Out of curiosity, how would unionization for SWEs work? I have never been part of one but it feels like something needs to change.

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boi_polloi@reddit

I started to write a whole thing about how SWE would need to become a licensed and regulated industry similar to teaching, nursing, or the trades, with oversight and barriers to wntey. But even if that happened, I still don't think an SWE union is realistic for the following reasons:

SWE is a profession where the top performers generate value that is orders of magnitude greater than that generated by low performers. Software is a force multiplier; compare to a trade like plumbing where there are good and bad tradespeople but their output doesn't scale beyond the work of their own two hands.
High performing SWEs have strong meritocratic beliefs and don't want to be lumped in with low performers nor have their upside capped by averages. There's a perception that low performers would drag down compensation and benefits for the cracked SWEs.
Therefore, high performing SWEs have leverage and resources but low motivation to form a union. Underperforming or average SWEs have high motivation but very little leverage in the current oversupply of workers. We also see that employers won't hesitate to outsource or perform layoffs which means that a union would need to be massive and present a united front.

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iPissVelvet@reddit

Just curious, how does this logic relate to unions like professional sport unions? Those professions are arguably even more unbalanced — the delta between LeBron’s value compared to the undrafted 10 day rookie’s value is much larger than the highest performing SWE at a company vs the lowest performing one. Yet sports unions are popular and successful.

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jeffwulf@reddit

Professional sports leagues have monopsony power that software companies don't have.

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UncleMeat11@reddit

The fact that there is competition between software companies should make it easier to unionize, not harder.

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ExtremeNet860@reddit

Alignment problems are more difficult to solve. There is a lot more friction in coordinating the entire workforce of any given company to unionize than there is for an individual to simply switch workplaces.

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Qinistral@reddit

You can’t outsource the NBA players overseas

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jeffwulf@reddit

But reduces the jncentive.

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BarkMycena@reddit

How so? Workers that are unhappy just go to a different company.

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breesyroux@reddit

The NBA union is run by veteran star players and largely caters to that group. LeBron makes ~50x what the 10 day rookie makes.

I think the two key things that make it work are: 1. There are relatively clear measures of value for players 2. The scale of money (and outside opportunities to make much more) is so high LeBron doesn't care to fight for making 100x the 10 day guy because he's actually that much more valuable.

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boi_polloi@reddit

This is a good point; a sibling post brought up the same thing. If comparing the NBA to SWE, I suppose that the union has leverage over the players - getting into the NBA is the ultimate goal, isn't it? Where else is an aspiring baller going to go if they don't like the CBA? In contrast, an SWE can shrug, say "I'll do it myself", and go on to found some AI-backed startup and get angel funding at eye-popping valuations.

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ThlintoRatscar@reddit

Contracts and compensation are individually negotiated for high performers with the player's unions providing a floor for the lowest performers. For the high performers, the union provides collective representation to affect the rules of the game and specifically occupational safety.

We don't have safety problems in our profession. Yet.

If governments decide that we are dangerous enough to regulate individually, then we would be personally liable for our mistakes. If we are personally liable, then a professional association/union would help protect the high performers, in high stakes, from jail / fines. In this role, the mistakes of low performers affect the high performers and it becomes in the best interests of the high performers to regulate the low performers through collective bargaining ( lobbying ).

That's how surgeons, civil engineers, and pilots do it.

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BehindThyCamel@reddit

I thought about the possible consequences of regulating software engineering like that. I think any country that does that immediately puts itself at a major disadvantage through losing a large portion of the SWE workforce and the rest demanding much higher pay due to professional risk and need to have certification and insurance. Specialized, high-stakes positions, like in banking, finance or handling personal data, should be regulated. Other areas would probably benefit more from customer protection incentivizing companies more effectively to be diligent.

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ThlintoRatscar@reddit

Yup. Consequently, we have no professional standards, and "anyone can be a coder". Including AI.

What we have chosen to do instead is regulate the output - privacy and cybersecurity liability applies to organisations, not individuals, with the extent of our exposure being termination rather than losing our license to practice.

An unsafe pilot can't fly. An unsafe programmer just scams another employer.

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Optimus_Primeme@reddit

Nailed it. I’m not seeing L6/L7s at Meta, Netflix, Google paying 10-15% of their $700k-$1.5m salaries to hedge against their not-very-likely unemployment. Also a union would negotiate their salaries down quite a bit I’m sure.

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demosthenesss@reddit

Also a union would negotiate their salaries down quite a bit I’m sure

This is the biggest problem.

Whether just perception or reality, no one in the FAANG tier comp range will join if they think it will on the long run limit their compensation.

I rarely see SWE union proposals which seem likely to do anything but make compensation more fair. Which has negative impact on the top end just like it has positive impact on the bottom end.

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Optimus_Primeme@reddit

People at the top of the food chain aren’t usually the ones asking for socialism

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Whatever4M@reddit

Not true at all, if the top X makes 160k and the bottom makes 140k, I think the top earner would happily take a 10k cut for many other benefits, the issue happens when the top end is much much higher than the low end.

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Optimus_Primeme@reddit

Your”if” is never the case, so it’s not worth talking about.

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Whatever4M@reddit

It is the case for many industries, software engineering is just not one of them.

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Optimus_Primeme@reddit

Please tell me what industry exists where the top earners only make 20% more than the bottom earners.

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Whatever4M@reddit

The specific numbers aren't the point, SWE top earners make multiple times more than their similarly experienced peers, but this isn't the case in any certificate heavy industry. Off the top of head, nurses, teachers and professors, and even dock workers.

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whostolemyhat@reddit

I pay £15/month for my union, and that's the top tier. Also unions negotiate the floor, not individual contracts

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robby_arctor@reddit

SWE is a profession where the top performers generate value that is orders of magnitude greater than that generated by low performers

Not clear to me why this isn't true in other, unionized industries. Tbh, when I hear stuff "software is a force multiplier", it sounds like unfalsifiable corpo-babble that provides a professional veneer over the assertion that "we in software are special".

Therefore, high performing SWEs have leverage and resources but low motivation to form a union. Junior, underperforming, or average SWEs have high motivation but very little leverage in the current oversupply of workers.

If the power dynamic was actually this unbalanced, I think more teams would just consist of these mythical 10xers. In my experience, these "highly productive", "force-multiplied" individuals are self-identified and rareful as useful as they think are.

The reality is that these average software devs are, in general, necessary to get shit done. And for that reason alone, a union is possible.

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Whatever4M@reddit

The issue is that identifying 10xers is hard, but they absolutely do exist. My friend works more hours than I do and produces more code that is also higher quality than mine per hour, so I've personally experienced this

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robby_arctor@reddit

Being productive isn't just about the amount of lines of code one produces. That's a really myopic view of productivity imo

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Whatever4M@reddit

I didn't say that though, but let me clarify just in case it wasn't clear, he is more productive in every single metric you can think of by any order of magnitude than like 99% of engineers I've ever met, and I've worked at a faang (and elsewhere).

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robby_arctor@reddit

Okay. All I'm saying is that meaningful metrics for that productivity are not the hours he works or the sheer volume of code he writes, which is what you cited in your first comment.

To the larger point - in general, teams can't make businesses money with just guys like that. Some degree of collective effort from mortals is usually necessary, which is why a union is possible.

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Whatever4M@reddit

Reread what I wrote, I said he produces more code that is also higher quality, it's obviously within the context of a job or project.

Absolutely they can, that's why he ended up being a founding engineer for a startup.

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robby_arctor@reddit

Absolutely they can, that's why he ended up being a founding engineer for a startup.

Reread what I wrote - I said "generally" for a reason.

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Whatever4M@reddit

Unions aren't just workplace things, the question is why would he ever join a SWE union when he can negotiate better solo and why would the companies care if the best performers don't want to join the unions.

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iPissVelvet@reddit

It’s well known that software company margins are much higher on average than non-software companies…

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Dr_CSS@reddit

That has nothing to do with 1 good dev and everything to do with the whole team working well, a perfect scenario for a union

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robby_arctor@reddit

What's your point?

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nebotron@reddit

Unions don't just have to negotiate around salaries. I'm happy with my pay, but would love gaurantees about oncall rotations, PTO, compensation transparency, changing deadlines at the last minute, etc

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BoysenberryLanky6112@reddit

What if 50% of the people in your union aren't happy with their pay and want it to be more equal to yours? What if they vote to make it so your pay that you're happy with is lower so they can get paid more? Because that's what happens in literally every other white collar union I'm aware of. What if your company instead takes your side and says they want to pay for performance, not the more equal tenure and certification-based strategy your union is pushing for? Then what if your union votes to strike over that? You'd strike with them?

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Schmittfried@reddit

What if 50% of the people in your union aren't happy with their pay and want it to be more equal to yours? What if they vote to make it so your pay that you're happy with is lower so they can get paid more? Because that's what happens in literally every other white collar union I'm aware of

That’s not how unions work. And there is always the option for the company to pay its top performers more than the union demands.

This is how it works in Germany and it works great. Nobody is dragged down by a union, more like the opposite. There are other factors that drag us down lol.

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BoysenberryLanky6112@reddit

Why are you so sure the factors that drag you down are other factors? I'm assuming you realize based on that last sentence that you're paid significantly less than your American counterparts who mostly aren't in a union. What's your hypothesis for why that is? For reference I went to a no-name state school, graduated with a 3.3 GPA, and now at 10 yoe I work for a non-tech company as a lead software engineer and make 250k all in cash and guaranteed bonuses no equity. People with my similar role in big tech who are better than me make closer to 500-700k which includes some equity with some golden handcuffs. My understanding is a similar role in Germany would be lucky to clear 6 figures.

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Schmittfried@reddit

Why are you so sure the factors that drag you down are other factors?

Because those factors affect all workers in Germany whereas only some professions are unionized. Software engineers in Germany are mostly not unionized. In fact, those who are earn more than their non-unionized peers on average, though software engineering is one of the few professions where experienced / very skilled workers can negotiate comparable salaries on their own (which is probably the biggest reason unions aren’t that common yet, next to the widespread neoliberal thinking).

I'm assuming you realize based on that last sentence that you're paid significantly less than your American counterparts who mostly aren't in a union. What's your hypothesis for why that is?

Becauss the US and Germany have vastly different systems, for starters. Also, Germany is very export-oriented, which makes wages mostly a cost that needs to be minimized to stay competitive globally. The US is much less export-driven and when it comes to tech its companies are de facto monopolies, so they can afford to pay a premium for top talent. In addition, US tech companies, in part, understand that engineers are their capital and they need to invest into them. Germans are, for the most part, cheap, and they treat everything in their life from food to employees like a cost to be minimized above all else.

My understanding is a similar role in Germany would be lucky to clear 6 figures.

Not lucky, but not exactly common either. Working for Big Tech in Germany does offer significant 6 figure salaries. Still lower than in Silicon Valley, but as I said: different systems, different mentality, and last but not least different cost of living.

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UncleMeat11@reddit

Sure. Unions are democratic control over collective bargaining. This can produce decisions that you don't like, just like any system involving voting.

But it is important to recognize that the alternative is not "I get to decide my own outcomes." The alternative is "my employer gets to decide."

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BoysenberryLanky6112@reddit

False, the alternative is I negotiate with my employer over outcomes and if I don't like it my leverage is I can leave. Obviously collective bargaining brings more leverage because it's "we'll all strike" not just "I'll leave", but pretending employers have a monopoly on the negotiation is laughable. Tech companies if they had all the leverage would pay SWEs minimum wage, which even in states with high minimum wages would be under 40k/year. If employers have all the leverage, why does my company pay recent college grads 120k and more senior members 200-400k? Why the last time I left a company did my company try to counter offer and negotiate to give me even more to keep me if I had no leverage and it was just up to my employer to decide which scraps to give me?

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whostolemyhat@reddit

Or things like return to office, mandatory overtime, no time off in lieu, opaque promotion/bonus structure despite companies making huge profits etc

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blahyawnblah@reddit

So talk to your boss about it. Or as a part of hiring negotiations.

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boi_polloi@reddit

I agree, and it's a major union benefit (along with protection against unfair termination, etc) but it still boils down to leverage. Unions have negotiating power because their workers can walk off a job en masse, causing work to grind to a halt. In our industry, a company on the other side of the negotiating table is probably confident that they can find some contractors or offshore workers to ship that deliverable (this goes back to the "barriers to entry" part of leverage).

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klowny@reddit

I think something like the Directors/Producers Guild of America or SAG-AFTRA would make sense as well. The movie industry is even more top loaded by high performers than the software industry, and they somehow make the union work well.

There's plenty of non-compensation benefits that the movie unions have negotiated, such as health insurance between jobs, standardized titles, and most recently: protection from AI.

On the compensation side, the movie unions have negotiated profit sharing rules and minimums. Software's closest equivalent is granting company equity.

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shagieIsMe@reddit

SAG works by enforcing global rule one - https://www.sagaftra.org/contracts-industry-resources/global-rule-one

Global Rule One states: No member shall render any services or make an agreement to perform services for any employer who has not executed a basic minimum agreement with the union, which is in full force and effect, in any jurisdiction in which there is a SAG-AFTRA national collective bargaining agreement in place. This provision applies worldwide.

Simply put, a SAG-AFTRA member must always work under a union contract around the globe.

Its a "you can do it" but its a "I refuse to work at any company that hires non-guild members"

There are exceptions for micro budget projects ( https://www.sagaftra.org/how-can-i-work-indie-films )... but this is a fundamental flip of how it works.

So, the company hires someone new, that person has to pay the guild 1.575% of their total comp, or everyone who is a guild member walks out. That's an excessively simplified version how SAG works.

The problem for software development is that there are a lot more people out there who would be happy to take those positions after guild members leave.

If it's not a union shop, they won't work there. If anyone is not a member of SAG, they won't work there.

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3May@reddit

SWEs want guilds, not unions. They appear similar, but your ass can get thrown out of a guild.

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nath1as@reddit

completely delusional

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Hog_enthusiast@reddit

I don’t think that will happen. When a nurse does a bad job, they kill someone. When a dev does a bad job CumHound might go down for an hour. Our work is just lower stakes.

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SignoreBanana@reddit

As a seasoned and high performing engineer, I'd be more than happy to throw my weight behind organization. It's not going to get better, and number pushers are gutting the industry of any of its tradecraft and wringing engineers dry. I'm happy to work hard, but I'm not working nights and weekends just because some dickhead manager says "we all have to buckle down."

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throwsomecode@reddit

SWE is a profession where the top performers generate value that is orders of magnitude greater than that generated by low performers

eh, not by nearly much enough imo and there aren't enough of these top performers. a mil/yr is what? a bit over 3x of 300k/yr? 5x of 200k/yr. meanwhile the companies and their respective CEOs are on the tens and hundreds of billions which is like 10,000x of these top performers...

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Slofadope@reddit

The point about top performers generating much more value than low performers is also true in the NBA, yet they have a CBA that limits the max comp of the best players. I think Freakonomics put out something a while ago about LeBron being underpaid relative to the value he provides.

I think you’re right that supply would have to be much more limited via a licensing barrier (not everybody can go through a boot camp to get into the NBA) for a union to be realistic though.

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Tasty_Goat5144@reddit

Top performers in the NBA or NFL for that matter get enough that they just dont care much if their salary is theoretically capped (not to mention it opens them up to incredibly lucrative endorsement deals. Let me know when we have even the top sdes doing Gatorade (or red bull) commercials). Ask the dev making 500+k if they'd be cool making 150k if everyone else could too and they will mostly tell you to pound sand.

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boi_polloi@reddit

This is a really interesting counterpoint; thanks for bringing it up. I'm ignorant of the details of the CBA but I'll do some reading to better inform myself.

I suppose that a star like LeBron still enjoys a net benefit (even with his salary capped under the CBA) by remaining visible in the NBA which translates to lucrative sponsorship and partnership deals on the side? After all, if we draw a comparison between SWE and the NBA, LeBron's leverage would be to threaten to "go solo" or jump ship to another league. But is that actually better than staying in the NBA with his salary capped?

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Dr_CSS@reddit

This is why I welcome the destruction of the software job market. Once the artificial intelligence gets better and more devs get shitcanned, The losers will start feeling the heat and wish they had collective bargaining

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demosthenesss@reddit

The second bullet point I think isn't just high performing SWEs.

I think most SWEs, regardless of performance, feel that way.

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boi_polloi@reddit

There's definitely a sense of exceptionalism, especially in FAANG (just look at the internal posts on Blind) but yeah, many of us have experienced the pain of picking up the slack from an underperforming team member. I think we'd all like to have the protections and benefits of a union if it was balanced with some kind of fair performance management (and it'll be hard to get everyone to agree on the definition of "fair").

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demosthenesss@reddit

It's not just in FAANG.

basically everywhere I've worked people have complained about their colleagues. And in a lot of cases for good reason.

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btmc@reddit

That’s because they all think they’re high performers. It’s a job that attracts a lot of top-quartile students who grew up being smarter than the average kid at their school and don’t realize until it’s too late that when all your peers are also in the top 25%, you may suddenly be below average.

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gahooze@reddit

I think the reason people don't is that we make plenty of cash to offset the risk that we face

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th3_pund1t@reddit

NBA players have a union. NFL players have a union. NHL players have a union. MLB players have a union.

Screen actors have a union. Writers have a union.

You are never too rich to form a union. You can always be too stupid to not form one.

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Nyefan@reddit

And importantly in a SWE context, these unions provide actionable examples for what a tech workers' union might negotiate for. We generally have good pay, good benefits, and good job stability, but there are still some clear areas where a union would benefit us.

Overtime pay, holiday pay, and on-call pay - these would meaningfully increase our compensation for the extra work we do.
Health insurance continuity (or even improvements) - we have all seen our health coverage get worse when rolling over to the next year, constituting a reduction in pay. Furthermore, companies can deposit more into our HSAs than we can, and that money is tax advantaged on both sides.
Complete 401k fulfillment - the company can contribute the same amount we can to a 401k. Imagine putting away $45000 a year tax free in your 401k along with $11000 a year in your HSA. This industry would become a 20 year retirement industry.
Minimum staffing levels - any company in certain size bands should have a minimum number of people in different roles. This could mean no more 3 ops to 50+ dev ratios, no more on call rotations every other week, and that teams have access to professional technical writers to maintain documentation.
Industry wide handling of common injuries in this line of work - rsi, eye strain, sciatica, and burnout. Guaranteeing that our vision coverage will pay for yellow tinted glasses and contacts to reduce eye strain, ensuring that people working in an office have access to ergonomic peripherals, access to free or reduced rates at a network of physical therapists, and paid sabbaticals would be meaningful improvements a union could negotiate for.

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tcpukl@reddit

Are you in America?

You have shocking employment laws. This stuff is just statutory by law in most developed countries.

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Nyefan@reddit

True. It's dire over here, but we are generally paid enough in the software field to be insulated from the worst of it. A quarter million a year gross after 5-10 years of employment does a lot to mollify someone with shitty working conditions, and the industry normalization of changing jobs every 2 years for your first 10 years helps to ensure that we are generally treated better than our non-union peers in other industries (and honestly, I think we should continue to encourage this - the diversity of experience engendered by this job-hopping culture makes us better engineers).

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valence_engineer@reddit

How much salary are you willing to give up for that?

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Nyefan@reddit

Well, I'm in a union, and I make more than anyone I know outside of faang along with 30 vacation days per year, so... none.

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teslas_love_pigeon@reddit

I'd give up half my salary if it meant increasing solidarity with my workers and allowing others to provide for themselves, family, and community.

Not everyone is selfish in the world.

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valence_engineer@reddit

That's perfectly fair, plenty of countries have strong socialist laws so you're not alone. However I suspect most of the people posting here don't think the same way. After all, if you just saved half your salary then you'd be able to personally avoid most of the concerns around these issues through a larger bank account balance.

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ComebacKids@reddit

I think a Union makes sense for the average software engineer, but it would be hard to convince engineers in big tech to join one. Not because they’re immune to layoffs or whatever else but because:

The egos are big enough to think they don’t need one
They’re on the higher end of the earning spectrum. Take the NBA Union for example; the Union mostly (not entirely) benefits median and lower paid players.

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Schmittfried@reddit

Too arrogant, mostly. If you consider what‘s included in the 'Silicon Valley Canon' and what isn’t, you kinda get the picture. Tech is probably the best showcase of the temporarily embarrassed billionaire type.

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Beneficial_Map6129@reddit

I just posted a comment with an actual proposal of what it would take to form a union and it got so many angry downvotes immediately

It will never happen.

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laminatedlama@reddit

15% union dues? Here in Finland they’re like 20 eur / month

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PragmaticBoredom@reddit

Unions in Finland have a different function and meaning than the type of union people assume in the US.

Dues probably wouldn’t be 15%, but they’d be much higher than 20EUR/month if people expected the level of protection, organization, and representation of typical unions here.

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Character_Fault9812@reddit

A proper union would pay your salary during a strike, but not sure how they operate in the US.

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PragmaticBoredom@reddit

Some do, but the money isn’t free. It comes from past dues paid in.

So you’re still losing money, it’s just spread out by the union.

If the company isn’t paying you, you’re losing money.

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throwsomecode@reddit

little do they realize in their tech bro mindset that whatever union dues they have to pay will be more than offset by the massive pay raise through collective bargaining

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Cultural_Ebb4794@reddit

You can easily get more money by just job hopping like a normal SWE than you will through a 2.5% annual union raise.

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ltdanimal@reddit

So which SWE union are you a part of?

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Choperello@reddit

Hahahaha. You guys think swes at faang are gonna get more $$$ through collective bargaining? Dumb ass

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throwsomecode@reddit

lol yes????? they have money left over after paying for all their expenses including employees. collective bargaining would just target that. it's pretty simple math

im not sure why people seem to think a strategy that companies employee even with other companies (a fortune 500 company negotiating lower rates for SaaS's, insurances, etc.) is somehow magically going to stop working for them for some strange reason

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teslas_love_pigeon@reddit

These people don't realize that big tech are some of the most profitable companies in human existence thus far. The average Director and VP at Google and Meta are pulling in >$1million in compensation, why is it out of scope to state Engineers (the literal people creating the value) deserve more than management?

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Choperello@reddit

Having worked at several faangs I absolutely know what I'm talking about. And at every one of these companies you can absolutely make the same amount of $ as directors/vps if you are good enough. A SrStaff at Google/meta can easily make 1m/yr in total comp. Principal even more. Don't even look at those who made it to Distinguished Engineer comp.

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archaelurus@reddit

The majority of SWEs out there don't work for FAANG corps though.

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Cultural_Ebb4794@reddit

I'm a freelancer now, but if I were still working corporate I'd absolutely vote against a union. And I say that as a true blue neoliberal globalist shill who generally supports most unions. I don't think our industry really needs it, we're incredibly privileged and well-paid compared to most other industries, much of the bartering power is on our side as individual developers already.

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RascalRandal@reddit

Also there's too much hubris. Before the current trend of AI/offshoring/layoffs way too many people thought they were untouchable. It's disappointing none of this has been a wake up call. At this rate, by the time we reach critical mass it'll be too late.

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RegrettableBiscuit@reddit

Yeah, now would be the point where you want to form a union, before you've lost all your power and collective bargaining won't help. The professions that already have unions are setting up rules restricting AI usage right now, for example.

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bwmat@reddit

I can't imagine companies taking a programmer union's demand to not use AI seriously

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RegrettableBiscuit@reddit

Not use != Restricting usage.

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bwmat@reddit

Honestly, that doesn't make a difference IMO

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RegrettableBiscuit@reddit

I guess I'm not exactly sure what your argument is. Companies can't just "not take union demands seriously", because the whole point of a union is to get some power over companies by collectively negotiating with them. If the company doesn't take these demands seriously, then the union will shut down that company.

This is how the WGA and SAG-AFTRA got pretty wide-ranging concessions on LLM usage.

Why do you think a union for developers could not achieve the same?

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shagieIsMe@reddit

Note that both of those are industry guilds (rather than unions) that work on the "if you hire anyone who isn't part of the guild, no one in the guild will work for you."

With WGA and SAG, they control their entire industries.

Software development, however, doesn't have a guild... and even if they did there are enough people out there who would be more than happy to work.

This is easier to do with a smaller pool. SAG has 160,000 members. Google is reported to employ about 27,000 software developers itself. Amazon has another 30,000 to 50,000 depending on how they're counted and which report.

There are about 10x more software developers in the United States than SAG members worldwide.

And thus, you would always be able to find people who are not members of the Software Developers Guild who are willing to work. The guild structure of SAG and WGA would not be able to cover the entire industry.

Unions, however, aren't big things. They are company specific things dealing with issues at that company. Kickstarter United is OPEIU (Office and Professional Employees International Union) Local 153. The local part is key there.

OPEIU is the organizing union, but the issues that Kickstarter United had were negotiated with Kickstarter employees for issues at that company.

A union for developers could do the same at that company... but it depends on the developers at that company to unionize rather than waiting for something else to try to establish some standards.

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RegrettableBiscuit@reddit

There is no functional difference between a guild and a union in the context of our discussion. The UAW has 370.000 members across many different companies across multiple different industries. There is nothing that stops developers from creating a union that is just as influential as the UAW or even more, other than the belief that we're better off without it.

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shagieIsMe@reddit

UAW organizes hundreds of local unions - one per factory.

UAW is influential - but in that they organize unions, much like OPEIU does... but OPEIU (or CWA) has many fewer local unions than the UAW.

My point is that trying to form a SAG like union / guild that spans every company (and you all quit if they hire anyone who doesn't work there) is different than holding an election at your company getting 50% + 1 people to vote for the union which has the power to collectively bargain for your contract.

The idea of trying to negotiate a cross company remote work agreement, or severance package minimums, or AI policy like SAG does ... that's going to run into some issues.

Additionally, there are things like - I'm in a union for public sector workers. Part of my contract gives the public sector union the exclusive right to negotiate my contract collectively. I can't join another union - nor can any of my coworkers. My health care benefits are top notch. My pension (yes, pension) is funded.

The idea in this (and many other pro software developer union posts) tends to revolve around the idea of having a world wide organization suddenly spring into action and prevent any company from doing certain things. That's not going to work... it just isn't a practical expectation. So instead of wishing for that to happen, unionize at your company.

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Xsiah@reddit

I thought I was pretty important to my company and had job security. I recently got laid off.

Based on the experiences I've had over 10 years in my career, I would still not join a union.

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AnnoyedVelociraptor@reddit

Why 10%? It seems a lot. It's between 1% and 2.5%. Which is a lot of money on $200,000.

Gonna be a rich union. Probably too rich.

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Beneficial_Map6129@reddit

For a union to have power they need to get people to strike and walk away from companies en masse.

For other professions they are lower paid so it’s easier to have them live on lean wages.

I doubt a Facebook employee would walk away from their job for $500 a week union subsidy if Zucchini threatened to outsource jobs to India or did something similarly objectionable

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Blothorn@reddit

Not to mention that competent software engineers already have a lot of leverage in salary negotiations because knowledge and experience with the company’s specific codebase and tools are so important—if it comes to it I can replace my company faster and more cheaply than they can replace me. I think unions make much more sense in industries where replacements can get close to full productivity faster and moving jobs is more expensive (e.g. less remote work and geographic consolidation).

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AnnoyedVelociraptor@reddit

You know what, you're right. Somehow I forgot the fact that union dues aren't just membership fees to keep the lights on. It is to build out a reserve so that the union can pay people should there be a strike. Thank you.

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demosthenesss@reddit

How long do you think twitter or meta can go on without eng? Elon fired 80% and it ran “good enough”. Sure there were blackouts and UX downgraded, but you understand a lot of eng can get cut pretty quickly and companies can ride it out better than individual people?

If like most people, you think that Elon has destroyed a lot of the value of Twitter through his actions, including firing basically anyone associated with growth, then it's far less relevant whether it's "running" or not.

A lot of the value of companies and tech ones in particular is growth potential. Firing tons of engineers might let you keep the lights on, but it'll kill your stock value long term if as a company you decide "we're going to stay exactly as we are today."

Companies can definitely ride it out better than the average SWE working at them. But it's not a zero cost decision for a company like Meta if they decided to do what Twitter did headcount wise.

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Beneficial_Map6129@reddit

That’s why if they fire just 80%, they just bought themselves a few months to transfer over to India/Poland for a non-hostile workforce while a few core devs keep the lights on the main product and there is a small rise in user complaints.

If they fire 100%, then they have to start negotiating within a few hours or else the media will let hackers know their servers are vulnerable to a DDOS that will take them out not for an hour, but a good few weeks and shareholders will panic as Google is offline

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demosthenesss@reddit

I think that's ultimately the problem with unionizing.

Companies are already suuuuper interested in outsourcing SWE jobs anyways because they are some of the highest paying IC jobs out there.

So it's a game of chicken. If SWEs all unionize, do we have enough collective influence to stop companies from outsourcing? Or do we just sign the end of American SWE as a field because companies finally have more incentive to just suffer the pains of outsourcing.

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Zeikos@reddit

Well, an alternative is to open a worker cooperative, so on top of having to rely on underqualified workers they'd have to deal with competent competitors.

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valence_engineer@reddit

Can you name some worker cooperatives that compete with top tech companies?

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Zeikos@reddit

Are you implying that, given none exist yet, somehow they're not a viable option?

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valence_engineer@reddit

I prefer to go with data and actual examples versus theoretical fantasies. If we're going by fantasies then I love unions since they'll give me a guaranteed $2m/year to do nothing. Somehow.

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Zeikos@reddit

Why do you believe it's a fantasy?
Worker coops exist all over the world, some are more successful than others.
There are reasons why none exist in the SWE market, but those don't necessarily mean that it's not possible for one to ever exist.

Not everything has data or examples available, often sperimentation is necessary. Or you can try to draw some information from different but comparable experiences

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BarkMycena@reddit

Thousands of startups are formed every day, do you think it's a coincidence very very few are co-ops?

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DigmonsDrill@reddit

I did a start-up that, in ways good and will, was kind of like that. Not on purpose but accidentally.

What ended up happening was bad personalities took over. People who didn't want to deal with assholes left and evaporative cooling drove the whole thing downhill.

One guy picked a fight with everyone, eventually including me (I was the last one left, who didn't ever have fights at work with anyone ever). And when called out on it he would just say "no I didn't." There's a powerful resistance to kicking people out and a lot of people hide in that, and one of the useful things management can do is just excise these warts.

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throwsomecode@reddit

that's when the regulations kick in

of which we have none but it's nice to dream about sometimes

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valence_engineer@reddit

You mean regulations that requires US companies to only buy software made by US companies in the US? All that does is make the pool of software jobs in the US smaller as the market shrinks dramatically.

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DigmonsDrill@reddit

If they can just flip over to India in a few months and keep it all running, then there's no power at all. But if so, why haven't they done so already?

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Chwasst@reddit

It won't be Poland. It's clear that our continuous economic growth makes us less competitive with each passing year. We see many companies move to countries like Romania. There's always someone cheaper. Imo at some point they will move out of the EU altogether anyway.

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thekwoka@reddit

If like most people, you think that Elon has destroyed a lot of the value of Twitter through his actions,

idk, I feel it's doing better than ever.

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GoonOfAllGoons@reddit

idk, I feel it's doing better than ever.

It is, but no board on this site is free from left wing circle jerk posts, so this is the one.

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gnu_morning_wood@reddit

Too soft.

More like "Overly self confident"

Devs (I almost wrote devas) are hired for their narcisstic personalities, and they carry around some wild belief that they are too valuable for bad things to happen to them.

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ALAS_POOR_YORICK_LOL@reddit

Alternately some of us just don't want to be in a union?

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humpyelstiltskin@reddit

not sure why dislikes, are we all the same now?

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AnthTheAnt@reddit

No it’s fine, you’re a special little snowflake.

Don’t worry, we will all be there to laugh at your misery if you ever get laid off because some asshole investor cried about the stock only going up 8% this quarter

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Mental-Work-354@reddit

Amen, I’m not taking average SWE comp after busting my ass for 15 years

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throwsomecode@reddit

you do realize how unions work right? the average SWE comp would go up greatly with bargaining power and you would likely have reached 600k or even more in TC with your level of experience since you get set raises per x years

unions don't exist just so you don't get fired my man... how are some of the "smartest" people lacking in so much knowledge?

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Mental-Work-354@reddit

I’m in the top 5% salary range of my profession and you’re saying I’ll make more by joining a union and collectively bargaining?

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becauseSonance@reddit

Have you looked at the top 5% of police salaries in your state lately? Unions are definitely not holding them down

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Mental-Work-354@reddit

Sure just did, they make less for more hours of work and a more stressful job

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basskittens@reddit

Plus every interaction they have in a day carries the risk of violent injury or death. Something bad could happen to the officer too.

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throwsomecode@reddit

lol yes my man. the average worker (not even SWE) at apple if it was a cooperative would have been earning 400k or so (pre-pandemic). a union won't magically turn a company into a cooperative level but it's a step in the right direction

i just don't understand why people cannot comprehend union isn't a perfect solution, just a step towards the right direction

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Mental-Work-354@reddit

I do understand those things. I just don’t think I have much to gain and way more to lose. I’ll be retired in my late 30s in a few years so I don’t really feel suckered or offended. Sorry if that doesn’t align with your world view.

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fasttosmile@reddit

you're a dumbass

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ComebacKids@reddit

I find that claim dubious, but please convince me otherwise.

Unions aren’t a cheat code for higher comp. If we look at other unions, strikes for higher pay and better benefits only really seem to be happening when things are getting bad. I’m thinking of the airlines, rail road, writers guild, Starbucks, Amazon warehouse workers, etc.

I think those are all admirable/worthy strikes, but there’s a very real cost and pain to the strikers. People have to believe things have gotten pretty bad in order to go on strike.

I can’t even imagine someone at big tech making $400k/yr being convinced to willingly go on strike so they might be able to collectively bargain for a 10% raise, at the risk of losing their job.

This idea that the guy making $600k at 15 YoE would’ve definitely got there sooner due to collective bargaining isn’t a given in my mind. Unions seem great for the lower end of the earning spectrum in a given field, and even the median, but I’ve not seen good evidence that unions are especially effective for the top earners in a field.

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turningsteel@reddit

Well because the corpos have years of anti-union propaganda that they have been shoving down our throats and people don’t question what they’re told.

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throwsomecode@reddit

what people on this thread seem to fail to understand is that union is not some sort of magical perfect solution. it's just a step in the right direction

everyone's also very much in a massive scarcity mindset. I don't get how they keep harping about just how much money the software industry has but also think that they'll be taking some massive cuts when unions become a thing. we'd be just redirecting the excess profits to workers

this is the same shit with people bitching about how funding more education or universal healthcare would raise our taxes. new flash morons, if you live in cities like NYC or SF, we already have some of the highest fucking taxes of first world countries with none of the benefits!

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throwsomecode@reddit

because?

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AnthTheAnt@reddit

Propaganda.

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Whatever4M@reddit

Unions don't make sense when the work isn't local and things don't break fast.

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teslas_love_pigeon@reddit

The purpose of a union is to state things that members want. What I want is time and a half for all OT work including on-call, I want a fair process when it comes to layoffs and not rely on the whims of outside consultants think, and finally I think tech workers should have a board seat to make sure they have a say in the company's success.

None of this has to do with "breaking" things, as if unions only care about the output of work and not their members.

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Whatever4M@reddit

If dock workers in a specific area decide to go on strike because some of their demands aren't being met, it's hard for the company to replace them because the actual work needs to be done at that dock NOW, every delay is costly and bringing in people to replace the current workers is expensive, because you need to fly in people to do that, so that places pressure on whoever the owners are, this isn't the case at all for SWE, the work can be done anywhere, so they can just hire people from elsewhere to start working now at no extra cost, and delays aren't a huge deal often so they can take their time, in this case, the company can hold out more than the SWEs can by a long shot, even if the quality of their product deteriorates over an extended period of time.

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ALAS_POOR_YORICK_LOL@reddit

First doesn't seem worth the bother.

Secondarily, like it or not, in america (especially trumps america) signing on to one is career suicide. I'm not looking to prove a point with my career

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throwsomecode@reddit

yeah but those are reasons why you cannot currently be part of a union. wanting is a different thing

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ALAS_POOR_YORICK_LOL@reddit

For the second party, sure. But it's a big part of our current reality.

The first part still stands.

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kokorean-mafia@reddit

I initially thought what you wrote was an overstatement, but then I scrolled down.

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gnu_morning_wood@reddit

Rockstars, 10x devs

Devas, the lot of us.

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sol119@reddit

Speak for yourself

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gnu_morning_wood@reddit

Score: 5 funny

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allKindsOfDevStuff@reddit

How much more of people’s money do you parasitic Leftists want?

We are already heavily taxed on our income, then everything we buy with what is left over is taxed, as is our property every year, then capital gains tax on investments.

Yet you - in a shrill whine - lament what people would prefer to do with (what’s left of) their own money, rather than having even more of it taken away??

Fuck your collectivist nonsense

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paradoxxxicall@reddit

The whole point is that you get paid more. And that’s not just in theory, it happens that way in practice. I don’t necessarily think it’s realistic in our industry at the moment, but this is such a dumbass take that doesn’t manage to see even a single step ahead.

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allKindsOfDevStuff@reddit

So you have even more of a dumbass take: Get paid more just to have the difference siphoned away and break even (at best), and strike when told to.

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Schmittfried@reddit

Sure buddy, that’s collectivism and not just applied game theory. Stick it to the union.

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pwnasaurus11@reddit

It has nothing to do with softness. I consider myself on the level of a professional athlete in terms of capabilities. Why would I give up 15% of my pay to support people in a position I will never be in?

Could I get laid off? Of course. But I’m highly confident I’ll have another job within a few months. I think many people feel this way.

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msamprz@reddit

I'm going to ignore the downvotes and just ask: okay, but why? What basis do you build this confidence on? Is it just personal confidence in yourself or do you have something tangible and reproducible to base that on?

And I'm really not saying that in a condescending way, I'm genuinely asking. If it's personal confidence, sure go for it.

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Choperello@reddit

I can't speak for the guy above for me specifically it's just simply evidence over the past 20y of my career. T every job I was doing more and better the most of my peers. I was able to solve harder problems, my solutions were more stable, faster, scaled better, my code had fewer bugs, my proposed architectures were more elegant, I was able to actually hit needed timelines, etc. All of the above on a constant basis more the most of my peers. And I have zero qualms saying I started expecting more $ then them because of that.

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msamprz@reddit

I'll probably reply again later with some of my thoughts, but thanks for the genuine answer, it sounds reasonable to me

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pwnasaurus11@reddit

100% this

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Schmittfried@reddit

Why would I give up 15% of my pay to support people in a position I will never be in?

Even if that assumption were true: It’s called solidarity. It’s really strange how it tool such an egocentric nation hundreds of years to start collapsing. Oh well, I guess the egocentrism increased significantly over the past 100 years.

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zelmak@reddit

15% union dues is insane. I’ve worked as a dev in a union (government) and it was nowhere near that high. I didn’t have a bad experience of the union, in fact as a new grad I was making more than most of my peers except those in FAANG/fintrch. but the standardized process to earn a promotion which entitled you to a 4% raise which was negotiated by the union was so tedious that I left the public sector.

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jeezfrk@reddit

When the union gets its first contract ... union dues are included.

You only pay them if they get results.

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FetaMight@reddit

Dude, you don't know all devs. The vast majority of the ones I've worked with aren't anything like your describe.

Give it up.

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istarisaints@reddit

I have no opinion here but your point is perfectly countered by itself.

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Imaginary_Doughnut27@reddit

The best devs I know would join a union.

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Beneficial_Map6129@reddit

The best dev I know would too. Unfortunately there’s a hundred other “goodish” to “good enough” devs who would gladly hop over to Facebook/Palantir/Defense if that was their only job and vote no to an additional 5-15% union fee to support the tons of other devs who were laid off across America during these last few years.

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FetaMight@reddit

I'm not claiming all devs are homogenous. I'm not claiming anything. How is that the same?

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Beneficial_Map6129@reddit

My proposal of what it would take immediately got 7 downvotes in 3 minutes while the original post and highest comment had 4 and 19.

You make a proposal then and see how they take it.

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FetaMight@reddit

But your proposal was based on this unrealistic assumption all devs were selfish.

Also, who cares about votes??

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Cultural_Ebb4794@reddit

I wonder if I'd be considered a scab since I'm a freelancer?

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jonnycoder4005@reddit

Most of us are probably severely underpaid based on the value we provide. We earn more of the pie than we get.

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ComebacKids@reddit

That’s always going to be true as long as you work for someone else.

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Adept-Researcher-178@reddit

But with a union, you can push for more pay much more easily than as an individual. The company has already decided your labor is worth $X. More than likely they’re not going to change that number if you ask them to unless you’re genuinely holding the company together, despite you providing a high value to the company.

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AnthTheAnt@reddit

It’s also because many people are ego driven and individualistic to a stupid degree. They buy into all the anti-union propaganda and have convinced themselves they won’t ever by fucked over by trillion dollar companies that have been fined massive amounts for wage fixing and are now constantly firing people.

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ButWhatIfPotato@reddit

Would probably join a union though

The easiest way to know that you need a union is go ask your boss if you can form a union. If he says literally anything else but yes, then you need a union.

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throwsomecode@reddit

lol no we don't

we do well relative to the average american worker but the pay has stayed pretty similar the last few years even though the cost of everything (esp rent/house) have gone up. i don't know of anyone who got a 50% CoL bump between 2021 and 2025. do you?

won't be long for us to reach a point where our pay isn't really offsetting the risk by much. i already think we're at that point personally

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demosthenesss@reddit

It's worth looking at tech income for a longer period of time than the best hiring market tech has seen in decades to now.

Go back to 2010 and make the same comparison - wages in tech in aggregate since 2010 have dramatically outpaced inflation.

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EnoughLawfulness3163@reddit

Ya we keep seeing layoffs get reported in the media, but everyone i know personally who has been laid off got a job within a couple of months. And most people I know haven't been laid off.

If you're one of the unlucky folks who have been struggling, I feel for you. But it seems like the vast majority of us are still doing fine and get paid more than most professions.

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Attila226@reddit

I’m glad most of you people you know are doing well, but statistically speaking your own personal experiences are irrelevant.

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EnoughLawfulness3163@reddit

If you want us to risk our livelihoods and start a union, the burden of proof lies on you. I'm not going to trust click-bait media to tell me we're all fucked, the same way I didn't trust them when they said it's easy to make $300k a year as a new grad

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Attila226@reddit

I didn’t anyone to do anything.

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birthdaycakefig@reddit

I believe statistically speaking unemployment is almost at the lowest it’s been in a long time.

https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-unemployment-rate.htm

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paradoxxxicall@reddit

That doesn’t represent the exodus of high paying white collar jobs to lower paying jobs though, which is something that’s been happening. You’d need data specific to SWE or tech to really make an argument in the conversation.

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EnoughLawfulness3163@reddit

Do you have the data for the mass exodus of white collar jobs?

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Current_Speaker_5684@reddit

We should see a real drop in spending on 'unnecessary' things in the US and increases in parts of India etc.

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jeffwulf@reddit

Statistically speaking the experience he's had is the norm for the majority of developers.

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Attila226@reddit

Do you have data to back that up?

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jeffwulf@reddit

Yes, BLS layoffs and separation data vs employment numbers.

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PragmaticBoredom@reddit

Unionized jobs with a lot of protection are also much harder to get into than normal jobs. The dockworkers union sub constantly sees people asking how they can get in, and the answer is always to grind it out for years trying to pick up shifts and being available.

People fantasize about unions being a perfect antidote to everything they dislike about their job, but those fantasies always assume they are already inside the union and have enough seniority. The reality is that if there were unionized jobs with great protections, your chances of getting into those jobs would be much lower than other jobs due to the extreme competition. Those unionized companies would have fewer openings because people would hang out to the jobs longer. Unionized companies would hire less frequently because unionized headcount is riskier to manage (harder to trim when budgets are cut, harder to fire when you get a bad hire) so software companies would move hiring to other states or countries without the union.

It’s really easy to imagine a union layered on top of your current job or dream job. It’s not as easy to understand how it would impact your ability to get that job, though.

Unions are tradeoffs. Not a magic wand that improves everything with no downsides.

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BomberRURP@reddit

Crab mentality

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valence_engineer@reddit

Conceptually unions would drive the same types of changes that exist in Europe due to more socialist policies. Not sure why people seem to assume that won't drive the same type of corporate feedback as in Europe. Much lower salaries and higher job safety.

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SignoreBanana@reddit

Things are good until they aren't. Ask the rail roads, construction and the dock workers. We need to be a united front against these asshair managers who are ruining this industry. This isn't just about our jobs, this is about what we make and our professionalism. People wonder why everything is so shitty now: it's because people who care about making things right take a back seat to people who only care about quarterly earnings reports.

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gjionergqwebrlkbjg@reddit

You do realize the only reason why software engineers are paid this much are those quarterly earnings?

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BitSorcerer@reddit

Half of us do; but I suppose the half that doesn’t will eventually find someone who values them more 🤷‍♂️

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4215-5h00732@reddit

I'm in a union, but because I'm in the public sector. It works like every other union. Some benefits I get...

Great health, vision, and dental that I'll keep in retirement.
Currently, 7 weeks of vacation that I can actually use. It will increase to ~8 weeks soon.
Regular merit and COLA raises. Smallest was 6.5%, largest was ~15% so far.
Normally unbeatable job security.
Great WLB. Rarely any overtime, never on call, low stress. 6.And a pension. Based on insanely conservative projections, I'll be making ~85k/yr in retirement at 62. It will be considerably higher unless something goes very wrong.

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UsualLazy423@reddit

$85k/year pension is worth about $2.5-3million in the bank.

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tinbapakk@reddit

Just curious, in which country do you live ?

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4215-5h00732@reddit

US. I work for a State gov.

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0chub3rt@reddit

It would need to solve a different set of problems. A Software Engineers Union could solve, or at least mitigate, the problem of needing to prove your skill set for every job you apply to. Through an anonymous peer ranking system.
||Perhaps a cross between stackoverflow and scribophile.com||

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throwaway0134hdj@reddit

This ha been brought up so many times I’m surprised no one has organized it yet.

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Ok_Slide4905@reddit

Engineers hate each other more than management.

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PragmaticBoredom@reddit

I grew up watching my cousin in a union. They hated each other with a fiery passion because the union protected the worst employees from getting fired. The union also put strict controls on seniority so your only real way up was to wait for some grumpy old guy to decide to retire.

Unions seem like sunshine and rainbows from the outside. On the inside there are tradeoffs.

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teslas_love_pigeon@reddit

You realize that not every union is the same right and when you join a union you can run for leadership and shape it how you want right?

You're given a democratic process to better yourself but then you're upset that they aren't doing what you want, did you honestly try to shape the union? It's easier than you think.

Also depending on the industry, it is extremely fair to go by seniority. Without more context it's hard to give a rebuttal but I will say this:

Capital has run amok for the last 50 years, why should Capital be unimpeded when it comes to their own bargaining about power? Why can't workers have a similar say?

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PragmaticBoredom@reddit

You realize that not every union is the same right

Of course I do. But I can also see that when Reddit talks about unions they speak like it’s a hypothetical combination of all the possible upsides that also avoids all of the downsides.

I don’t find it very interesting to talk about some hypothetical perfect union that manages to avoid all of the tradeoffs of real-world unions. I prefer to talk about how unions actually manifest in the real world, because the truth is that unions end up this way largely because that’s what their members vote for and want.

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teslas_love_pigeon@reddit

I don't think the downsides are even worth mentioning, the point is that capital has an oversized influence in the direction of the company, what workers can work on, and how workers are paid.

Anything to fight that massive imbalance is worth seeking and pursuing as a member of the working class.

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PragmaticBoredom@reddit

I don’t think the downsides are even worth mentioning

Of course they are. You have to consider the downsides to understand the full picture.

The problem with unionization discussions on Reddit is that people don’t want to have an honest discussion. As soon as the tradeoffs are mentioned people started yelling them down or waving them away, but this isn’t an honest perspective.

You have to consider the big picture if you want real discussion. Downvoting and waving away any talk of downsides just turns the conversation into the usual Reddit pile-on where anyone who wants to seriously discuss the topic leaves.

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teslas_love_pigeon@reddit

Not really, the downsides about unions is something to worry about when labor has as much power as capital.

Until the balance is firmly tipped into labor's favor (hint it has never been this way in recorded history), I don't see the problem for advocating anything that weaken's capital power.

Capital is not democratic, and we need more democratic systems in our lives since they are the best way to structure complex organizations.

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PragmaticBoredom@reddit

The “capitalism bad” rants are for venting on Reddit, but when it comes time to search for jobs and consider options people are really going to consider the downsides no matter how much you wish they’d ignore them.

This subreddit is for practical advice, not ideological class warfare rants.

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FetaMight@reddit

We should have unionised 10 years ago, when we had most of the leverage, but better late than never.

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BomberRURP@reddit

I really hate every engineer older than me for this reason (I’m kidding. Kind of)

They literally had ALL of the power and just fucking wasted it

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FetaMight@reddit

It's more than just a single generation of devs dropping the ball. As you can see from the varied responses in this post Americans have internalised decades of anti-labour anti-union rhetoric.

It'll take a lot to roll that back.

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BomberRURP@reddit

Those post the .com bust are the ones I have the most ire for. In the rebuilding stage of the industry… holy shit dude, thinking of what could’ve been :( wow

Yeah I mean people respond to their material conditions and under those conditions the “I can do better for myself by myself” was objectively true. Companies were fighting each other to throw engineers more money, even the meh engineers! But to think things would always stay that way, to ignore the culture-wide effort to pump our numbers up in order to drive wages down, to witness the endless offshoring or it’s parallel, the importation of desperate easily exploitable and controlable migrant workers… and do nothing? Id argue there was a decade, at least a decade, where those engineers could’ve really ensured the stability of our roles and benefits.

But speaking of material conditions, as things go to shit the obvious conclusion will be increasingly undeniable to more and more people and maybe something good will happen. It’ll be hard to overcome the California ideology bullshit that poisons so many minds in our field, but getting treated like shit will do a lot to cleanse that. We are in the descent from the height of the industry (from a labor perspective)

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rdem341@reddit

No time like the present.

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nit3rid3@reddit

The weekly unionization thread, right on time.

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sessamekesh@reddit

I have yet to hear a unionization proposal that's appealing to me.

One absolutely exists, but the people I hear pushing for tech unionization are calling for things that either I already have (fair wages, good PTO, etc.) or things I actively don't want ("job security" that just drags around bad performers, movement of career tracks to consider tenure instead of merit alone).

I'd be much more tempted to join a union if it means I had a union rep to count on to be in my corner for performance reviews, headcount negotiations with the money bugs, prioritization of reliability/maintenance tickets, etc... instead of having to hope I have a good manager for the same.

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BoysenberryLanky6112@reddit

I'm pretty anti-union in general, but I agree with this 100%. The issue is I see my friends in non-software unions, and they all have all the issues you point out. My one friend is making 90k in government and doing the job of the guy making 150k while the guy making 150k is given busywork because he'd just fuck it up if he did the important work but his pay is guaranteed by tenure and he can't be fired unless he sexually harasses someone basically. And when my friend tried to change jobs to one in the same company that paid more, he was told he couldn't get a raise due to the union negotiated contract.

It's easy to talk about how a perfect union would work in theory. In reality, the majority of workers vote to promote mediocrity and tenure and making it impossible to fire people in every white collar union I'm aware of, not things I actually care about. If you really want me to join a union, you need to make the compelling case that it would not turn into any of those other unions, not just pipe dreams of how a perfect union would be. Because I'm sure when every one of those other unions was started, the people starting them also thought they'd turn out perfect and not machines of mediocrity that they actually became.

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roodammy44@reddit

American unions are weird. It doesn’t work like that in Scandinavia at all.

Union negotiated pay in Norway (if it’s done at all - my engineering union keeps out of it because the workers don’t want it) tends to set a floor to pay so you don’t go under it. There is no pay scale by seniority.

The unions don’t tend to kick up a fuss when people are fired or demoted unless the reasons for it are illegal or outrageous.

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valence_engineer@reddit

Scandinavia has worker protection laws that don't exist in the US and people are trying to achieve through a union.

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BoysenberryLanky6112@reddit

Yep and it's these same laws that cause Scandinavian devs to be paid a laughable amount compared to their American counterparts.

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teslas_love_pigeon@reddit

You say "laughable" but I say they live in a society that looks after its people. If you get sick you won't die in the streets, if you want to go to school the government will pay for you, and if you need assistance when life punches you down there is a hand to reach out and help you.

There is a reason why the average European lives longer than the average American and income has very little to do with it.

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nit3rid3@reddit

There is a reason why the average European lives longer than the average American and income has very little to do with it.

That's true. But it has nothing to do with welfare. Welfare in the US reinforces bad diet and sedentary lifestyle causing most of the health problems. If your nation has as many unhealthy people as the US does, your healthcare would be extremely expensive too.

You sound extremely naive if you believe "the government" pays for you.

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valence_engineer@reddit

The US has fairly large amount of social programs. For example, the government "pension" that almost everyone gets (and Europeans seem to think doesn't exist) is more than what Germans get in their government pensions. There's medicaid for low income health coverage. The big social support issue in the US is that there is support for those at the bottom but if you're middle class then you can very easily fall all the way to the bottom. That's the group hit with layoffs and high medical bills and not those at the bottom.

The larger issues that exist are due to complex systematic and social factors that simply throwing more money at won't just fix. California sort of tried and it's now got half mile long homeless encampments and people parking their cars with windows rolled down so they don't get broken.

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BoysenberryLanky6112@reddit

I'm not going to say we're perfect, but people don't actually die sick in the streets in the US we still do have a large welfare state and lots of charities that support the exact people you're referring to. I have a friend who works for a nonprofit that helps to house and feed homeless LGBTQ youth but who works closely with other charities and food banks and other orgs that support homeless people. She just told me about how whenever someone begs for money, she points them to all the places they can get hot meals for free and they typically react with hostilities. The people you see on the streets are not the people who would be helped with more money, and there is a lot of money behind the scenes that is helping people who actually do want and need the help. No one in the US dies due to lack of food.

And you're correct the average European lives longer and you're correct income has little to do with it. The fact that the average American doesn't move and eats like shit does though, the average American male is 5'9" and 200 pounds, which is classified as obese. The average female is 5'3" and 170 pounds, also obese.

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demosthenesss@reddit

The second paragraph is basically why this SWE who worked in a different unionized field before tech is opposed to unions.

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iPissVelvet@reddit

Yeah agreed.

Similar to NBA unions and how they negotiate minimum vet contracts, health benefits, etc.

Personally I’m interested in “guaranteed contracts”. I think that would be cool. I’m a proven engineer at this point and a known quantity. Pay me 100/110/120% of my current total compensation, but guarantee it for 3 years. Make the third year a “team option”. If you lay me off you’re paying me 2 years of guaranteed salary regardless. After 2 years if you’re unsatisfied with my performance you can decline my 3rd year. Or you can re-negotiate a new contract with me.

It would be nice to have that kind of guaranteed money and stability. We could do better financial planning this way.

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BoysenberryLanky6112@reddit

The NBA union operates in a pure monopoly. My question for you is why are you so confident that a tech union would look more like the NBA union and less like every other white collar union that exists in the country that has very little differentiation for performance and makes pay based almost entirely on seniority and certifications? Do you think the market for SWEs is closer to the market for NBA players or closer to the market for accountants?

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iPissVelvet@reddit

Not confident, just passing thoughts.

My counterargument is that the salaries we make (speaking purely as Silicon Valley big tech) have diminishing returns past 200k or so. Something that your 25 year old definitely hits. Anything after that is generational wealth building. Nothing you spend after 200k is critical to life — only quality of life from there onwards.

That’s what differentiates us. Again, I’m just theorizing here.

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BoysenberryLanky6112@reddit

The vast majority of SWEs will not get close to 200k in their entire career. You did mention silicon valley big tech, but that's a small segment of tech workers. Also I think you underestimate the amount of tech workers making 200k+ who want the extra money to retire early, or pay for their children's private school, or buy a new luxury car, or go on family vacations where they take first class flights and stay at all-inclusive resorts that are 1k/night. Personally the only thing in that list I want is to retire early, and I recently hit 250k tc at the age of 35, and I'm still aggressively planning my career to maximize my earnings so I can retire before I'm old and brittle and can travel a bit.

Also it's worth noting that a lot of the reason pro sports leagues have rookie minimums isn't even to benefit the rookies, it's so veterans can't be undercut with cheap players to save owners money and stay way under the salary cap. It's one of those rules that makes it seem like it's for rookies, but almost definitely results in fewer rookies getting contracts.

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iPissVelvet@reddit

That’s fair. I guess the question is — what size would this union be? Would it be a global union? National union? Regional union? Or company-specific union? I’d say if the union is too large it runs into your original comment — that the needs are too diversified.

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shagieIsMe@reddit

Unions need to be sized appropriate to the bargaining unit so that it can properly represent all of its members.

Consider the 2024 UWA strike. UWA was the "managing one" but each factory has their own union that they voted for. And some companies and factories are non-union.

And so you see things like UWA Local 933 which is a factory level union for Rolls-Royce in Indianapolis.

One can say we need the SDEWA union... or CWA (which some unions have filed under). Kickstarter ( https://kickstarterunited.org ) is OPEIU Local 153 ( https://www.opeiu.org ) .

Those high level organizing unions exist. People need to organize their own, company level WHATEVER Local 1234 union.

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jmking@reddit

Why would a union rep have leverage in the negotiations you mentioned? I fully agreed with you until that part. Not trying to be snarky - just feel like I'm missing something there.

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sessamekesh@reddit

I don't really want one for my own job negotiations, more for team resources.

I've been on a few teams that legitimately needed more headcount to fill the product asks (especially at Google...) where me and all the way up to my +3 made pretty strong arguments but they feel on deaf ears.

Our team of 20 was expected to do the job of 30 and penalized for not hitting those high level expectations, which is a pattern I see a lot in my career. I'm happy to put in 40 - 50 stretch hours of solid work and argue my own case, but I'm not happy having to bend over in constant meetings trying to convince the brass of what's realistic over and over and over again.

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jmking@reddit

Right, but how does the union help stop this?

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sessamekesh@reddit

Hence the no good proposals I suppose.

Like I said, I haven't seen a proposal I'm happy with. I've seen proposals that solve problems I don't have, and the problems I have don't seem to be solved by any proposal I've heard.

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jmking@reddit

I agree. All proposals for unions I've seen come at a cost to me with no benefits.

Even if I'm on a team with no work life balance that's burning me out. I pay into a union and I'm still in the exact same spot.

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CanIhazCooKIenOw@reddit

> ("job security" that just drags around bad performers, movement of career tracks to consider tenure instead of merit alone)

> I had a union rep to count on to be in my corner for performance reviews, headcount negotiations with the money bugs

How can you contradict yourself in two paragraphs? You want a union rep to look out for your own personal interests instead of the general professional ones - because f those other guys.

The fact that you want a union rep to "be on your corner to prioritize tickets".... I mean, come one.

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sessamekesh@reddit

I fail to see the contradiction.

I'm sick of having to play politics and spend valuable time crafting arguments to why the time I spend on engineering quality and maintainability is worth the hit to immediate feature velocity. On top of that, respecting and advocating those arguments currently falls on my manager but they ultimately represent the business interests - I'd love a union rep to say the same but representing employee interests.

I don't want a union rep to be my scrum lead, I want a union rep to put my scrum lead in their place when they start being a bit too reckless about feature velocity without having to hold the pager.

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CanIhazCooKIenOw@reddit

You don't see the contradiction of not wanting a union to increase "job security" that just drags around bad performers but you would be convinced for one if they sit with you during performance reviews?

How is that not a massive contradiction?

As for everything else you mentioned, it does not make any sense because it's either your job to do or your managers job to, as you mentioned. Who else is going to make the engineering case for quality if not the engineer himself?

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sessamekesh@reddit

I don't see the contradiction.

I don't want the union rep to be there to hold my hand if I'm being a lazy ass, I want them to be there to point out that testing/practice maintenance/monitoring isn't lazy ass stuff.

I'm happy to make cases for myself but in my 10 years in industry I've had maybe two performance cycles where I felt like the performance review process was properly aligned with product+engineering, even after all the hours of crafting arguments and working with my manager.

I've had 5 managers now and I'd say 3 of them were "good", I don't want to have to trust my manager exclusively to make sure the VP and other suits respect the stuff that doesn't directly make it to customer screens.

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nebotron@reddit

I agree so much with this - organized labor is about more than money. Prioritizing quality and reducing oncall burden is a great use of organized labor

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Advanced_Slice_4135@reddit

Dude you don’t want unions!! Don’t lose your mind.

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Inevitable_Abroad284@reddit

Will never happen because a SWE strike doesn't create immediate losses (as opposed to a factory that can no longer produce goods). It takes time for software to degrade and slowly lose revenue.

This means workers lose more relative to the company, compared to other fields, and also gives more time for the company to replace and adapt.

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selflessGene@reddit

American workers, software engineers in particular, have drunk the anti-union kool aid. We probably need another 20% of American software jobs exported to India before the profession starts to begin to wake up.

Unions are just an organization to bargain collectively on behalf of labor. Corporations are an organization to bargain collectively on behalf of investors. Investors get compensated way more than labor yet I see the argument in this thread that we don’t need unions because we’re paid well. Lol, investors have never used this argument because it’s very clear to them the power of collective bargaining for their own interests, no matter how much power they always have!

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jakesboy2@reddit

Wouldn’t unions just create more incentive to outsource?

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demosthenesss@reddit

I’ve never really understood how unions prevent outsourcing.

They have many benefits but stopping outsourcing isn’t one which will be significant.

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selflessGene@reddit

Unions would lobby Congress for tax penalties on any company that outsourced labor outside the U.S. The policy implementation is trivial. It’s that software engineers, as a unit, have zero political power.

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BoysenberryLanky6112@reddit

Do you really think a tech union would actually have more sway on Capital Hill than the tech companies? Like have you even thought about this for a second?

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selflessGene@reddit

Unions wouldn’t win every political battle but it’d be better off than the status quo where we’re not even at the table.

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razzledazzled@reddit

I think a key difference is that (manual) labor unions cannot be outsourced like SWE because there are visa/immigration constraints that limit it. SWE is just "thought labor" and is easily offshored.

Ultimately when it comes to the trades, they always have some amount of say because the work they produce is tangible.

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BoysenberryLanky6112@reddit

It's also way easier for manual labor companies to become pseudo monopolies, necessitating the need for unions. In tech there's the opposite of a monopoly, and the threshold for a startup is quite low. If I want to get contracts for say building houses, it's tough to break into the industry. If I want to compete with current heavy hitters in tech I can spin up an MVP in the cloud in a week that can show more efficiency and attract funding to actually build at the scale I need.

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BoysenberryLanky6112@reddit

Our seat at the table through our vote is worth much more than the seat at the table a tech union would get from lobbying politicians. We just had the most pro-union President we've had in our lifetime and Harris if anything was running on an even more pro-union platform. Instead voters voted for the guy literally famous for saying "you're fired", mostly elected by everyday workers to the point that other worker's unions wouldn't even endorse the Democrat this round. You're much better off donating to swing state Democrats than a union which would have absolutely no influence whatsoever compared to the other big players in politics. How successful was the teacher's union, one of the largest lobbying unions in the country? The department of education is being dismantled as we speak.

Reddit loves unions for some reason I can't fathom. They seem to think it's some magical vehicle for achieving all their hopes and dreams. But I've spoken to so many people in unions, and at their best they provide things like insurance and legal representation, at worst they create conditions for mediocrity where low performing high-tenured people are protected and all the high performing people leave for non-union jobs that will actually pay them what they're worth rather than what 50% of the union votes to pay someone at their years of experience and number of certifications.

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real_fff@reddit

How'd your vote work out this time?

And why do you have so much faith in democrats?

I'd much rather be a part of a group that actually does have control and leverage (via the collective power to literally stop a corporation in its tracks) than throw my money away to candidates that were already selected for us by our billionaire overlords just for another bozo to regress us back 20 years next term after which dems will give us another less than mediocre neoliberal lesser evil.

Also crazy to say voting matters more then reference the fact that swing states exist. I've voted every election I could and not one of them has mattered in the slightest. So my alternative is to throw my money at the Dems so they can make more false promises in another state? Meanwhile they're getting the vast majority of their funding from SPACs working their hardest to lobby away anything that resembles an actual change that would impact our lives for the better.

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BoysenberryLanky6112@reddit

Welcome to democracy in general. Your vote for union leadership will have just as much influence as your vote for political leadership, and just as with politics it'll be your money funding it. I choose to fund my own negotiations, because although government serves an important role even when the people I don't like win, unions serve a negative role when the people I don't like win, and I'd be better off without a union than a union where the majority of my coworkers get to decide what to negotiate for instead of me getting to decide what I negotiate for.

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real_fff@reddit

I can't speak much to how unions actually work in the US -- clearly we're in this sub and in the US. But I know for a fact that we need all the leverage we can get to be able to have any say compared to billionaires that have infinitely more power than us.

Running your own negotiations sounds very privileged and naive. Are you paying a lawyer to be on your side, just that confident in your individualism, or something else?

What happens when software jobs inevitably sink to an unlivable wage or become unattainable if companies manage to get AI to do what they want? Are you confident that won't happen in your time? Are you just that good/in a good niche that you'll keep one of the very few jobs? Are you privileged enough to just switch careers to a different one that pays a livable wage?

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BoysenberryLanky6112@reddit

I'm using competing offers as my leverage and it's always worked fine. If my employer had all the leverage I'd be paid minimum wage, which I believe is $10/hour which is 20k/year. Instead I'm paid 250k/year, and the last company I left countered to pay me even more than my offer (but I was leaving due to non-monetary reasons).

And I don't believe a union could negotiate for anything you're worried about. If our labor is no longer worth the amount we demand we be paid, companies will lay us off union or no union. A union can't squeeze blood from a stone, it can only negotiate collectively rather than individually. And if collectively dev labor is worth less, that leverage is worthless.

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real_fff@reddit

$7.25/hour. That's great that it works for you, and sure sounds like you're far enough down the line. Glad you're doing well.

In that case though, I wish you'd be a little more compassionate towards people that are less fortunate and able than you.

Out of curiosity, how long have you been in the field? Entry level pay is getting closer and closer to $50k while the requirements shift upwards. Have you seen the other CS subs? People dedicate their entire being to CS in order to compete at the expense of humanity. I performed very well in school and landed a job at an F500 for the next 5 years at the expense of my mental health and social life.

Now that layoffs hit, none of that has been serving me particularly well so far. Though I'll admit that my job was in security which I love despite how much it drains the life out of me to only do security without much opportunity for writing code beyond a python script here and there.

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BoysenberryLanky6112@reddit

That's the national minimum, state-level we're $10/hour and some are as high as $17/hour. My company is not big tech and our entry level pay is $120k/year and our requirements are pretty much have a BSCS with most people having at least one internship, which is the same requirements as when I entered the field 10 years ago (I started out at a non-tech company making 75k/year). But the entire point is if they're being paid any more than minimum, clearly they have some leverage. And the reason wages go down is supply and demand, which unions don't solve for. If employers really have 100% of the leverage, why is there a single SWE position posted for less than the minimum wage? Why are even entry level SWEs frequently paid in the top 50% of overall workers in the country when employees don't have any power in the negotiation?

And a year of time isn't relevant, it's about the value you produce in that year. I lead a team with 7 devs I mentor and I participate in high-level design and regulatory discussions among management. The problems my team solve save our company billions of dollars in regulatory fines. And honestly this is why I don't like unions, the majority of devs would vote to quantify the value of labor as number of hours and how "good" we are, rather than value we deliver and the supply and demand of other people able to do similar work. You say you've sacrificed years of mental health and social life. The vast majority of devs I know making what I make or more haven't sacrificed any of that, and typically have families with children. Sacrificing mental health and social life are much more likely to burn you out and make you a worse dev, not better.

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real_fff@reddit

Yeesh, y'all hiring? I'd love some advice on how to find a company like that. Also do y'all actually hire people at those requirements or do you hire the tippy top qualified of a giant pool of applicants?

Anyways, I'd love to be valued based off the value I produce, but I was using the unit that we measure our wages with in the US. Trust me, I have ADHD and I sure could hyperfixate and finish the week's work in a day.

But you're valuing your own work not by value produced but by the potential value that you saved the company. Regardless, my point is that you are being horribly exploited getting <0.25% (maybe 2% including the team) of the value you provide - I think there's plenty of room for you to be leveraging that. Maybe unions do suck, but I don't think voting or donating to the DNC is going to get you the fair share you deserve.

It's above minimum wage and I'd much rather be exploited and fed than unemployed and starving, but imo 0.25% is close enough to 0 while the executives and shareholders get the profits that I wouldn't be saying I have that much leverage.

Really I'd rather us get to a world where we're valued as human beings, not measured by the value OR time we contribute. I don't really care if I make $80k or you make $250k while our companies make $billions - I'd rather us both be housed, fed, have access to education and pursue work for the betterment of humankind instead of for the betterment of shareholders. I think measuring our individual value at all is a bit capitalism-contrived and silly. I'd rather just exist than have to measure myself against others under some shareholder's definition of value.

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demosthenesss@reddit

As someone who was in a union and worked in multiple unionized companies in a prior career, your second point is particularly frustrating for me - it feels like there's a ton of Redditors (not you) who are obsessed with perceived benefits from unions and they ignore all the costs.

Well, some of us experienced the downsides first hand.

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Dr_CSS@reddit

You live a comfy life because unions bled and died to protect the weekend

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demosthenesss@reddit

My union jobs worked weekends ton.

Overtime was very common. Paid yes. But plenty of mandatory overtime.

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throwsomecode@reddit

yeah, though im mostly pro union despite their drawbacks, we really need regulations first and foremost

also unions imo are like vaccinations. you can't have too many gaps. like the non-unionized sector cannot be so large that they are able to just out pay people to leave unions

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ketsebum@reddit

You don't need a union for that, just general organization and lobbyist. Guns don't have a union, but they do have lobbyists.

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KarthiAru@reddit

Unions work best when the job requires you to be onsite—think data centers, defense, space, etc. The main way unions apply pressure is by striking, but if SWE unions go on strike and the work just gets handed off to someone remote, how are you actually enforcing anything?

A big reason for this is that most SWE jobs are just web development. Firmware for physical products, for example, takes way more in-depth skills. And honestly, web development isn’t a lifelong career. New tech pops up all the time, and you’re competing with younger talent and developers from lower-cost countries for the same skills. You'll need to either find a niche or pivot to something else.

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curiouscuriousmtl@reddit

With all the layoffs I think it is showing definite things that a union could help with. Making sure the companies treat employees with respect and not hiring a lot of people and then firing them for fun or when they feel like it. Pay is pretty good but it's down as well as perks. It's not 2010 anymore. But the government wouldn't support unionization anyway and Google fires people who try so it's not a good bet

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johanneswelsch@reddit

I think anyone who suggests unionization should have his teeth kicked out. That is my opinion. If you attach another parasite to a finite amount of funds, then both you and your employer will have less.

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Rascal2pt0@reddit

So you choose violence? Finite amount of funds like the 1000x pay difference between CEOs and ICs? The government isn’t the wage thief.

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Unfair_Abalone_2822@reddit

There’s a lot of models of unionization. There’s the trade-union model, exemplified by the IBEW. There’s the one-big-Union model, exemplified by the IWW. There’s the sector-organizing model, exemplified by the CAFFWU. There’s the single-shop model, exemplified by the Amazon Labor Union.

The lines get blurry. The teachers’ union started as just teachers, but now the janitors and everyone else in the school usually join too. Same with nursing.

It was always going to be incredibly difficult to organize SW engineers. First, because of culture. Solidarity is practically nonexistent. Way too many libertarians. Outsourcing was always a bigger threat to us, too, and I don’t necessarily mean to India. Simply opening an office in Texas would do the trick. Much easier to move an office than a factory or a hospital. But now, the second a union crops up, all they gotta do is bring back WFH, and everyone will cheer. It’s goddamn impossible to organize when the bosses have control over all your comms channels.

I’m not a doomer about it, though. We just gotta go further back, to before unions. The first trade unions started as guilds. We could create a voluntary guild. A professional society.

Members of the guild would first prove to their peers that they are a professional worthy of our association. They would pay modest dues. We would have ethical standards for our members, things members would refuse to do on principle, like how PEs won’t sign off on a negligent bridge design. Hard limits on crunch time should be a big one.

It could grow over time. We’d have apprenticeships. We’d have a virtual “union hall” where certified members can find work without the interview gauntlet, because they already have social proof of their skills. Then, at some point, it grows large enough that it starts looking like the IBEW, with prevailing wages, and our members only working with union shops. This would take many years to happen.

Our industry is so immature, as in new. There aren’t many ICs nearing retirement age who’d want to organize this. Realistically, I can’t imagine anything like this getting off the ground for another 15 years, just due to demographics. All the candidates who might organize it are academics or CTOs. The academics already have the ACM! But they’ve been around for twice as long as the modern SWE profession. Sure, we had programmers before the internet, but it was such a wildly different job.

And that’s the other problem, isn’t it? How do you organize an industry that moves so quickly? What do you do with all these LLM “experts” in your guild when AI winter arrives and the value of their skills goes to zero?

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bwmat@reddit

First step to unionizing would be setting up informal quid pro quo performance review exchanges. You give me a good rating and I’ll do the same. How hard is that to imagine? We’re a bunch of catty, cutthroat bitches.

If this is how unions work then I don't really like the idea?

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spacyoddity@reddit

https://code-cwa.org/

they have unionized a bunch of software teams. they do free trainings.

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sashka22@reddit

I am in a rare unionized swe position in Canada. It’s not that different from any other role. Overtime is incredibly limited due to there being overtime pay and it’s very easy to get days off by working extra couple hours here and there. One significant thing where I was glad to have the union is that I had an issue with upper management, and the union was able to investigate it on my behalf. My union dues are like $700 a year. My pay is much lower than in the open market though(100k for senior).

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Cdore@reddit

No unions.

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jedberg@reddit

It would work like the screen actors union. Minimum payments for days of work, minimum standards for working conditions, but no maximums and no seniorities like a standard labor union and no job protections per se, but there would be minimum payouts to cancel a contract.

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-_-summer@reddit (OP)

I like this

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AlexGrahamBellHater@reddit

The question we have to ask is are we ok with getting stuck with someone incompetent that's now going to be EXTREMELY hard to fire because we're unionized?

The common fear is that Unions will protect the worst performers.

What is our solution to addressing that? How do we make it so someone who ain't up to snuff can be removed quickly from the Union?

I do like the idea of overtime pay but most of us are salaried. We don't get overtime

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-_-summer@reddit (OP)

This seems like a common fear amongst everyone. But why are we automatically assuming the SWE union wouldn’t take the employees’ performance into consideration? Obviously SWE performance metrics would be different than existing union ones.

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AdamBGraham@reddit

Not quite sure how folks think unions would necessarily help in this case.

Especially in this present era. The incentive to push even harder for AI tech job destruction would greatly increase. Effectively unioning more folks out of a job.

I would also expect many of the aspects of the industry we don’t like to get worse. For instance, unions often protect less impressive workers because it’s more difficult to get rid of them. Our feelings toward management keeping those folks around and being frustrated would likely get even worse.

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RaceMaleficent4908@reddit

Of course it would work. It works in europe

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Positive_Lettuce_641@reddit

The continent that gets paid shit wages for same work you Americans do

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teslas_love_pigeon@reddit

The continent that provides things like free access to healthcare, education, and a safety net that ensures if you start a business you won't be one failure away from rotting in the streets?

The continent that has some of the highest lifespans and rates of happiness on the planet?

Sounds amazing, here in the US we have a President that is rounding up legal residents being taken off the streets and exported to 3rd world countries.

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Positive_Lettuce_641@reddit

You realise Europeans aren't happy with immigrants either and right-wing parties surging all over Europe. How do you reconcile that with your belief that Europeans are happy?

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RaceMaleficent4908@reddit

Yeah like in switzerland. Those poor poor swiss people.

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Positive_Lettuce_641@reddit

And what does tech pay in Switzerland have to do with unions?

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RaceMaleficent4908@reddit

Because switzerland loves unions and also have very high salaries. Sure, the us has high salaries but they are a consequence of a miriad of factors, including history, politics and macroeconomics.

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Positive_Lettuce_641@reddit

Again you have provided zero evidence to explain how unions have impacted Swiss salaries levels in tech where union membership rates are tiny. Switzerland itself is the best paying country and still falls short of US and the rest of Europe is doing even worse.

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worst_timeline25@reddit

There are unions at Blizzard now:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/24/24205366/world-of-warcraft-developers-form-union-blizzard-entertainment

Might provide some insight for other places to unionize.

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bruh_cannon@reddit

I think it would be particularly difficult to unionize a job that can be offshored as easily at software development can.

We're all aware of the problems with offshoring and the offshoring cycle, but the company can survive it longer than the employees can, IMO.

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BomberRURP@reddit

Thinking too small dawg. It’s a bigger task of course but you’re forgetting the political angle. In theory one could legislate offshoring away, one needs only the political power to do so.

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bruh_cannon@reddit

I'm not denying that you could do this with the political power if you had it, but I'm not sure there's much point in contemplating it.

I'm not so much as forgetting the political angle as I am being realistic that the US government is in bed with our collective tech overlords.

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wrex1816@reddit

Yet to hear a good proposal.

The calls usually come from poor engineers who aren't well qualified or have issues getting work for other reasons.

Good/well paid engineers have less incentive.

I've worked unions jobs before becoming a SWE. Personally Im just not sure how it fits our line of work. IMO, it fits non-skilled jobs better than skilled jobs, and even then you need a STRONG union. That's why 5 workers at a local Starbucks forming their own union rarely works. It's not the conspiracy people think it is.

One of the other problems I see with people on Reddit wanting unions, is that it's clear that the people wanting unions ahev never worked under a union. Their assumption is that having a union is always better than not having a union and that's not true at all. It's only true when you have a very strong union.

The union I did work under was shit. My dad also worked a union job his entire life and the union fucked him in retirement. I think people really need to understand what they are asking for.

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metaphorm@reddit

exactly. how would it even work? unions tend to flatten the job market and make all workers in the union more-or-less the same. that's the kind of thing that makes more sense for factory labor than it does for software engineering. the differences in background, skill-level, domain knowledge, and working style are enormous in software engineering. flattening software engineers to make them artificially less distinct is probably not good for most software engineers.

unionization also doesn't really protect against layoffs, only against capricious treatment of individuals (who would benefit from union legal representation, which might be out-of-reach for an individual). at-will employment is double-edged. it makes the job market more "liquid" in general, which has both benefits and downsides to both workers and employers. it makes it easier for employers to add or shed workers according to their needs. it also makes it easier for workers to find a job at a different company when they need to do that. it trades off job security within a single firm for career optionality within the whole industry.

I tend to think that a union is the wrong organizational structure for software engineers. We're more like creative workers than factory workers. We should probably be looking at historical use of Guilds instead of at Unions.

A Software Engineer's Guild could provide some really valuable resources and services to its members.

It would be excellent to have an option to get your health insurance through the Guild instead of through the employer. That would make it a lot more portable, and greatly reduce concern about losing your coverage when you lose your job.

It would be excellent to have access to good lawyers who are very experienced in dealing with issues relevant to Software Engineers (IP and copyright law, employment law, data privacy/protection, whistleblowing, etc.).

It would be excellent to have an umbrella organization that facilitates the formation of professional communities-of-practice so Software Engineers would have a ready-at-hand resource for career development and technology skills education.

I'm sure there are many other services that a Guild could provide to improve the quality of life/work for Software Engineers. I think this is what we need. Not the stuff that Unions do. We don't need to flatten the field, collectively bargain on pay+benefits, or restrict the hiring process. We also really really really don't want the interjection of outside political interests creeping into our work, and Unions are often very guilty of politicizing things that aren't directly relevant to the work at hand.

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it200219@reddit

same question asked few weeks ago, you may want to read interesting comments about many are against it

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mothzilla@reddit

Easy:

https://www.tuc.org.uk/join-a-union (for those in the UK) https://cwa-union.org/ (for those in the US)

There's also https://www.alphabetworkersunion.org/ and a few others.

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Chickenfrend@reddit

The number one reason people seem to give here in opposition to unions is "it would prevent bad devs from being fired". Which is funny because the biggest obstacle to good work at my place of employment is terrible bureaucracy, organizational problems, non-technical managers, and so on. Not bad devs. Where I work developers get very little input on processes in general. Unions could be a way for us to have more of a voice and maybe push through some of the corporate nonsense

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demosthenesss@reddit

It might surprise you but not everyone works in a place like that.

Most of the companies I've worked for have had strong developer input into processes and how the engineering organization worked.

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Chickenfrend@reddit

Well, I work at a very large company. I've worked at little startups where devs had more input, too, but I think it's common for things to be like they are at my current place of employment at many of the bigger companies. And, big companies probably make more sense to try and unionize within anyway.

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nebotron@reddit

My personal theory? It's relatively easy to move overseas, so employers have more power to bust unions.

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PragmaticBoredom@reddit

Unions get much of their negotiating leverage from controlling the source of labor and threatening to strike.

SWE is relatively easy to move overseas if a union starts striking. The company could shrug and move the functions to other teams and just wait out the strike indefinitely.

Companies could also stop hiring new people in any location that unionized. They’d respect the union, but it would die out because they stop giving new headcount in that location.

Unions don’t have the same leverage when the job can be moved across the world as quickly as creating a new Slack channel. It’s not like auto workers in a physical factory.

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demosthenesss@reddit

Unions don’t have the same leverage when the job can be moved across the world as quickly as creating a new Slack channel. It’s not like auto workers in a physical factory.

Yep.

Every single example in this thread of unions being impactful/beneficial has a strong physical component to it.

NBA, dockworkers, railroads, medical, etc. You can't outsource those. So the employees have more leverage by default and it's a large amount more.

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BomberRURP@reddit

That shit takes time and costs a ton in the transition. That’s why they do it by bit. I’m theory if we were organized and had a strike, everything would come to a standstill, billions would be lost per day, we’d force them to the table. They can’t offshore literally overnight. At which point we could force contracts that hire domestic.

And of course there’s the much better (but much harder since both parties hate working people) option, political power. One could very easily legislate offshoring away.

Unions are great, but we (I’m assuming USA) have a couple hard problems on top. First neither party really likes working people, they both work for the wealthy. This is why our laws regarding organized labor are so absolutely dogshit. That would need to change (if you want proof the govt hates workers, and that the hate is bipartisan, take a look at TaftHarley and notice neither side wants to end it). Which is why political organizing is so important. We need a party for working people by working people.

A true workers party and legislative change, while being huge goals, are really the only path forward. Not just for us, but for everyone that due to their birth is forced to sell their labor to survive

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Hog_enthusiast@reddit

Yeah look what happened to the American auto industry. Unionizing drove all of that industry overseas and then that killed the unions

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Beneficial_Map6129@reddit

Refuse to share knowledge with anyone who is not part of a union
Any union-created open source tooling belongs to union members only and huge penalties if used by companies not following union rules
Union members have to quit if the union orders them too immediately
15% salary paid to union

I doubt this will happen. 60% of SWE are H1B it seems like

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nemec@reddit

Immediately paywall stack overflow

SO is a business and their website is a product of that business. Unions won't change that. Do you mean we'd have to give someone (the union?) the ability to fire any dev using SO?

Any union-created open source tooling belongs to union members only

This is no longer open source by any definition, though I guess you could call it "union source".

Union members have to quit if the union orders them to immediately

A layoff by any other name...

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Instigated-@reddit

Calling BS.

4) What union charges 15% of a person’s salary?

3) what union has made employees quit, and why would they have any reason to make that demand?

2) if a union creates tooling, it has a right to profit from it like any other organisation creating tooling. What you’re describing isn’t “open source”, it’s standard market practice

1) most organisations don’t share information freely, why would you expect a union to give something away free that their members pay for? 1a) they’d have to own stackoverflow to paywall it, and they don’t. The kind of information unions deal in is related to worker rights, not stack overflow type questions.

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Beneficial_Map6129@reddit

It’s a proposal. I could change it to 5% and people would still cry and not accept it.

Unions strike all the time. Actors, nurses etc

God you are so sheltered

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Instigated-@reddit

You didn’t state it as a proposal, you implied it would be terrible to have a union for these ludicrous made up reasons.

It tells me you don’t know much about unions, which is why I questioned you to give me examples that fit your crazy claims.

Mobilising people to strike is not “quitting” your job.

I’m not the sheltered one. You assume all devs are “bay-raised”… there is a whole world out there full of other countries, cities, suburbs, yet you are focused on some tiny percentage stereotype. I’ve been a member of a union before, I know current union members, and so I know everything you said was BS.

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FetaMight@reddit

Your reasoning here is absurd.

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FetaMight@reddit

Stop pretending your limited experience is universal.

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Beneficial_Map6129@reddit

I’ve met and worked with many devs and have had a long career spanning the Valley, NYC, and Miami, in both big tech and unicorn startups. I know devs and they are pretty selfish from the hundreds of people I have interacted with.

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FetaMight@reddit

This is a tiny fraction of devs.

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Beneficial_Map6129@reddit

Do you expect someone to work directly with hundreds of thousands of people before they get to submit an opinion?

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FetaMight@reddit

I have no idea what you're trying to say here. Who's working directly with thousands of people? What?

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gurthang2@reddit

People bring up some good points but I think people are underestimating how hard it is to unionize, and it will take a lot more than top performers accepting less pay to make it work.

(American centric post incoming)

The fight for workers rights in America is a very long and very bloody story. I am no expert but I think these wikipedia articles give a good summary. Link1, Link2

Corporations today (hopefully) won’t call in the Army to put down a strike, but you better believe companies would fight like hell to make sure any attempt at unionization doesn’t get off the ground. Just look at how anti-union companies like Amazon, Starbucks, and Walmart are.

Most blue collar unions today are under the umbrella of the AFL-CIO, an organization that was founded in 1886. Almost 50 years before workers had a legal right to unionize. Frankly it’s a miracle that it still exists today. But, the AFL-CIO exists because in 1886 the alternative was working 14 hour days in life threatening conditions. That’s something worth fighting for.

Today, with federal legislation protecting workers and general quality of life improvements, I don’t think there’s enough incentive to get in the ring with mega-corps who have essentially unlimited resources. This goes doubly true for SWEs. Let’s be real, we sit a desk all day and get paid well for it. Anything else on top of that seems pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

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sudosussudio@reddit

It is really really really hard. There is a podcast about the kickstarter union that is really insightful.

The current administration is not worker friendly either.

I helped start a union at a software company and it was one of the hardest things I did in my life.

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AdvisedWang@reddit

First of all what will SWEs be interested in organizing for? Pay is probably not compelling enough for the risk. At big companies I can see organizing for:

Transparent pay bands and formula for how pay is set. No more discovering you make 1/2 your coworkers because they negotiate harder.
A better performance evaluation system (although I don't really know what the ideal one would be. I don't think many SWEs would go for seniority!)
2 week notice for termination. PIP and PIP outcome are reviewed by union committee.
Allocated time for professional development, 20% projects, tech debt work
Limitations or compensation for on oncall. In particular making sure excessive paging is disallowed or disincentivezed enough that the company prioritizes fixing those issues.
Grievance process to handle managers that retaliate, harass, or try to push people around.
Contractual specified severance and 60d notice even if the layoff doesn't meet WARN criteria. You could even have a 3x severance penalty for layoffs where the job ends up still being done by someone in another location or by non-FTEs.

Notably there's no reason that unions have to do seniority, fixed pay, or anything like that.

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sudosussudio@reddit

Remote work was a big factor for ours.

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drnullpointer@reddit

First of all, unionization works because you can create a little empathy from the rest of the society to support you in your fight for better working conditions.

Good luck doing that as a software engineer when you are already being paid way more than the rest of people for work that isn't saving lives, isn't dangerous and isn't hard.

Please, I don't want to hear your stories about how you feel your work is hard and unfair -- understand pretty much everybody else has way worse than us and we still live in a world of privilege even if that privilege got a bit diminished in recent years.

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sudosussudio@reddit

Do you only have swes at your company? Because our union included lower paid support staff.

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Stubbby@reddit

The question for all prospective union members are what % of your salary are you willing to give to the union?

The union leadership must be paid from your salaries - the head of shipworkers union earns $700k/year. Maintaining the union and populating funds would probably take 10% of your salary.

On top of that, unions regulate your compensation - if another company comes to your area and starts hiring at higher compensation, your company will not raise the salaries. If Google had a union, the salaries would be substantially lower than Meta's. In fact, Meta wouldn't have to offer very high compensation either to attract talent.

We can look at other countries for the union impact - the earnings in Germany for unionized software engineers are abysmal. While the compensation for developers grew rapidly all around the world, in Germany, it was frozen by the unions. This is why an American Amazon software engineer makes 50% more than his German equivalent.

The real question is, on a scale of 10 - 50% how much compensation would you be willing to give up being a member of a union?

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sudosussudio@reddit

This is incorrect. You can create your own union, you don’t need one with a big staff. A big staff is a huge advantage though because they have lawyers and other useful people. You shop around and see which ones are worth it.

Most contracts last a year or so and if you wanted higher salaries you’d negotiate it as part of a contract.

European tech salaries are low regardless of unions or not

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HobosayBobosay@reddit

Large number of employed software developers shouldn't even be working in the field and if there was unionisation of any sorts it would reward such software developers while punishing the highly productive ones. Which would lead to severe degradation in quality of software that gets built. By thinking about this, I'm already going to have nightmares tonight.

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4215-5h00732@reddit

That's avoidable if this union were run like trade unions. You'd be working for a pushover company if they didn'tdo somethingabout it. Incompetent, lazy people get sent back to the "shop" to sit on the books. Eventually, you'll be ghosted due to a bad reputation.

I had this thought as well, and then I worked with some trade union guys, and I was blown away (I had a decade of non-union trade xp at the time). Everyone from the painters, HVAC, and everyone in between were top-notch and high output.

My current team has all-around solid developers, but since we don't operate as a trade union does, we need to be on top of tracking their progress during the first prob year. But even if we miss, we can PIP and remove people; it's a myth that you can't get fired.

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Stephonovich@reddit

Some are definitely better than others. My personal experiences with random tradespeople who’ve done work on my house has been that those who are in unions are better, yes. However, while in the Navy, I spent time at Electric Boat shipyard in Connecticut. All of their trades are unionized, and there is a vast chasm of ability and attitude in its ranks. We routinely had to kick people off the boat on the midshift for sleeping, or reeking of booze. Also, one time while a group of us were walking in a construction building, someone threw a bag of trash down from a catwalk. It’s easily a 50 foot drop; had it hit anyone, it could’ve caused serious injury. We reported him to the area supervisor; the guy was suspended for a single day.

I am very pro-worker, and as a consequence pro-union, but stories like that make it hard for people to accept them. Unions need to ruthlessly cull dangerous and lazy workers, or they’ll drag everyone down with them.

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4215-5h00732@reddit

Agree 100%.

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hachface@reddit

I strongly feel that this is backwards. Widespread incompetence I believe is a consequence of the profession having no concept of apprenticeship or a standard body of knowledge. Organization, whether it take the form of a professional association or trade union, could help the problem.

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Venthe@reddit

There is no standard body of knowledge nor standardisation and the one simply can't exist. On daily basis, each one of us maybe uses 40% of the capabilities of a given framework/library; but that alone is maybe a 1% of the overall knowledge of the industry. Hell, we are still debating clean code, paradigms, even applicability of languages alone; not to mention minutiae (and applicability!) of architectural, integration and design patterns.

To date, we still discuss about brackets style; and tabs vs spaces.

The SDBOK would have to be dozen volumes long; and it would be outdated in less than a decade.

Apprenticeship is a different idea altogether, but we don't need union for that. We "only" need to change our approach as developers, but for that - we lack cohesion. And unions, from my experience in other fields, would not help at all.

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hachface@reddit

Developers have no ability to establish apprenticeships because the terms of developer employment are completely controlled by non-technical management who have no regard for the health of the profession and have every incentive to offload the cost of training on individuals. That’s why dev skill sets are so spotty and unreliable. Apprenticeships in the skilled trades only exist because trade unions force employers to respect their credentialing system and put money into on-the-job training.

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Stephonovich@reddit

There are plenty of ways to approach this. A base requirement could be that you have a decent understanding of computers in general, by which I mean their hardware, how it works, how its architecture affects software performance (think cache alignment for memory, etc.), general latency numbers for various operations, basic networking, basic security, and so on. Then, a programming language. You don’t need to master it, but you should be able to – without any external libraries – do basic things like parsing a text file, storing information durably, etc.

I don’t see much value in training on specifics like a framework, because as you correctly point out, they constantly change. I do see a lot of value in people understanding fundamentals, because consistently they are the cause of problems everywhere I’ve been. Some examples:

Didn’t think about available network bandwidth, saturated a DB’s uplink by spamming it with massive reads to fill a cache.
Didn’t think about Disk I/O, caused repeated issues due to saturating available IOPS on nodes which in turn caused high IOWAIT on the CPU.
Didn’t think about latency, caused sluggish performance by issuing DB reads in a loop instead of once for the desired range.
Didn’t know how to profile code, causing poor performance from being unable to determine problem areas.
Didn’t think about how B+trees work, caused poor DB performance by making the PK non-k-sortable.

That last one is perhaps a bit beyond basic, but it’s absolutely in the realm of anyone with a CS / SWE degree, or anyone who’s progressed past Junior.

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RaceMaleficent4908@reddit

Nonsense. Unions do not necessarily protect people from dismissal. In austria you can fire anyone whenever you want and all those all jobs are in unions

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pinpinbo@reddit

Please teach me what does a union do for the members? Is it as simple as paying a subscription? Will they help negotiate salary every time I change companies?

What prevents the union from going against their members (think of draconian HOA as an example)?

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sudosussudio@reddit

They can do a lot, basically it’s a whole team that will negotiate everything for you from salary to benefits.

If you don’t like a union you can run for steward and take it over or start a decertification campaign.

They can protect against outsourcing with contracts. It’s not perfect but it’s really nice to have a bunch of lawyers on your side.

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aefalcon@reddit

I see a lot of people mentioning that employers would just ship the jobs overseas, which I agree with. But there's a weak point to it, and that's solidarity. If this is a trade union, maybe not all of the software development jobs could be shipped, and the remaining brothers and sisters would have to carry the strike. If this was an industrial union -- the union represents everyone and not just software developers -- then the other trades would strike in solidarity of the software developers. This only works if everyone is united in solidarity.

Further, if general strikes were legal -- and they've been illegal in the USA since 1947 -- other organizations could strike in solidarity. So, for example, if you're company bought software from a another company that was moving to outsource, your union could strike. You can see this happening in Sweden with dock workers striking in support of Tesla factory workers.

This seems kind of far fetched for the USA. Union power has been eroded since the 1940s with all the rugged individualism going about. You hear more about Henry Ford giving his workers an 8 hour work day than the riots that secured it elsewhere. There's some deep reaching propaganda that has to be unlearned before the USA has strong unions again, and software developers, who are historically labor aristocracy, are some of the worst affected.

So if there were something to be done, I'd say organizing with an industrial union is the best bet, but it's a hard sell because the other white collar workers who aren't in danger could be resistant to join or scab on you to save their jobs. Try the IWW: Industiral Workers of the World.

Imagining both development and sales in the same union is giving me a chuckle right now.

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DarkBlueEska@reddit

I was part of a small SaaS software company that attempted to unionize several years ago - I wasn't one of the ones that signed union cards because I had already made up my mind to leave by the time the union got off the ground, but my understanding of what they did was sign on to be represented by an existing large union for media and communications workers.

It didn't work - basically as soon as leaders were notified about it, everyone who'd signed on was fired. They brought a suit and won a decent settlement from it, but when you divide it 10+ ways, it's not nearly as big a penalty as it should have been, especially for how egregious and obviously illegal the firings were.

Basically, you can try to unionize, but you are almost certain to be immediately fired, no matter how illegal it might seem to be to do that. Companies would much rather pay out a significant civil penalty and admit no wrongdoing than they would allow their workers to gain any significant bargaining power. The fear of losing one's job and the fact that our industry has historically been relatively cushy has kept people from organizing at a large scale. If things get bad enough, though, I could see people at a larger company giving it a try.

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sudosussudio@reddit

I was part of a semi successful unionization effort in that we managed to certify but then they laid us all off as soon as the pandemic happened. They were just waiting for an excuse.

There is a podcast about the Kickstarter union that’s worth listening to. Basically there are laws that protect you but they have very little teeth. They went to the NRLB and it took years and they were still out of a job.

Idk I’m very pro union but there really isn’t any protection. It’s only getting worse under the current administration.

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AardvarkIll6079@reddit

How were the firings illegal? Nearly every state is at-will. You can absolutely fire someone for joining a union. Because I’m assuming the union didn’t already work out with the employer that they cannot be fired at will. There’s nothing illegal about that. You can fire someone because they wore blue shoes to work and you don’t like blue shoes.

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Stephonovich@reddit

Because organizing is not something you can be fired for, and judges aren’t stupid: a company can’t say “oh, we just happened to get rid of all of these people, such an odd coincidence.”

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DarkBlueEska@reddit

I am not a lawyer, but I understand it to be a violation of the National Labor Relations Act. You might be able to fire someone for wearing blue shoes, but you aren't supposed to be able to fire people specifically for joining a union. It is supposed to be legally protected conduct, even in at-will employment states.

The only issue comes with proving in a civil court that the termination was because of the union activity. The company will always assert otherwise, as my former employer did, but it's obvious to the ones who worked alongside these people for years what happened and why. If there weren't a problem with it as you say, I doubt they would have paid out a large settlement or entertained the lawsuit at all.

Don't take my word for it, just google some common phrase like "can I fire an employee for union activity" and read one of the articles that has been written about the matter. Pages and pages of results all reaching the same conclusion.

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DreadSocialistOrwell@reddit

We would create new standardizations for unions instead of fixing what's wrong when we thought the union wasn't working.

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huuaaang@reddit

Unions wouldn’t address any of those issues. It doesn’t create jobs. Health insurance is a much bigger issue for all Americans.

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BoysenberryLanky6112@reddit

Why does everyone pretend unions stop layoffs? Unions can protect the most senior members at the expense of the more junior members in the case of layoffs, but that's about all they do in literally any industry. They can have some advantages, but unions don't prevent layoffs. Why do we think unions = solution to everything bad that could happen with no downsides?

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DrossChat@reddit

Dude, what a ridiculous straw man. Read the post again and read your reaction. No one is saying they are flawless.

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cant_get_it_out@reddit

OP listed off a bunch of issues (layoffs, at will employment, healthcare) and then asked how unions work, implying that they are under the impression unions can help with these issues

Instead of telling someone else to reread the post, maybe you should first

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DrossChat@reddit

Right, unions can help with those issues. I know first hand this to be the case. No one is arguing that they unilaterally stop layoffs. Obviously there is limits.

Look, pretty every worker nowadays is a benefactor of unionization in the past. So much shit we take for granted directly or indirectly came from unionization. There’s not a whole lot on this earth that infuriates me more than regular ass workers shitting on unions.

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ALAS_POOR_YORICK_LOL@reddit

Infuriates, really? Are we not allowed to have a differing opinion?

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DrossChat@reddit

Of course you are! Are you suggesting I’m not allowed to be infuriated by them?

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ALAS_POOR_YORICK_LOL@reddit

Infuriate just sounds like an over the top reaction.

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DrossChat@reddit

… ok? For some people their livelihood is an emotive topic, maybe I’m in the wrong place though.

Sir can you direct me to a place where people’s livelihood is an important topic, perhaps where the sub is built around that topic.

Sir?

Sir…

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ALAS_POOR_YORICK_LOL@reddit

I mean I guess it's good that you're self aware about being emotional / irrational?

Have fun getting infuriated by opinions man

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DrossChat@reddit

It’s wild to me how many people aren’t self aware about their own emotions but reality is its way more common in our industry tbh. Took me a lot of years to realize that emotions are not being “irrational” necessarily, they are a guide. When you feel particularly “emotional” about something it’s useful to dig into why, usually it’s based on something quite rational.

But yeah, have fun being dismissive af I guess

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ALAS_POOR_YORICK_LOL@reddit

Maybe you're being liberal with the use of infuriate. To me being drawn into an extreme anger or rage over anon opinions on a message board is the very definition of an irrational response.

Have you ever had an interesting or productive conversation with someone that was infuriated?

Fair point about emotions in general though

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DrossChat@reddit

Yeah it’s mostly just a Reddit thing. I make a comment and immediately move on to the next thing, my attention span is completely hosed outside of stuff I’m actively engaged in. Hyperbole sometimes just feels good in the moment. I wasn’t infuriated just infuriated

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ALAS_POOR_YORICK_LOL@reddit

Haha makes sense. I like how you put that

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BoysenberryLanky6112@reddit

Any evidence to that? Can you cite one single example where a company was going to lay people off and the union prevented it? Layoffs are typically for monetary reasons and they need a reduction in force to remain profitable. What company is going to continue being unprofitable if the union threatens to strike? They'd just laugh, and especially in our industry, they'd hire scabs and outsource for the people who strike.

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FetaMight@reddit

You have poor reading comprehension.

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cant_get_it_out@reddit

Oh neat, thanks for educating me

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FetaMight@reddit

It's amazing how hard the anti-union bots start down voting when this comes up.

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FetaMight@reddit

I don't think anyone has said any of that yet in this thread.

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jimjkelly@reddit

So as someone who has lived and worked in Europe where there are union shops:

Power comes from seniority, not based on merit
You often see pushback on efforts to improve things because of the above.
In the US salaries have increased dramatically and a talented and/or hard working individual can demand a lot of money. These sorts of high paying salaries are much rarer in Europe, in part because of the previous points.
Even for the median dev salaries have grown substantially compared to Europe because there’s been enough demand that the salaries of the highest paid are pushing up the median and lower tiers.

As long as over the longer term developers are in demand, it will never make sense to unionize as individuals will be ceding their ability to individually capture gains, which paradoxically helps raise everybody up. Beyond that things like it being easy to hire/fire here in the US allows companies to take on more risk than they can in Europe with hiring.

Maybe some day things change, but a lull after the most insane labor market we’ve seen in the industry isn’t that yet. When salaries start to fall substantially that’ll probably be the time.

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TopSwagCode@reddit

Hi from EU. Here unions are normal and I am part of one :)

There is a lot a union can do: https://www.prosa.dk/english

Take a read.

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HistoricalCup6480@reddit

I joined a union in Denmark, but I don't even know what they do for me. Membership fees are tax deductible though, so it's relatively cheap to be a member and all my colleagues are also members.

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TopSwagCode@reddit

What I have used it for: review contracts, to ensure there is no legal stuff. Compare my wages to other people that have same education and years of experience. Free events / talks. Course on how to negotiate better wages.

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ciynoobv@reddit

In Norway here, but I’m assuming they work pretty much the same way as in Denmark.

I mostly joined as a sort of legal insurance I.e if I ever get into a legal conflict with a current or former employer I can count on my union to foot the legal bill.

Also the unions need a certain percentage of workers to be members for them to collectively bargain on behalf of workers, “fun fact” there is no legal minimum wage in Norway, but the effective minimum wage is defined by the collective agreement.

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valence_engineer@reddit

Doesn't seem like they do much? Then again most of the things US SWEs would want from a union are already legal requirements in the EU.

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nevon@reddit

Americans have a very different idea about what unions are than what they are in Europe. Unions are simply a way for labor to collectively bargain with capital - simple as that. I'm from a different EU country, and am also a part of a union, just like the majority of people are.

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Helpjuice@reddit

Your compensation should actually be variable and based on your actual market value with a minimum floor. This way if you are working on a team that is generating billions of dollars every quarter in a FAANG company, your compensation should match this so you get a fair share of the value you bring and get a nice percentage of the profits in your total compensation.

This way you don't end up working for an employer only getting 1/100,000 of the value you generated from the profits the company has made.

All promotions should be based off merit and not favoritism and opinions which is how it is in many places with too much ambiguity on what is required and what your rating is. Your rating and current path should be extremly transparent and mapped out completly so you know what the expectations are from day one and can see where you are at any time along with seeing projected compensation for each level, know where you are in band and the requirements to move up and promotion timelines.

It should require union rep signoff and your signoff for changing of your priorities, etc. this way you can have consistant work that you can actually complete and show value on. Then if priorities do change you know what is changing, how much you are getting paid +/- for doing the work and the timeline for the work and your profits at the end.

For long term projects, management should be required to generate profit generation mappings to the work you are doing so you can see how much you will be making vs doing work in a black hole for just base pay and no additional pay from the profits made on your hardwork.

At the end of the day everything should be extremly transparent, you should be able to see how much you are paid vs how much the company makes in profit which should be capped at 10-20 percent, and you should also get a nice share of the profits of anything you work on that generates profit for the company paid out monthly and it should be treated as a cost of doing business which is also great for the employees.

Managers with bad ratings should be terminated swiftly, especially if they are pushing for overtime, and poor at project management.

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ice_cold_fahrenheit@reddit

Seeing this post is actually funny. There’s been massive controversy surrounding SAG-AFTRA and the video game Genshin Impact recently. Basically, a new voice actor to replace a striking Genshin VA, which has caused some SAG-AFTRA Genshin VAs to basically cancel them on Twitter. Needless to say, that did not go well with fans. It doesn’t help that the goals of the strike seemed to go from “provide AI protections for VAs” to “enforce that only union members can work on projects.”

And it got me thinking: how would I react in a similar situation if I was a member of a software engineering union? Or if I was either the one being replaced since I’m striking, or if I was the one doing the replacing? Would I even support the strike in the first place? I think it would heavily depend on what the strike was about, and the good and bad sides of the union as a whole.

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FriendZone53@reddit

Unions are for “workers”. Most every SWE is a future startup CEO. If SWE’s employer is a dick, starting a successful competitor is a real option. This is a wholly different mindset than begging your shitty employer for a little more money.

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PM_ME_DPRK_CANDIDS@reddit

There are ~3,472,758 software engineers in the USA. I don't think very many will ever be startup CEOs.

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The-_Captain@reddit

I'm against unionizing. There are drawbacks and benefits to every decision. The market sucks right now but the advantages of a free labor market still outpace the drawbacks.

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TilYouSeeThisAgain@reddit

I’m in a company where SWEs are unionized. It’s pretty nice. Layoffs have only happened once in the past decade. When one project winds down people already working for us are generally moved onto different teams before looking outside the company. It makes it a bit more competitive to get hired for the company but the job security is nice. Salary might be marginally lower than usual though. Juniors start between $70-$80k, seniors can earn up to $185k. We get up to 6 weeks of vacation with a couple weeks off around Christmas from the union. Those are all the union related things I can remember off the top of my head.

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georgehotelling@reddit

There's literally a book about unions for tech workers: You Deserve a Tech Union by Ethan Marcotte, the guy who coined the term "Responsive Web Design".

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StolenStutz@reddit

One piece of the unionization puzzle (when it comes to our industry) really intrigues me (in kind of a morbid way).

One of the benefits of unions is a standardization of the quality of work. Union electricians, for example, are trained and certified to do their job a certain way, against well-established codes. And because of this, I'm reasonably confident that my house isn't going to burn down from an electrical fire.

When it comes to software, a) training is all over the map, b) certifications are... let's just say not comparable, and especially c) everyone has their own idea of what the right way is (and will eagerly die on very worthless and small hills).

If there was ever an effort with enough momentum to unionize our industry, I really feel like that last point is going to be our industry's equivalent of talking politics at the family dinner. It's going to end in a mess, with everyone pissed at each other, and the whole thing will be embarrassing.

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Abject-End-6070@reddit

A union of SWEs...run by SWEs....I shudder to think.

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BomberRURP@reddit

To be honest, things need to get worse first. I mean just look at all the brain-dead responses you’re getting on this post. There’s also the te h-specific issue of having to overcome “California ideology” (as you see from the comments).

That said, post like yours are a good sign. Things are shifting more than I’ve seen them in my entire career.

I would post comments similar to yours a decade ago and get laughed out of the room. Lots of “I can do Better for myself by myself”, “tech is a meritocracy and I don’t want to hold up some 0x dev”, “my company recognizes how much value I create and will reward me for it”, etc. Today a lot of my comments about this topic have positive engagement and agreement. I never thought I’d see the day.

Long story short, engineers need to put down “designing data intensive applications” and pick up “Das Capital” by papa Marx.

We’re in the tail end of the good days in the industry. It’s capital had concentrated and centralized, the rate of profit is declining (thus the AI Hail Mary we are seeing), things will deteriorate.

People respond to their material conditions, as things get worse people will be open to different ideas.

I wish we were more proactive instead of holding this ridiculous idea that tech is different. It’s fucking not. It’s a job under capitalism like any other, the class struggle exists like it does in anything else. The mass firings, the lowering of benefits, the offshoring, etc all these things should make it fucking clear and for some they’re starting to. Unfortunately things have to get worse before the opportunity opens to make them better

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more_magic_mike@reddit

Why would we want unions? There’s already so much dead weight on most programming teams

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GoonOfAllGoons@reddit

We don't, for the reason you just mentioned.

You think H1B and pffshoring is a problem now?

Say goodbye to the software industry if this happens.

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p0st_master@reddit

As someone who’s family owned canning factories during ww2 I can assure you that has nothing to do with unions.

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RaceMaleficent4908@reddit

Because unions have more power than you as an individual and protect you from corporate doing whatever they want with you. You get better benefits and compensation in the long run.

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FetaMight@reddit

I think you misunderstand unions.

Having a union in your corner doesn't mean you can't get fired. It means your hiring and firing will be on fairer terms.

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demosthenesss@reddit

Fairer?

Depends on what is considered fair. Most union layoffs are heavily influenced by seniority. Is that more fair? Depends on your perspective.

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FetaMight@reddit

Sure, but your union serves you. If you think its perspective is skewed then you can get involved and have influence.

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BoysenberryLanky6112@reddit

The union serves the majority, not me. This would be like the Trump administration now trying to concentrate power in government because "the government serves you. If you think its perspective is skewed then you can get involved and have influence". But what if my priorities don't align with what the majority of people vote for?

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demosthenesss@reddit

Perhaps a SWE union would be different.

But some of us have worked in other fields before SWE with unions and been in them before.

Most firings I've seen in tech have been fairer than those I saw in union jobs. Layoffs perhaps were differently unfair, but not inherently more or less unfair.

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BoysenberryLanky6112@reddit

In theory sure. In practice in literally every other white collar job, it means it's impossible to fire (which means it's MUCH harder to get into a company, so people feel more locked in) and pay is based on seniority and/or certifications. Because at the end of the day what the union does is what 50%+1 of the employees vote for. And it turns out what most people who vote in white collar union elections care about is not what I care about, or what you seem to insinuate you'd care about.

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cbusmatty@reddit

He is saying right now in the “unjust” version of events people are keeping their jobs who have no right to because it’s easy to hide on some teams with a few high performers. It isn’t like unionizing will create more firing, but somehow even less. It is already a near impossibility to get fired at most of the places I’ve been. And if you brought in a union then they would shut down and move everything to India outright.

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MistSecurity@reddit

They’re already doing that though, so what’s different?

I can’t count how many vendors now that I’ve talked to who have US based sales reps, but outsource all the actually programming work to India. Feels like it’s a rarity to see on-shore work.

Coincidentally or not the main partner we work with outsourced to India and now their work is extremely shoddy with lots of basic errors that we end up catching in test. Previously we’d find nothing or maybe an edge case.

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cbusmatty@reddit

>They’re already doing that though, so what’s different?

They are doing it incrementally, thsi would be wholesale and immediate

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t-tekin@reddit

And you think that “fairer terms” don’t come with a cost to others? Sigh…

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FetaMight@reddit

Example.

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p0st_master@reddit

Work less hours for more pay.

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PmanAce@reddit

I'd rather not have to work with devs that can't be fired and slack off.

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RaceMaleficent4908@reddit

Im part of a union and have zero protection against being fired

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ALAS_POOR_YORICK_LOL@reddit

Yeah, I already deal with enough of this.

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Rude-Journalist-3214@reddit

Have you looked at WFH jobs? I see a lot on LinkedIn but I'm also a C/C++ developer mostly and may have different suggestions depending on language and experience.

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zero02@reddit

I don’t like working with incompetent people so I wouldn’t join a union

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poetry-linesman@reddit

Fuck unions, bring on the singularity.

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BertRenolds@reddit

Nope. Fuck that. Unions protect bad employees.

As someone who's never gotten a below exceeds expectations, why would I want to prop up bad employees. I want to point out that this has been asked a bajillion times before, did you seatch before asking? Because you could have spent 3 minutes searching and now you have a hundred odd people spending 5 minutes explaining.

Nursing should have unions, they can get abused. Software developers? No. Learn to save and budget.

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blahyawnblah@reddit

The job market may not be great but it's low performers or people that only went to bootcamps that are having difficulties finding jobs. I know several people, including people I would call juniors, find work within a month or two of being laid off.

Unions would just take more money out of my pocket.

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spekkiomow@reddit

Unions do not prevent anything you just listed. A select few would get near permanent employment, and new positions are cut in half and you need "a guy on the inside" to even have a chance to get hired.

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vbullinger@reddit

It wouldn't work and we'll never do it

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Ok-Kaleidoscope5627@reddit

We can't even help ourselves from building tools to make ourselves redundant. It's like our main focus most of the time.

A SWE union couldn't go on strike because we'd happily automate ourselves out of the job first.

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kirkegaarr@reddit

I imagine it being exactly like a consulting company

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auburnradish@reddit

It would accelerate offshoring.

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funereal@reddit

USA folks, you would be wise to learn what P25 has in store for Labor: https://www.project2025.observer/?subjects=C15pTtwfw7zuWZEKMw-zg

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FulgoresFolly@reddit

It would be similar to SAG-AFTRA. (Labor dynamics and income distribution are highly similar)

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shagieIsMe@reddit

The way that SAG works is "I won't work with anyone who isn't a union member."

https://www.sagaftra.org/contracts-industry-resources/global-rule-one

Global Rule One states: No member shall render any services or make an agreement to perform services for any employer who has not executed a basic minimum agreement with the union, which is in full force and effect, in any jurisdiction in which there is a SAG-AFTRA national collective bargaining agreement in place. This provision applies worldwide.

Simply put, a SAG-AFTRA member must always work under a union contract around the globe.

You could do this now... get a bunch of people and refuse to work with anyone who hasn't signed up with that group of people and paid dues to the union.

It means you only work with other people in the union... and prohibits you from working outside of a union contract.

If the company you work for hires a non-union person, they would either need to pay dues to the guild or you would all quit.

This works for SAG because everyone important (in the film industry) is a member. It wouldn't work as well when the company can easily find other people who aren't guild members.

As an aside, I am in a public sector union... and would be prohibited from joining such a guild - my contract prohibits me from joining another bargaining unit (the union is the eclusive bargaining representative for me).

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Bulky-Drawing-1863@reddit

I was a member of IDA, which is a cross disciplinary union for all engineers including SWEs here in Denmark.

But our system is so different that you can't compare to the US. It is not a useful comparisson.

The unions here are so powerful that politicians almost never intervene in labor-related issues.

We don't have Amazon here, they would have to reinvent their model to conform to our rules. Not following them is not an option, the unions litterally cut off their utilities and go on strike, and the police just watches. They are just across the border in Germany.

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durandall09@reddit

Hawaii has a SWE union. Dunno the details offhand

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shagieIsMe@reddit

Kickstarter has a SWE union. https://kickstarterunited.org

Their contract can be read at https://kickstarterunited.org/first-contract/

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jkingsbery@reddit

I have worked as part of a company where most software engineers were unionized. It did not help in any ways that I commonly hear people suggest. At the same time, it created other problems. It was hard to fire low-performers, so when they did need to cut costs teams that included some talented engineers were laid off. The working hours were generally pretty good, but that had more to do with apathy among the employees, who weren't really looking to do anything new. The focus was much more on internal politics than building a product customers would love.

Based on that experience, I would not work for a union company again.

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kingmotley@reddit

As an SWE, I always had a safety net in savings. You always need to have 6+ months of savings. Then if you are a consultant, make it 12 months.

Once you save that up, then unions just look bad. Especially for any good SWE that can command above average salary or can make it as a consultant. The market is a bit messed up right now, and I'm not saying it is perfect, but it isn't that bad normally.

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wiskinator@reddit

I would join a union tomorrow if it were available.

How do unions that aren’t at one job site work?

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