I used to feel the same as you, but after years of salary negotiations I began to realize how disadvantaged employees are in the negotiations. In part due to information asymmetry, but also negotiation expertise--or lack thereof.
Given the demand for top talent we are largely underpaid, at least look at the multipliers that top engineers can generate.
So, imagine what you could achieve with collective negotiations. You want a death march to achieve a deadline, great then pay in overtime or stock at 1.5x my salary. You've given me new responsibilities, great I love the new challenge but now contractually we are obliged to open salary discussions to bring my salary inline with those new responsibilities (usually this happens 6 months later). Just a few ideas off the top of my head.
Yep, us programmers are usually introverted but more than that we just have never been given lessons on negotiations. Business people have classes on psychology and on how to deal with workers and clients and they have far more social training and skill to use in their negotiations. Us programmers, jesus christ, we can't even negotiate to be able to use a paltry $500 training budget.
Same. It took 2 months to get a Macbook Pro; it took a month to get a monitor (and the CTO himself walked over to buy it); and I ended up bringing my own keyboard and mouse and mouse pad and headphones. I'll end up bringing in my own monitor to dual monitor and buy my own thunderbolt->dvi cable. It's far easier than trying to negotiate expensing and having to justify it.
I just got my 2009 MBP replaced last month. What a struggle. I finally had to find the right person and explain how it was an embarrassment in front of customers to have a laptop that can't handle our software. I buy my own keyboards, mice, dongles, etc but I'm taking those with me if I leave. We have a program that allows you to purchase things. I ordered a mouse one time and was told the order total amount was too little. So I added a few other things I might need and was denied.
Given the demand for top talent we are largely underpaid, at least look at the multipliers that top engineers can generate.
So, imagine what you could achieve with collective negotiations. You want a death march to achieve a deadline, great then pay in overtime or stock at 1.5x my salary. You've given me new responsibilities, great I love the new challenge but now contractually we are obliged to open salary discussions to bring my salary inline with those new responsibilities (usually this happens 6 months later). Just a few ideas off the top of my head.