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Programmers don’t need a union. We need a profession.
- jacques_chester 14y agoGuild unionism (which is still a union, just with a different name) is an evolved strategy for managing the risks that exist in certain areas of human activity. If you give someone advice on medicine, law, accounting or engineering and your advice is wrong -- the consequences can be dire. Very dire. Even trivial mistakes can spiral out of control. Even though guild unionism imposes enormous cost and drag on society at large, it sufficiently damps the risk that the cost is probably worth it. But for enormous swathes of software development, doing a hilariously bad job doesn't lead to loss of life, limb, liberty or livelihood under any circumstances. The risks are substantially lower. But the cost of guild unionism would be the same.