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Comment by erikerikson | Hacker News Reader

Germany offers an example of unions that work with the rest of corporate leadership to maintain the health of corporate fiscal flows and labor pools among the other concerns they attenuate to.

This reads to me like characatures used to construct a straw person argument. Your inevitability decoration is denied by observable fact.

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No one in their right mind would rather work for a german software company in a union than work for an american one without a union.

EDIT: Hyperbole here, and it was lost on some. Despite unions in germany, German companies are exploiting their workers compared to lucrative salaries that non union US software engineers are enjoying. The gap beteween the lifestyle of a german software engineer and a US one is quite large.

I would and I am sane of mind.

30 days' vacation (24 by law, the extra 6 were because effective union), so much sick leave that I don't know anyone who exhausted it with anything less than a long term disability, and extremely strong employee protections once you're past an initial 6 month trial period, as well as amazing parental leave/part-time policies enshrined in the law, backed up by sector-wide unions and company Betriebsrat (Works Council).

All helps keep me sane, anyway.

Ok so most SWEs in the US get 25 days of vacation and make what, 4x what the average SWE in germany makes?

Please explain. It seems you harbor assumptions as to the context in which right minds are making their decisions.

Perhaps a German citizen living in Germany with young children that is supported by local family; "only" speaks German, Afrikaans, and Chinese; and is independently wealthy but enjoys writing software might disagree.

I know that since I dramatically changed my contexts the way I look at roles changed dramatically.

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