[jariel]

Acting are the most commodity of all commodities.

There are 1000x available actors for every role cast.

Almost every actor you can name is 'worried about their next project' to the point that basically only A-listers have real job security.

The vast majority of actors are paid very little and work in odd conditions.

It's an artifact of the fact that there's so much aspiration in the industry. Most projects are works of aspiration, everyone wants in, there are tons of unpaid internships, stuff like that. The closest analogy in software would be gaming, where you can see, the aspirational motivation of many developers is essentially abused into generally longer working hours.

Otherwise, wages and conditions for Software developers is quite high, a better question would be 'what is the point?' of a union.

[sjg007]

Actors have a union. I think the analogy is apt. The "A-lister" programmers always have a job etc... It's everyone else. Professors have unions, doctors have unions, nurses have unions. This is no brainer.

[jariel]

Actors have a union because they are commodity workers, which is my point.

Software developers are not commodity workers.

Profs, Nurses and Doctors have what are essentially guilds, where they set very special standards of accreditation and control who can enter and not their industry. The later two literally limit access to their field by law, partly to control wages.

All 3 of those professions are socialized in most countries, meaning they arrive at salaries by non-market terms. The later 2 are in healthcare where there is a humanist component making non-market factors essential.

Marketers, Accountants, various kinds of Engineers, Lawyers, Financial Analysts etc. - why don't they have unions?

Because it makes no sense.

They have industry associations for varying reasons, where it makes sense.

Amazon, Walmart - those are places where unions would make sense, for the floor and factory workers and possibly some admin staff, but not for the professional class.

[sjg007]

Actors are a guild. NFL, NBA, MLB all have player unions.

[jariel]

Actors have union that sets wages and conditions, otherwise, a lot of actors would get paid $0. That's a lot like a regular union.

Major League Sports have unions so that players can leverage their power vis-a-vis owners. It's a straight up power play vis-a-vis another group. While it's probably a net-zero outcome for society, it's rational for them to gang up.

For both of those groups, it makes sense.

It makes no sense at all for software developers - try to articulate a situation wherein that structure could be established and beneficial in the long run.

If a 'Software Union' establishes accreditation for 'who can be a software developer' - then are 100% of scientists and lab techs doing research going to be forbidden from writing Python scripts? Forced to hire 'accredited' developers? That wouldn't work.

Will the 'Software Union' establish minimum wages of say, $80/year and simply push all those jobs overseas?

Will they limit the entry into the profession in order to create a supply/demand asymmetry? Everyone but a select few lose in that scenario.

Software Developers are probably the least rational of all groups to start a union.

There's literally zero point.

None of the points articulated in the article will be materially improved with a union in place.

The market for devs. works as well as it does for almost everything else.

[sjg007]

I respectfully disagree.