If they can offshore your job because you joined a union they can do so if you didn't join one too.
It's more likely they'll offshore the union job. Unions lead to an ossified workforce where nobody does more than what is essential. New employees are jealous of tenured employees with more benefits. Once people get tenure, they'll take advantage of their status. This leads to lower productivity, not higher productivity. Without a union, you have people fighting to show their seniority and leadership at every level.…
It’s so wild to hear capitalist talking points come from a worker.
Awesome to see something like this on HN. As we keep working for less pay, more hours, the constant threat of layoffs, and business leaders frothing at the mouth to replace us all with AI, it's important to remember that we aren't powerless as workers. It's also important to remember that your relationship to the higher-ups is adversarial. They want to get as much productivity out of you for as little pay as possible…
> They want to get as much productivity out of you for as little pay as possible It’s only adversarial because you want to get as much pay as possible out of them for as little productivity as possible. > I somewhat agreed and got caught up in that culture until I got picked up in the fourth round of layoffs at a time when I felt I was doing my best work. Did everyone feel that way?
Yes but they do that without doing any of the labour.
Software engineering is one of the ways of playing life in "easy mode" (I moved from academia over a decade ago, and I know the difference). This blog post tries to paint it differently - and it feels like it lacks perspective compared to virtually any other occupation. > We’re living in a world where billion dollar tech companies expect us to live and breathe code, demanding 80 hour weeks under the guise of "passion…
> This blog post tries to paint it differently - and it feels it lacks perspective with virtually any other occupations. On one hand, misery and happiness are relative. On the other hand, try telling a construction worker how hard our lives are sitting in chairs clicking buttons. My dad used to have to do things like hot tar roofing to pay the bills. So I still consider it a blessing to get to work in software. I thi…
> On the other hand, try telling a construction worker how hard our lives are sitting in chairs clicking buttons.
Construction workers usually chose to do that job instead of call center, cashier or elderly care for instance. The perception of what's stressful or "hard" is I think different (illegal workers who can't do these jobs in the first place being another can of worms)
I also think this is the same perspective for burnout, repetitively doing something that is felt as mind crushing will be a trigger, but what is felt as mind cushing vastly depend on individuals, preferences and predispositions. I don't think there's a single yardstick for that.
Class consciousness is firmly in the zeitgeist: witness season 1 of Severance. There is no going back from this, as once you are disillusioned it is much harder to be re-illusioned. There will be some sort of collective response by white-collar professionals at some point. I think people are ready for change.
Most developers are paid more than 2x the median wage. For HN, that difference is probably 3x-5x or more. If class consciousness is on the rise, HN's readership is in the classes that the lower economic strata are going to be rising up against. If you have any illusions that the proletariat will welcome you with open arms for your claimed solidarity, think again or you might be in for a shock; specifically, a short,…
how is the proletariat oppressed by an ordinary non-management software developer?
Have been on both sides, running a company, and being an employee. Neither side is happy with current status-quo, but we're at some equilibrium.
How does this sound as new equilibrium: companies pay across board become around ~40%-50% less than it is today. Avg tenure and stability goes up ~2x what is today. Would we as an industry take this up?
I'm generally in favor of unions, but I don't understand the game theory under which an L3 up to L8 (for example) have enough in common that they would be a single bargaining block.
Compensation and authority scale up pretty quickly in large tech companies. Also, much of that compensation is in stock, which makes the tech workers capitalists. I'm skeptical that you're going to encourage unionization by telling people they're evil for owning capital.
So if the goal is collective bargaining power you first have to figure out what mechanisms need to be in place if L3 and L have diverging interests. Then you need to figure out if waging a 19th century holy war against capital is important, in which case you have to make a case for why tech workers should give up the ability to be compensated by shares.
Also if you want people to come together, maybe stop trying to bully them? Some of the comments on this thread are really beyond the pale.
In my experience as a software engineer rounding out 6 years now, what I have observed in myself and others is that the work pressure that leads to burnout in SWEs is largely self-imposed. I have some conjectures as to why that may be: 1. High variability of pay, not only between companies but within companies. As a SWE your total compensation can be expected to double every two promotions, and promotions can be pret…
With 25 years experience, the other thing is environments vary a lot, even within a single company. Things can be dysfunctional for lots of reasons, sometimes due to individual incompetence at various points in the hierarchy, or just systemic/cultural issues that no one has the vision or influence to identify and fix. When you're young and inexperienced, but technically brilliant, it's easy to miss the forest for the…
This leads to a more fundamental observation.
That if unionization is so cleary net positive for most workplaces, then it wouldn’t need any sustained agitation campaigns in the first place.
As any company that unionizes would near automatically gain a huge competitive advantage.
Software engineering is one of the ways of playing life in "easy mode" (I moved from academia over a decade ago, and I know the difference). This blog post tries to paint it differently - and it feels like it lacks perspective compared to virtually any other occupation. > We’re living in a world where billion dollar tech companies expect us to live and breathe code, demanding 80 hour weeks under the guise of "passion…
Some people got a career path like this, and in fact I either personally have or know someone who has experienced all of the things you're listing here as perks. I'd even say you likely get all that if you're in the 95th percentile of seniority and job stability among devs, or if we're talkin' about ten or fifteen years ago. Sounds like you're in one of those categories? Congrats. I'm not doing terribly myself either, albeit not quite that well. This always seems to be the argument. "How very privileged we are! Devs have so much going for us, we ought to be grateful! Clearly there is no reason we should collectively bargain." I dunno. I'm not into doing oppression olympics about my working conditions? There are still things that suck about how labor arrangements are in this profession, and this has become especially apparent during the recent multiple-year enormous layoff cycles in tech, and this is also indicative that we are, as a profession, perhaps losing some of the very scarcity-driven leverage that creates these conditions. Also, this kind of view really seems almost explicitly designed to buck solidarity with people who, in the same career path, don't have as many options as us, possibly because they are more junior or have nontraditional backgrounds or whatever. In fact, working conditions having high variance between devs for various reasons is one of the problems unions try to solve
I don't want a union... I want state licenses like doctors, nurse, lawyers, engineers, etc.
When would it kick in, do you think? Would you need a JSON loisence? A bash loisence? Is Javascript ok but only in the browser, and only under 500 lines? At what point does the bobby say Oi! ?
How about direct control of human lives?
Therac-25.
Toyota unintended acceleration.
Tesla full self crashing.
Tesla software locks trapping people in lithium fires.
Software engineers do basically no physical labor I developed debilitating tendinitis in both wrists right about the time I graduated college. A decade later, I developed a bulged disc in my neck that ended my career. There are very real risks to your body from sitting at a computer, deep in thought all day. There's a whole other swath of health issues, too, beside injury risks.
How does a union help you with your wrists? Why do you need help? I type every single day and I don't want your health problem placing limits on my job flexibility and career advancement. If our industry fills with unions, suddenly I won't be able to job hop to positions that look interesting to me. I'll have to consider things like seniority and tenure and a bunch of artificial rules. It'll be like going back to hig…
> If our industry fills with unions, suddenly I won't be able to job hop to positions that look interesting to me.