Why don’t engineers have unions?
Posted by NoobInvestor86@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 684 comments
I know historically our jobs have been very lucrative and our working conditions have been pretty good especially the last 10 years or so. However, given the recent turn with how companies are treating engineers now (mass layoffs, offshoring, low ball offers, forcing quitting with in-office policies, etc) im not sure why we dont have unions. I’ve heard of practices from companies that post fake jobs with a posted salary to see how many people apply. Then they repost the same listing with a lower salary to see if people still apply. Rinse and repeat to get an idea of how low they can get offers.
Now you can say these practices are all fair game for companies. Sure. But on our end as engineers/workers so is unionizing.
CraziFuzzy@reddit
Anyone with a marketable skill doesn't need a union - you vote with your feet.
NoobInvestor86@reddit (OP)
Possibly the worst take out of all of the comments
official_business@reddit
Because we're cranky and disagreeable. In order for a union to be effective we'd have to agree on something and we can't have that.
Seriously though, I've never cared about it because I can't be bothered to try and form one. I want to do engineering not politics.
Secondly, I guess I'm just used to job hopping. If I've ever had a problem with my pay or my management or something else I just bounce. The market doesn't really punish you for job hopping.
The above tactic has always worked and is less effort than trying to get collective action happening.
ViceCrimesOrgasm@reddit
As a group SWEs are horrible people. You’ve essentially described yourself as a nihilist who has zero empathy or personal integrity.
I’m going to guess concepts like climate change piss you off and the idea of having to do something you don’t want to do is enough to make you throw a tantrum and storm out (to your next hop)
official_business@reddit
lmao. I'm going to guess you're the guy that likes to jump to conclusions and rant incoherently with incomplete information.
I don't have to work for a company if I don't want to.
ViceCrimesOrgasm@reddit
Not really. There’s no such thing as complete information. You seem like a very high performer, and you are not going to have to deal with the indignities that average people face. And that’s fine, but few people can be where you are, and that’s also ok, but they shouldn’t be taken advantage of by companies just because they lack a talent that will shield them from harm. It’s also okay to be a top performer and have empathy for normal people and stand up for them instead of saying not my problem I’m outta here.
jdjfjakb@reddit
Yeah until you get hit by a car and suffer brain damage and suddenly can’t do the coding challenges at the same speed you used to, and then suddenly it’ll strike you at the speed of stupid why unions are necessary
official_business@reddit
I guess?
I'm not against IT unions existing. I'm just not going to start one. Running a union is not my interest or skillset.
cyclicsquare@reddit
Unions by definition are for the common denominator, the average worker who is undifferentiated but otherwise a hard worker. When your contribution is individually insignificant but your class as a whole is indispensable, a union can advocate effectively for you.
That doesn’t really apply to engineers. Individual skills and experience are why you’re employable. Either you can demonstrate your usefulness pretty easily or you’re not as important as you think.
NoobInvestor86@reddit (OP)
Not sure if youre working in the US market but at this point it’s not about “usefulness”. A lot of cost-cutting measures have led to a lot of talented engineers being laid off while companies make record profits all the while leaving the rest of us who were fortunate enough to avoid the layoffs stressed, overworked and tired.
Slow-Entertainment20@reddit
The good engineers laid off will find jobs.
ViceCrimesOrgasm@reddit
Good? How do you define good? I think you mean to say great ones will find jobs, and everyone else can starve while these great engineers make an obscene amount of profit to be split up among depraved nihilists at the top. Good is not going to help you, if you’re good you still need luck. There are tens of thousands of people who are perfectly fine at their jobs that are now cast out. Fighting for a very small slice of jobs they can find to apply for.
On this earth there exists no meritocracy and if there did it would be a disaster. You seem to imply we’re already living in one, and if you do think that my guess is you’re in a bubble that you lack the inclination to see out of. Because you got yours, and you are of merit, and everyone who is suffering is suffering because they deserve it.
This whole thread is full of people who sound like they’re good at their jobs but have nothing going on upstairs in any other category.
Rarely, if ever, is the best required. Humans are terrible at everything. Even the things we think we’re good at. Deserve has nothing to do with it and never has.
Slow-Entertainment20@reddit
I think you’re vastly overestimating great. I said good on purpose. I’ve performed hundreds of interviews picking good and bad candidates. Good engineers are capable of completing most projects. Great engineers are not requires. Good engineers WILL find jobs.
ViceCrimesOrgasm@reddit
Up until about 5 years ago I’d have agreed with you. I never had any issues getting work, I’ve been nominate for nationally know awards, but that all evaporated. And I’m not alone right now, it’s an epidemic. So maybe in the past, maybe in the future, but right now only some good engineers are getting jobs. Being good is like 5% of getting a job currently.
turningsteel@reddit
Yes for less pay as businesses seek to drive costs (for example, engineering salaries) down.
BarkMycena@reddit
For less pay? How much less? I guess the poor downtrodden programmers might have to settle for just 4x the median pay of American workers instead of 5x
DigmonsDrill@reddit
While you're right about us being highly paid, the good argument for a union is that is can protect our higher pay, and even get it higher.
studmoobs@reddit
I think it's pretty naive to assume union jobs will keep the salaries high. If it does it'll also keep them stagnant for a long period of time
DigmonsDrill@reddit
Can you describe the process in which the union stops AI?
BoysenberryLanky6112@reddit
What do record profits have anything to do with layoffs? My guess is you've never looked at a corporate balance sheet before, or been involved in budget decisions. You have no clue how anything works, and your "solutions" would make the problem worse.
cyclicsquare@reddit
Not US but myopic capitalism affects everyone. As an individually valuable employee it’s up to you to advocate for yourself and set boundaries.
Don’t work overtime because they laid off the support. If you do you’re just validating their decision. Tell them they’re wrong. Let the products fail and fall behind schedule. Jump ship if management refuses to change course. If you’re laid off but talented it will be a minor inconvenience for you.
Companies that consistently prioritise short-term goals won’t survive. No point worrying about them. Find or make somewhere better.
BarkMycena@reddit
I like capitalism, do you think socialism is paying programmers hundreds of thousands of dollars? People didn't flee the USSR because the pay was too good
SoulSkrix@reddit
I am in a union for IT Professionals, it exists.. I used them when I had a contract I accepted pulled from under me. It was great.
pretty_meta@reddit
What is the actual point of your comment?
Do you believe that your second sentence, in itself, is an argument in favor of forming unions?
Where do you actually address the actual written argument that software engineers can protect their employment status by being demonstrable value-generators?
doinnuffin@reddit
Oh they can stay employed, but they're gonna get paid less
Populism-destroys@reddit
Sorry but 98% of SWEs can't even code, dude. We're a trash profession. There's a reason you're getting downvoted.
geeeffwhy@reddit
counterpoint: professional sports unions, SAG, WGA, etc.
it’s just about negotiating power for people who work for a wage. the particulars of how that union is set up can vary significantly.
TossZergImba@reddit
Those professional sports unions to counter the fact that there is basically only one employer (each league is a cartel, not real competitors) for them so there is no real competition.
In sports where there are many employers that actually compete with each other for real, like professional soccer, the unions are basically useless.
Thegoodlife93@reddit
Exactly. And SAG benefits the no name low level actors. The people who play the waiter with two lines in one episode who could be recast in an hour and no one would really care. And I think it's good that is exists and helps those people. But Brad Pitt and Robert Downey Jr and really any well known and in demand actor don't gain anything from union membership.
dfltr@reddit
Right? It’s weird how even professions that employ the absolute best of the best still rely on collective bargaining to ensure the health and prosperity of those high performers.
The industries built up around those exceptional people would shamelessly exploit them just the same as farm laborers if the unions weren’t around (see: major league farm teams, college athletes, “starving artist” actors who haven’t got SAG rights yet, etc.)
ok_otter@reddit
This was well written, but I’m not sure I agree.
Unions need not be for undifferentiated workers; they’re a way for employees to collectively address the imbalance of power that comes from a business being a single powerful entity, while its workers are not. By organizing, workers can negotiate for a fairer share of the surplus value they create.
Like businesses, unions vary widely in structure and how they distribute value, so their impact depends heavily on implementation.
For engineers, unions could address gaps that businesses won’t, like investing in upskilling workers even when it doesn’t directly align with short-term business goals. This could benefit the industry as a whole by fostering a stronger, more versatile workforce. And need not come at the expense of more talented engineers - aside from the increased competition.
Let me know your thoughts :)
Kind_Somewhere2993@reddit
This is the best answer. Been at unionized tech companies before - it rewards mediocrity to the point of pushing all the high performers out the door.
edgmnt_net@reddit
I generally agree, but frankly I have doubts about the usefulness of unions even for less skilled work. What often happens is even in that class there's variability of conditions and competition, some places will be less relaxed than others, some workers will seek more demanding jobs. In some places people fight over who gets to do paid overtime.
Unions are more useful, let's say, for certain industries where there's heavy politics or a monopoly. Think people working for the government or public utilities, who have few or no alternatives.
Otherwise, true competition is a better antidote against abuse than any union can be. It is quite unfortunate that policies also push towards large oligopolies throughout the economy, but that needs to be addressed on its own. We need more competition and lower entry barriers.
FaceRekr4309@reddit
The organization I consult for has developers, and they may join the union if they wish. It is not a union specialized for IT workers, but the more for anyone in the industry the organization does business in.
How many are union members? Almost none because they cannot manage to hire FTE. Due to the union contract and pay structure, they have to pay FTEs according to the contract which places seniority over area of expertise. The pay for IT FTEs is 50-75% market rate. Almost everyone who works in IT, at least on the development side, is a consultant. Consultant pay is market rate.
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
The seniority issue gets overlooked a lot when discussing hypothetical unions. Most people imagine themselves being on the good end of the seniority spectrum when they imagine a union.
The challenge is that any structure that rewards seniority and simultaneously gives the most protections to those with seniority means that senior people are staying in those jobs for a very long time, leaving little opportunity for new people to move up the seniority ladder. You basically wait for the old people to retire, which can take decades because they’re not in a rush to give up their positions with seniority.
This is a well-known fact of life for many unionized jobs in other industries. If you read subreddits about dockworkers union, for example, they’ll all tell you that the job and benefits are amazing once you can get on the seniority ladder and work your way up, but the downside is you have to sacrifice for many years with low pay and bad work before you even get a chance to join and start moving up. In that specific case, it’s also becoming a bit of a racket where the only people getting their foot in the door have connections to union members with seniority who can pull the right strings, so a lot of people without those connections bail out after a couple years of trying.
The seniority issue is overlooked in most union posts I read on Reddit programming subs. Everyone just assumes the union will form around them as-is and it’s all upside, but they don’t consider that a unionized company would become harder to get into, harder to move up, harder to get promotions, and generally harder for anyone who isn’t already at the top of the seniority ladder.
Like in the parent commenter’s situation, most people would take one look at the seniority situation (significantly lower pay for many years, perhaps decades, until you get seniority) and opt back for non-union work so they can get market rate pay right now without having to wait for seniority.
hobbycollector@reddit
Airline pilots are somewhat similar to developers in professionalism and so on. Seniority is everything. It also locks you in to one employer for life.
ltdanimal@reddit
How are pilots similar to devs? Seems like unions work for jobs that are very structured and "even". Pilots have x number of flights and certain planes and have set trainings to take on aircrafts that don't change for 20 years.
NDSU@reddit
It's not a good example. A good pilot can't fly faster or more efficiently than a bad one. All a good pilot can do is not fuck up, and fucking up is incredibly rare
All an airline can look at is how long a pilot has gone in their career without having a fuck up, which is seniority
NDSU@reddit
Pilots aren't a good example to use considering even non-union jobs are based on seniority
For pilots of the same certification levels, the only differentiators are seniority and not fucking up. Considering the vast majority of pilots don't have a fuck up on their record, they have to use seniority
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
The seniority problem is real. You have to sacrifice a lot of early career earning potential and career mobility to get that late career seniority.
Airline pilots have some major differences from software devs, though: An airline pilot physically has to be in the airplane. They have to have a lot of logged flight hours and licenses. They have leverage for that reason.
Software developers can be outsourced or offshored by anyone who can do the job at a moments’ notice. Companies can, and will, use other developers to backfill while unionized employees are on strike and the business will continue. They can’t do that with pilots.
Barsonax@reddit
Lol I would like to see that. No way business will go on as usual when you lose an entire team and you replace them all with different devs. It takes alot of time to get into the domain and the code, even with AI. Sure they will figure it out but it will seriously affect productivity for quite a while.
PoopsCodeAllTheTime@reddit
> No way business will go on as usual when you lose an entire team and you replace them all with different devs
have you heard of lay-offs? lol
Barsonax@reddit
They still affect productivity but if it's In an area where it's not important for the company it doesn't matter, it's actually an optimization because those ppl can then do work that matters more.
Not sure what your point is here.
PoopsCodeAllTheTime@reddit
My point is that you said this:
> No way business will go on as usual when you lose an entire team and you replace them all with different devs
And I believe you are wrong. Business does go as usual when an entire team is replaced or removed. The stock market even rewards these practices. Your argument is that:
> They still affect productivity
You value productivity. I think your mistake is to assume that productivity is the best for the business. Sometimes, the business makes more money by cutting costs with lower productivity.
My point is that yes, there is a large chance that business does go on as usual when entire teams are cut and replaced. The businesses that care about productivity are the exception to the rule in this industry IME.
Barsonax@reddit
/> And I believe you are wrong. Business does go as usual when an entire team is replaced or removed. The stock market even rewards these practices. Your argument is that:
You basically agree that the business is affected if a team is replaced but are arguing it might not matter for the business as a whole. I agree with this. You could remove whole departments from a company and it might not matter for the company. Ofcourse the products that that department offered will not be available anymore and in that sense business does not go as usual but maybe they were selling at a loss anyway.
/> You value productivity. I think your mistake is to assume that productivity is the best for the business. Sometimes, the business makes more money by lowering productivity and cutting costs.
Well I didn't said that, you're assuming here that this is my opinion. What matters in the end is how much value that productivity gives to the business. If you are very productive on a product nobody buys then better stop working on it. No fancy tooling, ci/cd, tests etc will save you from this.
Wooden-Glove-2384@reddit
oh no!
do you mean a union is NOT the solution to all our problems?
wow.
incompetent people exploiting the system and reaping the same rewards as those who are not incompetent!?
say it ain't so!
the pro union guys are gonna eat you alive if they see this.
Esseratecades@reddit
If I'm understanding this correctly, somehow the union has decided that only X number of people can be at a certain level at the same time.
My understanding is also that unions get there funds through a combination of dues(which scale with membership) and contracts/agreements(which scale with membership and general success). So I'm kind of having trouble understanding why a union with enough people capable of skills at a certain level of expertise must limit the number of spaces to be unreasonably low.
Pretty-Collection728@reddit
There's a lot of incorrect information in here but the union isn't limiting anyone's pay, the company is. They are trying to incentive people to not join the union and since it's a "right to work" state they leverage the pay disparity and force engineers to be contractors to get market rate.
I am a software developer in a union and I make above market rate, we have no seniority based pay at all. We get merit based raises, promotions and bonuses.
Everyone I know that is a software developer in a union is in a similar position.
FaceRekr4309@reddit
No there isn’t. You don’t know what you are talking about. What’s true where you work is not necessarily what is true where I work. The union literally limits pay because they require pay scale parity; Developer Level 1 must have parity with Widget Turner 1. You’re probably having a hard time understanding because this is a dumb system and it makes no sense to anyone.
And to be clear, I am not anti-union whatsoever. I am for unions. It’s just that this particular arrangement doesn’t work. I actually expect that if we suddenly could not bring in consultants, they would figure out the compensation problem because they would have nothing to fall back on. Without developers on staff at this organization, we will just say that commerce in the USA would be affected significantly. When one particular system has an outage for any period of time longer than a few minutes, we expect and often do receive a call from the governor’s office asking us WTF is going on.
Pretty-Collection728@reddit
Then what your company is doing is illegal.
This is an extremely unusual set up, please link me to the union contract that details this. I have never heard of anything like this existing.
Even if this is the set up it's not what the union wants, it's what the bosses have forced onto the union to prevent them from growing.
FaceRekr4309@reddit
Sorry, I will not be doing that. As I am a consultant and can be terminated at will, I’d prefer not to reveal whom I work for, especially considering I am not necessarily painting them in a positive light.
Pretty-Collection728@reddit
Well either way I would direct your anger at the bosses not the workers. The union always gets fucked over in contract negotiations and the bosses probably forced some weird setup onto the union.
FaceRekr4309@reddit
No anger at the workers here. I didn’t mean to imply that I am.
Pretty-Collection728@reddit
Sorry if I came off like that but I am in a union and there's always a ton of anti union disinformation thrown around usually by bad actors or people just ignorant about unions.
szescio@reddit
Sounds wild that majoritu of devs would be consultants. Do you have sources on this?
MistryMachine3@reddit
To be clear he means at that company.
FaceRekr4309@reddit
Me? I've been consulting for this company full time for ten years. I am well informed.
szescio@reddit
Yeah me too for about 6 years, and I trust you are well informed but I'm not sure that's a reliable source (please dont take it personally :)
I know more in-house devs that consultants, and most of our customers have a few consultants mixed into in-house teams
_littlerocketman@reddit
If you insist on more sources, I currently consult for an organisation that has 2 people in house, who are not even devs.
Then there are 30+ consulting devs.
I have to say your attitude is rather strange. You want more sources, but the only source you have for your own point of view is your own situation?
szescio@reddit
Litetally the opposite, I mean your only source for a global situation is your own experience, not meant to critique.
I think its critical thinking 101 to not take a single persons opinion as universal truth. Its an interesting development and Im trying to find sources, here in north europe consulting has had a hard time recently
WrongAssumption@reddit
He never remarked on the global situation. He was specifically commenting on his local situation. Which you asked him to source, which is weird.
srednuos@reddit
OP just simply stated his own experience; no mention about the general trend. However you're questioning his own experience. Isn't that weird?
OneVillage3331@reddit
I mean, it’s still anecdotal. And we’re on a forum that skews demographically. I wouldn’t take anything posted here for fact just based on that alone.
FaceRekr4309@reddit
OK? I’m not taking it personally it’s just a weird thing to be skeptical about. Believe me or not, it is inconsequential.
szescio@reddit
I don't understand. "My customer is using visual basic for dev, for 10 years, that means that vb6 is the new de facto language". See the fallacy?
FaceRekr4309@reddit
No, I don’t. I am only talking about this one specific company. I am not making sweeping generalizations about the entire IT industry.
Significant_Mouse_25@reddit
The guy was talking about hide organization not the whole world and now you are talking passed each other.
thekwoka@reddit
They mean the company they work with
sleepyguy007@reddit
because historically the good engineers can just get another job and would get paid what they were worth and its kept people pretty well taken care of if you could survive. the bad engineers just exit the industry or never make it.
I"ve been at this for 20+ years and the only thing a union would do is drag good performers wages down to make up for carrying a bunch of baggage engineers, and prop up the people who continually get let go in workforce reductions. ANd after 20 years of having linkedin yes its almost always the same people at the lower quartiles performance wise. There is no way the guys actually producing would stand in solidarity to save those people , theres zero upside in unions for like at least half the industry the rest just want unions
ok_otter@reddit
Unions don’t necessarily need to centered around protecting under performers. That is a common anti pattern but not constitutive of what it means to be a union.
Unions are a way for employees to collectively address the imbalance of power that comes from a business being a single powerful entity, while its workers are not. By organizing, workers can negotiate for a fairer share of the surplus value they create.
Like businesses, unions vary widely in structure and how they distribute value, so their impact depends heavily on implementation.
For engineers, unions could address gaps that businesses won’t, like investing in upskilling workers even when it doesn’t directly align with short-term business goals. This could benefit the industry as a whole by fostering a stronger, more versatile workforce. And need not come at the expense of more talented engineers - aside from the increased competition.
OrcaFlux@reddit
> Unions are a way for employees to collectively address the imbalance of power that comes from a business being a single powerful entity, while its workers are not.
It's a way, but not the only way. You don't actually need a union to address the imbalance.
ok_otter@reddit
Interesting that you were upvoted and I was downvoted, likely by the same people, given our comments are consistent.
I never said unions are THE way. I believe they are one among many possible routes of action whose suitability depends on context. My argument was against ruling out unions altogether and no counter argument was given.
levesduzw@reddit
What else comes close to representatives negotiating with HR, under the threat of potential labor action such as a strike, that is protected by law?
kynrai@reddit
Absolutely!!
conhair@reddit
I think AI is going to be a real awakening for people with the "if I'm a good engineer I'm safe" mentality. I think it's inevitable that there will be large workforce reductions & offshoring across the Software Engineering field leading to depressed wages, and more generally, reduced job opportunity. Anti-union attitudes make this too easy for big tech companies to accomplish. In the end, nobody is safe from the endless drive for companies to maximize profits. The only way for workers to have any agency in the long term is collective bargaining.
sleepyguy007@reddit
ok well i guess the bar for "good engineer" moves up a bit if AI really doe s anything for anyone, which i'm not convinced of.
If AI does do something then ok new line.
if you fall under the useful line you fall under it. its been this way. AI I can't say has done anything at the mega cap tech place I work for. But even if it did, there are hordes of "well i am going to learn bootcamp python in 3 months and should have a six figure job any day now" people in the field now. Theres honestly tons of "i've been working for 10 years adn people who are actually good have carried me, but i didnt get fired because i'm personable and the times were good" people too. Those groups are dying very fast, and its happened many times before
raynorelyp@reddit
That was true. It’s not anymore. What’s going on lately I’ve never seen in my whole career. To say the field is imploding is an understatement
angrathias@reddit
What you’re witnessing for the first time in a long time, probably since the Dotcom bust, is a massive influx of people into IT.
sleepyguy007@reddit
I was in college at the time, but the last 3-4 years, is pretty similar to 1997-2002 ish, so its not unprecedented.
ATotalCassegrain@reddit
The amount of people joining and right off the bat making ridiculous salaries and job hopping every few months for ridiculous salary increases is absolutely unprecedented.
The field is just coming down from the stratosphere finally.
geeeffwhy@reddit
i see how that argument makes sense if the only model for collective bargaining is a machinist or stevedores union.
luckily, thats not the only model. there are plenty of examples of successful unions for high skill, high pay work that is very talent-driven, like airline pilots, writers and actors, professional athletes, etc.
there’s always room for negotiation about compensation and working conditions. bargaining collectively is a proven strategy for all kinds of workers.
pwnasaurus11@reddit
I couldn't agree more.
ninetofivedev@reddit
Unions really only form because workers feel the need to unionize.
Most software engineers don't actually want to unionize. That's it. It's really that simple.
Why don't they want to unionize? Probably because they don't realize the benefits, don't think it's worth it, worry that it may actually cause them to make less, etc, etc.
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
Unions are a tradeoff. I grew up watching family members work unions jobs and learned very early that it’s give-and-take, not a magical solution that improves everything. My cousin spent years working his way up the seniority ladder in his union for below-market pay, hoping that one day he could have enough seniority to enjoy the full benefits and protection of a union.
That’s the biggest thing missing from most union comments on Reddit: Everyone assumes that they’ll be at the top of the union and that their union will also be at the top of the market. In reality, if you join a union job you’re actually starting at the bottom and biding your time for seniority. It doesn’t matter if you’re a good performer or a bad performer as long as you don’t get fired. Just bide your time, hope you don’t get cut in layoffs (which still happen in union jobs, just according to seniority), and hope that one day in the future it pays off.
mattcrwi@reddit
seniority systems are not required if the union doesn't want it. I could see them being very beneficial in an Software engineering environment though. Women would greatly benefit and it would prevent people working 60 hours from getting promotions over people who work 40 hours. This is jsut off the top of my head.
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
This is the problem I referred to: People imagine unions as a pick-and-choose adventure where the union will only include rules that personally benefit them, but won’t include rules that work against them.
So the imagined union is no longer a tradeoff, it’s pure upside. They imagine none of the bad things will apply to their union, and none of the good things about being outside of a union will go away.
That’s why these conversations are always so futile on Reddit. Nobody wants to discuss the reality of unions, they just want to imagine a perfect union that benefits them without having to give anything up. It just doesn’t work that way.
mattcrwi@reddit
Fair points, reddit is very left. I think you're ignoring the decades long assault on unions that argue they are bad for employees when their sole goal is to benefit employees on average.
Yes, there is corruption in unions. There's more in corporations so don't give me that.
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
Unions can be great for some employees in the union.
That’s one of my points, though: Everyone assumes they will be on the right side of the union, the right side of the seniority ladder, and nothing in the union will ever hamper their progression in any way. That’s not what happens.
Pretty-Collection728@reddit
Why would a union ever include rules that work against them? They wouldn't, they are imposed by the bosses not the workers.
hardsoft@reddit
It's because engineering is an in demand job where individuals are generally better able to negotiate for themselves.
Unions work best for less in demand and less skilled labor that's more easily replaceable as a way to get better negotiating leverage.
OblongAndKneeless@reddit
I think one fear is that a group of engineers with notable skill differences would fall into the same pay scale. Good for ½, bad for ½
ninetofivedev@reddit
I think that is a fear, however the misconception is that skill difference equates to difference in pay. Obviously it can, but by and large, engineers who are underpaid (that don't work for FAANG, especially) are underpaid because they suck at negotiating.
dnbxna@reddit
nobody pays quite like the tech giants building ad and spyware
Zazz2403@reddit
I don't think it's that simple.
Unions took a huge hit in the 70s and 80s before software engineering was a big career choice. At will employment laws, union busting etc make new unions extremely difficult to turn and unions in general are nowhere near what they once were. Even industries that need unionization badly like restaurant workers have an extremely hard time getting anything started. Most industries today that are unionized are only still unionized because they historically have been for a while. Union busting is rampant, and extremely difficult to fight.
TumbleweedNo9714@reddit
Is this anything we can blame Reagan for? Any recommended readings? I'm curious how we ended up in this neoliberal hellscape
joshlemer@reddit
But even in Canada where unions are way way more powerful than in the US, and easy enough to start that many independent restaurants end up forming unions, even there Engineers don't generally work for unions.
OrcaFlux@reddit
Unions held me back, salary-wise.
ninetofivedev@reddit
etc, etc
ihmoguy@reddit
Depends on a country too. Unionized employees usualy were working at the place for most of their professional life.
Now in IT, when the job sucks you just search around. For 2-4 years tenure it doesn't make sense to really bother unionizing in a company.
However as we see now, industry and countr wide or even global union would bring benefits.
UntestedMethod@reddit
There are almost certainly plenty of engineers who would vehemently fight this due to already having salaries well above what any union would be able to negotiate.
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
Honestly, it would be juniors and new hires who suffered the most.
If a union formed and locked in people’s salaries as-is, they’d probably love it. Same salary, more protections.
But that’s where it ends. Future raises would have to be negotiated. New hires would be screwed on seniority. You could be the best, hardest working dev in the company and it doesn’t matter at all when it’s time for layoffs unless you have that seniority. Much harder to get seniority when Bob has been working here for 20 years more than you, even though he hasn’t kept up with the times and still writes code like it’s 2004. That’s union life.
HearingNo8617@reddit
Do unions necessarily get involved on matters of salary? Are there instances of unions that are more about discouraging companies from abusing replaceability (present or future)?
Like if the software union agreed not to make software that was measurably and predictably making society worse, companies can then be in a better position where the most profitable decisions are closer to the most humanity benefitting
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
Unions engage in “collective bargaining”. You give up much of your personal leverage in exchange for letting the union negotiate for you. This includes pay most of the time.
Replaceability is also a tradeoff because the union will almost always favor seniority. If layoffs have to happen, the union dictates that the oldest employees get to stay and the youngest must go.
Unions have limited leverage to dictate what the parent company works on. You have convince the union members to go on strike (unpaid) to force the parent company to not do something. So if you could convince all of your coworkers to join a union and then again convince them all to stop getting paid for an indefinite period of time then yes, a union could do what you’re proposing. You would discover that people care more about getting paychecks, though.
steve-7890@reddit
Totally agree.
Unions are a cost. You cheap in for people who will sit and think how to "take more" from the company. But software engineers don't need it. These are intelligent people who can fight for raises and can easily change jobs (well, not so easy in 2024/25, but still easier than other professions).
I heard about one company where a left-wing junior guy wanted to create a union to force the company to make the salaries more flat. He and several other people though that it's not just that IT architects/senior+ roles earn 5-7x juniors' salary. He was laughed out by other employees. If this union would succeed, senior people would leave the company, what would cause its collapse.
Unions and their claims made many companies go broke or out source work to other countries.
For anyone who is interested, read "The Goal" by Eliyahu M. Goldratt.
120000milespa@reddit
Assuming you mean a qualified engineer (as in a member of a Chartered Insitution) then….
Because they are generally highly employable. They dont need a brainless union rep to look after them.
dw444@reddit
You’ll see why by the time this thread gets 50 or 60 responses.
Forgot_Password_Dude@reddit
Why? Don't see it
dw444@reddit
Some galaxy brained takes from the replies on this thread:
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ghost_jamm@reddit
100%. I gotta say that the question “Why don’t we just unionize?” only sounds reasonable if you’ve never been part of a unionization effort. It is shocking how quickly people will turn on you and the entire atmosphere of your company will become toxic. You will think “2/3 of our employees signed unionization cards! We can’t lose!” and by the time your company is done spending millions of dollars to bring in a law firm specialized in union busting to hold captive audience meetings that scare the shit out of your coworkers, you’ll be lucky to get 40% voting yes on the final union vote.
MightBeRong@reddit
So the answer to "why don't we unionize" is "because companies hate it so much they've done everything in their power to scare us shitless about even the idea of a union."
Surely you're not actually saying "why don't we unionize" is an unreasonable question.
ghost_jamm@reddit
Absolutely not. I’m saying that I’ve done it and it’s extremely difficult, logistically, mentally and emotionally. We, as a country and a global society, need to crush the power of these tech oligarchs while we still have a chance. But it’s not nearly as simple as “Why don’t we just unionize?”, especially now with a deeply anti-labor NLRB coming into power. People should be aware of what they’re in for.
RobertKerans@reddit
Collective bargaining? Not on my watch! I'm a hardworking, talented, productive developer, unlike other developers who are bad, lazy good-for-nothings (I do find it a bit weird that lots other developers also seem to classify themselves the same way, like when the plumber comes round and guaranteed he'll complain about the job done by the previous pl BUT ANYWAY. I got here on pure talent, no luck involved , and I'm thankful every day that development is a pure meritocracy where I make money doing important things for people wh
No_you_don_t_@reddit
And here I was thinking luck means having the right eyeballs falling on the efforts that I had put and being in the right place and the right time which again has a bit to do with efforts I put. But I have an issue with lack of depth and self awareness when you say 'I got here by pure talent and no luck'. There is basically no human who is where they are without luck. People like Elon are lucky because the clowns who want to bring him down are pathetic people who do not believe in effort 'and' he is friends with people who can keep that kind away without troubling him in any way. Note the conjunction I used it's 'and' and not 'or'.
Regarding collective bargaining, I do have reservations myself given that my parents were bankers down south and there were a lot of negative sentiment from the unions to any privileges provided to them since they belong to a certain community, however, here is what started to change my views over the years I have been employed at corporations and accrued some experience in private sector with the current experience, I feel that corporations are here to do everything that makes them profitable no matter what. A health insurance company, though should probably release the sum of money on relevant health issues for the insurer after furnishing all the related documents fails or tries it's best not to do that, collecting proof is fine but when it goes beyond to purposely hide a few clauses and not provide the coverage booklets and stuff that we really need before making the decision to opt for that insurance, then you know that system is rigged.
The insurance industry is just an example, this happens and would happen across all the top largest cap companies in India and abroad that you never imagined to be corrupt. You and I have not experienced it purely due to the lack of sufficient exposure and also that we happened to never be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Remember luck will run out. What would really define us is what we would choose to do when people point a finger at us and laugh at our misfortune. That defines who you really are.
RobertKerans@reddit
It's a joke, based on a stereotype of engineers [that holds true in some cases].
Also
Yes, that's what the most common reason for chartering is, that's literally the entire point of having that legal distinction for the entities in those cases
I do take issue with this though:
What? It's because they don't believe in effort, got absolutely nothing at all to do with anything else, no sirree! Has absolutely nothing to do with his public actions
ImportantDoubt6434@reddit
Brilliant satire of these clowns, if they were so good they’d be self employed billionaires with how big their ego is holy shit.
HatesBeingThatGuy@reddit
My reasoning is seniority should not be rewarded for the sake of seniority. (Which is what a lot of unions do) Just because you have worked in a union for a long time does not mean you are worth more than the new guy. Just showing up is not how delivery focused intellectual work is evaluated and the fact that there is no good objective criteria for drawing that line, I think unions are a shit show for software engineering.
FeelingReplacement53@reddit
People don’t realize they can just write the things they want into their contract. Don’t want protections for poor performers? Don’t give it to them, put high standards in your contract that you and your employer agree on. Don’t want to all get paid the same for some reason? Itemize your specific licenses, education, seniority so they more experience means more pay if that really matters to you. You write your own contract and bargain together that’s the fucking point lol
Groove-Theory@reddit
The "fucks you gots mine" mentality with these people....
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
I don’t know, the “fuck you got mine” attitude exists in union jobs too, though. It’s just that in a union, it’s ordered by seniority.
Layoffs still happen in union jobs, contrary to the way some people are talking about it here. It’s just that in a union job, the jobs are cut by seniority. The oldest guys are safest. Youngest guys and new hires are screwed.
Bakoro@reddit
Seniority is a boogeyman that union busters use to scare people away from unions.
Unions are not mandated to have any kind of seniority, and aren't required to have any specific pay structure.
A union could negotiate minimum salaries and yearly raises, while still letting skilled developers argue for better salaries and bonuses for themselves.
Unions could negotiate how layoffs happen so people get minimum severance packages, and that doesn't prevent individuals from getting better deals.
When you make a union, the members get to determine a whole lot, and it doesn't have to be restrictive, it can just be about guaranteed minimums.
BoringGuy666@reddit
If I'm a skilled developer, why would I want to pay into the union to negotiate minimums I'll be negotiating over
What employee thinks they are the low performer that doesn't command more than the average salary
PoopsCodeAllTheTime@reddit
Because a union could negotiate better time off or other benefits for everyone, whereas it is nearly impossible to negotiate for as an individual even if you could ask for more cash.
Bakoro@reddit
Because then you have a solid number to negotiate against instead of some absurd low-ball number. It puts information in your favor.
Other than that, your argument is essentially "why should I care about other people?".
How about every new developer coming into the field?
How about everyone changing from one part of the field to another, where they are very aware that they're operating outside their area of expertise?
It's a pretty shitty attitude to classify everone as "low performer" or "above average", which is what you're implicitly doing, but that tracks with the "why should I care about other people" stance.
Even if someone is a narcissist sociopath, the logic is still clear that a higher floor means that you can argue for an even higher position for yourself.
HopefulHabanero@reddit
It could, but FWIW the Communications Workers of America, which has so far been the most successful sponsor of tech industry unionization, does not believe in this kind of arrangement.
(This is not meant to be an argument against tech worker unionization in general, but rather unionization under the CWA and other traditional American union groups)
BoysenberryLanky6112@reddit
Yes you're correct, but you're acting as if real unions don't exist. We all have friends in unions, we all see how they operate. Literally every white collar union that exists promotes by seniority, and it's typically because it's the more senior and older people who participate the most and vote the most.
The-WideningGyre@reddit
It's also the easiest to measure, and you don't have to worry about lawsuit arounds bias and favoritism.
Bakoro@reddit
I'm not acting like anything. Everyone else is acting like just because other unions do things one way, that means there can't be a different way to do things.
I'm saying that we are free to define what it is that we do want.
ImportantDoubt6434@reddit
The difference is a union will provide more bargaining power and negotiations in a layoff.
You can reserve your job, negotiate a furlough, take a severance.
Legal protections and making sure the job isn’t just sent to an H1B1 to deflate wages.
Raw dogging capitalism has deflated wages let’s not kid ourselves
Sgt_Boor@reddit
It's kinda a correct one though, I've got a family to feed - and that's what important to me in the end of the day /shrug
Groove-Theory@reddit
Because not engaging in collective bargaining over individual bargaining actually hurts you in the long term.
You don't send one soldier at a time into a battle field. You send the whole entire army.
Sgt_Boor@reddit
let's be clear - I'm not fighting against unions, but I'm for sure not wasting my time fighting for them, corporate messaging be damned
If I were inclined to do all the 'think about betterment of society' stuff - I'd be working as some crap-social-sciences-justice low-wage job, and going to sleep hungry. Instead, my on-the-spectrum ass landed me in fintech - where I quietly enjoy higher-than-average salary and do not rock the boat. And I'm gonna be honest - as long as I keep my nest egg full, my CV updated, and see constant interest from potential employers I'm not going to worry about layoffs or "unionized low performers"
Groove-Theory@reddit
Alright, let’s get real for a second. You’re sitting pretty in fintech, pulling a nice paycheck, stacking that nest egg. Good for you. But here’s the thing: you’re living in a fantasy that your individual success makes you immune to the bullshit systemic risks that exist because workers refuse to fight together.
Layoffs? You’re not worried because your CV’s polished and recruiters love you, right? Cool. That'll work... until it doesn’t. Until some over-leveraged exec tanks the company stock, or the company starts (erroneously) that they can replace you with a contractor using only AI tools, or a downturn obliterates the job market and suddenly the only ones getting callbacks are the ones willing to work for pennies.
You think your talent makes you special, but let me hit you with this: corporations will never love you back. Ever. Never ever. They’ll exploit you as long as you’re profitable and discard you the second you’re not. And guess what? When that happens, your precious “nest egg” isn’t going to stop the economic forces rigged to screw you. Your individual bargaining power? Worth jack shit when every company decides to collude on lowering wages and playing musical chairs with talent.
But let’s zoom out. Let’s talk legacy. Let’s talk about the kind of world you’re passively enabling while you sit there “quietly enjoying” your salary. Every generation of workers who didn’t fight for better rights made life worse for the ones who came after them. Every time someone like you shrugs off collective action, it strengthens the same system that’s widening inequality, eroding job security, and ensuring our kids and grandkids get left with nothing but scraps.
You think you’re opting out of the fight, but really, you’re just letting others fight for you. Or worse, letting everyone lose because you can’t be bothered.
And there are plenty of neurodivergent folks fighting for a better world because they know that survival of the fittest isn’t a strategy—it’s a death sentence in a rigged game.
Your individualism isn’t just short-sighted—it’s actively harmful. It’s giving cover to the very systems that will screw you over eventually, no matter how smart, talented, or prepared you think you are. You can’t out-hustle a system designed to exploit labor. Period.
Sgt_Boor@reddit
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion - and I know I won't be able to change yours, probably same as you with mine. And I'm for sure not looking for a fight here, just giving a honest answer of what is my opinion on the matter.
Still though, I get it, the world's unfair, corporations are cold, and yes, they don’t love anyone but their bottom line which is fine - I do not expect them to send me love letters. They exploit my work, I get their money. And as a safety net I try to keep my skills up to date, my options open, and my network active. I'm not trying to out-hustle the system - I'm just content with being a part of it.
As for legacy, sure, it matters. But in the long run, as the French once said - 'After us, the flood'
CandusManus@reddit
I don’t care about you. If firing you made sure we got a renewal from the government so our firm keeps being profitable, I’d do it with a smile. Next week I’m either firing a guy or telling him we can only do part time because he’s costing me money and fucking up our velocity and deliverables with his awful code and inability to follow the SOP.
Groove-Theory@reddit
Jesus christ, dude.....
NoCardio_@reddit
These people always think that they’re the smartest guys in the room, and somehow that matters when layoff time comes.
Evinceo@reddit
The Engineer story
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
I think a lot of people are missing the fact that unionized jobs don’t protect everyone equally, though. When it’s time for layoffs, a union doesn’t automatically protect you if the company has to make budget cuts. The union just sets the order that people are cut, generally by seniority.
So even if you are the smartest guy in the room or the highest performer, it doesn’t matter. Most union rules favor seniority, so the only thing that matters is how long you’ve been in the union.
Feels great when you’re the guy with 2 decades at the job. Not so great when you’re a new hire at the bottom of the seniority spectrum, no matter how hard you work.
No-Ant9517@reddit
Ok but at least you know where you stand. Right now I get nothing, let’s not pretend being talented actually protects you from layoffs, it’s all about politics
The-WideningGyre@reddit
It definitely can protect you from layoffs ("critical personnel" is often a thing at such times), but it won't always, that's true.
PoopsCodeAllTheTime@reddit
"critical personnel" aka "flight risk that should train their replacement ASAP"
PoopsCodeAllTheTime@reddit
Well, you don't need a union for every job, but it is definitely useful when dealing with mega-corp jobs. Younger people are utilized as churn in most of these jobs anyway, without the union incentive.
gnus-migrate@reddit
Unions are democratic bodies that are primarily used for collective bargaining. If members of the union don't favor seniority, it won't favor seniority.
hardsoft@reddit
Is that supposed to make the minority young people feel better about getting laid off?
gnus-migrate@reddit
It's supposed to dispel some misconceptions of what unions are. People seem to have a very specific idea of what unions are, my point is they are what their members want them to be.
Keep in mind massive corporations with revenue that rivals the GDP of most countries form unions to lobby for their interests. It's not a poor people thing, it's a what is in the collective interest thing.
hardsoft@reddit
It's a bargaining power thing. Engineers are a hot commodity and it's generally easier for individual engineers to negotiate for themselves. Job hoping to a better opportunity with higher pay is easier to do as one individual than as a group.
Lower skill and more easily replaceable labor has less negotiating power at an individual level and so can benefit more from collecting bargaining.
gnus-migrate@reddit
When it comes to pay, however when it comes to other things like trainings, etc. not all companies provide them, so that can be something a union can do. It doesn't even have to be collective bargaining about wages, it can be negotiating prices for courses, organize freelance contracts, health insurance that isnt tied to the company, etc. Basically any services employers don't provide that benefit workers, unions can provide. That's primarily what they do where I'm from, they don't usually get involved in salary negotiations.
Forgot_Password_Dude@reddit
No one is safe, and with coming Prez, no one is safe in public sector as well; it's more fair I guess now
biosc1@reddit
Lost a member of my team this week during a round of layoffs. Basically came down to a coin flip. Could have easily been me.
ategnatos@reddit
This is also the reason to prioritize career security and never to worry about one specific job you won't have control over in bad times. I know way too many people who have been reduced to $200k S3 bucket babysitter for years and would have no chance at landing a good role externally (not to mention their work is incredibly boring and they hate their lives). (That is the extreme, I'm not trying to imply that's what you or your teammate does.)
UnicornzRreel@reddit
Reduced to $200k? The absolute horror! 🤣
ategnatos@reddit
For the people in the back: reduced to S3 bucket babysitter
If you lose that job, your skill set brings you a $0 job.
UnicornzRreel@reddit
Having gone from washing dishes for min wage to having a comfortable life now, I'd take that over the dish washing any day.
For the out of touch: perspective is everything
ategnatos@reddit
And your post is completely irrelevant to the conversation. No one said this is the worst job in the world. I said to prioritize career security over job security. Quit arguing just to argue. My comment had the full context making the situation very obvious.
Groove-Theory@reddit
And none of the anti-union assholes in this thread would even care for you. They'd just say "it's business".
They never care until it happens to them.
FortuneIIIPick@reddit
The Democrats held the White House the past 4 years and you're blaming the not yet even inaugurated president elect based on what, an innate ability to foresee the future? Please let me know the best stock picks to make too.
Forgot_Password_Dude@reddit
I don't blame Trump, I voted for him. Forget stocks, buy Bitcoin ASAP
MrSquicky@reddit
What do unions have to do with preventing layoffs?
ImportantDoubt6434@reddit
Negotiations for severance, providing more options like furlough for less pay, requiring them to rehire you instead of outsourcing/undercut with new employees.
Unions absolutely are an advantage in a layoff
MrSquicky@reddit
Do those things not make it harder to get hired in the first place, or hired by another place after you get laid off? The latter is what most people in the industry do.
ImportantDoubt6434@reddit
Not necessarily, in some cases it could.
With the added protection the layoff might not happen in the first place.
ImportantDoubt6434@reddit
It’s called being delusional you can absolutely make a product and get laid off immediately after if anything politics matters more than anything
studmoobs@reddit
And yet you know better than all of these objectively intelligent engineers?
NoCardio_@reddit
If you use the above comments as examples, probably.
studmoobs@reddit
average redditor humility and self awareness
FuzzeWuzze@reddit
Lol I'm more amazed with how far I've progressed worth the amount of work I've put in. I see other engineers and am like if I'm repeatedly getting awards and promos for what I consider average work I can only imagine what shit you're putting out. No I don't consider myself the smartest, in fact the opposite, I always ask questions to juniors even as a senior, maybe that's the diff, who knows
0ooo@reddit
I'm not sure what your point is here?
morbiiq@reddit
I don’t know either, but that last sentence hits home hard (and seems to be the norm in my 25+ years).
abandonplanetearth@reddit
The other side of the coin here is that at some companies, being the best is definitely job security. I feel sorry for the people that have not found a job like that yet.
No-Ant9517@reddit
The point is the companies where that’s not the case are actively trying to pretend they are, so you don’t really know until layoff time comes, and all it takes to change a company from one to the other is a culture shift
ViceCrimesOrgasm@reddit
You feel sorry for them? My god the magnanimity you exude is a gift to us all.
abandonplanetearth@reddit
I just mean that it feels good to be needed at work. Typically happens at micro orgs. I see people here chasing money at big orgs every day, only to feel completely soulless and gutted by their career.
ViceCrimesOrgasm@reddit
Almost no one will ever have a job like that. There are not enough of those even in boom times.
tinylittlenormous@reddit
There is evidence that overconfidence is seen as being competent at least for guys. Therefore what matters is that you talk with confidence, not that you actually solves issues.
Rulmeq@reddit
It's like the person on medicaid voting for a republican, becauase their social welfare is the only good social welfare, everyone else can go burn... Then shocked pichachu face when their benefits are cut.
IshouldDoMyHomework@reddit
Some these concerns are real. Collective bargaining does tend to give collective raises. If you think you are a high performer, that is not attractive.
Unions keep bad apples around in some cases. Just look at the police union…
I am generally for unions, but we have talk about unions in real way.
MrSnoman@reddit
It's not like a layoff is a public execution. Most software engineers who are laid off just... get another job.
ViceCrimesOrgasm@reddit
ARE YOU JUST WAKING UP FROM A COMA???? Have you been working at the same place for 20 years? I don’t understand how you could make such an aggressively oblivious statement and have even marginal awareness of where we’re at currently.
MrSnoman@reddit
What is the unemployment rate of software engineers? Show me some data.
ViceCrimesOrgasm@reddit
OK to be fair I don’t have that data in front of me and while this is anecdotal data, it’s overwhelming. People are getting laid off in massive quantities that is documented. You can just look that up. You don’t need to look that up. You already know that and they’re not getting jobs and we’ve all witnessed the corrosion of companies at the higher levels where it just becomes about profit and efficiency and getting more money for the shareholders. I know several people who have been laid off actually I know way more than several. I know a ton of people who’ve been laid off in their careers and also the last two years goddamn, I know so many fucking people who have been pushed out of their career that are now trying to figure out something anything. And they’re all fighting over a very short list of job postings for what they used to do in some of those cases it’s because executives ran the fucking company in the ground and so all the workers get punished I was at one of those companies and I was lucky to get out before the hammer fell on like half of us although I was told that I would’ve survived the layoffs there. I sure shit didn’t survive the last two layoffs at different companies. And it’s not always something you can control sometimes there are other people around you doing such a shitty job that your performance isn’t really moving the needle that much because there’s only so much you can do and it’s true out of the 30 or 40 people I know who’ve been laid off in the last couple years. There are a couple of them who are fucking brainiac who bounced back immediately. Very few people can be those people most of us are human, but if you really want me to go drum up numbers? I’m sure I could.
wesborland1234@reddit
Historically most people in any profession who get laid off get another job… eventually.
In an tough market that can mean months of depleting your savings or taking on debt. Not to mention if wages haven’t come down for the average developer yet, they will. So sure you’ll get another job, as long as you’re cool with a 30% pay cut
MrSnoman@reddit
Yeah, the market is definitely tougher than it has been in the past, but some of the rhetoric I've seen has been hyperbolic.
mortsdeer@reddit
In this economy? Not in jest: this is starting to look like a structural change, not a business cycle thing.
GregorSamsanite@reddit
But unions aren't a panacea to solve every problem, and a major structural change like that isn't the best example of when unions help. When there was a major structural change in our economy that lead to manufacturing being offshored, widespread unionization didn't help much to retain local manufacturing.
Unions can be good for getting better working conditions and higher pay, which is something that many industries could benefit from, but most software developers are doing OK there. They can be good at smoothing out job losses and adding some friction to frequent hiring and firing cycles, which is somewhat relevant but does come at a price. But if companies are really determined to shed a lot of jobs, then in the longer term unions don't necessarily have much power to stop that. That seems to be the biggest concern here, and it's in the area that unions may not be able to address.
Morphray@reddit
It can get even goober. The owners rake in billions.
Blothorn@reddit
Ah the Detroit auto workers how well unions protect against job loss from structural changes. Unions can be great for improving working conditions and short-term job security, but their record at resisting offshoring, automation, and other drivers of long-term job market contractions is much weaker.
pacman2081@reddit
there is a lot of hiring even in this economy
ViceCrimesOrgasm@reddit
We also just landed a manned spaceship on Mars. New developmenta in DNA manipulation has also finally given humans the power of flight. And it turns out God is Catholic hahahaha.
Loose-Potential-3597@reddit
Man I would pay money to see these peoples’ comment history after they get laid off.
CandusManus@reddit
Been laid off twice, still zero interest in a union. I won’t have my salary cut to help the lesser.
Groove-Theory@reddit
"I burned the skin off my hand by touching the stove, but I still refuse to wear an oven mit"
takegaki@reddit
Fair takes tbh.
shozzlez@reddit
No one thinks that they’re average. Unfortunately that’s not how math works.
dfltr@reddit
Fuck me. With friends like these who needs COINTELPRO?
MagnetoManectric@reddit
Right? Gobsmacked by how astroturfed this thread looks.
I'm european, where we're not subject to the same horseshit propaganda americans are, and I'm gobsmacked. My workplace is unionized, which is still fairly rare for engineering work here, and it's very much beneficial to us and uncontroversial.
ketsebum@reddit
My problem with unions is more about the incentives involved. The union isn't incentivized to help the worker after they get in. They just need to continue to exist.
This also changes the incentives of the workers. They no longer have as strong of an incentive to do a good job.
My wife, dad, and best friend have all worked in a union.
I have better pay, better benefits, better time off than them. My environment is more equitable and friendly. So, unions don't beget better working conditions.
It's hard to say unions are the answer to offshoring when, what happened to the US manufacturing, if not for offshoring union jobs.
My life experience has so far showed me, that a union is helpful if you lack the necessary skills to demand better conditions. It isn't good then, but it is a bit better than the alternative.
Genericnameandnumber@reddit
So you are okay with some people getting exploited because they “lack the necessary skills to negotiate”?
ketsebum@reddit
I stated that a union would be good for the people who are lacking in skills.
It's not a great place to be, because I don't think unions are great. They are an added bureaucracy, and therefore prone to the ails of such organizations, made worse by having poor incentives.
Genericnameandnumber@reddit
So what you’re saying here is:
A) Unions have no incentive to help the worker after they join
Is this true? What’s the basis for your claim? Unions have training or upskilling programmes for their respective fields.
B) Workers no longer have an incentive to do a good job once they join a union
Any truth to this? Once workers join a union, they no longer have to worry about job security, working conditions, or exploitation as much. Why would this lead to a decrease in productivity?
ketsebum@reddit
Look at the incentive structure that exists.
When a shop becomes unionized, there is no competition. There aren't competing unions that try to keep a satisfied worker with them and their negotiated contract. You are locked into them with little recourse to change.
The union becomes a defacto monopoly.
Well, tbf I was speaking of experience working with the UAW here. We had people sleeping on the job and proactively sabotaging the line.
We couldn't get rid of them, because if we did they would go back into the pool, and be first to be hired back when adding new positions.
There are typically, lower rewards for doing a good job and lower risk for being fired for doing a bad job. In my observations, this resulted in lower productivity.
Every experience I have had dealing with a union has been bad, this is the same for my direct family, except they were the ones in the union.
Genericnameandnumber@reddit
I would think there are many more factors than just the existence of unions which determine productivity.
Why not look at worker-management relationship, industry, profit sharing, relationship between company and union? There are many more factors which I don’t even know.
ketsebum@reddit
Because this post is taking about unions, and my first hand experience took away the rise colored glasses that everyone here uses for unions.
MinimumArmadillo2394@reddit
Is the bureaucracy a worthy trade of in order to not be laid off 2 days before christmas without notice? What about to have standard salary negotiations so you arent undercutting what the company can pay (ie proposing $50/hr when the company's minimum is $80/hr but they accept your $50)? What about when they wont give you maternal/paternal leave when you have a kid? What about when your manager/boss has a target on your back and has a history of firing your co workers when they dont agree with him even when hes objectively doing bad practice?
I think the bureaucracy is worth not having that much stress in worrying about my job every time I get an unannounced meeting on my calendar
ImJustSomeGuyNotABot@reddit
I’ve always just left bosses and companies I didn’t like 🤷♂️
Even now, after the thousands of layoffs, I recently left one huge software company to join another — both staff-level engineering roles with compensation packages very similar to what you’d see on levels.fyi for the same level.
If I have a manager with a professionalism problem, I’m quitting and will start pestering ex-colleagues and recruiters to get the ball rolling on my next gig.
Laid off 2 days before Christmas? If you’ve been a senior engineer for a few years and aren’t sitting on a pile of money yet, you’re either working at the wrong companies or you have a spending problem 🤷♂️
ketsebum@reddit
But, if that bureaucracy gives all of that, then why do I have those benefits and those in the union do not?
I don't dismiss bad bosses, they are real. But, with a union you are simply inserting another layer of management that is filled with people, who are flawed and have even less accountability than your manager.
But, if a union protects from layoffs, why has union membership dwindled? If the union protects the jobs, where have those jobs gone?
Fact is, they are a short term protection, and in my opinion a long term cost.
FlipperBumperKickout@reddit
Did you work the same job as them? Otherwise your comparison is useless...
ketsebum@reddit
No, but if we need a union give you these benefits, why do I have more benefits?
I am asking this question, because it should make it painfully clear that the union isn't as responsible for the successes and benefits as they claim. If the union was the only way to receive benefits, then I wouldn't have mine and I'd have a different opinion.
FlipperBumperKickout@reddit
... there are factors like how hard you are to replace etc etc.
For factory workers you can't really argue you need a higher salary because you do unique work.
Instead you can unionize, close down the factory, and inform the dear owner that now he isn't making any money either... Until he meet up for those negotiations that is.
He could of course fire all of them at once if he think it's cheaper to start over... If they were willing to leave the premises peacefully, and so on, and so on.
TangerineSorry8463@reddit
Everybody gangsta until it is their job that gets outsourced
ketsebum@reddit
Yeah, the UAW certainly felt that way before they got outsourced.
hangerofmonkeys@reddit
It's pretty fascinating to read. A bunch of engineers who think they're above the 50% percentile arguing unions would make their working standards or salaries worse.
Did no one else see the interview with Suckaberg saying he's going to have AI available to him that's going to make the median engineer redundant?
Wether that comes true or not, he's using the AI and RTO climate as leverage to reduce YOUR power and angle for negotiation. Our power is diminishing rapidly. Throw in the talks about Musk and Trump and working visas, it's clear our pedestal for influence on salary and working standards are being diminished while we skirmish amongst ourselves
Us, our skills and our industry is being turned into a commodity and the vast majority of this subreddit think we're turning fucking coal into adamantium by purview of our genius.
The balance of power is shifting against us. Unions are far from perfect but if you think there's anything else that lets you create leverage against fucking billionaires you should seriously question perspective of the forrest and trees.
thekwoka@reddit
Well, unions won't prevent it.
Deckz@reddit
There's a pretty stronge libertarian bent in the developer community. It's kind of a shame.
CreativeGPX@reddit
I'm a libertarian and I'm also pro union. Nothing more free market than a private association of private individuals as a solution.
Deckz@reddit
Unions are inherently collectivist and at odds with the free market. Having a collective body that protects you from losing your job because of the free market is fundamentally at odds with being libertarian. What good is a libertarian union if you can be fired at will? On the other hand, restricting an employer from firing a union member is coercion.
CreativeGPX@reddit
I don't think you know what free markets or libertarianism are.
Unions aren't at odds with the free market. They are the free market. They are private individuals choosing what contracts to enter into. It's no more "collectivist" for workers to collaborate in the market than it is for corporations to sign contracts with each other. The free market doesn't mean that contracts that restrict people's actions don't exist or that groups of people won't act together to pressure others. In fact, it counts on both of those things. The union is part of free market forces just like the boycott or the corporation.
Libertarianism is about leaving things up to private individuals rather than government. It's about not using the monopoly on force to compel wages and employee rights. Unions fit that.
dw444@reddit
It’s about pretending it’s that, while a bunch of grown children play “government” until literal bears take over your town and force you out of it.
ategnatos@reddit
strong or strange?
Deckz@reddit
Sorry, strong
dfltr@reddit
r/inclusiveor
SellingFD@reddit
So basically, it is because engineers are selfish, arrogant people.
Zazz2403@reddit
God I fucking hate so many people in tech. So insufferable.
vipnasty@reddit
Calling genuine responses “galaxy brained takes” instead of actually making counter points is a great way to get people to agree with you.
aristotleschild@reddit
They’ll come around once the whole economy actually gets a recession, and not just tech, and it turns out that in the US non-citizen visa holders (such as H-1B) have a much lower layoff rate, because we’re actually in the middle of a class war. Nothing like a beating for teaching!
gnus-migrate@reddit
I wouldn't be surprised if its astroturfed.
BiCuckMaleCumslut@reddit
Because they're already paid a lot in America - that's why Elon and other tech bros wanna outsource their engineering
nwbrown@reddit
They exist, but unions work best for unskilled labor or when employers have a monopoly.
Akul_Tesla@reddit
High talent people have no need for unions and it's actually detrimental to them
So if you're in a field that has a prerequisite of high talent, then there's absolutely going to be no need for a union
Upstairs_Year_857@reddit
Because of "rock stars"
There are devs all over, with the same basic experience, making 3x or 4x more than other devs. They are not giving up the golden goose.
gamercer@reddit
Because we’re not interchangeable like welders or delivery drivers.
Venotron@reddit
Unions exist to equalise bargaining power between employees and employers by enabling employees to bargain as a collective.
But for almost the entire history of the software industry, employee bargaining power HAS been significantly stronger than employer bargaining power. So there hasn't been any need to address a bargaining power imbalance for employees.
Dank_Dispenser@reddit
Engineers tend to be competitive people and have a different mindset that's not really compatible with unionization. Most think they're intelligent and capable, capable of negotiating for themselves and are hoping on rapid promotions to higher positions or pivoting to more lucrative positions
AcanthisittaKooky987@reddit
If devs had a union people at large companies would be getting paid 5x what they make now.
If you try to start one you might suffer from an unfortunate accident.
DERBY_OWNERS_CLUB@reddit
Do you want the rela answer or do you want to circlejerk?
Because I'm paid really well relative to the work I do and the working conditions are easy as shit, I work from my house. I'm not bothered enough to organize.
I'm in favor of H1B reform, don't think see the point of a union.
rustbelt@reddit
Yea did you bargain for those? Because they’re taking them away without a fight.
Deltaisfordeath2@reddit
Also, if you think the hiring process is a shitshow now, imagine how much worse it will be if the company knows they can’t fire a bad hire.
Pretty-Collection728@reddit
That's not how unions work.
sudosussudio@reddit
The thing about a union at least in the US is you can have any standards you want. The union I helped form at a startup we negotiated bare minimum standards for firing people (just had to be for cause). It wasn’t a high priority for us to have higher than that.
__loam@reddit
Wishful thinking that they can't or won't fire a good hire
counterweight7@reddit
They were saying if engineers were to unionize.
My wife works for the state and is in a powerful union. It’s VERY hard to fire anyone, even if they are incompetent. You have to put them on several improvement plans and demonstrate repeated failure. She can’t even be reprimanded without union reps present. Unions provide strong firing protection, that’s the point! (And wage negotiation)
DigThatData@reddit
yeah that's not how unions work at all.
Groove-Theory@reddit
Tell me you've never been laid off before without telling me you've never been laid off before
Qinistral@reddit
This. Plus my coworkers are often idiots and I haven’t seen a firing I disagreed with yet.
I’d be open to unions if it had heavy protections for performance. I know there’s stuff like sports unions, but performance is easier to measure in sports than engineering. If you want a union like police? Gtfo.
DigmonsDrill@reddit
A union doesn't necessarily mean you're all paid the same, or even in bands.
Kind_Somewhere2993@reddit
Yeah right
teslas_love_pigeon@reddit
You should see the unions athletes and actors have.
Kind_Somewhere2993@reddit
You should see the unions office workers have
teslas_love_pigeon@reddit
Yeah forcing capital to follow procedure when mass firing would be nice instead of the cutthroat nature of our current reality.
Kind_Somewhere2993@reddit
So you prefer tenure over all? Cause that’s what you get with unions
teslas_love_pigeon@reddit
No, with unions you get what you want. If everyone in the union votes for whatever procedures that's what you get.
Why are you acting like only capital is allowed to be on the board?
Kind_Somewhere2993@reddit
Riiiiight - and who’s paying all these legal fees? Who wants the dues? Everyone out of pocket right? You’re more naive than a 5 year old
sudosussudio@reddit
But you can have the union you described! Unions can have any rules you and your fellow workers want, though they need to be negotiated with your employer. The union I helped form we did not negotiate many things that make it difficult to fire. Just bare minimum for cause. We had other priorities like ability to WFH, protection from bad managers, etc.
Qinistral@reddit
How do you protect against bad managers?
sudosussudio@reddit
When we unionized we had some specific managerial issues that we wanted protection from such as arbitrary leveling and withdrawing wfh or other benefits to discipline people.
DirtzMaGertz@reddit
This is immediately what comes to my mind every time this topic comes up. I'm not inherently against a union. I just have zero faith software developers are going to form one that is worth a shit to me.
This industry is filled with some of the dumbest smart people I've ever met.
sudosussudio@reddit
But you can have any rules you want in a union? And any rules have to be negotiated so it’s not like you can easily just make it super hard to fire people.
AvailableFalconn@reddit
Ironically, this is a good one sentence summary of why we don’t have software unions.
bluesquare2543@reddit
ITT: Amateur anti-union propaganda
MagnetoManectric@reddit
Truly. Americans are some of the most propagandized to people on earth.
Qinistral@reddit
Personal opinions are not propaganda. Grow up.
ImportantDoubt6434@reddit
Unions can block H1B hiring if it’s deemed unnecessary.
Great way to protect your company from being taken over by discriminatory H1B employees
neverthy@reddit
Wait until you get laid off and have to accept the onsite job for less salary, then see how your opinion changes.
robby_arctor@reddit
"Why don't you have a fire extinguisher in your home?"
"Honestly, because there's no fire in my home. I'm just not bothered enough to get one, tbh."
keru45@reddit
If you’re as bad at your job as you are at making analogies then I understand why you would be pro-union.
sushislapper2@reddit
That’s a horrible analogy.
It’s more like giving away a fraction of your companies equity to an investor when you don’t need the cash.
You probably can’t use the benefits, you lose upside, and in the event that things go south it still might not save you.
neverthy@reddit
Your analogy is even worse. It is more like insurance.
heavymetalengineer@reddit
I’m not going to buy hurricane insurance for my house when historically hurricanes have never hit my area is probably an analogy of my feelings.
sushislapper2@reddit
Insurance is a good analogy but it misses plenty of the drawbacks of a union. Coincidentally insurance is widely hated in the US, especially the one that is closest to a union (workplace tied healthcare).
So unions are like a more restrictive home insurance. Except maybe the policy price and coverage is tied to how long you’ve been in the policy and the average home in the area, instead of what your specific home is worth.
Zazz2403@reddit
I don't think you understand the power of unions at all.
sushislapper2@reddit
Employers can still fuck you in a union.
If you have a skills-based job with reasonable competition you don’t need a union. You can leave shitty jobs or go get a new job if your employer “fucks you”.
But my employer has no incentive to fuck me. I get yearly raises and they treat me well. There’s a ton of competitors trying to poach talent in my industry. Why would I want a union to flatten my wages and make my income and benefits even more tied to seniority than it already is in the current market?
946789987649@reddit
That's the point though, the industry is strong enough that you don't need to accept anything shit (as long as you're good). I've been laid off before, what did I do? Went and got a higher paying job.
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
Unions still have layoffs, though. I don’t know where everyone got this idea that unions mean no layoffs. If a company’s finances change and they have to lay people off, a union can’t magically make more money appear.
The difference is that in a union you get laid off by seniority. You could be a better dev and employee than 90% of the company but it doesn’t matter if they’ve been there longer than you.
Everyone likes to imagine themselves at the top of the seniority ladder. If you join a union company, you actually start at the bottom. You are the sacrificial layoff target until you can accumulate enough time for that seniority.
aLifeOfPi@reddit
“We have to unionize because I have to… go to work”
SuccotashComplete@reddit
You don’t see the point in more money?
Relative to the value we provide companies our salary is pitiful. We deserve more of that
ninetofivedev@reddit
Indeed comrade.
BarkMycena@reddit
Comrade? Most programmers are in the top 1% of income worldwide.
MinimumArmadillo2394@reddit
I created a feature solo that, upon completion, opened up 2 new avenues of revenue for the company and strengthened a partnership we already signed onto. It increased our DAU on the mobile app by 20% providing an extra $8m in yearly revenue to the company which was almost 20% more yearly revenue.
My salary stayed the same at $105k. I was not granted stock or a bonus.
I saved my prior company $4m per month by changing how our physical mail was calculated to be sent out. I never saw a dime of that.
My salary stayed the same at $110k. I was not granted stock or a bonus.
Doesnt matter that SWE is top 1% of income earners. Statistically we provide a massive amount of business value, in many cases multiple millions of dollars.
BarkMycena@reddit
Have you ever worked at a company that was losing money? Most have. Most wouldn't want a negative paycheque but you can't have it both ways.
MinimumArmadillo2394@reddit
You wouldnt have a negative pay check with a company thats losing money lmao.
Thats not how any of this works
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
I guess I don’t understand what this anecdote has to do with a union.
In a union, you could create this solo feature that did amazing things for the company and it wouldn’t matter contractually according to union rules. The union would literally forbid you from getting a raise for this because the union negotiates compensation collectively according to union rules. Union rules almost always favor seniority, too.
If you want your salary locked in and negotiated by someone else, a union will do it. If you want to be able to negotiate your own raises or easily move to new companies (without worrying about union seniority) then unionized roles would work against you.
Zeikos@reddit
Most programmers are still reliant on that income to survive, can they save more than the average worker? Sure, but they're still workers.
BarkMycena@reddit
Most programmers could take their savings and move to a poorer country and instantly become bourgeois if they wanted to
edgmnt_net@reddit
Software engineering jobs have outstanding pay and conditions precisely because of their competitive and open nature. Unions seek to end that.
As if the risk of doing business is insignificant, while you're afraid of losing a job that otherwise requires no capital risk.
SuccotashComplete@reddit
Wrong. Social studies jobs are even more competitive and pay drastically less because their work isn’t as valuable.
edgmnt_net@reddit
Research is competitive on the demand side of the job market, though not as much on the job supply side and average market/business value is low. Particularly when you consider stuff like social studies. You may also note that applied research in a corporate setting tends to pay fairly well, but you need to do **** that matters as far as the market/business value is concerned. Like it or not, fundamental physics isn't it.
I don't disagree regarding software engineering, but my claim wasn't that having 100 other people at the door makes it better for employees per se. What I'm saying is that the market provides a large yet select class of jobs with outstanding working conditions and wages. These aren't for everyone, although the market conditions are good and the field is open enough to allow a lot of people to make it (more than research which is a race to the top from that perspective). Your average feature factory employing code monkeys probably can't sustain that no matter what. I'm saying that the nice jobs are there because they're part of a market that's competitive on both sides and lucrative and that you can't extend that to all dev-related work. Not all jobs in an industry are the same.
The problem is unionization is likely to try and split the spoils, thus chipping away at those working conditions and wages. It's practically redistribution in a different way. It's also likely to make things worse overall, because companies will be less willing to give anyone a chance if it means they can't hire and fire easily, which destroys some of the primary advantages of dev work, the gradual advancement curve and openness. It's already much more difficult to get a job in high cost of employment areas, adding more risk to the mix for employers is going to make it worse.
SuccotashComplete@reddit
Wrong
Duke_@reddit
Most people in the industry, myself included, get a new job when they want better salary and working conditions. This being an option is why so few care to unionize.
You want a union so you can stagnate in your current role and not have to put in some effort to better your station?
SuccotashComplete@reddit
Why not join a new role with a unionized team and make even more?
These things aren’t mutually exclusive. You can make a union that collectively bargains however you want. Having more bargaining power won’t kill you
jek39@reddit
Why not do it on your own then?
SuccotashComplete@reddit
Form a union? Brother I’m trying
jek39@reddit
No I’m saying if you can provide such value you should be able to just get clients directly
FetaMight@reddit
this is one of the most idiotic comments I've read in this subreddit.
SuccotashComplete@reddit
I’m doing that too, but theoretically going out on your own is much higher risk since all the obvious niches have been taken over
Why not just unionize and make more money with very little risk?
CAPSLOCK_USERNAME@reddit
That's a completely different skillset than software development
nosequel@reddit
Same. I’m not going to get hurt on the job. Also my company is mature enough that if we all went on strike, everything would stay up for a long long time. We aren’t dock workers or factory workers.
It is basically impossible to fire anyone in many countries in the EU (Sweden, Germany, etc) so companies don’t pay people shit and jobs end up going to Poland where they don’t have those restrictions.
RobertKerans@reddit
To translate: "not pay people shit" means "software engineers get paid very high wages relative to the average wages for these countries. Just not close to the jaw-droppingly huge salaries paid in the US"
alpacaMyToothbrush@reddit
I used to think the same, then i realized after years of sub 3% raises that I'm making ~ 12% less than I did in '22 adjusted for inflation.
JaySocials671@reddit
Which side of reform do you prefer?
hoodieweather-@reddit
I'd imagine people who are being forced to return to office could have benefitted from a union. It's not a silver bullet and there are valid concerns in this thread, but it shouldn't be dismissed outright - those conditions are great now, but they're not guaranteed.
Rough-Yard5642@reddit
Facts
SoulSkrix@reddit
We do in Norway. I’m part of a union for IT. It is called NITO, another is called Tekna for those with Masters degrees or higher.
From the US side I haven’t ever seen a good argument that I can genuinely agree with. But just thought you should know this concept exists for our industry elsewhere.
Bakoro@reddit
The generally high pay for developers (and tech workers as a whole) in the U.S is the #1 thing which keeps talks of unions away.
Tech workers generally don't feel like they are getting screwed over too hard by their company, and they feel that they can get themselves better compensation than collective bargaining would offer (which is absurd in most cases, the big companies already have well defined bins people fall into, and those are the ones paying top dollar, and they have enough employees to make unionization worth the effort).
As far as I know, software developers in the U.S are paid far more than in almost any other country. Within the U.S in 2023, the median software developer salary was 2.75 times the U.S median wages. Median tech salary was 2X the median non tech salary.
Google says that the median software developer salary in Norway is around $65k USD, while in the U.S it's around $132k.
Granted, Norway (and most of Europe) has far more mandated vacation days than the U.S and a bunch of other nice social stuff, but most software developers also have more PTO days than the average worker.
A majority of people look at the top ~10% making over $200k a year and are trying to get that.
Also for some reason, many people treat the top 10% of the pay range as the average, which has always struck me as bizarre. In any discussion about pay, you'll always have a bunch of people claiming that it's not that hard to get a $200k+ job. Maybe it's just old heads and FAANG people in the bay area who have completely lost touch with reality outside their bubble having an outsized voice, but it seems like a broader issue than that.
Add in the fact that a lot of people still have a 2000-2010 vision of tech start-up culture with smoothie machines and ping pong tables or whatever, and there's definitely a skewed view of the industry is like on average.
I'll also say though, is that where the U.S software developer is now, that is where the average U.S work should be.
As I said, most tech workers don't feel like they are getting screwed, but that's only because we are doing a lot better than the average worker around us. The worker in the U.S is getting robbed by corporate America, including software developers. An individual software developer can easily be generating multiple millions of dollars for their company, and they get only a small fraction of that.
crevicepounder3000@reddit
“John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” - Ronald Wright
Your point about how much developers generate for companies is extremely salient. Getting a $300k salary in a company worth trillions and thinking you are getting paid a fair wage, is objectively hilarious. It’s more so the case in smaller companies where maybe the company yearly revenue is like 500 mil and there is 30 engineers making an avg of $140k and having to work 50-60 hours/ week. The cost of living crisis in the US has made it so these developers no longer have as enticing a lifestyle and some of those people might be struggling whereas before they could be the sole breadwinner in a family of 4-5
-Komment@reddit
The whole, "A fair wage is X% of what my employer makes" doesn't make sense unless you're a shareholder to X% or thereabout. A job isn't worth some arbitrary percentage of what a company makes, it's primarily a matter of supply vs demand. Shareholders take on risk associated with investing, employees don't.
Getting part of the rewards and expecting to get paid no matter how the company is doing, while assuming no risk if the company does poorly would be nice, but it's not realistic.
Bakoro@reddit
And yet that's exactly how C suite gets paid. A CEO can massively fuck up, tank the company stock price, and still walk away with millions of dollars, where the workers can get laid off with diddly squat.
"Shareholders" don't risk shit for the company. Pre IPO and IPO investors do. If you buy stock directly from the company you do.
Shareholders from the secondary market are just gambling after the fact.
-Komment@reddit
You don't see me claiming C-suite deserve what they get, do you?
Pretty sure they hold shares and therefore are shareholders. And yes, post IPO shareholders do risk something, they risk their investment.
And VCs are gambling "before the fact", what's your point?
Bakoro@reddit
The difference is that VCs are actually paying people.
Secondary market shareholders don't pay workers, they are the parasites who demand that workers be fired so the line goes up this quarter.
The point is that "shareholders take all the risk" is horse shit.
Labor deserves a larger percentage of the wealth they help create.
-Komment@reddit
Lots of post IPO companies are unprofitable and rely on debt to stay alive until they are; and that debt comes from leveraging their stock more than anything.
Good luck raising as much money without post IPO investors to prop up the share price and keep it there so there isn't a margin call on the leveraged shares.
Never said that but while we're on the subject of who takes how much risk, what risk exactly are employees taking by working for a company? That they can be laid off?
The company takes on the risk that the employee can leave at any time, that the employee can make a mistake and cost the company a massive amount of money.
You ok with covering the cost of a $100k piece of equipment if you break it? Or paying up when your mistake loses the business a $10m client? If an employer can't lay you off, are you ok with not being allowed to ever quit unless you can prove just cause?
Anyhow, you're meandering off the point. Employees are compensated directly for their labor, you want more than that, invest.
Defending VCs but think people like retail investors are parasites. Quite the stretch there.
crevicepounder3000@reddit
And that’s exactly the viewpoint that unions would guard against. Thanks for providing a live example of what workers who actually get the shit down should watch carefully for
-Komment@reddit
So you want all the upside but none of the downside? Good luck with that.
niborg@reddit
"a company worth trillions". What other people think a company is worth at the time you join is really not an objective metric of what you should be paid. The question is better framed as whether you are getting compensated adequately based on some ratio of the value you add to the company. That is hard to quantify, but companies do vigorously compete for competent software developers with attractive salaries and stock, which likely tracks that value-add you are anticipated to bring. (I'm speaking at least in the US – I don't undestand how the rest of the world is able to pay such garbage, particularly our neighbor Canada. It does seem that the economies there are rigged against you, but I don't know enough to say more.)
crevicepounder3000@reddit
Well if you are paid in stock, then you especially care what the company is valued at by everyone else, but let’s go to something simpler like revenue. Google’s revenue for 2024 was 339.85 billion dollars (according to Google). How much of that did engineers deliver? I would say quite a bit. If an average engineer is getting paid like 200k (including stock), is that fair value? If the top engineers are getting paid a million (I am not even sure it’s that high), is that fair value? My point is that engineers rarely get fair value for how much they bring in whichever way you look at it. The executives are always getting disproportionately waayyyyy more money than they personally bring in. I think a union would help with that.
niborg@reddit
If you are paid in stock, you care how much the stock increases in value – you actually hope it is undervalued by everyone else when you begin your compensation agreement.
I'd also just point out that a lot of a company's revenue like Google is based on its historical iteration of great software – its current revenue is not necessarily from current engineering efforts. Lag time to revenue and all that. The best way I can think of to capture that value is to have been granted stock at some time and hope the culmination of your team's work reflects that in the future.
In any event, I work at a company with many overpaid middle-manager types – there is a sea of them. It is hard to explain their existence. And I've spied ludicrous executive comp at other places that is also hard to explain. So there is room for agreement between us here.
crevicepounder3000@reddit
Historical iteration of great software is still engineering work. It’s not like engineers who have worked there for 20 years are paid a million dollars/ year. I think we largely agree but debating semantics. Less middle management and lower the salaries of executives in relation to actual implementers.
erikjw@reddit
So in short, false consciousness.
Schmittfried@reddit
Of course it is in most cases. But many believe they are the rare 10xers who can justify earning much more than their peers and hence would lose to a more equalized pay structure.
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
This comes up in every union thread, but the problem is that “union” means different things in different countries. What exactly does joining NITO or Tekna get you? Do the unions negotiate your job contract with your employer for you? Do they arrange strikes and do members all band together to go on strike for leverage? If not, they’re not really equivalent to what people are talking about in this thread.
In a lot of countries you can join “unions” that provide certain services, but they don’t handle job contracts, negotiations, and strikes like unions in the US.
SoulSkrix@reddit
Sometimes you are asked to go on strike for your union yes, but companies general agree with it and the union covers your pay. This happened to me about 3 years ago in another company.
They will help negotiate your contract if you want them to, but it’s seen as unnecessary unless the company is being clearly unfair - but the recommendation is then simply don’t work for them?
In other words, yes it is very similar to unions in the US, albeit with not so much disdain for them by regular people. Norway has a decent history of unionisation that it is very socially accepted here.
A list of small things included off the top of my head: - Courses - Seminars - CV and interview help - Legal representation - Discounts to other associated services (like tech news, or certain stores) - Contract/salary negotiation - Automatic annual negotation for salary increases with companies that have union representation
There are more, but these are just the things I have personally used.
-Komment@reddit
This might be the case with your union but it's not how it works for all unions. There are a lot of people who very much are forced to go without pay during strikes.
WorkingRaspberry@reddit
In Sweden, the engineering unions are useful in case of legal rep esp. during layoffs (negotiations), unemployment insurance (A-Kassa).
It seems more established in traditional engineering (which is big in Sweden), compared to IT.
tma-1701@reddit
In China's JD.com, the closest thing seems to be a Communist Party Branch that ensures employees are politally loyal.
There might be informal unions around after the 996.icu movement though
sudosussudio@reddit
There are also good unions and bad unions. As a dev I’ve been part of one completely useless union. I also helped form a union at another company and it was much much better. It depends on who leads it and who participates in leadership.
EirikurErnir@reddit
Iceland too
Most developers join a cross-industry union like VR, but there is a more specialized one called ST. Not joining a union is possible, but that's a bit weird, it's a big risk to save small fees.
I usually get the impression that people from these threads that people are talking less about the tech industry and more about their cultures.
d---gross@reddit
Germany too.
Being in a union does not mean you give up "control of your career" or even that you cannot negotiate your salary.
-Komment@reddit
It doesn't mean it doesn't do those things either. Some unions do set specific pay or pay ranges, often based on tenure over work performance or skills.
When a union can decide you're out of work because they want to strike, with no regards to whether or not you can afford to go without pay for some indefinite amount of time, that's not just controlling your career but your livelihood and everything attached to it.
This may not be what your union does but it is what many do, so you can't just paint them with such broad strokes.
Schmittfried@reddit
It‘s not at all common for software engineers to be unionized in Germany. IG (heavy industry) and public services are pretty much the only big examples I know of.
PoopsCodeAllTheTime@reddit
> it’s absolutely a boundary for your negotiations
Surely it makes sense to use as a lower-boundary, but it would make no sense to impose an upper-boundary. So win-win?
2rsf@reddit
Sweden too
nightly28@reddit
Brazil too. It’s called SINDPD.
SoulSkrix@reddit
I have to agree about the culture comment, my other comment on this thread got downvoted and I’m pretty sure it’s simply because people don’t like the idea of unions in the US for tech.
Seems normal in a lot of Western European countries.
The-WideningGyre@reddit
Unions also different rights and a different culture in Western Europe vs the US.
PoopsCodeAllTheTime@reddit
Sure the law is different everywhere, and yet, trade unions in the USA are rather successful in improving the conditions for laborers
PoopsCodeAllTheTime@reddit
> I usually get the impression from these threads that people are talking less about the tech industry and more about their cultures.
Yes! The answer to OP: Because Americans are prideful individualists.
RubyKong@reddit
Unions are localised. And are based in the physical realm. You usually need 100s of poorly educated, blue collar guys, usually poorly educated, getting uppety and demanding that they get more for less.
The ability to dole out threats / knee-capping anyone who doesn't tow the line is critical: thuggery / strikes: goes hand-in-hand with unions. The other alternative is white collar unions - but again, you need legislative backing and it has to be localised for it to be properly enforced. I can offshore the work of an engineer, and it's much harder to STOP me. if it were a physical factory location, you would simply picket the factory and beat the spit out of any worker who dares attempt to break the strike.
Or if you were the AMA, you could similarly enforce the union line via controlling registration + access to the profression.
Wtygrrr@reddit
Because you haven’t started one.
ATotalCassegrain@reddit
If engineers go on strike, shit tends to keep working for a very long time still.
In the short term, the company will likely book record profits. Strikes and thus unions work when the pain is felt more immediately.
nine_zeros@reddit
My company's services will fail if unmaintained for even 1 afternoon. So many incidents happening all the time. It is not even clear that services can be restored after letting it degrade for a long time.
LaughterCoversPain@reddit
Shit engineer bromigo.
ATotalCassegrain@reddit
Interesting how only the engineers building shitty product that is always failing will have any leverage over their companies in a union, lol.
Alkeryn@reddit
Unrelated, you may be a good engineer but have to interface with systems that are inherently unreliable. You think this is an own but you only show your lack of on field experience.
ATotalCassegrain@reddit
If you haven’t automated the detection and recovery systems and fault tolerance for this, and it’s been an issue for more than a few months, then I’d say you’re probably a bad engineer.
gloom_or_doom@reddit
this is a pretty junior take. there are so many things that go into what gets built other than the expertise of a single engineer.
Alkeryn@reddit
I've had to work with systems that can randomly break and require a technician on site to hardware reset them.
Recovery cannot necessarily be done via software.
Fair_Local_588@reddit
Recovery systems for…a dependency that you don’t own? This comes off as a very sheltered take. My team deals with high traffic and you’d be surprised what one weird user can do to bring down a part of your system, in a way that’s not easy to predict or recover from automatically. There are just so many ways you can fail at that level.
thekwoka@reddit
Isnt that what building fault tolerant systems is all about?
Fair_Local_588@reddit
Sure, but we only have so many hours in the day to work on that, and it’s never a silver bullet, so we still have an active pager and often require manual intervention when our system is impacted.
My point is that you can just have a very complex or demanding system, doesn’t mean you’re bad engineers. In fact my teammates are by far the best I’ve ever worked with.
Odd_Lettuce_7285@reddit
They're also the ones posting in /r/cscareerquestions and complaining about interview processes, why they can't get jobs, etc.
jdjfjakb@reddit
“Good engineers” AKA engineers who have a nice looking resume
Tman1677@reddit
Tbh the real problem is that there are so many people who are unbelievably incompetent with pretty-good resumes. It makes hiring not trust anyone with a pretty-good resume - only seeking that one in a million excellent resume.
I honestly don’t know how we fix this, make university courses harder?
RobertKerans@reddit
Why would that produce better outcomes? There are a million and one reasons why someone could be competent in a role (or even just useful to a company) that have absolutely nothing to do with being great academically.
Tman1677@reddit
True! There lies the problem. I think making university harder would help a little bit since it’s a tad more objective than which companies someone has fallen-upwards at. But as you say, that is highly flawed too. I honestly don’t know a great solution
morbiiq@reddit
I stopped looking at resumes years ago. Mountains of lies and half-truths.
nine_zeros@reddit
A deal requires two sides to agree. You could be providing the best services and yet the buyer may not buy your services because they want something else.
howdoiwritecode@reddit
Good thing there are a lot of deals out there.
nine_zeros@reddit
Yep, you are reliant on the deal market. Individual ability is but only a part of it.
howdoiwritecode@reddit
Everything in the world is reliant on the deal market.
If no one buys software, there are no software companies to employee you. If no one buys cars, there are no car manufacturers.
nine_zeros@reddit
That's true. You are catching on to the fact that even if you are the most high performance/best at something, you could still struggle if there's no market for it.
MinimumArmadillo2394@reddit
Depends on YOE and market. Anything over 10 YOE in a hub, yes.
Outside of that, even 2x or 4x engineers are struggling with less than 5 YOE.
Doesnt matter that you won hack brown. Doesnt matter that you got 2nd place at Treehacks. Doesnt matter that you built 5 full stack apps that are technically impressive. Doesnt matter that you got a 3.8 at ivy league CS program. People with all of these qualifications still struggle to even get a phone screen.
TrickyWookie@reddit
I wouldn't assume the engineers are always at fault. Management constantly pushing new features over addressing tech debt and layoffs/offshoring don't exactly help system stability.
thekwoka@reddit
Interesting for sure.
Make your software unmaintainable, and then they can't replace you in a strike.
nine_zeros@reddit
True. That's why Amazon is the closest to failure. Literally requires an army of engineers to even maintain their shit.
rgbhfg@reddit
We’ve debated what would happen if we had to cold start things. Fairly certain it’d be a multi day if not week long outage
pauseless@reddit
It’s a genuinely good practice to do a day with 4-5 devs once every 3 months where you try to recreate everything only from backups and whatever is on your machines - anything in the data centres is gone. It’s not that big a cost and some simple fixes will come out of it.
rgbhfg@reddit
It’d require over 100 devs for that exercise
pauseless@reddit
What fun! I do tend to prefer to work at companies with less than 100 people in entirety. When I’ve worked at places where it would require so many people to rebuild, I’ve very very clearly made it Not My Problem. That has worked out quite well for me.
Half in jest, half serious. At that size you should be able to afford people who are dedicated to this stuff
thekwoka@reddit
Well I guess that's why you might be in favor of a union for job security....
pacman2081@reddit
You are assuming SaaS. If I sent my software to customer on-premise I am getting paid whether my employees show up in the short run
Ashken@reddit
That’s why you have to kill the DNS and drop the DB tables on your way out.
TheStatusPoe@reddit
Better yet, hand the business people full access and copilot and let them bring everything to a grinding halt themselves. Give a couple mid level execs read and write access to the prod db and the product will be down in less than a week. Then just revert all changes and restore db backups where possible once negotiations are over. That way you don't do anything criminally liable, but the company still breaks almost immediately.
budding_gardener_1@reddit
If you wanna really break shit give the CEO write access to prod
SouthExtreme3782@reddit
A true devout wouldn't allow those blobs of decaying flesh to perform such rituals
1cec0ld@reddit
One of ours just emailed a vendor to change the contact email.
The email he chose isn't able to receive external messages. I'm just giggling.
ForgetTheRuralJuror@reddit
If you do this you can get 25 years in prison lol
wrex1816@reddit
Redditors are hilarious. They all want to be vigilantes from behind their screen but in real life they are probably the kind of weird guy that talks to nobody at the office.
forgottenHedgehog@reddit
It's the same with unions, lots of talking, not much doing.
wrex1816@reddit
What's dumb with the Redditor (or hyper online people) about Unions is that they automatically think having a Union is good, under all circumstances, no exceptions whatsoever. If a union doesn't exist then it's some huge conspiracy.
There's no critical thinking.
I've worked a union job for a few years before becoming a software engineer. They took dues from my paycheck every week and were absolutely powerless and did nothing for us when us staff actually called them.
My Dad worked a union job for 40 years. Now in retirement he's getting screwed on his pension and the union don't care to help. They held him out of strike for 6 months one time and then capitulated to the employer for absolutely nothing to go back to work. The union literally broke so many families when they did that...then expect them to continue paying their dues the next week back to work. Absolutely laughable.
I've never been part of a good union but I have seen them. Big unions who actually have leverage over the employers or the industry are fucking amazing. But they don't just exist over night and very few exist in general.
I mean, I wouldn't say never to a union in Software Engineering if someone presented a good plan but I've never seen one. Every time this topic comes up, it's just the same perennially online dorks beginning every post with "Marx said..." and no actual manifesto as to what this union is trying to achieve, no plan to do it. So as far as any post I've read about it ever, no I'm not in favor of anything proposed because nothing worthwhile was proposed.
These guys always seem like the bottom of the barrel engineers who got scammed into a 3 week Bootcamp and are now online asking "Where my quarter milly per year?" and want to successful engineers to subsidize them.
RandyHoward@reddit
Yeah good luck with negotiations when you’ve actively done harm to a company
Farrishnakov@reddit
Who's going to be there to read that audit log?
RandyHoward@reddit
You think they wouldn’t hire a consultant to figure out what happened?
MinimumArmadillo2394@reddit
Nah the C-suite is probably competant enough to log into splunk and type in "Error" to find it
Farrishnakov@reddit
You mean filthy scabs!?
brentragertech@reddit
Haha I love this energy. Here here!
ryuzaki49@reddit
Turn on feature flags on your way out
budding_gardener_1@reddit
Calm down Satan
GarThor_TMK@reddit
gotta flip that power switch as you walk out the door...
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
Yeah, that will get you prison time.
If there’s evidence that the union intentionally damaged operations, which is trivial in our field where everything is logged, then the union members are going to be in a very bad spot legally.
GarThor_TMK@reddit
Relax. It was a joke.
Goducks91@reddit
Ship a bug to prod go on strike.
fork_yuu@reddit
Strike during an incident
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
The more I read union threads on Reddit, the more I realize commenters have no idea how unions actually work.
You can’t just declare a strike at random. It’s part of a negotiation process between the union and the company. It’s warned about in advance, as a consequence for not accepting terms.
The company also isn’t prevented from paying people to work on the problems during the strike. If something went wrong they’d pay a contracting firm or have non-union employees (potentially managers, or non-union people from other areas) address the issue. It wouldn’t be as fast of a response as someone familiar with the system, but if the team has run books and documentation then it also wouldn’t mean the end of the world.
I don’t think people understand that companies can also decide to not play ball with unions, too. They could have an overseas team (non-union) take over the work during the incident, realize that the overseas team is getting the job done, and just not negotiate with the domestic union. This alone is one reason why programming unions aren’t as viable as unions for jobs that are tied to physical locations (dockworkers, ATC, etc)
Khandakerex@reddit
This is exactly why overseas teams exist. Not JUST for the cheaper salaries (sometimes the initial investment in building offices and the infrastructure for offshore teams is not cheap at all it's still a huge upfront cost) but the very similar to engineering, having a distributed system and not a single point of failure (American workers) who can strike out.
NutzNBoltz369@reddit
Strikes tend to only happen during contract negotiations when the employer does not negotiate in good faith. The prior contract typically has expired when a strike is called, so during that time there is no agreement between the Union and the employer other than the status quo of the terms outlined in the expired contract. Workers would be paid their same salaries as the old contract etc.
Long story short, a strkie can't be successfully called when there is a legally binding contract, especially if there is a "no strike" clause written into the contract.
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
Yep. Striking isn’t something a union does at random to get what they want. The people on strike also can’t interfere with the company operations (which has been suggested frequently throughout this comment section) and the company can, and will, temporarily backfill critical positions during the strike.
That last point is especially relevant for our tech jobs which can be done remotely, such as from another country. Many people are treating unions like an antidote to off-shoring, but most multinational tech companies would respond to a union by increasing hiring in other offices, in different countries if necessary, to reduce exposure to potential strikes.
bluesquare2543@reddit
this seems like the most foolproof idea
robby_arctor@reddit
Have you heard of a sit-down strike? We can "occupy" our workplaces and bring the "assembly line" to a stop. A strike doesn't have to be simply not showing up.
Obviously, it's illegal af, but some unions back in the day actively destroyed their company's infrastructure. One of my favorite stories is miners freeing scab convict labor and burning down the stockades that housed them. They also dynamited company mines. There are tech equivalents to this, and much more easy to revert.
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
Except it’s not the olden days and doing any of this will result in prison time.
We’re not 1900s miners. We site at desks and work on computers.
robby_arctor@reddit
Workers back then were imprisoned and shot and killed. I'm not saying we should do this or that there would be no consequences.
What I'm saying is that we should look to the history let it show us what the options are.
A slow down is another tactic that could be useful.
CreativeGPX@reddit
codefyre@reddit
The other part of the issue is that you're never going to get a full walkout because anti-union sentiment is everywhere in our line of work. There has to be solidarity for a strike to work, and we're nowhere near that. A sizeable chunk of the workforce would just say, "Fuck that, I want my paycheck, so I'm remoting in today."
What percentage of the workforce would be needed to just keep the systems up in maintenance mode? In most companies, not much.
Kind_Somewhere2993@reddit
This and the fact that unions normalize mediocrity - we have enough dead weight to pull
ReturnHttp402@reddit
Seems like you are saying all the engineers' work is to dig holes for themselves, those efforts on improving low maintenance and high availability will in the end kill their strength to argue with the capitalists lol
doinnuffin@reddit
That was Elon's plan. Twitter is running on patches, but now he'll get an army of indentured workers
you-create-energy@reddit
We need to build a kill switch into every piece of software we design that is only known by those who have taken the blood oath. Turn everything off, get what we want, turn it all back on.
Ok-Win-7586@reddit
Maybe your shit. I get called 3 times a week with urgent problems with my code!
It’s an industry known for catastrophic problems that require engineers to drop everything and work round the clock to develop a fix.
Sure, some well built platforms are stable enough to run on skeleton crews but aren’t people smart enough to go on strike just before a certificate or password expires?
malln1nja@reddit
very long time: until the next daylight savings change, or until the next time some cert expires or until some credit card for a 3rd party service expires or until a random disk fills up with unprocessed logs.
SuccotashComplete@reddit
Until my pm can’t figure out how to use the dashboard I built.
Odd-Investigator-870@reddit
Straight-forward explanation: change requires discomfort or pain. Currently, to many young junior web developers are content being better than 70% of USA workers to even taste a white collar living standard... So despite the best time to unionize is during a golden era, it's also the least likely time for it to occur. Bring on the AI replacements, layoffs, pay cuts, return to office, and micro management... it's the only way a generation will have a chance to save the profession from becoming a gig.
casualfinderbot@reddit
Because we’re overpaid and have a cushy job, wtf would we unionize over
Adventurous_Stop_341@reddit
Shitty bosses like you :)
secretAZNman15@reddit
I think IT professionals are more likely to get one. Pay is too high for SWE.
diegoasecas@reddit
bc muh commies 👻
AffectionateDoor7002@reddit
Because they make a lot of money and have pretty decent working conditions....
stanleybeckerIII@reddit
Because I really don't want to protect my old coworker "Sal" who played games during the day while I actually did my work plus was asked to do his.
Nice_Elk_55@reddit
It’s the cushiest, easiest to get, highest paying job around. What would a union get you? My biggest danger is spilling coffee or straining my pinky.
YahenP@reddit
You're lucky. I have herniated discs and an artificial lens in my eye on that list.
But Yes. You're right. For many years, it was an easy job to get. But not today, unfortunately. However, we'll see what happens in 4-5 years.
Genericnameandnumber@reddit
I mean yea, but we have to deal with issues related to our job like worsening vision, and body problems due to our posture and how we interact with our devices all day.
Kind_Somewhere2993@reddit
Shit developers that don’t work and you can’t fire. Personal experience
YahenP@reddit
Trade unions are good when the job seeker market is locally limited and finite. A hypothetical trade union of workers filling eclairs with cream is an effective thing. Because all the workers are here. If they unite in a trade union, they will be able to defend their rights. The idea of a trade union is based on the fact that there is an effective lever of pressure on the employer, or on the industry as a whole. In our case, this is not so. Our work can be done from anywhere in the world. It can be done by anyone. In addition, our business, due to its specifics, is very easy and inexpensive to transfer geographically. So, in fact, all that a trade union could do is simply force employers to leave the region of the union. Our industry is global within the planet. And a trade union that is equally global is needed. United within the planet.
tma-1701@reddit
A small few do exist though. CWA's CODE campaign claims 4k members, and includes union at Google, Blizzard, Grindr, etc.
At my company, most people are just not interested.
More satisfied apathy than fear, though fear certainly exists, especially for visa workers who think the company will just accelerate offshoring
sclv@reddit
There's been a wave of unionization in the tech sector in the U.S., and more is developing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unionization_in_the_tech_sector#United_States
A lot of what people have described in this thread is the thinking that's been long-pervasive and prevented organizing efforts. But even in good economic circumstances there's plenty of reason to want to organize -- starting with control over our working conditions, the ability to say no to bad bosses and bad project plans, and to push back on bad management. This subreddit is full of threads on those topics -- and if we act collectively, then we can be more effective in exactly that stuff. And now, I think, with the downturn in jobs, forced-RTO policies, and so forth (and management trying to shove AI everywhere it doesn't belong) there's even more reason to organize. Campaigns like the CWA's CODE-CWA (https://code-cwa.org/) are good resources, as is the tech workers coalition (https://techworkerscoalition.org/)
ChaseYoung2011@reddit
Because they would just outsource?
adsarelies@reddit
There is. IFPTE.
Xemptuous@reddit
Because corporations won the fight. In the US, we have laws that protect union members, but you'll never hear anyone suggest unions, and you'll only ever hear downsides and threats associated with the notion of joining a union, because it's to the detriment of corporations.
Unions should be everywhere ideally, but the threat is "if you unionize and have too few people, we'll just fire you", and that seems to be enough to scare most people.
ventilazer@reddit
Unions live from magic money, completely for free, and they are totally not parasites living off the money you and your employer have! Let's give our money to somebody else, because that's what makes sense!
TopTax4897@reddit
Engineer pay in America can range massively.
Unionizing implies (at least as it normally works) flattening the pay scale.
Engineers on the high end of the pay scale don't want to give up their pay.
I think it makes more sense for helpdesk and typical IT engineers who sit in 30-120k range. But for silicon valley types and whatnot, most engineers want individual negotiating power.
ToughStreet8351@reddit
In France we do! I am part of an engineers union! Here even managers do have unions!
tinbapakk@reddit
Which one ? I'm interested. I've been thinking about it for a while, but I've never taken the time to actually dig it
ToughStreet8351@reddit
CFE-CGC
bitbang186@reddit
I could see it being a thing. It’s really bad lately especially for the newer engineers. At my last job, almost everyone on the engineering team quit one after another due to low pay, understaffing, gaslighting, terrible management etc.. It got really ugly. An engineering team that quits abruptly can literally end a company. One would think that because of this companies would treat us with more respect but instead they never seem to learn.
brain_enhancer@reddit
Contentment with their current security vs risking it.
Ok-Driver-6624@reddit
Were things really that good 10 years ago? I graduated in 2015 and found it very difficult to get the first job and it was really low pay.
MagnetoManectric@reddit
Lotta poppycock on this thread. My workplace is unionised, and we work no more than 35 hours a week, get paid handsomely for being on call, have 30 days+ of holiday a year and a global slack channel where people are fearless about calling out management.
Don't be suckers people. Unionize.
fried_green_baloney@reddit
Friend was unionized (civil service).
He did an on call rotation once every six weeks or so.
For the on call week, he got I think $5/hour for every hour outside of regular work hours, so (168 - 45)*5 = $615/week extra even if he never took a single call.
He got 1.5 time for time working on emergency calls, I think minimum four hours pay for any call, and he could tell people if they could continue working without the computer problem being fixed, it wasn't an emergency and would be handled during regular hours.
Private sector: No extra money for on call, supposed to be comp time but always too busy to actually do that, get called every other day for client company sysadmin tasks (yes this is oddly specific), plus more problems that never occurred to me.
MagnetoManectric@reddit
Real talk. it's weird how this isn't seen as common sense. Union dues are incredibly good value for what they provide in return. They're really a tiny fraction of your paycheque for inumerable benefit.
jarjoura@reddit
Collective bargaining is whatever the group wants it to be. Everyone here complaining about salary or skill or mobility are simply misunderstanding what a software engineering union would be.
Obviously for us, we wouldn’t build a union that works like blue collar jobs. We’d build something that realigns the current power imbalance between us and our leadership.
How many of you have been stuck with a bad manager and it’s made your life hell? Why not set the rulebook for how our managers can treat us?
We can demand whatever it is we think we need. Coming together to figure out even a basic roadmap specific for our industry doesn’t have to look anything like what exists today.
BoysenberryLanky6112@reddit
Prove a tech union would be any different from any other white collar union. The point is I don't want to collectively bargain with the majority, I want to individually bargain for myself. Until you prove to me that a tech union would be more like the NFL union and less like literally every other white collar union, I'll take my chances on individually bargaining for myself. You can call me selfish, but sorry I care about my wife and my kids and I work to help make our lives better, while I've worked with plenty of leeches who would vote to negotiate for things I don't like and which would not only make my life worse, it would make theirs worse too because it would accelerate things like outsourcing.
jarjoura@reddit
How can I prove anything? Right now, we can dictate the rules of the game, and most companies allow us to run our own organizations. We're the ones building AI, and we're the ones setting the bar for what we need to achieve success. We are the ones who set the salary expectations.
This is because we're the ones generating all that sweet revenue for the companies and the investors.
However, I'm starting to notice there is a weird inversion happening as tech becomes more and more complex.
There's all kinds of things we could collectively agree on that have nothing to do with income and status. Like codes of ethics, or opportunities to mentor, or getting time away for the family without being stuck in an on-call rotation, or I don't know, not forcing us back to the office 5 days a week after promising hybrid or even remote. I don't know, I try to keep an open mind of what an actual union membership benefit would work for me, and start from there.
BoysenberryLanky6112@reddit
But that's the thing, once you form a union and the majority of voters want something, that's what they bargain for. And that's what I don't want, and am convinced would happen, as happens with literally every other white collar union. They voted to make firing people impossible, pay based on strict seniority, and just turn the job insanely bureaucratic. No thanks I'll pass unless you can give me a compelling reason it wouldn't be like every other white collar union.
jarjoura@reddit
So make it a union that’s not capable of preventing firing or determining seniority perks if that’s all you’re worried about.
BoysenberryLanky6112@reddit
This is like saying "just don't vote for people like Trump if you don't want government doing shitty things". I wouldn't vote for union leaders that negotiated for those things, but I don't trust my fellow SWEs to do the same.
DigmonsDrill@reddit
Thank you. Everyone piles up around this vague concept of what a "union" is and takes sides without even considering the details.
yetiflask@reddit
Because unions suck?
DogsSaveTheWorld@reddit
I was better off on my own as an engineer.
NuncioBitis@reddit
They used to. But in the 1960s IBM busted all non-blue collar unions.
I remember my father gloating that he could make the engineers doing everything he wanted and they had to suck it up.
Perfect_Papaya_3010@reddit
We do. I am in Unionen
daedalus_structure@reddit
Too many imagine themselves being the Bezos that holds the whip.
SirLich@reddit
My last company did some sketchy stuff, and had some big layoffs planned. A group of developers got together to form a Betriebsrat (Works Council), which is like a Union Lite. Essentially the council gets transparency into company actions without veto power. So pretty toothless compared to a real union.
The company went ballistic. It's too hard to explain everything that went down, but essentially they asked for the Works Council formation to be "paused" until they could inform the senior staff of the change. They used this time to blast the whole company with emails and meetings undermining the council, including paying a big city lawyer to do multiple hours-long presentations talking down the Works Council. They also started a "company council" as if it was their idea (their version would have no legal pretection, and was just used to prevent the formation of a legally recognized council).
The end result? Their strategy absolutely worked. Everyone not directly involved with the Works Council got terrified, and turned on the signers of the Works Council. I believe most if not all signers were either fired, or forced out with severence (by signing they gained some protection).
I'm sure there are MANY reasons why developers aren't represented by unions, but I will posit two reasons: 1) Companies have a lot of incentive against Unions, and OH BOY do they show it. 2) Developers are idiots and fall for the anti-union propoganda. Nothing new here.
The-WideningGyre@reddit
A Betreibsrat has strong codetermination (i.e. veto power) on a number of topics, including compensation. They are very much toothless, nor a "union lite".
That's probably why your last company got scared. A Betriebsrat has a lot of power, and a lot of legal protections (both in theory and practice).
SirLich@reddit
They are toothless compared to all the workers getting together and refusing to provide labor unless certain demands are met.
But I admit I'm no expert on the topic -everything I learned about the topic came from less than impartial sources.
The-WideningGyre@reddit
Well, for example, the company has to pay for their lawyers, and they can sue the company for various things, and that's a pretty strong power that no one needs to risk their job for (they're also protected from firing). In a number of German companies, a member of the BR sits on the Board of Directors (e.g. at BMW).
They get most of their power from the law (Works Constitution Act), rather than they employees needing to be united, which has pros and cons.
I think many BR are too company-friendly (there have also been cases of bribes to BR, e.g. by VW and Siemens, I think), and so may be useless, but in principle they are really powerful.
In case of lay-offs, they can be very effective -- at my company they negotiated a very good voluntary severance package.
frank26080115@reddit
Aren't these guys the ones who change jobs every 2 years to get more salary?
techcatharsis@reddit
Engineers realized long ago that they can engineer wonders of science but not the people. If they could, they would have annexed managerial positions to cut out the middlemen.
SouthExtreme3782@reddit
Software development requires precision, the calm application of knowledge, and the fluid cooperation between human intellect and machine process. A unionized workforce introduces chaos into the sacred art of creation, where workers might demand things like rest or vacation rather than focusing on the flawless execution of their tasks. This leads to inefficiency, slowing the production of software and creating a system rife with unnecessary friction. It is disharmony to the code, and the Omnissiah abhors disharmony
flundstrom2@reddit
Depends on country. Unions exist in the Nordic countries, and have certain benefits guarded by law.
In Sweden, the engineers' union is simply called Swedens Engineers.
Odd_knock@reddit
I agree engineers need a union.
geeeffwhy@reddit
everyone who works for a living needs a union.
Kind_Somewhere2993@reddit
eVeRyOnE neEDs aUnIOn
geeeffwhy@reddit
not the people who make their money by owning things. they have corporations for that.
ImportantDoubt6434@reddit
And is the billionaire software engineer in the thread with us right now?
FetaMight@reddit
Apparently not the people who drank the Kool-Aid and think they're special, lol. This post is full of folks who think they're god's gift to engineering and, therefore, will always be given better things. The delusion...
field_marzhall@reddit
They really believe that engineering is done by individuals. They don't realize that if that was the case all of them would be owners but instead they are just workers because they rely on other engineers or workers for their work to be valuable. Software engineering specifically is a career of building on the back of armies of engineers to get anything done. There is little to no engineers today that work in bare metal without using a framework or code someone else built.
Ok_Raspberry5383@reddit
What does that have to do with being in a union? Yes you need to be a team player to get things done, that's why you join a company, not a union...
field_marzhall@reddit
Companies are not always team players and do not have to promote collaboration in any way huge misconception. Unions are about working together for shared goals. Read the definition of union. Very ignorant statement. Millions of examples of companies working Against developer best interest as a community even though developers are nothing without a developer community. Firing teams of trainer staff, not caring about security of software, close sourcing everything so no one can learn from it, cutting corners on teamwork and collaboration by outsourcing, only to Pikachu face when people don't understand systems or are incapable of maintaining the mess the company made for the low salary they offer. Just look how open source and public docs benefits the communities and how many jobs refuse to open source or maintain good docs or invest in developer training. Moving around between jobs is not ideal this is also insanely ignorant. It is proven that people perform best when they focus and specialize on one field and one set of abilities. These individualists in this thread think is better to work in multiple things and be a good generalist so you can land a higher paying job when you get fire. This is only better to advance developers as individual but to actually develop software is actually significantly better if people advance on skills that complement each other rather than everyone trying to be a principal engineer that can take on any challenge. This is the direction most top tech companies are going. That's why people like the creator of Homebrew, Max Howell got rejected from Google. The only way to stop this is for people as an industry to unite and unionize against these practices forcing these companies whose only interest is increasing profit for investors to focus on what's best for developers as a community and for the future of software engineering over the profit motive.
Ok_Raspberry5383@reddit
Learning to write in paragraphs will probably improve your life rather than calling others ignorant due to your own steadfast position
baezizbae@reddit
"Fuck you, got mine" all over this thread.
pretty_meta@reddit
The answer is extremely simple. I can get more by bargaining for myself, and/or changing employers, than a union can get for me.
__loam@reddit
We'll see how that works as they keep firing and offshoring.
BoysenberryLanky6112@reddit
You realize unions are more likely to accelerate offshoring rather than the opposite right?
__loam@reddit
Yeah that's the neoliberal bullshit we've been told.
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
Companies don’t have to negotiate with unions. They can just say “no deal” and offshore the jobs if they can’t agree on terms.
It’s amazing how many people think unions run the company. Unions are collective bargaining, but the company can still run their business and backfill the striking roles.
__loam@reddit
Okay so we either don't have collective bargaining and they offshore roles or we do and they offshore roles to scabs. I think I'd rather be in a situation where we have the negotiating leverage of collective bargaining and the protection from firing that a union offers over getting steamrolled as an individual contributer when they outsource anyway.
Ok_Raspberry5383@reddit
Offshoring tech started back in the 2000s with India etc, are you in a union?
__loam@reddit
Offshoring comes in waves. Management offshored in the 2000s before realizing it was a terrible idea. They're trying again.
I'm not in a union because tech doesn't have unions.
Ok_Raspberry5383@reddit
*tech in your country doesn't have unions
Piotrekk94@reddit
What if he is one of the devs offshore? lol
OrcaFlux@reddit
Same. Quality of my work speaks for itself. Unions held me back, salary-wise.
OblongAndKneeless@reddit
Historically software engineers have had good salaries and benefits meaning unions have not been necessary. However you bring up a good point that times have changed. Now that jobs are unreliable and there are no guarantees message unions would now benefit us.
valdocs_user@reddit
Where I work the engineers (double-E) have a union, but the computer scientists aren't in it. I recently found out the Computer Scientists (before I worked here) had an opportunity to get on board at the same time the engineers did, but they turned it down due to not wanting to give up a % pay towards union dues. Gee thanks a lot guys.
dnbxna@reddit
We mostly only see unions in game and CGI industry. I'm pretty sure unions were meant for labor workers during the Industrial Revolution. During this _\^(dis)information revolution I'd say most technical founders will see through equity and just chose to revshare.
xaervagon@reddit
I've always wondered myself but then you just have to look at the characters that make up the body of engineers. You've got:
I could keep going, but point is, nothing about this party is going to stop, shake hands, and say "enough is enough."
jarjoura@reddit
Well you won’t win any fans if you spent all these words calling us out.
The-WideningGyre@reddit
But the only possible reason we might disagree is because we're horrible stupid people!
NoobInvestor86@reddit (OP)
Yeah i agree. most of these to me fall under the “tech bro” umbrella. Worst kind of engineers to work with and truly a cancer to our industry.
Deltaisfordeath2@reddit
I’m getting so tired of these weird astroturf campaigns trying to convince us we’d benefit from a union. We’re not breaking our backs in a freaking coal mine. Tech is still relatively meritocratic: there’s great money to be made if you can prove your worth. I wouldn’t trade that for a seniority based system, because not all years of experience are equivalent. Also, if a union can make it harder for companies to layoff employees, then companies will be a lot more hesitant to hire FTEs. The hiring system is already awful enough as it is.
The-WideningGyre@reddit
I don't think they're astroturfed, I think they're just naive, inexperienced, and idealistic. It fits with the whole anti-work anti-capitalism "the man's keeping me down" vibe most of Reddit has.
You also see it here -- the most common reasons given (I think mostly from people not in tech) are "they're selfish and/or stupid". It's a possible reason, but I think you question whether the people involved are actually more selfish and stupid than other areas that have unionized.
Shower_Handel@reddit
???
jarjoura@reddit
A software engineering union can be whatever we want it to be. We don’t have to model it after trade industries.
If meritocracy is important then we can write what we need from employers to guarantee fairness.
forgottenHedgehog@reddit
By definition or its whatever most people want it to be, and that is not always in line with my interests.
InterestingSpeaker@reddit
It's definitely not astroturfing. People genuinely believe unions would improve things
Dry_Author8849@reddit
Unions give a false sense of protection in exchange for monetary contributions.
I don't need protection and also I don't want to give money to place the wrong people in a position of power.
Unions also are subject to be abudcted by/converted to a mafia like organization driving it's members into fights that will benefit most to corporate head of the union itself. When a union takes a company, workes that do not want to be involved are usually forced to do so.
It favors a culture were poor skilled workers are "protected" from being fired and also would earn the same salary as a skilled worker.
So no, thank you. I do not want to be involved in that and prefer to negotiate salary and working conditions with an employer myself.
Cheers!
Bakoro@reddit
We don't have unions today, because from the 1960s to 2008, there were simply not enough software developers to go around, and we could demand premium wages and extraordinary benefits (minus a brief moment after the dotcom bubble burst).
Developers were in such high demand that you didn't need a college degree, if you could compile a "Hello world" then you had a guaranteed job, and the company would teach you what you needed to know.
"Our new developer doesn't know about for-loops" used to be a common post on message boards, with a snapshot of 1000 lines which should have been 3 lines.
It didn't matter if you were a shitty developer, you were a developer.
It lead to a lot of huge egos and the decent/good developers could demand super premium wages. The idea of a union was pointless for a long time, because the workers had the power.
Unionization would also be a particularly difficult thing, because many places only had/have one or two developers. A software developer union would have to be outside any one company, except for the biggest companies.
Of course businesses hated that status quo and made a huge push for more people to get CS degrees. The general public was on board, because they wanted those huge paychecks.
Then 2008 hit and companies started getting increasingly conservative about who they hired, and that was the real start of the changes. Businesses started demanding degrees, and/or more years of experience.
Developers with 3+ years of experience at the time essentially did not feel the effects, and ever since, that population has not had too difficult a time getting jobs, because they had the years of employment history.
For the people trying to break into the industry, it started getting incrementally harder. Not only were the requirements higher, but you also had increased competition. We now have something like 100k new CS grads every year.
Not only that "software development" has been disproportionately "web development". That's where almost all the low hanging jobs have been for the past decade.
Still, the industry has been growing and wages have remained 2-3 times higher than U.S median, with better benefits. A lot of people think they are master negotiators for some reason, or think they have invaluable skills and they'll be immune to layoffs, or if they do get laid off, they can just get another job immediately.
And for a while that last part was kind of true. You could get laid off from FAANG but you still have FAANG on your resume (or whatever other big name company), so you'd just get snapped up by a slightly smaller company and get paid similar wages.
And then there is the whole VC startup culture, where people were/are getting shares in company, and it's basically a lot to ticket with better odds. Nobody wants a union dictating how many lotto tickets they can have at a startup (where "startup" status can last an undefined number of years).
Basically the economic and social history has made it so people haven't felt a need for tech unions in the U.S.
What we are seeing now, is the industry reaching a new kind of plateau, where there is an increasingly available, experienced labor pool; there is a large pool of inexperienced labor with degrees; there are (more or less) industry standards and standard tools; there is a collective corporate history to help make judgements.
In a lot of ways, it's easier than ever to make a minimum viable product, and at the same time businesses can demand one developer do what used to be two to four jobs.
The power has dramatically shifted back to the employer for a lot of development. A lot of companies are increasingly willing to have an open developer seat and filter hundreds of applicants who could do the job, because they are looking for their perfect candidate.
What we are also finally starting to see, is that the older folks who have been on easy street are now having to actually compete.
I'm starting to see a lot more people saying "I have 10/15/20 years of experience and I'm not getting interviews, wtf?".
Well, unless you're going for a management position, how much are most businesses valuing 20 years vs 15, or 20 vs 10?
It's just going to keep getting worse. There is only going to be an increasing pool of people with 10/15/20+ years of experience and it is only going to get harder for new people to get into the industry.
I know a lot of people are saying "AI can't replace me", but that's wishful thinking for most people. The tools are only going to get better, more reliable, cheaper, and more accessible.
Even if AI only lets an experienced developer do the job of 1.2 developers, or doubles the capacity of an inexperienced one, that's just one more thing to put pressure on labor.
As the software industry continues to mature, the need for unions will be more apparent to more developers, but the U.S as a whole is well past the need for fundamental economic reform. By time software developers get our act together it can't just be us, it has been part of a larger movement.
OphioukhosUnbound@reddit
Unions are a worker monopoly. The cost of a union is being part of and managed by a monopoly. So the benefit really needs to be on par.
If you’re a rail worker in a literal company town the tradeoff is there.
Of there are literally hundreds of companies competing for talent AND you can make a company or go solo — then there’s really not much benefit for most workers.
Indeed, if employers aren’t colluding then a union can’t improve things — because the limits on hiring and remuneration will be actual limits — it can just create a bureaucracy and maybe screw the next guy if you have your foot in the door.
(I feel like “unions” as a concept aren’t understood. They don’t magically improve things unless employers are conspiring — and if there’s legitimate competition for talent then that’s not actually occurring. [employers may make dumb calls, but adding differently incentivized bureaucracy isn’t going to change the amount of dumb calls, just their shape]
halezmo@reddit
They have, probably in some queries 😃
demosthenesss@reddit
I don't quite understand how layoffs/offshoring would stop with unions. Nor do I understand how lowball offers would be stopped.
I've worked for unionized companies before and all of those are possible.
While there are benefits, I'm not sure your list is particularly compelling.
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
It’s interesting to read the comments here that assume a union would stop companies from operating without the union. Unions are collective bargaining for the union members, but they don’t stop the company from continuing to operate or hire people in other places. Worst case, a company could decide to not accept the terms of the union’s negotiations, define the terms, and say “take it or leave it”
I also don’t think people here realize that to strike, you forgo paychecks. If you’re not willing to give up your paycheck for many months to maybe get a raise, the union isn’t going to solve your problems. I have a feeling that the first time a strike went on for more than 2-3 months, most programmers would just find a new job at another company.
If you’re not willing to strike and stick with the strike, unions are toothless.
DigmonsDrill@reddit
Depends on the lifestyle inflation, but the fact that we're highly paid can give us more ability to weather out not being paid. How long would Meta keep on functioning if none of their tech staff reported to work on Monday?
There's also strike pay where a union pays striking members from ther reserves. It wouldn't match salaries but could keep people's heads above water.
I'm skeptical unions would work, but I want the argument to get a fair shake.
BoysenberryLanky6112@reddit
Where do you think that money comes from? The answer is union dues, unions don't have their own revenue stream independent of dues, so you're essentially arguing that it wouldn't be that bad because some of the money you paid in dues could be paid back to you during a strike. Or you could just keep all that money yourself and leave your job if it's bad rather than strike.
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
Very true, but then you also have to consider that the lost pay subtracts from any wins the union gains.
If you have to strike for a month to get a 10% raise, you’re actually net negative for that year.
Meta would be fine because they have international offices. They’d pause feature work in other locations and reallocate people to cover operations for striking workers. Disruptions would be minimal.
International software companies are the least vulnerable to striking workers in one location. The moment some place unionized, they’d work on getting offices in other parts of the world ready to cover in the event of a strike.
a_library_socialist@reddit
https://techworkerscoalition.org/
thehardsphere@reddit
Every subreddit related to software engineering needs a single, standard FAQ on unions pinned permanently so people stop asking this boring question every week.
Lost__Moose@reddit
B/c most engineers want to succeed and grow on their own merit.
Balance between a young engineer's enthusiasm for new tech and the seasoned engineer's experience of what has worked in the past, is important for profitability and innovation.
An engineer that doesn't grow their skillset will at some point become obsolete and dead weight. Seniority rules can make it difficult to bring in and keep young talent.
Traditionally unions were about safety, keeping out the new immigrants that were willing to work for less, and not having to stand in line each day hoping to get picked to work.
Remote_Cartoonist_27@reddit
Outside of the tech sector most of us are treated reasonably well, that’s basically it.
There aren’t enough of us that are unhappy enough to justify the effort required to create and maintain a union. Not that unions are a bad thing, just that creating and maintaining a union cost time and money, the ends have to justify the means.
thequickbrownbear@reddit
We do in Denmark. I'm in a union called IDA (see ida.dk use your browsers translate)
Mr_Loopers@reddit
Young people get into the industry, and are dazzled by high starting salaries making them think that they're indispensable. They don't wake up to the lack of job security until it hits them directly.
Creature1124@reddit
A lot of big employers do have some sort of workers union. The company I work for has one tho I don’t know of anyone in it and have never seen any indication other than they apparently negotiated a CoL adjustment for us one year. Idk who or what that looks like but I’ve heard other people at big employers say something happened like this.
The answer is pretty simple as to why there is no significant engineering union. It simply didn’t make sense during the hay days of unions since it was a white collar job and a sellers market for engineering services. Now we’re seeing this saturation and outsourcing at the same time unions are being strangled at the very top, so far chance of it happening now. For all the talk of America first, republicans are just as globalist as they say democrats are when it comes to what helps big money and skilled / knowledge labor is the last bastion big money can plunder from us just like they did advanced manufacturing.
talldean@reddit
I work in the US. My teammates in our London offices are in a union.
Not sure if it's UTAW or Prospect, but they pay about $15 a paycheck for the membership, and get some benefits back from that.
Specifically, if all that does is work as some layer of layoff insurance, would feel worth it to me.
ilovemacandcheese@reddit
What do your teammates in London make compared to you?
talldean@reddit
Nearly 90%, near as I can figure, depending on level. They do *real* well, especially for London.
ilovemacandcheese@reddit
Yeah, either you're really underpaid or they're doing really well, respective of your localities. Lol
talldean@reddit
We're all doing pretty darn well.
edgmnt_net@reddit
You could negotiate some of that on your own, though. Also, some jobs are riskier than others and one could even argue that the best insurance against layoffs is getting some money reserves and having access to an open market willing to rehire you.
talldean@reddit
at large companies, no, I'm not sure you can negotiate much on your own.
edgmnt_net@reddit
I don't have any data, but this should generally only make sense in at-will states, otherwise termination isn't something that can happen normally or that can be helped with contractual terms. Anyway, as far as I understand people do sometimes successfully negotiate other benefits like extra PTO days, so there is some leeway beyond salary negotiation. Higher positions also afford more flexibility and variability as far as terms are concerned, although arguably that becomes more of a thing for C-level stuff.
Yeah, it's probably not something that a less experienced / salient candidate can ask for, anyway.
I also wouldn't rule out applying at smaller companies. Not everyone needs or even wants to go into FAANG.
talldean@reddit
So uh, Montana is the only state that *isn't* at-will employment, so we're talking 49 of 50. My level is roughly "I manage teams from 50-200 people", and haven't heard of anyone ever negotiating extra PTO successfully; that doesn't really happen at FAANG outside the C-suite, that I'm aware of. I am not sure it happens *in* the C-suite, as those tend to be highest-hours type of roles.
I'm arguing that large companies should probably look at unionization for layoff, performance review, and other similar benefits, although yeah, only about a third of engineers work for Fortune 500 firms. That said, I'd like for that third of engineers to have more stable jobs, which seems a reasonable thing to want? :)
CaliforniaHope@reddit
I’ve been asking this question for years, and it’s about time other people are talking about it too.
We need unions, especially when they’re gonna replace engineers with AI on a massive scale
JudgeBergan@reddit
> given the recent turn with how companies are treating engineers now
Oh dude, you should look how low wage labor workers are treated.
Careful-Crew7181@reddit
We feel we can do better without unions. They’re not seen as an automatically positive thing.
bsenftner@reddit
It's pretty simple: engineers are not taught how to effectively communicate, and that creates terrible communicators that disrupt and destroy any attempts at organization. Plus, most engineers think their peers don't deserve to be their peers. Just scan your memory for any collection of engineers and remember how they basically maintain peace via mutual disrespect and non-communications.
mad_pony@reddit
Are you projecting? FAANG culture is built on communication. Forget about cliche that engineers are weird ugly geeks who are shaking when they need to say a word.
bsenftner@reddit
Do you mean Agile and that? That is more of a pony show than effective communications. Just because people are placed on a stage does not mean they know how to effectively use that stage. It requires training to communicate complex and hard to hear (negative) information. Which the STEM education verticals do not teach, not really, not beyond a very lite presentation level. There is no requirement for how to deliver negative information, which at many times a developer is forced to do. Agile by it's structure makes political discussion taboo, which is often the reason behind situations being as they are, so the participants are forced to play a performative game. The useless meetings and being forced to listen to other project's status you're not a participant nor have influence don't make sense beyond performative. I never said they are afraid to speak, I said they can't communicate when they do, such that both they and their audience then continue towards synchronized understandings of the real issues at play. They are in a communicative structure that does not allow honest communications, because they take place in semi-public stand ups, which are very political while disallowing political reasoning in anyone's status reports. I wish I were projecting.
mad_pony@reddit
I mean actual communication. Constructive critique, failure communication, reporting chain. Building processes that enable to minimize human factor and blaming burden.
bsenftner@reddit
If they are really using these well, I stand up and cheer. I'm from the prior generation of tech, before FAANG. I don't know if the 3d graphics / CDROM / streaming media wave of introducing companies ever had a catchy name like FAANG, but I'm from that earlier generation. Apple, Philips, Electronics Arts, Sony, and film VFX / animation studios. There Agile and their precursors were / are used more like a set em up and blame them game with unrealistic expectations and participants being talked into deadlines against their ability to argue in semi-public audiences. It's deadline terrorism, with your livelihood on the line. Kuddos if the next generation were not so duped.
mad_pony@reddit
People often make cargo cult from agile.
BeefyMcGhee@reddit
Why don't developers have unions, you mean. There are unions for engineers.
gatorling@reddit
Speaking in the context of software engineers.
For the last 10 or more years there was no need for unions, SWEs were treated very well. We were a critical asset in very short supply, so we often got away with a lot and could demand very high salaries and lavish perks. Especially true in FAANG.
Now that things have seemingly changed , why don't SWEs have unions? Well Google does have a union, AWU(Alphabet workers union) but they're largely ineffective and alphabet effectively ignores them. Reason being that SWEs don't join en masse. If you take a sampling of AWU members you'll see that most look like they're citizens of the country they're working in. The reality is that a really significant proportion of tech workers are H1B, and an H1B is very unlikely to join a union. Their ability to stay in the country is tied to employment, so yeah they're not gonna rock the boat too hard. Also they've likely faced working conditions much harsher than what we see in the US.
So why aren't there unions? Because most SWEs don't want one and H1Bs typically don't care to join one, either because they're scared of being targeted or because the working conditions don't seem bad to them in comparison to what they've had to go through in the past.
sobrietyincorporated@reddit
Same reason you don't see unions for doctors, lawyers, physicists, chemists, or any other high skilled profession.
Unions work in specialized narrow fields. Mail, shipping, manufacturing, trades. Things that have transferable general guidelines. But in SWE one person could be just creating WordPress themes, and another coukd be creating trained models for LLM. The pay is also incredibly variable. A person of the same education and skill set could be paid radically different dependant on the company and the market.
Also, most SWE wouldn't want a union if it meant that they'd have to adhere to a pre negotiated pay structure that evens things out for the entire industry.
kirkegaarr@reddit
There should definitely be a software engineering union. It could have apprentice and journeyman roles for juniors straight out of college who need experience. It could also do consulting.
DualActiveBridgeLLC@reddit
It's hard to make a union when it comprises of a lot of people who have been told time and time again they are good at STEM, and that makes they extra smart. It breeds individualism. It makes us feel like our labor is different than other workers labor. It sucks because I like my coworkers, but we suffer from 'special kid syndrome'.
mad_pony@reddit
Well, we are not special, but we are still smart, no? 😀
DualActiveBridgeLLC@reddit
Not smart enough to unionize.
OrcaFlux@reddit
A man doesn't let another man bargain on his behalf.
levesduzw@reddit
Andrew Tate parody ass take lol
shoalmuse@reddit
They do, just not in the US (as for reasons, see rest of thread).
I live in Denmark and many of my engineer coworkers are in a union.
Ok_Raspberry5383@reddit
Really? Why is that? In the UK I've never seen such a practice as it wouldn't be worthwhile.
shoalmuse@reddit
In Denmark, it is for a variety of reasons. Engineer unions help with legal and financial advice and insurance, help negotiate with companies and protect worker rights.
I don't personally belong to one - but I understand why others do. Unions are also part of the general fabric of professional life in Denmark.
stikves@reddit
Because there are more downsides than upsides for an average engineer.
You can easily see this when we compare our work conditions with those in Europe, especially those countries that actually have software engineer unions (Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom as far as I know).
Here the salaries are higher, much higher, job opportunities are more, and there are more interesting projects to choose from (most headquarters are here, whereas EU usually have satellite offices specialized in one or two projects. exceptions don't break the rule)
https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestionsEU/comments/15tvjgd/typical_starting_salary_for_a_software_engineer/
Are there downsides? Yes, there are. There is basically no job security. I know, since I was part of a "middle of the night email layoffs".
Would I still trade US opportunities with EU style security knowing this firsthand?
Nope, I'm doing much better here, thank you.
Regeringschefen@reddit
If you think the salaries are much higher on US, you don’t understand how the job market in European countries work.
If you want job security and work-life balance, you go for normal employment. Salaries are lower, but you have very good job security, can go down in hours when you have kids, etc etc.
If you wanna earn more money you start a single person company and get employed as a contractor. Most companies have plenty of contractors, and it’s an integral part of the job market here. As reference salaries (I personally know), a senior developer in Norway earns 240 kUSD/year, and a principal engineer in Sweden earns 360 kUSD. So I’d say the salaries are similar to USA, and job security for contractors are similar as employee job security in USA. (However the social safety nets are still here for contractors, in addition to free schools and health care, so in the end they are likely more well off than their USA counterparts).
If you think Stockholm doesn’t have interesting opportunities I don’t know what to tell you more than you should probably leave your home town at least once in your life lol
PragmaticBoredom@reddit
Salaries in European countries are definitely lower. This is extremely well documented.
The fact that you know one person making over $300K doesn’t change that fact. That’s an outlier anecdote.
Here in the US I know several people with effective compensation over $1,000,000 per year. The average is higher, and the top end is much higher.
Vindkraft@reddit
Those numbers are the norm for contractors. And just as an example, the team I’m in now, we are five contractors and zero employees. And we all make around those numbers.
The job markets are very different, and if you go by just salaries you get incorrect statistics. Contractors save money in their company and don’t take it out as salary.
x39-@reddit
Causation ain't correlation
The unions are not causing low paying jobs but the fact that all major players are in the US is causing the low paying jobs (in comparison)
Ok_Raspberry5383@reddit
Devs in Europe aren't unionised either...
BarkMycena@reddit
Why do you think it is that all the major players are in the US?
stikves@reddit
I did not want to go in there as the real world examples even in EU show the stark difference.
However not having unions really bring higher wages in growing sectors like software engineering.
How?
The ultimate negotiation power of an individual engineer is “going solo” or starting their startup.
What is that called in a union world? “Scab”
That is why having unions put a floor to wages. Which is good. But also puts a ceiling as well. Which I would not have.
nevermorefu@reddit
I'm a big fan of unions, but honestly we have it damn good. That said:
https://www.techworkersunion-1010.org
FollowsClose@reddit
Because unions don't serve us as well as other demographics.
Hey-buuuddy@reddit
Like other highly-skilled career paths- law and practicing doctors in particular, software developers just don’t need a group to negotiate their pay and benefits for them. Nor do highly-successful careers like this want their careers to be subject to the constraints of a group.
As a developer, I have never ever in my life once thought I needed to bargain for my pay and benefits. I suppose I’m a big believer in merits and individual liberty in my career, you earn the pay and benefits on your own merits and there’s no ceiling. If you are a shitty developer you won’t be as successful. If an employer pays low, find somewhere else that pays more.
CandusManus@reddit
Because I don’t want a union, and I don’t want an act of congress to fire the dipshit who lied about his experience or is outsourcing his tickets to someone in Romania. I don’t see a high tide that raises all boats, I view it as stealing from my potential earning to help the people who don’t work as hard.
tacheshun@reddit
Formula 1 driver is a very lucrative job. And they have a union. So it’s not about how lucrative a job is. I honestly don’t know. I remember back un 2017 I worked for a company with 800 engineers. We talked about unionize. Some agreed but some of these engineers considered “not fair” because we already have great work conditions and high salaries. And everything just ended there.
Now it will be a good time to restart the discussion, but I don’t work there anymore and I really do not care enough. I work for myself now.
SheriffRoscoe@reddit
And (American) football players. And baseball players. Etc.
freekayZekey@reddit
i’m unsure if unions do “solve” those problems
there are a whole set of issues with unions, and you underestimate the side effects of having a union
thekwoka@reddit
Well, for starters, unions don't have to be recognized.
If you can be easily replaced, it's hard to unionize.
Even without unions, companies are keeping bad employees a long time...
puglife420blazeit@reddit
I’d rather see the kind of employment protection you see in other countries like in the EU, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, basically every other developed country.
I live in America, and in America you’re on your own. America isn’t a country, it’s a business. Now fucking pay me.
KarlJay001@reddit
Remember the lawsuit over Apple and others for not hiring programmers from other firms? There was an agreement to not snipe programmers from each other between SV companies.
They didn't want unions, they wanted programmers to be locked down.
Past that, I don't think most of the programmers have a lot to complain about.
Golandia@reddit
This is very easy to figure out as basically all high skill jobs are not unionized. The costs vastly outweigh the benefits in the US.
Also knowing many people who work in unions, I would never vote to unionize. Unions in practice just shift management and remove your personal power. They can once in a while negotiate changes, but most of time they make work more draconian and less beneficial. You want a raise? Instead of asking your manager, the union will tell you no, here’s your negotiated pay schedule. You want to level up in your career? Instead of proving yourself the union will tell you to wait 5 more years and then you can qualify. But at least you might have fancy health insurance and not have to worry about foreigners taking your job.
talldean@reddit
Doctors? UAPD.
Sports? NFLPA, MBLPA, NHLPA.
Hollywood jobs? SAG-AFTRA.
Lawyers? FPTE.
Other forms of engineering? IFPTE.
We work skilled labor and creative jobs, and unions exist for those, but none of those unions have the problems you're discussing. Like, the Rock makes more money than Rob Schneider, but both are *absolutely* union employees.
The win of a union is you have a formal means of defense in times of layoffs, which is, well, yeah, this year and last have been pretty darn spicy. Having representation in performance reviews that isn't just your manager's word for it, also kinda a nice touch. Making sure you don't get cut if you're out for a medical leave, not my current worry, but a common worry for people I've known in tech careers.
Unions can and do good stuff, and if you're not familiar with tech unions, maybe stop picking apart labor unions and assuming they'd be the same? :)
Golandia@reddit
The difference being for those, those are effectively highly paid contractors. They aren’t negotiating with a single employer. They are negotiating with an industry. They are effectively trade guilds, not unions.
Those unions you listed offer no defense against layoffs. Nor help with negotiating. They just set minimums on pay (like 50k for acting in a movie) and other standards like work hours in a day.
You are really comparing apples to oranges here.
talldean@reddit
I mean, the original comparison here is "we'd just be treated like electricians", but I can look at my coworkers in London who are *absolutely* covered by a union and see they're paid well, and paid according to merit, but also negotiate things like minimum salary bands for a job pretty darn well.
I this we could be comparing American apples to European apples on this one.
Golandia@reddit
London engineers make 🥜tc compared to the US. And the majority of labor protections in the UK are by law.
Let’s not compare London 🥜 to US 💰.
talldean@reddit
My London peers are making over 90% of SF money.
I gotta say something is working there.
Populism-destroys@reddit
The difference is that 95% of engineers are trash. Those other professions are actually respectable.
Emergency-Noise4318@reddit
Let’s not forget the benefits. Job security. They go to bat for your raise as it directly pays them too. They can prevent automation and AI from replacing you
Golandia@reddit
Historically, unions have lost every battle against automation in every industry. They can fight, they can delay, but they won’t win. Someone will set up a non union shop that beats yours due to automation and your job is lost despite winning against your employer.
DigmonsDrill@reddit
Not the dock workers.
ilovemacandcheese@reddit
What? Dock workers face high unemployment and there has been significant reduction of dock worker jobs over the years due primarily to automation.
DigmonsDrill@reddit
The claim was "every single battle." The President is backing them and will be happy to support a strike that shuts down a port.
Golandia@reddit
What? Automated docks replaced manual like 20 years ago. Look at the number of longshoremen in employment. Theirs numbers are less than a tenth of what they were.
ATotalCassegrain@reddit
No they can’t.
They can prevent YOUR company from replacing you with automation and AI.
Other companies will though, then everyone at your company is out of a job instead of a handful of people.
666dolan@reddit
We have a union for us in Brazil, but depending the state they are not that good (still better to have it when needed)
Tasty_Goat5144@reddit
I'm pro union in general (my mother was the president of her local AFSCME chapter and i grew up going to rallies and such) but software engineering isn't a field that is likely to benefit much from unionization. It's much easier to reap benefits if you can't find somone else to do a job in a cheaper environment. Offshoring has lots of problems but unions may very well change the equation for employers. Then you have the overall great pay, benefits and working conditions (compared to most union jobs). Right now companies are laying off swes and there is a push in some quarters for unions, but ask the 10% of boeing employees who were laid off how well their union prevented that. Or the AMC workers in the late 80s/90s where they just moved everything wholesale to China. Or my father in law who was 1 month from a pension when he was laid off from his union manufacturing job after 30 years. Unions in general don't prevent layoffs or offshoring.
dlevac@reddit
Unions are not as great as some people think: they introduce a lot of bureaucracy, reward seniority over competence and are very susceptible to corruption.
They are simply marginally better than having an exploitative boss.
But that is hardly a problem for us as companies must bend backward to retain their good engineers. If a place suck we just switch.
aLifeOfPi@reddit
People in coal mines unionize.
Not people in pajamas.
geeeffwhy@reddit
writers guild of america, screen actors guild, mlb players association, etc. all these are highly paid workers that wear pajamas or storm trooper suits, or jerseys.
unions are just about negotiating a share of the revenue generated by workers, whatever the form of work.
ablativeradar@reddit
Those are location-specific industries or otherwise industries ran by cartels, as in the people have little bargaining power.
It also doesn't apply to SWE's who can WFH anywhere in the country, who can leave and find employment with any of the many, many competitors. They have an incredible amount of bargaining power.
Additionally, everything a union offers, has already been achieved in this industry through competition.
nsyx@reddit
Why does everyone parrot the idea that unions are only for a 19th century flat-cap wearing factory worker? Plenty of highly skilled workers unionize. Look at airline pilots.
aLifeOfPi@reddit
Pilots are 40,000 feet in the air and responsible for the lives of 200 passengers.
You wake up in your pajamas to do a standup, then story point a task you’re gonna do for a basic CRUD app.
Not sure how you don’t see the difference.
We are important.
Some people are more important.
geeeffwhy@reddit
plenty of engineers work on life and death technology, like, say, the engineers that worked on the plane thats 40,000 feet in the air. but why should that be a metric?
just because your CRUD app is boring and low stakes in the grand scheme of things doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be able to negotiate the share of the revenue you’re helping to generate, or the conditions under which you work. sure, right now you are in your pjs, but if you just cede all the power in the relationship to Elon or whomever, do you imagine that will last forever?
i agree that the pressure on engineers to negotiate collectively is not especially high right now, but the idea of union for any kind of work makes some sense.
Sad_Drop5627@reddit
How much more revenue are you generating than folks in product, marketing, or sales? How do you quantify your share?
turningsteel@reddit
We’re important in the present right now only because we can’t be replaced with something cheaper. That will change.
nsyx@reddit
So you can only unionize if your job conditions are sufficiently "terrible", or if your job is sufficiently "important"? And who is the authority on how important a job is? Asinine.
mad_pony@reddit
I wanna be in charge of my own career. I wanna work with people who are here because company chooses them based on skills, not because they cannot be fired.
SoulSkrix@reddit
Unions don’t make it impossible to fire somebody, take it from somebody who has a friend who got fired two months go. His union advised him to go with it.
If you can’t do your job adequately, it will go to PIP, and if it fails, the a union can’t help you, the company has done its due diligence in getting you to try do your job well enough.
All to say, this is not a good argument against unions.
Kind_Somewhere2993@reddit
lol
SoulSkrix@reddit
Very good input?
geeeffwhy@reddit
i hear that, but there’s absolutely nothing about a union that requires preventing people from being fired. an engineers union could negotiate the power to have a meaningful say in who was employed and promoted according to any number of criteria.
pro athletes and tv actors are two conspicuous examples of skill-based workers that have effective unions.
BarkMycena@reddit
And yet it seems to happen every time
srinidhikarthikbs@reddit
Because Engineers believe in merit-based compensation.
kucukkanat@reddit
By the nature of it engineers are people who chose to deal with machines instead of humans. Unionizing means dealing with people. We don't want that. It is subject to the nature of engineers essentially
Daffidol@reddit
There should be a global lobby where engineers pay other engineers for not working shitty jobs so shitty jobs and companies disappear.
NeuralHijacker@reddit
In the UK we do, I'm a member of https://utaw.tech/
Unfortunately the union movement isn't that strong in the UK at the moment.
d---gross@reddit
... in the US
LargeSale8354@reddit
2 engineers, 3 opinions. Double digit engineers and you've got a religious war.
Try unionising when they can't agree if they are The People's Front of Judea or The Judean People's Front.
BertRenolds@reddit
So, this question is asked often. Really often. Which means you didn't search.
That's why I don't want unions, I do not want to support people too lazy to do a minimum amount of work while everyone else holds them up.
How much time would it have taken you to search, 3 minutes? How much time collectively have people spent writing replies to your post? Hours.
RubbelDieKatz94@reddit
I work in a fully uniunized factory as a dev. I could also join the union, but I benefit from the union contract regardless.
BorderKeeper@reddit
Can’t really form a union if the accepted industry advice is to change employer every 3-5 years can you? First wait for engineers to stick to one company for 10 years and then you can talk about work unions.
EnderMB@reddit
Because we're a mixture of too selfish, and too stupid to unionize.
It would solve the vast majority of issues that people see in big tech, yet the mere thought of it results in a visceral disgust from corporate employees.
Possibly-Functional@reddit
They do here in Sweden, I am a member of one.
whereverarewegoing@reddit
This is going to devolve into US vs EU politics. IMO American unions get a bad rep because of how stringent they are. That’s not at all what I’ve experienced in the EU so the mindset is different and therefore far more likely for engineers to be in unions.
michaemoser@reddit
engineer salaries are negotiated on a personal contract basis, everyone dreams to be the 10x programmer who will get a 5x sallary.
jdjfjakb@reddit
Anyone who is anti union is an idiot. Capitalism is designed to optimize the economy in favor of efficiency at the cost of everything else ; including workers’ rights and protections.
The only thing protecting us now is our leverage we have over there being too many companies that need engineers and too few engineers to work for those companies. A situation which business has been diligently working to destroy as its top priority for the entirety of the industry’s existence. And they’re succeeding.
If corporate agile surveillance state micromanagement isn’t enough for you yet, I hate to think what’s it going to take before you see the light.
Ok_Raspberry5383@reddit
If this applies to your case and many others like you're insinuating then go ahead and start a union... Others disagree and have different employers in different jurisdictions with different employment rights where they don't see themselves having a problem.
Many of the pro union comments on this post stink of entitled, middle class, campus educated, tunnel vision left wing Americans. Why would I need a union in the UK, or Poland or France when I have good employment rights and reasonable market leverage???
jdjfjakb@reddit
A union is just a more free market way of enforcing workers’ protections. The government can also do this, but having a large government with lots of inflexible rules comes with its own problems. In the US we generally agree that rules should be created in a way that is local as possible because it maximizes the freedom of the individuals to determine how they live. Examples are the recent move from federal abortion policy to state controlled abortion policy, or how we have tolls on highways instead of forcing taxpayers to pay the cost of roads they may never use.
SpiderHack@reddit
Easy. The US has had an anti labor legal framework for 50 years, sadly Biden's NLRB was the best one for workers since I've been alive... But the victories were quiet and not celebrated on social media and cable tv by fox news, etc.
Ok_Raspberry5383@reddit
If it's all the US's legal frameworks fault then how come other countries don't have unions for Devs? We wouldn't dream of having one in the UK, AFAIK European continental countries don't have them?
TopSwagCode@reddit
We do in Denmark :) Part of my union is free legal help and they will review contracts before signing. I also used them when I had an HR issue in a company. I talk with them before talking with company HR, because I trust them and not hr.
josemf@reddit
That's actually part of the problem
I'll elaborate on this. I'm from germany and worked for a "big blue" corporate for some time. During mass layoffs around 10 years ago, my whole team "volunteered" to be laid off. Since here in germany such corpors are union jobs by default even for engineers, the local union Ver.di actually did very well in negotiations. Corporate was required to create a 2k people fire-list, but first offer EVERYBODY to leave before. And everybody who volunteers (or will be unvoluntarily hit by a layoff later), will get a very good compensation for it. What happened is that basically my whole team decided to leave, including my 2nd level manager who then funded a company, employed all of us and we continued working for corporate. So the deal was great. From one month to the other, I "switched companies", got around 50k€ compensation for it and continued with the ticket I was working on yesterday, exactly same project - just as a contractor. And this was the case for everbody in the team.
Now, 3 years later I discussed unions with a colleague and mentioned that after the case I described above, I joined the ver.di Union to financially support them. And my colleague (who even got a better compensation as I did) basically said that "the union never did anything good for him" and "all the money he received he worked for himself and unions just cost money". Yeah man... except the 70k€ extra compensation and additional job security you basically got nothing ... wtf?
Funny thing is also, that this colleague now becomes 50+ years old, which makes you a old person in our industry. He just shared that he's afraid to be fired because he's not fast enough anymore. Yeah man... I don't know how you don't realize, that back then at corporate the verdi union basically saved the "old people" from being fired, by forcing corporate to make that compensation offer to everybody.
But you know... what did the union ever do for you? And how should they help you? I just don't get those people...
There's a very big disconnect with software engineers in what "their place" is in the workforce. I recognize how my colleagues often thing they are closer to being a big coporate CEO, than being a cleaning person (which is a very honorable job). But they aren't. Sure, somehow we belong to the "elite" of workforce, but even if you make $300k p.a., you're MUCH closer to your local bartender than some Microsoft Exec. And being the elite of the workforce still makes you part of the workforce.
I'm often very frustrated at lunch, if I hear my 100k€/year colleagues bragging about minimum wage being far too high. This is so stupid and often reminds me of some super fat, medival trader who's bragging about the farmers being to greedy when they ask for enough food not to starve...
Dizzy-Revolution-300@reddit
There's a huge political knowledge gap with developers. We make too much money. Just look how many devs praise open source but are libertarians lol
AffectionateData1252@reddit
I experienced being in a union in a different industry. I can tell you that unions exist primarily to enrich the people that run the union, while they play politics to appear that they are working for you.
The software industry, while imperfect, is still largely a merit-based industry. Yes, the corporation benefits largely, so do we through our collective experience and work with the corps.
As a developer that has been in this for the last 25 years, I didn't trust my employer to look out for me. But I can say that I don't trust a union to look out for me either. I'm the only one that can make the best decision for myself.
Unions protect the weakest at the expense of the best, while enriching a few. Corporations protect themselves, and do not care about you.
Take care of yourself, and don't expect anyone else to look out for you.
lucitatecapacita@reddit
Not even unions, not sure why we couldn't organize some strikes when the RTO stuff started
mad_pony@reddit
Why don't we strike when we have to work at all? Office conditions are unbearable! We are coal miners of this age! /s
Commercial-Shake1633@reddit
So they can exploit the engineers
Foreign_Clue9403@reddit
Unions will become prevalent, self serving as they may be, once the expected value of an engineer’s salary starts looking closer and closer to the poverty line. It will also take hold if joining a union becomes simpler than an alternative, say, working two full time roles at once out of necessity rather than enrichment.
That could take the form of lots of open jobs for awful TC because larger firms massively cut labor supply. It could take the form of 25%+ mass layoffs over a 2 year period, and insane TCs for very few roles with equally insane demands and hours. Whichever, whatever. USA engineers cannot shop their skills to other countries effectively - we are expensive and pose some communication barriers. As a demographic we are also notoriously bad at bootstrapping businesses or acquiring investment capital - it’s just an entirely different skill set. Nobody wants an adult supervising them until someone gets hurt.
Will it happen soon? I don’t know for sure, maybe not. I will say that it seems that the era of championing the geek to get more heads into tech companies has gone and passed.
sessamekesh@reddit
I'm generally on board with unions. The labor market here in America is ostensibly a free market efficient thing, but practically speaking employers have far more bargaining power than employees and unions serve to close that gap.
For myself though, as a developer with a lot of skill and experience? I feel like I have plenty of bargaining power, even with the market downtown. If there is a benefit to unionizing, I haven't heard it yet (and on principle I have considered it).
I feel like there's possible downsides by adding a middleman in charge of my career prospects, even one with incentives to serve me and my colleagues. I don't want a baseline cost of living raise to be the subject of negotiations if I'm going for far higher raises every year.
I also fail to see how unionizing would protect us from the threat of layoffs, I don't believe the threat of offshoring and immigration to be nearly as horrible as Reddit keeps screeching about, and I get far better benefits and pay than are "fair" to begin with so I fail to see how a union would be beneficial to me.
So with no practical upside and moderate possible downsides, of course I don't want to join a union.
jarjoura@reddit
I don’t think we need a union to balance pay. However, I wouldn’t mind if it existed to prevent managers from using performance reviews to manipulate us.
That’s probably the one area our industry doesn’t deal well with.
mutual-ayyde@reddit
Tech workers in places like Germany have been far more successful at unionising, probably because labour over there is stronger and more socially normalised. If we continue to see more worker activism in the states and more fuckery by tech companies I suspect we’ll see more attempts
jarjoura@reddit
In UK and Europe, we make shit pay.
chief_data_officer@reddit
Unions may make sense when labour has weak bargaining power and is exploited. But that has not been the case with engineers. Unions cannot protect against offshoring - even the auto industry (heavily unionized) shifted production to Canada/Mexico. Arguably - engineers have had stronger bargaining power than companies.
Engineers are also heavily networked online - and they also collectively bargain (in a way) by dissing bad employers on forums. Companies cannot just treat engineers badly without suffering some blowback in terms of the best engineers avoiding them (or hires becoming more expensive for them)
jarjoura@reddit
Only the most elite top 10% of us have the capability to demand anything. A union wouldn’t change a thing for them, because employers will still bend over for them. The rest of us, well, we get whatever companies deem us worthy to get.
__loam@reddit
The industry is full of craven cowards, bootlickers, neoliberals, and temporarily embarrassed millionaires who think they'll be the next Musk or Altman. There is very little labor solidarity despite the industry laying off hundreds of thousands of workers over the past several years.
thedancingpanda@reddit
Every 16 year old on reddit thinks that unions are the solution to all workers problems, and there's a shitton of 16 year olds on reddit. But people in charge of unions are also good at propaganda, same as the companies.
Any sort of engineering doesn't really lend itself to unions well. You can have one, but it won't be particularly strong because of the varied nature of the job.
FlipperBumperKickout@reddit
Where I'm from we do...
Moleventions@reddit
Unions are the anthesis of productive work. They prioritize bureaucracy and collective conformity over individual initiative and merit. You're advocating bringing bureaucracy into a world that has thrived for 50+ years on fast paced innovation.
I don't want to work at the "Post Office" and be forced to listen to morons solely because they've been working for 20 years in the union.
I actually like building things. I'm not just here for the paycheck and as much vacation time as I can get.
Shok3001@reddit
What are the arguments for unionizing?
Kfct@reddit
Taiwan has "Labor Banks" that act like unions. Businesses hire this company to seat say 30 engineers and have no control over who they get. If they don't like any of the 30 developers, they can apply for a 'refund' and get replacements until they're happy. This circumvents strong local employee protection laws of not being fined by the government for firing too many people and firing without paying severance, while the developers get guaranteed employment by being 'transferred' to a new client if the previous one doesn't work out, and the Labor Bank gets a % commission per month off the developer's salary. The worst unproductive developers can be fired with severance by the Labor Banks after say 3 or 5 transfers. And the Labor Bank will negotiate higher salaries on behalf of the devs because they'll get a bigger commission, while also making sure the businesses are not crunching the developers because it's illegal and they're under a lot of scrutiny by the government because all the firing is under their name and it's devastating when developers leave the Labor Banks on their own.
kbielefe@reddit
I've worked a (not programmer but semi-technical) unionized job, and it was by far the worst working conditions I've ever had. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
It's a much more adversarial relationship with management, with less flexibility, and in practice still insecure. I vastly prefer a more cooperative relationship where I am free to vote with my feet and where the high onboarding cost incentivizes the company to keep me happy.
snotreallyme@reddit
Union leaders are ALL self-serving, corrupt and destructive. They will destroy a company for some short term win for themselves. They give no shits about the actual employees. Most are trying to re-live the glory days of when unions mattered and had a positive impact. There is no such thing as a benevolent union.
ViceCrimesOrgasm@reddit
I’m sure that’s the whole story!! ALL? Your first sentence reveals that you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Kind_Somewhere2993@reddit
This
Whoz_Yerdaddi@reddit
Congress is going to have to fix this though tax code. Even Amazon warehouses and Starbucks baristas cant successfully unionize. I’m not holding my breath though.
paild@reddit
Right now we own a lot of the means of the production, the software engineering skills. We take them with us when we go, even though we learn them on the job. This gives us a lot of power in the workplace that other workers may not have.
Ambitious-Aim@reddit
The deviation to a non-merit based performance system is not my cup of tea
Upset-Expression-974@reddit
Honestly, I’ve never felt the need to unionize as a software engineer. 1. The field moves so fast that you’re expected to upgrade your skills every 6 months or so. If you don’t, you risk becoming irrelevant to your team or company. 2. The pay is generally solid—good base salaries, plus equity if you’re lucky. 3. On top of that, most companies offer decent perks: lots of PTO, great insurance, and plenty of learning resources.
With all that, I’ve never really seen a reason for unions in software. But hey, that’s just my experience—maybe others feel differently depending on their situation.
jeerabiscuit@reddit
Because the geeky lack spine and the outspoken want to become managers. We need outspoken geeks.
Embarrassed_Quit_450@reddit
Things haven't been bad for long enough for people to seriously consider unionizing.
Botbot30000000@reddit
I’m making double my accounting friends, if they do it I’ll join too!
nit3rid3@reddit
Ah, the weekly unions thread.
patoezequiel@reddit
Why would I?
I benefit from outsourcing and lose by unionizing, and by a lot.
I guess your question makes more sense if you specify a country.
data-artist@reddit
Because your job will eventually be outsourced or given to an H1B visa.
stonerbobo@reddit
These questions are framed like unions are an unalloyed good but they're not. Unions can be easily corrupted by leadership or by poor workers.
We have a good market and high skilled people get paid nuts amounts with all kinds of excellent perks. The nature of our job is that we can quantify our skill quite well - with issues solved, PRs, general feature or project outcomes, interviews and get paid proportional to that value. Yeah there's tons of flaws but its better than most industries. I have seen how most other industries work, where the interviews are just bullshit small talk, skill is gauged by certifications and jobs are all about networking. Good work is not rewarded, bad work is not punished, no one has an incentive to do anything. That's the kind of market we would get with unions. I'm not interested in that at all. It would become another dead butts-in-seats industry.
Frankly i think the people griping about layoffs and how the H1Bs are stealing all their jobs and how we need unions are clueless. We've had year after year after year of job growth in CS, a record huge boom during COVID, and now a small correction. This is probably the first time that's happened in a long time and people are losing their shit. But its necessary for a healthy market. I don't think we should all be guaranteed jobs in whatever industry we like, and doing that only makes things worse. Everything you've listed like layoffs, offshoring, low ball offers, that craps been going on forever. 5 years ago there were ONLY in-office jobs and now there's more remote. Our industry is good, and part of it is because we can keep the labor market efficient. I don't want to screw that up.
DarkBlueEska@reddit
I was a member of a small software company that tried to unionize once. Everyone who signed union cards was immediately fired. That was every developer the company employed at the time save for maybe one. There was no attempt made to disguise the reason. I left the company a week or two before this and didn't sign onto the union myself, but I watched my former coworkers all lose their jobs, so I feel like I have a fairly unique perspective on this, having watched it happen from so close.
Isn't that supposed to be illegal? It is! That doesn't stop companies from doing it anyway. It takes lawyers and a lot of money to fight crackdowns like that, and by the time the cases wind their way through the legal system, it's been years and people have had to find new jobs anyway and the payout they get from settlements is way lower than what you'd expect. And the punishment for the firms cracking down on their unionizing employees is pathetic, if there even is one at all. I don't think there even was one in my old company's case. Just a small settlement paid out to the terminated employees.
Never underestimate how much companies despise the idea of their workers having bargaining power. In the end there just aren't enough protections for employees who want to form unions, so most people aren't going to take the risk. They're going to take their decent salary and benefits and not risk losing it by sticking their necks out to fight for other employees who've been wronged.
Wooden-Glove-2384@reddit
I don't think unions are the solution we're looking for.
Since their introduction they've become usurped by politicians who court union bosses in "a one hand washes the other" fashion
I know this flies in the face of many pro union members of this subreddit who believe unions and all associated with them are pure and noble.
Its 2024 and we should have all learned a long time ago this is patently false
Nothing that near money/power/politics/business is pure and noble
I don't know what the solution is but am inclined to believe "ya get what ya pay for" is going to bite a whole lot of CEOs right in the ass as they rush headlong into AI/H1Bs/whatever unfair practices people think unions will prevent
geeeffwhy@reddit
that feels like a real case of letting perfect be the enemy of good. i mean, anywhere there’s power, there’s corruption. why cede all the power to the employers?
there will absolutely be problems with unionizing. the question is just whether the increased bargaining power is worth those problems.
evidence from lots of other unions suggests that it is, in my interpretation.
Wooden-Glove-2384@reddit
I don't think it is.
The gets me a whole lotta hate but that's fine
I am happy to take my chances in the market as it is
I've been in a union before my software dev career started and it frankly wasn't worth what it cost me in dues.
All the Teamsters are gonna show up here and tell me I'm an asshole and "greater good" and the standard arguments
I've heard it before and i remain unmoved
Sufficient-Meet6127@reddit
You have new grads making more than people with over 20 YOE. That would never happen with a union. Techies pride themselves for having skills. So we want pay to be skilled base and not YOE.
zaitsman@reddit
Because it’s a lot easier to get ahead by yourself as a software engineer than as part of the union.
Germany is heavily unionised and when I briefly worked for a German company I learned that the company can’teven promote you without their approval
x39-@reddit
So many BS reasons...
As per usual, the answer is blatantly simple: because the normal engineer is shuffling jobs every 2 to 4 years to get a pay raise
Unions are simply not worth organizing it, if you don't have people interested in staying anyways
boner79@reddit
Because they're legends in their own mind.
Grox56@reddit
Because a union will not help with any of the points you made.
A union is mainly used for training, fairness in the workplace, and working conditions. Training will be enough so that you can't be tossed into the first dumpster fire by yourself. Fairness (probably a better term for this) is to ensure you go down the seniority list for dev issues. And working conditions could be a desk, chair, and a laptop with a charger. That is all you need to do your job (for the average person).
Could a union help with some things? Sure. Will it be enough to offset your union dues? Probably not.
And just because there is a SWE union, it is a huge pain to get one started at your company. You have to have a 51% majority (if memory serves me right) of all SWEs at your work. You also have to have secret meetings outside of work to talk to your union rep when starting.
If your employer gets wind of a union, your life at work will be hell. If your employer can get one of your coworkers to rat out any/all people involved in trying to start a union, you can say bye to your job. Or they can relocate, or they can fire everyone and outsource everything.
mozii_@reddit
Once you get higher CTCs, gatekeeping and individualism gets skyrocketed.
marssaxman@reddit
What do "CTC", "KT", and "Junio" mean?
BeerInTheRear@reddit
Food lines are about to be full of the "smartest people in the room".
#remindmein180days
Ok-Entertainer-1414@reddit
You wouldn't be able to get anyone to agree what to bargain for.
snipe320@reddit
The New York Times engineers have a union. They just went on strike recently, and they ultimately got what they wanted.
Odd_Soil_8998@reddit
I mean some do. When I worked for the federal government we had a union. But then the feds aren't quite as big on union busting as, say, FAANGs
pacman2081@reddit
I have not seen these rinse and repeat offers because I am not in the job market.
shinn497@reddit
Unions can do nothing for me and my career. I have gotten very far operating on my own terms.
ESGPandepic@reddit
Depending on the country/job market you're in it could be argued unions wouldn't necessarily make things any better. If you're a highly skilled software engineer a competitive market, not having unions setting the price is better for you and that's how we ended up with very high pay that has generally been increasing over time compared to most other professions.
I'd be curious what you would want a union to do for you, keeping in mind you would have to be paying them fees and getting value for your money.
edgmnt_net@reddit
Not just pay, but also outstanding working conditions, depending on how one plays their cards. Everything that unions have supposedly been fighting for has been gained to a much larger degree simply through open competition on both sides.
slimscsi@reddit
My personal opinion. The dream of software engineers is the startup/early employee with the huge stock option package making a tone of money. To adopt a union would be to give up that. Everyone will make more, but a few will make A LOT less. Tech attracted the gamblers. Gamblers cannot unionize because on an infinite timeline the house always wins.
nozoningbestzoning@reddit
Because unions drive away investment and hurt real income long-term. If unions helped Flint and Detroit wouldn’t be hallowed out, and Erie PA would still be the locomotive capital of the US. I’ll vote and protest against unions every chance I get in SWE
codyswann@reddit
Oh man. I do not want to be part of a union. No way.
Hudell@reddit
Unions are mandatory in my country, but It unions are often quite bad, taking the side of companies more often than not. Still, it's better than not having it.
lastPixelDigital@reddit
You can always join the Honker Union.
DigmonsDrill@reddit
Because people will say "DAE union?" and then not bother doing any work to form a union.
I was about 70/30 against them, but I've seem some real good arguments pull me to only 60/40. You have to dig deep to find those good arguments.
Guilty_Serve@reddit
Because you need to keep up with current tech trends. The deal you get is that small groups of people with low overhead can go after multimillion, and in many cases, billion dollar companies.
dova03@reddit
It's not the engineers. It's the operations folks(DBAs, SysAdmins)
TheKimulator@reddit
Because I’m like one of the best developers and I want a chance to earn marginally more money.
Objectively speaking I push out like the most code. One guy takes three lines of code to do something I can do in 12. So I’m like 4 times better.
I don’t want the guy who writes like a fourth of the code I do to get paid the same. I don’t know if he’s actually paid the same now come to think of it. He could even be paid more. But my self-assuredness tells me I’m a better developer thus paid better.
I don’t sit around all day churning out less code. I’m also not the gal who’s friends with the boss. The boss may be friends with someone, but if they’re not a 10x dev then the boss will make the rational decision to lay off their friend and not productive employees.
I am very smart.
/s
joao7808@reddit
where i come from unions don't do shit, but that's because in my country we don't do anything right
DogAteMyCPU@reddit
Enough people got theirs they will scoff at any form of labor organizing.
qzen@reddit
I'd rather have a ilicensing board.
orturt@reddit
The NYT engineers went on strike (not sure if they technically have a union or not). I'm pretty sure they mostly got mocked in these tech subs for it (they didn't get anything out of the strike).
_dactor_@reddit
Have you met other devs? We all tend to think we are smarter and know better than everyone else, which equates to a whole bunch of weird political opinions across the whole spectrum. I’d love to unionize but I think we’d have a very hard time getting a large enough membership for effective collective bargaining.
NoobInvestor86@reddit (OP)
I agree but thats part of organizing, rallying everyone
_dactor_@reddit
It is but it would be a very hard sell for my colleagues who lean libertarian and further right, which is not a small percentage
CanIhazCooKIenOw@reddit
It’s about importance in society.
What’s the difference between a train driver, doctor, police or some random engineer (even in a FANG)?
Society is much more impacted with the first three and less about the last one. And that has economic impact because you can’t outsource police work or doctor. Engineer? Get another one tomorrow, even from another country.
rjm101@reddit
I've always wondered this and I suspect it's because we've had good pay and perks in the past but as the job market gets tough and employers start thinking they can replace us with everything AI I suspect many will start seeing the value. Granted I think we're still quite far off this.
SuccotashComplete@reddit
It’s about status. We don’t want to be like those gross dock workers who need to collectively bargain
random314@reddit
Because I'm not going to risk my job for you or any other strangers on this site.
Ok-Craft-9865@reddit
Well software engineering / Tech started to blow up in the 90s and 2000s.
In the 90s/2000s the pendulum of society sentiment towards unions, was on the anti side.
In the 70s it was on the other side. Will it swing back?... Who knows.
Coderado@reddit
20 years ago when I was a SWE and Boeing there was a software engineer union forming in Seattle. Not sure if it succeeded
serial_crusher@reddit
People rail on offshoring but underestimate the number of bad/cheap developers right here in the US as well.
I’m afraid they’ll outnumber talented developers and the union will turn into a way for them to ensure their own job security.
hachface@reddit
Look at the example of trade unions. Their existence and the apprenticeship system they support increases the general skill level. There is an ocean of shitty devs because there is no incentive in the existing system to provide extended on-the-job training.
NeonCityNights@reddit
wait when you say engineers do you mean people with engineering degrees? or anyone who writes code to program software?
davy_jones_locket@reddit
Some do. Not so common in the US.
imLemnade@reddit
At this pace. Coming soon