undervalued and in a new place it's fairly valued (hopefully).
  - codewright 14y ago
    I had less experience then than I do now, despite that, still had a better run of it. Maybe I was just better at picking my work when I was a consultant. Hard to tell.
  - tonyedgecombe 14y ago
    I've seen it in the same company. At a previous employer I trippled the hourly rate and was amazed at how the same customers treated me completely differently. These customers seemed to be valuing my time by how much they paid for it.
qdog 14y ago
I think it's mostly the first one. I've met a lot of people with huge egos who think they are above the problems, and so far there is enough work. Someday, though, that might change, who knows when, though.
- GabrielF00 14y ago
  My grandfather was an aeronautical engineer who spent most of his career at one company - he joined early enough that he was friendly with the founder. That didn't stop them from laying him off right before he would have been able to collect his pension. (They did this with their other older engineers as well). This was around the end of the cold war when that whole sector was shrinking. Say what you will about unions, but they do exist for a reason.
mcguire 14y ago
I don't want to weigh in on the union issue, but those last two paragraphs are spot on. I worked for IBM as a contractor a number of times and you are describing exactly the differences between those of us who were hourly and the salaried regular employees. On the other hand, I wouldn't recommend working for IBM at all; there are reasons my resume reads like a list of major software project disasters of the '90's and it has a suspicious dearth of shipping products.

sageikosa 14y ago

Are you going to force people to join?

debacle 14y ago
No, I wouldn't see any reason to. Having a union that endorses members will create a professional body that is superior to non-unioned workers, making being part of the union a clear advantage.
- sageikosa 14y ago
  I'm not following how being a member of a union would make me any better than a non-union worker; thus I am not seeing the clear advantage of membership being a positive endorsement to me. "Having a union that endorses members" doesn't lead directly to the creation of "a professional body that is superior to non-unioned workers". IT/IS workers are usually considered "superior" (and thus more marketable) based on the degree of their knowledge and the effectiveness of their problem solving skills, to which membership in a collective bargaining society adds neither. Perhaps rather than forcing people to join, you want to force employers to exclude non-members? So that rather than being "under management's thumb" I can be under the "union's protection"?
  - padraigm 14y ago
    I think your parent's point was that if the union can guarantee that its members are high-quality, it will have a lot of leverage to negotiate with employers. A union taking that approach doesn't need to stipulate that employers only employ union workers or anything like that; it simply says "all of the best people work for us - if you want to hire them, you have to agree to our terms (re. salary, benefits, working conditions, etc).
    - sageikosa 14y ago
      "Having a union that endorses members will create a professional body that is superior to non-unioned workers" looks (to me) like an assertion that the value is in the union endorsement (and that it thus create the professional body), as opposed to the workers themselves. As I've asserted, information workers are valued for their knowledge and problem solving skills, so unless this hypothetical union were going to certify people as having certain knowledge and problem solving skills and include/exclude members based on that certification (or give them a grading level), it will be meaningless as a value indicator to any employer. If I think the level they give me is too low, I won't be likely to stay associated with them. If employers think they rate people too high, they'll avoid them also. If the "professional" union is just a middleman, I'd prefer not to have it, and I'm fairly certain sure employers wouldn't either. Of course, professional bodies (outside of trade organizations) exist like this, but they are called consulting companies.

huhtenberg 14y ago

I hate unions and everything about them. You don't like working conditions in the company - leave. You don't like conditions in your industry - switch specialty, go elsewhere. Too lazy to switch or too gifted to leave? Well, sure, OK, let's instead arm-twist and blackmail employer. Given, there are circumstances when you can't leave or switch. Say, if you are a miner in a small mining town. One employer, one skill set, no possibility of re-training. But unions are essentially an artifact of the 19th century.

knieveltech 14y ago
The very concept of work/life balance is an artifact of unionization. You hate everything about unions? Fascinating. How many have you worked for? Edit: upon reflection my original comment left a lot on the floor so I'm circling back to pick some of it up. Here's what a "typical" union experience looks like: The union hall staffs individuals that find work for you. The bulk of back-office paperwork and other hassles (including wage negotiation) are handled on your behalf by the hall. When you first hire on it's typically as a pre-apprentice (no prior experience) or apprentice (some applicable experience to the trade). OJT and training/certification materials are provided for you. Your coworkers are trained, experienced craftsmen. All applicable safety guidelines are rigidly enforced. From day 1 you are presented with the kind of benefits package that is no longer available to your average worker. In addition to credible health insurance this includes pension, annuity, on the job training and certification, and death benefits. In addition to your wage you are guaranteed additional compensation for overtime and hazardous work. By way of comparison, working in the trades for a non-union shop is at best a crapshoot. There's no guarantee SS and other taxes are being taken out correctly or at all. I've known several subcontractors who've gotten royally screwed by the IRS come tax time when they found out that they (unexpectedly) owed thousands in taxes. Safety guidelines are routinely ignored, it's nothing to get shorted on your paycheck (or go weeks without pay), benefits are typically non-existent, no guarantees of overtime, and you're working sink or swim with whoever the boss could scrape together to form a crew, typically for less money than you'd make in a union shop and that's after dues. General contractors also tend to maintain a good-ol-boy network, so you go rocking the boat about substandard pay or unsafe working conditions and it's a very real possibility that you could find yourself blackballed in your area. TL;DR: Union: guaranteed pay, safe working conditions, training provided for career advancement, benefits, retirement plan. Non-union: good luck, buddy. Full disclosure: I worked in the trades (both union and non-union) for several years before changing career tracks to become a programmer. I do not regret my time with the Union and would go back in a heartbeat if for some reason coding was no longer a viable career option.

trhtrsh 14y ago

Unionization really only makes sense in industries where work is very much to spec, and many people perform the same function, to the same standard of quality, and there is no reason or benefit to exceed that quality. Otherwise, a unionized work force becomes a market for lemons, with everyone driving average quality down.

debacle 14y ago
Yes, because there aren't national unions for professional engineers, doctors, lawyers, actors, writers, professional athletes, or teachers. The main role of a union is to provide for collective bargaining agreements.
- namdnay 14y ago
  The unions for doctors and lawyers aren't really the same thing as "normal" unions. They're more advocacy based. The unions for teachers exist because teachers are (wrongly IMHO) considered by their employer to be in the parents poster's category. If teachers weren't considered a commodity I think they would have less need for unions. And professional athletes unions are usually restrained to sports where the employers are a cartel (or even a single entity). The cartel phenomenon is similar in the case of actors.
  - hkmurakami 14y ago
    And professional athletes unions are usually restrained to sports where the employers are a cartel (or even a single entity). The cartel phenomenon is similar in the case of actors. Interesting point about the employer cartel, since the SV Tech Giants (Google, Apple, etc.) were outed as colluding to keep salaries down and not poach employees from one another earlier this year. Maybe that is a starting point for grounds to consider unionizing? Maybe?
    - namdnay 14y ago
      I agree, if the companies collude to keep salaries down there is no reason employees should not collude to keep them up.

lambersley 14y ago

Completely disagree! I work in a unionized IT environment and I would accept a reasonable offer to go back to IBM. Unions further complicate the relationship between employer and employee. It created "us vs. them" in every single implementation of unions. In the traditional 'Employee Relations' model, you could at least find a handful of good employers that value people. Not so the case in unionized environments. Employers' hands are forced to treat every employee as equal; the amazing, the good and the horrible all get the same treatment.