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Comment by baskire | Hacker News Reader

Some of us have been in unionized industries prior. It also lead to promotion based on years served. Pay scales. And the protection of low performers.

Right now engineers have incredible leverage. What do they gain by a union.

Don’t like what Facebook is doing. Quit and work elsewhere. There’s plenty of jobs available

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Here's a few lists of reasons for why SWEs might want a union:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15248774

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8498324

commandlinefan 3 months ago [–]

Well, there’s a lot of philosophizing on here about what a hypothetical future with unionized programmers might look like; some good, some bad. We already know what a future without one will look like: open offices, JIRA ticket quotas, unpaid overtime, permanent contract work, whiteboard coding interviews, penalties for experience and education and zero training.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22359605

And a rather prophetic comment:

LarryDarrell 10 months ago [–]

My worry is that without premature organization, the next recession is going to make the "tech worker shortage" a permanent thing of the past. We'll never have as much negotiating power as we do now.

If say there was a Tech Workers Union/Guild/Association, we might have been able to protect the older workers at IBM, or the outsourced workers at Disney. Maybe there could be a push back against open offices and poorly implemented Agile. As it is, we're just better compensated workers floating from job to better job.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20384298

So what you're saying is a union would try and prevent companies interviewing candidates to weed out the ones that can't code, would block its members from working in open offices regardless of their preferences (some people like them), protect workers who fix one bug per month just as much as those who fix ten and then ... the last parts I don't even understand really. Are you claiming that companies deliberately penalise education? That's not true at any company I've ever worked at.

I believe those original posts meant that employees often penalize engineers who come from nonstandard backgrounds in favor of those who come from well known universities with top CS programs. This was less common in the past, especially when there were many self-taught engineers in the era when CS was less common as a degree, but credentialism has become more popular in recent years and those from elite schools are often preferred especially over bootcamp grads.

Everything else you're saying is essentially bad faith readings of legitimate industry concerns that I deign to respond to unless evidence of non-trolling becomes manifest. Perhaps you genuinely have bought into the propaganda that unions are intended to protect mediocrity, or are ignorant that unions exist in industries where stark differences in worker performance exist (the SAG and professional athletes' unions), or believe that a union made up of software engineers- the supposed innovators of this age, making the world a better place, etc.- are doomed to repeat the same failures as past unions. And here I thought tech can disrupt and reinvent anything.

But I will mention that those issues you've caricatured aren't even the potentially most killer features of a union specifically for the software industry: anti-discrimination and anti-harassment. HR departments are notorious for protecting companies instead of individual workers, so an independent body that can provide the individual with legal representation and support would be useful in an industry notorious for ageism and issues with gender and race. Would Susan Fowler have endured as many indignities if there was a SWE labor union that had her back? We won't know until there's one to protect those who suffer from similar mistreatment in the future. And yes, such a union would be expected to protect workers from such abuse no matter how many bugs they fix in a month- that is how equality before the law should be, and a union is a way to ensure that labor laws are respected.

> It also lead to promotion based on years served. Pay scales. And the protection of low performers.

You do realize all of these things are standard at any large tech company already?

Commoditizing labor into pay bands is standard HR policy for all large companies (see levels.io). And people who get promoted tend to have more seniority with the company.

I’ve also worked at multiple FAANG companies, and low performers are absolutely not fired. You’d basically have to steal something or molest a coworker before they even think about firing you.

> And the protection of low performers.

Witness how many times the policeman who killed George Floyd had complaints against him and was protected by his union.

I'll go out on a limb, and say that the existence of police unions is not the most important factor behind police brutality, and the killing of people of colour by police, in the US.

As one example, look at training and employment. It takes three years to become a police officer in Germany or France. Once you are one, you are employed for life (after a probation period). A lot of the training is focused on legal work, de-escalation and so on. Is there still excesive use of force? Yes. Still racial profiling and protection of your felllow officers? Yes and yes. Do you have to be affraid of police? No. Does police have to be afraid of the population? No. Are there exceptions to this? Yes, as always.

Anohter, very big difference, between France germany and the US is, that in france there are two police organisations (Police and Gendarmerie), in Germany a federal one and one per state. All are follwing the same regulations with only minor differences between the states in germany, and differences in area of responsibility. Compare that to the US with city-based police departments, sherrifs departments, sate police and so on. The former makes it easier to implement common standards, the latter makes it harder.

But we divert a lot from the topic, don't we?

> I'll go out on a limb, and say that the existence of police unions is not the most important factor behind police brutality, and the killing of people of colour by police, in the US.

Hard to say if it is the most important but it is a pretty important factor. See https://www.joincampaignzero.org/ for all research that indicates the unions are a key stumbling block.

That is true. On a meta level, that is kind of what a police union should protect interests of the police force. Shows how this, be it unions or any other association, can backfire.

Lots of different types of unions exist. Seems silly to throw the idea out because some unions fought for things that aren't popular with this crowd. Instead make a union that fights for the things you want. They are democratic institutions after all.

What examples do you think of where unions do not/did not lead to more formalized, static, equalized systems, which somebody that likes having impact, being paid and promoted based on his work and not his time with the company etc does not want?

Bewildering syntax aside, that sounds like every big company, ever. Unions don't change the core nature of large organizations, just the power dynamics.

The company aggregates the individual contributions and makes them stable to the outside. A union would make workers more stable when interfacing with the company: you pay everyone the same, you get the same amount of hours, you don't negotiate with individuals but with union representatives etc.

That's not necessarily desirable for somebody that currently has a compensation package that's far above the average.

I've never seen or heard of a union that handles this differently, even if they are "democratic institutions", so I wonder if there are any examples where you bargain collectively, but you don't get the negative side-effects of equal pay for unequal work, promotions based on time spent instead of contributions, essentially tenure for underperformers etc.

> That's not necessarily desirable for somebody that currently has a compensation package that's far above the average.

That doesn't happen in the SAG. Talent are expected to be paid a floor, but no ceiling is mandated. There's certainly stories in the news all of the time about incredible contracts getting signed by big stars.

https://www.wrapbook.com/essential-guide-sag-rates/

> you don't get the negative side-effects of equal pay for unequal work, promotions based on time spent instead of contributions, essentially tenure for underperformers etc.

Given that a hypothetical software engineer union would be a brand new entity with no historical baggage to older, more archaic or corrupted unions, certainly its members can work to design an updated system that addresses some of these issues. Why, if tech is supposed to be about innovation, must a union representing its workers must necessarily be tethered to the same faults as older institutions?

> Why, if tech is supposed to be about innovation, must a union representing its workers must necessarily be tethered to the same faults as older institutions?

I don't really follow that tech is about innovation, but that aside: I'm not saying a union would have be the same as all the other unions, I'm asking why it wouldn't and how to ensure that.

The SAG is interesting, but I don't know whether it's very comparable to tech. I'm not anti-union, but I wouldn't join a union, I work too closely with them to believe that it's in my personal best interest. For the average (non-tech) worker, that's different, they'll most likely benefit. But they're also in a very different position than tech people, with very different hiring markets.

> I'm asking why it wouldn't

Because a significant percentage of its hypothetical membership feel the same way you do about those problems.

> and how to ensure that.

Become a member. Vote for the union policies you think are important. Become a union leader. Etc.

> Right now engineers have incredible leverage.

If the engineers’ leverage is so great, why have they been unable to enact policies they support?

Policies that engineers in general truly support are rare. Many engineers - I suspect the majority - just don't feel that strongly about most causes.

And they don’t feel strongly because they don’t have to care. I know I don’t. I could never open a newspaper or go to a protest and live quite blissfully. I’m white, I’m a man, I’m an engineer. So I’m safe. Everything seems to work just fine for me. I have friends struggling to pay rent, my girlfriend has trouble finding peers at school who will treat her like an equal, but I get an inbox full of emails all the time from companies begging to pay me amounts of money that boggle even my mind. I’m 27 and I make more than both my parents combined, of course you don’t see me fighting for a union. I can barely keep up with all the perks I already get! It’s rare to find someone willing to step outside their bubble and do work for someone else when they won’t benefit.

Engineer distaste or at least lack of enthusiasm for open offices is near-universal. It might not be the best reason to create a union, but its prevalence is probably rooted in the lack of something like a union to tell management to back off.

Engineer who works in an open office, can confirm. Open offices suck in a large variety of ways, not the least of which my personal health has deteriorated over the years in large part because of it.

As in getting colds? I haven’t heard of health as an open office gripe, but I’ve never worked in one.

Why can they make hundreds of thousands in total compensation?

this explains everything. you can stage a walk out in a meeting but you’re still on zuckerbergs payroll. and if 50% of the us based engineers quit based on some social principles there’s thousands of engineers ready to fill those spots around the world for a fraction of the price. covid has shown remote work works. unionizing and making the US more costly to work with will only accelerate how “remote” these jobs can be

The FAANGM types aren't hiring mediocre programmers out of Uzbekistan, they're looking for MIT/Carnegie Mellon/Stanford types. Plenty of primo talent coming out of Texas A&M, Virginia Tech, etc. as well.

Plenty of bodies to replace those who leave, for sure, but they're not about to start hiring random offshore types.

But there are brilliant IIT graduates from India who would much rather work from their home city in India than pay Bay Area landlords just so they can sit on an 80 year waitlist for a green card.

Extreme time zone differences are still a challenging problem that might actually be an insurmountable limit to remote work. (Depends on the level of asynchronicity of the job, of course.) Unless there starts to be a culture of remote shift work, which would just be dystopian.

this description of target candidates does not match what i have seen. i’m not implying random or mediocre. it’s purely bay area hubris to assume no one else in the world except some top university graduates can learn our crud microservice development skills or put together some components

Because they're replacing their political leverage for dollars.

Which is, of course, their choice.

It’s not clear to me that claiming political leverage would cost them dollars. Typically unionized employees make more once it’s said and done. I tend to think that there’s a shortage in engineering skill, which drives their cost up.

Have they not? Certainly, life as an engineer is exactly as I desire it to be most places I go.

What have they been unable to enact? By my measure, Facebook has implemented "fact checking" with a jury stacked full of left-leaning organizations and has leveled bans and other measures against enemies of the genocide-denying ADL, a far-left organization with a long history of disgraceful incorrect accusations (which includes ruining innocent people's lives, later resulting in a court settlement).

The only reason FB takes marching orders from such organizations is lobbying by their own employees.

A union leads to exactly what its members want it to lead to. It's a democratic entity.

This is like saying a political party leads to what it members want it to lead to, since it's a democratic entity. In practice different members want different things, and it easily ends up as political games with mismatched incentives.

So the argument against forming a new political party is that there are political parties that do things you disagree with?

I think the argument is that a union is more like a party in a winner-take-all system than a party in a multiparty system.

The alternative is the employer winning in a two party system.

Maybe. Or maybe that's a false choice. Honestly I'm generally unconvinced by "it's us or them" arguments.

That's not necessarily a given. To be fair we also technically live in a democracy with a democratic process. Many would argue that the views of the majority are not reflected.

Are you saying that the views of the majority are better represented in dictatorships?

Negative.

It doesn't work that way. Boeing employees don't get to dictate what Boeing as a business does, only how it interacts with and compensates its workers. No union is going to change that.

Well they do with Airbus, and Volkswagen, and Bosch, and DHL, etc., because in Europe it is not uncommon for unions to have board seats. In Germany this is mandatory for corporations of a particular size, regulated by the works constitution act.

The main thing I’ve been told consistently is foot in the door is the biggest thing. Once you’re in as long as you really did pass the interview and are at least okay, beyond that, chances of you being fired have to be low because no one ever brings that up. I’ve asked around. No one thinks that is even a possibility in normal circumstances.

I don’t think any companies do stack ranking any more in terms of firing. Layoffs are the only times you’d have to worry. And that comes down to politics as well no matter what.

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