Increasingly, I think some kind of professional association would be useful, largely to represent programmers' views regarding how technology affects society.
There's a pretty clear disconnect (visible on HN), between the interests of the programming-classes, and the exec/VC strata.
However, it's the latter group that always get to provide a sound-byte as the voice of technology in the news, to legislators, etc. etc.
Having a well-respected professional organization for the programming-classes could help shift the representation of "the tech industry" towards it's people and away from it's money, with regards to public debates about data autonomy, open standards, net neutrality, and privacy legislation.
[1] Most notably: https://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valle...
Doesn't that already exist in the form of the Association for Computing Machinery (http://www.acm.org/)? They cover all the areas you mention and more.
It is easy to create union in manufacturing because everyone is doing roughly the same thing. There is very small variation in skill in majority of workers. It is similar in Law or Medicine where you have standards and exams for these professions.
In programming you can have home growth hacker that produce just another PHP website every week or Machine Learning expert working with distributed systems, publishing papers or contributing to projects like TensorFlow. It will be extremely difficult to persuade both of them to take the same stance on earning or job protection. One is remote developer making 20k per year and second is Google developer making 300k.
Union represent group of people, but it is important to remember that you transfer part of decision power to Union in exchange for better bargaining power. Google developers do not need Union because they have high personal value, they can easily change jobs and still make a lot of money. PHP/Web developers that are commodity would benefit from Union but disparity on skill and background will make it impossible to happen.
In general Union are for people that are insecure about theirs jobs. In many cases Unions are actually harmful. Teachers Union in my home country makes impossible to fire bad teachers. It is major issue where instead of teaching results, tenure is more important. Train workers unions are equally bad, low skilled workers demand high compensation.
While I see the benefits of unions, I also see the cost of them. Namely, I refuse to condone an action (establish a union and require membership in order to be legally employed) that limits the ability of another human being to feed his or her family, should they disagree with joining the union.
Unions, as of late, have been overtly political in action. If someone disagrees with that political activity, then they should not be forced to join the union (with whom they disagree) just to be able to provide for their families.
> Unions, as of late, have been overtly political in action.
Isn't that kind of the point? Unions are why an 8-hour workday became standard, instead of 10-12, for instance. (Wait a minute....)
But regardless of whether a 10x programmer is a myth or not, the fact is that there are huge variance in programmers' ability. Assuming a bell curve in ability, union by definition will have to tend to their average members. If you ever believe that you're not in the average, it's probably better not to join a union.
This, I agree with, and was why I was challenging the notion of what is often thought of when the word "union" is used in the context of labor.
I also agree with there being a "huge variance in programmers' ability". But I fail to make the connection with how that necessarily leads to your conclusions (assuming, mind you, that the "union" looks nothing like it does for factory workers)?
Anyway, here is the some of the assumptions I made to go to said conclusion in the previous post:
- Difference in programmers' ability will necessitate difference in pay grade. Vastly so, in the case of programmers. This causes issue in different members of the union. Couple with issues of "how to determine someone is a good programmers", I can see resentment or stupid rule being put up. Assuming that union has certain power in compensation negotiation, their interest doesn't align with any SINGLE programmer either. Everyone want THEIR compensation to be as high as possible, the union doesn't have their incentives in caring for a single individual member (this is the same dynamic as recruiter/job seeker right now in term of salary).
- Programming is more of a creative jobs, and like-minded interest could be a more questionable notion than in older times.
Hypothetically: what if the professional organization ("PO") were more concerned with all of the programmers' share of the pie, as compared to say sales or management, instead of each individual programmer's slice? To work, I imagine logistically it would require open salaries across the board as opposed to only the top dogs (as is law for public corporations), which of course may be a hard sell (if only because it's counter-intuitive, and distinctly not in the interests of management, who have already tipped the scales far to their own favor). But having worked for a tech company which did have open salaries across the board, I can at least anecdotally vouch for its effectiveness in maximizing both employee output and employee salaries. Of course an individual's negotiating skills still somewhat come into play, and this is where the exact pecking order would ultimately be determined (say, as a percentage of the PO's share of profits), but I would argue such a structure more aligns the programmers' incentives to work together to increase their share, than it would promote "every man for himself" attitudes.
What I think we really have here is a giant prisoner's dilemma, complicated even further by globalization. So realistically, yea, I agree with you. It ain't happening. But I think it's fun to think about, so, thanks for your reply :)
But you're obviously OK with people being forced to join corporations (with whom they disagree) just to be able to provide for their families.
I believe in freedom, including freedom to work for whomever you choose, or freedom to be self-employed, if you choose.
What have I said that implies that I'm OK with people being forced to join corporations?
And by pushing for labor-saving technology and measurable outcomes, that makes us villains to the unions. Capital trying to cut labor out of the economy. It’s sad that unions discount intellectual contribution so much, but that’s often the way it is.
Unions sometimes resort to coercion to get their members. In the case of California, this is no secret: Get a job in a public school, and you pay union dues, even if you do not join the union. They wrote that into the contract, on the basis that your pay depends on the union’s negotiation, so the union gets its share.[1]
Some of the stories are harder to corroborate, from the age before ubiquitous cell phone recordings. Some of the more blatant incidents actually did make it into the historical archive.[2] Some of the more disturbing stories didn’t, such as the story of Cesar Chávez and his union enforcers raping the families of farm workers who refused to join his union. Did that happen? I don’t know for sure.
Unions promoting social causes that roughly half of Americans do not want, this is also no secret. The national teachers unions are the most blatant about this.[3]
Unions forcing wasteful regulations, this is also no secret. Excessive mandatory staff on public transit.[4][5] Rejection of technological upgrades.[6] Using coercion to force use of overpriced labor.[7]
And the big automakers and the entire cities of Vallejo, Stockton, and Detroit going bankrupt, a part of that was pension plans won by unions.[8][9][10] The operation was a success, but the patient died.
[0]https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/yellow-journa...
[1]http://www.npr.org/2016/01/11/462607980/scotuspublicunions
[2]http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/03/strikebreake...
[3]https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=L1300
[4]https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2012-08-27/labor-rul...
[5]http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/why-do...
[6]https://www.flexport.com/blog/port-automation-oakland-rotter...
[7]http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-labor-enviro-hous...
[8]http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/10/pf/vallejo-pensions/
[9]http://www.reuters.com/article/us-stockton-bankruptcy-cause-...
[10]http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/201...
The positive was that there was compensation transparency and it was difficult for the employer to screw is in many circumstances.
Why don't we have programmers in unions more often? The political winds shifted, and companies figured out how to push employee buttons. People think they are better individual negotiators (total bullshit), and management has everyone competing against each other. As long as you're an ambitious little bastard fighting for scraps with your stack ranked colleagues, you're on a leash.
There’s something wrong with us. I used to think that everybody should learn programming. … I don’t think that anymore. I think there has to be something seriously wrong with you in order to do this work. That a normal person, once they've looked into the abyss, will say, I'm done. This is stupid. I'm going to go do something else. But not us. Because there's something really wrong with us.
So they'd worry about a union bringing about things like Global Rule One (from the Screen Actors Guild) where union talent can't work in a non union environment (or vice versa). Or that joining a union would somehow become mandatory, like it is in some other industries.
In other words, they like how anyone can get into programming, that you don't need a specific degree or to pass a specific test to start and that it's up to the worker to choose what company or organisation they want to work for. And they worry that if programmers were unionised, this would stop being possible somewhere down the line.
That and they're decently well paid anyway. So they might think they need a union less than say, factory workers or public transport drivers.
That is how it works indeed. Most programmers ignore that or refuse to acknowledge it.
Unions can only standardize on the lowest common denominator, which is utter shit in programming jobs.
What's an union gonna do? Make a law to force 10 people startups to give more than 0.001% equity and another to tell programmers that they can freely go home after 80 hours a week?
But the intentions behind its creation (on paper) are to protect the "engineering trade".
Further, programmers actively look to change jobs whereas typical people needing union look to holding on to their jobs till retirement as much as possible. A programmer could also go freelance and charge whatever he likes. Exploiting loopholes in the current job contract, programmers could even do consultation or host a revenue earning webapp as a side business. A union like setup seems to be a hindrance to such activities more than being useful.
Finally, most programmers are highly opinionated and always seem to disagree on everything, not just programming things. It would be a miracle for a thing like a programmer union to even exist. :P
Why would you deal with a union if you didn't have to (both sides)?
I think programming governance is much closer to fashion than engineering, and the void is filled with a plethora of interested parties legitimate and otherwise, peddling wisdom and otherwise, in varying quantity.
Why don't they want to be? Because they don't see any value in being in a union.
And why don't they see any value? Perhaps because unions are bureaucratic, and programmers hate bureaucracy. Why would they want to have to deal with another one?
(Ok I'll get coat)
I regularly renegotiate my salary and benefits, and I have no desire to share any of that with a union.
If you are a programmer and you are not making what you think you deserve you have no one to blame but yourself.