I see no reason or benefit to unionizing tech workers.
Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte
101–110 of 380 posts
Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte
#102Don't unions work best in fields where quality is very uniform and expertise counts for very little? I'm thinking about low skilled jobs that can be mastered in months or years. Unions create salary progression, and benefits for seniority where there is otherwise no reason for them to exist. When no one does anything better than anyone else, it makes sense to negotiate as a block, individuals have no power. Now compa…
> Don't unions work best in fields where quality is very uniform and expertise counts for very little?
I will do my best to take this as the result of decades of anti-union sentiment across the USA; in places like Sweden this is not "common knowledge" as it seems to be stated here.
The best counter-examples I can think of, within the US even is: the screen actors guild (which is a union) and the writers guild. Both of which cannot (and definitely do not) represent uniform quality and lack of talent or special skill.
Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are on an assembly line and you have 45 s to do your job you either do it, or don't. If you do it fast and wait for 40 s you don't add any value.
> If you are on an assembly line and you have 45 s to do your job you either do it, or don't. If you do it fast and wait for 40 s you don't add any value. Have you worked on an assembly line? I have. You may not add value by doing it faster, but you certainly cause problems if you do it slower.
So there’s a cap on the maximum value (always doing it on time), and a cap on the minimum value (never doing it).
The above poster takes the position that the ratio between the maximum value, and minimum employable value is less than 10.
Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are on an assembly line and you have 45 s to do your job you either do it, or don't. If you do it fast and wait for 40 s you don't add any value.
> If you are on an assembly line and you have 45 s to do your job you either do it, or don't. If you do it fast and wait for 40 s you don't add any value. Have you worked on an assembly line? I have. You may not add value by doing it faster, but you certainly cause problems if you do it slower.
I think the distinction is the relationship between the median performer and the 90th percentile performer. The two are very different employees for software development but not on an assembly line. As you point out, there is a difference between the median performer and the 10th percentile performer on an assembly line, but that's not the comparison the parent comment introduced.
Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte
#105Don't unions work best in fields where quality is very uniform and expertise counts for very little? I'm thinking about low skilled jobs that can be mastered in months or years. Unions create salary progression, and benefits for seniority where there is otherwise no reason for them to exist. When no one does anything better than anyone else, it makes sense to negotiate as a block, individuals have no power. Now compa…
A union would protect everyone. And nobody is saying that a senior engineer should get paid the same as a junior. You live under the impression that better workers will earn more. In practice the skill that earns higher salary is to pretend to be very competent by using jargon and parroting stuff.
Even the terrible developers that are a drain on the company and hence compensation? No thanks
Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte
#106Hard pass. I can do better without a union than with one, and I refuse to subsidise those who can't.
The goal isnt to strike or anything, its to raise money, lobby the government, and give ourselves some sort of regulatory capture.
Look at the medical cartels for the playbook.
Make it illegal to outsource work, make the barrier to entry high, etc...
Sure its terrible for the nation, but everyone else is doing it. We don't want to be last.
Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte
#107I don't know whether we deserve a union or not. I do know that I emphatically do not want or need one. I make the amount of money I need. I have my pick of jobs if I feel undervalued by the place I work. Under no circumstances do I want to be forced to pay dues into a union that is unlikely to represent me in the company or politically.
Since I have no need or desire there is no reason for me to consider the question.
Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
In what country? Software engineers have some incredible pay for pretty low effort in the last 15years. Even before that it was a pretty decent living for most of the time pretty non-unique software. We are talking about them as an exploited working class, wild to me.
Given that they are typically salaried, I wonder what the hour adjusted pay is? The median for a dev in the US is $110k, and many of those jobs fall in higher than average cost of living areas. It's possible that people in the industry want better working conditions or more equal/open pay systems, not just more money. Better hiring practices could be nice too.
It would be nice to work for a successful company, see that company earn record quarterly profits and then not have to worry about being laid off. Pay is important but, arguably, job security even more so.
Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The best engineers are worth literally 10x the worst engineers Uh, I'm pretty sure the best employees in any field are worth 10x what the worst employees are, whether you're writing code, assembling a car or gutting fish. The economics of labour suggest unions are most valuable where there's a monopsony buyer of labour. Big Tech might fit that bill, especially when we know they colluded to depress salaries.
> Uh, I'm pretty sure the best employees in any field are worth 10x what the worst employees are, whether you're writing code, assembling a car or gutting fish. I've worked at FedEx as a package handler before. That is absolutely not the case there. The absolutely best employees might be 3x more productive than someone who's mediocre with 2 weeks of experience. When the job is picking up boxes off of a conveyor belt…
>Some jobs - especially jobs that involve heavy manual labor - just don't have a wide range between the most and least productive employees.
Obviously we're all just throwing around numbers to make a point, this isn't hard data.
But I assure you there are zero jobs where there is no difference between the best and worst employees. Zero.
Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte
#110I don't read that title the same way other people read that title