The problem is that workers don't have leverage like they used to due to globalization and a general labor surplus. We need to think of something that would work better than a union.
Software developers have incredible leverage right now, perhaps more than any cohort of employees in the country, and while most don't have salary to organize around, there are plenty of other practices --- transparency and liquidity of equity compensation being a great example --- that generate a broad base of support across the whole industry.
People hear the term "union" and they think "shop rules" and "union contract salary". There's no reason that's what has to happen. Substitute "professional association" for "union" and you've got all the degrees of freedom you could want for us all to profit from organization without over-complicating our work lives.
> People hear the term "union" and they think "shop rules" and "union contract salary".
The problem is that a significant number of the people who push "unions" (especially on places like HN) are actually trying to push for those things. Just look in this thread to find people arguing over whether there actually are large differences in developer performance.
If people want a professional association (I do!) let's call it that and avoid all this union talk. Think lawyers, not factories.
Hi, I assume you're talking about me (the person above expressing some skepticism about the 10x programmer thing). I'm actually open to be proven wrong, but I'm not sure that makes much of a difference in terms of how compensation is justified in the real world (again, ask your employer to provide justification for salaries if you think 10x programmers exist and they are paid as such). Whether or not I'm right, I'm one person with one vote in a union.
A professional association by contrast does not work to help workers in a workplace dispute. It is fundamentally an advocacy group for the profession itself and works to advance it by creating professional standards, lobbying, offering education and certification, etc. The AMA for example, does not engage in collective bargaining with the management of a hospital and has no legal right to compel such a thing under the NLRA. The AMA does however lobby politicians and puts its people on medical boards to limit the supply of doctors. Furthermore a professional organization works at the level of a single profession and doesn't organize workplaces in strikes, which is the major power of a union.
Unions can aggregate under federations that often resemble and provide the same function as professional associations, but a professional association provides almost none of the benefits of a union.
> I'm actually open to be proven wrong, but I'm not sure that makes much of a difference in terms of how compensation is justified in the real world (again, ask your employer to provide justification for salaries if you think 10x programmers exist and they are paid as such).
I've had a fairly thorough knowledge of salaries at many companies I've worked for (currently the founder of my own company) and I'm not sure what your point is. There was absolutely a large variation in salary and it clearly correlated with two factors: performance and negotiation ability. Why exactly do you think employers pay some engineers so much money? Out of the goodness of their hearts? It's due to measurable impact and differences. I've been places where I was producing more than the rest of the team in half the hours (I was in school at the time).
Your arguments about collective bargaining are precisely why I don't want a union. I sure as hell don't want you (or anyone else) bargaining for me or being tied to any generic salary formula. It's hard for me to imagine that if things were done democratically most engineers would vote for me to make what I do.
"It's hard for me to imagine that if things were done democratically most engineers would vote for me to make what I do." It sounds like you feel the current system works out very well for a few elite performers, in a way that the majority of workers would not be comfortable with if they had a say in the matter. I'm curious, how do you see the tension/balance between what benefits the majority of engineers vs. what benefits a small number of elite performers such as yourself?
I come down firmly on the side of meritocracy. If you're contributing a lot more value, you deserve to be compensated more. I've spent a decade honing my abilities and it's reflected in my skill level. It'd be unfair if that skill weren't reflected in my salary.
In fact, if anything I think top developers are underpaid in most of the industry. Outside certain organizations and areas, it's hard to break $200k as a developer—even when a senior developer can easily be 2x as effective as a new grad making $100k.
Also, to be clear, the current system is better for probably the whole upper half of engineers. It's not just elite performers who would see cuts if we moved to salary formulas. The problem I see is that humans have a well-documented tendency to hurt themselves if it means they can "punish" others as well: I can people voting for a $100k mandatory salary (while they're making $110k) just to spite me for making $200k.
> The AMA for example, does not engage in collective bargaining with the management of a hospital and has no legal right to compel such a thing under the NLRA. The AMA does however lobby politicians and puts its people on medical boards to limit the supply of doctors.
This is a common misconception.
The AMA does not limit the supply of doctors. The AAMC (used to) limit the supply of doctors, but (a) they have been trying for the last 10+ years to increase that, and (b) the actual number of practicing physicians is bottlenecked by funding for residency positions, which is funded by Medicare, not the AMA or AAMC. The AMA has actually lobbied to increase funding for GME, which would increase the supply of practicing physicians.
The AMA does not represent doctors in any meaningful sense - only 25% of physicians belong to the AMA, and only because membership is required for licensing the CPT codes that those doctors need for billing. The AMA does not consistently advocate for physicians' best interests, and in the last couple of decades, it has actually consistently sided against physicians' best interests.
At one point the AMA had about 75% of American doctors as members but has declined for various reasons (growth of specialty professional associations, change of employment in which many doctors have gone from private practices to hospitals which has accompanied a change in political objectives, etc.). The AMA probably does still serve as a professional association in the interest of some segment of doctors, but I take your point that it definitely don't work for doctors writ large. This is actually a good example of why professional associations can be inadequate, because they fundamentally are limited to advocacy for a profession instead of working for gains for a workplace.
> The AMA _did_ lobby (I should have clarified that they no longer do this) to restrict medicare funding for residency
...twenty years ago, when we had the opposite problem. It still wasn't some act motivated by the desire to benefit doctors, even if that's the PR spin they used.
> At one point the AMA had about 75% of American doctors as members but has declined for various reasons (growth of specialty professional associations, change of employment in which many doctors have gone from private practices to hospitals which has accompanied a change in political objectives, etc.)
The move away from private practices was not the driving force behind the declining membership of the AMA. Quite bluntly, doctors stopped joining (unless they were forced to) because they did not support the AMA or its objectives. Why pay money to an organization that fights for causes you oppose?
Of course, this is only possible because (most) doctors are not required to be AMA members or pay membership fees if they choose not to, which is not true of people in most unions.
> The AMA probably does still serve as a professional association in the interest of some segment of doctors,
It does - it acts in the interest of the subset of doctors who are serving in administrative roles and are no longer practicing medicine full-time. That is to say, they advocate the interests of hospitals and payers, not practicing physicians.
> This is actually a good example of why professional associations can be inadequate,
It's not that they're "inadequate". It's that, in this case, they are literally fighting against the interests of the group they are (allegedly) advocating.
So really, the AMA is an argument against either professional associations or unions - doctors are unhappy with the AMA, and you certainly don't see them, by and large, advocating unionization in their practices en masse.
Sure, this will often happen if litigation can set some precedent that benefits the profession as a whole. For example the AMA will take up cases that can challenge legal precedent on malpractice damages limits. Sometimes these disputes can be with management, but generally these kind of interventions are done as part of professional advocacy.
However a professional association is effectively limited in what it can do in a labor dispute because management has no obligation to collectively bargain with them, hence this is not really the purpose of professional associations.
I don't think shop rules are a good idea, or contractually mandated pay scales. I'm not interested in getting into the heads of every single person talking about unionization. It sounds like we agree, and should move on.
So what organising principles should a software developer union have?
It's easy to say they could be anything we want it to be, but I'm not sure there's a real consensus on any particular principle.
Lots of people who talk about unions seem to value privacy protections for consumers, but there are clearly software developers writing this software who have a different view.
Ubers reputation has been trash for almost as long as Uber has existed, I feel like most people are there to get rich, do you expect those people to go on strike for a grievance that doesn't affect them?
There are a lot of labor practices that most software developers would agree on changing: unpaid overtime, unreasonable on-call requirements, lack of transparency in equity compensation, unreasonably short windows for exercising vested stock options after leaving the company.
Thanks to the Fair Labor Standards Act, anyone who is a software engineer is exempt from overtime pay as long as they make at least $455/week on a salary basis.[1] Hint, I don't know any software engineers making less than $23660/yr.
It's a heinously stupid regulation, and it's one which was lobbied for heavily by the tech industry to reduce labor costs. But that is the federal law of the US currently, which means yes you can be required to perform unpaid overtime.
Not sure if you're agreeing or disagreeing with the person above, but just to clarify: the FLSA doesn't prevent tech workers from collectively bargaining to gain paid overtime as a condition of employment, it just determines the highest wage at which salaried workers are required by law to be paid overtime (which I agree is stupid, and should be a benefit all workers receive).
Note that you can cease to be exempt if your employer begins treating you as if you were hourly and not salaried --- for instance, docking your pay in small increments, for instance because you went on strike for half a day.
> Software developers have incredible leverage right now, perhaps more than any cohort of employees in the country
Hah hah, very cute. A trivial proof that this claim is false: H-1B.
Indentured H-1B visa workers have absolutely zero leverage. American software developers are constantly reminded that if they don't behave and do what they're told that their jobs will be outsourced or they'll be replaced by H-1B workers. I say this as an ex-H-1B holder, who left the US six years ago for Australia (where I'm now a citizen).
Young American programmers will do well to read Norman Matloff's blog at https://normsaysno.wordpress.com/ where he exhaustively documents the abuse of American IT workers and ask themselves how they plan to make a living after the age of 40.
I think we're getting a bit of a "you see a trunk, I see a tail" view of a very large elephant here.
Think of the most scutwork of scutwork programming jobs in the industry, or even quasi-programming quasi-IT jobs like, I don't know, Sharepoint administrator at a regional insurance carrier or line programmer at a university (where most projects are "execute a SQL query to get a list of students in a particular course then, and this is the hard part, display it on a web page"). Tata doesn't simply manufacture billions of dollars in services revenue; actual companies pay them actual money to outsource work. Actual companies also pay actual money for Tata to send 6k engineers at $75k apiece to the US. That's like half-a-Google worth of engineers; add in Infosys and you approach a full Google, except at something like 30 cents on the dollar.
AppAmaGooBookSoft consume the H1B program in an entirely different fashion and Tata is more-or-less orthogonal to the startup world. You can fashion a career in software which never touches the ecosystem that Tata is a part of. You can also fashion a career in software which never touches AppAmaGooBookSoft, startups, or software development shops. These two worlds are separated by a titanic gulf in conditions and expectations, and transferring between them is difficult, for much the same reasons as transferring between social classes is difficult. This does not mean that either of the two worlds does not factually exist.
You might never have been explicitly threatened with "We can trivially replace you with cheaper foreign labor." You might not even know anyone who has been, depending on who you generally hang out with. I have been in the room when that threat was made, and (because life is hilarious!) I was the literal face of the threat.
I acknowledge that there are portions of the industry dominated by outsourced/offshore workers.
What I don't acknowledge is that the parts of the industry that aren't offshored are suddenly going to become offshored as a reaction to labor organization. The idea that strikers will be replaced with H1-Bs is a hollow threat.
Guest workers aren't a reason not to organize though, they're just a reason it might be more difficult to organize certain shops (though not impossible, take a look at the FLOC who has been able to organize thousands of guest workers).
> If you believe that H1-B employees are abused...
Of course that would never happen. All American business executives and outsourcing agencies only act with unimpeachable integrity and the highest ethical standards.
(Wait, what is the original subject of this thread again...)
I repeat, for all American programmers under the age of 35, read https://normsaysno.wordpress.com/ to see how your careers are being systematically undermined by your own industry and political leaders. Then make alternative career plans for when you're 40+. You'll thank me later.
It's only leverage because software developers have no solidarity. So yes, an individual can be threatened by this, but in reality the US government only grants 65 000 H-1Bs per year; Such a threat could be made easily irrelevant by even a modicum of organizing.
What? It's literally your right to vote to join a union. If a majority of coworkers vote for one, you've got a union. Look up the National Labor Relations Act.
Not only is this true, but the NLRA also bars employer retaliation against concerted actions by employees both to organize and also to take actions in protest of work conditions. It's a huge exception to at-will employment.
I had no idea about any of this stuff until I started talking to the Tech Solidarity people. I'd always thought the reason nobody goes on strike is that you'd simply be fired for doing so. But, no! That was dumb of me! Striking --- really, most forms of employee protest against working conditions --- is protected federally.
I'm particularly interested in how these laws interact with the employment laws for salaried workers. In addition to it being unlawful (in most cases) to fire an employee for striking, it's also (usually) legally risky to dock a salaried employee's pay.
While technically true, the enforcement is up to the Department of Labor. Do you honestly believe that Puzder (now Acosta) is really going to enforce these rules? It's the whole reason they were chosen for the position in the first place.
No, enforcement is not up to the Department of Labor. If you're terminated for organizing and protesting against working conditions, your recourse includes the courts.
People should, of course, talk to labor lawyer before organizing. Tech Solidarity is working with several now, and collecting employment contracts from the best-known tech companies in order to provide standardized organizing advice.
Really? Alright I'll bite. They only promulgate the regulations that are enforced. And if you're being pedantic enough to insist it's the DoJ, then my point still stands under one led by Sessions.
> the NLRA also bars employer retaliation against concerted actions by employees both to organize and also to take actions in protest of work conditions.
I also learned about this from the Tech Solidarity people. The key here though is that actions are only protected if they're taken collectively by multiple employees. A single employee protesting can still be fired without recourse.
It is also totally true that you are not squeaky clean in your employment (never been late once? Never missed a deadline?), and that your performance management targets are set by the people against whom you are protesting. You can be performance managed out of a position in months, even if your right to protest is protected and you are literally a Saint in the workplace.
I'm not saying it's right, just that I've seen it done. There is always a way to remove "difficult" employees regardless of protection laws.
So, I believe this, but what gives me comfort here is having seen companies try to performance-manage people out (for legit reasons!) and fail because of protected-class problems. As soon as you can credibly allege retaliation, your case gets 100x more expensive to dispose of. In two companies, one of which I had a senior role at at the time, I've seen the companies cave and pay out to make them go away.
It is also totally true that you are not squeaky clean in your employment (never been late once? Never missed a deadline?), and that your performance management targets are set by the people against whom you are protesting. You can be performance managed out of a position in months, even if your right to protest is protected and you are literally a Saint in the workplace.
Wait a minute, wait a minute: if I just decide I'm not going to work anymore, they can't fire me if I say it's because I'm protesting for higher wages? And they have to keep paying me?
Google "protected concerted action" and spend $75 on a consult with a labor law attorney. Some catches:
1. The protest has to involve more than one team member, and depending on circumstances that other person possibly can't be a manager.
2. The protest has to be defensibly about some kind of working conditions issue. You need a concrete, defensible ask.
3. You can in fact have your pay docked for not working, though you (probably) can't be fired. But remember, you're an FLSA exempt employee (if you're a developer), so you can make it difficult for them to dock your pay, too.
I probably wouldn't make the protest about higher wages.
Ehh, when my previous workplace was voting to unionize I wasn't able to vote because I was a remote worker, and didn't have the disposable income to fly in and vote... being disenfranchised is a drag.
Yes but in this particular instance Uber recruits heavily in the Bay Area. If all workers in the Silicon Valley office refused to work and discouraged others to work for Uber it could be quite effective.
It's either unionize or a class action lawsuit. Silicon Valley tends to prefer the latter.
Many IT roles already fall under collective bargaining units (CBU), particularly in the public sector.
If stories like Susan's become common, and there is blatant gender discrimination, then the Government will have no choice but to acknowledge a private-sector CBU and Union.
People hear the term "union" and they think "shop rules" and "union contract salary". There's no reason that's what has to happen. Substitute "professional association" for "union" and you've got all the degrees of freedom you could want for us all to profit from organization without over-complicating our work lives.