Comment by jacob_a_dev

Comment by jacob_a_dev a day ago

At least in the US,

I like that software engineering doesnt require/encourage unions, contrary to other big industries.

As unions mature they protect the employment of their members, not prospective members who are unemployed applying for jobs.

One great thing about being a dev in the US, u dont need a degree, learn a lot, can apply and get a great job.

Ive previpusly been in a union for a company and the experience did not encourage a competitive working environment. When layoffs came, Jr employees get sacked before more senior union members (not neccesarily the best technical staff just becuase they worked there long time).

I have family/friends in unions (non software devs) that have had similar experiences to mine.

vitaflo 18 hours ago

Devs are the factory workers of today. You’re going to be sorry in 10 years when AI is fully mature and all the cheap talent overseas takes every US dev job just like it did to factory workers in the 90s and there’s no unions to even attempt to slow it.

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codedokode 17 hours ago

And in an unlikely case that there were a union, US would lose competition to China and the union will be involuntarily disbanded.

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hackable_sand 17 hours ago

Factory workers are the factory workers of today.

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- const_cast 9 hours ago
  
  I believe what they mean is that software devs are the lowest of the low of the totem pole for making software. We, manually, put together the software. We're the lowest level part of the chain. In that way, we're the factory workers of software.
  
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  hackable_sand 4 hours ago
  
  I get it now.
  Good luck then.
  Can't say I have much sympathy for American devs after what they've done with the place.
  
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  globular-toast 5 hours ago
  
  I'm sorry you feel that way about software. I suppose if your bedrock is JavaScript or Python and you've been bashing out CRUD apps it might seem that way.
  We've actually been automating away our job since the beginning of software. Compilers have been thing for like 80 years now. We've had auto-complete, static analysis, automated testing tools etc. for decades. What about the poor assembly programmers? What about the people who were bit banging serial protocols for a living?
  
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giantg2 a day ago

"One great thing about being a dev in the US, u dont need a degree, learn a lot, can apply and get a great job."

And on the other side, you can have a degree and experience and still not get a job due to the wild criteria and games that get played in various interviews.

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Henchman21 a day ago

You trot out all the familiar retorts. None of this is a reason to not organize to better represent the interests of labor.

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appreciatorBus 18 hours ago

A retort being familiar does not mean it isn't true or real.
Millions upon millions of ppl at every income level have experienced working in and around unions and not all of them came away with a positive experience.

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- antonvs 17 hours ago
  
  You can say the same thing about democratic governments, or capitalism, etc. etc.
  By itself that's not a meaningful observation.
  
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  nothrabannosir 16 hours ago
  
  It didn’t come by itself, it came in the wake of a comment that outlined a process whereby unions have a negative effect on new applicants in the job market.
  The disagreement then was “I’ve heard that argument before.” - “ok that doesn’t make it wrong” <— that last sentence is what you’re replying to.
  
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- fzeroracer 14 hours ago
  
  Do these same criticisms also apply to corporations? I've worked for some absolutely shitty corps that have abused and taken advantage of their labor. Should we abolish corporations?
  These criticisms of unions are always pulled out but then never equally applied to corporations.
  
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  vanviegen 8 hours ago
  
  Corporations are providing people with jobs and clients with value (or they go out of business).
  Unions, especially failing ones, don't inherently provide any net benefit to society. They may as well be engaged in little more than self-preservation and zero-sum games.
  Therefore, I believe unions deserve a different type of scrutiny than corporations.
  
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fsckboy 17 hours ago

>None of this is a reason to not organize to better represent the interests of labor.
unions restrict the supply of labor and this results in (price increase) better wages for the union's members. However, overall the total dollar amount transferred from employers to labor goes down (employment decrease), so the "class" of all workers (employed and unemployed) see their per capita wages go down. and if that's not enough, the industry grows more slowly so the problem only gets worse for everyone in the future (trickle down) this is the underlying reason for europe's lower year over year economic growth compared to the US
is the reason. it's not a moral or ethical or even income distribution issue, it's just how markets operate.

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- LtWorf 2 hours ago
  
  Surely you deserve a nobel prize for having solved economy where everyone else was just doing guesswork?
  
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MangoToupe a day ago

I've been working in the tech industry for about twenty years now, and I desperately want unions. Sticking your neck out alone sucks to begin with and only sucks harder the more time goes forward.

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lc9er 17 hours ago

Same. Back when I first got into IT, I was surrounded by (similar) nerds whose self-esteem was defined by being the smartest person in the room. Compensation was often higher than other white-collar jobs, so they (we) were happy to overlook the long hours and non or poorly compensated on-call shifts.
Most IT work now, whether dev or admin side, is not rocket science. It’s mostly approachable work and no one should settle for being abused by employers for some outdated, ingrained, cultural baggage.

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vanviegen 8 hours ago

Why unions? Why not just more protective labor laws? Why bet on some political organisation to protect you, instead of being able to take your employer to court yourself?

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- LtWorf 2 hours ago
  
  labour laws don't happen by themselves…
  
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acdha 20 hours ago

> As unions mature they protect the employment of their members, not prospective members who are unemployed applying for jobs.

This is true in the same way that it’s true that all democracies turn into the majority oppressing everyone else, or get captured by oligarchs, or vote to raise taxes to fund social until the economy collapses, etc. – which is to say not at all. Unions CAN fail that way but it’s not a given. We shouldn’t give up on a useful tool because it can be failed, we should talk about how to keep it healthy.

For example, I’ve seen the no-degree route you talk about made easier by unions because it forced merit hiring rather than hiring more dudes with social ties from certain colleges. Again, that’s not guaranteed – you’d be forgiven for wondering if the Teamsters were a deep cover operation to discredit the concept of unions – but social institutions aren’t magic: they work to the extent that we make them work.

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