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As a California tech worker (where the article is focused), I have zero interest in joining a union and firmly believe that much of what has been possible as a

As a California tech worker (where the article is focused), I have zero interest in joining a union and firmly believe that much of what has been possible as a tech employee (high paying, interesting career) is in part because we don't have unions, and instead employees own equity and get valuable skills. Modern tech workers arguably have the best career deal in the history of humankind. I see no upside in killing the goose with the golden egg.

DiscourseFan 1mo ago
Yeah just wait until you get laid off
- alephnerd 1mo ago
  Unions don't help with that as can be seen with Volkswagen or much of Detroit. 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.
  - mikojan 1mo ago
    Volkswagen is perhaps the greatest counter-example. The union in Germany converted every layoff initiative in whole or in part (more often in whole) into partial retirements, backfill stops, reduced working hours, compensation freezes.
    - alephnerd 1mo ago
      100,000 jobs were still lost and there is no one else who can absorb them. 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.
      - DiscourseFan 1mo ago
        Wait a second, are you arguing that it’s better to just straight up fire people? In that case, the company is absorbing the lion’s share of the profits (or whatever profit is left) so you are effectively arguing in favor of shielding an entity over the livelihoods of the people who work within it.
        throw-the-towel 1mo ago
        To butcher a famous poem, it's better to have hired and lost than never to have hired at all. Restrictions on letting go of enployees mean that companies are afraid to hire. They double check and triple check, they reject everyone they feel even the tiniest bit suspicious of, they try to protect themselves with ultra long probation periods, etc. 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.
      - johnnyanmac 1mo ago
        >there is a real risk that what arises is labor immobility and blocking new entrants. 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.
  - Apocryphon 1mo ago
    Without film industry unions, might the offshoring have been undertaken even earlier?
    - throw-the-towel 1mo ago
      History knows no conditionals.
  - Melatonic 1mo ago
    VFX workers did try to unionize along with software engineers. Major tech companies colluded illegally and were caught doing this. This was way before the AI boom
  - DiscourseFan 1mo ago
    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.
  - johnnyanmac 1mo ago
    >Unions don't help with that as can be seen with Volkswagen or much of Detroit. 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.
- jamestimmins 1mo ago
  I've been laid off. It was fine because software is literally the most marketable skill in the world. 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.
  - Apocryphon 1mo ago
    Within the last four years?
    - hylaride 1mo ago
      I was canned early last year. Looking for a new job was mostly fine. It wasn't insanely easy like 4 years ago and I had to network a bit, but there very much is still demand for qualified people. Would suck to be in this market as an entry-level engineer, though.
      - johnnyanmac 1mo ago
        My network has all experienced at least one layoff in the last 2 years. Every single person I talked with except maybe 1 or 2 people. And they don't feel good about their studio. YMMV.
  - johnnyanmac 1mo ago
    > software is literally the most marketable skill in the world. I see you haven't been in the current job market.
- throw-the-towel 1mo ago
  It's still not clear to me whether union protection is going to be worth the decrease in job creation. There's a reason Europe has way less IT positions with worse salaries.
  - DiscourseFan 1mo ago
    I think you’ll find that at the very least unions preserve jobs in contracting industries, which software is clearly in the process of.
  - eatYourFood 1mo ago
    [dead]
  - braiamp 1mo ago
    Salary isn't even be all end all. In fact, higher salary might be worse, because in total you have to pay out of pocket for things your europeans counterparts. Therefore they should have more discretionary income compared to a US worker (I don't think I have to source this).
    - satvikpendem 1mo ago
      Actually it is, because you can make money in the US and then retire in Europe or wherever else you want and live like a king, as many people I know have done.
    - throw-the-towel 1mo ago
      This gets trotted out every time, but let's be realistic: you can't pay your rent in European good vibes.
    - DiscourseFan 1mo ago
      No, the benefits Europeans get do not translate to any equivalence to the money an Average American makes. The per capita income is like 100k a year now.
    - ThrowawayR2 1mo ago
- missedthecue 1mo ago
  Most tech workers I have met with parent commenters opinion have been laid off at various times in their career. 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.
  - triceratops 1mo ago
    > most tech workers don't have bad pay or 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.
    - missedthecue 1mo ago
      But despite those margins, it's also an industry with a LOT of unprofitable businesses, unlike any other industry in history. From many people's perspective, if they already earn well, why rock the boat in a high effort high risk way so that the union can negotiate an 8% raise instead of a 4% raise. I don't need the money. And the bad to worst case outcomes could give me serious irreversible buyers remorse.
      - triceratops 1mo ago
        > I don't need the money. I promise you, management doesn't think that way.
  - DiscourseFan 1mo ago
    A friend of mine at Amazon got laid off during their big stupid AI push last year and yeah, being paid like $150k a year sounds nice until you realize that only covers basic living expenses in, say, Manhattan. Now was Amazon right to fire so many people for basically no reason? No, but software on its own is no longer marketable. One person can generate a hundred times more code than before the advent of LLMs, so you only need one person to do the job of a hundred. Now, it takes some skill, that takes years to develop, to use LLMs effectively in the workplace, so Amazon was incredibly short sighted to believe it was just some magical box that fixed everything automatically. But that doesn’t mean companies won’t be making similar moves, in the aggregate, in 10 years, when leaner competitors come to rip a chunk out of their profits. Do you see the capex of major tech companies now? They are _scared_, they have every right to be. You have to be just as nearsighted as those Amazon bosses to believe that things will continue as they always have, that this is just a short dip in a long term regression to the mean.
Apocryphon 1mo ago
ZIRP era perspective
ktallett 1mo ago
This golden egg has a funny smell. You are exclusively focusing on high paying as interesting is found in many careers. Lots of people don't trade rights for cash. Many prefer a comfortable lifestyle that protects their families and life style, whilst allowing them to just do a fair day's work in exchange for pay. It is far better if people don't feel they need to put in endless hours or always have to please someone to avoid getting fired.
fnord77 1mo ago
until the VC money runs out (e.g. high interest rates) and we have to grind away at some awful, large company
- satvikpendem 1mo ago
  Oh the horror of making 500k working at a large company of Google. Seriously, I wonder if tech workers really even understand how lucky they are being able to sit at a desk instead of, say, toiling away in the mines.
  - fnord77 1mo ago
    SWE salaries aren't 500k everywhere. Even in expensive places in Europe you're lucky if you break 100k
    - satvikpendem 1mo ago
      I don't count Europe to be honest, they don't have an engineering culture. Regardless 100k is still good, better than making a third that toiling in the fields or mines.
hackthemack 1mo ago
These topics are just so difficult to debate. They are filled with feelings and one person's perspective or anecdote, and it is difficult to drill down into what is true or what is not true. You wrote "Modern tech workers arguably have the best career deal in the history of humankind". How do you know? And, for the sake of argument, let us say it is the best deal in the history of humankind, does that make it fair that the big tech companies did the following... As a small rebuttal of sorts, consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L... You are making less money than what you would have been making if that illegal arrangement had not been made.
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
- adamisom 1mo ago
  >How do you know? Well, if a European dev asked me how I could possibly know if they'd make more in a less regulated environment, I would point to American salaries. Agree it's hard to know things and that antitrust arrangement was bad. If we're talking policy, we are implicitly accepting counterfactual reasoning (because otherwise why would we change policy).
  - hackthemack 1mo ago
    Yep. We can go around and around. Like, does health care count for some of the discrepancy? Or the more generous time off that Europeans typically have? I do recall some reports that concentrated on just workers that had unions in the United States versus workers in a similar field that did not have unions, and it concluded that unionized workers get paid more. But, it was not the tech sector, so someone, maybe you, will argue it does not count. Just very, very difficult to get to the bottom of what is the best way. I am in the we should unionize camp. My stance is based on, the tech companies have way more leverage than you or I. They do not work in your interest. A union is imperfect but it is better than nothing to get "some" leverage back.
- bko 1mo ago
hnav 1mo ago
The underlying thesis for the valuation of all these AI labs is that 80% of tech workers can be replaced with automation.
- kxjwidjwjdj 1mo ago
  Except they can’t and these AI labs know that very well, which is why their marketing push is always so overpoweringly annoying: they have to convince you because they know they are wrong and their product will not deliver what they are promising.
- satvikpendem 1mo ago
  Then why are these labs actively hiring engineers?
- bko 1mo ago
  Unions will obviously save the industry and its employees. Worked for the auto workers...
  - throw-the-towel 1mo ago
    And the coal workers too. If the industry itself is dying pr mutating then the workers are screwed either way, union or no union.
    - DiscourseFan 1mo ago
      So, union is always better than no union, is what you're saying?
well_ackshually 1mo ago
The lack of union is exactly the reason why every software developer shut the fuck up and took money in exchange for building spyware, tracking software, ran psychological experiments on unknowing people and generally contributed to the destruction of society. "Engineers" would have the balls to stand up to it, and unions would be the backbone that helps it happen. Instead, you got a nice paycheck, and made sure to make the world actively worse for everyone. Good job.
superfrank 1mo ago
> Modern tech workers arguably have the best career deal in the history of humankind. I see no upside in killing the goose with the golden egg. I agree, but that's actually one of the strongest arguments for why tech workers should unionize now. Wages are high because employees have leverage due to 10-15 years of demand for skilled workers being higher than supply. If you wait until that leverage is gone to form a union then you've lost a lot of the leverage to negotiate for better conditions as a union. For the record, I've been in a union in another industry much earlier in my career, and I'm pretty on the fence about a tech workers union, but I think your argument is pretty short sighted.
braiamp 1mo ago
Part of what made the "no union" deal work out for early tech employees was that supply was scarce and demand was exploding. Good pay and equity weren't really a function of not having a union, they were a function of being early in a market with more jobs than workers. We should keep that separated, before crediting the lack of a union for the result. That's leverage you didn't build and don't control and it's already eroding as the market catches up. Which is why collective bargaining needs to exists, a way to hold onto ground when individual leverage isn't guaranteed. BTW, it's not like unions had it easy. Even as they were legally recognized (organized labor was treated as a antitrust problem), the judiciary has in the US been dismantling the little foothold it has after it. The US needed 2 new laws to actually get something. And even then, it doesn't enjoy the same flexibilities that other forms of collective arraignment has, such as capital, in the way of "right-to-work" laws, at-will employment and strikes aren't protected as they should. Hell, legal existence and being on equal footing with the other side of the table have never been the same thing.
matheusmoreira 1mo ago
> is in part because we don't have unions Not really. It is all about leverage. When you've got what they want, and they can't get it anywhere else, they pay the price. Whatever leverage tech workers have, they would have even more if they unionized. Salaries are high? Maybe they could be even higher. These trillion dollar corporations can afford it. > employees own equity Why would this be mutually exclusive with unionization?
insane_dreamer 1mo ago
sure, you haven't needed the protections that unions provides so far (and tech companies have wisely provided tech workers with enough benefits so that they don't feel the need to unionize. that's going to change. > I see no upside in killing the goose with the golden egg. AI is going to kill the goose
baubino 1mo ago
Unionization succeeds first and foremost when workers have significant leverage. That leverage is irrespective of how much workers get paid but is based on how critical those workers are to a given type of work or given industry. What you are describing shows the immense amount of leverage tech workers have had for the last two decades or so and now with AI that leverage will only lessen. Unionization is fundamentally about maintaining control over your own labor (of which salary is a part but not the only concern). Unionizing 3-5 years ago would have been best but next best is now.
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
deleted 1mo ago
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preg_match 1mo ago
Most other engineers are also not union, and they don't experience our high salaries or supreme career mobility. I think it was always a factor of demand and the domain. Software makes money without making anything physical. It therefore scales infinitely, trivially. Yes it doesn't actually, but the marginal cost is so, so small that it effectively does, especially when compared to any physical good. So, software has always been rated for extreme growth. Investors absolutely love software for that reason. They don't like bridges, or planes. But none of this is set in stone. Software engineers are losing leverage by the day. It's possible our salaries, stability, mobility, and equity will all decline. That does happen to careers sometimes. We're just assuming things will continue as they are, but they're already not, so I don't think that's a safe assumption. Unions are, ultimately, about balancing leverage. You have to understand that, as an individual worker, you have little to no leverage. As a software engineer you have, arguably, the most leverage of any individual workers, and even then it's incredibly lopsided. You are purely at the behest of the company and the market, for the most part. Your control is an illusion, carefully implanted in your brain through decades of propaganda. Unions do not suddenly give you perfect leverage, but they certainly give you more. With the layoffs we've seen, how many engineers wanted that? And, what could they have done? Well... a lot of people are now realizing, nothing. They had no control. They are passengers.

DiscourseFan 1mo ago

Yeah just wait until you get laid off

alephnerd 1mo ago
Unions don't help with that as can be seen with Volkswagen or much of Detroit. 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.
- mikojan 1mo ago
  Volkswagen is perhaps the greatest counter-example. The union in Germany converted every layoff initiative in whole or in part (more often in whole) into partial retirements, backfill stops, reduced working hours, compensation freezes.
  - alephnerd 1mo ago
    100,000 jobs were still lost and there is no one else who can absorb them. 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.
    - DiscourseFan 1mo ago
      Wait a second, are you arguing that it’s better to just straight up fire people? In that case, the company is absorbing the lion’s share of the profits (or whatever profit is left) so you are effectively arguing in favor of shielding an entity over the livelihoods of the people who work within it.
      - throw-the-towel 1mo ago
        To butcher a famous poem, it's better to have hired and lost than never to have hired at all. Restrictions on letting go of enployees mean that companies are afraid to hire. They double check and triple check, they reject everyone they feel even the tiniest bit suspicious of, they try to protect themselves with ultra long probation periods, etc. 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.
    - johnnyanmac 1mo ago
      >there is a real risk that what arises is labor immobility and blocking new entrants. 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.
- Apocryphon 1mo ago
  Without film industry unions, might the offshoring have been undertaken even earlier?
  - throw-the-towel 1mo ago
    History knows no conditionals.
- Melatonic 1mo ago
  VFX workers did try to unionize along with software engineers. Major tech companies colluded illegally and were caught doing this. This was way before the AI boom
- DiscourseFan 1mo ago
  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.
- johnnyanmac 1mo ago
  >Unions don't help with that as can be seen with Volkswagen or much of Detroit. 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.
jamestimmins 1mo ago
I've been laid off. It was fine because software is literally the most marketable skill in the world. 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.
- Apocryphon 1mo ago
  Within the last four years?
  - hylaride 1mo ago
    I was canned early last year. Looking for a new job was mostly fine. It wasn't insanely easy like 4 years ago and I had to network a bit, but there very much is still demand for qualified people. Would suck to be in this market as an entry-level engineer, though.
    - johnnyanmac 1mo ago
      My network has all experienced at least one layoff in the last 2 years. Every single person I talked with except maybe 1 or 2 people. And they don't feel good about their studio. YMMV.
- johnnyanmac 1mo ago
  > software is literally the most marketable skill in the world. I see you haven't been in the current job market.
throw-the-towel 1mo ago
It's still not clear to me whether union protection is going to be worth the decrease in job creation. There's a reason Europe has way less IT positions with worse salaries.
- DiscourseFan 1mo ago
  I think you’ll find that at the very least unions preserve jobs in contracting industries, which software is clearly in the process of.
- eatYourFood 1mo ago
  [dead]
- braiamp 1mo ago
  Salary isn't even be all end all. In fact, higher salary might be worse, because in total you have to pay out of pocket for things your europeans counterparts. Therefore they should have more discretionary income compared to a US worker (I don't think I have to source this).
  - satvikpendem 1mo ago
    Actually it is, because you can make money in the US and then retire in Europe or wherever else you want and live like a king, as many people I know have done.
  - throw-the-towel 1mo ago
    This gets trotted out every time, but let's be realistic: you can't pay your rent in European good vibes.
  - DiscourseFan 1mo ago
    No, the benefits Europeans get do not translate to any equivalence to the money an Average American makes. The per capita income is like 100k a year now.
  - ThrowawayR2 1mo ago
missedthecue 1mo ago
Most tech workers I have met with parent commenters opinion have been laid off at various times in their career. 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.
- triceratops 1mo ago
  > most tech workers don't have bad pay or 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.
  - missedthecue 1mo ago
    But despite those margins, it's also an industry with a LOT of unprofitable businesses, unlike any other industry in history. From many people's perspective, if they already earn well, why rock the boat in a high effort high risk way so that the union can negotiate an 8% raise instead of a 4% raise. I don't need the money. And the bad to worst case outcomes could give me serious irreversible buyers remorse.
    - triceratops 1mo ago
      > I don't need the money. I promise you, management doesn't think that way.
- DiscourseFan 1mo ago
  A friend of mine at Amazon got laid off during their big stupid AI push last year and yeah, being paid like $150k a year sounds nice until you realize that only covers basic living expenses in, say, Manhattan. Now was Amazon right to fire so many people for basically no reason? No, but software on its own is no longer marketable. One person can generate a hundred times more code than before the advent of LLMs, so you only need one person to do the job of a hundred. Now, it takes some skill, that takes years to develop, to use LLMs effectively in the workplace, so Amazon was incredibly short sighted to believe it was just some magical box that fixed everything automatically. But that doesn’t mean companies won’t be making similar moves, in the aggregate, in 10 years, when leaner competitors come to rip a chunk out of their profits. Do you see the capex of major tech companies now? They are _scared_, they have every right to be. You have to be just as nearsighted as those Amazon bosses to believe that things will continue as they always have, that this is just a short dip in a long term regression to the mean.

Apocryphon 1mo ago

ZIRP era perspective

ktallett 1mo ago

This golden egg has a funny smell. You are exclusively focusing on high paying as interesting is found in many careers. Lots of people don't trade rights for cash. Many prefer a comfortable lifestyle that protects their families and life style, whilst allowing them to just do a fair day's work in exchange for pay. It is far better if people don't feel they need to put in endless hours or always have to please someone to avoid getting fired.

fnord77 1mo ago

until the VC money runs out (e.g. high interest rates) and we have to grind away at some awful, large company

satvikpendem 1mo ago
Oh the horror of making 500k working at a large company of Google. Seriously, I wonder if tech workers really even understand how lucky they are being able to sit at a desk instead of, say, toiling away in the mines.
- fnord77 1mo ago
  SWE salaries aren't 500k everywhere. Even in expensive places in Europe you're lucky if you break 100k
  - satvikpendem 1mo ago
    I don't count Europe to be honest, they don't have an engineering culture. Regardless 100k is still good, better than making a third that toiling in the fields or mines.

hackthemack 1mo ago

These topics are just so difficult to debate. They are filled with feelings and one person's perspective or anecdote, and it is difficult to drill down into what is true or what is not true. You wrote "Modern tech workers arguably have the best career deal in the history of humankind". How do you know? And, for the sake of argument, let us say it is the best deal in the history of humankind, does that make it fair that the big tech companies did the following... As a small rebuttal of sorts, consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L... You are making less money than what you would have been making if that illegal arrangement had not been made.

deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
adamisom 1mo ago
>How do you know? Well, if a European dev asked me how I could possibly know if they'd make more in a less regulated environment, I would point to American salaries. Agree it's hard to know things and that antitrust arrangement was bad. If we're talking policy, we are implicitly accepting counterfactual reasoning (because otherwise why would we change policy).
- hackthemack 1mo ago
  Yep. We can go around and around. Like, does health care count for some of the discrepancy? Or the more generous time off that Europeans typically have? I do recall some reports that concentrated on just workers that had unions in the United States versus workers in a similar field that did not have unions, and it concluded that unionized workers get paid more. But, it was not the tech sector, so someone, maybe you, will argue it does not count. Just very, very difficult to get to the bottom of what is the best way. I am in the we should unionize camp. My stance is based on, the tech companies have way more leverage than you or I. They do not work in your interest. A union is imperfect but it is better than nothing to get "some" leverage back.
bko 1mo ago

hnav 1mo ago

The underlying thesis for the valuation of all these AI labs is that 80% of tech workers can be replaced with automation.

kxjwidjwjdj 1mo ago
Except they can’t and these AI labs know that very well, which is why their marketing push is always so overpoweringly annoying: they have to convince you because they know they are wrong and their product will not deliver what they are promising.
satvikpendem 1mo ago
Then why are these labs actively hiring engineers?
bko 1mo ago
Unions will obviously save the industry and its employees. Worked for the auto workers...
- throw-the-towel 1mo ago
  And the coal workers too. If the industry itself is dying pr mutating then the workers are screwed either way, union or no union.
  - DiscourseFan 1mo ago
    So, union is always better than no union, is what you're saying?

well_ackshually 1mo ago

The lack of union is exactly the reason why every software developer shut the fuck up and took money in exchange for building spyware, tracking software, ran psychological experiments on unknowing people and generally contributed to the destruction of society. "Engineers" would have the balls to stand up to it, and unions would be the backbone that helps it happen. Instead, you got a nice paycheck, and made sure to make the world actively worse for everyone. Good job.

superfrank 1mo ago

> Modern tech workers arguably have the best career deal in the history of humankind. I see no upside in killing the goose with the golden egg. I agree, but that's actually one of the strongest arguments for why tech workers should unionize now. Wages are high because employees have leverage due to 10-15 years of demand for skilled workers being higher than supply. If you wait until that leverage is gone to form a union then you've lost a lot of the leverage to negotiate for better conditions as a union. For the record, I've been in a union in another industry much earlier in my career, and I'm pretty on the fence about a tech workers union, but I think your argument is pretty short sighted.

braiamp 1mo ago

Part of what made the "no union" deal work out for early tech employees was that supply was scarce and demand was exploding. Good pay and equity weren't really a function of not having a union, they were a function of being early in a market with more jobs than workers. We should keep that separated, before crediting the lack of a union for the result. That's leverage you didn't build and don't control and it's already eroding as the market catches up. Which is why collective bargaining needs to exists, a way to hold onto ground when individual leverage isn't guaranteed. BTW, it's not like unions had it easy. Even as they were legally recognized (organized labor was treated as a antitrust problem), the judiciary has in the US been dismantling the little foothold it has after it. The US needed 2 new laws to actually get something. And even then, it doesn't enjoy the same flexibilities that other forms of collective arraignment has, such as capital, in the way of "right-to-work" laws, at-will employment and strikes aren't protected as they should. Hell, legal existence and being on equal footing with the other side of the table have never been the same thing.

matheusmoreira 1mo ago

> is in part because we don't have unions Not really. It is all about leverage. When you've got what they want, and they can't get it anywhere else, they pay the price. Whatever leverage tech workers have, they would have even more if they unionized. Salaries are high? Maybe they could be even higher. These trillion dollar corporations can afford it. > employees own equity Why would this be mutually exclusive with unionization?

insane_dreamer 1mo ago

sure, you haven't needed the protections that unions provides so far (and tech companies have wisely provided tech workers with enough benefits so that they don't feel the need to unionize. that's going to change. > I see no upside in killing the goose with the golden egg. AI is going to kill the goose

baubino 1mo ago

Unionization succeeds first and foremost when workers have significant leverage. That leverage is irrespective of how much workers get paid but is based on how critical those workers are to a given type of work or given industry. What you are describing shows the immense amount of leverage tech workers have had for the last two decades or so and now with AI that leverage will only lessen. Unionization is fundamentally about maintaining control over your own labor (of which salary is a part but not the only concern). Unionizing 3-5 years ago would have been best but next best is now.

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preg_match 1mo ago

Most other engineers are also not union, and they don't experience our high salaries or supreme career mobility. I think it was always a factor of demand and the domain. Software makes money without making anything physical. It therefore scales infinitely, trivially. Yes it doesn't actually, but the marginal cost is so, so small that it effectively does, especially when compared to any physical good. So, software has always been rated for extreme growth. Investors absolutely love software for that reason. They don't like bridges, or planes. But none of this is set in stone. Software engineers are losing leverage by the day. It's possible our salaries, stability, mobility, and equity will all decline. That does happen to careers sometimes. We're just assuming things will continue as they are, but they're already not, so I don't think that's a safe assumption. Unions are, ultimately, about balancing leverage. You have to understand that, as an individual worker, you have little to no leverage. As a software engineer you have, arguably, the most leverage of any individual workers, and even then it's incredibly lopsided. You are purely at the behest of the company and the market, for the most part. Your control is an illusion, carefully implanted in your brain through decades of propaganda. Unions do not suddenly give you perfect leverage, but they certainly give you more. With the layoffs we've seen, how many engineers wanted that? And, what could they have done? Well... a lot of people are now realizing, nothing. They had no control. They are passengers.