[erik998]

Those were my initial feelings as well. I guess the issue comes down to focusing on software development as a skill and having that skill rewarded in manner you can count on. Our industry is really similar to actors. They have SAG and their guild negotiates with the MPAA. So every studio needs to belong to MPAA. Every year they negotiate the daily/weekly minimum rates for actors with SAG. They are pretty flexible with different rates for indy films vs big budget films.

It's not so hard to imagine a software developers guild where they negotiate for a daily/weekly minimum for developers, dba's, qa's, devops, and such...

https://www.sagaftra.org/production-center/contract/810/rate...

If you are celebrity equivalent of a developer, then you can get paid more. There are no real restrictions. You don't see famous actors getting paid below the daily minimum. When they work for a big budget film they typically get x multiple times the daily rate. Also, if they want to work on an indy film they can agree to those minimum daily rates as well.

I think its flexible enough so if you want to work for a nonprofit you can just accept the daily/weekly minimum vs asking full price if you work for FAANG.

I don't think it's a crazy amount of protections but it sets aside a basic set of standards you can expect from job to job.

If your are making over 120k they suggest actors create a loan out corporation at that point...

https://firemark.com/2015/01/12/should-you-have-a-loan-out-c...

Can you imagine all the FAANG companies having to setup a Software Industry Association to negotiate with a Software Developers Guild every year? It seems plausible. It's probably in their best interest as well. These companies could just dump any social issues on to the union and just focus on making profits. The ability to lock out competitors might force other big software dev employers to join the association as well.

[freewilly1040]

It's less cut and dry as to who should covered by a union and who shouldn't. With SAG (IIRC) there are specific rules with respect to screen time / speaking parts and so on. Who needs to be in the software union? Anyone who writes code? Do SQL analysts count? SaaS admins?

One advantage of software as a relatively ill defined career is that you can acquire responsibilities that look like software engineering without actually having a software job. Would my first employer have let me tinker around with the server (when my job was mostly Excel based) if it would have run afoul of union rules?

[erik998]

Same could be said about all the young and hopeful people that show up in L.A.... Self taught or professionally trained they show up to casting calls/interviews and demonstrate their work. Sometimes self taught actors get a good gig and join SGA and continue in their career. SGA does not assure anyone success it's just there to make sure actors don't get abused in the process.

Imagine how many people have gone to Silicon Valley and worked their butts off in a startup that really went nowhere. It would be nice if they had a union that had resources to indicate if the developer should quit, go to another startup, or take another position. An intermediary that could assist with some analysis of the cap/gap tables would be helpful. A union that could indicate the daily minimum pay with a startup would be nice.

If you want to tinker with code no one would stop you. But if you got a gig and tinker with code after 3 paychecks you could join a union. Many actors don't join SGA when they start. They take on multiple gigs and then decide if the fee is worth it. Plenty of youtube videos go over the options. It seems very flexible. I don't understand why there is resistance to the idea. It's not some factory union. A Software dev guild similar to SGA seems most appropriate. Essentially most dev roles are contract roles for a short amount of time 3 months - 3 years.

Imagine if we got residuals from our code... Best incentive to document, unittest, and push some code library.