Programmers don’t need a union. We need a profession.

Well, that's quite a wall of text. If you want to make it more persuasive, you might want to break it up into linked pieces:

    professions and professionalism
    corporations
    ethics
    competence exams

Re the fishing boat operator example, you might want to use a "factory worker" who does piecework, and does not lease a boat, pay for fuel, and insurance, hold a fishing or boat operator's license, etc.

Where you use terms, and then defend them, try to find terms that do not need defending:

  > commodity labor, and I use that term non-pejoratively.

perhaps "piecework" or "fungible product labor"

    > liberal service ... Professional service...

I would delete that whole sentence, and replace it with "Professional work is a service..."

    > Some have to fucking use vacation days to attend conferences!

uh, "professional" language?

  > In typical industrial work, the "Bozo Bit" starts out in the "On"
  > position, meaning that a typical worker is assumed to be stupid,
  > treacherous, and useless. Since barriers to entry are low, the only thing
  > that defines a worker is wanting money, and being willing to do unpleasant
  > tasks in order to get it. There's no respect for the average, individual
  > member in such an industry; the default assumption is incompetence,
  > ethical depravity, and childlike stupidity.

Wow. Don't hold back, tell us how you really feel!

Instead of "stupid," how about: "a typical newly-hired worker is assumed to be ignorant of the workplace and the work at hand, and thus potentially dangerous to themselves and others."

Incompetence and uselessness in an entry-level worker suggest a need for training rather than intrinsic bozoness. I think that suggesting treachery and ethical depravity is a bit of a reach, even in this context.

[edits: formatting]

It was an interesting read. The main professions he described, law and medicine, have certification requirements. I wonder if the author is envisioning having some form of accreditation? Without that how can one know who is a "professional" programmer?

I am not sure given the current climate of corporations exploitation that this is viable.

Here's a related article on the topic: Is Software Engineering Engineering? http://denninginstitute.com/pjd/PUBS/CACMcols/cacmMar09.pdf

Very good article. Thanks. The one sentence "we're not a profession" explains almost all the tech. workplace dysfunctions that I've seen.

I hope people read the article before debating the title, because I have a specific meaning of "profession" here.