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Comment by coreyp_1 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

Very fair points.

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 :)

> 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.

"forced to join corporations"? What on Earth are you talking about?

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?

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.

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