231–240 of 383 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How would a tech union help in that case?
If the union was cross-company, it could have noticed the lack of "poaching" much sooner. Unions could also help in the world of game studios, to stop the deeply harmful practice of "crunch".
I find this interesting because I don't fully understand how tech became so opposed to unions. Many in our industry are quite jaded about the poor behavior of large corporations. Perhaps there are also reasons to be distrustful of unions. But mostly we accept working with or doing business with the former, and entirely eschewing the latter. Why have we decided that untrustworthy, sometimes poorly managed organization…
To be clear, though, I have no issue if some people think they can improve their bargaining position by being in a union. That should be what a union is, after all. Where I do object to unions is when they come to dominate their field and turn actively hostile to outsiders who don't play their game or, as in my case, arrange things so that people who don't care to be represented by them have to be regardless in order to work in their area.
I am jaded by large/exploitative corporations, but my way of dealing with that is to not work for large/exploitative corporations.
I find this interesting because I don't fully understand how tech became so opposed to unions. Many in our industry are quite jaded about the poor behavior of large corporations. Perhaps there are also reasons to be distrustful of unions. But mostly we accept working with or doing business with the former, and entirely eschewing the latter. Why have we decided that untrustworthy, sometimes poorly managed organization…
I'm in a mandatory union in my country. But I'm a software engineer and it's an "office worker" union, so needless to say they take on a lot of stuff that's totally irrelevant to me. But because I'm required to be in the union, I get "represented" anyway and "get" to go on strike and take a substantial pay cut to "support my peers", none of whom I'll work with or have similar life situations to mine. To be clear, tho…
I would argue that most people don't have an aversion to the idea of unions, but more to their practical application (at least in the US). Just like any large organization, things can go off the rails and move far away from the original intended purpose.
But at the same time, you only really hear about the bad unions. The ones that fairly represent their members and partner with management to find common ground (obviously this is dependent on good management as well)? Those don't get talked about much.
I find this interesting because I don't fully understand how tech became so opposed to unions. Many in our industry are quite jaded about the poor behavior of large corporations. Perhaps there are also reasons to be distrustful of unions. But mostly we accept working with or doing business with the former, and entirely eschewing the latter. Why have we decided that untrustworthy, sometimes poorly managed organization…
I think unions make sense when every worker is basically the same (on a production line for instance). That's because you don't have any leverage otherwise.
Right now, my leverage is "give me my bonus or I'll go elsewhere and the only other guy on this team can't code or troubleshoot for shit and takes every nfl game day off sick". At best, a union would make me share my bonus with him. At worst it would insist he got a bigger one as he's been in this role for years (hint, that's a BAD thing) and I'm newer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same in Germany, lots of unions in tech.
Why are their salaries so low then? I'm not seeing the advantage here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't say everyone wins. I said everyone feels like they've won. Those aren't the same. If I have to split $2,000,000 between you and me, but you don't know how much money there is, then you might be happy with me giving you $400,000. That's $400,000 you didn't have before. Hell yeah, $400k! That's loads. The fact we're both going away happy doesn't make it right though. There's a big disparity there. If you found…
> If I have to split $2,000,000 between you and me, but you don't know how much money there is, then you might be happy with me giving you $400,000. That's $400,000 you didn't have before. Hell yeah, $400k! That's loads. The fact we're both going away happy doesn't make it right though. There's a big disparity there. If you found out that I'd kept 4* what you got you'd have every reason to be pissed about it. Do you…
I didn't suggest anything of the sort. I said that maybe companies are paying their employees much less than they could, and that maybe employees aren't getting a good deal despite wages being high relative to other industries. I didn't say that all of the value an employee generates should go to that employee - just maybe it could be more than does right now.
If not, then why should employees expect to make more than the market rate for the labor they provide?
"Market rate" is basically the median negotiated salary for similar roles. There's an assumption that a salary is like a price, and supply and demand will drive that price up for in-demand skills. This is the part I'm challenging. I don't know if price theory works for salaries where one side of the market (employers) has far more information and leverage than the other side (developers). If most developers are bad negotiators then getting a "market rate" salary means you, as an individual, are being paid the same as the other bad negotiators, and you actually lost out on getting a higher salary.
It could be that using the market rate to derive the appropriate salary for a job actually keeps developer wages lower than they could otherwise be.
At this point this is all just futile speculation though, and no one is going to change anything so we might as well just accept it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do tech unions in other countries not produce the same pay level found in the US?
Because we don't have the same costs as in the US (university, healthcare, housing, ...). For instance, the cost to attend courses in a good university in Belgium is at most 835 euro/year [0]. (This does not include textbooks) In the EU, the market is much more fragmented because of the many languages we speak. [0] https://uclouvain.be/en/study/inscriptions/tuition-fees.html
Well, if you live in Vancouver you'll pay just as much as SF for housing, maybe half for university and I'll give you healthcare costs are minimal.
But salaries are maybe 60% of SF. So I don't think it's that.
I find this interesting because I don't fully understand how tech became so opposed to unions. Many in our industry are quite jaded about the poor behavior of large corporations. Perhaps there are also reasons to be distrustful of unions. But mostly we accept working with or doing business with the former, and entirely eschewing the latter. Why have we decided that untrustworthy, sometimes poorly managed organization…
I've always done well by being judged and rewarded as an individual. I've been on teams with people who were lazy or entitled or just bad at their job and didn't care enough to change. I don't want negotiate as a block with those people because if get less of I did. And frankly, I'd rather not work with them at all, because they're just a pain in the arse to deal with. I think unions make sense when every worker is b…
This attitude to me seems terribly short-sighted. Currently tech workers are privileged and can live with the illusion that they are not replaceable. The nature of capitalism however is to instrumentalize human beings and reduce them to what they can produce/consume. Nobody in particular cares about how special you are. If at some point in the future your job becomes less valuable your individual leverage will evaporate. At that point it would be good to have a union to fall back on.
What’s the benefit of unions? Because from the outside looking at Teachers unions in America I see that only hurts education and benefits Teachers. It doesn’t help make education better. So it seems like unions protect the employee but damage everything else. (Serious question I’m super curious why tech unions are a good thing cos I have 0 idea)
> and benefits Teachers > So it seems like unions protect the employee Yes, that's the entire point of a union. It's about the employees, nothing else. collective bargaining. union is strength. > that only hurts education It doesn't, that's a myth. What hurts education is lack of funding for education.
The pay being the same between a good teacher and a bad teacher, doesn't hurt education? Or teachers unions pushing to get tenure preventing bad teachers from being fired, and being able to collect a pay slip for doing no work while waiting a year for disciplinary hearing?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same in Germany, lots of unions in tech.
Why are their salaries so low then? I'm not seeing the advantage here.