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Comment by euroclydon | Hacker News Reader

The idea that a bunch of highly paid conservative software developers would unionize and get the NLRB involved is rich.

Why?

We're all generally well-paid (even with respect to the value we create). But this whole message board is practically dedicated to the ways in which our industry pisses us off, from confiscatory IP clauses to open offices to death march projects. Who's to say labor can't organize simply for a better shop to work in? That's not unprecedented.

FB is monopoly at this point. Very few people there are irreplaceable. If this was was a startup you might have more leverage. Mr. Amerige probably doesn't have much here. Mr. Amerige is probably making good money. If he gets fired good luck trying to get another job. Companies hate controversy.

Trump won because of Facebook. I don't know why these guys are complaining.

> Very few people there are irreplaceable

Ah, but they're not replaceble fast enough. It's hard to get a scab up to speed quick enough. It could take weeks before someone's able to come in at short notice and replace a sysadmin. Hence the employees could take the website down for an hour or so...

> Trump won because of Facebook. I don't know why these guys are complaining.

You tar with rather a broad brush. Is it really so inconceivable that there are conservatives who disapprove of Trump and the far-right? Is it really so inconceivable that there are long-time liberals who don't agree with significant aspects of current liberalism?

Modern liberals should be wary of a hardline "us-vs-them" mindset lest they come to discover that there are more of "them" than there are of "us".

> If he gets fired good luck trying to get another job. Companies hate controversy.

But they love skills.

I still think the vast majority of software engineers are either 1) Thankful (if they take a few minutes to consider the unique time in history in which they are employed) that given their relatively modest education investment, they are making the salaries they are. And these are probably your non-high-ranking-university CS majors, those without a college degree, L.A. majors, etc or 2) Graduates of top C.S. programs who are making really great salaries.

What real incentive do they have to unionize even along a professional path? I just don't see having their political views stifled at work to be a big motivator.

It's a cart/horse position problem. If we had to go to school for 7-10 years to be a doctor or lawyer, then of course, we'd want the protection and insurance of a professional licensing organization. But if I can make half the money of a doctor or lawyer without all the hassle, then why bother?

I associate unions with homogenized labor, stratus of equivalent positions, but we’re all too unique 10x butterflies for that. I mean, what part of your career arc would have been better served in a unionized environment?

Who says it has to be an according-to-Hoyle union? The NLRA covers all concerted organized action. Start a professional association. The doctors and lawyers have them. We don't get one? Why?

There's the ACM and IEEE already though?

The ACM is an academic association. The IEEE should be more important professionally than it is; one problem with the IEEE is that you have to have a related bachelors degree to join.

Developers should start a new organization that represents the interests of employees of the technology industry.

Those things mostly exist to collect membership fees and run conferences.

That’s interesting. I figure we’re more like PEs than MDs or JDs.

People forget how much of entertainment is unionized. Like, Lebron James and Aaron Rodgers are members of their unions. Tom Cruise is a member of a union. Steven Spielberg is in a union.

Unions are one way. Guilds are another.

For people who are supposedly so highly paid the majority of my peers can't afford children. The rent of a two bedroom flat/house and the price of daycare means the household needs to earn close to $600,000/y for two children. That's maybe the top 10% in most companies. If a class in society can't afford to reproduce itself it is underpaid regardless of how many trinkets it can afford compared to the median.

Your retirement and your healthcare would probably be better in a union.

Because conservatives are anti-union and anti-NLRB.

Edit: why the heck am I being downvoted? I'm literally just explaining what I assumed the GP was referring to.

I agree about the irony. I think it's pretty sad that in the last 12 months, the two major tech/labor stories have been about conservative employees pushing back against supposedly-liberal corporations. But, whatever. A wakeup call is a wakeup call. I think these FB people can succeed, and should succeed.

The key word being supposedly. None of these "liberal" corporations have been left-liberal in terms of workers' rights or well-being. They want a rainbow of representation among the top-10% stratum of elite professionals to whom they pay enough to not need food stamps.

The party platform isn't the beliefs of every member of the party. Indeed, it's be absurd if every member of either party agreed with every line from a multi hundred page platform.

Only Nixon could go to China. Sometimes in America you see the strangest political bedfellows.

Yes. Another example is Clinton and welfare reform. Politics is weird that way.

Same thing with Reagan and Russia. But I think it's perfectly understandable. If Team Red is for X and Team Blue is against X, then it takes someone with street cred on Team Blue to make X happen, because they're the only one who can get Team Blue to stop the kamikaze opposition to X.

Nixon.

for one, American right wing conservatism is strongly anti-union and anything that diminishes the employers agility to conduct business as they see fit, so the idea of a bunch of well paid conservatives banding together to collectively argue against their employers is very ironic.

But is conservatism against regulating monopolies?

Facebook seems to be a natural monopoly. People only want one social network, and they want everyone they know to be on it. If it's a natural monopoly it should be regulated and, like other utilities, required to provide service to everyone.

Who says that these software engineers have to be necessarily "conservative"? I'll be perfectly frank. I'm a liberal. I've voted Democratic as long as I've had the right to vote. But I look at what's happening to politics the West Coast with a mixture of disgust and horror. People are losing their jobs for saying the wrong things, donating to the wrong causes, or because they've offended the wrong people. And far from being concerned at the excesses of this politics, activists are gleeful, and are saying that these are just desserts for "oppressors".

It's possible to be a liberal and be less than 100% on board with defining everything in terms of intersectional oppression. It's possible to be a liberal, and still think the left has gone too far. It's possible to be a liberal and think that people should only be punished for actions, not beliefs. And I believe that the people standing up at Facebook are, by any standard outside of San Francisco, liberals.

People are losing their jobs for saying the wrong things, donating to the wrong causes, or because they've offended the wrong people.

They aren't. At least, not any more than previously when they mostly also weren't.

Collective bargaining can be used to leverage other assets, besides money.

What if they weren't conservative?

Sure, it's funny, but shush, they're coming around to unions being good!

Who said they're all conservatives?

I'm a liberal and I'd join this group in a heartbeat.

same here. some liberals are so fanatic that they can't hold a dialogue with a person of opposing views. I've got a friend who stopped speaking with their father because of Brexit.

I have no issues being friends with right wing people, even if they're more extreme. I just don't very often discuss politics with them, but we hang out a lot.

I like your thought process... embrace, extend, extinguish.

The history of unions in the US is based around highly paid incumbents forming “good ole boy networks” when people [of color] started migrating from agricultural areas into big cities and accepting lower pay.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1913/06/the-neg...

The history of almost every institution in America is that of non-blacks forming overt and covert alliances to arrest the progress of black people. For over a decade after the civil rights act, mortgage lending was organized to keep black people out of "white" neighborhoods. Shall we do away with the 30 year fixed mortgage?

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