We 10x engineers are so special that we are waving off offer after offer and that will never end.
Not only will that never end, but luckily I’m so perfect that I’ll never experience a disability or need any accommodation that I can’t just code or build myself.
I mean even then, certainly you had a good enough exit at your first company (like anyone good) that you could basically retire whenever.
I mean, you know it boils down to this: just be a better software engineer and you’ll never have to NEED a union. The only people that need unions probably suck at algorithms and think Kubernetes is too hard.
I know this is said in jest, but I just want to remind people there is no such thing as being too valuable to be a member of a union. LeBron James is in a union. Tom Cruise is literally striking right now as part of the SAG-AFTRA union strike. Unless John Carmack happens to be reading this, I guarantee you are not close to being as valuable an engineer as LeBron is a basketball player or Cruise is an actor.
I am not sure what is the point you are trying to make, had LeBron James and Tom Cruise made a choice to join a union? Was the not joining an option for either of them? From what I know you cannot play in NBA nor you can play in Hollywood w/o being a union member. From what I can imagine each of them would do much better w/o being a union member if they are as good as you described them.
>had LeBron James and Tom Cruise made a choice to join a union?
Yes
>Was the not joining an option for either of them?
Yes
> From what I know you cannot play in NBA nor you can play in Hollywood w/o being a union member.
That isn't true. It is much harder in Hollywood than in the NBA, but some people decide to not join or leave the union. Jon Voight is the most famous example that comes to mind. He continues to work despite quitting SAG-AFTRA. It is also more common for actors who live in cities where non-union productions are more common (outside of LA and NYC).
Can you expand on this, what is "harder" exactly? They don't enjoy the benefits of the union or they cannot get high paying roles? Also, are you implying Jon Voight is not a SAG member, if so, I'd like to see your sources because from what I can find he is a member while being in dispute with it (also shows how great the unions are).
And as far as NBA goes, not being a member is irrelevant as you are still paying dues and obey union regulations, fun fact I've found looking for this: Michael Jordan was not a member of the union and does seem to do better than LeBron James, e.g. there are those "Jordan" shoes which seem to do much stronger than "LeBrons".
The unions have power in the industry and they work to maintain that power. That includes trying to establish rules making it difficult for union members to work non-union gigs and vice versa. This gives incentives for studios to make their productions union jobs which strengthens the union.
An actor who refuses to join the union will have a harder time getting work because people generally don't want to deal with these headaches. However, actors can certainly have careers without being in the union. This is easier in places like Chicago or Atlanta were there is still a decent amount movie/TV production, but a lower percentage of the work is union work.
Jon Voight is a "fees-paying non-member". He is not part of the union. He has to pay dues whenever he wants to work union jobs.[1] Same as your NBA example.
I think you are mistaken about Michael Jordan. He opted out of union's shared licensing agreement[2] which is just one of the many benefits of the union. Have you found something that says he completely left the union?
If work opportunities dry up, how the union would help? Unions don't create work opportunities, they only can redistribute who gets the ones that are still there - e.g. by excluding nonmembers or by mandating that less senior members will be fired first, etc. Given that, why "these people" would be sure they aren't ones who'd get the short straw?
Do they have a choice? I mean, can you work jn the industry and not be member of the union and not strike? Would you have trouble getting hired if you chose not to be a member?
LeBron James is also underpaid, at least his NBA salary. That's why he chose his team based on whatever would be best for his "brand" so he could make real money.
The NBA has a cap on how much each player can make (around $50M this year). Lebron could be, say, worth $100M/yr, yet they can't be paid this. I'm guessing that there are around a dozen players in the league worth more than the max salary.
NBA has maximum contract sizes in its CBA. James (and many others) get the max contract allowed, which is why the best players choose teams for reasons other than money.
I'm all for unions (going as far as organization attempts at my company)... that said, in all my conversations there is one big thing that people seem to miss, which separates tech unions from automotive or sports unions: The type of work we do and how we're compensated for it.
Our work is closer to tool and die makers, we make money printers that keep running without our day-to-day involvement.
Let's take S3 as an example. AWS S3 was started with 10 engineers or so (according to Andy). AWS S3 is now an organization with over 800 SDEs alone, that headcount costs well over $300MM per year (still excluding all the SDMs, Ops, QAs, PMs, TPMs, DCAs, etc also involved). That headcount made sense as the product exploded with new features, hardware, regions, etc etc... but the "greenfield" new feature development pace is likely an S-curve, and we are now on the slowing side that will only continue to slow.
How many SDE hours/year are needed for S3's steady state operation? How do companies compensate skill for rapid growth, and then transition to their steady-state needs? What changes in terms of headcount and/or compensation, if anything?
(Of course this isn't about S3, the same questions apply to any software product)
How would unions operate in this environment? It seems quite different than, eg Boeing's manufacturing unions with the long lead times and relatively stable production volume/labor needs.
(There are also interesting questions for shareholders - what happens if S3 lays off 90% of their SDEs? Where would those people go, what would they be most valuable working on - how "safe" is S3's revenue as competitors and startups hire their layoffs?)
This is exactly like the entertainment industry and it is the whole reason the Hollywood unions have fought so hard to get and maintain ongoing compensation via residuals.
An actor usually spends a few weeks working on a movie and then the studio profits in perpetuity off that work. Tom Cruise finished filming Top Gun: Maverick years ago, but people are still streaming, renting, and purchasing that movie bringing in massive profit for the studio.
> Tom Cruise finished filming Top Gun: Maverick years ago, but people are still streaming, renting, and purchasing that movie bringing in massive profit for the studio.
This is also true of the original Top Gun, released ~37 years ago. Very little software has that kind of long-term earning power, further supporting the idea that software work is not all that unique as work goes.
It is as of yet unclear if software will reach that long term profitability. Video games certainly can have it though. I've purchased copies of games which were coded before I was born. Tech is still a young and growing industry where we find new use cases every day. As this slows and as software is perfected this may change. If someone designs the perfect email app it may just be able to run in steady state for decades. We haven't seen that but it may be a reality at some point in the next two decades.
Video games are probably closest to books; in fact, much of software is probably "bookish" in general - lots of it written for particular purposes, sells well enough to have been done, disappears into the long-tail.
A few major breakout successes become historical and bought long after the fact, but the majority do not.
The residual model is very interesting for tech... It's complicated by software refractors over time (kinda leading to compensation questions similar to those around genAI)
Besides labor unions focused on collective bargaining for the purpose of guaranteeing wages (shame that working conditions are brought up less often), seems like it might be helpful even just to have something akin to the AMA or ABA, a professional organization that advocates for software engineers, except without the credentialist gatekeeping perhaps. Like an IEEE/ACM with teeth.
FWIW I think those are all great questions that need exploring. One thing I'm hoping comes out of this recent push for unions is having more opportunities to explore different types & structures, rather than the tiny handful of massive, well-established unions which has been the state for the past 40+ years.
It’s difficult to see unions as anything but a failed model. What they advocate for, workers’ rights, is noble. But the divisiveness they employ makes them a political distraction. We need workers’ rights in law for everyone. Not just those who are in a union.
1. It’s pretty much only in the US that there are union workers and non union workers in the same field. If you haven’t already guessed, this is entirely a ploy by corporations, and the US govt to weaken unions by creating differences where none exist.
2. Unions rarely, if ever, negotiate rights only for their own workers. The massive union protests prior to COVID asking for minimum wage increases didn’t ask for minimum wage increases only for union workers. They asked for federal and in some cases statewide increases in minimum wage which would affect all workers.
3. A lot of the research shows that higher union salaries also translate into higher non-union salaries, so union efforts also very directly help non union workers.
> pretty much only in the US that there are union workers and non union workers in the same field
China. India. Japan. Korea. Pretty much all of Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. Unions are prevalent in Northern Europe [1]. That's it. That's the exception.
Outside Northern Europe, countries with great workers' rights [2] have between one in four and one in six people in unions.
> Maybe if China had labor unions their software engineers wouldn’t be working 996
Again, you're ignoring that countries with terrific worker protections have, on average, low union penetration. The one is uncorrelated with the other. In America, unions principally serve as a distraction. We periodically throw a few industries a bone while most workers get zero protection.
The only divisiveness I see (after many years in many different union shops) is planted by corporate flaks in an attempt to divide and conquer the other side of the negotiating table.
> But the divisiveness they employ makes them a political distraction. We need workers’ rights in law for everyone. Not just those who are in a union.
And how do you propose we align around such things? It seems like you’d need to organize your labor pool and possibly position yourself to bargain collectively, perhaps?
No no, you see, all bureaucracy is evil, and thus organized collections of workers-- necessitating an organizational bureau --is evil.
If you read my magnum opus, Chronos Shuffled, you would see that individual negotiation by an enlightened majority will reach the same common goal if... um... everyone individually pursues the exact same agreed upon goals...
> all bureaucracy is evil, and thus organized collections of workers-- necessitating an organizational bureau --is evil
This is the distraction I'm talking about. Unions, in this century, have been effective at one thing: dividing voters from organizing around labor reforms in law.
I really don't understand how you reconcile that with unions pushing for federal and state wide wage / benefit increases that cover non-union employees as well. You need a structure with which to organize labor power. Call it whatever you want—whether it's a union or a soviet or a syndicate it's the same idea.
Voting is literally just the bare minimum bottom of the barrel scraping. You have to also agitate for things to be on the ballot, and there is plenty of pressure to be applied outside of the purely electoral lens. A union gives people a direct benefit for organizing while trying to improve conditions for workers in general.
For one, get tech workers to vote. Ironic detachment from politics still appears to be a thing for many in our industry. After that, this is political organization 101. For all the tech unions we do have, I haven't seen them try to expand workers' rights broadly. Because why would they. That's the competition.
Unions are fundamentally about putting workers and management into separate categories. (And unionized workers on a pedestal above others.) In an industrial context, this makes sense. In a start-up, it does not.
This is so fundamentally wrong I don’t even know where to start.
By definition of function, employees and shareholders are at diametrically opposed incentives if the organization prioritizes return on capital over all other things.
If you are in an organization, where in the majority of the ownership is held by the people who have funded it, then at the starting point, it is already adversarial unless you are an equal partner in equity.
Since the vast majority of organizations are set up as such, and unless you have a controlling interest in the organization from a legal stock perspective, then you are in a position of no power to start with, and it will continue that way until you become a significant shareholder.
Unions are required to provide the collective action necessary to counter the overwhelming legal power of shareholders in the current structure.
My first job was at a tech company with a union. Boeing.
It was ridiculously bad. I've never worked with less talented people. One of my coworkers did nothing, at all, for 2 years. But with 17 years of experience, he couldn't be fired.
I carried the team, but they couldn't pay me what I was worth or promote me. I left as soon as I could.
I've worked at a few non-union shops that were the same way. I don't think the existence of a union is a large factor in that regard. I think the size of the company is.
Was it the union that was the problem or was it that you were working for a Dinosaur that hadn't been required to operate in today's high-tech world? Experience has shown that AT&T and Disney are the same sort of thing when working in tech, yet they don't have unions. But what they do all have in common - they are old companies that formed well before the internet.
Disney is a very big company. Maybe there are parts of it that our dinosaur-like but there are other parts that are doing the sharpening of the cutting edge. They'll fall behind every so often but then they catch back up and have been known to pass ahead.
When I was at Boeing, there was a story that a worker slugged his supervisor. The worker was fired, the union got him reinstated.
Boeing is a big company with a lot of inefficiency, but there clearly was
inefficiency due to union rules. For one thing, layoffs went by seniority, not merit.
Been in a similar environment as an intern. Can concur was worst professional experience of my life. Very glad I experienced this early on to avoid whenever possible for the rest of my days.
Staff couldn't even be disciplined without going through the union rep and everything was based on seniority... with no other reason.
That business no longer exists... its competitors that were non-unionized are still thriving.
People love simple answers to complex problems. Unions are such an example. The core idea behind a union makes sense - it's legalised extortion. Unions have codified in the law the ability for everyone in the union to hold the owner of property at ransom until they meet the union's demands. The only counterweight is the threat of bankruptcy, which ruins everything for everyone, but because the ideology of labor is very anti-business, they don't really care about that anyway.
Very few intelligent, educated people are part of unions, so they have no idea how they actually work. As I am against extortion, I am against unions.
I think the notion of "we are all going to quit and/or refuse to work if employer doesn't do (or does do) x" is arguably pretty extortiony. One could also argue it's just makes the market hyper-efficient by signalling the reaction of the supply of labor to a change in the asking price very quickly and directly.
I genuinely don't know why employers do not hire non-union employees in such circumstances; I think most of us assume they "can't", but would like to hear from someone who actually knows.
It's no more extortiony than how employers treat their employees.
Collective bargaining is pretty much the only tool workers have to even begin to correct the power differential between employer and employee. Ideally, it allows employees and employers to negotiate on more equal terms than is otherwise possible.
Unions are extortion in the same sense that a utility company or something like Amazon is extortion; I need to agree to some terms and conditions and pay up, or they’ll stop providing service.
Which is to say, most ongoing services in a capitalist country are provided under the “threat” that if you break the deal you agreed to, you’ll have to look elsewhere to get that service going forward.
The biography for Ethan marcotte says he is responsible for “responsive web design”, which looks like he made wrote some book in 2010 about the topic. But didn’t actually write the browser code, specifications, frameworks or anything that actually allows responsive web design. Not was he involved in any of the first examples.
Kind of tangential but that seems like a resume stuffer at best and stolen valor at worst.
He coined the term and wrote a lot of the early guidance for designing responsively for the web. Most of that is common knowledge now, but back in 2010 he was definitely on the cutting edge.
> Microsoft president Brad Smith has twice in recent weeks told me that Microsoft is simply doing what it sees fit for its own relationship with workers and not trying to push others. However, labor leaders see Microsoft's move as a potential model for others.
> "I won’t say that it was completely easy for Microsoft to do this but they did it," Christopher Shelton, president of Communications Workers of America, the union organizing at Activision, told Axios.
(last I checked, Microsoft owns Linkedin, but I could be mistaken; I am not uneducated on the challenges and downsides to organizing, but am also not so uneducated and inexperienced to think the power imbalance doesn't require improvement; maybe an individual can do better solo occasionally, but that's luck and not what the data shows)
You are forgetting the root cause of why all the tech layoffs happened.
Between mid 2020 and early 2022, tech was the place investors were willing to pay any money even at a ridiculous P/E. It wasn’t because the value proposition suddenly shifted to tech but money was plentiful and looking for places to go and tech was the place that could give you high return.
Fast forward, US Fed has decided there is too much inflation and consumers need to slow down so they are shrinking their balance sheet. Investors suddenly are getting 8% return basically without any risk. Why would you invest in tech and all the volatility when you can get that return. Suddenly companies that could raise money and rollover their debt in peanut interest expenses are seeing money has dried up.
There is one and only one responsible for this mess. Central Bankers. They had absolutely no idea what they were and are talking about including very basic things such as where would inflation and interest rate go in short term. In 8 months, they went from “we need deflation and we foresee low interest till 2024” to largest inflationary environment since 1980s and highest interest rates. And of course they face no consequences. #EndTheFed
I have worked for companies with tech unions. You can only negotiate the terms ahead of time because as a union you don't get a heads up before a mass layoff. The terms I saw were usually not that good. Usually they only had severance pay linked to years of service with a cap at 5. In some places that's barely more than the local law requires.
On my own I have been able to negotiate stock as well. Unions won't touch that.
A union would have done nothing other than accelerate the process. We need laws that if a job is off-shored the company is penalized heavily, where it makes it painful and unbearable.
A free market is one that is protected. Unfortunately nothing in the USA is protected. Our borders, our jobs, our votes. Those in control only care about themselves.
Socialism is an incredibly broad term in practice, a typical sound bite dictionary definition hints at this:
a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
So .. community as a whole, not just workers, and not even ownership is required, regulated for the general benefit (minimising polution, requiring power operators to deliver in 99.9% of weather conditions with a fixed cost ceiling) of the commons counts.
> Socialism means worker ownership of the means of production
Isn't that trending towards a definition of communism? Socialism could mean a lot of different things; economic protectionism is a market inefficiency designed to champion things like jobs over corporate profits, and was a policy choice made by some socialist governments in the latter 20th century.
A union would have also changed the distribution of who was laid off. Basically, fresh grads who have very little seniority would be the ones kicked to the curb. Whereas MS had the option to lay off exactly who they wanted...maybe it was certain teams, maybe they laid off a lot of people whose compensation no longer matched with their contributions.
Not MS, but I was at a big tech co that recently did layoffs, and a lot of the Super Senior Staff Distinguished Wizard SWEs, who I always wondered "What exactly do you do?" got laid off.
How about US developers can’t compete with offshore developers?
Average Indian earns $571/mo. Even if devs earn 2x average you’d be able to hire at least 3 for just the average SF/NYC rent a developer in the US has to pay let alone taxes, benefits, etc.
Not particularly good for the country or economy long term; is the end game to destroy the US and start over paying people here $571/mo?
Unions probably have better severance packages but how many times is a typical worker laid off in their life?
There are costs to increasing the cost of a layoff. It means corporations will rely on credentialism more, and take fewer risks. I'd rather live in a world where you can jump into software without a college degree, but maybe have to save a little money at your very well paying job than one that only hires college grads with a 3.5 GPA but you get a generous severance package.
I worked for 5 jobs or so in my decade of experience. Every single one had layoffs (usually 10%+). Layoffs aren’t that common in tech until now but were always prevalent in the “industry”.
I think there is a large difference between number of employees who have worked at a company that had has layoffs, and number of times they were laid off.
Assuming your experience is representative of every company (I don't think it is) then every company lays off 10% of their workforce every 2 years.
Assume a random distribution (I don't think this is true) that means the average worker get laid off once every twenty years. So you're looking at 2 lay offs a career. Savings should be sufficient for this. Policies or agreements like this just make good hirs cheaper, and bad hires more expensive.
Companies like Google & Salesforce paid out 6-8 months of severance (more depending on tenure) and accelerated remaining stock vests, so not all that different.
First waves of layoffs are famously more generous with their severance agreements than the following ones.
They are already not as generous as they could be (for example, Google on January 20th boasted about accelerated vesting for the notice period of US employees that would be laid off... But employees in other regions didn't get the same terms)
...and they are going to get worse and worse, with future layoffs
I know of some factories that shut down for annual maintenance for several months every year, and they lay everyone off. There is another factory (same company) that works opposite months of the year so in theory people are laid off and just switch between the two factories, but depending on schedule and work needs you can be out of work for a while.
I also know big projects often hire union labor (electricians, plumbers), and lay them off at the end of the project. I have no idea what the terms of this are.
Better overall terms than what? As far as I can tell there's no information available yet on what kind of severance package these people got. It's definitely not in the source article.
That doesn’t happen at LinkedIn. I don’t totally understand what I would have to gain from a union when I feel like my employer treats me really well. The union feels like unneeded overhead
We 10x engineers are so special that we are waving off offer after offer and that will never end.
Not only will that never end, but luckily I’m so perfect that I’ll never experience a disability or need any accommodation that I can’t just code or build myself.
I mean even then, certainly you had a good enough exit at your first company (like anyone good) that you could basically retire whenever.
I mean, you know it boils down to this: just be a better software engineer and you’ll never have to NEED a union. The only people that need unions probably suck at algorithms and think Kubernetes is too hard.
Live in emacs or starve is my motto