[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.