We 10x engineers are so special that we are waving off offer after offer and that will never end.
Not only will that never end, but luckily I’m so perfect that I’ll never experience a disability or need any accommodation that I can’t just code or build myself.
I mean even then, certainly you had a good enough exit at your first company (like anyone good) that you could basically retire whenever.
I mean, you know it boils down to this: just be a better software engineer and you’ll never have to NEED a union. The only people that need unions probably suck at algorithms and think Kubernetes is too hard.
Live in emacs or starve is my motto
It’s disappointing but not surprising
Some of these people truly, truly believe that they are so gifted and so talented that the work opportunities will simply never dry up.
Yes
>Was the not joining an option for either of them?
Yes
> From what I know you cannot play in NBA nor you can play in Hollywood w/o being a union member.
That isn't true. It is much harder in Hollywood than in the NBA, but some people decide to not join or leave the union. Jon Voight is the most famous example that comes to mind. He continues to work despite quitting SAG-AFTRA. It is also more common for actors who live in cities where non-union productions are more common (outside of LA and NYC).
Can you expand on this, what is "harder" exactly? They don't enjoy the benefits of the union or they cannot get high paying roles? Also, are you implying Jon Voight is not a SAG member, if so, I'd like to see your sources because from what I can find he is a member while being in dispute with it (also shows how great the unions are).
And as far as NBA goes, not being a member is irrelevant as you are still paying dues and obey union regulations, fun fact I've found looking for this: Michael Jordan was not a member of the union and does seem to do better than LeBron James, e.g. there are those "Jordan" shoes which seem to do much stronger than "LeBrons".
An actor who refuses to join the union will have a harder time getting work because people generally don't want to deal with these headaches. However, actors can certainly have careers without being in the union. This is easier in places like Chicago or Atlanta were there is still a decent amount movie/TV production, but a lower percentage of the work is union work.
Jon Voight is a "fees-paying non-member". He is not part of the union. He has to pay dues whenever he wants to work union jobs.[1] Same as your NBA example.
I think you are mistaken about Michael Jordan. He opted out of union's shared licensing agreement[2] which is just one of the many benefits of the union. Have you found something that says he completely left the union?
[1] - https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/voight-gets-nom-i...
[2] - https://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/01/sports/sports-of-the-time...
This does not make membership an option, does it then? This is exactly the reason programmers like myself oppose the unions. Bringing up SAG in this context seems to be counter-productive to me but you can do that if you think this increases union's support somehow.
So I was wrong on the Jordan's membership, then who was playing in NBA without being a member if you say it's possible?
Yes it does. You are just redefining the meaning of "choice" now. There is always going to be pros and cons to any choice including this one. What do you want the non-union membership to look like? There are obviously going to be downsides to not joining the union or else there would be no reason to join the union and if there was no reason to join the union, it wouldn't exist.
I already provided a link that proved this wrong. I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here, but that other commenter is right, you aren't engaging in this conversation in good faith.
He's definitely been underpaid in the past, but I'm not seeing it in his current contract.
By what logic?
Our work is closer to tool and die makers, we make money printers that keep running without our day-to-day involvement.
Let's take S3 as an example. AWS S3 was started with 10 engineers or so (according to Andy). AWS S3 is now an organization with over 800 SDEs alone, that headcount costs well over $300MM per year (still excluding all the SDMs, Ops, QAs, PMs, TPMs, DCAs, etc also involved). That headcount made sense as the product exploded with new features, hardware, regions, etc etc... but the "greenfield" new feature development pace is likely an S-curve, and we are now on the slowing side that will only continue to slow.
How many SDE hours/year are needed for S3's steady state operation? How do companies compensate skill for rapid growth, and then transition to their steady-state needs? What changes in terms of headcount and/or compensation, if anything?
(Of course this isn't about S3, the same questions apply to any software product)
How would unions operate in this environment? It seems quite different than, eg Boeing's manufacturing unions with the long lead times and relatively stable production volume/labor needs.
(There are also interesting questions for shareholders - what happens if S3 lays off 90% of their SDEs? Where would those people go, what would they be most valuable working on - how "safe" is S3's revenue as competitors and startups hire their layoffs?)
An actor usually spends a few weeks working on a movie and then the studio profits in perpetuity off that work. Tom Cruise finished filming Top Gun: Maverick years ago, but people are still streaming, renting, and purchasing that movie bringing in massive profit for the studio.
This is also true of the original Top Gun, released ~37 years ago. Very little software has that kind of long-term earning power, further supporting the idea that software work is not all that unique as work goes.
A few major breakout successes become historical and bought long after the fact, but the majority do not.
Most books almost certainly lose money for the publisher. It's more complicated from the author's perspective given that people write books for a variety of motivations but, certainly, most books are doing well to earn out their advance which can easily be only $1,000 or so.
But, as you say, even those that sell "well enough" initially fall off pretty quickly. And some sorts of titles such as non-fiction about current tech stacks or software versions have a very limited shelf life.
2. Unions rarely, if ever, negotiate rights only for their own workers. The massive union protests prior to COVID asking for minimum wage increases didn’t ask for minimum wage increases only for union workers. They asked for federal and in some cases statewide increases in minimum wage which would affect all workers.
3. A lot of the research shows that higher union salaries also translate into higher non-union salaries, so union efforts also very directly help non union workers.
China. India. Japan. Korea. Pretty much all of Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. Unions are prevalent in Northern Europe [1]. That's it. That's the exception.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_comparisons_of_t...
Again, you're ignoring that countries with terrific worker protections have, on average, low union penetration. The one is uncorrelated with the other. In America, unions principally serve as a distraction. We periodically throw a few industries a bone while most workers get zero protection.
Congress won't function until the cohorts who vote for representatives unwilling to champion broadly popular policy or labor protections dies out. That's going to take a hot minute, even assuming a death rate of 1.8M voters over the age of 55/year.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/what-you-need-to-kn... (Control-F "Figure 1")
Congress is divided, but still generally productive [1]. Expanding labor protections simply isn't a political priority. Also, this can be done at the state and local levels.
> Do you know how many worker hours will be exhausted in suboptimal labor conditions waiting for Congress to pass human labor protections?
About as many as there are laid off writers? Ten percent of Americans are in unions [2]. Doubling union membership in a year has less effect than waiting ten years to pass protections into law.
[1] https://datainnovation.org/2023/01/visualizing-congressional...
The fact of the matter is, God gave us Sunday off and unions gave us Saturday off. Unions were the reason child labor was banned in the U.S. We have worker’s comp and the 40 hour work week was standardized. None of those things would’ve resulted from the benevolence of profit maximizing corporations.
Unions are inefficient--only those represented get benefits. And they're unnecessary. Most countries with good worker rights have low union penetration. Unions in America are a dead end. They let electeds toss a bone to the ten percent of Americans in a union while delaying broad reforms.
And how do you propose we align around such things? It seems like you’d need to organize your labor pool and possibly position yourself to bargain collectively, perhaps?
If you read my magnum opus, Chronos Shuffled, you would see that individual negotiation by an enlightened majority will reach the same common goal if... um... everyone individually pursues the exact same agreed upon goals...
...shit.
This is the distraction I'm talking about. Unions, in this century, have been effective at one thing: dividing voters from organizing around labor reforms in law.
Voting is literally just the bare minimum bottom of the barrel scraping. You have to also agitate for things to be on the ballot, and there is plenty of pressure to be applied outside of the purely electoral lens. A union gives people a direct benefit for organizing while trying to improve conditions for workers in general.
For one, get tech workers to vote. Ironic detachment from politics still appears to be a thing for many in our industry. After that, this is political organization 101. For all the tech unions we do have, I haven't seen them try to expand workers' rights broadly. Because why would they. That's the competition.
What divisiveness? Most news I hear about unions paints them as a negative without backing anything up.
> We need workers’ rights for everyone. Not just those who are in a union.
Agreed, but we have to start somewhere. If unions are able to push for some type of labor benefit, then good for them.
Unions are fundamentally about putting workers and management into separate categories. In an industrial context, this makes sense. In a start-up, it does not.
By definition of function, employees and shareholders are at diametrically opposed incentives if the organization prioritizes return on capital over all other things.
If you are in an organization, where in the majority of the ownership is held by the people who have funded it, then at the starting point, it is already adversarial unless you are an equal partner in equity.
Since the vast majority of organizations are set up as such, and unless you have a controlling interest in the organization from a legal stock perspective, then you are in a position of no power to start with, and it will continue that way until you become a significant shareholder.
Unions are required to provide the collective action necessary to counter the overwhelming legal power of shareholders in the current structure.
A relevant book that recently came out but I have not read is You Deserve a Tech Union by Ethan Marcotte
It was ridiculously bad. I've never worked with less talented people. One of my coworkers did nothing, at all, for 2 years. But with 17 years of experience, he couldn't be fired.
I carried the team, but they couldn't pay me what I was worth or promote me. I left as soon as I could.
Very few intelligent, educated people are part of unions, so they have no idea how they actually work. As I am against extortion, I am against unions.
How is it extortion, legal or otherwise?
I genuinely don't know why employers do not hire non-union employees in such circumstances; I think most of us assume they "can't", but would like to hear from someone who actually knows.
Collective bargaining is pretty much the only tool workers have to even begin to correct the power differential between employer and employee. Ideally, it allows employees and employers to negotiate on more equal terms than is otherwise possible.
No, it isn’t. There is the individual threat of quitting. And there are the courts.
1. An individual quitting at a company where they are one single cog doesn't impact the company in any measurable way.
2. The court system in the west gives an asymmetric level of power toward the corporation, an individual has neither the time, the money, or the ability to navigate an ongoing protracted lawsuit with a corp that dwarfs them in all three aspects.
I've personally used both to extract concessions from employers.
In any case, my general point is that we need more protections in law for workers. Unions are a good way to distract from that.
Whereas the employee is free to go to work for some other company at any time.
The rules are not in balance.
> Whereas the employee is free to go to work for some other company at any time.
And generally the employer is free to fire people at any time. And to forbid employees from working elsewhere.
I don't think your examples hold up to scrutiny.
> And to forbid employees from working elsewhere
That's simply not true.
Who said anything about that? Scab labor is an extremely common thing. How you come to the conclusion that "the company is not allowed to hire other people to replace the striking workers", I'm entirely unsure. For two very popular examples, both in the air travel industry, both pilot's strikes and ATC strikes have had "other people hired to replace striking workers", with varying degrees of notoriety (being at Boeing, I can't imagine you being entirely unaware of either).
> That's simply not true.
Many employment contracts have "no moonlighting" clauses. Only two states specifically forbid them: Washington, and Washington DC (and Washington's policy only affects lower-paid workers) (https://sbshrs.adpinfo.com/blog/7-faqs-about-moonlighting-po... and https://www.rocketlawyer.com/business-and-contracts/employer...)
The ATC was a special case. It was illegal for them to strike, they struck anyway, so Reagan fired them.
"It shall be unlawful for any employer willingly and knowingly to utilize any professional strikebreaker to replace an employee or employees involved in a strike or lockout at a place of business located within this state. 1134.2."
Which is to say, most ongoing services in a capitalist country are provided under the “threat” that if you break the deal you agreed to, you’ll have to look elsewhere to get that service going forward.
Boeing is a big company with a lot of inefficiency, but there clearly was inefficiency due to union rules. For one thing, layoffs went by seniority, not merit.
Staff couldn't even be disciplined without going through the union rep and everything was based on seniority... with no other reason.
That business no longer exists... its competitors that were non-unionized are still thriving.
Kind of tangential but that seems like a resume stuffer at best and stolen valor at worst.
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1706 ("Treasury Department Releases First-Of-Its-Kind Report on Benefits of Unions to the U.S. Economy")
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/10/us-union-wor... ("Feel the benefit: union workers receive far better pay and rights, Congress finds")
https://newrepublic.com/post/175274/gallup-poll-two-thirds-a... ("Poll: Majority of Americans Support Unions and Support Strikes | A new Gallup poll shows Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of labor unions.")
https://www.axios.com/2023/04/27/unions-tech-industry-labor-... ("Push to unionize tech industry makes advances")
https://www.axios.com/2022/06/15/microsoft-union-truce-techs... ("Microsoft, meanwhile, announced last year that it would not stand in the way of any workers who wanted to unionize.")
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/microsoft-first-labor-union-vid... ("Microsoft recognizes its first U.S. labor union as video game testers organize")
> Microsoft president Brad Smith has twice in recent weeks told me that Microsoft is simply doing what it sees fit for its own relationship with workers and not trying to push others. However, labor leaders see Microsoft's move as a potential model for others.
> "I won’t say that it was completely easy for Microsoft to do this but they did it," Christopher Shelton, president of Communications Workers of America, the union organizing at Activision, told Axios.
(last I checked, Microsoft owns Linkedin, but I could be mistaken; I am not uneducated on the challenges and downsides to organizing, but am also not so uneducated and inexperienced to think the power imbalance doesn't require improvement; maybe an individual can do better solo occasionally, but that's luck and not what the data shows)
Me and many others are cool with socialism. Are you?
Isn't that trending towards a definition of communism? Socialism could mean a lot of different things; economic protectionism is a market inefficiency designed to champion things like jobs over corporate profits, and was a policy choice made by some socialist governments in the latter 20th century.
Socialism is an incredibly broad term in practice, a typical sound bite dictionary definition hints at this:
a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
Average Indian earns $571/mo. Even if devs earn 2x average you’d be able to hire at least 3 for just the average SF/NYC rent a developer in the US has to pay let alone taxes, benefits, etc.
Not particularly good for the country or economy long term; is the end game to destroy the US and start over paying people here $571/mo?
Are you implying not having access to semiconductors built elsewhere or goods built elsewhere wasn’t a net positive for the US?
The idea that software development was immune to this inevitable change is nonsensical.
Not MS, but I was at a big tech co that recently did layoffs, and a lot of the Super Senior Staff Distinguished Wizard SWEs, who I always wondered "What exactly do you do?" got laid off.
> While your union leader does nothing while driving a luxury car
"While the CEO owns a couple private jets and the company initiates another billion dollar stock buyback"
I'd take my chances on getting an occasionally corrupt union (that I actually have a say in) vs 100% of companies that couldn't care less about my interests.
> While the CEO owns a couple private jets and the company initiates another billion dollar stock buyback Unlike the union leader, the CEO isn't working for you, so that private jet isn't coming out of your pocket, unlike the previously mentioned luxury car
You can google, plenty of sources, but the best evidence is how hard every company fights to prevent companies from forming one. How much has Amazon spent on union busting?
> Unlike the union leader, the CEO isn't working for you, so that private jet isn't coming out of your pocket, unlike the previously mentioned luxury car
We'll probably disagree on this, but all profit comes from the difference between the value created by workers and the portion of that value returned to workers. There is no value without workers.
So, when a company does a $60 billion stock buyback. That $60 billion comes from the amount workers were underpaid relative to the value they created.
This only shows that companies believe that unions are harmful for them. Which I support, as usually unions are bad for both companies and workers
> from the amount workers were underpaid
No, workers are paid in full long before buybacks happen. Shareholders are usually paid last.
If a worker takes $100 in materials and builds a $1000 chair, they created $900 in value. If you pay the worker $20, then the employee was "underpaid" $880. That $880 is what is used to pay the CEO, stock buybacks, dividends, etc.
(I'm not suggesting the employee necessarily deserves all of that $880 of course, but it is the value from which the worker's pay comes from)
If workers are paid according to the value they create, then profits would be $0. (Revenue - COGS - Compensation). So, there wouldn't be money left to pay for dividends or stock buybacks.
Therefore, necessarily, employee compensation must be suppressed to afford stock buybacks and dividends.
My point is that everything comes from the same pot. Stock buybacks and dividends "could" have been employee compensation.
It does require the underlying premise that workers should be paid according to the value they create. I suspect you'll disagree on this, but I hope I've explained enough to share my point of view.
> This only shows that companies believe that unions are harmful for them. Which I support, as usually unions are bad for both companies and workers
Fine.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/how-unions-are-cruc...
https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/labor-unions...
https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/f46bc621-abb1...
https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0113/are-labor-u...
Please show me some sources that show unions hurt employees.
No. The company had created this value. If it was just the employee, I invite the employee to try quitting and creating this value without the company. It is bound to fail.
The rest is invalidated by this faulty assumption in the beginning.
> Fine
I can't say I read 100% of this. But it seems to show: - Unions claim to be beneficial. What a surprise - U.S. Democratic party claims unions, who give them a lot of money are beneficial. Another surprise! - Some authors rely on correlation to claim causation. Good luck.
> Please show me some sources that show unions hurt employees.
Have a look at your own links, for instance the last one. Reduced competitiveness of the business is bad for employees. Reduced income inequality is bad for everyone who is willing to work hard. Massive corruption. Waste of money and resources on nonproductive activities. Difficulties firing people who don't perform. Do I need to go on?
But I wonder: how do you feel about the CEO "driving a luxury car" (as if linkedin engineers can't afford to do the same) amidst these layoffs?
There are costs to increasing the cost of a layoff. It means corporations will rely on credentialism more, and take fewer risks. I'd rather live in a world where you can jump into software without a college degree, but maybe have to save a little money at your very well paying job than one that only hires college grads with a 3.5 GPA but you get a generous severance package.
Assuming your experience is representative of every company (I don't think it is) then every company lays off 10% of their workforce every 2 years.
Assume a random distribution (I don't think this is true) that means the average worker get laid off once every twenty years. So you're looking at 2 lay offs a career. Savings should be sufficient for this. Policies or agreements like this just make good hirs cheaper, and bad hires more expensive.
I know of some factories that shut down for annual maintenance for several months every year, and they lay everyone off. There is another factory (same company) that works opposite months of the year so in theory people are laid off and just switch between the two factories, but depending on schedule and work needs you can be out of work for a while.
I also know big projects often hire union labor (electricians, plumbers), and lay them off at the end of the project. I have no idea what the terms of this are.
Do you think the LinkedIn people will get their pensions fully paid out?
They are already not as generous as they could be (for example, Google on January 20th boasted about accelerated vesting for the notice period of US employees that would be laid off... But employees in other regions didn't get the same terms)
...and they are going to get worse and worse, with future layoffs
Yep, that's what happens when you have labor laws that dictate the terms. It cuts both ways.
1- the laws dictate minimum terms for the agreements, they don't put ceilings on the maximums
2- the regions in which employees got shafted in that way aren't the regions in which employment laws are stricter
That's not how it works in many jurisdictions: if a company does a round of layoffs and exceeds the terms ... those are the new terms going forward for that company.
Theres virtually no other business that yields so much revenue from only ~10 people (5 on court players and 5 bench players).
If Lebron decided to not show up to a bunch of games, this would have massive repercussions for the entire league & TV contracts.
On my own I have been able to negotiate stock as well. Unions won't touch that.
Between mid 2020 and early 2022, tech was the place investors were willing to pay any money even at a ridiculous P/E. It wasn’t because the value proposition suddenly shifted to tech but money was plentiful and looking for places to go and tech was the place that could give you high return.
Fast forward, US Fed has decided there is too much inflation and consumers need to slow down so they are shrinking their balance sheet. Investors suddenly are getting 8% return basically without any risk. Why would you invest in tech and all the volatility when you can get that return. Suddenly companies that could raise money and rollover their debt in peanut interest expenses are seeing money has dried up.
There is one and only one responsible for this mess. Central Bankers. They had absolutely no idea what they were and are talking about including very basic things such as where would inflation and interest rate go in short term. In 8 months, they went from “we need deflation and we foresee low interest till 2024” to largest inflationary environment since 1980s and highest interest rates. And of course they face no consequences. #EndTheFed
...right?