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There are a lot of benefits to organization beyond simple salary negotiations. Other professions in very high demand like doctors organize themselves to an incr

There are a lot of benefits to organization beyond simple salary negotiations. Other professions in very high demand like doctors organize themselves to an incredible extent, and are able to have significant pull with both employers and governments as a consequence. They have meaningful input into the laws and regulations that apply to their craft. Doctors don't have organizations with the word "union" in the title, but the AMA, essentially the doctors' trade association, was maybe the second most powerful player who opposed meaningful healthcare reform (and they won). An equivalent association of developers could basically dictate terms for software patents/licensing/ownership issues and software-related IP regulations in the US. They could secure absolute limits on the length of their work week. They could easily block Zuckerberg, et al.'s H1B visa expansion garbage. And yeah, on top of all that, they could include QA in their little club and maybe get them some health insurance or job security or literally anything approaching just and fair employment terms.

jlgreco 13y ago
An industry wide political interests group (not a labor union) could be useful, but to be honest I expect there would be far less common ground than you might expect or hope. For every Bay Area programmer that is really into sane standards, open software and minimal surveillance, there are probably half a dozen programmers throughout the rest of the world that work 9-5, have a few patents in their name, and primarily care about their family and (consequentially) their employers stability. They are the people participating in most of the stuff the rest of us think is wrong with the industry, and they don't hate themselves for it. On another end of the multidimensional spectrum you have armies of STEM graduates working/contracting for the Federal government who really do buy into "nothing to hide". (For an example of this attitude, see Bob Metcalfe's recent reddit 'AMA'). I'm spinning these perspectives very negatively because I don't share them, but regardless of my bias the fact remains there are a lot of programmers that the diversity of "what programmers think about stuff" is underestimated.

jlgreco 13y ago

An industry wide political interests group (not a labor union) could be useful, but to be honest I expect there would be far less common ground than you might expect or hope. For every Bay Area programmer that is really into sane standards, open software and minimal surveillance, there are probably half a dozen programmers throughout the rest of the world that work 9-5, have a few patents in their name, and primarily care about their family and (consequentially) their employers stability. They are the people participating in most of the stuff the rest of us think is wrong with the industry, and they don't hate themselves for it. On another end of the multidimensional spectrum you have armies of STEM graduates working/contracting for the Federal government who really do buy into "nothing to hide". (For an example of this attitude, see Bob Metcalfe's recent reddit 'AMA'). I'm spinning these perspectives very negatively because I don't share them, but regardless of my bias the fact remains there are a lot of programmers that the diversity of "what programmers think about stuff" is underestimated.