[AndrewKemendo]

We believe that employees should come together and clearly define the values and policies they'd like to see their companies uphold. A tech union isn't the perfect metaphor for this, but it's not far off.

If it's going to do anything but be window dressing then it needs to have the teeth of union - so just call it what it is.

I've argued for a while that tech workers need a union, but the chorus on HN and other places is "we're too special for a union." Which is bogus on it's face - otherwise SAG for example wouldn't exist.

If this moves the needle on a union then great, but I'm wary of the source being a pure power move (which all unions are - rightfully). I think whomever leads this needs to be above reproach in every sense as an advocate for the tiny introverted developer.

edit: I should note that the reason SAG worked is because some of the highest profile actors joined in the early days and arranged to collectively bargain for the rest of the group. It will probably work best if you get the top 50 most high profile developers (Eg. Carmack) to join and then advocate for the small guy. Sadly, in reality, a union is only as good as it's most high profile members.

[xienze]

> If it's going to do anything but be window dressing then it needs to have the teeth of union - so just call it what it is.

This sounds like it's going to have exactly zero to do with what a labor union would normally be concerned with -- pay, working conditions, etc. Instead, I have a strong suspicion this is going to be some sort of enumeration of the progressive ideals that all tech workers "should" be concerned with, as dictated by a group of Bay Area tech workers. Namely, LGBT stuff, female and minority representation, immigrant's rights, etc.

[badloginagain]

I don't see what that would really accomplish, though. All companies already publicly advertise the 'moral' beliefs you mentioned, yet continue hiring white male whiteboard challenge mavericks.

[xienze]

No, not all companies. Many still follow the age-old wisdom of staying out of the social commentary business. I think the goal of this endeavor is to change that by convincing the tech workers to create a culture of doing so where it didn't exist before.

[matt4077]

The only age-old wisdom I remember from my great-grandfather is "never trust the British, and kill every French on sight".

Regarding this issue, I'll stop demanding that corporations act morally above and beyond what the law requires when they seize to influence those laws.

[wtvanhest]

This feels like a very political move that has little to nothing to do with tech. If you build a union or trade organization which has influence over the biggest CEOs in the world, you have consolidated a lot of power.

I'm left scratching my head after reading this, and I feel like YC may have lost its way.

[humanrebar]

> yet continue hiring white male whiteboard challenge mavericks.

Is that even true? Are you counting Asians and light-complexioned immigrants the same as American white people in this context?

[webwright]

Here's the kind of thing it could accomplish:

https://www.recode.net/2017/2/2/14490950/travis-kalanick-ube...

If tech workers express collective displeasure about a company, it meaningfully hurts that company's ability to recruit/retain tech workers.

[lazyasciiart]

> Namely, LGBT stuff, female and minority representation, immigrant's rights, etc.

offering parental leave is an excellent example of the kind of thing a union would negotiate, and is also pretty well related to how attractive a company is to women (who are more likely to have childcare responsibilities). Rules against firing someone for being gay or a different religion are a great example of something a union would negotiate, and are definitely going to help increase minority and LGBT representation. Why do you see 'working conditions' as unrelated to these topics?

[xienze]

> Rules against firing someone for being gay or a different religion are a great example of something a union would negotiate

Except they're not, that's what our existing laws are for.

> Why do you see 'working conditions' as unrelated to these topics?

Because in my reading of this it doesn't sound like they're going after things like vacation time, pay, IP rights, you know, day-to-day stuff that a union would really be concerned with.

Instead it sounds like they want to define a shared set of principles that tech workers should believe in and then through sheer numbers said workers would convince their employers to be more socially conscious.

So again, I'd be shocked if the results of this were anything other than "A real tech worker believes in the right to an abortion, a real tech worker believes in gay marriage", etc. instead of, say, "a real tech worker believes in a minimum of four weeks paid leave" and similar statements.

tl;dr it's gonna be a bunch of touchy-freely Bay Area stuff.

[chimeracoder]

> > Rules against firing someone for being gay or a different religion are a great example of something a union would negotiate

> Except they're not, that's what our existing laws are for.

Ironically, unions are allowed to terminate memberships for reasons that would be illegal to use as grounds for firing someone[0]. In a closed shop, terminating a membership is tantamount to firing someone, so that literally means employees covered by a closed-shop union contract have less recourse if the union decides to fire them than they would if they never had a union contract to begin with.

Also, a democratically-elected body will (in theory) represent the majority of people whom it governs. If a majority of people want to target a minority religion or race or ethnicity, a democratically-elected body representing them will do just that. Unions actually have a long history of lobbying for unbelievably racist laws throughout the 20th century in order to protect their majority-white members[1].

I know this is unpopular to say here, but as someone belonging to a group that was explicitly targeted by these unions as a scapegoat, and who had their US citizenships revoked and property seized due to successful, xenophobic lobbying by those unions, I'm really sick of the pervasive assumption that unions will inherently protect minorities, or even minority members.

[0] This includes retaliatory termination

[1] The AFL is the most well-known of these, but they weren't the only ones.

[pseudalopex]

It's legal in 28 states to fire someone for being gay. 32 for being trans. Some have even preempted local nondiscrimination ordinances.

I agree with you that this doesn't seem to have anything to do with working conditions. I don't see why you think they'd want to go anywhere near abortion.

[xapata]

> touchy-freely Bay Area stuff

I don't think those beliefs are exclusive to the Bay Area, nor would I describe those topics as "touchy-freely [sic]".

[damagednoob]

> offering parental leave is an excellent example of the kind of thing a union would negotiate, and is also pretty well related to how attractive a company is to women (who are more likely to have childcare responsibilities).

This is an excellent example of how women make different choices to men driven by the special rights that they are afforded. Giving a women more maternity leave sounds laudable but it creates a perverse incentive where they have to take on those childcare duties.

My wife and I are going through this at the moment and she will be entitled to 5 months of full-paid maternity leave. No employment contract I've ever signed has even come close to that for paternity leave. The only rational decision is for her to take care of the child.

I'm much more in favour of some sort of system where that leave is allocated to a family and how they choose to divide it is up to them.

[lazyasciiart]

I said "parental leave" and not "maternity leave" quite deliberately.

[ocschwar]

Well, if a professional organization of tech workers actually managed to hold some sway in DC, it would be an improvement over the status quo at the moment.

[civilian]

My main objection to unions is that, once they're in a company, employees lose the right to negotiate their own compensation. I want to be able to skip my union dues and deal directly with the company. OR I want to be able to make a union of my own, especially for a functional or values-based subset of coworkers, and have us negotiate separately.

This is not just a tech-unions-related complaint, this is a critique of unions as a whole. But yeah.

I think that tech workers are in a special place because we have a lot of disposable income. I've gotten over my college-era "can't pay for anything" attitude, and I'm willing to pay for content that could be gotten for free. Entertainment was the first one, but now I'm also supporting some people on patreon and donating to causes. We don't need a union to drive that-- we can just remind tech workers that if we all donate a little, we can make big changes.

[Barrin92]

>My main objection to unions is that, once they're in a company, employees lose the right to negotiate their own compensation. I want to be able to skip my union dues and deal directly with the company. OR I want to be able to make a union of my own, especially for a functional or values-based subset of coworkers, and have us negotiate separately.

Bargaining collectively is the whole point of creating a union in the first place. This special snowflake mentality that permeates the tech sector and the myopic individualism is a giant problem.

[bitcrusher]

Contrarily, the special snowflake and myopic individualism is what MADE the tech industry. The hubris to say, "I see a better way" or "I can do it better than that person" is how we got here. In point of fact, this entire thing is basically another form of "snowflake individualism".

I am starting to think the giant problem in tech is really attitudes which are dismissive of our differences and our experiences. Tropes about "tech-bros" and "millennials" are rooted in the very same biases that they're railing against.

It's just another face of tribalism.

[stale2002]

The moment someone removes my individual right to negotiate is the moment I hand in my resignation and go work somewhere that I do have that right.

I will NOT have my coworkers voting on what is "fair" for me to be payed, based on BS metrics like "seniority".

If unions were so great, then how come I make more money than any other union based engineering position?

I have done just fine negotiating my salary on my own, thank you very much.

[bigtimeidiot]

>I have done just fine negotiating my salary on my own, thank you very much.

And many, many other people haven't. Those people will unionize and won't care a lick to see you go.

[stale2002]

Awesome. They can do that, and I will work for the multitude of companies and startups out there that will not unionize.

You can't unionize every startup in the world, and non unionized employees will be able to demand a premium.

Other people are free to burden themselves with union rules, and I will be free to accept the higher salary that I can command because my competition is hindered.

It is a competitive advantage to not be burdened by union rules.

[oddlyaromatic]

It's people like this commenter who need to be won over if a union would have any chance in tech. But I don't know how to do it. At my first ever job everybody at the company was an automatic member of a union (it was a grocery store in my home town). I knew that when I took a paid break, or a vacation, or got time and a half for night work, I was benefiting from industrial action taken by those who went before me. I remember being a kid and seeing my aunt and her coworkers picketing over a pay dispute. I made better money because it was not just me negotiating on my own, other people went without pay to force the company to do better. It was and remains a successful chain. Currently I support people with disabilities who work in similar jobs and are protected by the "burden" of union rules.

I wonder if tech contains too many people who think they are too smart to get screwed to gain critical mass for a union. Maybe everybody thinks they have a competitive advantage... What's weird is that this is also how the employers like it. So is everybody winning, or does one side just think they are? I have never before heard the complaint that unions reduce wages. Maybe I'm missing something because employers should be all for that!

[eli_gottlieb]

>You can't unionize every startup in the world, and non unionized employees will be able to demand a premium.

Empirically, this is completely untrue. Union workers have higher compensation than nonunion workers overall.

>It is a competitive advantage to not be burdened by union rules.

Doesn't look like that to me. Unions don't just have advantages in terms of salaries; they have the advantage of helping to grease the wheels between companies, between jobs for the unemployed, and between skillsets. Unions are an important source of job-training for an ever-changing field like tech.

Why pay for a web-programming bootcamp if your union dues entitle you to one?

[Apocryphon]

You seem to be operating from a world where there unionization in tech even exists, and making assumptions that tech unions behave exactly the same as they have in different industries.

[maxxxxx]

In Germany you can negotiate your pay within the union payscale. You can ask the employer to move you up a level. There is nothing stopping them from doing that. Once you have reached the top you are "Ausser Tarif" and can negotiate your salary .

The union mainly defines a bottom level salary and also gives a defined path upwards. For most people this is a nice system for a long career.

[alphonsegaston]

You can create a union to reflect whatever values (e.g. negotiating compensation) you see fit. Don't believe the narratives proffered by anti-union forces for their own benefit. Actors are all in unions and employ an entire sub-class of workers (agents) to negotiate compensation for them.

[stale2002]

Cool. How about we base this union on the values of not forcing people to join it?

I'd be OK with that. Please keep these efforts focused on voluntary interactions.

[AndrewKemendo]

A union can't force you to join it so in that regard it's completely voluntary.

It does however pressure companies to only hire union workers, or pressure the government to give preference to union workers. That's the whole point of a union, to check and co-opt the monopoly/oligopolic power of corporations and the government and giving it to the collective workers.

You might philosophically disagree with that approach and think that a more anarchic market is better, but a union is not a violent coercive group.

[aanm1988]

because then it has no power.

That's the whole point. Individuals have no power. You can fool yourself into thinking that extra 20k a year you managed to get is power.

[stale2002]

You guys do your own thing and I'll do mine.

We'll see who comes out on top with the better job.

The power that I have is the ability to up and leave and go somewhere else that offers me a better deal.

And I will absolutely use my power of leaving if a group every tries to force me to join a union.

[aanm1988]

No you won't. You can get bored at lunch and just not come back if you want.

[AndrewKemendo]

Well the whole idea of trade associations and unions has it's roots in anarchic-socialism. The idea being that collective bargaining lifts the floor for the worker.

The idea here is that the person at the top with outsized bargaining power is voluntarily relinquishing it to the person at the bottom in order to increase general welfare.

If you don't believe in that, then that's great, but that's kind of the direction everyone seems to be headed.

[xapata]

Even that "top" person might gain bargaining power by being part of a collective.

[bosie]

> employees lose the right to negotiate their own compensation.

I have never heard of that. Why would that be?

[matt4077]

In some US states, unions are allowed to agree on so-called "union security" rules in their negotiations with employers. These require all employees covered by the union's agreements to be members.

Other, so-called "right-to-work" states have outlawed the practice.

The clauses make sense for the union and their members because you cannot restrict the benefits of union representation to only members. That creates "free-rider" problems. The opposite argument is about freedoms of contract and association.

I'm unsure if you are typically allowed to make your own agreements with the employer when there's union representation. That's probably defined in negotiation, and whatever has traditionally been agreed upon for steelworkers etc. may not be the best model for tech workers.

[chimeracoder]

> I'm unsure if you are typically allowed to make your own agreements with the employer when there's union representation.

No, in closed shop contracts, this is expressly prohibited. Violating this and negotiating with your employer directly could be considered grounds for termination of union membership (ie, termination of employment). The employer would also face consequences as well.

> whatever has traditionally been agreed upon for steelworkers etc. may not be the best model for tech workers.

That's true - unfortunately, the NLRA (the law which regulates union operations) is very rigid, and it does not provide different stipulations for different industries.

There's a reason that virtually all NLRA-regulated unions in each state enact the same corporate policies for membership, the same contract structures, etc. - those are the ones which turn out to provide a stable (in the literal sense) balance of power under the laws.

It's very unlikely that an NLRA-regulated union in the tech industry would operate differently, in the long run, from the NLRA-regulated unions in every other industry.

[nichj]

At my last job(not tech), our wages were negotiated with the union at a much lower rate than our competitors and owed dues. We had no control because the union was "representing" us and we could take it or quit.

[GauntletWizard]

Yes. Mandatory unions (And be careful about how you define that, because many would claim they're not while still requiring their pound of flesh[1]) are signified by their monopoly on labor.

By maintaining a chokehold on who can supply a vital resource (labor) to businesses, Unions have a history of strangling their patrons - See Detroit. From a distributed systems perspective, Unions represent a single point of failure.

I'm entirely in favor of groups banding together to request, nee, demand, rights, pay increases, healthcare. Once they start having 'management' tiers of their own, they're no longer representing you - They're a corporation you work for, contracting to your nominal employer. Just being clearer about it doesn't work - Microsoft hires an army of 'contractors' who are abused in precisely the same way. Nor does having multiple competing pseudo-unions - There's dozens of headhunters to go through to work for microsoft, but they all compete on 'price' and drive wages down[2].

[1]http://www.nrtw.org/required-join-pay-teacher/ - "educators cannot be required to do more than pay a union fee (typically called an "agency fee") that equals their share of what the union can prove is its costs of collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment" - Which is to say, you don't have to join the union, they just get to negotiate for you, take a cut of your pay, and be the intermediary that represents you - While you've proved your disloyalty to them by not choosing to 'join' them, so they have no actual incentive to do so. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrichs_v._California_Teach...

[2] The lightly fictionalized https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microserfs, which still rings very true more than 20 years later.

[pseudalopex]

US jurisprudence requires unions to represent non-members whether they want to or not. I don't like agency fees, but they're a response to a free-rider problem.

Yes, a union is pretty much a corporation that supplies labor. The biggest difference is how they're governed. Nobody bats an eye if a supplier negotiates an exclusive contract.

[GauntletWizard]

Agreed. I think exclusive supplier contracts are pretty dumb, too - At least without clauses for 'Price match or get out'. And the solution to the former should be (and I'll admit this is a stretch) to fix that problem, or better yet: simply to make your union's services so attractive and obviously a public good that the significant majority want to be sure it sticks around. Yes, the free rider problem is universal - Unions cause it as much as suffer from it (ever heard of unions suffering from deadweight because of seniority rules? No, nobody else ever has either :P)

[chimeracoder]

> US jurisprudence requires unions to represent non-members whether they want to or not. I don't like agency fees, but they're a response to a free-rider problem.

They get around that by structuring all of the benefits in the employment contracts to cover only their members, and by negotiating exclusive employment contracts with employers (so that there are no non-members).

Put another way, 94% of people who are represented by an NLRB-governed union never had the opportunity to vote for or against union membership in the first place. Most of those are employed by employers with exclusive contracts ("closed shop"), and because the union itself is not required to stand for reelection (its representatives are, but the union basically guaranteed permanent representation[0]), it means that free-riders are a non-issue.

[0] The process of decertifying or deauthorizing a union is very strictly regulated and unions have very broad leeway in preventing it, so it almost never happens except in cases of criminal misconduct and the like.

[carlosdp]

Because they would need to join the union and the union negotiates compensation for everyone, that's one of the main purposes of a union.

[stale2002]

And that's exactly why I will never join a union. As soon as that happens at any job I have, I will hand in my resignation the next day.

I can negotiate very well on my own, as opposed to being stuck into seniority "levels", thank you very much.

[aanm1988]

Plenty of unions and associations don't do this. A reasonable method for this would be for a union to negotiate per level salary bands, and yearly merit increases.

Within the band the company pays whatever they think you are worth.

[Shivetya]

The worst aspect isn't just the right to negotiate your own compensation but doing better work has no reward. Get any decent size shop and your going to have that one person if not two that everyone just carries.

then there is that asshole who becomes shop steward and well, you best hope you agree with them.

Yeah i am a bit jaded but no thanks. Let alone like it will matter because outsourcing will just become the standard means by which many companies will operate in a 24x7 world where talent to do IT can be anywhere. unlike your local plant our jobs can be done about from anywhere in the world. If you can work your job from home so can someone else

[geofft]

> Get any decent size shop and your going to have that one person if not two that everyone just carries.

> then there is that asshole who becomes shop steward and well, you best hope you agree with them.

But that happens in tech already! And usually that one person is friends with the boss, or a long-term employee who did good work once and is now coasting, or is really good at this one skill that the company doesn't particularly need any more and not at the current stuff, or is a 10x engineer because they spend their time dragging down nine coworkers, or whatever.

If anything, a union gives workers more ability to push back against that: I'm not going to call out the one guy the boss likes for being a jerk dragging down the business, because I know they'll find some way to get back. But if my coworkers contractually have my back, I'll be much more inclined to.

[sverige]

It seems apparent that you have never worked in a (traditional) union shop. Management still has power, union bosses have power, but union members end up with two bosses instead of one. Your coworkers aren't going to be able to help you vote out the shop steward who sucks because that is going to be the only name on the ballot.

But carry on with your starry-eyed idealism.

[aanm1988]

> My main objection to unions is that, once they're in a company, employees lose the right to negotiate their own compensation

So don't have the union do that.

Have the union worry about coming down on places that fire members for refusing to work 60 hours a week, want you to train your replacement, force shitty unpaid oncall schedules, etc...

[chimeracoder]

> So don't have the union do that

Unfortunately, it's an all-or-nothing deal. The NLRA is a very rigid law, and once a union has been sanctioned as the exclusive representative of a bargaining unit, they have the authority to do that.

It's next to impossible to either decertify or deauthorize a union once it forms, so you not only have to trust the current leadership, but all future leadership that may get elected, to focus only on the things you list and not focus on negotiating your compensation for you.

[fragmede]

What's in a name? Lawyers and doctors have unions, but they're called associations, but there's a test, with the full force of the law, for doctoring or lawyering without having passed their respective tests. Github's 'like' button has proved that we developers are just as vain (and lazy) as the next human, so I feel this has more of a chance to succeeded if we recognize that. Some of us take pride in thinking that we are better than plumbers, despite most of us merely being the digital equivalent.

The G in SAG doesn't stand for union.

[spangry]

I agree with the what (I think) the parent post is getting at: if you're going to form a union, form a union. As in, a labour monopoly. This might sound radical, but I think there is good reason for developers and tech workers to consider this.

There are strong network effects and nearly unlimited economies of scale in most tech markets. In these cases, given enough time, the end result will be a monopsonist employer.[0] This results in lower employment, lower wages and, ultimately, the replacement of labour with additional accumulated capital (e.g. ML algos) and/or cheaper substitute labour (e.g. imported foreign workers). Even in cases where there are a few large firms in competition (e.g. Google and Apple), they will have incentive to collude and make illegal agreements on hiring practices, wage ceilings etc (and there have been documented instances of this).[1][2]

The logical way for software developers to avoid exploitation is to form a labour monopoly (i.e. a union or a guild).

I've noticed some interesting features of the software development labour market: quite a lot of the work is creative in nature, you produce non-rivalrous products (i.e. my consumption of 'software x' does not block someone else's consumption), and the workforce is supposedly peppered with unusually talented individuals who produce 50-100x the value that the average worker does.

There are two other industries that have similar features: traditional screen entertainment (TV & Movie), and professional sports leagues. In both of these industries, the content producing workers (baseball players, actors) are invariably a member of an industry guild or union, and they operate more like independent contractors than employees.

Food for thought.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony#Welfare_implications

[1] https://www.cnet.com/au/news/apple-google-others-settle-anti...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

[chimeracoder]

> In these cases, given enough time, the end result will be a monopsonist employer.[0] This results in lower employment, lower wages and, ultimately, the replacement of labour with additional accumulated capital (e.g. ML algos) and/or cheaper substitute labour (e.g. imported foreign workers).

Unions that have closed-shop contracts with employers are, by definition, monopsonies on labor. Employees are required to be union members in order to be employed, and the union is the sole purchaser of the employee's labor (before reselling it to the employer).

Some of the earliest and most successful unions formed in industries in which there already was a single, monopsony employer for an unionized market (think: "company towns" in the Rust Belt). But that's a very different situation from taking a competitive market and turning it into a monopsony.

[spangry]

Sorry for the late reply. It's true that unions tend to have more success forming in monopsony employer situations, usually because of the labour force abuses that tend to follow. The other context where unions have high coverage (and tend to be unusually militant) are industries where the job carries a high degree of risk for the worker.

Historically this risk has almost always taken the form of physical danger (e.g. miners, steelworkers, construction workers etc.). Whether intellectual labourers will be motivated to organise by less proximate, but no less real, risks (e.g. the risk of being automated out of a job, being denied ownership of one's own IP/thoughts etc.) remains to be seen.

The other interesting factor is that there seem to be parts of the tech industry where a worker produces orders of magnitude more surplus value for their employer than they are paid for their efforts. I suspect this may have been a factor in the unionisation of screen entertainment workers and professional sports people (particularly when radio and TV turned those markets into 'winner-takes-all' markets).

And I'm not sure I'd personally characterise many of the markets in the tech industry as competitive. The most lucrative markets seem to be either dominated by a de facto monopolist (e.g. search, social networking) or duopolists (e.g. Windows vs OSX, GFX cards and CPUs, the android and iOS platforms etc.).

[AndrewKemendo]

Yes, despite a lot of tech workers insistence of unique professional distinction, there is plenty of well worn ground for the exact kind of labor we provide being unionized.

[amorphid]

What benefits would a strong Tech Workers' union to provide? And what percentage of one's income would be membership dues be?

[alphonsegaston]

Floors for wages, combatting H1-B abuse, fighting against toxic cultures driven by an untouchable management class.

In terms of dues, unions are democratic, so you can debate, decide, and vote on what you think is appropriate.

[aanm1988]

Return to 40 hour work weeks, eliminate unpaid oncall, paid overtime.

[cb21]

Susan Fowler should've had a union to complain to, instead of Uber's hostile HR department.

[chimeracoder]

> Susan Fowler should've had a union to complain to, instead of Uber's hostile HR department.

As a minority, you can't assume that a union rep is on your side. Especially if the complaint is against someone else at your company who is represented by the same union, if that person is more politically important (within the union) than you are, you're risking a lot - up to and including retaliatory termination of union membership[0] by speaking out. It's your word against theirs, and you're not the one hiring your representative, so you can't be sure that their incentive is to advocate your case to the bitter end, instead of to brush things under the rug.

If you want someone who has no conflict of interest to advocate your case, you need a lawyer, not HR or a union representative. At best, the latter will refer you to a lawyer (at which point they're not doing anything for you you couldn't do yourself). At worst, they will cost you your job, and possibly your career[1].

[0] Which, incidentally, is not protected by the same laws that protect retaliatory termination by employers.

[1] If you're in an industry that's represented by one single union, having your membership terminated means you should probably start looking for other career options.

[eli_gottlieb]

I think we can all agree existing unions need to be made more democratic. If your union rep isn't on your side, they should be replaceable.

[chimeracoder]

> I think we can all agree existing unions need to be made more democratic. If your union rep isn't on your side, they should be replaceable.

The problem I'm talking relates to how people in the majority group can politically overpower those in the minority. "Making unions more democratic" doesn't fix that; democracy as a system is literally designed on the principle of the majority (or plurality), not the principle of the minority.

Just as an HR representative works for the company (not for you), a union representative serves the people who elected them as a group, not you individually. If you are a minority member, you can't assume that your representative has your best interests in mind. And, by definition, you don't have the political power to replace them.

[matt4077]

Anything you like, basically.

Without a a union there's a power imbalance between employer and employee. People say it's all based on mutually agreed contracts. In reality, you are probably much more dependent on your job than the company is on you. That's because they may lose something like 1/1000 of their employees when they fire you, but you lose 100% of your jobs[1].

Unions are a way correct this balance. Employees band together, so that failure to reach an agreement is as painful for the employer as it is for the employee, i. e. (in the worst case) work stops and nobody gets paid.

[1]: If you doubt me, try getting Google to come in for 6 interviews and make your future manager do a whiteboard exam.

[stale2002]

Sure, band together and fix the power balance on your own, but don't force me to join one.

I am perfectly OK with "fighting" the power imbalance on my own, using a skill called "negotiating my salary" and "voting with my feet".

[alphonsegaston]

Neither of those things are forbidden by unions. Actors are unionized and negotiate their salaries. And of course you're always free to quit.

[chimeracoder]

> Neither of those things are forbidden by unions.

They can be - and most unions do prohibit negotiation with employers. SAG-AFTRA is the exception, not the rule, due mostly to the temporary, part-time, and gig-based nature of their work.

[alphonsegaston]

Sure - but we're talking about a new union for tech workers here. It can be what we want it to be. There's no reason to lock ourselves into some kind of historical determinancy. SAG-AFRTA never did.

[spangry]

Not to mention the fact that software developers will eventually find themselves in exceptionally weak bargaining positions, at least as individuals. Almost uniquely so.

It's great that remote working is possible in software dev, but the flipside is that it's much easier to outsource your job to another country. And working on cutting edge stuff like ML sounds interesting. But it also means you may one day find yourself building the surplus capital that will ultimately replace you. You refuse to do that? Cool, you're fired. Maybe the guy sitting in the cubicle next to you will.

[Dramatization. May not happen.]

[poikniok]

Well not exactly, you get what other people like, which is generally not what I myself like.

[x0x0]

I have to wonder if this isn't an attempt to co-opt the movement started by @TechSolidarity / Maciej.

I also think -- particularly if the HN audience is in any way representative -- that engineering in particular is far too deeply bought into the narrative of the rights of capital owners to unionize. Much like America, we think we're all temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

I'm well aware unions aren't perfect. But they are a countervailing center of power who work for employees. The relationship between the employeed and the employers is a fundamentally contentious relationship: sometimes your incentives align, but often they don't. See eg things like the option trap vs 10 year exercise periods, or even founders getting millions of cash off the table while employees get $0. Much like how VCs can whine all they want, founders get better deals because of economic forces such as decreased engineering costs from open source software and better tooling, more capital seeking investment, etc; employee unions are a way to better the outcome of the employees themselves.

[ThrowawayR2]

> Much like America, we think we're all temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

The reason that old canard doesn't carry a lot of weight around SV and the other tech hubs is that a lot of rank-and file, non-manager techies actually _are_ millionaires.

[eli_gottlieb]

"A lot" if you measure in absolute numbers. Very few if you measure in percentages. Remember, the median salary for a tech worker stagnated between 2000 and roughly 2012 or so, and even since then has only really risen because a few huge firms pay high salaries. Your average tech-worker still makes an upper-middle class salary that won't even buy a house in the Bay Area, Seattle, New York, or Boston.

[x0x0]

Exactly.

All the rampant stupidity on here and elsewhere about how well tech employees are supposedly paid is simple to vanquish: divide by the median home price within a 30 minute commute of the office.

[alphonsegaston]

While the capital class makes billions off their backs, colludes with each other to restrict wages and labor mobility, and exploits H1-B subcontractors to do more of the same.

Why settle for this?

[ThrowawayR2]

> While the capital class makes billions off their backs, colludes with each other to restrict wages and labor mobility, and exploits H1-B subcontractors to do more of the same.

You do realize that you're on a site run by Y Combinator, where a few people with an idea can transform into a multi-million dollar startup or even a multi-billion dollar business[0] for all to see? It should be rather self-evident why tired, old classist rhetoric doesn't get taken very seriously, particularly on a startup-oriented site like HN.

"Why settle for this?" I ask you in turn: why would anyone in SV settle for the stifling mediocrity and onerous rules of a union when millions are out there to be had for any with the courage and drive to try for it?

[0] "Including more than 400 active companies–Dropbox, Airbnb, Reddit, Stripe, Twitch, Homejoy and more–the market capitalization of Y Combinator startups exceeds $30 billion, according to the accelerator's president, Sam Altman." -- https://www.fastcompany.com/3033215/the-value-of-y-combinato...

[alphonsegaston]

>You do realize that you're on a site run by Y Combinator, where a few people with an idea can transform into a multi-million dollar startup or even a multi-billion dollar busineas

Of course. Why preach to the converted? And if you think "classists arguments" are outdated in an era of inequality unseen in the US since the 19th century, perhaps look more to history.

>why would anyone in SV settle for the stifling mediocrity and onerous rules of a union when millions are out there to be had for any with the courage and drive to try for it?

Because under the conditions of contemporary Capitalism, believing in venture capital as your ladder to the moon is as mythically fictitious as your description of unions.

Don't get me wrong - technology and its impact on society is as revolutionary as was industrialization. But it's also obvious that a similar class of robber barons is attempting to subvert this revolution into a new Gilded Age. In that era, the laboring classes, through their solidarity and protest, stopped their children and families from being worked to death, their land being poisoned, and generally having their futures stolen from them. What you have the privilege of calling "stifling mediocrity" is only because of their sacrifice.

[ThrowawayR2]

> Because under the conditions of contemporary Capitalism, believing in venture capital as your ladder to the moon is as mythically fictitious as your description of unions.

We have before us, in the form of Y Combinator and other accelerators, many examples of successful businesses started using VC by ordinary people such as you and I. And, as a former resident of Detroit, I quite assure you that my portrayal of unions comes from observing their behavior over quite some time and I am far from alone in having first-hand experience with their, shall we say, drawbacks. So forgive me if I fail to see the "mythically ficticious" bits here.

I will agree that many modern worker protections do stem from the risks taken and sacrifices made by organized labor nearly a century ago and that we ought all to be grateful for that indeed. However, that was then, this is now. History is fine but what unions are in the United States today is something that many software professionals, including myself, don't wish to be a part of.

[diyorgasms]

Right. Even at the top of the shit pile you're still standing in shit.

[cholantesh]

And Carmack is unlikely to ever join such a group, being as he is a staunch libertarian.

[eli_gottlieb]

You'd be surprised how thin the line is between a libertarian and a mutualist.

[djsumdog]

It's interesting because it would need to have the teeth of a union yes, but unlike unions of the past that lobbied for better wages and working conditions, what is being proposed is a union to ensure their company does what the workers feel is morally right for the world (not necessarily their customers, but the greater community of people affected by each companies goals and purposes).

[AndrewKemendo]

I understand that's the thrust of the post, but practically those things aren't really that much different if done effectively.

You make a good point though and if the intention is that it will result in some kind of engineering code of conduct or Hippocratic oath - then my guess is that it will have too many hurdles. The military code of conduct is immensely difficult to arbitrate and the Hippocratic oath isn't anything without governing boards for certification and licensure.

So there needs to be a power structure somewhere that holds the power of the members if it's going to be worthwhile and that would have to be linked to the other tangibles like pay and time.

It comes down to how and what is measured. Time and Pay are easy to measure, if your MongoDB is being implemented "morally" or not is much muddier.

[Kalium]

What you're describing isn't a union. What you're describing in a professional association that helps protect workers who make ethical decisions that land somewhere awkward.

You don't get the power of a union without the self-interest that makes a union.

[eli_gottlieb]

Well personally, I feel that what's morally right for the world is that tech workers should get better wages and working conditions, while standing in solidarity with the non-technical employees at tech companies to help them get the same.

[bigtimeidiot]

>If this moves the needle on a union then great

I'm trying to figure out why a tech worker union would want to sidle up to, say, YC. As someone who spent a few years as part of the Canadian Autoworkers Union, management were adversaries, not partners. Are the bourgeoisie trying to get out in front of this thing?

[eli_gottlieb]

> Are the bourgeoisie trying to get out in front of this thing?

Yes. This sounds like techno-Fordism. Given that Fordism was invented to stabilize and rejuvenate a crisis-ridden form of capitalism, this is a very good sign.

The union would also want to work with VCs, since they're the real managers in the industry. Startup companies come and go, but VCs and giant firms (Google, Apple, Microsoft) last.

[AndrewKemendo]

I'm trying to figure out why a tech worker union would want to sidle up to, say, YC.

Well they shouldn't, actually - which was the whole point of my last sentence.

[debt]

it's odd the tech community in sv wouldn't want a union. i mean the tech alone is already attracting top talent imagine what a decent union would do. people from all over would be like omg they work normal hours and have decent benefits and they get to work at these huge companies and they're protected by a union damn

but the execs are waiting for most of us to be replaced by the algos we're writing before that happens so who knows

[paulddraper]

We're not special. We're just like the other engineering disciplines.

[sidlls]

No, this industry is far from being like the other engineering disciplines. It should be like them, but it is still far too immature to be put at that level.

[intrasight]

For starters, we are not licensed. And I suspect that a non-citizen couldn't get an engineering license.

[sidlls]

Licensing would require settling on actually understanding that software development is an engineering activity and not an extended CS 401/501 project. The industry isn't even mature enough to consider licensing either.

[cyphar]

In Australia, non-citizens can get engineering licenses. The process is basically the same as a citizen (just more complicated because of visa requirements, as you would expect).

[lazyasciiart]

What? Of course non-citizens can get an engineering license. It can be trickier if your education is from outside the US, but citizenship is not an issue.

[intrasight]

I stand corrected

[paulddraper]

Neither are other engineers (in the US).

There are certifications (e.g. PE) but you can get a job with or without them.

[intrasight]

Not so. If you are not a licensed Professional Engineer, there are jobs you can't get. And that's what I mean by "licensed".

[TheCoelacanth]

There are jobs you can't get, but there are also plenty of other engineering jobs that you can get.

[cyphar]

Our starting salaries are much larger than other engineering disciplines, and I'd argue we don't make nearly as stable constructions as other engineers. In Australia the starting-out civil engineering salary is almost half the starting-out software engineering salary (and this is a country which hates technical innovation and prefers building more mines).

[bermanoid]

We shouldn't make as stable constructions as other engineers, for very good reasons: they're building things out of concrete, iron, and steel that are meant to last for years doing a very predictable job without alteration after their initial construction. If you don't get it 100% right before you close up a building, it's going to cost millions to go back and fix it.

As programmers, conversely, we build text files that are expected to change every day as the business needs shift, and we know up front that most of the code that we write will not survive as-is. Speed of iteration is far more important than getting things right the first time, and the cost of a delay in the name of building something right can be much higher than the cost of refactoring the simplest solution that can possibly work once you actually need to (YAGNI is not something you'll hear very often in physical engineering fields).

[tropo]

The other engineers do their part, and then software controls it. Bad software destroys things. People get killed by accident.

Then there are the security holes in things that will never get updates, the malware-infested webcams and TVs... this too impacts the world.

We can combine it all: connected cars. This isn't "other engineers". It's software developers -- call them programmers or software engineers if you like.

[stale2002]

Sure. In the very rare situation of connected cars, or infrastructure, it is important that code quality is bullet proof.

Fortunately most developers write web and mobile apps.

It doesn't really matter that much if 1% of the time the add friend button doesn't work on the Opera web browser.