[mjr00]

> Tech workers are fungible while actors or athletes are not though

Strongly disagree with this, and I'm in 'tech management' now so I'm not saying this out of self-preservation.

Tech workers are similar to athletes in skill disparity IMO. A handful of superstars makes a massive difference. Look at those superstar AI developers who are allegedly getting 8 or 9 figure compensation from Meta etc. They're still technically "just" tech workers.

[satvikpendem]

Those 8 and 9 figure employees are the exception that proves the rule, as I am talking about the vast majority of tech employees who largely fall within the middle of the normal curve. Athletes as well are far fewer in number and simply cost less overall (less than 2000 in the entire NFL).

[mjr00]

> Those 8 and 9 figure employees are the exception that proves the rule

??? This doesn't make any sense. There's a hell of a lot more background actors, which you can call fungible, than there are Tom Cruises, but they're all covered by SAG-AFTRA. "Tech workers are fungible except for the ones that aren't" is tautological and doesn't support your argument.

[satvikpendem]

Sure it does. I'm talking about the majority of tech employees who are fungible while you for some reason are talking about the few that aren't, I'm not sure why they're relevant to this debate. I'm sure there are some very rich tradespeople but they have unions too for the regular worker. And as I said, it's more appropriate to treat tech unions like blue collar unions over specialized unions like actor or athlete ones. And if we do so, wages will be depressed.

[mjr00]

> Sure it does. I'm talking about the majority of tech employees who are fungible while you for some reason are talking about the few that aren't, I'm not sure why they're relevant to this debate.

Because I gave examples of unions which contain and are beneficial to high wage earners, and you dismissed them as irrelevant because tech employees are "fungible" except for the ones who aren't. Except those unions also contain far more "fungible" employees (background actors, backups, practice squad players) than they do star actors and quarterbacks, so it's a close comparison. There's currently 2,314 members of the NFL Players' Association but only 32 starting NFL quarterbacks.

Fungible means all employees are the same, that's the exact definition of fungibility. If certain employees have a measurably different impact on delivery, that is the definition of non-fungible. Just because most employees deliver near-average performance does not change this--it's tautologically expected!

[satvikpendem]

Nit picked, I suppose. Regardless of the word I used (maybe it's my mistake), my overall point does not change that tech unions will depress wages for high earners.

[mjr00]

> Nit picked, I suppose.

It's not a nitpick. There are some industries and jobs where employees truly are fungible. There's never going to be a security guard or Starbucks barista or janitor who does such an amazing job that they're able to negotiate significantly higher wages than their peers because of how much value they deliver. "Software developer" is not that kind of job, at least not right now.

> my overall point does not change that tech unions will depress wages for high earners.

And this goes back to the original point which is that unions only depress wages for high earners if the unions negotiate terms which depress wages for high earners. As has been pointed out in the thread there are many existing examples of unions for collections of high-earning employees.

[awesome_dude]

Athletes have a far bigger curve than you're aware of

[satvikpendem]

And generally most make little money, while sometimes it's a net negative for them to participate and compete in their sport.

https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/your-money-matters/going-for-go...