[sassyonsunday]

Nobody saw an end to the good times in sight. I've hopped jobs about 5 times in my career and saw a 20-30% pay raise each time. What incentive existed to unionize in that environment? Unionization only makes sense if you think the good times won't last.

[Supermancho]

> I've hopped jobs about 5 times in my career and saw a 20-30% pay raise each time

> What incentive existed to unionize in that environment?

These situations are not incompatible.

> Unionization only makes sense if you think the good times won't last.

"Good times" is a soft term that translates to "when the employer's short term goals line up with your specific employee goals"...ostensibly to keep getting paid those big numbers.

[sassyonsunday]

Sure. I was just sharing my POV as someone who never cared about unionization and works in the industry. I associated unions with manufacturing and filmmaking. It didn't occur to me that they would be a good thing for software engineers since we seemed to be treated extremely well already. I also never trusted people who spoke about unions because I figured they may have ulterior motives, like placing themselves in a position of power by acting as a middleman between myself and the companies that pay me so that they could take a cut.

I'm not saying what I felt was true. It was just my instinct and because I was already richer than my wildest dreams (I come from a lower middle class background) so I didn't care to overthink it. An "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality. I'm sure I'm not the only person who thinks this way and since unions require popular support it's a data point toward understanding why software engineering unions aren't widespread.