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Comment by ihm | Hacker News Reader

To those who think tech workers don’t need unions: unions don’t have to be about wages. They are simply an association that lets us as workers deliberate and coordinate our actions.

I think in tech they would be better used to help us control what we are working on and the conditions in which we do it. For example, you could use your collective power to push for

- eliminating creepy tracking from the software you work on that execs wants to put in

- open sourcing more of your work

- eliminating addictive dark patterns

- requiring engineers’ sign-off on deadlines to avoid unrealistic ones foisted upon you

- working on projects that seem meaningful and useful for the world instead of what will make your investors the most money

and a million other things specific to your context

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I'm generally in favor of unions as a one of many tools for helping workers get a better working arrangement.

Yet I personally don't see the need for this tool in tech. The labor market has been red hot for years with demand exceeding supply and numerous options for each worker. Firms and their management seem exceedingly responsive (sometimes to a fault) with regard to addressing worker requests.

Sure there are still plenty of suboptimal tech employers and no firm is ever perfect for every worker. Yet worker choice seems to be sufficient to let tech workers find a firm that meets their requirements.

Some people are still choosing employers that many of us would reject, yet those workers are likely just prioritizing different things. Some people want to maximize their pay or progress more quickly in their career. Some people might even want to center work in their lives and seek a demanding employer. Whatever; to each their own.

It seems nearly impossible to determine how a company or team operates from the outside. An independent organization that could categorize approaches to software development along different axes (and also share true salary/TC info) would be useful.

I used to think we didn't need unions, and then we found out that "dozens" of the largest tech companies were conspiring to cheat their own devs out of billions of dollars of lost wages through a "no poaching" agreement. 'Member that?

> working on projects that seem meaningful and useful for the world instead of what will make your investors the most money

Having your business choose projects based on what engineers think is neat rather than what the business needs seems like a profoundly terrible idea. If your employer's goals don't match the stuff you want to do, get a different job. You're not entitled to use Facebook compute (or whatever) to pursue your passion project. There is more than one company in the world.

And in many countries there is no need to have one in the building, they span across the industry and one can always reach out to them anyway.

What they could also be used for:

- Allowing people to become unproductive and still get paid.

- Protecting sexual harassers.

- Blocking marginalized people from joining the company.

- Enriching union bosses.

- Propping up organized crime.

If you think “but that would never happen”, American unions have a long, long history of doing all those things.

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