I don’t want a levelling effect in our industry. I don’t want gatekeeping either. We aren’t interchangeable cogs, and people who do better than average should not be held down. Promising people with nontraditional backgrounds should not be prevented from entering the field. Despite what people claim, unions would definitely hold people down and lock out new people.
Things are going really well for us actually, compared to people in other professions. That’s partly the case because our industry has been able to remain dynamic and innovative. Much of the success we’ve seen was built by people with nontraditional professional backgrounds and would not have happened if we got bogged down by gatekeeping and credentialism.
When the pie stops growing and we need to fight management over how to divide it, maybe a union will be attractive. But right now the pie is growing rapidly and workers are getting a huge amount of it in the form of both cash and stock. I’m all for continuing with this free, dynamic, and incredibly successful model.
By the way, unions don’t make layoffs a thing of the past. Look at what happens in the auto industry. The beat thing we can do for laid-off tech workers is ensure that we keep our industry dynamic, so there will continue to be new employers to work for.