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I've never been in a union but know people who have. From this small and biased sample of unions:

- Pay is based on seniority, not skill

- You have to please your boss from the company and also the union

I don't want either of these things. If there is a union where this doesn't happen then I could consider it.

Not all unions, just some blue collar unions. The american bar and american medical association are also de facto unions.

Lets call it a professional organization instead, and I think what most of us want is collaborative bargaining around IP(companies doesn't own your off hours) and non-competes.

The ABA doesn't do much if anything to benefit lawyers' working conditions. It enables and perpetuates the regulated monopoly that makes it a giant crapshoot of an industry to work in.

That is a small and biased sample, and ignores a union representing the most visible people in society: the screen actors' guild.

Think Tom Cruise is paid based on seniority and not skill?

Isn't selecting the SAG an even smaller and biased sample?

I'm showing one very easily understood counterexample to "unions pay based on seniority" to expand on the parent poster's "small and biased" sample and show that unions are what their members make of them.

Are the majority of people in unions in a union that bases pay mostly on seniority?

I dunno, and it doesn't really matter for this conversation.

After all, why would tech workers choose that pay scale when putting together the rules for their union?

(And, if they did choose that, whose place is it for anyone outside the union to tell them that's wrong?)

>I dunno, and it doesn't really matter for this conversation.

travis stated pay is based on seniority (implied most, not all). You claimed his sample was too small, then gave a small sample as counter-evidence. So now that I ask you if the majority of people in unions are paid based mostly on seniority you admit you don't even know? And thus claim it's irrelevant?

That's an odd way to demonstrate that your objection has merit.

You can look up the biggest unions in the US, and you will in fact see that a significant component of pay is seniority based for the majority of people in US unions.

If you're going to complain that someone is wrong, at least put in some legwork.

It is irrelevant. How unions structure their pay rules is entirely up to them.

If tech workers unionize, they can decide whatever pay scale they want. Why do you think that is not so?

And if they choose a pay scale based on seniority, lines of code delivered, or the weather, what difference does it make to you, someone presumably not a member of their union?

We need some more creative thinking here. If we base it off existing unions meh, but we can prob engineer something good.

A software eng that cant see this prob/solution most likely isn’t a good software eng and would benefit from said union.

To give some examples of practices that unions might help prevent:

I was a full-time employee of an enterprise software consulting company my first job out of college. We were paid salary and didn't get overtime. We did get comp time, but only for hours worked in excess of 95 every two-week paycheck (so you'd have to work 7.5 unpaid overtime hours per week until you started getting comp time). I also had several managers who wanted us to bill the contractual maximum of 40 hours per week for clients, which in practice meant that I worked a lot more than 40 hours per week once travel and various administrative tasks were factored in.

I burned out at that job in less than four years and left to do something else that didn't involve so much time spent away from home at godforsaken little cities.

I'm sure this is not true for everyone reading this, but for me the answer to all those questions is zero times.

Nonetheless, if such a Tech Workers Union existed, joining as an act of solidarity would benefit all fellow members and offer you a level of protection to insure you never experienced any of the aforementioned scenarios.

Not interested, personally. I can only picture being made worse off by being in a union. Fortunately, it’s insanely difficult to get well-paid ambitious people to join a union, so there is little danger I’ll come closer to experiencing a tech workers union than reading about the idea in impractical internet comments.

> well-paid ambitious people

Hollywood actors and other people in showbiz? Professional athletes? Doctors?*

*https://www.forbes.com/sites/johngoodman/2014/09/03/the-doct...

It's not at all difficult to get well-paid and ambitious people to join a union. The Screen Actors' guild represents people who are as ambitious as, and far better paid than, the hottest tech superstars.

What amazes me is, for how curious tech workers tend to be about, say, new frameworks or languages or whatever, they're so amazingly incurious when it comes to talk of unions--and in fact not just incurious, but so willing to repeat stuff that just isn't true.

>The Screen Actors' guild represents people who are as ambitious as, and far better paid than, the hottest tech superstars.

Are you just making up SAG claims throughout this page? Did you look to see what SAG members actually make?

Avg SAG member makes far less than a software developer. Tech superstars make well over an order of magnitude more than an avg SAG member. Tech superstars include unicorn founders, who again make more than an order of magnitude more than even the very top stars.

Here's one place listing how low SAG members generally are paid. You can find others if you like.

https://www.backstage.com/news/actors-income-falls-far-below...

I didn't make any claims about the pay for all SAG members, but only that they are absolutely a union that highly ambitious, highly-paid people willingly join (counter to the parent poster's claim that unions don't appeal to such people).

Also, yeah, a handful of tech company owners make more than actors? So? Does that matter at all to the rank and file, who, by fault of not acting collectively, are leaving money on the table year after year? "Your boss is a billionaire, don't unionize" is the argument to make here?

>handful of tech company owners make more than actors?

From the numbers I posted, the majority of tech workers make far more than the majority of actors. Do you dispute this?

If the benefits of unions were so clear, would you have to keep using this comparison dishonestly?

> Ask yourself how many times you’ve seen a colleague let go because they had some medical troubles.

Never.

> Ask yourself how many times a colleague on a visa told you they felt trapped.

Never.

> Ask yourself how many times you’ve heard of a colleague get fucked out of their vacation due to a critical issue.

Never.

> Ask yourself how much power you have to effect change when it comes to just general process

Hmm, somewhat. All places I've worked have been pretty responsive. Current place moreso.

I suggest the above is USA-specific and nothing to do with unionised programmers.

I work in the USA and also answer "never" to all of the above. Regarding the last bullet point, I've helped to change general processes in almost every place that I've ever worked. I'm genuinely curious to hear from folks who have experienced these bullet points: where did you work at the time?

while I agree with you, I don't think this would work, as most tech workers are pretty well off and simply don't have to deal with what tech contractors have to deal with. I get a strong "f%$k you I got mine, don't change anything" vibe working in the tech industry.

In terms of benefits, SV companies, modern tech companies, are typically the cream of the crop, so I think it mitigates the need.

I don't think we need collective bargaining on salaries. But I do think workers should have a unified voice at the table, and at the very least have a political lobby for their rights.

>In terms of benefits, SV companies, modern tech companies, are typically the cream of the crop, so I think it mitigates the need.

There are a lot of lower level tech employees in modern tech companies that don't have the luxuries or benefits software engineers do and get stomped on all the time. It's really only engineers who have 'cream of the crop' jobs and benefits.

Of course - most tech workers are not in this group. They would benefit from unionization - but outsourcing has decimated that ability.

Speaking from a software engineers perspective, the need for unionization is pointless. Software engineers are at the top or near the top for most jobs in terms of compensation - so the need for unionization isn't as necessary.

Relative to cost of living, typical SV compensation is not "pretty well off" or "cream of the crop". It's not even close to the latter…

My tech coworkers live in the dingiest of apartments. Housing prices are outpacing gains in salary, and the majority of housing is out of reach of the median tech-worker salary.

There are some exceptional positions at exceptional companies, such as FAANG, but I strongly believe they're exceptional. Frankly when I look around my office I see either a bunch of young engineers working too long and too hard for a salary that won't really ever get them anywhere, or folks who already got their share of the pie. (And perhaps are quite fine on a SV salary.)

I'm also strongly considering leaving the Bay Area, as I'm tired of trying to change the minds of a generation that doesn't want me here.

>My tech coworkers live in the dingiest of apartments. Housing prices are outpacing gains in salary, and the majority of housing is out of reach of the median tech-worker salary.

I do executive tech support & linux support for corporate and live in a 1br apartment from the 60's 10 miles outside of the city. My commute is 1-1.5hr every day on the bus. I can't afford to use my health insurance even though I pay the premium every month.

It's absolutely true that costs are outpacing salaries, and a majority of them aren't "cream of the crop".

Tech support and linux support, call centres, etc, would make sense for unionization - but they're easily outsourced.

Perhaps I should've been clearer in my comment. If we're including call centers and first level support in "tech workers" then that changes things, just like including laborers in a steel mill as "steelworkers" would change things. Strictly from a software development/engineer perspective, unionization makes little sense right now.

Where is this not true? If you actually do the math for software engineers it simply doesn't add up. Most decent rust belt cities will be a severe drop in salary that it wouldn't be worth it. Some cities in Texas you'll break even.

If we're including low skill tech workers, then sure, their benefits won't compare. I was looking at it from a different PoV.

https://iww.org/unions/dept500/iu560

No. I'm an adult. I handle my own issues.

Curious: do you also have that attitude toward starting a company? Would you do it with no loans, no investments from others?

Why would I think the two should be equivalent or conflated? They are different audiences with different requirements, different risk tolerances, and outside of the shared work, likely different major goals.

A corporation is a mechanism for individuals to pool capital and achieve greater return from that capital than any of them would using only their own personal resources.

A union is a mechanism for individuals to pool labor and achieve greater return from that labor than any of them would using only their own personal resources.

The only difference between them is the resource being pooled. As a result, I have great difficulty understanding why people are accepting of one but condemn the other.

Corporations pool resources to make things or offer services. Unions are just bargaining devices that attempt to tip the scales.

If you want to compare unions to corporations, consider this: What if all the local companies got together and agreed to only pay tech workers minimum wage? By pooling their bargaining power, they can achieve a far better result!

This is of course illegal (at least I'm pretty sure it is), but even if it weren't, it would be easy for startups to take advantage of: Suddenly, there's a surplus of tech workers looking hard for different work. Unions have the same problem: Some people might be happy to work for wages that the union considers unfair, causing the union to collapse. Unless, that is, there were some law requiring the businesses to only hire from the unions.

I'm extremely happy to be employed in a field where I have natural bargaining power that doesn't need to be augmented by legislation. The day programmers unionize is a sad day indeed: It's just a few years before the whole profession is automated or outsourced away.

Interesting question:

What if all the local companies got together and agreed to only pay tech workers minimum wage?

Rather than use a hypothetical, lets use a couple of actual things that have happened; "all the local tech companies got together and:"

   * agreed not to offer jobs to the other's workers
   * agreed to get H1B visas rather than pay hire wages
   * converted previous employee jobs into contracting

These are all things that have happened which could not be counter acted by disorganized labor pools. So when you say "I'm extremely happy to be employed in a field where I have natural bargaining power that doesn't need to be augmented by legislation." I expect you will find at some point in your career that your "natural bargaining power" will erode and you will be in a position where the lack of any bargaining power will benefit the corporation disproportionately.

I think it is great that this hasn't happened to you yet but it would be unwise to assume it will never happen.

> If you want to compare unions to corporations, consider this: What if all the local companies got together and agreed to only pay tech workers minimum wage? By pooling their bargaining power, they can achieve a far better result!

And this would be totally fine if we valued corporate rights over individual rights.

But as a society, we value individual rights over corporate rights, which is why we allow for unions but not corporate collusion. Any individual cannot stand up to a corporation, but a union of individuals certainly can, supporting the subjective values of our society.

> And this would be totally fine if we valued corporate rights over individual rights. But as a society, we value individual rights over corporate rights, which is why we allow for unions but not corporate collusion.

Unions are corporations. They are corporations which claim to represent their members' interests, but under US law, they are not obligated to. (And fittingly, there is actually plenty of evidence to suggest that many do not, which is one of the reasons for decline in both overall union membership and the decline in support for unions among union members).

This is of course illegal

I wonder how it came to be illegal. Did legislative bodies pass laws to protect workers solely out of the pure and spontaneous goodness of the legislators' hearts?

Or did they pass these laws because people organized and agitated and worked to get these laws passed?

If only there were some sort of books of history we could go look this stuff up in to find out.

And I think you'll find corporations have problems and excesses, too, but you seem perfectly willing to tolerate those.

As to the rest, see the other replies: "I have and have always had good bargaining power" does not imply "I will always have good bargaining power". In fact, the belief that how things are now is how they always must be is one of the most basic economic mistakes a person can make.

> I wonder how it came to be illegal. Did legislative bodies pass laws to protect workers solely out of the pure and spontaneous goodness of the legislators' hearts? Or did they pass these laws because people organized and agitated and worked to get these laws passed?

Wait, are you really going to try and give unions credit for antitrust laws (ie, the laws that OP is referring to)?

The first antitrust laws outlawed collusion, which also had the effect of outlawing a lot of common union activities as well. Labor unions fought to exempt themselves from antitrust laws.

I'm going to give the progressive movements of the turn of the 19th/20th century a lot of credit for antitrust and worker-protection laws. I'm also going to ignore anyone whose response is to try to nitpick and split out individual acts and try to attribute them to completely contextless utterly independent forces that had nothing whatsoever to do with anything else happening at the time in any way.

> I'm going to give the progressive movements of the turn of the 19th/20th century a lot of credit for antitrust and worker-protection laws. I'm also going to ignore anyone whose response is to try to nitpick and split out individual acts and try to attribute them to completely contextless utterly independent forces that had nothing whatsoever to do with anything else happening at the time in any way.

Nobody's saying that these were "utterly independent forces". I'm pointing out that the relationship between them was the exact opposite of what you claimed. Labor unions opposed antitrust laws which outlawed the sorts of behavior OP described; they certainly weren't responsible for it like you tried to claim.

It sounds like you're interested in ignoring the actual details of the history which disprove your point, in order to paint a certain narrative. In that case, there's probably not much point in discussing further, because that's not what a good-faith discussion looks like.

> As to the rest, see the other replies: "I have and have always had good bargaining power" does not imply "I will always have good bargaining power". In fact, the belief that how things are now is how they always must be is one of the most basic economic mistakes a person can make.

But I didn't imply that. What I said was that it makes me happy to be in that position. Requirements may change in the future, but I am capable of change as well. Rather than invest in a union to protect me as I become obsolete, I'll invest in my own development to do my best to ensure that doesn't happen.

Programmers are hired without unions for a reason, not because nobody's thought of it yet. Unions are a last-resort crutch to prop up unsustainable employee-employer relationships. Nobody should want to transition from being beholden to no-one to owing their employment to both a union and a government. I could scarcely live with myself.

Many companies start with no outside investment or debt. Like unions, it's a risk assessment: do you give up control in exchange for stability?

That kind of obstancance isn't a sign of being an adult.

Unions are by their very nature levelling mechanisms, the only real situation they can be of any use is in non-competitive and relatively low skilled labor markets. Anybody who wants to develop their skill set and advance their own careers would want to have nothing to do with unions. If a union negotiates a contract for me, they're not actually doing it for me, they're doing it for everybody, which will mean that I walk away with compensation equal to the average value of all people in the union. If I negotiate compensation for myself, then I can get employer to pay me what I'm actually worth, and none of my salary will be used to subsidise other less ambitious/competent union members.

That's a very optimistic view, and does not take into account the vast discrepancy in leverage between an employee and an employer.

That leverage only exists in non-competitive labor markets, which are almost exclusively low-skilled. That discrepancy can only arise when labor supply greatly outstrips demand. In such cases, you could make an argument that the disadvantages of the levelling mechanism are outweighed by the protection that unions provide. However, no matter where unions exist, they will always restrict individual contributors ability to advance their own careers, as well as their ability to seek remuneration appropriate for the value of their contributions.

"That leverage only exists in non-competitive labor markets, which are almost exclusively low-skilled"

That is flat out not true.

It absolutely is true. Employers cannot possibly have a disproportionate amount of leverage in competitive labor markets. what high-skilled markets do you believe are non-competitive? It’s certianly not software engineering, employers compete relentlessly for talent in this market.

That's good, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here. Especially not on divisive topics, where the effect will be trollish.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html