Yeah exactly. Stop being a bystander to shitty company practices. A lot of them have forgotten that their employees make them profitable and scalable.

I agree we shouldn't stand for shitty employers. But, especially right now, it can be hard for a dev to find a job. Especially if the dev has dependents taking up time for take home tests etc. Or if they have a visa the employer needs to manage.

I suggest we should have something like an actor's guild instead, where a floor of basic protections are necessary but there's no ceiling on payment and benefits.

What's the difference between that and a union?

Nothing, it is a union.

There isn't any. The Screen Actors Guild is a union that merged with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists union to make what the grandparent comment is likely referring to as the "actor's guild". They are a traditional labor union and member of the AFL-CIO. They are also seemingly poised to go on strike at the end of next month.

Often times when someone criticizes the idea of unions, it is because they don't fully understand their purpose, flexibility, and flaws. For example, that comment could imply that unions somehow cap payments and benefits, but that isn't some universal truth of unions (that person also could just be using guild as a synonym for union, but that isn't necessarily true and it doesn't appear to be how they're using it). Unions negotiate on behalf of their members. If the union members don't want caps on compensation, the union can negotiate for no caps.

And it may be worth noting that "aspiring actor" is probably not considered the epitome of someone on a guaranteed safe and lucrative career path. But it does guarantee that if they can land a job, they're going to get paid scale (~$1k/day I believe).

The film and television unions are a tough nut to crack. On the west coast, that's almost all there is and if you're working you will be in the union easy. Unless you do youtube/streaming content and most of that is non-union.

On the east coast, you're going to be working probably for 10 years before you can get into your union and it's an uphill struggle the whole way.

And union or not, you're only going to get work if people like working with you. One day with a bad attitude and you can find yourself unable to get hired by anyone. Film and TV is long hours and a stressful environment and nobody wants to work with anyone who makes the day harder.

Is it because people get in the union on the west coast and then move east?

Or are you just stuck in the local that you started in (and would then definitely be unwilling to relocate once you’re in?

(Not sure how the regionalization works if the unions are national)

Is it realistically possible to be a actor or screen writer without joining this union? If not, then isn't the union itself a monopoly and a form of tyranny?

You can work with independent studios but you're not going to get distribution.

Tyranny is a pretty hefty word for "can't get a particular job without agreeing to the rules of the employer"

What if a group of distributed "mainstream" (not sure the right term?) writers are unhappy with the rules of their employment, including the rules of their union. Are they able to organize and collectively bargain with both their employers and their union? In other words, when it comes to these large unions that dominate an industry, are sub-groups within that union able to organize and collectively bargain, forming a sub-union of sorts? My understanding is that large unions make it harder for people within the union to organize and collectively bargain, which is, of course, quite ironic.

Unions are democratic entities. A subgroup in that union would need to either directly lobby union leadership or convince their peers. This can include running for union leadership positions themselves.

It works just like democracy does at larger scales. I can't just declare my property its own new state with me as governor just because I don't like the political opinions of the state's leadership. I can however leave that state or leave the country entirely just like a person can leave the union. However, there are obvious repercussions for that decision.

Exactly. I was criticized for using the word tyranny; a union is capable of tyranny to the same extent a democratic government is. Everyone can judge for themselves to what that extent is.

You say a small group can't just form their own country, or in this case, they cannot just form their own union, but they actually could if only the mega-union did not already exist. Thus, my claim that large unions prevent small groups from organizing and collectively bargaining is true. The small group could form their own union if the large union hadn't removed their ability to do so. I feel about large unions the same way I feel about any large group that prevents small groups from organizing.

>You say a small group can't just form their own country, or in this case, they cannot just form their own union, but they actually could if only the mega-union did not already exist. Thus, my claim that large unions prevent small groups from organizing and collectively bargaining is true. The small group could form their own union if the large union hadn't removed their ability to do so.

The small group can form their own union. They just won't be a part of the big union anymore. Like I said, they need to leave the union/state/country.

I don't understand what argument you are really making here. Even within your hypothetical small group, there can be an even smaller group. You effectively are arguing against any type of collective because there will always be some people who disagree.

> The small group can form their own union. They just won't be a part of the big union anymore. Like I said, they need to leave the union/state/country.

How is this different than, let's say, Amazon telling a group, "that's fine if you want to organize, but you'll have to find another company to do it at" and then firing the group. I believe it is illegal for a company to prevent a group from organizing, but apparently it is legal for a union to prevent a group from organizing.

I'm not sure what the solution is, I'm not that knowledgeable about unions beyond recognizing that people within a union lose their ability to form a union (because they're already in a union). I also recognize that once a union is large enough, sub-groups within that union might want to organize independently, but they cannot. Probably what I would argue for is making exclusive contracts with unions illegal.

>How is this different than, let's say, Amazon telling a group, "that's fine if you want to organize, but you'll have to find another company to do it at" and then firing the group. I believe it is illegal for a company to prevent a group from organizing, but apparently it is legal for a union to prevent a group from organizing.

Amazon is preventing the union from organizing. The larger union is not preventing another union from organizing, it is just saying you can't create a rival union while staying a member of another union. People are still free to create a smaller union, they just need to leave the big union.

The smaller union can negotiate with Amazon, the Hollywood studios, or whoever else. The bigger union is also free to negotiate on behalf of its members and get Amazon, the Hollywood studios, or whoever to not work with the smaller union. That is just a negotiation. The group with the more power will get a better deal. That is the whole point of a union. A smaller union has less power and therefore will inherently be less successful than a big union.

Unions often work to solidify power because that results in better deals for its members. That will include both mergers like the previously mentioned SAG-AFTRA merger and this type of behavior to squash rival unions. It all depends on what its members think is the best strategy.

>I'm not that knowledgeable about unions beyond recognizing that people within a union lose their ability to form a union (because they're already in a union).

I just don't understand why this is a flaw. What value do you think this second smaller union will bring to its members that the bigger union can't? If the smaller union wants its own seat at the negotiation table, then it no longer acting as part of the bigger union anyway in which case there is no restriction on the second union being created (unless the big union negotiates for this exclusivity which is within their rights).

The actor’s guild is a union.

There are lots of different unions with lots of different structures. This person is saying we should have a union with a structure similar to that union.

Yes. The Animation Guild, IATSE Local 839, is a good model for a programmer's union.[1] TAG represents animators at Disney, Sony, and some lesser studios. (Mostly Disney now, because Disney acquired everybody else.)

This is the current Master Agreement.[2] It specifies minimum wages, but not maximums. "Nothing in this Agreement shall prevent any individual from negotiating and obtaining from the Producer better conditions and terms of employment than those herein provided."

See section 5, "Hours". "Time worked on the employee's sixth workday of the workweek shall be paid at one and one-half (1½) times the hourly rate provided herein for such employee's classification. Time worked on the employee's seventh workday of the workweek shall be paid at two (2) times the hourly rate provided herein for such employee's classification. Minimum call for the sixth and seventh days shall be four (4) hours. ... All time worked in excess of fourteen (14) consecutive hours (including meal periods) from the time of reporting to work shall be Golden Hours and shall be paid at two (2) times the applicable hourly rate provided herein for such employee's classification."

These are standard union terms in Hollywood. This is why film scheduling is a discipline but software development scheduling is a joke. Hollywood has crunches, and they hit the producer's budget hard. So planning goes into avoiding crunches.

Despite significant efforts, TAG has been unable to unionize game developers.

[1] https://animationguild.org/

[2] https://animationguild.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/2018-2...

The hours bit gets interesting since that also states that animators are hourly rather than salaried.

If you work less than 40 hours in a week, your paycheck is likewise adjusted.

You won't be able to work a 9/80 schedule since the payroll week starts at midnight on Sunday morning. Nor would you necessarily be granted permission.

If you work 6 hours on one day because you were out for some reason rather than 8 hours, you will not necessarily be able to make it up on other days - or even be granted permission to work overtime (because that would be time and a half pay) to compensate.

As programmers we tend to take advantage of the "if all the work gets done we get paid." Get into work at 10 am, leave at 4 pm.

Under the hours provision in that agreement I suspect many programmers would chafe a bit. Under these (and similar) provisions people are butt in a seat for 40 hours a week if they want to be fully paid. Taking a sick child to the doctor on a day for 2 hours means you will only be paid 38 hours for that week.

"But, especially right now, it can be hard for a dev to find a job. "

What ?

are you unaware of major layoffs at major employers?

There are plenty of jobs (and recruiters) still reaching out. Just for smaller companies than the tech giants.

As someone laid off from a smaller company, I’ve been competing for those jobs with the people laid off from the tech giants - for almost half a year now.

Same here. I think this month marks over 6months. What’s stranger is I don’t even see jobs in job boards anymore, at least not ones that don’t look shady. Most of what I see now on say… LinkedIn is spam postings from iffy looking recruiting firms and consultancies.

A lot of previous mega-corp SE's have unrealistic ideas of what normal salaries should be, leading to them being rejected based off salary demand, or rejecting offers themselves.

No, you aren't going to be paid $450k a year to work on our website... that is fantasy land.

There's so many tech jobs available at all sizes of companies, including mega-corps you've never heard of - they're just not as sexy as your FAANG's & co.

Nice try, but I’ve never worked at or even considered FAANG jobs.

Fair, then you shouldn't have much trouble locating a decent job if you're in the tech and/or software field. Despite FAANG layoffs, the field is booming.

Plenty of insurance companies, restaurant conglomerates, car dealership conglomerates, banks, manufacturing companies, big-AG, medicine, commercial property management companies - not to mention all the consulting companies adjacent to nearly every industry imaginable. They all need tech...

Tech != FAANG, was the point.

Fair enough, though I don’t touch consultancies. Which seem to be the mass of jobs I see right now.

There are plenty of job postings. I'm doubtful as to how many of them urgently need to be filled.

Nobody is reaching out to me... and I don't even see job openings I can send my resume anymore.

For example if go to "who is hiring" and do a search for c++ I find almost nothing. The few c++ Jobs that do exist require you to already live nearby because they can't offer relocation assistance or VISA sponsorship.

Meanwhile same search years ago I would find plenty of cool openings to send my resume to.

I am not even getting recruiter spam anymore where people offer me jobs that are unrelated to my skillset.

I was looking for a job 2-3 months ago and the market wasn’t great, but I got solid leads for C++ dev positions at a number of companies. Ended up calling off further contact since I luckily secured a position fairly quickly, but if you’re interested shoot me an e-mail (address in profile) and I’d be happy to forward you the details of the companies/positions.

They're already hiring again

If ExampleCo laid off 1000 javascript developers last week and is trying to hire 20 ML developers this week, then it's true to say they're hiring again, but it's also true that it can be hard for a dev to find a job.

just curious - is there a real world scenario where a company has 1k "javascript" developers and can also lay them off without crippling their position in a given market?

follow up - what market and which company(FAANG counts but must be a single org)?

Are you implying that companies that grew by a factor of two during COVID laying off 10% of their staff means that software is no longer eating the world?

There are endless dev jobs, the market's a little softer for pay thanks to megacap collusion once again, but I see an endless list of jobs online...

Have you tried actually job hunting at the moment? The listings don't respond.

Haha, recruiters have that problem with me. But fair enough, perhaps it's also more location dependent.

Those have been mostly non-dev roles

A couple of friends and myself got laid off in Germany a short while ago - was really tough finding a new job. Very different compared to a year ago. Same for friends from the US and especially the UK.

> "But, especially right now, it can be hard for a dev to find a comically overpaid FAANG job."

I think that's what they meant

I actually think this is the core cause of a lot of current popular hate of capitalism - shitty managers (I'm thinking the /r/antiwork sort of sentiment). People conflate shitty managers with how the system intrinsically works, which is an over simplification.

Now there is an argument that operating in our 'capitalist' system introduces incentives to be a shitty manager (I think this is approximately Chomsky's perspective).

The problem that seems to expose to me, is why do we have so many (shitty) managers. Are managers just prone to be shitty?

Part of me thinks so. I think if you renamed every managers title to other titles like “clerk” and “facilitator” and basically reset what it means to be a manager, it feels like things would be different. At least for a while.

But then my theories swing back the other way. I have observed that many of my peers want to be “managed.” What they like about the arrangement is the feeling of isolated from responsibility and liability. Do as told. It’s sort of an “anti self reliance” thing. An attempt to be, as an adult, in a relationship that looks more like a subservient child-parent relationship.

Management is a skill like any other. Very few people are born competent managers but most people can be trained as such. The trouble is that most organizations promote their top individual contributors to management without giving them additional training. You'll see a lot of snarky comments on HN about MBA programs but the good ones do instill at least some basic level of competence.

Of course training alone is insufficient. The organizational culture and incentives also have to be aligned. The US military puts a major focus on training officers to be effective leaders, and yet the results have been mixed. Toxic leadership is one of the main problems driving their current retention crisis.

> You'll see a lot of snarky comments on HN about MBA programs but the good ones do instill at least some basic level of competence.

I strongly disagree with this. MBA programs are part of the problem in my opinion. They train people to be good "managers" for a company's interests which is often actively hostile to the people who report into that manager.

The MBA-ification of management and companies is to treat people like units of work not humans.

> I have observed that many of my peers want to be “managed.” What they like about the arrangement is the feeling of isolated from responsibility and liability. Do as told. It’s sort of an “anti self reliance” thing. An attempt to be, as an adult, in a relationship that looks more like a subservient child-parent relationship.

What a bizarre take. I like programming, I don't like dealing with all the people stuff. I've run my own business and it involved focusing on all the things I find uninteresting and focusing very little on the things I find very interesting. So for me it's just a matter of not liking that position. This belief that everyone who isn't in management is some sort of troglodyte who can't pick their own nose is very childish.

Note that reddit in general, those whose posts rise in particular and posts that rise to the top of that subreddit even more in particular, is extremely unrepresentative of actually common sentiment.

To get an a less biased view you can chat to people on public transport (in Europe) or talk to your neighbours (in the USA).

> Note that reddit in general, those whose posts rise in particular and posts that rise to the top of that subreddit even more in particular, is extremely unrepresentative of actually common sentiment.

Why?

Because the population of Reddit users is not representative of the population in general. This is true for all such places (including HN).

Reddit has a severe astroturfing problem. Any subreddit that gets any attention (or ends up in /r/all) gets hammered with socket puppets and astroturf campaigns. Groups can very cheaply buy upvotes for pretty much anything.

Reddit has shown little appetite for combating this issue because their value is the number of eyeball-seconds they receive every day. They want to report huge eyeball numbers you investors and advertisers.

A whole bunch of different effects, present on most forms of social media:

Evaporative cooling (if an environment appeals to people they'll join and if an environment gets more extreme those who least like that direction will leave). The presence of visible up votes and downvotes magnifies this effect.

Founder effects. Reddit in general and any given sub in particular was initially populated with people who are a bit unusual in some fashion. E.g. the initial reddit population was very techy. This effect also applies to any Internet forum (both in that Internet forums are used by somewhat odd people like us and that an Internet forum on Thing will pull people interested in Thing and interest in Thing very likely correlates with many other factors, such as socioeconomic status, culture, gender, subculture)

General interest in going online to talk about things. The vast majority of people do not go online to talk and argue with strangers, those who do are different along a number of axes (such as a lack of young kids or higher disagreeableness) which in turn correlate with other traits and beliefs.

In Reddit case there's also an element of active moderation, mostly due to founder effects, but also due to them being the only ones actually caring a lot (being activist) the main subs are policed by a bunch of supermoderators (who are mods in hundreds of subs) with similar views on issues such as trans rights and as a moral duty will actively attempt to remove people who express other viewpoints to keep the place tidy (without the viewpoints that are offensive and wrong).

> the main subs are policed by a bunch of supermoderators (who are mods in hundreds of subs)

This is easily evidenced and is not true. You can check for yourself. Parroting this talking point shows that you do not check your facts.

Top 100 subreddit moderators and number of subs moderated:

* https://gist.github.com/bspammer/d6059d2bfa222a0f340353ae0be...

Your list seems incorrect. Merari01, for example, moderates 243 subs[1]: https://www.reddit.com/user/Merari01/

For example, r/GetMotivated and r/ContagiousLaughter which are not in that gist.

I picked a couple of other users on the list at random such as Sunkisty, TreKs and Blank-Cheque and they're also all over 100.

Where did you get the gist from?

[1] https://imgur.io/a/8KoGyGv

> the main subs

The list is the top 100 subs.

Anyone can create a sub to moderate, so one person having 200+ is going to be mostly squatting -- almost all of those subs are going to be empty.

I got the list from someone who made a script to get the info and posted the results in the github I linked to.

Ah, so you interpreted my statement about "supermoderators (who are mods in hundreds of subs)" to be saying that they are mods of hundreds of the top hundred subs?

Not sure how relevant that list is tbh...

I'm also perplexed as to what criteria is used for "top sub" given that r/ContagiousLaughter (which has 6.7 million subs) and isn't on the list while r/EldenRing (which only has 1.9m) is.

Anyway, are you satisfied that I was not just parroting talking points and had checked myself?

> the main subs are policed by a bunch of supermoderators

This is a common talking point and you are backtracking. By 'main subs' you meant something which you are now trying to get out of on a technicality. You have not proven that what you initially meant was based on any fact checking and my contention is that you were spouting hearsay.

Eh? I thought we cleared this up?

The main subs (e.g. the most popular ones) ARE policed by people who also police hundreds of other subs, right? That was what I meant (and indeed what I wrote). I'm not actually sure what you think I wrote any more...

> People conflate shitty managers with how the system intrinsically works

When the system intrinsically works by producing shitty managers the problem is in the system, by definition.

> When the system intrinsically works by producing shitty managers the problem is in the system, by definition.

Is bad management intrinsic though? Wouldn't that make the presence of good management surprising?

It seems to me that people work better when they enjoy their job and nobody likes working under a bad manager, so bad management is a sign of incompetence and degrades operations.

The presence of bad management is an opportunity to optimize operations; treating people well is generally good for the people and the business.

Managers? Define "managers."

We just saw multiple banks collapse with zero financial penalty for those who were in charge when it happened, even as they were collecting tens of millions in bonuses.

When your compensation is structured in such a way that you can be a monumental failure at your job and you STILL make hundreds of times more than the rank and file employee, then the system is broken.

This is an ownership class problem, not manager class. The owners and their lackeys are the ones approving and justifying these insane compensation packages even as companies lay people off.

What you’re describing is an Oligarchy. Which is technically what the US is.

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/cbo-american-wealt...

Yeah. Go up to that corporation and say: Do Better, capitalists, or I’m walkin’ out that door!

When your best talent leaves you without any recourse, and onboarding new talent takes 3-6+ months, they will definitely start to care. My last company is imploding due to this exact scenario. They didn't want to listen to their experts and are now reaping those particular rewards.

I guess the questions remains, will the management that caused your last company to implode take the right lessons with them to their next job?

Almost certainly not, no.

This only protects "your best talent". The company is free to mistreat all the rest of the people who don't have the unique skill set to guarantee themselves better treatment. That is capitalism working as intended.

A commenter below mentions unions.

This could be the answer.

I think tech workers so far have been paid and treated well (at least where I work) and so haven't felt the need to unionize. But having a union would certainly protect against these kinds of problems. (Being relocated and then immediately laid off)

I was a member of three different unions before I ever switched careers to tech and being able to (and expected to) negotiate my own contracts was one of the biggest factors in me ending up in this industry. I have certainly made orders of magnitude more money and under substantially better conditions.

My experiences in unions were awful and I would never go back to that.

What industry did you work in before?

American workers are the wimpiest creatures on the planet. That's why they don't have unions, tolerate horrible bosses, and have few protections.

And the strongest most productive economy on Earth. Which the employees benefit from.

Which SOME employees benefit from. The poverty rate is too high, too many people in jail for such a rich country. What's the point of being rich when only a tiny percentage of the people benefit?

Well, a lot of the people you're addressing here are the ones benefiting, so I don't know what sort of answer you're expecting.

You can expect people to have empathy and be self-aware. It doesn't mean your expectations will be met, but it's a sad world we live in where you dismiss this as unrealistic.

Everyone in the US is benefiting from this.

People in the US are so comfortable they don't seem to have a clue what real hardship actually is.

Well, at the very least the ones who die from exposure in the winter because they don't have a place to live, the ones who die because they can't afford medical care, and so on have a clue what real hardship is.

"In the United States: 6,660 people died from hypothermia or exposure to cold from 2006 to 2010, an average of 1,320 deaths a year." [1]

It isn't split up along poverty vs. accident lines, but this is not a major cause of death in the US.

[1] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr076.pdf

The deaths amongst the homeless are underrepresented in the statistics for obvious reasons. But ignoring that...

> this is not a major cause of death in the US.

Wait, so people dying due to poverty isn't something that deserves attention just because it isn't common enough?

This discussion is if the United States has an issue with poverty, and the answer is: no it does not.

A tiny fraction of people dying from cold is not an indication that the US has a poverty issue.

Sure help them, no one is disputing that, but that's also not what's being discussed here.

Yes, that's why the life expectancy of the US, the richest empire in history, is ranked 51 out of all countries, just below Cuba and above Albania.

The United States has the highest median income in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income

If we look at the income level of the poorest 10%, the United States ranks 16th—not as good, but still among the 10% best countries: https://ourworldindata.org/poverty (click on the Table tab)

> The United States has the highest median income in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income

Only because it's unique among developed countries in seeing healthcare costs as disposable income.

Economists thought of that; the US is still very high income "after taxes and transfers" and most healthcare costs in the US aren't out of pocket anyway.

> Economists thought of that; the US is still very high income "after taxes and transfers"

You only have to look at the definition in their link to see that US healthcare costs don't get adjusted for.

> most healthcare costs in the US aren't out of pocket anyway.

Right, most people pay health insurance in a way that's indistinguishable from paying taxes in practice (although the US system also comes with significant out-of-pocket costs, so just including insurance costs wouldn't tell the full story). But that "disposable income" metric is defined in a way that considers US-style health insurance voluntary and therefore money spent on that is disposable income (even though it never actually hits someone's bank account in practice), whereas in a country with tax-funded healthcare or mandatory health insurance (unless it qualifies as "social insurance", but normally it doesn't) the costs of that aren't counted in that person's income.

No, it’s in spite of US spending more in taxes on healthcare than what some developed countries use to cover their entire population.

You’re both saying the same thing

That is a "yes even though" not a no

The poverty rate is not high. Actual hunger in the US is so low that they had to pick a new metric "food insecurity" to work on.

Maybe travel a bit and see what actual poverty is.

Sure, when your options are "eat Jack in the Box's 99¢ two tacos deal or starve" you will eat the tacos.

Can't wait until you people are justifying soylent green in a couple decades.

How about access to electricity, clean water, modern medicine.

Even our poor people have cars.

We all benefit and even our pets have a higher quality of life than most people in the third world.

> How about access to electricity, clean water, modern medicine.

> Even our poor people have cars.

The luckier ones, sure, but there are plenty of people in the US that have none of that.

It's not that hard having a productive economy when most of your workforce is mainly composed of essentially indenture servants.

The only way you could say such a thing would be if you were profoundly ignorant on what indentured servitude actually is.

Maybe look it up.

Indeed. The idea that software engineers could be in the top 85th percentile of American income and be identified as "indentured servants" is an absurd notion.

The idea that software engineers account for most of the American workforce (which is what I said) is so egocentric that I hope you just misread.

Seriously. Anyone only has to look for a second and see how many Americans are struggling day to day, paycheck by paycheck. Quick search says up to 78% of Americans do. That’s “essentially indentured servitude”.

They aren't indentured to another person, they're indentured to the laws of nature - needing to eat, find shelter, etc. When in human history has this not been the case?

Where are you living that you are getting free food and housing? Everyone I know is obligated to pay someone for those things. In that way people are "indentured" to those who can provide those things, as there is no reasonable way to procure them without money, which can only be earned by submitting oneself to another's will.

I did. You should do it too, while also trying to grasp it. I said "essentially indentured servants", which is what most of the American workforce is (not just you and your couple of privileged friends).

They earn just enough money to cover their very very basic needs. That's essentially an indentured servant.

If you don't like it, work to change it. Don't hide from the fact trying to redefine it.

"They earn just enough money to cover their very very basic needs. That's essentially an indentured servant."

Have you ever been abroad? What is your standard of not being an indentured servant?

You describe the US workforce with profoundly negative terms that would, in my opinion, fit workforce in Bangladesh or Egypt, if not Congo.

How is a Visa tied to employment _not_ indentured servitude? Isn't the power dynamic and core mechanic essentially that?

It's not wimpiness, it's an essential acceptance of cruelty that is accepted as a neccessary part of the american psyche where not just individuals but businesses have that freedom.

"If I was the company owner or the boss, I might do that to in order to protect my money"

You're describing a mental illness and yet I still agree with you.

They don't? All the tech companies I hear about having unions are American. (They are also big I suppose, but when I worked at Arm in the UK there were frequently outsiders sort of 'protesting' for employees to join. I was never aware of anyone caring who worked there.)

It seems weird to me to have professional unions, doctors are an outlier there, where it's common, and (partly I suppose because) there isn't a professional institution (which overlap slightly) - it's split between unions and the GMC (licencing body, and as a doctor you'd whistle-blow to them for example).

I'd like to see more software engineers be professionally registered, and it be more worthwhile to. (Yes, quite chicken-and-egg I'm sure.) I'm a member of the IET, but to be honest their light on software-relevance. The chartership requirements for example seemed like they would require quite a bit of bullshitting (not lying exactly, just sort of business-speak style forcing something to fit the very specific irrelevant questions) to satisfy; I abandoned it, so far at least.

> American workers are the wimpiest creatures on the planet

American workers do put up with a lot. But the cruelty of having one’s health care access perfectly intertwined with employment probably explains much of their reluctance to engage in the sort of individual and collective action needed to address malignant employer behaviour.

This is starting to collapse with the shift towards high deductible plans and HSA accounts. Increasingly, employers are just providing a subsidy for something that partially covers you when you get cancer. You'll pay for everything else yourself.

Seems easy to say when you have healthcare coverage

Could you please stop posting flamewar comments, including nationalistic flamewar comments, to HN? You've been doing it repeatedly, unfortunately. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.