What is different then the acting though? Actors have unions that protect their rights but don't affect their salaries AFAIK (maybe they were abused so much that the history if fresh for them still?)
The difference is that actors were treated like shit first. Even the stars. Just look at what they did to Judy Garland, not to mention everyone else on Wizard of Oz.
I know a fair number of developers who aren't doing that great, or at least not as well as they should. Life quality issues are very common. It is for instance very common to get screwed on salary, pension or vacation at some point of your career, be let go because a project was mismanaged, having a dysfunctional work environment or any number of issues were developers draw the last straw.
Edit: To add to this. I think people don't understand the "failure mode" of being unorganized. It isn't that it is going to be bad all the time. It is that since you don't have a voice other people don't have to consider you. Which means that the likelihood that you will be negatively affected by both small and large decisions of other people increases over time. And that isn't necessarily something you can correct after the fact. Getting unduly interrupted in your career, working in a bad environment or not getting credit is something seemingly small can really affect your life long term. And at least many people I know have these types of stories.
You may want to think back just 25 years to the early to mid-nineties when developers where considered “code monkeys” who couldn’t think past their current module and needed “business analysts” to write requirements for them.
It wasn’t slavery by any stretch, but working in programming was akin to working in “IT” and thought of as a department full of weird nerds who cost the company money.
Separate business or system analysts managing requirements documentation weren't (and aren't in the many places where they are still a thing) about developers being “code monkeys” with limited and not particularly valued skills, in fact, it was and is usual for such analysts to be considered inferiors to the programming staff who do work that is beneath programmers worth.
The reason they exist is because the organization values (or is subject to mandates for) documented requirements, and doesn't want programmers to have to bother with the tedious work of developing and maintaining them, focussing on actually developing the software.
Was this always the case though? Perhaps my position is colored by my experience working for a former IBM manager who thought of programmers as those who “just write the code” based on the requirements written by the “more senior” business analysts.
That particular experience reeked of superiority of managers, project managers, and the business analysts who worked directly for them. I admit that my experience could have been anecdotal, however I’ve asked several senior programmers who were active in the nineties who have confirmed the relationships were by and large toxic at the time.
Correct, but perhaps unions didn't arise from that because the model failed---that era of Silicon Valley died in the dot-com bust.
The second generation of dot-coms that succeeded centered developers as domain experts and essential to company survival (broadly-speaking; there is certainly variance).
"But, the new documents added, employees had to waive the right to take their age cases to court. Instead, they had to pursue them through private arbitration. What’s more, they had to keep them confidential and pursue them alone. They couldn’t join with other workers to make a case."
Videogames, in particular, should be a fascinating case study in lack of unionization.
I assume it's because there's always another batch of fresh-out-of-college young people willing to throw their bodies onto that grindstone that we haven't yet seen successful unionization in that space?
I think video game developers are a subset of developers and that subset is almost entirely passionate about video games. Very few people end up working in game development if they are not passionate about it. I think any time you have a workforce who are passionate about their field you can get people to work for less than if they held the same job in a different field that wasn't full of passionate fans.
Do you think the passion keeps them working more then 80 hours a week or there is some pressure?
I worked 16 hours a day for a week, it was horrible, I don't think I can do 2 times more in 16 hours then in 8 and I gave up the money and just worked the 8 hours(now I am doing 4 hours a day , screw the money)
I think the passion is definitely a force that on average pushes developers to take more punishment to get ahead of their peers. That adds up a lot pretty quickly when it's everyone in the industry. (4 hours a day sounds quite nice)
Actors' unions do impact salary. Union contracts set and enforce minimum amounts that all working actors have to be paid, for example. An actor earning these amounts is said to be "working for scale."
So isn't ok of setting some minimal salary? I do not see why the developers would be against this, only the companies would like to abuse the developers and work them extra hours and not pay.(so probably companies are spreading the FUD against unions? )
The major benefit of the acting unions is the ability to limit the labor supply. In a growing industry like tech, this isn't necessary as the demand has always been greater than the supply of talent.
That hasn't happened yet to developers.