[Eridrus]

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?

[knucklesandwich]

Without a fair equity package, none of those employees are going to get any kind of payout from an exit. And given the number of fundraising rounds Uber has undergone: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/funding-rounds and their difficulty in actually turning a profit: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/uber-lose... it seems a little questionable that anyone from the rank-and-file is going to get rich at Uber.

A union is what gives you the ability confront management about these kinds of things.

[TheCoelacanth]

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.

[tristor]

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.

[1]: https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/fs17e_computer.pdf

[knucklesandwich]

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).

[tptacek]

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.

[TheCoelacanth]

Yes, I'm aware. That's why I pointed it out as something that a union could change.