Most unions and guilds do this. I don’t find it unreasonable, and would still sign on to a technology workers union, dues and all. Credentialing? I’d be okay with that, otherwise if everyone can “be an engineer” just by saying so, no one is (and credentialing would be superior to the white board gauntlet mess tech interviews currently are).

Collective action is the only way to improve working conditions and dissuade abusive employer practices.

With the current hiring process mess I'm a strong proponent of more universal credentials. I would happily pay and test through some licensing option once than invest similar time for some of the current interview processes at each company. My time is more important than playing continual ambiguious and inaccurate qualification games.

And this shows exactly why many oppose unions in the tech industry, despite the incredulity of union supporters: they make it easier to impose rules which many of us profoundly disagree with.

Those are more like guilds than unions.

What's the difference?

AIUI, unions represent employees, guilds represent independent members of a profession or vocation. Said another way, neither the AMA nor ABA negotiates compensation for their members.

"Presentation!" as Megamind would say. The only difference is the color of the collar (and a whiff of classism).

Historically that's what guilds did.

But that's horrible. I don't want to throw up barriers to entry, in order to keep out new comers.

There are many great engineers that I know who would have been barred from the industry, if we had anything at all similar to the barriers to entry in the medical or "real" engineering industries.

It is because of this that if there is ever a software union, I am going choose "defect" every single time.

I am not going to let these new-comers, that I know, be barred from the amazing jobs in tech, just because they didn't get a degree or pass a test or whatever.

When it comes to development and security engineering a certain demonstrated base qualification might not be a bad thing. It's pretty unbelieveable how quality is handled in software engineering...

When I think about self driving cars I can't help but think about the Therac-25.

Software bugs kill people. Not all software bugs, and not all software, but the lines are getting blurrier. It's not just medical equipment. Phones explode. A connected coffeepot could burn a house down.

The Toyota acceleration bug (where cars would accelerate uncontrollably) was preventable if industry standards were followed. These aren't things you'll find in a Martin Fowler book, there are specific best practices for reliable embedded systems.

Something needs to improve on this front.

If you want to say that people working in self driving cars should have to pass qualification tests or whatever, I don't care about that.

That is a small amount of people though. The vast majority of people are not working on anything at all to do with self driving cars or medical equipment or space X.

Instead, what I care about preventing, and will fight extremely hard to stop, is barriers to entry for the most common software out there.

This most common job being the web developer.

We do. It need Industry standards in order to stop people from making website or apps. If a button doesn't work, in some dumb app, it does not matter. At all.

You might come up with some weird edge case, but we both know that whatever example you come up with is going to be the exception, and not the rule.

The reality is that for the vast majority of software engineering jobs out there, the stakes and consequence of failure are very low.

Anyone handling PII is dealing with high stakes. That's not my opinion, that's the post GDPR world we live in. And that's pretty much everyone in the B2C space.

> that's the post GDPR world we live in.

In America nobody cares about that. This isn't going to effect any of the major companies that matter, and is already causing companies to merely stop doing business in countries that have bad laws like this.

But also, I don't care. I will defect and fight every step of the way any of your efforts to keep out people from non-traditional backgrounds. (regardless of whatever misguided reasons you have to keeping people from non-traditional backgrounds out of the industry)

Your only options are to try to make some sort of law, which is extremely unlikely to happen in the US, or form some sort of union. And I will defect that union hard. Along with a whole lot of other people who do not want to see this industry destroyed. We will defect and sabotage any attempts to do this any way.

Fortunately for me, though, the anti barriers to entry side of the debate and anti union side of the debate is currently massively winning, and the people who are trying to throw up barriers to entry are losing.

All I have to do stop by the nearest tech bootcamp to see just how much the pro barriers to entry side of the debate has lost this war. And those barriers to entry are only continuing to be lowered.

It has never been easier to become a professional programmer. And it is only getting easier.

There have always been barriers to entry to be a programmer. For every self-taught coder, from both the pre-CS as a degree days to the modern day bootcamp devs, there several times as many employers who only want graduates from top-league schools or FAANG experience. Credentialism is not being advocated for by employees, but by employers. If anything, a union could be useful to combat restrictive hiring practices.

The tech world has changed a whole lot in the last 10 years. I know many people who got into the industry by merely going to a tech bootcamp, which got them into a junior engineering position.

Yes, there are still barriers to entry. But the barriers to entry have been massively reduced over the last 10 years. Going to a bootcamp, and getting a job within a couple months used to be unheard of.

Your opinions on what a union "could" be are vastly different than the opinions of what other people want. This whole thread is me responding to a person who literally wants to raise the barrier to entry to tech.

Credentialism is very much being advocated for, by many pro-union/pro-guild people. And history has shown that whenever a union, in every single industry in the world, gets enacted, the result is higher barriers to entry.

Go look at the American Medical Association. Go look at the American Bar Association. Go look at the actor's guild. Screen writers guild. Whatever. It doesn't matter. Pick any high skilled labor union/guild and you will see an organization that is creating barriers left and right, and making it harder for people to get into the industry.

Yes, the current tech industry could be better. But the pro-union people are the ones who are most advocating in favor of keeping out competition/newbies/immigrants, you name it.

> stop doing business in countries that have bad laws like this

That's not how GDPR works. Any EU citizen, regardless of residence is covered. There's no real way around it.

Sure there is!

The way of "getting around it" is to block all traffic coming from certain countries.

Sure, they might sue you anyway, but just imagine how many tens of billions of dollars in damages would be caused to European countries if Google or Facebook started blocking all traffic going into and out of these countries.

There would be huge negative political consequences, that the citizens of these countries would not stand for.

Also, it doesn't matter if they sue you, if your company is entirely based in the US. american companies don't worry that it is illegal to be gay in Saudi Arabia, so I see little reason why they would worry about bad laws in Europe.

But anyway this is completely irrelevant to the topic of conversation, which is barriers to entry in the tech industry.

And in order to fight these barriers to entry, I will defect, and sabotage any unions that try to do this, at every step of the way.

Security is an economic choice of the producing firm for the most part, and there are plenty of certifications and degrees that employers can discriminate on but do not. They even might have the security training and still fuck up.

Reality is, most customers do not want to pay the price for extra security, other than the CYA (Cover Your Ass) kind and it shows.

There need be no credentialing or collusion or universal contract requirements or wage demands. Credentialing/licensing would be particularly ridiculous. A tiny organization with just a lawyer, phone and a website to share info would likely be completely adequate. After all, we are not a group as vulnerable to abuse as coal miners etc.

And kudos to Google for doing the right thing.

This is the thing. I'm never going to be stopped from working with a guy who wants me to work with him simply because some moron in an ivory tower thinks I don't have the credentials. This is good. I won't accept the alternative.

The way quality assurance works in software engineering is way below any other industry - so I wouldn't be surprised if at one point some base qualifications are needed, much like a doctor, architect, nurse or teacher...

Oh I'm of the opinion that it will happen. But I aim to delay it as long as possible until my career ends. After that y'all can turn into a super-IBM. Be my guest.

Imagine that sentence coming from a wannabe doctor or civil engineer.

I don't build things that will kill people if they're wrong. If I get this slightly wrong, the wrong people will be advertised the wrong car. The world won't end.

There's a new story about passwords getting hacked and leaked every month, if not every week. This industry needs stronger standards, and if the industry doesn't come up with it ourselves, the law will.

I don't hold people's data like that. I don't need your law. I don't need your regulation. Always with the slowing down of development. Ugh.

Don't complain to me, complain to all of the Facebooks that resell data to third parties, and all of the Googles who store that so that the NSA can tap into it, and all of the Equifaxes that leak all the data so the criminals can make use of it.

Doesn't matter that you don't want law or regulation.

You'll get them regardless.