To contrast that look at medicine. Doctors have no union. They have a huge barrier to entry but once you are already a doctor then how much you get paid is determined by your skills and where you work. Doctors can get paid millions with enough prestige on them.
Nurses on the other hand have a terminal limit. Every pay increase is gated by another nursing exam giving an additional certificate. Then in the end, the only upgrade is to doctor. However that means losing all benefits, retraining, and starting in a new track despite both professions being medical. Nurses therefore need a union.
Another thing that stops unionization is the ability to work on your own. Nurses with high enough qualifications can work on their own, but in most cases they still need a supervising doctor even if that doctor is only a warm body. VFX pros are much the same. They need a team with them to work on a big budget movie.
Programmers and doctors though can break away and start their own practice, serving the public directly and no one can stop them. With a little business savvy they can even rival the agencies that would have hired them as employees. If your profession can double as a stand-alone business then you rarely get a proper union.
Even in cases (e.g. electricians) where a union is formed, it will still conduct training and certification which positions it somewhat like a guild.
Citation needed.
It doesn't organize medical doctors for working conditions, salary and benefits negotiation, insurance, or most of the other features of a union. A hospital chain doesn't negotiate with the AMA on behalf of their surgeons and hospitalists.
(It would probably be a very good thing if interns and early residents had a union supervising working conditions.)
That's one big reason why I am unlikely to support unionization for the foreseeable future. If an employer treats us like crap, we just leave and either find a better opportunity or start our own business with blackjack and hookers. As a programmer, you can start your own business today by simply offering your services and looking for clients. We aren't nearly as enslaved to our companies as many other professions are.
This is a good thing for standard of care: it's a chain of accountability. Medical supervision is supposed to set local policies and quality gates across a range of different providers. This also extends to EMT's in the field, for example: their supervision says what drugs or procedures they can use, which affects what the ER is expecting when patients arrive.
This is classism in action. There’s no reason a nurse practitioner can’t bear legal responsibility for their actions. As long as it’s unambiguous who is the responsible party whether they are a physician, nurse or physiotherapist there’s a chain of accountability.
The point is there's a system requirement for interfacing one provider to the next, so that if you're receiving a handoff from someone else you know they prepared the patient for the next guy. There's also a malpractice/liability component.
You are saying a NP is the equivalent of an attending physician, which is absurd.
> A meta-analysis of nurse practitioners and nurse midwives in primary care
> This meta-analysis was an evaluation of patient outcomes of nurse practitioners (NPs) and nurse midwives (NMs), compared with those of physicians, in primary care. The sample included 38 NP and 15 NM studies. Thirty-three outcomes were analyzed. In studies that employed randomization to provider, greater patient compliance with treatment recommendations was shown with NPs than with physicians. In studies that controlled for patient risk in ways other than randomization, patient satisfaction and resolution of pathological conditions were greater for NP patients. NPs were equivalent to MDs on most other variables in controlled studies. In studies that controlled for patient risk, NMs used less technology and analgesia than did physicians in intrapartum care of obstetric patients. NMs achieved neonatal outcomes equivalent to those of physicians. Limitations in data from primary studies precluded answering questions of why and under what conditions these outcomes apply and whether these services are cost-effective.
They also enjoy broad exemptions to antitrust law which would otherwise apply. It's why other classes of worker cannot have the same type of protective guild -- it's legal when the ABA or AMA do it and illegal when someone else does it.
Doctors, whether MDs or otherwise, tend to be pretty well-compensated in US broadly.
Lawyers are much more of a mixed bag. White shoe law firms--mostly hiring students from top-tier schools with prestigious clerkships? Big bucks though either make partner or are mostly eased out. Some decent corporate law and successful private practices. But it's generally not a particularly well-compensated profession for someone from a mid to low-tier law school. And lots of people who graduate law school and even pass the bar don't actually end up practicing law.
In Germany doctors are heavily unionized. The largest union, Marburger Bund has 131.000 members.[1] The second largest, Hartmannbund has 70.000 members.[2] For comparision: At the end of 2020, there were 409,121 practising doctors (not including dentists) in Germany.[3]
[1] Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marburger_Bund
[2] Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartmannbund
[3] Source: https://www.bundesaerztekammer.de/baek/ueber-uns/aerztestati...
A lot of programmers I've met are either narcissists or autists bereft of self-awareness.
If you're a normal person you go into product management.
A coworker once told me that we are "society's elite". That's the level of delusion we're talking about here.
I also do not really believe in this concept in general. Programming skills are not one dimensional, people have different strengths and weaknesses.
Still have no idea what this mythical 1x - 10x number scale maps to. Inspiration can up anyone's game.
Tom Cruise makes (e.g.) $10M for being in a movie, and Jane Doe who plays Waitress #2 gets paid $10K for being in the same movie, and yet they're both part of SAG.
You can create union/guild structures which have a minimum pay scale but not a maximum.
for screenwriters, most studios will not even review scripts without going through SAG, according to an awarding screenwriter/director who is a good friend on mine.
I've heard people say to freelance musicians (like myself), that you don't really need the union until you start working in recording or broadcast.
I've not seen a screen actor's contract but I'll bet the provisions for working conditions and rights are a bigger deal than the pay scale. Also, I've read that in general, unionization efforts tend to be triggered by working conditions rather than pay. Even programmers could benefit from that.
It reminds me of the scene from the Simpsons: Homer and Mr. Burns are chilling together in what will become the rocket-house:
Homer: Oh Mr. Burns, you're the richest man I know.
Mr. Burns: Ah yes, but I'd trade it all... for a little more.