[idiotsecant]

You're taking a remarkably short sighted position here. Blacksmiths and cobblers were once highly in demand workers as well. Do you really think writing code is such a special beautiful skill that it's immune to the same forces of automation?

Software development is a trade skill, like any other. We're in a very brief window of time where it's a very lucrative skill to have. Don't expect that to last forever. When that stops being the case you'll want something between you and the harder facts of life that you might have had the privilege of ignoring for a while. There's a reason people bled and died to make these organizations. The moment it's possible the capital class will grind you into a fine paste and sell you in tubes to make a few extra percent on the quarterly financials.

[eru]

> You're taking a remarkably short sighted position here. Blacksmiths and cobblers were once highly in demand workers as well. Do you really think writing code is such a special beautiful skill that it's immune to the same forces of automation?

No, but that's not required for the argument. Do you think any amount of unionisation would have forced society to keep lots of well paid blacksmiths and cobblers around?

(And if the answer to that is Yes, isn't that an argument against tolerating unions?)

[slt2021]

I am not at the mercy of my employer or capitalist class for that matter.

And I will be the first one to automate my job and reap the benefits of automation myself.

This is the way of life - if you cannot adapt - those more flexible, more adaptable, smarter, younger, hungrier - will eat your lunch.

There is no way any tech union can enforce monopoly, because there will always be new entrants ( ew grads) and offshore workers and immigrants willing to take the job, if union workers decide to strike.

In fact, I will be the first one to create outsourcing and offshoring consulting company to help companies fight unionisation.

This is the way of capitalism, the way of life. Smarter, faster, nimbler will get larger piece of the pie.

If union is willing to get $xxx mln in labor costs from a company, I will happily help this company fight unionisation for a fraction of that - to drive unions out of business while pocketing the profits by myself

[idiotsecant]

I hate to break it to you but if your job is automatable it won't be you reaping the benefits, it will be the people who have the most capital to deploy automating. That ain't you buddy, sorry. Your world view is basically peak HN techbro-iterianisim. I hope you never get the opportunity to experience exactly how wrong you are.

[slt2021]

it shows that you have zero experience in automation, because no high value job is fully automatable.

Human augmented+automation will always be more superior/flexible/valuable and large corporations with a lot of capital will never be able to be as flexible and nimble for all customers and all their use cases, as a small player like myself can be

[eru]

I want to agree with you, but:

> it shows that you have zero experience in automation, because no high value job is fully automatable.

That's sort-of a tautology. What used to be a high value job can become a lower value job with some automation, and then be automated completely later.

Up to about a hundred years ago, many reasonably well-off people in the US and Europe used to have domestic servants. Those jobs could go to fairly high levels of skills and value. Nimbleness was rewarded. (But to be fair, they also could go down to pretty menial labour.)

Nowadays even really well-off people barely have any domestic servants. Instead they have dishwashers and vacuum cleaners and order their food delivered to their doorstep, and perhaps hire a part time cleaner for a few hours a week.

[slt2021]

When stakes are high you are not going to ask a robot. When you have serious health condition or legal problem - you will find youself the best doctor/lawyer and seek their counsel.

Google search or chatgpt wont gonna cut it.

Same with tech - if you create a startup with big ambitions - copilot and chatgpt wont gonna cut it for your product.

and I see no mechanism for union to provide any value to tech workers. Hell, there is no even a category of tech workers: thousands of different specializations. I would never wanna be in a union with grandpas coding in COBOL for example

[eru]

Oh, I wasn't arguing in favour of unions. I was arguing against your specific point about specialised jobs.

[kortilla]

You sure make a lot of declarations about who is right and wrong and the poster is literally talking about their job. Is it possible you want unions in software so badly that you’re blind to successful models that work without them?

Physicians and Lawyers have been around forever and they don’t unionize.

[slt2021]

technically they dont unionize, but they have cartel that regulates supply of specialists to the market (State Bar for lawyers and State Medical Board for doctors).

the reason why healthcare is such a mess and so expensive - is because Medical Board artificially limits supply of doctors to the market, by allowing very very few Medical Residencies perspecialty. This severely limits supply of doctors, keeps their pay high and leads to ever increasing cost of medical care for patients