Hacker News Reader

Comment by randy5235 | Hacker News Reader

What makes you feel that a union wouldn’t represent your interests? Do you really believe that corporations will continue paying us well any longer than they absolutely have to? As soon as an ai or low code split comes along that can replace junior and mid level engineers, those jobs will get harder and harder to find. The rest of us will have to shoulder the responsibility of “cleaning” after those solutions and the additional work of not having a “pipeline” to continue growing better software engineers.

View on HN

You have very very heavy lifting to do if you're trying to prove a productivity improvement leads to a worse outcome.

Farming automation and the green revolution didn't make us all unemployed - it meant 90% of us could do something else instead of farming.

We used the productivity to just invent new forms of work that weren't possible and aren't possible in a lower productivity economy.

> Farming automation and the green revolution didn't make us all unemployed - it meant 90% of us could do something else instead of farming.

There was actually a lot of fear that there would be mass starvation and competition for food because food production could not match population increase. It was an existential threat, much like how we look at global warming. And that fear today? Gone, and most people never even knew it existed.

“Technology will free us from a life of drudgery!” has been the promise for what, over a hundred years now? We all sit around at our leisure while robots prepare our dinner.

What actually happened in agriculture is that technology enabled massive conglomerates to dominate the industry. I see few guarantees that technological progress is going to free me up to do something else that enriches my life.

“ The spoils of technology went straight to the top while workers switched to new jobs that pay horribly.”

I have a hard time believing you believe that most people switched to a worse paying job. Did peoples material quality of life improve or not?

Technology has already freed me from a life of drudgery.

One has to consider the impact on dynamism. It may not matter to many but it would be something management would have to consider before entering into new areas for development.

I think unionization would impact expansion and research areas —the big bets where now if something doesn’t work the company either reorganizes the team or lets go of a team. With a union companies would operate more conservatively.

That would perhaps provide stable jobs for current job holders but limit growth for prospective job holders.

Outcome for whom, though? We can use fancy words like "Pareto" or we can argue that it doesn't matter if a productivity improvement gives a billionaire more toys if everyone else is experiencing smaller houses and a worse public environment.

One thing we're not experiencing is smaller houses. Compare now to the 1950s or the 1920s or the 1890s. Productivity improvements have not led to smaller houses. Empirically proven.

> Outcome for whom, though?

Everyone who is not a slave, serf, or subsistence farmer

Union's do much more than just negotiate things with your employer. They lobby elected representatives. They donate money to political groups or candidates for office.

I have more dimensions to me than just what I do for a job. The collective aggregate desires of all my coworkers is likely to diverge from me in areas that I care deeply about. I don't need a situation where I am "forced" to support those things with my money and labor. I already have to do it with my taxes in some occasions. I don't need another one.

Do you use the "forced" framing when your money and labor is used to fund your employer lobbying against your interests? Or is it just natural and right that your effort is subservient to the desires of your boss because they are more important than you?

I think it depends. If the union is voluntary its not forced. But often membership isn’t voluntary. The relationship between you and your employer, however is. Many people choose not to work for defense companies for example.

> What makes you feel that a union wouldn’t represent your interests?

They definitionally don't. Unions represent the union's interests. It is the design intent of unions to represent an amalgamation of their members. That's already not the same as my interests, but the union organization itself is also an incentivized actor.

These distinction are far from a subtlety.

My interests might overlap with the union's interest, but that's highly situational.

It wouldn't represent my interest because an older programmer who puts in a few hours of work a week would be paid more than me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com