Why do you need help?
I type every single day and I don't want your health problem placing limits on my job flexibility and career advancement.
If our industry fills with unions, suddenly I won't be able to job hop to positions that look interesting to me. I'll have to consider things like seniority and tenure and a bunch of artificial rules. It'll be like going back to high school. I prefer to break rules, color outside the lines, and set my own path.
It sounds like your idea about what unions are and do are deeply informed by abnormal circumstances.
In fact, they've told me so, in so many words.
In general it’s surprisingly difficult to compare salaries, because the US is a complete anomaly here. The tech bubble, stock inflation, real estate prices in SF and NY, student debt are all contributing factors.
In my anecdotal experience, there is little difference in actual disposable income for software engineers in the US and North West Europe, even when one makes $200,000/year and the other makes €100,000/year.
You live in a society. All I'm hearing is I need to vote to raise taxes to bring you back down to reality.
So it will be.
You should not require unions just to get help with your health problems.
> pause employment
Rather than retiring on that money, I'm back at it again, and I'm working even harder.
I know what mediocrity and complacency is. I've worked surrounded by it, and I'll do anything to avoid it. I don't want that bullshit where coworkers strive to do the minimum and everybody plays hot potato to see who will take responsibility.
I'll take responsibility. And I'll take the high comp that comes with it. Not have some union pencil in my salary band according to arbitrary rules that don't directly map to solving customer problems.
It's an entirely different matter if you stand to make huge gains if the company succeeds. That is not the majority of jobs in the field. Most of us will never even have the opportunity to be involved in one of those. That's not what this discussion is about.
I still can't fathom the headspace of people wanting to do less and be entitled to more while the rest of the world is catching up and offering a better value. The lasier we get, the less likely we'll be picked to do the work. And this is such a goddamned cushy job. Are we so fucking entitled we're complaining about our career? Seriously?
I also can't reason about why people think this is about money rather than building cool shit. If this is your hobby and you enjoy building, why wouldn't you want to do this? Especially if you pick your problem space?
Why are there so many people like this on a startup forum? Shouldn't everyone here be hustling and working hard? I don't get this attitude, and I don't want people like that on my team to drag me down.
I'm working to make money to pay my mortgage, put food on the table, save for retirement, and build a better life for my small family. That is the motivation that keeps me showing up.
If I want to build cool shit then I'll do it on my own time. Unfortunately, not everyone can build a startup.
The fact that you think a union only exists to "drag (you) down" speaks a lot about you.
Its how you exploit other people is where you get $1,000,000,000 or a billion worth.
But don't enforce that on your underlings. I have such a boss and let me tell you, it sucks!
Your underlings have lives and passions that have nothing to do with you or your work, and more importantly they don't have that founders' equity and opportunity for a 10-figure exit.
If you want that kind of excellence, be prepared to pay for it dearly. Market-rate TCO is not nearly enough.
I have no idea why you replied to me with this irrelevant nonsense, but a unions regularly protect injured workers from being fired (often for fabricated reasons). This is also why companies love illegal immigrants. When José loses a finger at the cannery, management just slips him a bus ticket back to Mexico and mentions that if he comes back they'll have to call immigration about some irregularities.
I was lucky enough that this happened before the modern era of cutthroat corporate behavior, and I was able to get physical therapy and ergonomic changes to fix the problem.
I type every single day and I don't want your health problem placing limits on my job flexibility and career advancement.
Again, WTF are you even talking about? What union? How does this imaginary union inhibit your ability to change jobs?
All I did was point out that sedentary jobs still have plenty of injury risk.
You are describing factory work. This has no relevancy to our career. We are in one of the cushiest job sectors on the planet currently.
I have literally never seen anything in my entire professional career in software that would necessitate a union to "protect" us. My last employer gave us massages at work, FFS, and I've always had flexible working hours where I can show up at the office pretty much any time I want.
I had a few colleagues develop carpal tunnel and work always provided time off, medical benefits, special accommodations, standing desks, monitor risers, ergo keyboards, etc.
> Again, WTF are you even talking about? What union? How does this imaginary union inhibit your ability to change jobs?
Sorry, most of this thread is about unions and I accidentally roped you into that. I don't want the specter of carpel tunnel to be a rationalization for unions.
Unions are a tool to prevent abuse of workers. We do not have a systemic issue with that in our field - conversely, we have one the cushiest careers on the planet.
I don't want us to install unions. There's very little reason to do so, and it'll damage the incredibly cushy status quo we have going for us:
1. Union seniority often means you have to stay at the same job or within the same set of employers as your union, which fractures the labor market, leads to unnecessary job specialization, and prevents mobility. This also ossifies institutional knowledge as the free exchange of ideas slows.
2. Union seniority perks mean new employees do the drudge work and senior employees get the perks. This is the wrong incentive alignment.
3. Creating barriers to fire underperforming workers will lead to offshoring. Offshoring will happen naturally as other countries get better at labor export, but unionization will prematurely accelerate this. We shouldn't be seeking to do less than our overseas counterparts, especially when our comp levels remain higher than most other professions. (I'm not biased against folks overseas, just stating that the labor markets will not mix if we don't accelerate it ourselves.)
4. Tech sectors in countries with unions pay workers significantly less and have fewer innovative companies (by volume). The tradeoff for "job security" is not worth it. Currently "job security" is the ability to provide value to your organization, and that works pretty well. This is what I mean by I don't want unions limiting my career - I have a pretty good success rate getting the jobs I want. Unions create a check box of criteria and fence people in.
5. The correct way to mitigate injuries is disability insurance, not unions. Companies shouldn't be saddled with employees that can no longer work. Companies (and employees) should instead pay for disability insurance.
There are a lot of other points, but you can see the outline of my argument. We're creating reasons to be less desirable to employers and installing barriers to career mobility.
If the situation on the ground changes, I might change my mind about unions. But as things currently stand, we still have almost everything going for us.
The real "anti-corporate" issue we should be fighting for is a trust-busting breakup of big tech into smaller firms. The FAANG companies control too much surface area, monopolize their platforms, and create barriers to entry for new companies and new markets - despite their high comp, this is what's putting the most downward pressure on the overall labor market.
> I type every single day and I don't want your health problem placing limits on my job flexibility and career advancement.
And you're punching down at someone who didn't have the genes you had?
Huh? Says who?
I know this is not like lifing boxes or bricks, but my main labor is a 2+hr commute each way to work -- why?
1. Because so many decent paying tech jobs are close to expensive cities
2. Because the jobs pay well, but not enough to live super close to the offices
3. Even if i lived closed to the office, the jobs are so volatile and changing you'd switch from south bay to SF to Oakland back to Fremont so you cant pick a single spot to live
4. You do this stupid 2hr commute only to go into a phonebooth "office" and sit alone on zoom calls with people in Asia who arent even in the same office
I started having wrist pain years ago and switched to an ergonomic split keyboard years ago which completely fixed that problem. Little laptop keyboard are terrible for any extensive typing.
Thank you for the lecture about problems I solved decades ago.
I started having wrist pain years ago and switched to an ergonomic split keyboard
Oh, wooow, such sage advice. If you spend some time dealing with repetitive stress injuries, you'll learn that causes and solutions vary tremendously.
Little laptop keyboard are terrible for any extensive typing.
Why are you telling me this?
I developed debilitating tendinitis in both wrists right about the time I graduated college. A decade later, I developed a bulged disc in my neck that ended my career.
There are very real risks to your body from sitting at a computer, deep in thought all day. There's a whole other swath of health issues, too, beside injury risks.