Ask HN: Why don't developers unionize?
Our new style of union would:
- Encourage corporations to take security and privacy seriously
- Advocate for those affected by automation
- Aide in the creation of standards
- Support free and open source software communities
- Strengthen the efforts of organizations like EFF, Archive.org, Tor, etc
- Advocate for a free and open internet
- Counterbalance corporate interests
Once upon a time, unions did a lot of good for working and middle class people and they failed ultimately in the end.
It seems we as developers have the power to create a new type of union. A new model that disrupts old ideas for collective bargaining and actually does some good in the world.
What will our legacy be? Some things in life are greater than code.
Why don't developers unionize?
152 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 257 ms ] threadIsn't that the future for most of us? We're tomorrow's factory workers. Corporations have already shown that they'll work to suppress wages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
The long game is to promote STEM fields and increase supply - pushing down wages and benefits.
There are so many business opportunities to build quality software for a very steep price it's incredible. But developers can have a pretty hard time understanding how to sell themselves.
Networking.
Speak for yourself. What I do takes a lot more creativity, flexibility, and variety of types of skill than most factory jobs. I intend to continue to develop skills that can't be commoditized.
My concern is that without a counterbalance of developers advocating in the interest of the workforce; individuals will always be at a disadvantage.
Why? In a business everything comes second to profits and the accumulation of capital. Anyone who has worked at a startup outside of the US coasts knows this well.
I'm not saying we employ the old methods of unionization, but what am I saying is that we need collective bargaining.
It's up to us to identify a modern model that addresses your concerns.
I just think unions would dilute the market with highly paid developers on average but then average developers. Once you get the title of developer and get to be part of this union all developers regardless of skill would be paid the same. How is that fair? (If that's not how unions work then I cede my point).
The cost of things like "free food" is usually paid for with lower salaries, longer work hours or cuts to benefits. In other words, if the value of a perk is n, then the company offering that perk is extracting a greater than n value from their employees elsewhere, without compensation, or else passing the cost on to customers, or both.
TANSTAAFL.
Worse case, if I were either just starting in the industry or wanted to learn a new technology, I might take one or two low paying jobs to get practice and build a portfolio but that would be about it.
They don't need to. For any combination of those goals, you can find some company that aligns with them, so just go there. It may not be google or facebook, but you have choice.
There's no collar boundary to unionization, of course, but there is a perception that there is.
I've considered trying for a PE certification (now that there finally is a software engineering PE, which was not the case when I graduated) to get the "engineer" back into my title at my current job (which as a broader engineering firm that serves multiple disciplines has an absolute requirement for a PE to claim the title), but getting the certification wouldn't really help me much in the industry anywhere else, so it doesn't seem worth it.
For the reasons you cite, it's a nice idea. The immediate answer is because nobody would agree on what a developer is (do front end developers count? web designers? excel macros?).
Unions arise when workers have a reason not to stay quiet and they lack recourse. But in tech the response to not getting what you want tends to be to raise funds and start your own company, or at minimum freelance. This is imperfect and allows vulnerable people to slip through the cracks. But again, it's not enough to make for a turning point, at least yet.
But unless there's critical mass, it's every code monkey for his or herself. So I contract myself to the highest bidder and wait for the revolution :)
The first thing you do at ANY organization is to read Orwell's Animal Farm and classify the types of groups, organizations, cultures, etc. Some developers are TOP PREDATOR Lion cats. Perl versus Python versus Java versus Rust versus Haskell.
They love fighting and snarling at one another. The INTERNET WORKS BY diversity and PERL and Java and even Javascript. Even if javascript is such an ugly, ugly language. this is a joke. OK, I write OCaml to typescript to ??? to Javascript.
metaphor: programmers union is like 'herding cats' is a LAKOFF 'false framing.' WRONG and false argument. not based on nature and/or observation of nature and bio-mimicry patterns.
'disinformation campaign.' aka TROLLING aka - making you think your life's passion/career is like being a cat. Screwing your mind over. Psyops. fill in your own term. Scam Racket.
The Teamsters do driving. Even a Child and a robot can drive. But the Teamsters Union survives. WHY? If the crime-ridden Teamsters Union can do it, then even the 'cat-ridden' SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS UNION' can do it.
insert cat smiling, LOL.
You realize that's a ploy to get you to take less vacation/not pay out accrued hours on leaving the company right?
However, if a sector creates a substantial value to the economy, their unions affect governing organs, they heavily influence cities or states to work in their favor not against them. If we look at for instance how tech companies are treated in bay area vs the automotive giants over in Detroit, or potato farmers in Idaho we can see the difference.
How much of that is paid?
they don't have to keep PTO hours on the books, and don't have to pay out for hours not taken when you leave either...
As employer abuses, such as the 'no poaching agreement' came to light, or sudden changes in salary compensation etc. That provides incentive but it often isn't enough incentive to start the really vicious knock down drawn out fight that unionizing would entail.
Bottom line I think it would take a perfect storm of events, gross employer abuse, a large group of people who feel they have nothing to lose, and the prospect of a very bleak future unless something radical changes. We saw what happens when those forces align last Noveember, it doesn't happen all that often.
I think the thing that people forget with regard to unions and employers is they are simply about redressing a massive power imbalance in a potentially mutually beneficial relationship.
A secret voluntary union would lack that unifying force and would collapse as workers pursue their personal self-interest.
My take is that the major obstacle workers face in negotiating conditions, pay, and work, is information asymmetry. Having everyone negotiate from an increased negotiating position should help the honest workers as well as the defectors.. and one would hope, the employers.
That very much depends on the jurisdiction. Closed-shops are illegal in Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action
[1] https://www.nlrb.gov/resources/national-labor-relations-act
Using that kind of sensational language to describe something routine makes it hard to take you seriously.
Medical doctors, university professors, and librarians are largely unionized. Do you believe the American Association of University Professors threatens colleges with arson when negotiations aren't going the way they want them to?
History?
> Medical doctors, university professors, and librarians are largely unionized.
Doctors aren't exactly a union - they're a licensing body. That distinction matters rather a lot for this discussion. (No licensing body has ever threatened, let alone carried out, violence to prevent outsiders from taking jobs, to the best of my knowledge, but unions have done so regularly. On the other hand, licensing bodies have the authority of the state behind them, so maybe it's just somebody else who does the violence...)
You're right that the AMA has never threatened or carried out violence, but then again, neither have any professional unions I've ever heard of.
For the record, I've spent ~6 years in unionized workplaces and never heard the school teachers, university professors, or government employees who had union cards conspire to commit violence. I would recommend reading about professional unions before decided that they are violent based on "History?".
Consider a case where let's say the founder of an extremely successful yet 50 person software company sells the company for an ungodly sum ($250mil+) to Corporation X but as a part of that deal this founder doesn't provide any equity to 80% of his/her employees who helped build the company?
What should they do then?
Call collective bargaining what it is, state-sanctioned extortion. "Give us X or we'll walk out. No, you can't hire a replacement either." Imagine if your auto mechanic or doctor or plumber could to this to you.
Not that it isn't necessarily justified; seeing the working conditions at, for example, Amazon's warehouses improved more than warrants it. But let's not pretend it's something it's not.
>...this founder doesn't provide any equity to 80% of his/her employees who helped build the company? What should they do then?
A talented, highly educated workforce of developers somehow collectively failed to read their employment contracts and understand the risks/rewards of their compensation? What they should all do is smack themselves on the forehead.
In a perfect world, where the government doesn't restrain the company from firing everyone and hiring new employees, I'm fine with it. I wouldn't want to participate, but I see no reason why it would be a unfair.
> Consider a case where let's say the founder of an extremely successful yet 50 person software company sells the company for an ungodly sum ($250mil+) to Corporation X but as a part of that deal this founder doesn't provide any equity to 80% of his/her employees who helped build the company?
> What should they do then?
Either continue working for the new owners or find employment elsewhere.
If employees wanted equity, then they should have negotiated that as part of their terms of employment.
Unions got buy-in from workers because they offered tangible benefits to workers. Shorter days, medical care, better pay, and so on. The items you list are public policy concerns that align well with a variety of advocacy groups. In virtually all cases, a specialist advocacy group seems better-suited to addressing the problem than a union.
But I would argue that issues like wage suppression, security, and privacy have a huge impact on our work-life balance, income and the software we write.
An organization of developers dedicated to collective bargaining would be able to support advocacy groups and give them teeth in their dealings with large multinational corporations and even governments.
Would you agree?
Personally, I would not be willing to join a union because I don't see any benefits they could give me in return for my money. I'm quite happy bargaining on my own, and advocating for the issues I care about, without a conglomerate middleman.
Developers like most people are motivated by self-interest and have little motivation to see change in the status quo.
With regards to advocacy, it's much easier to cut a check to the EFF (or similar organizations) when your conscience is moved.
We as developers could careless about actually seeing meaningful results outside of the code we write and money we make.
That's what you're saying more or less?
I strongly disagree with your statement that collective bargaining isn't beneficial because at no point are the efforts of individuals more effective than that of a group. Only together is there change. The people's movements of the world have demonstrated that time and time again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People's_History_of_the_Unit...
I may have missed it, but it is also possible that dsacco didn't opine on whether developers care about things that are greater than code.
I think most developers, if asked, do in fact care about security, privacy, standards, net neutrality, and open source software. The issue, I have found in my many conversations with developers, is not that developers do not care about the items you have listed. Most do! That the EFF and the FSF and similar groups continue to exist shows this.
The issue I see at hand is that unions need to look like a good deal for people to sign up. People need to expect to gain more for their dues and participation than they could gain on their own. If a union is going to send money to the EFF, and I can send money to the EFF myself without the administrative overhead of a union, what does the union gain me?
Think of it in business terms, as successful unionizers have always done. What unique value does your new model union offer that justifies the costs? You're asking people to make a major financial commitment to group together and advocate for themselves, but you're focusing almost exclusively on secondary issues.
It is not that a union could or could not do all the things you suggest. The issue I see is that a compelling case has not been made that a new model union is the best way to advance the causes we care about. Where's the return on investment in collective bargaining for us?
Also: I see that you created an account solely to have this conversation. Have you come to understand why developers don't unionize, or did you expect to convincingly advocate for unions of software engineering professionals?
Who's implementing the security? Developers and operations. I seriously doubt the union is going to be naming and shaming their own membership for shoddy work.
> ...privacy...
If developers cared about that, nobody would be working at all these advertising supported businesses and Google would be a forgotten footnote in history. Here too, such a union would be alienating a large portion of its potential members.
The scope of this is so diverse no organization, union or otherwise could advocate for all this to the satisfaction of its constituents.
"Counterbalance corporate interests"
What is that? There's really only one unifying corporate interest, and that is to profit, which is generally speaking a Good Idea.
There's nothing intrinsic about unions that would cause that rule to exist.
- "Sorry, I need to talk with he Union first to see what my options."
- "Hi, we decided that you need to come to work all the weekends in March and we still have to decide if we will pay for the overtime and how much".
- "Mmm... Well, let me ask the Union, but I think that this is not going to happen... I actually had lots of plans for the weekends in March."
- "Hi, you are fired. Not because you are a bad professional but because you ask too many questions and because you don't show yourself submissive in front of me".
- "Mmm... I am afraid that you will need to have a long conversation with the lawyers of the Union first".
That's what Unions are for in many countries.
1. employer is allowed to unilaterally change contract with employee?
2. employer is allowed not to pay for overtime?
3. employer can fire somebody at a whim?
In my country all three are forbidden by law, and I haven't talked about unions yet.
If you need a union to push back for you, well, sorry but most likely you're not keeping up with the average for your profession.
If, instead, you're engaged in a collective labor action, your employer cannot retaliate by firing you.
Do you remember 2004?
Why can't there be another way than the way our grandparents' unionized?
I am just a single person, but I wouldn't be caught dead in an union just from what I've seen them do.
It leaves me wondering if it's the same country or it's the same issue
#1 Abundant labor, meaning buyers market, so developers don't have leverage. This has a pretty good primer on the topic:
Democracy At Work
https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-at-Work-Cure-Capitalism/dp/...
#2 I'm as pinko commie liberal socialist as they come, and I can't imagine how even the most well intentioned (least alt-factual neo-reactionary libertarian) group of developers can coordinate collectively. Said another way, I can't imagine preventing the free-rider, defector problem.
This book covers the sociology of collective action:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action
Maybe, just maybe, there's a unifying issue or policy, like protecting privacy rights, that could motivate most developers to pull in the same direction... Just to throw out an idea as an example.
That being said, I see you describe yourself as a "pinko commie" and as a business owner who was at one time a union administrator in a past life I would never hire you, so perhaps that explains the bubble you are living in.
There is huge disparity and in worker skill levels, productivity and salaries. Lots of mediocre developers on, say $60,000, but also lots of guys on $150,000 and up, with pretty different concerns (e.g., maybe the guy on $200,000 can live with a few late nights).
Pretty different from, say, auto workers or bus drivers where you have thousands of staff at the same skill and salary level, with the same interests and concerns.
Darn.
But I don't think it will always be this way. With the rise of bootcamps and the influx of new developers we're going to see over the next 15 years, thanks to all of today's kids learning to code, I think developers are at serious risk of becoming commoditized. I see a future where a developer is paid the salary of a retail cashier and it scares me.
The only way that will happen is if Point-of-Sale systems become so complex that a developer has to run them, or development becomes as easy as punching buttons on a Point-of-Sale system.
It was a really sad day when they started teaching English and Math to elementary school kids.
Kids today are just punching out novels and theorems like there is no tomorrow...
I had always seen the fight as between capital and labor. But then again, I'm an elitist white urbanite.
The book Democracy at Work (linked upthread) attempts to find a third way. Worker owned democratically run organizations. My personal interest comes from when I used democratic decision making on my own teams, to great effect. Alas, we didn't control the capital, so our efforts had limited broader success.
But an EFF which gets to negotiate my salary for me? No thanks. I'll keep donating to the EFF and just not join the union, thanks.
Without collective bargaining, what you're describing isn't a "new style of union" but an advocacy organization. We probably need more of those, but they're really hard to run effectively.
They have a strict definition (job titles, educational background) that excludes designers but includes front-end developers. But since IT workers, compared to so many other industries, are rather well off, PROSA is not a typical worker's union. I assume the main reason why people are members is to get access to the part-government funded unemployment fund, and the secondary reason is to support its IT politics.
Yes, they've handled large-scale conflict and strikes in the past, and yes, they handle collective agreements for workers in a few larger organisations. But because there's so little conflict in this sector in Denmark, it is mostly handled on a case-by-case basis (where the union membership fee can be seen as a subscription to legal aid) and the union can spend its energy on[1]:
- Lobbying for better IT policy. Unlike like-minded non-profits, the union has a good budget, full-time employees, career lobbyists etc. Still, IT policy is not being taken very serious in Denmark (being just a series of tubes)
- Running citizen-focused campaigns that focus on privacy, use of FOSS, the free internet, TPP, automation, etc.
- Donating, on occasion, to non-profits that really need it. I think EFF were targets at least once.
It does not maintain or create standards. It does not hold companies responsible for privately made security choices. (The media does to some extent, but as you may have read, paying for security is more expensive than screwing up and dealing with the consequences.) It does not support FOSS directly, AFAIK, but since Denmark is such a small place, there are active FOSS players both among union members and employees.
Among other things PROSA does, which you have not mentioned that a new style of union could is: Create a geographically based community. Some meetup groups use their meeting rooms (e.g. Functional Copenhageners; MF#K). And there's a lot of user groups organized within PROSA, so in a sense they've taken over the social aspect of LUGs (Linux User Groups); e.g. makers, roboticists, board gamers, network admins, etc.
If you ask me, unions in IT are useful if you're the hundred-something or thousand-something employee in a large corporation. If you can't simply switch jobs from one month to the next. If you don't get paid so well that you could take months off if you wanted. And IT is large enough to encompass people for whom that makes total sense. And then there's those who probably get paid more without a collective wage agreement. In Denmark, some of those choose to stay for the cozy atmosphere. :)
[1]: Note, I never worked for PROSA. I'm sure they do a hell of a lot more union-related work than I can imagine exists. Also, I know nothing of how IT unions work elsewhere. I just wrote articles for their magazine while I was a student.
It's like asking why cats don't herd.
Also many of the issues that matter to you don't matter to developers, or aren't convincingly argued.
If you want developers to unionize the first step is consulting them on what changes they'd like to see and then creating an organization to effect those changes, treat the union like a lean startup creating an MVP and I bet you may have success.
I would support a professional organization however that performs some amount of accreditation and peer review especially if it led to better hiring decisions throughout the industry and higher quality software.