| Tech companies used the same strategy in the 1970s, offering employees high salaries and sweet perks to make collective action less appetizing. That doesn't make sense to me... I think it's more likely that tech workers get higher salaries because they were/are in high demand, not to prevent unionization. Employees suspected Lanetix planned to fire lower-level female engineers, many of whom graduated from Hackbright, an all women’s coding boot camp I am generally skeptical about bootcamps. In my experience they typically only teach very specific skills, but don't teach fundamental concepts. That makes it hard to pick up new skills, which is required from software engineers. Is it possible that this is the reason Lanetix was planning on firing them? EDIT: I took a look at the website of Hackbright. I'm very skeptical about this bootcamp. The bootcamps is 16k for 12 weeks. They seem to teach full-stack programming in 8 weeks (python, flask, postgres, html, css, javascript, jquery, git). That gives students about a half a week per technology. The last four weeks seem to be reserved only for interview prep and computer science fundamentals that are needed for interviews. Their website implies that the skills they teach will empower students to work at famous tech companies, e.g. "Companies that use Python include Google, Yelp and Dropbox to name a few. Mastering Python here will help you start thinking like an engineer. You can feel confident that you’ll walk out of the door ready to tackle any engineering role.". |
The inverse is exactly that, though. Higher wages give certain skilled individuals enough personal comfort to the point that they don't feel they need to stick their neck out for some group of randos. Sure, that $125k job with a small sack of RSUs looks pretty on paper, but break it down with all of the extra-curricular obligations, the occasional long week that happens a little too often, housing costs, commuting, and it doesn't look too appealing.
Once you have enough 'highly' paid individuals in a group -- we'll cut the number at $100k, even though that's the poverty level in the Bay Area -- then a backbuilding narrative begins to create itself, that because 'everyone' is at a a certain level, it's kind of just okay.
The trope of high demand, low supply of qualified individuals is pervasive in tech recruiting, to the point where some of the same individuals being oppressed question if there's an actual problem. It could also be explained away as that we're all just that unique and special, but that's stitching together another reality entirely.
Instead of agreeing that fellow humans are being oppressed, we tech workers muse and question the merit of sticking together, for one another. We question the quality of one's skills or ability to comprehend with not another thought. We even sometimes question if we're overly compensated, when overt actions or results would prove otherwise.