The better question would probably be: Programmers, why don't you want to unionize?
While I see the benefits of unions, I also see the cost of them. Namely, I refuse to condone an action (establish a union and require membership in order to be legally employed) that limits the ability of another human being to feed his or her family, should they disagree with joining the union.
Unions, as of late, have been overtly political in action. If someone disagrees with that political activity, then they should not be forced to join the union (with whom they disagree) just to be able to provide for their families.
I don't think that's happening anywhere. Tons of developers (myself included) work for smaller companies that they personally align with or work for startups. Many more are freelancing or doing products.
Speaking perhaps a bit abstractly, a "union" is just a group of people whose interests are better represented by banding together than by all acting independently. I hear you; there a lot of connotations attached to the word. Most of them negative. But what if they're mostly bullshit? Maybe they're not. I don't know. But regardless, it seems to me short-sighted to dismiss organization of like-minded interests because it "limits the ability of another human to feed their family" when, in fact, that's the very right a union ought to be fighting for.
> Unions, as of late, have been overtly political in action.
Isn't that kind of the point? Unions are why an 8-hour workday became standard, instead of 10-12, for instance. (Wait a minute....)
Union for factory workers can barely resemblance anything that would work for programmers (for example, I highly doubt there is a notion of a 10x assembly line workers).
But regardless of whether a 10x programmer is a myth or not, the fact is that there are huge variance in programmers' ability. Assuming a bell curve in ability, union by definition will have to tend to their average members. If you ever believe that you're not in the average, it's probably better not to join a union.
> Union for factory workers can barely resemblance anything that would work for programmers
This, I agree with, and was why I was challenging the notion of what is often thought of when the word "union" is used in the context of labor.
I also agree with there being a "huge variance in programmers' ability". But I fail to make the connection with how that necessarily leads to your conclusions (assuming, mind you, that the "union" looks nothing like it does for factory workers)?
There are several hidden assumption I made to get to the conclusion. But now that I'm thinking about it, this is interesting because while we establish (loosely speaking) how union shouldn't be, we didn't say specifically how our newly improved union would be. And hence each of us would have our own idea of what a programmer union would be -- similarities or otherwise with factory union. I guess a more productive question would be to specific how should our "union", or "professional organization" would be, in more details instead of the loaded "union" term.
Anyway, here is the some of the assumptions I made to go to said conclusion in the previous post:
- Difference in programmers' ability will necessitate difference in pay grade. Vastly so, in the case of programmers. This causes issue in different members of the union. Couple with issues of "how to determine someone is a good programmers", I can see resentment or stupid rule being put up. Assuming that union has certain power in compensation negotiation, their interest doesn't align with any SINGLE programmer either. Everyone want THEIR compensation to be as high as possible, the union doesn't have their incentives in caring for a single individual member (this is the same dynamic as recruiter/job seeker right now in term of salary).
- Programming is more of a creative jobs, and like-minded interest could be a more questionable notion than in older times.
Hypothetically: what if the professional organization ("PO") were more concerned with all of the programmers' share of the pie, as compared to say sales or management, instead of each individual programmer's slice? To work, I imagine logistically it would require open salaries across the board as opposed to only the top dogs (as is law for public corporations), which of course may be a hard sell (if only because it's counter-intuitive, and distinctly not in the interests of management, who have already tipped the scales far to their own favor). But having worked for a tech company which did have open salaries across the board, I can at least anecdotally vouch for its effectiveness in maximizing both employee output and employee salaries. Of course an individual's negotiating skills still somewhat come into play, and this is where the exact pecking order would ultimately be determined (say, as a percentage of the PO's share of profits), but I would argue such a structure more aligns the programmers' incentives to work together to increase their share, than it would promote "every man for himself" attitudes.
What I think we really have here is a giant prisoner's dilemma, complicated even further by globalization. So realistically, yea, I agree with you. It ain't happening. But I think it's fun to think about, so, thanks for your reply :)
As a career, programming is a low risk and high paying career. (I mean real risk - like you could get injured and lose your ability to earn a livelihood) Additionally, it can be done anywhere in many situations. So there's no need and little bargaining power.
Because of historical accident, a lot of us come from families that distrust unions. I grew up on stories about how unions are greedy for money, which they use to fund liberal social causes, and also create wasteful regulations, and ultimately destroy industries. The Schlock Mercenary comic, week of June 18, 2001, is an example of our attitude to unions. [0]
And by pushing for labor-saving technology and measurable outcomes, that makes us villains to the unions. Capital trying to cut labor out of the economy. It’s sad that unions discount intellectual contribution so much, but that’s often the way it is.
Do you have any more resources for this that's more than just a comic? I hear similar things as well but am never sure if it's just propaganda by those who are negatively effected by a union's intended purpose.
I don’t keep my sources around, and actually a number of the stories that my parents used to tell, I’ve come to believe are distortions or fabrications. The tricky part is figuring out where are the inaccuracies. You cannot trust the popular media’s historical accounts. They mangle the truth of everything else they report (try listening to reports on anything sciency), often deliberately (journalistic integrity, telling things the way they are, has always been a convenient fiction, even before deconstructionism, but it used to be not hidden).[0] Why should you trust their truth on union history? But a part of union animosity is a matter of interpretation.
Unions sometimes resort to coercion to get their members. In the case of California, this is no secret: Get a job in a public school, and you pay union dues, even if you do not join the union. They wrote that into the contract, on the basis that your pay depends on the union’s negotiation, so the union gets its share.[1]
Some of the stories are harder to corroborate, from the age before ubiquitous cell phone recordings. Some of the more blatant incidents actually did make it into the historical archive.[2] Some of the more disturbing stories didn’t, such as the story of Cesar Chávez and his union enforcers raping the families of farm workers who refused to join his union. Did that happen? I don’t know for sure.
Unions promoting social causes that roughly half of Americans do not want, this is also no secret. The national teachers unions are the most blatant about this.[3]
Unions forcing wasteful regulations, this is also no secret. Excessive mandatory staff on public transit.[4][5] Rejection of technological upgrades.[6] Using coercion to force use of overpriced labor.[7]
And the big automakers and the entire cities of Vallejo, Stockton, and Detroit going bankrupt, a part of that was pension plans won by unions.[8][9][10] The operation was a success, but the patient died.
The point of unions is to give workers bargaining power where they previously had little or none. In programming, good talent is in short supply and there are plenty of job openings. As a result, the worker holds all of the chips, eliminating the need for a union at the present time.
While true for many programmers, this means that how much you are paid has more to do with negotiation skills and willingness to interview different places then your actual ability to do your job. Plus a good union could keep people getting paid market rate so they stay, quite possibly saving the company money and time if you consider recruitment interviews and training.
> how much you are paid has [more] to do with negotiation skills and willingness to interview different places [than your actual ability to do your job]
That is how it works indeed. Most programmers ignore that or refuse to acknowledge it.
Unions can only standardize on the lowest common denominator, which is utter shit in programming jobs.
What's an union gonna do? Make a law to force 10 people startups to give more than 0.001% equity and another to tell programmers that they can freely go home after 80 hours a week?
Because demand outstrips supply. Though tech companies have conspired to pay us below what we're worth in market terms[1], it's still very comfortable.
Increasingly, I think some kind of professional association would be useful, largely to represent programmers' views regarding how technology affects society.
There's a pretty clear disconnect (visible on HN), between the interests of the programming-classes, and the exec/VC strata.
However, it's the latter group that always get to provide a sound-byte as the voice of technology in the news, to legislators, etc. etc.
Having a well-respected professional organization for the programming-classes could help shift the representation of "the tech industry" towards it's people and away from it's money, with regards to public debates about data autonomy, open standards, net neutrality, and privacy legislation.
>Having a well-respected professional organization for the programming-classes could help shift the representation of "the tech industry" towards it's people and away from it's money, with regards to public debates about data autonomy, open standards, net neutrality, and privacy legislation.
Doesn't that already exist in the form of the Association for Computing Machinery (http://www.acm.org/)? They cover all the areas you mention and more.
Too many of you are too young to remember the 2000s, but I hope you don't believe this supply demand stuff. Its being propped up by VC money, but when it swings to the other side its going to be a slaughter for a lot of developers. In a team of 10 there might be 2 or 3 people who really matter.
It is easy to create union in manufacturing because everyone is doing roughly the same thing. There is very small variation in skill in majority of workers. It is similar in Law or Medicine where you have standards and exams for these professions.
In programming you can have home growth hacker that produce just another PHP website every week or Machine Learning expert working with distributed systems, publishing papers or contributing to projects like TensorFlow. It will be extremely difficult to persuade both of them to take the same stance on earning or job protection. One is remote developer making 20k per year and second is Google developer making 300k.
Union represent group of people, but it is important to remember that you transfer part of decision power to Union in exchange for better bargaining power. Google developers do not need Union because they have high personal value, they can easily change jobs and still make a lot of money. PHP/Web developers that are commodity would benefit from Union but disparity on skill and background will make it impossible to happen.
In general Union are for people that are insecure about theirs jobs. In many cases Unions are actually harmful. Teachers Union in my home country makes impossible to fire bad teachers. It is major issue where instead of teaching results, tenure is more important. Train workers unions are equally bad, low skilled workers demand high compensation.
I'm not sure if a union is the way to go but at least some sort of binding institution to reduce the amount of ephemeral standards and ephemeral tech in the profession would be something I could get behind.
I think programming governance is much closer to fashion than engineering, and the void is filled with a plethora of interested parties legitimate and otherwise, peddling wisdom and otherwise, in varying quantity.
I think a lot of programmers see themselves as more independent, and kind of distrust things that take away said independence like unions or accreditation.
So they'd worry about a union bringing about things like Global Rule One (from the Screen Actors Guild) where union talent can't work in a non union environment (or vice versa). Or that joining a union would somehow become mandatory, like it is in some other industries.
In other words, they like how anyone can get into programming, that you don't need a specific degree or to pass a specific test to start and that it's up to the worker to choose what company or organisation they want to work for. And they worry that if programmers were unionised, this would stop being possible somewhere down the line.
That and they're decently well paid anyway. So they might think they need a union less than say, factory workers or public transport drivers.
If this was a serious option I would do this in a heartbeat. The amount of exploitation that goes on in our industry is perverse, and programmers don't seem to stand up for themselves much. Even at Google, supposedly the best job out there, we get stack ranked, and Sergey pushing us to work 60 hour weeks for extended periods. Makes me wonder where I went wrong in life.
There’s something wrong with us. I used to think that everybody should learn programming. … I don’t think that anymore. I think there has to be something seriously wrong with you in order to do this work. That a normal person, once they've looked into the abyss, will say, I'm done. This is stupid. I'm going to go do something else. But not us. Because there's something really wrong with us.
So you're thinking the reason people don't push back much on the 60 hour week is because of a personality type that simply can't stop programming? It's possible...
However there's a big difference between building something for yourself, and building something for your boss, and unfortunately I feel the difference.
I've been a unionized programmer and system administrator. The level of competence/incompetence was about the same as anywhere else.
The positive was that there was compensation transparency and it was difficult for the employer to screw is in many circumstances.
Why don't we have programmers in unions more often? The political winds shifted, and companies figured out how to push employee buttons. People think they are better individual negotiators (total bullshit), and management has everyone competing against each other. As long as you're an ambitious little bastard fighting for scraps with your stack ranked colleagues, you're on a leash.
The connotation of the word 'union' is of a group of poor laborers, often working in harsh environment, coming together for fight against arbitrariness of their rich employers with regards to matters such as salary, job security, accident compensation etc. I think it is fair to assume that even the lowest paid programmer is still paid at least above the average national pay in (most) developed/developing countries. Even those programmers that sulk at not being paid "enough" know that they are actually quite well off compared to most others in their society. Any grievance is highly individualized and will be negotiated directly by that person, with their lawyer if necessary. So union doesn't seem necessary.
Further, programmers actively look to change jobs whereas typical people needing union look to holding on to their jobs till retirement as much as possible. A programmer could also go freelance and charge whatever he likes. Exploiting loopholes in the current job contract, programmers could even do consultation or host a revenue earning webapp as a side business. A union like setup seems to be a hindrance to such activities more than being useful.
Finally, most programmers are highly opinionated and always seem to disagree on everything, not just programming things. It would be a miracle for a thing like a programmer union to even exist. :P
Because they don't want to be. And who's going to make them?
Why don't they want to be? Because they don't see any value in being in a union.
And why don't they see any value? Perhaps because unions are bureaucratic, and programmers hate bureaucracy. Why would they want to have to deal with another one?
41 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 41.5 ms ] threadWhile I see the benefits of unions, I also see the cost of them. Namely, I refuse to condone an action (establish a union and require membership in order to be legally employed) that limits the ability of another human being to feed his or her family, should they disagree with joining the union.
Unions, as of late, have been overtly political in action. If someone disagrees with that political activity, then they should not be forced to join the union (with whom they disagree) just to be able to provide for their families.
But you're obviously OK with people being forced to join corporations (with whom they disagree) just to be able to provide for their families.
I believe in freedom, including freedom to work for whomever you choose, or freedom to be self-employed, if you choose.
What have I said that implies that I'm OK with people being forced to join corporations?
> Unions, as of late, have been overtly political in action.
Isn't that kind of the point? Unions are why an 8-hour workday became standard, instead of 10-12, for instance. (Wait a minute....)
But regardless of whether a 10x programmer is a myth or not, the fact is that there are huge variance in programmers' ability. Assuming a bell curve in ability, union by definition will have to tend to their average members. If you ever believe that you're not in the average, it's probably better not to join a union.
This, I agree with, and was why I was challenging the notion of what is often thought of when the word "union" is used in the context of labor.
I also agree with there being a "huge variance in programmers' ability". But I fail to make the connection with how that necessarily leads to your conclusions (assuming, mind you, that the "union" looks nothing like it does for factory workers)?
Anyway, here is the some of the assumptions I made to go to said conclusion in the previous post:
- Difference in programmers' ability will necessitate difference in pay grade. Vastly so, in the case of programmers. This causes issue in different members of the union. Couple with issues of "how to determine someone is a good programmers", I can see resentment or stupid rule being put up. Assuming that union has certain power in compensation negotiation, their interest doesn't align with any SINGLE programmer either. Everyone want THEIR compensation to be as high as possible, the union doesn't have their incentives in caring for a single individual member (this is the same dynamic as recruiter/job seeker right now in term of salary).
- Programming is more of a creative jobs, and like-minded interest could be a more questionable notion than in older times.
Hypothetically: what if the professional organization ("PO") were more concerned with all of the programmers' share of the pie, as compared to say sales or management, instead of each individual programmer's slice? To work, I imagine logistically it would require open salaries across the board as opposed to only the top dogs (as is law for public corporations), which of course may be a hard sell (if only because it's counter-intuitive, and distinctly not in the interests of management, who have already tipped the scales far to their own favor). But having worked for a tech company which did have open salaries across the board, I can at least anecdotally vouch for its effectiveness in maximizing both employee output and employee salaries. Of course an individual's negotiating skills still somewhat come into play, and this is where the exact pecking order would ultimately be determined (say, as a percentage of the PO's share of profits), but I would argue such a structure more aligns the programmers' incentives to work together to increase their share, than it would promote "every man for himself" attitudes.
What I think we really have here is a giant prisoner's dilemma, complicated even further by globalization. So realistically, yea, I agree with you. It ain't happening. But I think it's fun to think about, so, thanks for your reply :)
(Ok I'll get coat)
Why would you deal with a union if you didn't have to (both sides)?
And by pushing for labor-saving technology and measurable outcomes, that makes us villains to the unions. Capital trying to cut labor out of the economy. It’s sad that unions discount intellectual contribution so much, but that’s often the way it is.
[0]http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2001-06-18
Unions sometimes resort to coercion to get their members. In the case of California, this is no secret: Get a job in a public school, and you pay union dues, even if you do not join the union. They wrote that into the contract, on the basis that your pay depends on the union’s negotiation, so the union gets its share.[1]
Some of the stories are harder to corroborate, from the age before ubiquitous cell phone recordings. Some of the more blatant incidents actually did make it into the historical archive.[2] Some of the more disturbing stories didn’t, such as the story of Cesar Chávez and his union enforcers raping the families of farm workers who refused to join his union. Did that happen? I don’t know for sure.
Unions promoting social causes that roughly half of Americans do not want, this is also no secret. The national teachers unions are the most blatant about this.[3]
Unions forcing wasteful regulations, this is also no secret. Excessive mandatory staff on public transit.[4][5] Rejection of technological upgrades.[6] Using coercion to force use of overpriced labor.[7]
And the big automakers and the entire cities of Vallejo, Stockton, and Detroit going bankrupt, a part of that was pension plans won by unions.[8][9][10] The operation was a success, but the patient died.
[0]https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/yellow-journa...
[1]http://www.npr.org/2016/01/11/462607980/scotuspublicunions
[2]http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/03/strikebreake...
[3]https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=L1300
[4]https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2012-08-27/labor-rul...
[5]http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/why-do...
[6]https://www.flexport.com/blog/port-automation-oakland-rotter...
[7]http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-labor-enviro-hous...
[8]http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/10/pf/vallejo-pensions/
[9] Fej ↗ The point of unions is to give workers bargaining power where they previously had little or none. In programming, good talent is in short supply and there are plenty of job openings. As a result, the worker holds all of the chips, eliminating the need for a union at the present time. lsiebert ↗ While true for many programmers, this means that how much you are paid has more to do with negotiation skills and willingness to interview different places then your actual ability to do your job. Plus a good union could keep people getting paid market rate so they stay, quite possibly saving the company money and time if you consider recruitment interviews and training. user5994461 ↗ > how much you are paid has [more] to do with negotiation skills and willingness to interview different places [than your actual ability to do your job] gjolund ↗ Programmers don't suffer from a lack of leverage and bargaining power. confounded ↗ Because demand outstrips supply. Though tech companies have conspired to pay us below what we're worth in market terms[1], it's still very comfortable. RandomOpinion ↗ >Having a well-respected professional organization for the programming-classes could help shift the representation of "the tech industry" towards it's people and away from it's money, with regards to public debates about data autonomy, open standards, net neutrality, and privacy legislation. confounded ↗ I stand enlightened! throwaway_45 ↗ Too many of you are too young to remember the 2000s, but I hope you don't believe this supply demand stuff. Its being propped up by VC money, but when it swings to the other side its going to be a slaughter for a lot of developers. In a team of 10 there might be 2 or 3 people who really matter. bjourne ↗ I am. And most developers in Sweden are. If you meant to ask "Why aren't programmers in the United States unionized?" then you should specify that. :) eecks ↗ Do you have a specific union for programmers? Chyzwar ↗ Because skill differ too much. usgroup ↗ I'm not sure if a union is the way to go but at least some sort of binding institution to reduce the amount of ephemeral standards and ephemeral tech in the profession would be something I could get behind. CM30 ↗ I think a lot of programmers see themselves as more independent, and kind of distrust things that take away said independence like unions or accreditation. kwhitefoot ↗ It seems that people here are answering a slightly different question, namely: Why aren't programmers in the USA unionized. Kepler-306e ↗ If this was a serious option I would do this in a heartbeat. The amount of exploitation that goes on in our industry is perverse, and programmers don't seem to stand up for themselves much. Even at Google, supposedly the best job out there, we get stack ranked, and Sergey pushing us to work 60 hour weeks for extended periods. Makes me wonder where I went wrong in life. Decade ↗ I love this quote from Douglas Crockford: Kepler-306e ↗ So you're thinking the reason people don't push back much on the 60 hour week is because of a personality type that simply can't stop programming? It's possible...
However there's a big difference between building something for yourself, and building something for your boss, and unfortunately I feel the difference. Spooky23 ↗ I've been a unionized programmer and system administrator. The level of competence/incompetence was about the same as anywhere else. p333347 ↗ The connotation of the word 'union' is of a group of poor laborers, often working in harsh environment, coming together for fight against arbitrariness of their rich employers with regards to matters such as salary, job security, accident compensation etc. I think it is fair to assume that even the lowest paid programmer is still paid at least above the average national pay in (most) developed/developing countries. Even those programmers that sulk at not being paid "enough" know that they are actually quite well off compared to most others in their society. Any grievance is highly individualized and will be negotiated directly by that person, with their lawyer if necessary. So union doesn't seem necessary. Raed667 ↗ Tunisian engineers (including software engineers) have a national union. It is a corrupt, useless, greedy organisation. AnimalMuppet ↗ Because they don't want to be. And who's going to make them? matthewhall ↗ Programmers make plenty.
That is how it works indeed. Most programmers ignore that or refuse to acknowledge it.
Unions can only standardize on the lowest common denominator, which is utter shit in programming jobs.
What's an union gonna do? Make a law to force 10 people startups to give more than 0.001% equity and another to tell programmers that they can freely go home after 80 hours a week?
I regularly renegotiate my salary and benefits, and I have no desire to share any of that with a union.
If you are a programmer and you are not making what you think you deserve you have no one to blame but yourself.
Increasingly, I think some kind of professional association would be useful, largely to represent programmers' views regarding how technology affects society.
There's a pretty clear disconnect (visible on HN), between the interests of the programming-classes, and the exec/VC strata.
However, it's the latter group that always get to provide a sound-byte as the voice of technology in the news, to legislators, etc. etc.
Having a well-respected professional organization for the programming-classes could help shift the representation of "the tech industry" towards it's people and away from it's money, with regards to public debates about data autonomy, open standards, net neutrality, and privacy legislation.
[1] Most notably: https://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valle...
Doesn't that already exist in the form of the Association for Computing Machinery (http://www.acm.org/)? They cover all the areas you mention and more.
It is easy to create union in manufacturing because everyone is doing roughly the same thing. There is very small variation in skill in majority of workers. It is similar in Law or Medicine where you have standards and exams for these professions.
In programming you can have home growth hacker that produce just another PHP website every week or Machine Learning expert working with distributed systems, publishing papers or contributing to projects like TensorFlow. It will be extremely difficult to persuade both of them to take the same stance on earning or job protection. One is remote developer making 20k per year and second is Google developer making 300k.
Union represent group of people, but it is important to remember that you transfer part of decision power to Union in exchange for better bargaining power. Google developers do not need Union because they have high personal value, they can easily change jobs and still make a lot of money. PHP/Web developers that are commodity would benefit from Union but disparity on skill and background will make it impossible to happen.
In general Union are for people that are insecure about theirs jobs. In many cases Unions are actually harmful. Teachers Union in my home country makes impossible to fire bad teachers. It is major issue where instead of teaching results, tenure is more important. Train workers unions are equally bad, low skilled workers demand high compensation.
I think programming governance is much closer to fashion than engineering, and the void is filled with a plethora of interested parties legitimate and otherwise, peddling wisdom and otherwise, in varying quantity.
So they'd worry about a union bringing about things like Global Rule One (from the Screen Actors Guild) where union talent can't work in a non union environment (or vice versa). Or that joining a union would somehow become mandatory, like it is in some other industries.
In other words, they like how anyone can get into programming, that you don't need a specific degree or to pass a specific test to start and that it's up to the worker to choose what company or organisation they want to work for. And they worry that if programmers were unionised, this would stop being possible somewhere down the line.
That and they're decently well paid anyway. So they might think they need a union less than say, factory workers or public transport drivers.
There’s something wrong with us. I used to think that everybody should learn programming. … I don’t think that anymore. I think there has to be something seriously wrong with you in order to do this work. That a normal person, once they've looked into the abyss, will say, I'm done. This is stupid. I'm going to go do something else. But not us. Because there's something really wrong with us.
The positive was that there was compensation transparency and it was difficult for the employer to screw is in many circumstances.
Why don't we have programmers in unions more often? The political winds shifted, and companies figured out how to push employee buttons. People think they are better individual negotiators (total bullshit), and management has everyone competing against each other. As long as you're an ambitious little bastard fighting for scraps with your stack ranked colleagues, you're on a leash.
Further, programmers actively look to change jobs whereas typical people needing union look to holding on to their jobs till retirement as much as possible. A programmer could also go freelance and charge whatever he likes. Exploiting loopholes in the current job contract, programmers could even do consultation or host a revenue earning webapp as a side business. A union like setup seems to be a hindrance to such activities more than being useful.
Finally, most programmers are highly opinionated and always seem to disagree on everything, not just programming things. It would be a miracle for a thing like a programmer union to even exist. :P
But the intentions behind its creation (on paper) are to protect the "engineering trade".
Why don't they want to be? Because they don't see any value in being in a union.
And why don't they see any value? Perhaps because unions are bureaucratic, and programmers hate bureaucracy. Why would they want to have to deal with another one?