[zoeysaurusrex]

I’m not 13 years into my career (three under the table at a hometown co and ten professionally), I’ve had the mom and pop shop experience, the big corp experience, and currently the startup experience. I’ve found the same abuse everywhere, but it’s not always caused by top level executives. I think the abuse in software has a dynamic that other industries don’t have. A lot of product managers and IT managers don’t understand what we do (and I say that on behalf of devs, ops people, the whole works). They want to look good for their executives and they overpromise, or they start treating us like garbage because they are afraid not to have anything to show in their weekly updates with their boss.

When product managers and CIOs don’t have anything to show, we get tossed under the bus. I’ve never been a fan of the dev unionization movement, but I’m becoming more of a fan it by the day. I think of how I feel after having given my all to my career, and I can’t imagine how young H1B professionals feel when the abuse they put up with is far worse than what I’ve dealt with.

[Frost1x]

Unionization doesn't have to be inherently bad. It is possible for well disciplined unions to be an overall positive force for both sides of the coin. Sure, there are plenty of negative aspects to unions but there's also a lot of negative aspects to having limited bargaining power. I personally believe growing rampant abuses in this industry is starting to warrant it.