Yeah just wait until you get laid off
Edit: But also, this was a pre-profit VC-backed company. If those companies can't lay people off, it's not like you make good money with more job security. Either the company just has less runway (so I still lose my job, just later and with everyone else) or they adapt by hiring fewer people at lower salaries.
Would suck to be in this market as an entry-level engineer, though.
YMMV.
I see you haven't been in the current job market.
I think it's important to note that unions aren't very good tools to avoid layoffs. If there is a company specific hardship, the union can't simply force the company to maintain headcount all the way into bankruptcy. On the other hand if there is a secular change across the industry, the unions can't prevent that change either. Easy example is how Big 3 automakers were 100% unionized in the 1970s and have since shed about 500,0000 American jobs despite producing more automobiles than ever.
Unions tend to be good at bargaining for better pay and benefits, but the current status quo is that most tech workers already have decent pay and benefits anyway.
But what if they could be even better? This is an industry with 75-80% gross margins, quite unlike any other industry in history.
I promise you, management doesn't think that way.
That's the issue. 2/3 of my layoffs were not "financial hardships". One was just a medium sized studio who ran out of projects and didn't want me to continue. The other was a large global company who was about to make big purchases (and eventually, change leadership).
Maybe with job #1 I could have saved it, but I was underpaid and already looking out the door, so it wasn't surprising to me. Job #2 was 100% the kind of place a union would have saved my job from. (and if you care, Job #3 was just classic "startup funding pulled". They shut down a year later. It is what it is, but I guess you don't see the red flags when you get a nice pay boost and a shiny company on your resume).
>Easy example is how Big 3 automakers were 100% unionized in the 1970s and have since shed about 500,0000 American jobs despite producing more automobiles than ever.
yes, almost like they spent the last 50 years working with the federal government to break down union powers. Surely isn't a plethora of literature on that.
>Unions tend to be good at bargaining for better pay and benefits, but the current status quo is that most tech workers already have decent pay and benefits anyway.
You forget stability. Making big money one year and none another year just averages out to "okay".
It's because they outsourced most roles starting in the 90s. They don't need as many people due to efficiency gains, but not "hollow out entire cities" levels of efficiency. Human labor is still necessary, and human labor in other parts of the world will be cheaper than many automation gains for times to come.
That doesn't tell me we got efficiency gains, they just shifted models on how and what to make. And where they make it. If we had true efficiency gains there'd be more cars sold, perhaps at cheaper prices.
The big 3 produced 15.66 million passenger cars in 2025.
How many EU's are migrating to the US?
Most people's solutions in first world countries is not to go through the arduous process of finding work in another country and leaving behind their entire culture and network behind in hopes of a better life. That is not the same decision you make as if you're jumping to another state/province (which in itself is already a big life change).
What Job creation? The last 3 years have only shedded IT roles (what the tech industry falls under) in the jobs report.
Or, from an IP-driven industry perspective, the offshoring of Hollywood following the SAG and WGA strikes in the early 2020s.
And if IATSE couldn't stop VFX from being offshored back in the 2000s and 2010s, then tech unions wouldn't be able to either.
Edit: can't reply
> Without film industry unions, might the offshoring have been undertaken even earlier?
Not really. VFX was already largely offshored by the early 2010s despite only starting as an industry in the 1990s.
> Yeah but this is a limited perspective. If the union was truly international (like they _used_ to be) VFX workers could push for high wages wherever they worked.
VFX workers in most countries are not unionized either, and much of the industry has already shifted to ASEAN, China, and India where there is no real unionization to begin with.
And the experience of the VFX industry is probably the best example of what would happen to a heavily unionized software driven industry.
Edit: can't reply
> are you arguing that it’s better to just straight up fire people
Nope, but there is a real risk that what arises is labor immobility and blocking new entrants.
I don't know about the US, but I spent 4.5 months trying to get a new job here in the EU as a senior dev. Everyone tells me that was quick.
We're already doing that without uniuons. Older folk can't afford to retire and new grads cannot get a leg in to start their careers. we're talking something like a quarter of new grads who cannot get any job in their field out of college.
Yes, let's point to examples of intentional union decay as proof that unions do not work.
>VFX was already largely offshored by the early 2010s
And there's still VFXs jobs domestically. For the same reasons offshoring tech in the 2010's didn't work out
> much of the industry has already shifted to ASEAN, China, and India where there is no real unionization to begin with.
Most countries are not "at-will" like the US. those houses cannot just layoff people on whim.
That said, yes. VFX is very much a contractor-driven field. But there's a different between knowing the end of a contract, and waking up one day to realize your key fob doesn't work and you're locked out of your account. You get to plan around the instability.