[Pfhreak]

>If I'm not happy with my company, I leave the company.

This presupposes that you'll have a list of companies to join that have all the benefits that you want.

> Non-competes are unenforceable in California.

Great. Tech work happens nationwide. You could say, "I got mine in California" or you could help pull up others. I believe that it's worthwhile, sometimes, for me to spend some of my income to help others reach a better station.

> Do you actually think that writing software is going to be come an unskilled job some day?

Do you not? Also, there are plenty of workers in tech who aren't software developers. We should be helping them get benefits as well.

[dymk]

> This presupposes that you'll have a list of companies to join that have all the benefits that you want.

Does anyone, anywhere, have a list of companies that checks literally all their boxes?

> I believe that it's worthwhile, sometimes, for me to spend some of my income to help others reach a better station.

Again, I don't think that software engineering is in a position that needs unionizing. This argument is nil to me. You're asking me to spend my income for something I don't see as a net gain.

> Do you not? Also, there are plenty of workers in tech who aren't software developers. We should be helping them get benefits as well.

You've suddenly moved the goalposts to be about something other than software engineers, which is not what we were talking about. If another profession wants to go unionize, more power to them. I don't see my profession as benefiting, hence I'm arguing against it.

[Apocryphon]

> You're asking me to spend my income for something I don't see as a net gain.

Less than $100 a month to have an organization fight open floor plans and to provide legal services on your behalf for when HR fails you seems like a small price to pay.

> I don't see my profession as benefiting

Say you're working in the game industry, and management keeps on slashing the QA org. Enjoy the additional stress of having to write all of the automation tests yourself on top of fiendish deadlines when you're already working 50 hour weeks with unpaid overtime.

[_qwfv]

> You're asking me to spend my income for something I don't see as a net gain.

Ok, that's fine. Depending on your reasoning a bit myopic/solipsistic/sociopathic, perhaps, but I recognize this is a widely held position that I happen to disagree with.

> You've suddenly moved the goalposts to be about something other than software engineers, which is not what we were talking about.

You are right, you said software engineers. But the article discusses tech workers.

There's a whole universe of sys-admins, SREs, technical writers, TPMs, QA folks, programmer analysts, devops folks, etc. who are essential to writing and shipping systems at scale who don't call themselves "software engineers".

Even if you don't think it's morally right to do so, isn't it in your self interest to ensure those people are as productive, well trained, and happy as possible so less of their work lands on your plate?