Hacker News Reader

Comment by mseebach | Hacker News Reader

So that's a nice optimistic vision, and if I had any faith we could keep it to that, I'd be for it. My vision includes scope creep and lots of greedy ambitious good-at-politics less-good-at-actually-doing-work types grabbing the show once it's successful.

Most organisations meaningfully described as unions has a non-trivial element of excluding people from the trade in one way or another. I will never be a part of any organisation that will prevent any person from (trying to) make a living as a programmer in whatever way.

View on HN

I wouldn't either. Luckily, since organization hasn't really happened yet, if we get involved now we can make that a principle for the field. Tech is unique among professions in how open it is to people that aren't the product of an academic feeder assembly. That's something I think is worth preserving about the industry, and something a labor organization should help preserve.

Don't assume that a disorganized workforce will keep that from happening. Look at pretty much all cybersecurity regulation from the last 10 years to see what could happen if labor rolls over and lets it: professional certification, run by commercial firms that specialize in selling themselves as efficient authorities.

> Most organisations meaningfully described as unions has a non-trivial element of excluding people from the trade in one way or another. I will never be a part of any organisation that will prevent any person from (trying to) make a living as a programmer in whatever way.

The problem is that, once an industry unionizes, you don't really have a choice.

The process of decertification is basically a catch-22: unions are actually allowed to terminate membership of employees who advocate decertification, which makes it impossible to organize enough support for decertification from current members without risking losing your membership.

And that's all assuming that you actually hold the majority view. It's quite possible that the majority of your coworkers want to (for example) ban Asian workers from obtaining work visas. If that's the case, you can't really do anything to stop your union from supporting it either.

That example isn't hypothetical, by the way. Banning immigration from Asia was one of the first major victories of the American Federation of Labor.

"The problem is that, once an industry unionizes, you don't really have a choice."

That's entirely false, and intellectually dishonest.

> That's entirely false

Technically, by the letter of the law? Okay. But in practice? No, it's completely true. Your only "choice" is to find a non-unionized job (if one even exists in your field). Decertifying a union is borderline impossible in practice. And if you're in the minority opinion among your coworkers, you're completely out-of-luck, because there's nothing you can do, legally or practically.

> and intellectually dishonest.

You keep saying this phrase a lot, but there's nothing "intellectually dishonest" about explaining the practical problems associated with OP's statement ("I will never be a part of any organisation..."). You can't just use that phrase to dismiss fact-based critiques that you don't like. If you disagree, actually engage with the argument.

Well yes, a union is organized democratically so you can vote on what you support if you're part of one. The problems you identify are central to all of democracy: what if you lose the vote? Then positions you don't support will be supported! Decisions made by the majority don't obey the will of the minority! So your solution is to eliminate the vote altogether and give away any voice you have, since you might not get everything you want -- not have unions at all; to reject any democracy altogether, and instead let a tiny few wealthy oligarchs make all the decisions. The alternative is your work goes to support whatever the executives of the company want, which is usually explicitly the opposite of what is good for you since your salary and everything that is good for you costs the company money. The profits from your labor will go to efforts to automate your job out of existence, they will go to efforts to lobby to take away all of your rights and protections, benefits and bonuses. This is currently exactly what happens in every non-unionized workplace.

Guess what: you (almost certainly) already are. You think your business (on orders from the management, not based on a vote of the workers) doesn't arbitrarily exclude people? You don't have HR officers who filter out great programmers because they don't have credentials? Your company doesn't post job listings that require 5 years of experience and a college degree to write basic CRUD apps? You just have no control over these decisions at all, so it is easier to divorce yourself from them. If you had some ownership over the decision making process, like in a union, you'd have to own it -- this is good, even if it means you don't get your way. It is a transition from having zero say (nonunion) to making an argument, being heard out, and losing. And who knows, convince enough people, argue well enough, and you'll win the vote next time. But you have to fight to get a vote in the first place before that happens.

It's always going to be in the self-interest of union members to put up the strongest possible barriers to entry, to protect what makes the union members valuable: their scarcity.

It's farcical to expect a majority of union members to put ideology above self-interest and vote to depress their own wages by permitting new entrants to follow in their footsteps (except in proportion to existing members leaving the field, maybe).

People who are inside an advantageous position (employed in a desirable field, living in a desirable city) very reliably kick the ladder down once they've climbed.

Society at large is nearly always better off when these people are disenfranchised and disempowered. You don't even need a tyrant to do this either; simply expand the voter pool to include would-be entrants as well as current members.

I could not have said this better myself.

If a tech association just wants to get vesting schedules fixed, great, I ha e no problem with that.

But the moment someone even SUGGESTS putting up barriers to entry is the moment I oppose that organization with all of my might.

It is just too risky to allow an organization to get entrenched and ruin the tech industry for newbies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com