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Comment by camgunz | Hacker News Reader

Tech workers need to unionize everywhere and create staunch opposition to this kind of garbage. We're the experts, we're the elite, we know what's best, and we have a responsibility to lead here. Doctors won't harvest organs to sell. Pharmacists won't make you poison. Engineers shouldn't make you encryption backdoors.

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> we're the elite

Nice thought, except most of us are morally no better than expensive prostitutes.

> Doctors won't harvest organs to sell.

Many doctors take bribe money from Big Pharma. Also some doctors do crazy stuff like recommend surgeries to fund a new swimming pool.

> Nice thought, except most of us are morally no better than expensive prostitutes.

I don't find anything immoral about sex work, but that aside, I think one of the benefits of a professional organization would be to unlicense unethical actors like how doctors lose their licenses or attorneys are removed from the bar. The idea here is:

- PA (prof. assoc.) says, "hey, we're not making encryption backdoors and we're not making tools to crack them available to governments and law enforcement"

- PA lobbies against policies that would mandate encryption backdoors

- PA lobbies for a law that says you must be licensed to distribute software at a certain scale

- PA strips licenses from engineers working on encryption backdoors

It's not perfect, you can probably imagine a lot of holes in it, but there are holes in everything (you can travel to a different medical regulatory regime, etc. etc.). The point isn't perfection, the point is to move society in the right direction rather than have this idiotic discussion about encryption literally every year.

> Many doctors take bribe money from Big Pharma. Also some doctors do crazy stuff like recommend surgeries to fund a new swimming pool.

Corruption happens, and I think it's clear humanity hasn't figured out how to deal with it. I don't think that's a reason not to organize though.

I wonder what the impact of making software development a profession would be, when you can easily teach yourself the mechanics of development with just a laptop from anywhere in the world.

If there was a restriction that said Californian companies can only hire guilded developers, that might form an effective protest in this case in particular; but in general, I have a hard time imagining software development being contained in a bureaucratic box. Seems like it would add needless/expensive/frustrating bureaucracy without much obvious benefit.

The point is that although your idea might be good in theory, you should formulate how we get there in practice. Because that's the hard part.

> morally no better than expensive prostitutes

expensive prostitutes care way more about their clients than tech workers.

Theres no need to generalise and dehumanise a whole group of people like that.

Normally I would agree, but tech workers (especially those that dub themselves elites) deserve it.

They could have meant prostitutes.

I highly doubt that. If the pair of things being compared was self titled tech "elites" and used car salespeople; there is a small (non zero but maybe zero if you rounding to the nearest number) chance they meant used car salesmen.

It was a joke mainly. But both other replies defended prostitutes.

I was talking about your condemnation of sex workers.

You're thinking of self-regulating professional body rather than a trade union. Unions fight for pay and working conditions against employers, professional bodies represent the considered opinion of the profession and self-regulate their members, like doctors and barristers.

A union could, if it chose to, take collective action to stop some particular lobbying effort, I just don't know if it's ever been done.

> A union could, if it chose to, take collective action to stop some particular lobbying effort

For consumer benefit? No. It's technically possible. But it's simply not how the structure is framed or incentivized.

Nurses unions have advocated in the US for policies like Medicare-for-all (single payer health care), so it’s not just possible but plausible. It would help them too (simplifying insurance makes nurses lives easier), but that’s equally true for many consumer protection bills in the tech space.

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/552324-union-lobbies-c...

> Nurses unions have advocated in the US for policies like Medicare-for-all

The same way a mechanics' union would advocate for a car subsidy. I'm not saying it's disingenuous. Just that there is a commercial need served; I haven't seen a private sector union advocate for something meaningful that's revenue neutral.

Big unions like the CWA do a lot more than that, but I don't really care what it is, although I think a lot of people in tech have a knee-jerk anti-union response so maybe that's not the way to go.

> We're the experts, we're the elite, we know what's best

I certainly don't want this mantle.

Everyone wins if, in layman terms, you can instead make it clear to the non-technical people what the issue is.

That mantle is not something you can escape unless you opt into not having a career.

> We're the experts, we're the elite, we know what's best.

Maybe about the technology and code. But definitely not about effects on society.

On the flipside, policy makers don't really understand the societal effects of a policy like this either. They're narrowly focused on one specific perceived benefit (a tool for law enforcement), while ignoring all other consequences.

Sure, that's why there's other seats at the table. But we need one too.

> We're the experts, we're the elite, we know what's best, and we have a responsibility to lead here.

Wow. That is possibly the most "orange site" type post I have ever read here.

The minute you claim to be the elite is the minute the commons lose all trust in you. Appeal to authority is not the way to go here.

I think you're reading this as arrogance, which isn't an inefficient assumption around here, but I view it more from the responsibility lens. We're the ones who know about this stuff, and we need to do more to spread that knowledge, and to take control of our destiny as to what we'll build.

this is absolutely not something a union should be taking a stance on. fear of a union getting bloated and losing focus on improving working conditions and pay is one of the biggest reasons tech workers i talk to aren't too jazzed about unions in the first place.

we don't even have one and already it's supposed to be opposed to some totally irrelevant legislation. i can see why people are hesitant to unionize

I wouldn't trust most tech workers to pick roses let alone pick government policy.

This has to be a joke, like a union would earnestly evangelize privacy and data security practices. It would, no doubt, be captured by activists who care more about DEI and non technical pursuits, and bloat into a bureaucratic monster overnight. A union's job isn't to set industry standards and best practices. And what would stop the companies from using consultants or third parties to implement these backdoors? Nothing. There will always be engineers willing to build things that are 'unethical' ... because money and technical curiosity.

> And what would stop the companies from using consultants or third parties to implement these backdoors? Nothing.

Contract with the unions could force the companies to not do so. The employees of tech companies have a lot of power that they’re not using right now.

I don't think a union would prevent big tech legal teams from finding loopholes to circumvent said contract. They could use some entity in another nation or state that has more lax laws. And if the government wants Google or Meta's infrastructure to use as a spying apparatus, they get their way (see: NSA). Seems like a game of whack a mole that a slow moving organization like a union would lose.

A handful of rogue leakers or vigilante whistleblowers, backed by some non-profit defense legal fund (perhaps funded by payroll deductions, like dues), could have an outsized impact on the future of security/privacy.

Part of unionizing is voluntarily giving up your individual bargaining power. Why would anyone that's one standard deviation or more above the mean developer trade that away?

Because they get laid off in random staff cuts just like everyone else. When tech companies band together against tech workers, it doesn't matter how many Xs of an engineer you are.

You can always get another job, and being good at what you do should increase the probability of getting a new one.

Everyone knows about business cycles. It's worth saving for the unexpected layoffs so that you can make it through. To reiterate, knowing I could not have a job tomorrow every single day is not enough justification for giving up my ability to self represent. Plus, I don't have to pay people for the privlidge of losing my independence.

You can probably get another job yeah. Can you get another job with the same total comp and benefits? A lot of people are finding that that's not the case, you might preserve your salary but give up stock options and remote work, etc. Also, it's just a pain in the ass.

I think this reasoning is pretty labored. Sure there's some small percentage of engineers who are eminently employable and don't care to unionize. It benefits everyone else though, and even those "elite" engineers benefit from unionization, as unions have to represent everyone. I feel like there are tinges of, "I don't want to pay union dues if I'm not in the union" or "everyone thinks they'll be rich someday / are an elite engineer so they don't want to tax the wealthy / unionize", but idk, these are old, bad arguments.

Exactly. I, personally, aim higher than the standard deviation and am compensated well for it. I would not give that up.

I wonder if you'll reflect back on this comment when ageism comes knocking.

I'll be long retired before "ageism" even becomes close to a concern ;)

Unions exist to represent and advance their members rights, which is good. They don't exist to pick up other social or political issues. When they try it is usually a mess because there is no good chance they will pick the "right" side, because it distracts from their actual mission and because it saps their support.

You'll then probably be surprised to learn the AFL-CIO lists such causes as:

- Criminal Justice Reform

- Health Care

- Quality Education

- Sexual Harassment

- Social Security and Retirement

- Tax and Budget Policy

- Gender Equality

on its issues page [0], or that the NEA has a whole section for Racial & Social Justice [1], or that the CWA has a whole section for Human Rights [2].

I don't think there's any reason that if tech workers all joined the CWA that the CWA couldn't then lobby against encryption backdoors.

[0]: https://aflcio.org/issues

[1]: https://www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/racial-social-just...

[2]: https://cwa-union.org/workers-rights/human-rights

I am not really surprised I'm afraid.

Unions often DO get involved in these things, they make no progress, divide their members and it prevents them actually doing their actual day to day job.

Has the AFL-CIO balanced the national budget yet? No. And wasting time on that has meant less attention has been paid to membership or issues where they could have made some difference.

We saw the same thing with the Amazon unionisation attempts last year: what started as (a broadly supported and popular and achievable ) campaign to get better wages, less terrible conditions and some job security rapidly morphed into making Amazon go carbon neutral, fixing racism in america and end global warming. I would like all those things. But if you want me to put my job on the line our goals need to be achievable, and frankly beneficial to me directly. And the Amazon unionisation fizzled pretty rapidly.

Again, if people want to join campaign groups (EFF etc) then that is their right. But that's just not what a union is for (any more than the EFF should represent me in salary negotiations).

To be clear in the specific case of the AFL-CIO, they are NOT a union (at least not one of workers). So it makes sense for them to campaign on whatever they and their members feel is important.

The second sentence is patently untrue.

Both that sentence and the one before are opinions. Opinions cannot be true or false, if something is falsifiable then it's no longer an opinion, it's a fact.

What you mean, is that you disagree. But you offer no reason or argument. You have just mistaken your own opinions for facts...

At the risk of continuing an argument. I don't just disagree. It's untrue. Opinions as to the nature of reality have long been falsifiable.

More accurately, your first two sentences are more like Union mission statement repetition that doesn't reflect observable reality.

For example, the largest unions in the US can be consistently observed to be political on issues that can't be plausibly connected to the benefit of their members. Unless one were to reason that the interests of their members lies with virtually all partisan political issues. But then we are dealing in a semantics shell-game and not reality.

I'd love an union mouvement for IT workers. We have a small trade union in Switzerland that represents our interests but like for most other countries, engineers rarely see themselves as blue collars.

I look at it more like the ABA (attorneys) or the AMA (doctors) in the US. Those organizations have enormous political power, and I think tech workers could easily hang in that echelon. I say unionize because I just like unions, but either way.

And, like attorneys and medical doctors, we could really do with having a clear system of professional ethics.

> look at it more like the ABA (attorneys) or the AMA (doctors) in the US

These are trade groups. Not unions. There's a meaningful difference. Unions for tech don't make sense, particularly in a world of remote work. Trade groups, on the other hand, do.

Why does it not make sense? Remote workers can join an union too.

It’s too easy to scalp, or for an unencumbered overseas competitor to take your chips. When offices resembled factories there was at least a capital expense to be leveraged.

Long way to go, but that's what international solidarity is for.

[0]: https://aflcio.org/issues/global-worker-rights

[1]: https://cwa-union.org/workers-rights/international-solidarit...

I don't need a union, I need a lobby.

Let me know where to sign up.

In this case, the EFF?

People would freak out if software engineers formed a trade Union. I’m all for it personally. Kind of like the bar for lawyers.

Yeah, what we really need is government by developer-king. If the Silicon Valley crowd ran countries, our lives would be so much better.

>"We're the experts, we're the elite, we know what's best"

I did not know Narcissus still alive and hangs out here.

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