I'm of the opinion that the average software engineer in the USA is already overpaid and underworked with excellent benefits and low incentive to unionize.
I'm simplifying it a bit but if you don't like your job, just grab a copy of Cracking the Coding Interview and apply to big companies. The big companies pay very well, have good benefits and interview everyone because of the need for a high head count
First of all, it should be all tech workers that unionize, not just software engineers. And you should talk to some of your fellow workers and ask if they all think they're being fairly compensated. Even aside from the issue of salary, tech workers are rarely given a fair stake in ownership in the company, and their equity grants often come with lots of clauses to deprive them from what little stake they have.
I suggest you seek out other opinions if you believe tech workers are under-worked. Perhaps this is the case at your job, but the majority of tech workers I know and have worked with are tired of having to put in hours on nights, over the weekends, etc. They're tired of "unlimited vacation" policies not actually guaranteeing them any time to take a vacation. I've had a boss prevent me from leaving at 10PM once before. I mean its not exactly a new realization that many of the most trendy perks for tech companies are ruses to get workers to stay extra hours at the office, that tech companies pursuing the youngest workers often leads to a culture where there's little differentiation between work and company time, etc.
Not to mention that tech workers are often asked to do dubiously ethical things by management. We're asked to automate away the positions of other employees, asked to be lax on security or privacy standards, etc.
Whether or not you believe there are any demands to make, I kind of find it bizarre to suggest that workplace democracy is something tech workers shouldn't demand.
> And you should talk to some of your fellow workers and ask if they all think they're being fairly compensated. Even aside from the issue of salary, tech workers are rarely given a fair stake in ownership in the company, and their equity grants often come with lots of clauses to deprive them from what little stake they have.
Who decides what is fair? You? Tech workers? Speaking about fairness as though it's objective or straight-forward isn't doing anyone any favors. Speaking generally, if employees aren't getting a fair deal, they should look for better jobs. If they can't find better jobs, they're getting a fair deal. There are certainly anti-competitive exceptions, but nothing posted so far suggests we're in such exceptional territory.
> If they can't find better jobs, they're getting a fair deal.
In an idealized market, yes. But given incidents like this, it seems like some employees must be being treated for more fairly than others -- which suggests there's no fairness at all.
I was speaking about fairness across the economy, not fairness within the company. For every Uber there are a dozen companies that actively seek out female employees for diversity purposes. I'm not aware of any data that suggest gender discrimination in the United States (and no, the wage gap is not an example of discrimination, as almost all of it is known to be caused by differing aggregate priorities between the sexes).
The difference between our points of view seems to be the degree to which we regards Uber as an outlier. I don't; it's one of many companies with this very different "fairness"; so I don't think we can take the market at face value.
Perhaps. I'd love more data on the subject. The data closest data I'm familiar with pertain to fair compensation between genders (not necessarily sexual harassment); and these data suggest that all but 4% of the wage cap can be explained by differing priorities between the gender (women prefer safer work with more flexibility rather than a high salary); the other 4% could be attributable to discrimination, misogynistic conditions, or other choice-related variables for which the studies didn't control. If so many companies were as bad as this article describes, I would expect that 4% number to be much larger (there are other explanations, but they don't seem very plausible to me). At any rate, we probably need better data (or maybe the data exist, but I'm not aware of them?).
Flexibility in job position is a matter of industry -- since one can not take a skill everywhere -- so looking at data that is across all industries won't speak to how fair (or not) the market is with regards to a particular role/salary/conditions combo.
> Who decides what is fair? You? Tech workers? Speaking about fairness as though it's objective or straight-forward isn't doing anyone any favors.
The beauty of a union is there doesn't have to be an objective definition. A union gives you a democratic voice to advocate for what you think is fair. Without organized labor power, your voice is completely ignorable.
> Speaking generally, if employees aren't getting a fair deal, they should look for better jobs. If they can't find better jobs, they're getting a fair deal. There are certainly anti-competitive exceptions, but nothing posted so far suggests we're in such exceptional territory.
This is a completely naive understanding of what finding a job is like. Leaving a job can be a strike against a person in the hiring process, not to mention it consumes a lot of time, leaves someone uncompensated and without benefits during the process, etc. This also assumes engineer competency is something we can effectively gauge in the hiring process or otherwise (just search "hiring" on hacker news to get the general sentiment among engineers about how good we are at this).
Imagine if this was the suggestion given to factory workers and coal miners and the early 20th century (not that I think the worker conditions are comparable, but its illustrative of how naive it is to believe that market forces are sufficient for providing fair compensation). This is a marginalist's definition of "fair" that doesn't jive with any real human person's.
The real question is why you are so fervantly against having a democratic voice in the workplace.
How is it a beauty? Stupid decision made by 1000 people is better than by one? At least if I make stupid decision I am to blame and I can fix it. If 1000 people make it, I have 1/1000 of infuence (in fact even less if I am not eloquent or persuasive) and can't change anything. Talk about ignorable. I certainly don't need a "democracy" to take my decisions for me. There's a place for it as we can't each personally decide about national defence or building interstate highway, but I can certainly talk to my boss.
As an individual you have virtualy zero chance of effecting any change - I have how ever got several thousand people a better pension at British Telecom (I was the secretary for one of the larger BT union branches)
My experience suggests the opposite - I've successfully effected change of my personal conditions several times, without help of any unions. So did many other people I know personally.
Of course, it is natural for union officials to see themselves as benevolent godlike figures distributing goods to the plebes. But this particular plebe is doing just fine without you and would like to continue as long as possible without any unions.
And BTW guess what I found as looking up BT pensions on Google?
Are you sure you've told the members of your union about that? Who would be left holding the bag when this thing blows up? Would it be you, or would it be those thousands of people who got unfunded pension promises? Or would it be UK taxpayers who would be forced to pay for it?
Ah Lies dam lies and Pension valuations - the current pension valuation rules are designed by accountants to make it easy for companies to shut them down.
I'm sure these people were very happy with their union reps, and their union reps were very proud of it. Until it turned out their pensions are unfunded. And now the taxpayers have to pay their pensions.
I didn't study the BT issue, but I read a bunch about how California did their pension valuations, and it's a circus. They basically just assume the fund would earn what they want, and project based on that. And needless to say, they assume they're market geniuses. And when it becomes dangerously underfunded, they just screw the newcomers - basically make a Ponzi scheme out of it by making new contributions finance the gaps for the old-timers and have new member to accept much worse conditions then the old ones.
> The beauty of a union is there doesn't have to be an objective definition. A union gives you a democratic voice to advocate for what you think is fair. Without organized labor power, your voice is completely ignorable.
This is silly; non-union employees have a democratic voice and the ability to advocate for "what they think is fair", and their voices aren't completely ignorable or else everyone would make minimum wage.
Perhaps there is some gross advantage to collective bargaining, but unions (in the U.S. at least) seem to discourage productivity, competition, and common sense while fostering corruption. These costs drive employers toward automation or outsourcing, thereby eliminating the very jobs they purport to protect. In my view, the cost of unionizing is too high for all but the most extreme circumstances.
> This is a completely naive understanding of what finding a job is like. Leaving a job can be a strike against a person in the hiring process, not to mention it consumes a lot of time, leaves someone uncompensated and without benefits during the process, etc. This also assumes engineer competency is something we can effectively gauge in the hiring process or otherwise (just search "hiring" on hacker news to get the general sentiment among engineers about how good we are at this).
You're conflating efficiency with fairness. Also, there's no need for an employee to quit before beginning to look for another job.
> Imagine if this was the suggestion given to factory workers and coal miners and the early 20th century (not that I think the worker conditions are comparable, but its illustrative of how naive it is to believe that market forces are sufficient for providing fair compensation). This is a marginalist's definition of "fair" that doesn't jive with any real human person's.
See my previous statement about exceptional circumstances, and take care not to confuse a depressed economy with unfair allocation of resources (although both a shrunken economy and anti-competitive practices contributed to poor conditions during the Great Depression). Maybe market forces alone aren't enough to guarantee fair distribution, but your analogy doesn't demonstrate as much.
> The real question is why you are so fervantly against having a democratic voice in the workplace.
This isn't my position, so I'm not sure how to answer your question... It sounds like you're conflating unionization with "having a democratic voice in the workplace"?
Unions originated as a way to commoditise labor. It has since grown into a way to keep out freelance competitors, and to force employers into doing things (both of which I don't agree with). In terms of commoditsing labor, tech is a very skill specific profession with no cookie cutter employee to sell, which makes it a bad candidate for unions.
This notion that there is a wide distribution in engineer competency has come under a lot of criticism for many reasons (not the least of which being that its often used as a cover for discrimination on the basis of gender): https://lwn.net/Articles/641779/ If you believe there to be such a wide distribution in talent and that salaries at your company are commensurately paid, I suggest you ask your employer if they will disclose every employee's salary and the justification for them.
Even if this we take this for granted, its completely untrue that all unions commoditize a trade by flattening pay. There are plenty of unions that have chosen not to put standardized salaries in contracts or have advocated tiered salary agreements or merit pay. Whether or not these are good things, they are things that unions have done and should dispel with the notion that unions are inflexible towards these concerns by workers.
As for your concern that unions "force employers to do things", well I suggest you consider all of the ways your employer can coerce you to do things and whether you actually have a mutualistic relationship. Many workers don't feel that they do.
> Or the RIAA, even the mega crops of the industry have a union.
...which hardly can be said to be acting in the best interests of either small-time musicians or big stars.
The RIAA actively seeks to withhold royalties from musicians and intentionally makes it very difficult to collect them. A number of big-name stars sued them over this some years back, unsuccessfully.
That's... not true. I was in a unionized software development shop at L3 communications in Camden. It was... different. Having a published document showing how the "top performers" were going to get a 3.5% raise this year while the average people would only get 2.5% was odd. Counting my hours (including signing out for lunch and getting management approval for overtime) was very different. Getting paid overtime was nice!
The problem is that if I had stayed there for thirty years, I would have been pretty much guaranteed to make good money. By changing jobs a couple times, I made that same money in 2. So... people who are capable of getting better jobs and willing to risk change simply left, while people looking for stability or who had trouble getting jobs simply stayed. This didn't lead to the type of environment that I enjoyed working in. Your mileage may vary.
Camden, in the UK? Thanks for sharing your experience. Any sort of unionized IT environment in the U.S. is an absolute rarity, if such things exist at all. I don't deny that unions would add an additional layer of complexity and will have unintended drawbacks. But if there were union shops in tech, then at least there will be options for tech workers to choose between stability and rapid growth. Certainly providing the former will help in addressing the ageism in Silicon Valley.
> I'm of the opinion that the average software engineer in the USA is already overpaid and underworked with excellent benefits and low incentive to unionize.
I happen to agree that, relative to other industries, we're overpaid and get to live pretty lavishly for the little sacrifice that working on building systems with code entails.
That said, when you look at the value we generate for the people we work for, and remember how we are necessary to their wealth generation, I think it's worth having a conversation about organizing.
It does, because value generated helps with your best alternative to negotiated agreement. Specifically, there's more money floating around trying to woo freelancers, technical cofounders, etc.
Also, it sets their BATNA as well - how much value they miss out on while working on replacing you.
> Also, it sets their BATNA as well - how much value they miss out on while working on replacing you.
Ah I never thought about that.
I don't really get what you mean with respect to more money to get freelancers and such. Isn't the compensation of freelancers directly related to how much they would have to pay employees anyway? After all, I can only assume that if it's significantly cheaper to hire an employee, they would do so.
I would have thought too that freelancers have some special skillsets, which make them less easy to find, and thus less replaceable as well, but I don't have any data to back that up.
It matters. The floor is how easy you are to replace. The ceiling is the marginal value that you provide to the company. Considering how incredibly high that marginal value is, there is a lot of upward pressure at the top of the scale.
Doctors, lawyers, professional athletes, and leading Hollywood actors and actresses might all be overpaid relative to other professions, and yet they all have professional organizations, even unions, representing them. What makes software engineers so exceptional?
Well, for instance, some amount of power to bargain for better treatment and basic protections, like say a healthy/safe workplace where you don't have to worry about being harassed by a superior and then ignored by HR.
Right now, companies like Uber can treat workers poorly -- apparently at a policy/organizational level even -- because the only thing they feel they have to fear is a bit of bad PR. No one has these workers' backs. HR is concerned with protecting the company. And the workers likely don't have the time, money nor stamina to fight a huge corporation with a lawsuit.
That's why workers need to band together to look out for one another. The deck is already stacked against them.
> Doctors, ... might all be overpaid relative to other professions, and yet they... have professional organizations, even unions, representing them
Doctors do not have professional organizations or unions representing them.
The AMA is frequently mis-cited by people not familiar with the industry as a union, but it's not one at all. Only 25% of doctors are members of the AMA (most of them only because they require licenses to CPT codes, which the AMA has a monopoly over) and the AMA does not advocate for physicians' interests.
In no meaningful sense does the AMA "represent" doctors at large.
> The AMA doesn't advocate for physician interests? How so?
The AMA sometimes does things that align with doctors' interests, but only incidentally. It's allegiance is to itself as an institution, not to doctors, and it will further its own interests over doctors' every time the two collide.
As one example listed upthread, they advocate increasing the supply of physicians to lower physician salaries, which is directly against doctors' interests but in line with their own. Similarly, their stranglehold over CPT codes undeniably harms physicians and places them under even more control of payers' interests, but because it provides the AMA with a monopoly stream of revenue, the AMA clutches to it.
> I think what you're likely getting at is how heterogenous physician interests are considering each specialty.
I wasn't, but incidentally, that's the exact problem that unions do have. The leadership has the incentive to throw minority group interests under the bus in order to appease the majority of its membership. Closed shops (the AMA would not be one) are the most ruthless, because the only alternative their members have is to find employment in another industry altogether.
I agree that in its current state, the AMA does not do a whole lot for physicians. However, I would argue that if more physicians took an active interest in policies that benefitted all specialties, the AMA wouldn't be this shell of an organization that benefitted themselves more than others.
That being said, maybe sticking with state organizations might be a more fruitful endeavor.
Additionally, while physicians are a heterogenous bunch, there are many issues that almost all physicians agree with. Use the AMA to collectively lobby for those, and stick to the specialty organizations to push for more individual issues.
I think the average software engineer is underpaid relative to the value that they deliver to a company and the economy in general. Relative to other professions, sure. But I think that if a tech company makes enough to (in one instance) pay out dividends, they have spare cash to raise wages or provide bonuses to those that generated the value in the first place.
Agreed, I think relatively high compensation is something engineers can get caught up on when discussing the idea of unionizing (though its worth noting that we're paid salaries closer to electricians and plumbers than we are to specialist doctors, not that this is really apples to apples in terms of education required).
Even though we earn good wages, its relatively easy to see that workers are not often reaping the benefits of surplus value and have no ability to weigh in on determinations of how that value is allocated. More importantly, the advantages of a union are not limited to being able to negotiate a better salary, there are lots of workplace conditions that can be pretty oppressive in the tech industry, and unions offer the ability to improve all of them.
>I think the average software engineer is underpaid relative to the value that they deliver to a company and the economy in general.
People see the sticker price of things and do some napkin math, but I'd be willing to bet in most cases, if that employee were to make the product on their own (with no help or resources or existing customers), they would not be able to make the same amount of money because they would have to face "new company" risks and statistics. That is pretty bleak.
"I'm of the opinion that the average software engineer in the USA is already overpaid and underworked"
Given how much money these companies make directly off of our work, and given the prevalence of death marches across the industry, I cannot take this position seriously.
I'm simplifying it a bit but if you don't like your job, just grab a copy of Cracking the Coding Interview and apply to big companies. The big companies pay very well, have good benefits and interview everyone because of the need for a high head count