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Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte

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Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte

#221

Post by badcppdev »

simonw wrote: post #18
aknfxb3m wrote: post #4

In my country we had mandated unions for tech workers in various states. I paid the compulsory annual fee plus an additional fee that I didn't understand and can't properly explain what it was for. Not once in 23 years in IT have they done anything for me. Not a single time. Every time we pushed for raises and someone contacted the union, nothing came back. When the company was not updating our salaries against infla…

Which country?

I know. Why would someone create a throwaway account and then not mention the key bits of information??

Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte

#222

Post by _aavaa_ »

runako wrote: post #178
_aavaa_ wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that things like RSUs are generally included, but the 50k of benefits does not include RSUs. The closest this they talk about is the pension plan, which they quote as 23k. Looks like UPS quotes above 95k avg, and 42$/hr avg after 4 years. I have no idea how that compares to average tech salary, but I agree that it is good money. That last thing worth mentioning, also from UPS' site is that almost half of thei…

> 50k of benefits First cut at this would be $23k of pension, plus health insurance. (Average policy for a family of 4 is running around $25k; UPS may have a better plan than average.) It's fair for them to include these because comparable employers do not include either. (Though it make the compare to tech workers less direct.) > almost half of their full-time drivers have been at the company for >15 years There's a…

> It's fair for them to include these because comparable employers do not include either.

It is fair, but not under the phrase "UPS workers make". That phrasing usually only refers to (pre- or post-tax) salary.

> There's a documented correlation between good benefits, low turnover, and higher profits.

I would believe it. All I meant to say is that the 95k average salary will be skewed by having half their full time employees being there for >15 years.

I think you and I agree for the most part, I am pushing to keep a clearer distinction between take home pay and total compensation.

Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte

#223

Post by nonethewiser »

shortrounddev2 wrote: post #206
nonethewiser wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Or presumably anything else (because you said "any field"). But why? It seems like the less skill or expertise something takes the less ability there is to deviate from the average. In which case unions, if most useful for low-skilled labor like OP described,…

Jobs aren't all technical skills. You can be the best coder in the world but if you're a colossal asshole you're not going to get put in charge of other people. If you show up to work drunk or high, you're definitely not going to advance.

Never said it was. We're talking about productivity. Being such an asshole that your performance is crippled is baked into that.

Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte

#224

Post by germinalphrase »

runako wrote: post #96
pydry wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This idea crops up so frequently that Ive started calling it the "Apparently Tom Cruise Works in a Factory" fallacy.

Is Tom Cruise represented by a union?

The film industry is highly unionized. At some point in his career, he absolutely was - possibly multiple.

Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte

#225

Post by andsoitis »

lapcat wrote: post #184
zaphar wrote: post #107

I 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…

> I make the amount of money I need. It's not just about money. Working conditions are equally important. Consider when companies demand that everyone RTO after promising permanent WFH. Consider when companies rescind offer letters after you've already quit your old job. Consider mass layoffs and severance. I think about how so many engineers need to take a long, unpaid break from work after leaving their jobs, becau…

> Consider when companies demand that everyone RTO after promising permanent WFH. Consider when companies rescind offer letters after you've already quit your old job. Consider mass layoffs and severance.

Should these not just be regular labor law requirements?

Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte

#226

Post by shortrounddev2 »

Jensson wrote: post #211
shortrounddev2 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions are democratic organizations. If those things are important to you, you can speak up at a union meeting

People voted not to have a union, so apparently democracy doesn't get you what you want, at least in your case.

In most states in the US you are not required to join the union if your workplace votes for it

Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte

#227

Post by iteria »

lesuorac wrote: post #138
iteria wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just keep thinking about the fact that literally everyone in my family makes less than that. To say that a developer _only_ makes 110K is high level privilege in many places including tech hubs. 110K is more than a whole household makes in my metro area. The average dev out earns dual income family. This is why I spend a lot of think wondering what could a union even do for me? I work in comfort. If I work long hou…

> This is why I spend a lot of think wondering what could a union even do for me? I mean the same thing it does for Tom Cruise. You're really thinking about this the wrong way. Companies all the time join trade groups and pay membership fees to coordinate their efforts. Are you going to argue that companies are making a fiscally irresponsible decision? A union is strictly the same thing as a trade group except its me…

Tom Cruise is in an industry where he can be shut out at any given moment and there's only like 5 employers.

How does that match tech? FAANG pays outrageously compared to regular dev jobs, but regular devs jobs are still pay absurdly high for a job that has a lot of comfort. This is nothing like average actor.

So for me, average dev, what is a union doing for me? What can a union offer me that I don't currently get? I make far more than median income in my area. It has never taken me long to get another job even when I burned a bridge. I can't be "black balled". My benefits are stellar and every company I have interacted with has stellar benefits. Merely being at a company with developer bestows better benefits for all white collar workers in my experience.

What can a union offer me when unions in the US are prone to valuing seniority over all (I say this as someone with 10+ yoe) and prone to being sympathetic to companies over time and tending towards modest progress instead of allowing supply and demand pressure to be fully felt.

Software development is not at the stage where it has been whole consolidated and companies are insulated from market pressure. If you work for an airline what real threat is your quitting? You can only do so so many times. This is not the case for developers. Unions however would bring forth a kind of calcified standardization that will resist radical change. That's why I'm against it. If unions existed when I first started my career, I would have seen the rise of unlimited PTO that allows me EU level vacations. I never dreamed when I started that I'd take 5 or six weeks off a year and that would be fine. I could tell my interviewers I'd be doing that and that would be fine. Because as it stands companies need devs and I have power.

People are upset about layoffs but barring Twitter which was an illegal shitshow, was anyone really harmed by it? Layoffs are rare in our field (ignoring game development which does actually need a union for inhuman work conditions and general instability). Easy money ended and so they layoffs happen. Should financial professionals be so up in arms about what happened to them in 2008 because it was the same kind of shitshow looking at my circle.

I remain unconvinced at this moment that unions will help and in fact feel they will hurt our industry which hasn't settled into a bad state and unions could settle us at a point less than we could otherwise get.

Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte

#228

Post by scottiebarnes »

vasco wrote: post #194
lapcat wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I make the amount of money I need. It's not just about money. Working conditions are equally important. Consider when companies demand that everyone RTO after promising permanent WFH. Consider when companies rescind offer letters after you've already quit your old job. Consider mass layoffs and severance. I think about how so many engineers need to take a long, unpaid break from work after leaving their jobs, becau…

How do unions help with those? - Do unions enforce remote work? - Do unions enforce an offer letter to turn into actual employment for someone who isn't even a member yet (they haven't signed anything)? - Do unions make people have a better handle on their mental health and do companies with unions have lower rates of burnout in their workforces?

Yeah actually a union can help with all of those things.

That's why police are unionized, as well as most team sport elite athletes (players unions). And they like the power it gives them, which is why you never hear them talk badly about it.

Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte

#229

Post by M2Ys4U »

alphazard wrote: post #22

Don'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?

Absolutely not.

I'm a software engineer in a research & development department (with a headcount of ~200 in an organisation of about 20k). Roles here are very varied, from people with multi-decade experience and very deep specialist technical knowledge to recent graduates, in domains that range from RF engineering to ethnography to project management.

Our union is indispensable, both within our department and across the whole organisation.

Re: Tech Workers Deserve a Union: An Interview with Ethan Marcotte

#230

Post by jampekka »

Aurornis wrote: post #114
alphazard wrote: post #22

Don'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…

This nuance is missing from most discussions about unions in tech; People have a high-level idea that unions have increased wages and improved working conditions in other industries and they’ve made a crude extrapolation that a tech union would therefore give them them more money and fewer working hours. All with no downsides or strings attached! A more accurate mental model is to understand a union as trading some (…

At least here in (highly unionized) Finland unions set only the floor on the wages and other working conditions, and especially in white collar jobs practically everyone is paid above the floor.

Some, mostly public sector, contracts have union negotiated "wage tables" suggesting pay based on position and individual performance, but similar exist in almost all large organizations. And the unions don't care if someone is paid more than this, and at the moment they wouldn't even know, because individual pay isn't public information.

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