[dpritchett]

Rather than move the mountain by unionizing and forcing big employers to pay up, skilled and connected developers can simply go around the mountain and disappear to the slightly better job down the street. As long as you are wired into a community of talented developers (and perhaps willing to relocate) you will have options. Spending years trying to "fix" a BigCo IT group from the bottom up is not likely to be the most rewarding use of a talented dev's time.