I think a key component to unions is a marked class dichotomy. Blue collar on one side, white on the other. This leads to strong "us vs them" tribal instincts to prevail. I don't think that dichotomy is as strong in tech industries, if it exists at all.
Ask HN: Why don't developers unionize?
31–40 of 153 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why don't developers unionize?
#32I can only speak for myself, but I will never join a union. It's a political thing for me. I know not everyone feels that way, but I also know that I'm not the only one strongly opposed to unionization.
Would you join a police officer's union?
Re: Ask HN: Why don't developers unionize?
#33"Why am I getting reprimanded?" "Because you ran a unit test..." "What is wrong with that?" "It's Brian's job to press that key, not yours. You violated Union rules"
You know unions can make and not make whatever rules they want, right?
There's nothing intrinsic about unions that would cause that rule to exist.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't developers unionize?
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Leveraged into poverty? Developer salaries range from 50-65k starting to 250k plus. Then there's freelancing.
Depends on where you're at, right? You'll find tons of developers on Upwork willing to work for less. Isn't that the future for most of us? We're tomorrow's factory workers. Corporations have already shown that they'll work to suppress wages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L... The long game is to promote STEM fields and increase supply - pushing down wages and benefits.
So not teaching more people engineering is a good thing? Are you really advocating ignorance to artificially constrain the supply in the market of competent engineers? Non-competes, no-poaching, etc and illegal acts to constrain salaries are deplorable, yes, but are you going to be able to change the profit motive of business? Nope. What you can change is how you market yourself and seeking other opportunities for income be they freelancing or something similar. Think of a world that is much more educated now. There's untold industries and innovations that can be had and we markets for us to be employed in.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't developers unionize?
#35Part of it is that unions are associated with blue-collar work and developers feel that they are "too white-collar" for that sort of thing. There's no collar boundary to unionization, of course, but there is a perception that there is.
Unions tend to be for identical-cogs-in-the-machine, no differentiation between individuals, everyone marching in lockstep by strict seniority type careers. Tech types tend to be more like herding cats... not a good fit for unions.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't developers unionize?
#36You seem to be describing donating to the EFF. That's good, I support the EFF.
But an EFF which gets to negotiate my salary for me? No thanks. I'll keep donating to the EFF and just not join the union, thanks.
Without collective bargaining, what you're describing isn't a "new style of union" but an advocacy organization. We probably need more of those, but they're really hard to run effectively.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't developers unionize?
#37Scarcity. Once you know how to program, and others know that, everyone wants to hire you. There are simply not enough developers yet for all the things people want to do right now.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't developers unionize?
#38If it wasn't for Steve Jobs we might have agents like Hollywood actors. To me the real question is why don't we have agents like actors and basketball players? We could be like actors and have both a union and our own agents. But thanks to Jobs conspiring to hold back engineer income we have a situation where we are often leveraged into poverty.
Agents are expensive overhead. Agents are for people who shift between "clients" frequently. The thing that both actors and athletes share (at least the ones with agents) is giant salaries and a frequently changing employer.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't developers unionize?
#39Generally unionization is fought fairly hard by companies for the simple reason that it restricts what they can do and takes some control out of the hands of management. In the Bay area in the late 80's there was mumbling about unions after the great semiconductor flame out. A lot of people were laid off without warning and since it was widespread the ability to walk across the street and get rehired was limited. Sin…
Fully agree.. but I wonder what would happen if unions started to take a leaf out of the 'no poaching' corporate playbook and simply unionised secretly. Collective bargaining via synchronised individual bargaining, where everyone demands the same conditions on their employment. (Surely this could be appified ;) Perhaps if there were no official union, the vicious knock down would be much more difficult to focus. And it could be much easier for a coordinated and realtime response direct from the employees, rather than an intermediary.
I think the thing that people forget with regard to unions and employers is they are simply about redressing a massive power imbalance in a potentially mutually beneficial relationship.
Re: Ask HN: Why don't developers unionize?
#40Developers do unionize. Some developers. In some countries. [Bernie]Take for example Denmark[/Bernie]. In Denmark, PROSA is the union of IT professionals and lives up to several of your ideas of a new style of union.
They have a strict definition (job titles, educational background) that excludes designers but includes front-end developers. But since IT workers, compared to so many other industries, are rather well off, PROSA is not a typical worker's union. I assume the main reason why people are members is to get access to the part-government funded unemployment fund, and the secondary reason is to support its IT politics.
Yes, they've handled large-scale conflict and strikes in the past, and yes, they handle collective agreements for workers in a few larger organisations. But because there's so little conflict in this sector in Denmark, it is mostly handled on a case-by-case basis (where the union membership fee can be seen as a subscription to legal aid) and the union can spend its energy on[1]:
- Lobbying for better IT policy. Unlike like-minded non-profits, the union has a good budget, full-time employees, career lobbyists etc. Still, IT policy is not being taken very serious in Denmark (being just a series of tubes)
- Running citizen-focused campaigns that focus on privacy, use of FOSS, the free internet, TPP, automation, etc.
- Donating, on occasion, to non-profits that really need it. I think EFF were targets at least once.
It does not maintain or create standards. It does not hold companies responsible for privately made security choices. (The media does to some extent, but as you may have read, paying for security is more expensive than screwing up and dealing with the consequences.) It does not support FOSS directly, AFAIK, but since Denmark is such a small place, there are active FOSS players both among union members and employees.
Among other things PROSA does, which you have not mentioned that a new style of union could is: Create a geographically based community. Some meetup groups use their meeting rooms (e.g. Functional Copenhageners; MF#K). And there's a lot of user groups organized within PROSA, so in a sense they've taken over the social aspect of LUGs (Linux User Groups); e.g. makers, roboticists, board gamers, network admins, etc.
If you ask me, unions in IT are useful if you're the hundred-something or thousand-something employee in a large corporation. If you can't simply switch jobs from one month to the next. If you don't get paid so well that you could take months off if you wanted. And IT is large enough to encompass people for whom that makes total sense. And then there's those who probably get paid more without a collective wage agreement. In Denmark, some of those choose to stay for the cozy atmosphere. :)
[1]: Note, I never worked for PROSA. I'm sure they do a hell of a lot more union-related work than I can imagine exists. Also, I know nothing of how IT unions work elsewhere. I just wrote articles for their magazine while I was a student.