Why Most Software Engineers Lose Nothing by Unionizing
michaelochurch.wordpress.com
michaelochurch.wordpress.com
"most software engineers are low-status workers whose jobs their bosses would gladly ship overseas, and who live under the surveillance described above. They’ll be fired as soon as their performance dips, or a cheaper worker comes on the market, or they piss the wrong person off. The adversarial climate exists. Again, nothing to lose."
What world is this author living in? Maybe 10 years ago, maybe, a lot of software jobs were like this. Everything I've experienced lately is that companies can't hire enough software engineers. You are not going to be fired if your performance dips a little. You are too hard to replace. Interestingly, this is very similar to the situation that Paul Graham described here: http://www.paulgraham.com/unions.html
I mean really this whole post basically says, "unions kinda suck, but your job already kinda sucks, so why not try a union?" How...inspiring? Honestly, if you really feel that down about your career a union isn't going to fix it. It's probably time to try a different field.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Suspected_Wikipedia_s...
Many devs are low-end technical talent that can probably pound out some application under strict requirements but aren't building anything significant and definitely aren't creating new innovative products. The lack of professional degree or schooling requirements has only further decreased the overall quality in the field.
The reason for the high demand is because of the high-turnover and lack of productivity of this average talent which just creates more work from bad architecture, poor planning and all kinds of technical debt. There's also a race to find really good devs before they realize they're good and get a better job on their own terms.
The high-end environments at Google or SV startups only reflects a tiny isolated portion of the vast software industry. Even a cursory look at the IT/developer departments at Fortune 1000 companies paints a very different picture.
Those jobs will tend not to be very much fun or very well compensated, as long as there's a ready supply of programmers willing to do the work, and the corporations doing the hiring regard software development as an expense that cuts into the budget for more important things, like dividends and stock buybacks.
The majority of markets, except very few select places like SV.
Unions constantly have to deal with internal corruption (and often don't...). The seniority system is much more arbitrary than anything approximating meritocracy. Better hope that you've saved enough if/when the union decides to strike because you are going to have to suck it up even if you don't think it's worth it. You better buy in to all the politics your union supports because your dues go to it. Enjoy watching the union protect the most incompetent worker who will go on to put lives at risk with his drinking problem. Just don't count on the union going to bat for you against the company, if they don't like you they'll hang to out to dry.
The author is out of his depth.
The unionization discussion focuses way too much around compensation instead of on union-employee relations. People just assume unions are all roses in this department (the author likens them to some street fighting Batman) when in reality they're flawed and have incentives that work against workers too. If you don't think there's nepotism and favoritism in unions then you've probably never worked in one. Unions pick and choose the workers they stand up for, it's not some romantic all for one and one for all story.
In my experience you should trust the union just about as much as hr or management. If you're not on the same side as them in whatever issue, watch your back.
We're talking about something that does indeed have very-situationally-dependent impacts and effects. The anecdotes require filtering, sure, but they're vital if you want aggregate data that reflect the real world instead of theoretical conditions.
If it's impossible to decouple something from the specific circumstances of the situation, then that "something" is insufficiently understood.
I am not familiar with the fine details of labor but I suspect the Screen Actors Guild would be a better fit as a template. The actors are anywhere from minor extras to superstars.
Although I am economically very far right, I could get behind a WGA model for software devs. I would be happy to join such an organization. But a teachers union style union.. no way.
Under different guises article says that if you are a low-level code monkey with no freedom or an "IT peon" doing menial tasks, unionizing can give you job security (so you can be sure that you can keep doing those boring things forever) and maybe raise your salary, too. That is probably a true statement. But this setup is BORING. The article claims this setup describes 95% of software engineers and I think this is nonsense. IMO at least half of the software engineers either have some project freedom and can pretty easily switch employers if they find themselves under abusive management.
And this could be at risk if unionized: no firing often means greatly reduced hiring, too. Please count me out. My 2c.
Real talk: that meth-addicted, drunk scumbag does not care one whit for your pretty face, buddy.
And this is merely the beginning of a multi-paragraph digression that is some heady melange of fantasy and humble-brag about how the author knows kung fu.
That's not how HN works - it's perfectly fine to downvote things one disagrees with.
People flag for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes they just get tired-head on a topic, feel a site adds nothing new to the discussion, think it doesn't belong, etc. The only real hardfast rule about flagging is that you don't talk about why.
To humor you, though: it's a thorough representation of an opinion that relates to my career, and the resulting discussions are important to have, regardless of whether or not I agree with the article.
My observation is that articles on such topics need an especially good title and have to be especially well written to not be flag-bait on HN. Even in cases where it's an excellent article, a bad title can get strong reactions. My impression is that a lot of flags happen based on title alone (or other info visible on HN without clicking into the article itself) without the article being read.
* 95 (no, sorry 99%) of Software Engineers are IT peons and
* therefore don't lose much by unionizing; however
* if you're one of the few lucky ones being recognized for what they do and making enough in compensation, don't bother
It seems to me that the biggest problem in this theory is the first assumption is wrong (at least the numbers are wildly off). Most software engineers tend to be highly compensated, work in fairly independent teams, are recognized for their contributions so don't have much to gain from unionizing.
Besides software engineers, there are plenty of sysadmins, help desk folks, and other technology professionals outside of developers who are also not highly compensated who would benefit from unionizing along with software engineers who aren’t outliers.
Do you work more than 40 hours a week consistently as a salaried employee and not compensated for that time? Wage theft. Are you on call and not compensated for being on call or when you have to respond outside of business hours? Wage theft.
Software engineers are not the only category of IT worker. You believing you’re highly compensated does not mean others are, and does not negate their right to seek a more equitable labor arrangement. Feel free to stand aside while others fight for better working conditions for themselves and the majority of their peers.
> The fact is, relative to most of the world, all software engineers are outliers.
(Relative to most of the world, developed country workers are highly compensated; that is no excuse for allowing worker rights to be clawed backwards, unless you’re prepared to attempt to live in the first world on a third world income)
From the Bureau of Labor (“software engineer median salary”):
“The median wage is the wage at which half the workers in an occupation earned more than that amount and half earned less. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $59,870, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $160,100. The median annual wage for software developers, systems software was $107,600 in May 2017.”
[0] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...
EDIT: I see you have updated your post with the same stat, but you don't seem to understand what it means. Even the lowest-paid software developers are the class enemy that solidarity is built to fight.
I consider SWE compensation low compared to the value delivered (we don’t need to argue that, right? That’s pretty clear IMO), and therefore desire more of the value be shared with the labor generating it versus it being captured by shareholders.
I would disagree with that. Of course I should still "bother" to make the world around me better, I still "bother" with solidarity. Even if it's just so I can enjoy my own luck freely, and be open when I meet new people. The less corpses I have in my basement, the less corners I cut because "fuck you got mine", the more free I am. The more free I am, the quicker and better I develop. Also, unused muscles atrophy, unused mental and social "muscles" do as well, and the primary reward for being in shape is being in shape, it just feels better than being out of shape.
If you're concerned that your coworkers in the same company or in other companies are not being treated fairly by the system and want to help in changing it, sure, you can do that. But that's usually not the strongest force for change in these things.
In fact, the better compensated and happy workers would want to ensure the continuity of this system that treats them so well.
Fairness really has little to do with it. Work is a business transaction extract as much compensation as possible. One very effective tool to achieve that is collective bargaining.
Because the fairness argument is always so one-sided. It is always the worker that should mind if he or she is making enough, never the owner. Apple is making hundreds of billions in profits on overpriced products and no one bats an eye. But if Apple engineers unionize to try and increase their salaries, you'd get lots of calls about how they are selfish and already making enough money.
PIPs have no appeal process. Many developers are forced to work on menial bugs while simultaneously being promised more freedom “soon”.
Every company is constantly hiring because every company has drastically high turnover. Burnout is a very real thing in the field, and it shouldn’t be considered the norm.
Seems like a rather cynical take.
but again whatever evidence you may have in your individual situation: the belief that "I'm getting a good deal" is exactly how a mark gets conned.
Nobody knows how the next recession will affect programmers. If adtech collapses will compensation follow? Why aren't more companies using offshore tech labor?
Can't comment on the union stuff but we should be wary of thinking devs are exceptional. Expensive labor isn't always valuable labor; as detroit learned in the 80s.
In software development, we obviously don't want to have to work with under-performing coworkers, so we need some way to remove those people that isn't based on seniority. If it can't be at management's discretion either, then what's a good solution?
I think one answer may be to have a union-negotiated peer-review process -- you can be laid off or fired if your coworkers don't vouch for your work, or consider you indispensable. Depending on the process, this could work okay or it could be awful. At best, it would seem to encourage a sort of Lord-of-the-Flies atmosphere and some unpleasant office politics.
Another approach would be market-based. Maybe projects within the company are allocated some sort of virtual currency units which can be claimed by employees when they finish units of work. Employees with a surplus of currency units but not enough time to finish their tasks by themselves can put bounties on subtasks. Worker's pay should be proportional to their credit surplus; if it's not, they can have their pay reduced or they could be asked to leave. This would less political and less personal, but working out the details could be tricky and it doesn't address the problem of highly productive people that no one wants to work with because they treat people badly.
I expect there are other possible solutions.
How does the Screen Actor's Guild, and screenwriter's and athletic unions deal with this problem?
No unions prohibit individual firing for cause (though they tend to require process for it); union contracts may require layoffs to be conducted by seniority, and companies not covered by union contracts may use allocation of what is notionally a not-for-individual cause layoff as a PR cover for targeted firings, but it is simply not the case that union contracts (at least commonly) require firing by seniority.
These research labs are mostly unionized. That's why they have good benefits, working conditions, etc.
I would like to avoid that happening to software jobs.
The #1 reason is that HR no longer represents the best interests of employees. They serve to protect the company, leaving employees with zero representation.