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Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union

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Re: Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union

#21

Post by themafia »

paxys wrote: post #19
thinkingemote wrote: post #2

I like the idea and encourage software workers unions. Is there an umbrella union that they can belong to? How effective are these new unions? I imagine these new tech unions don't have the same "shop floor" power as in industry. Why is this? Perhaps generally the ideals the new unions are advocating for are different than traditional ones?

While things can be bad in software in general, game developers need a union more than anyone. Conditions in that industry are horrendous. The entire period of a game's development is "crunch time". Everyone is exempt, so no overtime of course. And it is standard practice to downsize studios and have mass layoffs right after big launches. It's a shame that so many are drawn to this just because of a passion for gamin…

> Everyone is exempt,

This comes with a catch in California. In order to make software developers exempt there is a minimum salary you must pay otherwise you are required to keep them hourly and pay overtime where appropriate.

https://www.dir.ca.gov/oprl/ComputerSoftware.htm

Re: Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union

#22

Post by closewith »

mrsilencedogood wrote: post #9
palmotea wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want that, you’d have to negotiate for it, and now doesn’t seem like a great time. Software engineers can be pretty foolish. When we had more power, unions were unpopular because too many imbibed some libertarian propaganda, looked at their high salaries, and decided to cosplay as bosses. Now that power is slipping away, and will slip away faster because we did little to preserve it to our determent . Also t…

But how do you actually bootstrap that process? Look at bandcamp. They unionized successfully. Then the company got sold (again), and everyone but the union leaders (and prominent members) got job offers from the new parent company. Basically got reverse-fired. I still suspect part of the reason Epic sold them is to ninja-bust the union (or at least get it out of the way).

Legislatively. In most of the Western world, TUPE would have made the manoeuvre impossible.

Re: Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union

#23

Post by danaris »

palmotea wrote: post #5
wrs wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want that, you’d have to negotiate for it, and now doesn’t seem like a great time. But given the continual decrease in job stability in tech, perhaps we’re headed toward more of a Hollywood model, where the skilled workers are nearly all free-lance and project-based, and have powerful unions with such provisions industry-wide.

> If you want that, you’d have to negotiate for it, and now doesn’t seem like a great time. Software engineers can be pretty foolish. When we had more power, unions were unpopular because too many imbibed some libertarian propaganda, looked at their high salaries, and decided to cosplay as bosses. Now that power is slipping away, and will slip away faster because we did little to preserve it to our determent . Also t…

> a union should be monomanically about representing worker interests and stay far away from any other kind of issue

So...should it pick and choose which kinds of workers to represent the interests of?

Or should it fight for the interests of all the workers?

Because that's really the choice it has to make: do you fight for the interests of disabled workers, and female workers, and trans workers, and black workers, and immigrant workers? Or do you only fight for the interests of white male workers?

Either choice is a political choice.

You cannot avoid politics when one side of the political aisle has declared that the validity and ability to exist in public life of certain categories of people is against their agenda.

Re: Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union

#24

Post by esseph »

natebc wrote: post #8
mrsilencedogood wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Software engineers don't even need to be around for the programs to keep running." Can you tell me where you work, and are you hiring???

Their ops teams are probably ground into dust.

Trying to keep alive 30yr old tech stacks and still pass security reviews, while doing stuff like manually compiling and packaging python 2 and jre6 tools. Ouch.

Re: Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union

#25

Post by tehjoker »

palmotea wrote: post #5
wrs wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want that, you’d have to negotiate for it, and now doesn’t seem like a great time. But given the continual decrease in job stability in tech, perhaps we’re headed toward more of a Hollywood model, where the skilled workers are nearly all free-lance and project-based, and have powerful unions with such provisions industry-wide.

> If you want that, you’d have to negotiate for it, and now doesn’t seem like a great time. Software engineers can be pretty foolish. When we had more power, unions were unpopular because too many imbibed some libertarian propaganda, looked at their high salaries, and decided to cosplay as bosses. Now that power is slipping away, and will slip away faster because we did little to preserve it to our determent . Also t…

Unions should focus on worker power, but staying away form politics entirely is called "economism" and "opportunism". Your bosses are political, they shape politics to mold the environment around you. Unions form the bedrock of worker power, and workers should advocate for a more democratic society against the oligarchs. We are some of the best positioned in society to do so because we control the means of production.

Unions should do political education and work with issue based, socialist organizations, and invite speakers to facilitate discussions, while building consensus around what needs to be done in the workplace and fighting on behalf of their fellow workers ferociously.

Re: Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union

#26

Post by johannes1234321 »

websiteapi wrote: post #10
mrsilencedogood wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Software engineers don't even need to be around for the programs to keep running." Can you tell me where you work, and are you hiring???

Didn’t twitter get 3/4 people laid off? Seems to still work as of time of writing (x.com).

They cut quite a lot projects and side products (from tweet deck to different statistics and insights to ads), some other things they scaled down a lot (in the past one could read everything without being signed in, now they limit to sign in users, which certainly takes a lot of load and thus need to keep systems running)

Also initially they had a lot of breakage.

Re: Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union

#27

Post by doctorpangloss »

thinkingemote wrote: post #2

I like the idea and encourage software workers unions. Is there an umbrella union that they can belong to? How effective are these new unions? I imagine these new tech unions don't have the same "shop floor" power as in industry. Why is this? Perhaps generally the ideals the new unions are advocating for are different than traditional ones?

Situation: There are 14 competing unions.

You: That's ridiculous! We need one universal union that covers everyone's needs. Yeah!

Situation: There are 15 competing unions.

Re: Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union

#28

Post by hellojesus »

podgorniy wrote: post #20

Good for them. During economic downturns, when fewer resources are available for redistribution, collective action across population groups can help address worsening power imbalances.

To an extent. There is always the chance that the collective action discounts the impact to the business too heavily and ends up driving the company under, making the outcomes worse for everyone. We saw this a couple years ago with Yellow Trucking.

Re: Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union

#29

Post by venturecruelty »

podgorniy wrote: post #20

Good for them. During economic downturns, when fewer resources are available for redistribution, collective action across population groups can help address worsening power imbalances.

The problem is that there is actually an abundance of resources available, they're just horribly imbalanced. There's an entire megathread complaining about RAM prices, and very few people have said "maybe one single person shouldn't be allowed to make computers expensive for the entire rest of the planet".

Re: Id Software devs form "wall-to-wall" union

#30

Post by mempko »

nitwit005 wrote: post #6
thinkingemote wrote: post #2

I like the idea and encourage software workers unions. Is there an umbrella union that they can belong to? How effective are these new unions? I imagine these new tech unions don't have the same "shop floor" power as in industry. Why is this? Perhaps generally the ideals the new unions are advocating for are different than traditional ones?

With a factory, the owner has to deal with the cost of all the late or canceled deliveries. With farms, the crops wither on the vines. There's not really an equivalent with most service industries. Software engineers don't even need to be around for the programs to keep running.

You do realize that, um, software need hardware. And also security upgrades often require software engineers. And uh, software maintenance is what engineers actually do most of the time.
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