[autoexec]

> In the past, software engineers had a lot more agency than they do now, because nowadays the supply/demand ratio no longer favors software engineers, and as a result we have weaker negotiation power. Now we're more afraid of being fired and not being able to find a job, and managers aren't afraid of us quitting and not being able to replace us.

This sounds like a job for unions. It would have been advantageous to have formed and joined them before so much power was lost, but it's easy to be shortsighted when you're happy and comfortable with where you are and ignore that the situation could easily change, if not for you then for the next generation. Companies are happy to leverage every advantage they have against workers. Unions can be a powerful tool for workers, one that could help solve a lot of problems current and future, and it's sitting there just waiting to be used.

[SR2Z]

I am 100% sure that I make more than the average person in my role and level (tbh more money than I even thought I'd make in my life).

Why should I support a union? If the company couldn't fire me they wouldn't pay me so much. If a union advocates for everyone else, it's gonna be harder for me to get paid so much.

I don't really mind the constant layoffs; I think that those are horrific for morale and lead to disengaged engineers and the bare minimum of work being done, but that's true with or without the union. I certainly look at the lack of opportunities for career growth and the constant threat of layoffs as a good reason to take it easy.

What I think the union would be AMAZING at is the same thing unions are always amazing at in this country: stopping anyone from being fired and ending merit based promotions.

[autoexec]

> I am 100% sure that I make more than the average person in my role and level..Why should I support a union?

Even if that is true today, it may not be tomorrow. The corporation you work for is not your friend. They aren't looking out for your best interests. They are worried only about themselves. You should do the same and unions give you more power in negotiations with your employer and more protections against them as well.

> If the company couldn't fire me they wouldn't pay me so much.

That's a lie. First, because unions don't make it impossible to fire employees, but also because the ability to fire you for arbitrary (or even illegal) reasons does not force companies to pay you more. Removing that ability won't force them to pay you less.

> the same thing unions are always amazing at in this country: stopping anyone from being fired and ending merit based promotions.

Employers spend billions every singe year trying to con workers into thinking that unions are evil and wow, you really fell for their bullshit. Those are some commonly repeated lies, but they don't stand up to scrutiny. They're just supposed to trick people who don't bother questioning what they're told.

At most, all a union does is force a company to actually document the disciplinary problems and give an employee an opportunity to correct their behavior before they fire them. This makes it more difficult for companies to fire employees for reasons that have nothing to do with their performance and for any reasons that the company isn't comfortable documenting (often because those reasons would be embarrassing or illegal).

There's nothing preventing merit based promotions either. How promotions are handled will be determined in part by the contract between the company and the union and it's the workers who decide what the union asks for in their contract. If you want a contract with the employer that allows for merit based promotions you can have one. There are zero rules against that, but you should expect the union will require the terms to be well defined. Employers like to say they want "merit based promotions" when what they actually want is total control over promotions for whatever arbitrary reasons they decide to call "merit based".

A union contract probably should require that an employer is able to justify the reasons for their merit based promotions using objective measures of productivity/performance that apply equally to all employees. That means the people who work the hardest and do the best work will be promoted even when the boss would rather promote their favored nepo baby, or when the boss would rather not promote someone who actually earned it. Even then, that'd all be according to the contract. If your union doesn't care about fair merit based promotion and wants the boss to be able to deny or award them to anyone at any time without justification that's fine too.

Unions are organizations made up of people. There are good ones and bad ones. Workers get from them what they put into them. There are plenty of horror stories that get heavily promoted to scare you. Some of them are even true stories. Ultimately though, employees have the power to change or replace their union to make sure their needs are being met. You may still think that unions aren't for you, and that's okay. It's still probably worth looking into them a little though because you've been being lied to by people who want to keep you ignorant and misinformed on the subject. Those people are afraid of what unions are capable of and that isn't because they're worried about your career and want to protect you. Once you understand what unions actually are, and aren't, you can make up your own mind.

[SR2Z]

> That's a lie. First, because unions don't make it impossible to fire employees, but also because the ability to fire you for arbitrary (or even illegal) reasons does not force companies to pay you more. Removing that ability won't force them to pay you less.

Why do Europeans get paid so much less than Americans for the same jobs? Like it or not, at-will employment makes it much easier to justify hiring a new employee because they can just be let go if things don't work out. I'm not even talking about the employee not working out, forcing companies into continuing employment can be disastrous if the market shifts (e.g. what's happening at VW right now).

A requirement to provide x months of notice with y% chance of success is a quantifiable risk with a dollar price tag. It is definitely brought up when companies decide to expand in places where labor law is different, and it scales directly with how much the employee is being paid.

> There's nothing preventing merit based promotions either.

So why do most of our unions have time-in-grade promotions? Merit-based promo is quite rare in unionized jobs in the US. There are obvious incentives that push unions away from merit-based promo, and you're being intentionally obtuse if you refuse to see them.

> Even if that is true today, it may not be tomorrow. The corporation you work for is not your friend. They aren't looking out for your best interests. They are worried only about themselves. You should do the same and unions give you more power in negotiations with your employer and more protections against them as well.

You're right, that might not always be true. Every time that's happened I've just changed jobs for a raise and sometimes also a promotion.

That's my defense against shitty companies: I can just leave. If people were MORE WILLING TO LEAVE when things got bad, companies would get away with much less and make more efforts to retain employees.

I get the argument when we're talking about working-class people who might have a lot of difficulty finding a new job, but IN SOFTWARE? Demand for qualified engineers is insane! I haven't bothered to apply to a job since college, I've just set LinkedIn to "open to work" and replied to a few recruiters. FFS, even when I've been voluntarily unemployed, just holding onto my stock was enough to see my net worth INCREASE.

> It's still probably worth looking into them a little though because you've been being lied to by people who want to keep you ignorant and misinformed on the subject. Those people are afraid of what unions are capable of and that isn't because they're worried about your career and want to protect you.

I don't understand why pro-union folks always assume that skeptics think their boss is their dad. Rest assured, I am very cynical about my job and corporate politics.

Look man, I'm fully aware of what unions are and what they do. They're a great deal for some union members! They're also why American ports are the least efficient in the developed world, they're a big part of why RICO exists, and I'm already doing an in-demand well-compensated job. My peers and I are all going to be able to retire at 40, barring a major war or other disaster. If I get laid off, I get 90 days of COBRA and then Medi-Cal, and odds are I won't even need the Medi-Cal.

What exactly is a union going to get me that I can't get myself?

[autoexec]

> Why do Europeans get paid so much less than Americans

There are lots of reasons though I doubt one of them is that it costs companies a fortune to document disciplinary actions before they fire someone (Is that even a law everywhere in Europe?) and it's probably more related to normal reasons like the cost of living is much much lower since employees already have a lot of their expenses covered entirely or substantially lowered like healthcare, child care, higher education, and transportation. They also work much less than Americans. They get tons of time off for vacations and for their families. All that extra income isn't putting the United States at the top of quality of life/happiness indexes. Even with lower numbers on their paychecks many Europeans are getting everything they need, and enough of whatever it is they want, to live healthy, happy, satisfied lives.

Again, unions don't force companies to keep people employed, but agreements companies make with unions can set certain terms. VW agreed to no compulsory layoffs until 2030. They can still fire workers who don't do their job. They can still eliminate tens of thousands of positions. They've been doing exactly that and they plan to do much more (https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/26/volkswagen-vw-job-cuts-autos...). If VW has mismanaged the company by accepting a labor agreement that they couldn't live up to that's not really the union's fault. Sure, companies could make a lot more money if they didn't have to treat their employees fairly. They could make even more money if they had slaves. That doesn't mean that workers should happily let them. Instead workers and companies have to find something they can both agree to. Unions just let workers do that on a more level playing field.

> So why do most of our unions have time-in-grade promotions? Merit-based promo is quite rare in unionized jobs in the US.

If that's true it's either because workers in those unions feel that is important to them or because they couldn't get an agreement with the company that offered them something better. Workers can ask for anything they want, but the company has to agree to those terms. Many workers feel that their time and experience at a company makes them more valuable and that should be reflected in pay and promotions. They may prefer to work under people who actually understand the work they do because they did it themselves. Workers may not like it when people who have no idea what they are doing get promoted into high paying positions while highly skilled workers with many years of experience can't advance. That said, unions don't have a problem with merit-based promotion when it's transparent and fairly applied to everyone. If companies look at that requirement and say "never mind, that defeats the whole point" then it's the companies who are the problem and not the unions.

> I get the argument when we're talking about working-class people who might have a lot of difficulty finding a new job, but IN SOFTWARE? Demand for qualified engineers is insane...What exactly is a union going to get me that I can't get myself?

there are plenty of qualified people right here on this website who have been looking for work and talking about how difficult it is to find a decent job. If you're one a very very very very small number of people in the world who will somehow never have any problem finding work, that's great for you. The vast majority of the people on Earth aren't in that position. Not even the ones who write software for a living.

Even if you are 100% certain that you can always find a higher paying job the moment you decide to quit your current job (in which case, why haven't you quit the one you have already?) there are all kinds of things a union could still do for you. While I myself am not convinced that AI is going to put all programmers out of a job, companies are forcing it on workers. A union could give you a seat at the table when it comes to decisions surrounding how the company uses AI.

This post was all about software companies using dark patterns and unethical practices. A strong union could help prevent companies from making employees do things that are unethical. A union could give programmers the ability to stop software from being released when it has bugs that would cause security/privacy issues. A union could help ensure that software is better written. Unions could also give you benefits you don't have now or improve the ones you have. A union could help to give you more time to spend working on what you care about instead of working for what your boss wants.