171–180 of 695 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But tech isn't a blue collar industry, and this is about tech unions.
Why is tech not blue collar? Because you use your brain instead of your hands? You are closer to a plumber or an electrician than to Sergey Brin, griping that you should be working 60 hours a week to develop AI to replace you for Alphabet shareholders.
The author seems to think that everybody works this way. In reality, many of us work 40-45 hour weeks with no on call and low amounts of meetings. These jobs are in the boring (military, banking, insurance etc) sectors but I make a good, not great, living.
The author is clear that they're talking about "billion dollar tech companies" for an audience of those people called to them. You're right that these are not the only place that people can write software and that many of us have recognized for a very long while that these are noxious places to write software, or that they were eventually going to become so. Billion dollar FAANGs and their smaller, cargo culting, sha…
> We’re in an industry where burnout isn’t just common - it’s expected. If you’re not pulling all-nighters, you’re "not committed." If you’re not answering Slack messages at midnight, you’re "not a team player." This culture is toxic, and it’s only getting worse. The relentless churn of projects, the constant pressure to innovate, and the ever-present threat of obsolescence create a perfect storm of stress.
No, the author is generalizing what work at a billion dollar tech company is like to the whole industry. I've never worked for a company similar to the one described in this post, and I think that the vast majority of people in tech haven't either. Silicon valley is not the world.
Either ways, unionizing sounds like a great idea.
These articles about work conditions in tech feel profoundly out of touch with the rest of the world. It's like reading a gazette from Mary Antoinette talking about how tough her life was (pre-revolution..) The rest of the world outside of tech, looks at tech and sees a bunch of very overpaid developers with quite cushy perks... Like sure, it would be great to unionise... But if tech workers don't acknowledge their p…
They most certainly do, but it says A LOT more about them that they see developers as overpaid rather than themselves as underpaid.
Propaganda from the owners of capital has worked well by ensuring that anyone relying on an income is more likely to look left, right, and strike down than to ever consider looking up.
A "no strike" clause is a big red flag that its not gonna do anything .
And organizing is a good way to get fired. Employers don't care - they won't get caught or prosecuted and if fined it will be after the critical organizers are long gone.
It takes some next level leadership to make it work that is mostly missing
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Incredible that people like you will watch the industry lay off hundreds of thousands of workers then turn around and make this argument. It's like devs are allergic to any semblance of labor solidarity.
Would you rather have layoffs at your company or have your company go out of business due to excessive labor costs? Should poor performers be immune from layoffs? When is a layoff justifiable? I'm free to leave my job at any time, so why shouldn't my employer be free to leave me?
You can invent strawmen like poor performers and failing companies all day long but the facts differ quite a lot from your perception.
Or, it can be like everything other job, and not so much.
Ad tech has given developers the illusion they are extremely valuable.
They are, but not that much. Not by a long shot. Google et al massively distorted the software development market by at least 4x, if not more.
What we are seeing now is a massive correction back to some level of sanity for tech worker comp.
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> The bet is that if we collectively use unions correctly, This sounds awfully similar to when people were holding their iPhones wrong .
Let me put it this way. If a rowing team spends their time infighting rather than coordinating, they’ll find it difficult to make progress even though they can in theory move very fast.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Incredible that people like you will watch the industry lay off hundreds of thousands of workers then turn around and make this argument. It's like devs are allergic to any semblance of labor solidarity.
Would you rather have layoffs at your company or have your company go out of business due to excessive labor costs? Should poor performers be immune from layoffs? When is a layoff justifiable? I'm free to leave my job at any time, so why shouldn't my employer be free to leave me?
I invite you to read earnings reports from any of the FAANG companies in the last 5 years. Go ahead, I'll wait.
This write up sounds like it describes a very particular subset of companies. If you only want to work at the flashy unicorns in downtown San Francisco, you are signing yourself up for exploitation. Like any career, if you get off the beaten path there are plenty of pretty okay jobs out there. Especially if you have a marketable skill. This is software, if you have a brain and functional hands - you already own the m…
Job mobility for tech workers is a fluke of current economic conditions. If interest rates spike, or a recession happens, or a bubble bursts, this benefit would go away and you'd be stuck at that exploitative company or unemployed.
Unionization and labor laws can make workers less disposable without substantially affecting growth (see: European tech hubs).