Congratulations You’ve Been Fired

Your first point is telling. Talent mobility has increased among young software developers. Dan Lyons was not a young software developer; he was an older employee on the business side of the enterprise.

It's possible (though: see game development companies for counterexamples) that abusive management of technologists at technology companies will be self-defeating, and that those companies will find themselves locked out of the talent market. But the story Dan Lyons is telling seems pretty well aligned with, for instance, reporting about Amazon's or Yelp's work culture: if you're not a young or elite technologist, management can in fact abuse you with impunity.

Balance of power. Employers have it, employees do not. If companies and employers treated their workers with dignity and respect no unions would be necessary.

* I'm sure you are familiar with how collective bargaining power works and how it can be used for good or ill. It is because of the actions of worker unions that people today enjoy many rights that they take for granted. You, personally, have benefited greatly from union movements through the ages. In fact, the creation of the so called "middle-class" worldwide can be directly attributed to worker union agitation. In many ways unions have created the world we live in. As the middle class produced the consumers corporates depend on. To me, these are all excellent and worthwhile side-effects. Today you can witness the slow destruction of the middle class again, as capitalism looses its way and degenerates into corporate fascism.

Programming is a "incredibly high leverage and highly lucrative field" ? Compared to what ? Investment banker ? Oil rig worker ? Corporate management ? Chartered Accountant ?

I do believe unionizing will significantly raise wages, historically they have.

* (apologies for the little rant, I'm leaving it in as it amuses me)

I don't really see a rant, so no worries there.

> Programming is a "incredibly high leverage and highly lucrative field" ? Compared to what ?

High leverage compared to:

1. Any job where labor is roughly proportional to output. Want twice as many cars in the same period? You're going to employ roughly twice as many people. Want twice as many Starbucks? Roughly twice as many baristas. Want to sell twice as much software or have twice as many subscribers to your SaaS company's offerings? You might need 0-10% more programmers to support 100% growth.

Highly lucrative field compared to (all figures 2014):

1. Median household wages in the US of $53,567.

2. Median household wages in CA of $60487, in MA of $63,151, in NY of $54,310.

I don't know any full-time industry programmers who are working for less than the median household income; that's before any income from other sources or other household members. We're paying fresh college grads around the 70-75th percentile of US household income (again, as individuals).

Those signs don't point me towards the idea that programmers are an oppressed class desperately in need of unionization.

> I do believe unionizing will significantly raise wages, historically they have.

Are there examples of such highly paid professions unionizing? Did wages rise afterwards? (It's a genuine question; I can't think of any highly paid professions that are overwhelmingly [or even typically] union.)

The problem here isn't that jobs don't provide job security, it's that they lie about it. How many times has someone called your company a "family"? Why is talking about a future in which you don't work for your company taboo? I'd have no problem working for a company that I knew wouldn't hesitate to fire me, except that there's no way to judge when that might happen. I'd appreciate hearing, "If we don't get this next round of funding, we might have to let you go," but instead the funding talks are done in secrecy while we go out for drinks and talk about how the company is such a family and how you're doing a good job, until suddenly someone is getting laid off.

The flipside of this is that if you do have job stability, it's usually not worth it to stay anyway. I've always worked for companies who needed me more than I needed them, so I've never really had to worry about job security. Over the past decade I've switched jobs 7 times, each time getting a 10-20% increase in income. In 5 of those cases I wanted to stay at my employer, but when I asked for a 10%-ish raise and explained that I could get more than that by leaving, they came back with 4-5% answers. In two cases they noted that 3% was "standard" (which was true for them--I talk to my coworkers about pay). In many cases, never giving significant raises works for companies: I still know people working year after year at my previous employers and accepting their annual 3% raise.

The underlying problem in both cases is that companies simply don't care about your goals. You're an equation to them, which can be tipped in their favor either by treating you like a liquid asset and firing you at their convenience, or by not paying you what you're worth. It's not an "alliance": that implies shared goals. It's companies using their workers for the company's goals, no matter what that entails, even if it means pretending that it's a family or an alliance when it's not.

I have to agree, programmers unionizing would seem a bit… "spoiled" to me. I've never had any issues negotiating or getting underpaid. The bulk of the issues described under this post actually seem to have nothing to do with pay, but rather with high-pressure work environments and simply getting fired (which in the field of programming, comparatively, is not the end of the world—if you're competent that is).