[z33k]

This is why we need labor unions. The power dynamics are almost universally stacked in favor of the employer. Unions can equalize this to an extent. You will still be disposable, but at least you will get better terms if you end up getting disposed of.

[taurath]

Oh, but my employer is different and a union would only make business more complicated and less likely to give me raises and promotions! I’m a rising star, you know.

- A literal supermajority of software developers

[Akronymus]

Over here (austria) the unions, which are pretty powerful, argue on behalf of ALL employees in that field. They basically set the minimum pay/benefits across the country for the kinds of jobs they represent by negotiating with the industrial association. By law, the result of those negotiations are the baseline for everyone. And everyone can still negotiate for better terms with their employer.

One benefit the union members have over the non-union ones, though, is that you get insurance for legal counsel, for example. Other than that, union members don't have that many benefits, tbh. I still chose to be a member, because IMO it's the right thing to do.

[throwaway7ahgb]

These comments miss so much nuance. This isn't black and white.

I don't want to work for a union not because I'm a rising star. It's because I know I'm on the right of a normal distribution. I don't want to revert to median pay. No thanks.

[ryandrake]

How do you know compensation is a normal distribution, and that you are on a particular side of it? Everyone on HN thinks they are a highly-paid, irreplaceable Captain Of Industry who, by their brilliant skill and shrewd negotiating power is making much more than the average. "Surely a union would bring -my- compensation and working conditions down!" they imagine.

[therealdrag0]

lol nice story. But we also have tools like Levels.fyi and networks. I have asked all my friends how much they make and some of them have spreadsheets where they track the pay of whoever they ask. It’s not that hard to get an idea where you land these days.

[therealdrag0]

I also don’t want it to be hard to fire people. I’ve worked with or adjacent with 2-3 people who got fired for performance and in every case I was so glad they did and am glad I don’t live in EU or a union where the process would have been harder than it already was.

[banku_brougham]

the tradeoff is median of an increased comp incl. health care, and greater job security. People fought for that and will again.

[resource_waste]

If you work at a Union place, you know the complications are absurd.

I've worked at both, and the efficiency, friendliness, experience were all absurdly better without unions. With unions, everyone was trying to get each other written up, seniority mattered more than performance, politics were half the conversations at work.

Engineering would be miserable with a union, you'd be basically locked into an employer climbing the totem pole.

[maxehmookau]

> - A literal supermajority of software developers

_American_ software developers. Many in Europe don't fall for this way of thinking.

[bjornsing]

Yes, and then we Europeans make peanuts compared to the Americans. Maybe the two have something to do with each other?

[ernst_klim]

> Many in Europe don't fall for this way of thinking.

Many in Europe leave for the US because EU salaries are ridiculously lower.

This is just a survey but it's in line with my perception, salaries on avg are 2-3 times lower in rich EU countries than in the US (after taxes).

https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2023/demographics/

[maxehmookau]

After taxes, but before healthcare and the fact that most employment is at-will.

I'll take higher taxes, healthcare through general taxation and relatively strong job security over a fixed dollar amount any day. Everyone is different though.

[ernst_klim]

> After taxes, but before healthcare and the fact that most employment is at-will.

That combined doesn't even remotely cost that gap of 60k per year (plus strictly speaking this is not true since many employers would provide IT people with insurance).

> I'll take higher taxes,

It's not higher taxes. It's much lower salaries + much higher taxes combined. 60k a year in savings will provide you far more security and bargaining power than any strictest EU trade code would (and this is IMO one of the reasons for higher salaries in the US).

[9dev]

Well. On the other hand, I can not be laid off easily, and will need to be told at least three months in advance; if my girlfriend gets pregnant, I can take a few months off, too; if the child is sick, I can stay at home too*; if I get sick, I’ll continue to get paid; if I have back pain, I can request to get expensive ergonomic equipment from my employer; if I need to see a specialist, or get insanely expensive treatment, I don’t have to worry; I have 30 days of vacation, of which I must take at least two weeks of consecutive time off, without any negative consequences for my job; if my children go to university, it’s pretty much free, as it was for me; I can’t ever get paid less by my employer, only more; I can take a few days of external educational courses of my choice every year, and my employer has to accept that (and pay for it!); and I probably forgot a bunch of other advantages here.

Specifically on insurance: how much is that worth if it’s bound to your employer? What if you get laid off and don’t find a job in time, then get sick? What if your father is laid off at 55, nobody wants to hire him anymore due to his age and he develops cancer? I can tell you what happens in Germany: nothing. Both of you go to the MD and get treated as appropriate.

You’ll never get me to trade all of this for a bit more money that I need to spend on health care, ridiculous tips, and overpriced apartments anyway.

[hnbad]

You'd be surprised. Tech is full of special snowflakes who don't need a union because they're one of the deserving extremely talented net contributors who earned their special privileges and don't have any problems working unpaid overtime because their employer would certainly have their back if they ever needed time off or their productivity declined because of bad health or personal issues and don't want the undeserving underperforming underachievers and talentless diversity hires to get a leg up and steal their glory.

I'm not even kidding, this is almost verbatim the attitude of plenty of (white, male, able-bodied tho at times mildly autistic) developers I've talked to throughout my career and at meetups and conferences, though few would be bold enough to spell it out this explicitly. Of course in those cases where they did end up having bad luck (be it health or otherwise) their employers did not in fact have their back, at least not longer than possible without harming profitability. If anything, developers working at smaller tech companies or in technical roles at non-technical companies were worse because they'd often see unions as only relevant for jobs that were "beneath them".

Granted, most of the people I talked to were in Central and Eastern Europe.

[bjornsing]

> Of course in those cases where they did end up having bad luck (be it health or otherwise) their employers did not in fact have their back, at least not longer than possible without harming profitability.

If you think unions or taxes will “have your back” in any real sense if you fall seriously ill you will be sorely disappointed.

> Granted, most of the people I talked to were in Central and Eastern Europe.

Could have something to do with these countries having experienced full blown communism not too long ago.

[hnbad]

> Could have something to do with these countries having experienced full blown communism not too long ago.

That's a bit of a non-sequitur if you have any idea of how the Soviet Union and its sphere of influence treated unions. Just look at modern China if you need a refresher on what authoritrian states think about workers unionizing.

Also unions are not communism and neither did any of those countries ever experience "communism". The USSR never claimed to have "achieved communism", in fact the expression "real socialism" (or "actually existing socialism") was coined by these governments to denounce critics who demanded steps towards communism as "utopian" idealists. China today even has a full roadmap towards communism with different labeled steps to justify why it hasn't achieved communism yet and needs to be authoritarian for just a little while longer because the state will wither away eventually really soon trust me bro.

> If you think unions or taxes will “have your back” in any real sense if you fall seriously ill you will be sorely disappointed.

Not with that attitude they won't. Do you think we got legally mandated 40 hour work weeks, paid sick leave and mandatory rest periods out of the goodness of the hearts of business owners?

[lordnacho]

Is it because of something inherent to software development, or is it just that software development became a big job category in an environment that was skeptical of unions?

[ernst_klim]

> Is it because of something inherent to software development, or is it just that software development became a big job category in an environment that was skeptical of unions?

Unions are neither a good nor a bad thing. It's a price cartel, which is rent-seeking in its nature, but so are the employers. Thus effects of unions depend on competitiveness of the particular market. In low-paying markets they are clearly beneficial and counterbalance the monopsony.

Programmers exist in a competitive market tho. Average programmer has a great bargaining abilities and most people know it. If you are a senior you wont get much from union, it's just a hustle. If you are a junior/immigrant unions will harm you by raising the bar.

[banku_brougham]

>Labor Unions => Cartel => Rent seeking

You reached reductio ad absurdum in two tiny steps. So unions are seeking rent by virtue of legal ownership of the motion physical bodies, just as property owners seek rent by virtue of ownership of real estate.

[taurath]

When life is working out for folks and they make a decent income, they tend not to complain or want to rock the boat so as not to risk things. Can’t think of anything that would risk ones income capability more than being seen by companies as a union organizer - retribution is illegal but can’t be enforced, so it is de facto legal. See: starbucks suddenly closing all the stores that decided to unionize.

People who own companies are not known for being nice but the best way to get the full force and fury of a billion dollars arrayed against you is to suggest unionization.

[dgb23]

It’s interesting how much effort, and money is put into combating unions instead of developing a healthy relationship.

[Aeolun]

> the best way to get the full force and fury of a billion dollars arrayed against you is to suggest unionization

Even if you didn’t personally think it’d be useful for you, that should make you reconsider?

[ThrowawayR2]

Unions benefit workers by giving them leverage through collective bargaining. For the US specifically, demand has been so astronomical for developers for the past couple of decades that most wouldn't have gained additional leverage from joining a union. Don't like your working conditions? Just job hop and get a pay increase as a bonus.

That calculus might change if demand for developers cools down as a long term trend but it's not going to be anytime soon.

[pjc50]

I do think the high level of autodidacts makes it very different from anything else. It doesn't feel like a "trade", those involve building things with your hands. It's perhaps more similar to a "profession", like the much older ones of lawyers and doctors, but it hasn't developed the professional organization structure to go with it.

Disintermediation also makes a difference. It's possible - very unlikely for any one person, but possible, and keeps happening - to just bootstrap a product out of pure labour and very little capital. At which point they get to keep a lot of the returns. It doesn't at all fit a nineteenth-century economic model, so you can't apply the M word.

The "10x" phenomenon also makes a difference. Whether it's real or not, I think enough programmers believe it's real and want to be part of the 10x and somehow get a 10x reward. This is the exact opposite of a factory line or mass farmworker situation.

(there's lots of interesting business anthropology research on piecework vs hourly rate work, I believe)

[beaglesss]

It is because software developers are the capital and managerial class and they are the rich guy with the boot that stomps all the lower earning working class schleps , not the other way around.

[blitzar]

Unions are for miners and factory workers - software developers are highly paid, special people (just ask one and they will tell you all about it).

[einpoklum]

Software developers _are_ mostly factory workers, it's just that their factories make software.

But titles aside - only some software developers are highly paid; some aren't. And we are not "special people" - that's just company propaganda. There are millions and millions of us around the world. And in most of our companies, there are a lot. And our employment conditions are not "special", they are like the other SW developers, and - guess what? Pretty much like those of most of the other non-manual-labor workers, even if the salaries differ by profession.

Most employers, and the media, do a lot to inculcate us with this belief in distancing ourselves from each other, emphasizing differences and supposed uniqueness, so that our interactions go through them; and that we not think of doing things - professionally and otherwise - by direct coordination and collaboration, but rather through the mediation of management.

But if there's anyone who has the capacity to imagine things operating differently than they do today, surely it must be us SW devs - if we don't limit our critical scrutiny to just the computers we work on but direct it also towards surrounding social structures.

[Aeolun]

I make enough money, I’m happy in my position, I feel like my employer treats me fairly. Why should I want a union?

I also have nationally strong’ish labor laws.

[banku_brougham]

>strong-ish labor laws

The battle is never over. In the US labor unions reached a zenith and have been undercut and dismantled as a multi-decade project.

The incentives are clear. Our systems drives ever onward toward slavery, the only remedy is pushing back through the generations.

[9dev]

So you’re sure it will stay that way, because you trust management to do the right thing? Even as you get older, life treats you harshly, or the economy goes down and suddenly you’re expected to work twenty extra hours?

[Aeolun]

> So you’re sure it will stay that way, because you trust management to do the right thing

Because they’ve given me reason to believe they will? But mostly because the law makes it really hard to let go of employees when your company is doing well enough to keep them.

[cdogl]

You’re not wrong, but in Australia where I work only 12.5% of all workers are in unions. We have some moderately union-hostile legislation (strikes are hard to pull off lawfully) but nothing preventing union organisation in principle for most workers. So evidently it’s not only software developers who think this way.

[banku_brougham]

>Strikes are hard to pull off lawfully.

So workers are prosecuted for withholding labor in negotiations with management, these are moderately union-hostile laws. I'm told Henry Clay Frick was somewhat disinclined in his opinion of unions as well.

[redleader55]

I don't want to be "equalized". I'm happy to negotiate my own terms. In my experience the union leaders negotiate better terms for themselves than for the people they represent. The company prefers to have a good "shepherd" for the flock - the union leader.

If you look at where the good salaries are, you will not find them in France, Germany, Italy where the unions are strong, but the Bay Area, London, New York where unions are not really a thing.

[Rinzler89]

>If you look at where the good salaries are, you will not find them in France, Germany, Italy where the unions are strong, but the Bay Area, London, New York where unions are not really a thing.

True, but those "good salaries" are only but a fraction of the total salaries in the countries you mention. Methinks a country should prioritize the welfare and well being of the entire country's people and the average worker instead of focusing on the top 1% SW devs while letting everyone else sink.

Maybe keeping public services running for the bottom half of society is more important for society than creating the top SW companies in the world. After all you can't eat software, but we do need garbage men, doctors, pilots, sailors, nurses, handymen, architects, oil & gas and construction workers, farmers, car mechanics, barbers etc. a lot more to survive and run a modern society, than we need web devs to write yet another food delivery, ride sharing or crypto trading app designed just to skirt the laws and scam VCs and clueless investors while the interest rates are low.

If your toilets breaks, you still need an actual plumber to show up in person to fix it since he can't push an OTA fix remotely from home, otherwise you'll be rooting in your own shit no matter how advanced your knowledge of K8s and ML-Ops is. Who cares if you're a well paid SW dev in London, NYC or San Fran but you can't walk alone at night because you're surrounded by poor minimum wage struggling and homeless people on substances or mental illness from wealth inequality, lack of welfare/social care and societal collapse due to decades of poor political and financial policies designed only to favor the wealthy?

This is just my biased opinion, don't treat it as gospel ground truth.

[robocat]

I am interested in your parallel universe where software doesn't underpin every business... What line of business do you work in that doesn't need software for accounting, banking, invoicing, payroll, communications, yadda yadda.

Consumer software doesn't run the world. I think your negative examples of software scams and hucksters are consumer based.

> just to skirt the laws and scam VCs

VCs are not generally seen as victims!

> you still need an actual plumber to show up in person to fix

And that plumber depends directly or indirectly on plenty of software to get their job done, from the basics of getting paid to the more complex of sourcing parts. And they use a mobile phone, which is 99.9% software with a little bit of hardware.

[Rinzler89]

>VCs are not generally seen as victims!

I never said they were.

[throwaway7ahgb]

This is a heart felt message but has nothing to do with SWE pay. You don't make any suggestions here at all, am I supposed to interrupt this as everyone gets paid the same? If that is the case, say it.

If everyone is paid the same, who sets these salaries, unions? Then who sets the non union pay? Or does everyone work for the union or government?

[Rinzler89]

Where did I say everyone should get paid the same? All I said was that focusing on producing the world's top SW companies doesn't seem to produce the societies with the best quality of life, and that that should be the main focus of a healthy society IMO.

Yeah, what I said is not a solution to such problems, just an observation to the Original grandparent comment who tried to point out a few cities that have the best SW compensation as if that should be the end goal for every country.

[bjornsing]

So we started out with the idea that unions are good for software developers, and now it’s about how you can’t eat software anyway and society should really value someone else? Yeah I get it…

[Rinzler89]

No, I was just pointing out that what London, NYC, SF, are doing might not be the best for everyone even if they host the topo SW companies in the world.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

> New York where unions are not really a thing.

I live in NY, and I can tell you that unions are very much a “thing,” hereabouts.

[throwaway7ahgb]

Same here, and unions are not much farther from the old school organized crime gangs.

The unions in NYC protect the union. They care about little else.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

> The unions in NYC protect the union. They care about little else.

That's their fiat. They're supposed to be like that.

I'm really hoping that unions are learning a bit of humility from the last few years. We'll see.

Japan (and Germany, I hear), has unions that are stakeholders (and, often board members) of corporations. They seem to work quite well, and are very powerful.

[9dev]

Particularly in Germany, unions are quite literally unions of workers that band together, not menacing cartels. By law, companies must not interfere with workers organising themselves in a Betriebsrat, basically a company-internal union, which (as you mentioned) by mere forming becomes a stakeholder and needs to be involved in certain decisions.

This doesn’t automatically mean you have a mandatory tariff for everyone, just that there is an organisation in your workplace that you can turn to, which will have your interests in mind, without you having to be a member. They can protect you from overreaching managers, baseless accusations, or unwarranted layoffs. And of course, they usually negotiate on behalf of the entire staff, especially on HR topics.

While this isn’t always working perfectly, it’s still a big achievement in terms of equality and worker rights.

It’s unfortunate, I think, that the US has such an awful history in terms of unions. There are far more nuances than discussions on HN make it seem, and virtually nobody looses if employees have strong protections against their employers.

[einpoklum]

> I don't want to be "equalized".

You already are - by your employer. Mostly equalized at the absolute bottom of every situation where you disagree with your superiors or need to rely on the company for something.

> I'm happy to negotiate my own terms.

And your employer is even happier for you to believe you are actually negotiating your own terms.

> In my experience the union leaders negotiate better terms for themselves than for the people they represent.

That is certainly a potential problem. But think about the distribution of status, benefits and compensation of owners, managers, and employees - that's even more extreme, and prevalent, than misdeeds by union leaders.

This sounds like a bit of a "democracy can have corruption so let's support the monarchy" kind of an argument.

> The company prefers to have a good "shepherd" for the flock - the union leader.

What companies prefer is to shepherd the flock themselves. Failing that, getting a collaborative shepherd. The challenge in unionization is disrupting the shepherding and allowing for conscious collective reflection and action.

> in France, Germany, Italy where the unions are strong, but the Bay Area, London, New York where unions are not really a thing.

The US is the center of the major world empire right now, and is not really comparable with most other places. However, even if you took the US - it's pretty much a hellscape, socially. Large tech companies are swimming in their ill-gotten gains while a huge number of people are homeless, many can only access contaminated water, students are in massive debt, infrastructure is in poor repair, public facilities and systems are under-developed...

----

[StefanBatory]

Exactly this. Union members, to an fair extent, are leeching on the back of other, productive employees.

[StefanBatory]

Labor unions are deeply corrupt. They serve the employer.

At my dad job their leaders of unions are literally paid as "leaders" xd No conflict of interest and the fact they always get so well with CEO and never with workers is not suspicious.

[eikenberry]

IMO the problem with unions is that they are still attached to a specific employer. I think a guild like structure would be better, where the guild would help you find employment along with improved terms.

[DonsDiscountGas]

It's why we need UBI and (in the US) universal healthcare, IMHO. there's a lot that's great about a dynamic and flexible economy, as long as it works for the people at large.

[cnotv]

It's 100% the same also with labor unions. The company has a deficit and has to lay off. You can give up on that if it is the same in Europe.