[glvn]

Unpopular opinion:

As a recent graduate (last 5 years), I can't agree with most works desire to unionize for one reason: demand for your skills.

When I was looking for my second tech job, I turned on that switch in my LinkedIn that lets recruiters contact me. I was immediately inundated with 10-20 messages a day from recruiters asking if I could speak with them about <Role with my expertice>. For me this was the most insane luxury in the workplace, instead of having to go out and look for jobs, those jobs were coming to me and knocking on my door.

What I took from that is tech workers have an incredible choice in where they can go work because their skills are highly in-demand. So why unionize? Don't like where you work? Flip a switch and suddenly you have 10-20 offers a day from other companies looking to hire someone with your skillset. Yes, you have to spend time combing through the messages, on the phone with recruiters and going to interviews but at the end of the day with that level of attention to your skillset, you can basically decide where you want to work. Company A seems great but the culture is toxic, ok great let's see what company B has to offer. Company B has a good culture but their data collection practices you don't agree with, ok let's see what company C has to offer. Company C has a great culture and doesn't do the things you consider unethical with data collection, bam we have a winner.

Also on the topic of general democracy in the workplace regarding decisions. As an engineer you don't make those decisions, you just implement them. Don't like the decisions, go somewhere else. Want more/total control over decision making? Start your own company.

[spamizbad]

The relative ease of finding employment shouldn't factor into your desire to unionize. In fact, quite the contrary: It's less difficult to organize when you're the strongest.

But more importantly, these are the "halcyon" days of finding tech work, and they are fleeting. There is absolutely no guarantee the job market will look this promising in a few years. Things seemed to be on an endless upward trajectory in the 90s and then it all came crashing down.

If you're gambling on the fact that tech work will always be in extremely high demand, then you have a combination of risk appetite and optimism that makes for a founder.

As someone who worked through the period of the tech industry during the dotcom fallout, lots of stuff people take for granted today was non-existent: You had much less autonomy over the technical aspects of the objectives you were trying to achieve. Mandated tools, crappy underpowered computers, bureaucracy, over project dependencies, process-heavy SDLCs weren't just the norm, but widely viewed as the proper way to build software. It was all a reaction to what was seen as the "inmates running the asylum" during the dotcom boom. It basically took a bunch of promising startups in the mid-aughts to start cleaning people's clocks and become juggernauts to get the broader industry to reverse course. It also became a lot cheaper to do a tech startup.

Basically, understand that a lot of what is enjoyable today about working in tech is a side-effect of supply-and-demand; they HAVE to avoid developer-hostile actions because we're difficult to hire and expensive to employ. Once that's no longer the case, the screws are going to tighten. Just look at China's 9-9-6 work policies and companies using chat tools to spy on their employees to keep them working as a point of reference.

> As an engineer you don't make those decisions, you just implement them.

I'd like to think we have enough integrity as a profession to fall back on an Eichmann-adjacent justification.

[scarface74]

* Things seemed to be on an endless upward trajectory in the 90s and then it all came crashing down.*

It the job market for developers only came crashing down if you didn’t have the skillset needed and/or were looking for a job at one of the $cool_unprofitable_startups. There was plenty of demand for your regular old corporate developers. The company I was working for didn’t even blink during the dot com bust. We were a boring old profitable company that did bill processors. I’ve been in the industry for 20 years and have never found it difficult to find a job.

[durnygbur]

Once you discover later on in your career that seniority and respect of your peers is not transferable between companies, that hopping to the next job from the job board is vicious circle of working on dull dead end projects under authocratic and dumb at times people (with long length of service at the company), you might change your mind. Also you’ll discover that life is more complicated than „just walk away or start your own business”, at times neither of these is possible or even both of these are straight suicidal.

[okmokmz]

>seniority and respect of your peers is not transferable between companies, that hopping to the next job from the job board is vicious circle of working of dull dead end projects under authocratic and dumb at times people (with long length of service at the company)

I haven't found this to be the case at all. I know many people who jump companies every 3 years or so, make more money each time they change, get to work on a variety of projects that interest them, and are well respected by their peers regardless of what company they are with due to the work they have done and continue to do. It is relatively common advice that you are generally able to advance faster by moving between companies and negotiating for better pay and titles rather than trying to get promoted frequently while staying with the same company. If you decide to take a position where you will be doing dull, dead end work with "dumb" people that is your own fault.

[durnygbur]

Significant payrise on switching jobs is a thing in Europe only until mid-level perhaps, above that it's on pair with regular payrise and is absolutely not compensating the stress of adapting to the new working environment. The salary ceiling is disappointingly low. Don't even think about launching own business - unless one manages to chime in into the supply chains for DACH, Scandinavian, or French economies' supply chains (automotive!) and keeps the salaries of its employees low.

[njepa]

I think this is true in many places. The real payday is when they don't want you to leave.

[okmokmz]

Fair; my experience is limited to the US tech industry

[ryandrake]

It will plateau though. You can't get 10-20% bumps every time you switch in perpetuity. Most of us would be making over a million a year after 40 years if that were true.

Just as a counterexample, my job changes early in my career netted me raises of sometimes 50% but each subsequent one increased less on a percentage basis. My last job change (now have 20 years experience) was +0%, and I give even odds that it will turn negative soon as I get older.

[scarface74]

Why do I care if the projects are a dead end of a check is appearing in my account twice a month? My job is just a way to have money in my account. I don’t look for “excitement” in my job. I’ve been working for over 20 years. I think I am “later in my career”.

[adreamingsoul]

Yes, you are popular now but in 10-20 years after you’ve been through the wringer a couple times the concept of a tech union might make more sense.

EDIT: changed "ringer" to "wringer".

[glvn]

I agree, and that's one of the reasons I posted how long I've been in the industry. On the one hand, right now everything is flowers and daisies but who knows what it will look like for me in 10-20-30 years, it might be a completely different landscape and unions might be required.

[jogjayr]

Unrelated, but it's "through the wringer" not "ringer". A "wringer" being something that wrings your clothes out i.e. puts a great amount of stress and force on them.

Sorry for being annoying and pedantic :-(

[adreamingsoul]

AH, my mistake and thank you. I was wondering about that spelling but obviously I didn't take the time to double check.

Ringer[1] 1. a person or thing that encircles, rings, etc. 2. a quoit or horseshoe so thrown as to encircle the peg. 3. the throw itself. 4. Also ring·ers. Also called ring taw. Marbles . a game in which players place marbles in a cross marked in the center of a circle, the object being to knock as many marbles as possible outside the circle by using another marble shooter. 5. Australian . a highly skilled sheep shearer.

[1] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/ringer

[appleiigs]

I've been through the ringer... I'm in my 40s and at the point in my life where if you'd pay me good money to dig holes, then I'd dig holes. I go to where ever pays me the most to dig. I don't identify myself by where I work at. I don't expect other people to have my values, and definitely don't have those expectations on a corporation. I have this mercenary attitude because I know that I'm solely responsible for myself and my family. If you are going to expect that a union, corporation or a government take care of you, then you are going to be very disappointed - that is my problem with socialism.

[cworth]

It sounds like you are mixing the positive and normative. Yes, corporations now don't represent the values of their workers and lobby for all kinds of awful things. Yes, there is no social net now provided by unions or the government in the United States.

But wouldn't it be excellent if these things were true?

[GreenJelloShot]

In theory, if it all magically worked, then sure. In reality, no. Because no matter the good intentions, I can not trust the government to not screw it up.

If a company screws something up, I can just switch jobs and move to another company. If the government screws up, there is little I can do.

[cworth]

The Nordic model shows that it is possible to have a highly unionized workforce with free higher education, free healthcare, and social welfare. They have been very effective in fighting poverty this way.

[GreenJelloShot]

Yeah, everything "works" until it doesn't.

See: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/08/finlands-government-resigns-...

"Financial constraints are colliding with the healthcare costs imposed by Finland’s fast-aging population. But cutting those costs is a major political obstacle in a Nordic country that historically has provided an extensive -- and expensive -- healthcare system."

[adreamingsoul]

Move to another country?

[GreenJelloShot]

While theoretically possible, I do not see this solution scaling well for the majority of a population.

[GreenJelloShot]

> If you are going to expect that a union, corporation or a government take care of you, then you are going to be very disappointed.

As a fellow tech worker who have been through the wringer many times, I can confirm this is absolutely true.

[adreamingsoul]

On one hand, I think it's unfortunate that a society has to have a mindset of self preservation. On the other, I think individuals should be self-sufficient and responsible for themselves.

What happens when you can't take care of yourself? What happens when a series of unfortunate events interfere with your ability to dig those holes? Who then will be responsible for you?

You mentioned you have a problem with socialism, have you experienced and lived in socialism? I haven't and have no actual experience of what is good or bad about it. Do you have any concrete examples of why socialism is bad?

[appleiigs]

You don't need to take my word for it... study history and economics.

[linuxftw]

> What I took from that is tech workers have an incredible choice in where they can go work because their skills are highly in-demand. So why unionize?

These things are not diametrically opposed.

A union doesn't imply anything other than collective bargaining. Maybe having a union would prevent things like Disney firing a bunch of full time employees after they retrain contractor replacements. This type of nonsense is driving down wages for the entire middle class of workers.

[itronitron]

>> As an engineer you don't make those decisions, you just implement them

I feel that is a very myopic attitude. Engineers and tech workers generally are in the best position to present options that can inform business decisions. In order to identify a good option it helps to have a lot of options. Disregarding the positive input that any employee can have on how a company operates is incredibly stupid.

[snarf21]

I think that increasing efforts to unionize or blackball projects will just increase off-shoring. This isn't like a coal mine where physicality is important and can be leveraged. It is easy to open an office in random company and also pay people less. I'm not making a judgment that it isn't important to stand up to companies being evil but I just don't see unions being successful. Most big companies could cut 50% staff on the engineering side and simply make more money. A lot of this is hoarding of resources and using it to create new products to enable more consolidation.

[matis140]

The main reasons I would like to see a tech unions and things I would want out of it:

1. assessment training and rank. my sister is in a union and has been train and qualified for specific kinds of work. she does this work for many clients and the chance that they are getting the skills they need and she has those skills are very high. she can also call in others from the union if needed and the union handles negotiations of changed whatever.

2. unions handles her seniority. she can work for several different companies a year, but time off and other benefits come from time in union not those companies.

There is a lot of other things about her union I do not like, but my biggest problems in tech are finding or developing the right talent (including my own) and constant loss of seniority (pto, retirement, and other benefits). I lost a lot of both early in my career because I didn't negotiate well.

If a union existed that helped protect my interests, develop my talents, and match my skills with work I would join it. If they were good at training/vetting their members (apprentice, journeyman, whatever) in whatever skill set they learned that would benefit both employee and employer. Might help with imposter syndrome. Might help both sides with many issues if done right.

[gorpomon]

>> As an engineer you don't make those decisions, you just implement them. Don't like the decisions, go somewhere else. Want more/total control over decision making? Start your own company.

Don't you want more out of the roles in your career? I want to work at a place that wants my best self, ideas, opinions and all. I don't want my only career options to be a paid typist or an entrepreneur.

[scarface74]

No. I want to get paid enough to enjoy my time with my family and friends. I don’t look for fulfillment out of my job.

[newen]

How would unions reduce your ability to choose between jobs? How are these two things even related?

[Brain_Thief]

It seems obvious to me that there is a burning need for tech unionization and the reason has little to do with individual compensation or job security (although those are very important ancillary issues that deserve to be addressed and discussed as well). The real purpose that unionization could potentially serve is as a check against what people like Stallman and Bruce Schneier would perhaps call the mass exploitation associated with extreme surveillance capitalism. There are risks associated with unionization, of course, but collective bargaining offers one of the only proven mechanisms for average workers to impact the behavior of their employers. In the past, collective action was taken primarily as a means to improve the work conditions and compensation of average employees; as you point out, work conditions are generally very good for tech workers already, and so the improvement of working conditions isn't such an issue (although there is a good argument for organization as a means to preserve good conditions). I argue that in the case of tech employees, many of whom are involved in the development of systems that carry the potential for horrific misuse against vulnerable populations in the name of corporate profits, unionization is actually a moral imperative. Such unionization would represent a form of evolution in the history of collective action and employee organization, since it would be (at least in part) about challenging large-scale trends that run counter to the ideals of privacy, human rights, and equal society - things that can't be meaningfully impacted by individuals switching jobs. For instance, consider the case of challenging the pervasive use of privacy-violating adtech in products, or partnerships between corporations and authoritarian governments.

As tech workers, we are uniquely positioned within society: we have privileged knowledge of how the most powerful systems and products of the age function and we are incredibly close to the control surfaces of the major pillars of the economy. We are in demand, paid well, and generally well-educated. We have the ability to make a difference in the world in ways that very few people do. This is why organization is important.

[frgtpsswrdlame]

Hirschman wrote a book called Exit, Voice, and Loyalty that you may find interesting. What I see in your response is this: 'Exit and Loyalty are enough, so why have Voice?' In your mind it's good enough to just go to another job that has better conditions, but why is it wrong to want to change your current job? I don't see a good argument in your post against the usage of voice or democracy in the workplace, just your perspective that you don't need it. But maybe others do think they need it, so let's give it to them.

[milquetoastaf]

Professional actors and actresses can also be in-demand and are often 'recruited' constantly for different projects. They get paid sometimes millions of dollars.

They're in a union

[option]

Exactly. Why unionize in the industry which highly competes for talent?