> I don't even know what the writer thinks a union is going to do.
As I read it, the writer thinks that a union can somehow bargain with management to get different technical tools adopted that will not commoditize developers.
I don't agree with him because the incentives pushing management to commoditize developers are real business incentives. Management doesn't care about technical quality per se; it only cares about technical quality that makes a difference in how much customers will pay. And customers don't care what technologies you use for your app under the hood; they only care about whether it does what they want. If management can make the app do what customers want using interns pulling code from ChatGPT and tweaking it until it stops crashing, at a fraction of the cost of actual expert software developers, that's what management will do.
Developers having a union doesn't change any of that, and if the union succeeds in keeping management in that particular company from using interns and ChatGPT, that just means that company will be out-competed in the market by some other company that doesn't have a developers' union and can give the customer a lower price. The only way for developers to break that cycle is to take on the business risk themselves and start their own developer-owned company that succeeds in the market by leveraging the developers' expertise to provide cheaper solutions to the customers' needs.
As I read it, the writer thinks that a union can somehow bargain with management to get different technical tools adopted that will not commoditize developers.
I don't agree with him because the incentives pushing management to commoditize developers are real business incentives. Management doesn't care about technical quality per se; it only cares about technical quality that makes a difference in how much customers will pay. And customers don't care what technologies you use for your app under the hood; they only care about whether it does what they want. If management can make the app do what customers want using interns pulling code from ChatGPT and tweaking it until it stops crashing, at a fraction of the cost of actual expert software developers, that's what management will do.
Developers having a union doesn't change any of that, and if the union succeeds in keeping management in that particular company from using interns and ChatGPT, that just means that company will be out-competed in the market by some other company that doesn't have a developers' union and can give the customer a lower price. The only way for developers to break that cycle is to take on the business risk themselves and start their own developer-owned company that succeeds in the market by leveraging the developers' expertise to provide cheaper solutions to the customers' needs.