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Comment by paulddraper | Hacker News Reader

Every industry has gotten less and less unionized.

Why would software buck the trend?

Because we’re smart enough to see the difference between a craftsman’s guild and a traditional workers union.

For starters guilds tend to have progression by merit, requiring an apprentice prove they are competent enough to be considered a journeyman.

And you know … not wanting to be exploited… healthcare sounds nice… ( on this point, I’d like to point out that as an Australian software engineer, I long ago resolved to never start a company in America because of how insane healthcare in America is. I can understand the guns, the polarised politics and all the rest of the things that make America what it is… but healthcare is just so fucking insane that i haven’t even seriously considered taking a holiday there to see the museums that have been on my bucket list for half my life… the idea of starting a business there is just an immediate non starter… I’ll take US cash and setup a holding corp if they demand US incorporation and employ people elsewhere… so having a guild where healthcare was provided would make American developers more competitive in the job market)

I would join a guild for at minimum protection for our fellow h1b visa holders. They’re constantly and regularly abused.

We should just eliminate H1bs and expand the green card program together with eliminating per country quotas. Relying on a union to protect workers with precarious visas is really just trying to address the symptom rather than the cause.

Are they any Real World examples of "guild" vs "union"?

About the US healthcare expenses: When you travel on holiday, you can buy pretty reasonable travel insurance. For example (no shilling): You can get one week of healthcare coverage from World Nomads for 130 AUD. Not so bad.

Unfortunately the only “real world” examples I can personally think of for craft guilds are from more than a century ago, making them quite poor examples of the practice in a modern context. However if your not opposed to a little bit of history, I’d recommend checking out the history of craft guilds which goes back well over a millennium and it represents one of the earliest forms of “qualification” outside of religious or spiritual contexts (since determining if you have a suitable priest of Zeus, etc… has basically been a thing since forever)

130 AUD for a week is considered reasonable?? For travel insurance even?

Starbucks has way more unionized stores now than last year.

True

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