[AndrewKemendo]

Don’t you know?

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

[slg]

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.

[pandaman]

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.

[slg]

>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).

[pandaman]

>It is much harder in Hollywood than in the NBA

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".

[slg]

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?

[1] - https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/voight-gets-nom-i...

[2] - https://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/01/sports/sports-of-the-time...

[hitekker]

This response is thoughtful, but I'm not sure why you're bothering. The other guy is playing the lazy "just asking questions" game.

[pandaman]

>An actor who refuses to join the union will have a harder time getting work

This does not make membership an option, does it then? This is exactly the reason programmers like myself oppose the unions. Bringing up SAG in this context seems to be counter-productive to me but you can do that if you think this increases union's support somehow.

So I was wrong on the Jordan's membership, then who was playing in NBA without being a member if you say it's possible?

[AndrewKemendo]

Just look at the amount of sincerely antisocial comments that boil down to effectively what I wrote above

It’s disappointing but not surprising

[scruple]

Yes, unsurprisingly I've had these exact sorts of conversations at work (gamesdev).

Some of these people truly, truly believe that they are so gifted and so talented that the work opportunities will simply never dry up.

[smsm42]

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?

[smsm42]

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?

[fullshark]

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.

[alistairSH]

He has the third highest annualized salary in the league, at $47.6 million. Curry is the highest paid at $52. Durant is second at $47.65.

He's definitely been underpaid in the past, but I'm not seeing it in his current contract.

[catlover76]

> LeBron James is also underpaid, at least his NBA salary.

By what logic?

[bogtog]

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.

[leksak]

$50M is not underpaid for any profession, that sounds like a sizeable salary regardless of what you do or the sacrifices you have to make.

[catlover76]

It's "underpaid" in the sense of like, if teams would pay him more in the absence of the salary cap, which the other posters kindly reminded me of, then his "true" salary is higher than his current.

[fullshark]

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.

[catlover76]

Ah, salary cap, forgot about those.

[callalex]

The comment you replied to was only two sentences, one of which described “by what logic?”

[losteric]

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?)

[slg]

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.

[runako]

> 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.

[6D794163636F756]

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.

[bombcar]

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.

[ghaff]

>sells well enough to have been done

Most books almost certainly lose money for the publisher. It's more complicated from the author's perspective given that people write books for a variety of motivations but, certainly, most books are doing well to earn out their advance which can easily be only $1,000 or so.

But, as you say, even those that sell "well enough" initially fall off pretty quickly. And some sorts of titles such as non-fiction about current tech stacks or software versions have a very limited shelf life.

[losteric]

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)

[oooyay]

I actually never thought of it like this. Thanks for the analog.

[Apocryphon]

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.

[coldpie]

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.

[JumpCrisscross]

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.

[addicted]

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.

[JumpCrisscross]

> 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.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_comparisons_of_t...

[2] https://www.globalrightsindex.org/en/2023/countries

[janalsncm]

Maybe if China had labor unions their software engineers wouldn’t be working 996.

[JumpCrisscross]

> 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.

[janalsncm]

Individually, workers have very little bargaining power. Collectively, we have a lot of power. So unless you’re arguing that workers would deliberately argue for fewer protections, I don’t see how not having collective bargaining could lead to more workers’ rights.

The fact of the matter is, God gave us Sunday off and unions gave us Saturday off. Unions were the reason child labor was banned in the U.S. We have worker’s comp and the 40 hour work week was standardized. None of those things would’ve resulted from the benevolence of profit maximizing corporations.

[toomuchtodo]

Unions are the only path to success when Congress is operating in a degraded governance state. Do you know how many worker hours will be exhausted in suboptimal labor conditions waiting for Congress to pass human labor protections? Strong legislative labor protections would be wonderful, but they are not on offer in the present day United States.

Congress won't function until the cohorts who vote for representatives unwilling to champion broadly popular policy or labor protections dies out. That's going to take a hot minute, even assuming a death rate of 1.8M voters over the age of 55/year.

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/what-you-need-to-kn... (Control-F "Figure 1")

[nerdbert]

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.

[LapsangGuzzler]

> 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?

[postmodest]

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...

...shit.

[JumpCrisscross]

> 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.

[drekk]

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.

[JumpCrisscross]

> how do you propose we align around such things?

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.

[kurikuri]

> But the divisiveness they employ makes them a political distraction.

What divisiveness? Most news I hear about unions paints them as a negative without backing anything up.

> We need workers’ rights for everyone. Not just those who are in a union.

Agreed, but we have to start somewhere. If unions are able to push for some type of labor benefit, then good for them.

[JumpCrisscross]

> What divisiveness?

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.

[AndrewKemendo]

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.

[quantified]

Dividing exactly who from whom?