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Comment by Clubber | Hacker News Reader

I think a tech union would significantly raise the wages of technical people. A past job, I automated away jobs at $0.10 on the dollar and made a healthy salary, but it obviously was 1/10th of what I was worth. I left that company and all those jobs are still automated away and the more the company grows, the more they save.

Also a tech union could push for perks like developer offices, remote work, better work equipment, etc. If nothing else, they could communicate with the business on how to make developers happy and comfortable; something the business might be willing to do, but don't know how to do.

Now is the time to do it too, US businesses are pulling back on offshore labor and bringing work back to the US.

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> I think a tech union would significantly raise the wages of technical people.

By what mechanism? Either they engage in collective bargaining, which is filled with problems, or artificially constrict the supply of labor by requiring additional licensing. Considering there is already a shortage of software engineers, constricting it further is unlikely to be net positive.

From where I'm standing, the current system works very well and is about as free as a labor market can be. I just accepted a new job and the process of getting there involved talking to about two dozen companies, narrowing those down to 6 or 7 offers and having each company submit a bid (initial offer). I pruned off the bottom half and had the top 2-3 companies submit revised bids based on competitor info and ultimately chose a company which offered a great mix of compensation and role/culture.

At no point in the process do I think having someone else do negotiation for me would have increased my pay. In fact, I'm convinced that any collective bargaining arrangement would mean a significant reduction in my compensation—for one thing, every "open salary" calculator I've seen proposes a salary about half of what I make. Formulaic salaries help low performers and hurt high performers.

> If nothing else, they could communicate with the business on how to make developers happy and comfortable; something the business might be willing to do, but don't know how to do.

I don't need a union to do that. I certainly don't need a union with collective bargaining to do that.

Tech "unions" might make sense to enshrine certain ethical principles, but I would not expect a union to increase my pay—and would vote against any one which promised that.

>Considering there is already a shortage of software engineers, constricting it further is unlikely to be net positive.

Since there is a short supply of software engineers, why do you think wages haven't risen?

>every "open salary" calculator I've seen proposes a salary about half of what I make. Formulaic salaries help low performers and hurt high performers.

I suspect that's because businesses manipulate that so they can hire offshore workers cheaper. H1B mandates that they pay at least industry wages (or something like that). If the business declares the industry wages artificially low, they can hire cheap tech workers. Unions would prevent that.

>At no point in the process do I think having someone else do negotiation for me would have increased my pay.

Maybe, maybe not. It sure works well for NFL players. I seriously doubt you are getting a tenth of what you make for the company. There's only so far you can go by yourself.

>I don't need a union to do that. I certainly don't need a union with collective bargaining to do that.

You can ask until your are blue in the face, but you will probably be ignored at most places. Also, you wouldn't have to fight for 6 months to get a decent monitor, it will just be there.

>but I would not expect a union to increase my pay—and would vote against any one which promised that.

That's not very good business sense. You should at least ask them to prove it before you flatly deny it.

Let me ask you this, say you owned your own company and you partnered with another company on a joint venture. Do you think it would be a good negotiation if your company only got 1/100th of the profits of the joint venture? That's probably what you are getting now. Sounds like you've sold yourself short and you either don't realize it, or you want to believe you are a good negotiator. You may be a good negotiator as an individual, but you just don't have the power of a group. Why do you think political parties exist? Group power always trumps individual power.

> Since there is a short supply of software engineers, why do you think wages haven't risen?

They definitely have, at least for the high end of the market. For example, Hired shows a 3.28% increase in salaries for SF engineers this year. [0]

> I suspect that's because businesses manipulate that so they can hire offshore workers cheaper.

I'm positive that open salary initiatives are not an attempt to hire H1B workers. I'm talking about things like this: https://stackoverflow.com/company/salary/calculator

I bet Stack Overflow doesn't even have H1B workers.

> I seriously doubt you are getting a tenth of what you make for the company. There's only so far you can go by yourself.

I know how much my new employer makes per employee, and I make well more than a tenth of that. I'd suspect I capture around 30-40% of my value.

> Also, you wouldn't have to fight for 6 months to get a decent monitor, it will just be there.

You and I seem to occupy very different segments of the tech industry. Every single employer I've ever worked for has given me carte blanche to request whatever equipment I need on my first day of work. Only stupid or nearsighted employers quibble over <$5k in equipment expenses for an employee they pay hundreds of thousands per year.

> Do you think it would be a good negotiation if your company only got 1/100th of the profits of the joint venture? That's probably what you are getting now.

Why would I accept 1/100th of the profits of the join venture? I negotiate very aggressively—in fact, I'd argue that I once captured more than my value from a previous startup which ended up failing. I don't expect to capture 100% of the value, since the company is also providing resources which allow that value to be created (ex. significant existing scale).

If I negotiate in a group, I have to accept the outcome of the outcome of the group. I have no interest in making what the average programmer makes.

[0] https://hired.com/state-of-salaries-2017

You'd be surprised how many companies aspire to hire Wayne Gretzky - and then complain when he wants new skates every season

I don't dispute that there are poorly-run companies which want to underpay and abuse their developers.

We don't need a union to solve those companies. Just don't work for them.

>Just don't work for them.

That's a pretty unrealistic solution, especially considering most companies are trying to reduce costs and don't understand the economics of good equipment.

If you don't like hurricanes, just move away from the coast. Simple. /s

Great analogy. I'm going to use that one. It's gotten so bad companies won't even let me bring in my own good hardware I paid for to use. Dual core laptops with 3 hours battery life, 24" 1920x1080 monitor, mechanical hard drives, all shit.

>They definitely have, at least for the high end of the market. For example, Hired shows a 3.28% increase in salaries for SF engineers this year. [0]

So if you really look at those numbers, you left out a bunch of them that don't back up your assertion that salaries are skyrocketing like they should in an ultra-high demand field:

  SF Bay Area | 3.28%
  Seattle | 2.14%
  Austin | 0.96%
  Chicago | 0.57%
  New York | 0.25%
  Boston | 0.24%
  LA | -0.13%
  London | -1.7%
  Denver | -2.63%
  Washington D.C | -2.85%
  San Diego | -4.92%
  Toronto | -6.29%

1. Half of the areas in your link are decreasing average salary before inflation.

2. Anything under the 2% inflation target is considered a decrease in income.

3. After subtracting 2% for inflation, add the cost of living increase in SF which was 78% between 2000 and 2015, and you are probably decreasing wages.

4. A union negotiator would know that. The hiring managers sure do (or at least the CFOs).

So let me ask the question a third time. If demand for tech workers is so high, why are wages flat? Do you think Apple/MS/Amazon/Google's EBITDA was that flat as well?

http://www.bayareaeconomy.org/the-cost-of-living-continues-t...

The total value of my compensation as a formerly unionized technology guy was on par with a tech company and probably higher than average, adjusting for cost of living.

Everyone on HN is a performer, but the reality is that most people benefit, and most high performers will work for a lot less.

> Considering there is already a shortage of software engineers, constricting it further is unlikely to be net positive.

"Shortage of software engineers": The myth that just won't die. If this were true, salaries would be skyrocketing, companies wouldn't have the luxury of being as picky as they are, and open reqs wouldn't attract hundreds of applicants.

> I just accepted a new job and the process of getting there involved talking to about two dozen companies, narrowing those down to 6 or 7 offers and having each company submit a bid (initial offer). I pruned off the bottom half and had the top 2-3 companies submit revised bids based on competitor info and ultimately chose a company which offered a great mix of compensation and role/culture.

Congratulations. While I don't doubt your story, you must realize your experience is an extreme outlier. Most people I know consider themselves lucky to get one offer after talking to two dozen companies, if that. With no alternatives, you have little power to negotiate: you take it or leave it. And once you're hired, it's no different than any other job--you are employed at the will of your employer. Any day can be your last.

> If this were true, salaries would be skyrocketing

In my corner of the world, they definitely are.

I think a lot of these discussions are complicated by the fact that there are essentially two developer job markets: prime and sub-prime. The prime developer market is for top-tier developers who work at top tech companies and startups, primarily in SV & NYC. The sub-prime developer market is all the developers working on companies whose primary product isn't software.

The hiring market for both markets looks very different, especially since people don't really recognize that as such. A hiring manager in the prime market might legitimately perceive there as being a shortage, even when receiving dozens or hundreds of resumes because the vast majority of those resumes are simply not qualified. When I was last hiring, we received plenty of resumes—but many of those resumes were from people who exclusively had Microsoft experience or simply maintained WordPress installations. They didn't meet my standard for a senior developer, and once we found someone who did meet that standard after months of searching we did whatever it took to hire them.

I don't feel like an outlier, since I'm looking at the market from the prime sector where it's normal and expected to have multiple competing offers.

There can be a shortage of senior developers while still having hundreds of applications for every open position because most of those applications won't pass the bar. If you're capable of passing that bar, you have your pick of positions.

My guess is that what you describe as the "prime" developer market represents 1% of the tech labor force, surely no more than 10%. Much smaller than you think it is. There are plenty of talented people, even in these "top" tech companies, who do not have 6-7 offers thrown at them regularly and have to slug it out with the rest of us in a brutal labor market. I think what is being argued here is whether collective action would be beneficial to the remaining 90-99%.

It's certainly more than 1%. Top tech companies alone employ more than 1% of developers.

> There are plenty of talented people, even in these "top" tech companies, who do not have 6-7 offers thrown at them

That doesn't match my experience at all. Every Google/Facebook/Amazon employee I know constantly has interview requests and people trying to recruit them.

> It's certainly more than 1%. Top tech companies alone employ more than 1% of developers.

That would be true only if you assumed around a huge number of top tech company hires were those prime developers. I've worked at all kinds of companies, including one you would undoubtedly consider "top." They all employ the full distribution. The mean will be higher in the top companies, but that's it.

> That doesn't match my experience at all. Every Google/Facebook/Amazon employee I know constantly has interview requests and people trying to recruit them.

Obviously it doesn't match your personal experience--we've already established that you're one of those "prime" developers. Likely your co-worker/acquaintance bubble is full of them too. Our perception of normal is often clouded by what we encounter every day. You see this all the time here on HN, where commenters tend to be smarter than the average bear. In that respect, I am open to applying that same reasoning to myself: I see talented people underemployed, struggling to get recognized, and at the mercy of their employer; and therefore I am potentially extrapolating this as normal. I think the numbers bear me out, but I admit I have not done more than casual Internet-research.

> That would be true only if you assumed around a huge number of top tech company hires were those prime developers.

I do assume that. Yes, there is a distribution of abilities at top tech companies—but virtually everyone I've worked with at a good company could easily get other offers.

If you actually worked at a top tech company, your bubble should be similar to mine—I have a hard time imaging that many of your FANG colleagues are having trouble getting good employment offers.

So what would the average prime developer expect to make in SV?

$200-300k in total compensation.

I don't want this to sound like it probably does but that's not overly impressive for a place like SV. I mean it sounds like a lot before you calculate cost of living (and it would be a lot here). A good self disciplined developer where I live (accounting for cost of living) would make the north end of that from a not very known company (that's not even a software company). A not great maintenance developer that requires a lot of direction with 5 years experience would make about $150K in SV (adjusted).

I'm pointing this out because it's important for developers to know at least their (adjusted) market value. The taboo about salaries only stands to help employers. Also, it's a negotiating tactic to have the other person throw out the first number, that's why job listings rarely list salaries.

For me, the only way I would gain is to collect a large (adjusted) salary for a few years, keeping my expenses as low as possible (not that easy in SV), then moving back to a lower cost of living area. That doesn't seem to be worth the trouble though.

FWIW, I would expect a prime developer working for one of the big five to make at least double that based on what they contribute to the bottom line. That's not going to happen with the way the negotiation is stacked against an individual.

My estimate is skewed downwards because you asked for average, and a significant percentage of the cohort is new grads and relatively inexperienced developers. Senior developers can certainly make above $300k.

You seem to put far too much stock in cost of living adjustments (a very common fallacy on HN). Such adjustments should be applied to expenses, not income, and neglects the fact that many expenses don't multiplicatively scale with location. It's very possible to live a good life even in SV/NYC on $60k/yr in expenses, leaving tons of room for aggressive savings.

Instead of talking about bogus adjusted salaries, give me hard numbers on why you think $300k is a low salary. At the very least, tell me what bogus adjustment number you're using.

> The taboo about salaries only stands to help employers.

It also helps highly-paid workers who only have to justify their salary to managers instead of to all their peers as well.

> Also, it's a negotiating tactic to have the other person throw out the first number

It's a tactic but not a very good one. I've conducted my own split tests and anchoring with a high number tends to lead to much better results while not wasting your time on people who think paying a senior developer $120k is reasonable.

>Such adjustments should be applied to expenses, not income, and neglects the fact that many expenses don't multiplicatively scale with location.

Only the big ones, housing, food, transportation.

>It's very possible to live a good life even in SV/NYC on $60k/yr in expenses, leaving tons of room for aggressive savings.

Bullshit.

http://www.city-data.com/forum/san-francisco-oakland/189180-...

>At the very least, tell me what bogus adjustment number you're using.

Pick any calculator. Here's one of many linked by the US Department of State.

http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/savings/moving-cost-of-l...

https://www.state.gov/m/fsi/tc/79700.htm

>It's a tactic but not a very good one. I've conducted my own split tests and anchoring with a high number tends to lead to much better results while not wasting your time on people who think paying a senior developer $120k is reasonable.

If it was between you and some other guy just like you and I asked each of you what you expected the salary to be without throwing out a number and you were $10K higher, I sure ain't hiring you. That's how it works.

> Bullshit.

Don't tell me my own life is bullshit, that's ridiculously patronizing. You'll trust a calculator over my own personal direct experience?

Not to mention that the very forum you linked says $60k is very possible.

> Pick any calculator. Here's one of many linked by the US Department of State.

All of those calculators make the ridiculous mistake of adjusting income instead of expenses. Income should only be adjusted if you're living paycheck-to-paycheck.

Even if you assume all expenses scale by that factor, you're much better off saving $100k/yr in SV than $50k/yr in the midwest. Not to mention that tons of expenses (cable subscriptions, vacations, e-commerce) don't scale with location.

I'm tired of fighting this fight on HN. Believe CoL calculators all you want—meanwhile, SV engineers can save enough to retire to the midwest by the time they're 35.

> That's how it works.

It is extremely rare that two equally qualified candidates are both negotiating offers for a single position at the same time. Your scenario is contrived and I have literally never seen it happen despite negotiating dozens of job offers.

>Don't tell me my own life is bullshit, that's ridiculously patronizing.

But it's not your life is it? You're a top tier developer in SV making $200-300K+, not some guy living the good life and saving aggressively making $60K.

>Not to mention that the very forum you linked says $60k is very possible.

This is what you said that was bullshit.

>It's very possible to live a good life even in SV/NYC on $60k/yr in expenses, leaving tons of room for aggressive savings.

Nowhere on that forum does anyone say they can live a good life in SV for $60K a year leaving tons of room for aggressive savings. It's a bunch of single people living in 1-2 bedroom shoeboxes with two roommates and $200 to spare a month. Maybe we just have large difference in our definition of good life and aggressive savings.

>Even if you assume all expenses scale by that factor, you're much better off saving $100k/yr in SV than $50k/yr in the midwest.

Yes, I agree with that. That was something I pointed out, one of the only benefits of living and working in SV. It's still no place to plant roots, even on that salary. It just doesn't pay enough. That goes back to my original point. Developers are underpaid regardless of location, particularly for a field in such high demand.

Here's some listings on Realtor.com for SF.

https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/238-Thrift...

A house the same size as mine (minus the yard) is 8x as expensive, yet a developer in SV only makes 2x more. I mean even if you buy a small little 1000 sq foot house, you're still paying 3-4x more than I am and you get less than half of the house. If you live in an apartment, you're just throwing your money away by not building any equity.

>Not to mention that tons of expenses (cable subscriptions, vacations, e-commerce) don't scale with location.

So ya, that's true but who cares? That's such a small percentage of your expenses. Like I said before, housing, transportation and food do scale with location and that's the majority of monthly expenditures, and also necessities.

Also I'm sorry to tell you but $1 million after 10 years isn't enough to retire on at 35, even in the midwest. You'll have to invest wisely or take another job or start a profitable business. Once you have a family and get older, things get expensive, even in the midwest. You still have 50 years left to live with inflation, college, etc.

>It is extremely rare that two equally qualified candidates are both negotiating offers for a single position at the same time. Your scenario is contrived and I have literally never seen it happen despite negotiating dozens of job offers.

From the hiring side?

I'm going to stop engaging with you, since it's clear that you'd rather make up facts and deliberately misinterpret my statements than discuss in good faith. For example, I specifically said $60k/yr in expenses—which obviously excludes savings and is a totally different number from income.

Maybe read up on investments and personal finance when you get a chance. You seem to have a very shaky grasp of fundamentals like opportunity cost or safe withdrawal rates. There are entire forums of people who retired on $1M or less in assets: https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/

>A hiring manager in the prime market might legitimately perceive there as being a shortage, even when receiving dozens or hundreds of resumes because the vast majority of those resumes are simply not qualified.

I was unemployed last winter into spring. I had job experience on my resume, as an embedded firmware developer. No company doing embedded wanted to hire me, because I'd worked on a small variety of fairly specific boards. No company doing non-embedded wanted to hire me, because I lacked substantial web-dev experience. I thus went from a six-figure year to depressingly continual unemployment.

I have a job now, but at a reduced salary because, well, I have to be the junior to do webdev (a friend helped me out).

Really seems to me like there's no shortage, and salaries are not skyrocketing. Nothing's gotten expensive enough that anyone's considered hiring people without exact skill combinations, but who otherwise have solid records.

> The myth that just won't die. If this were true, salaries would be skyrocketing, companies wouldn't have the luxury of being as picky as they are, and open reqs wouldn't attract hundreds of applicants.

I don't know whether to think it is real, or that it is a myth. It's true that tech companies are picky, it's true that salaries are not skyrocketing. Open reqs attract hundreds of unqualified applicants, at least, that was my impression.

> With no alternatives, you have little power to negotiate: you take it or leave it.

I just wanted to add, this is inline with my experience. It is difficult to get multiple offers to align in the manner suggested.

> Open reqs attract hundreds of unqualified applicants, at least, that was my impression.

Matches my experience on the hiring side. Even after we filter heavily long before they get to me, within the last month, had a candidate for a senior software position who literally asked "What is AWS?"

I can only presume that guy files loads of applications and goes on every interview he's offered.

Are you paying market rates? If so, how are you calculating market rates? Also, if you are paying market rates, why would you expect anyone really talented to select your company over all the other ones that pay market rates? (I'm not trying to be snide).

I believe so and this guy was just an outlier dud who BS'd his way to an on-site round.

Fresh college hires are making 6-figures and it goes up from there, quickly. We use an HR market data firm to inform our hiring managers, but if you spend enough time in the market, you get to learn when you're never losing a candidate over comp or when you're frequently losing them over comp or getting strong counter proposals. I trust the intel we get from the candidates and market over what we get from the HR research company. (Boston market.)

It sounds like you are doing it right. I only personally know two really good people. One is my mentor, the other I made my business partner. Good luck.

As an engineer, I do the interviewing, but I have no insight into salary details. I have no idea what my coworkers are paid, were hired for, how much this candidate thinks he is worth or is asking, or what we've promised or advertised through recruiters, etc.

>Open reqs attract hundreds of unqualified applicants, at least, that was my impression.

In that case, what you can do is train your underqualified candidates. Create a system which allows you to train candidates for training and get them up to speed.

Kind of like manufacturing used to do.

I actually think apprenticeships would be a great system for software engineering. I'm in no position to implement it, however.

>I don't know whether to think it is real, or that it is a myth. It's true that tech companies are picky, it's true that salaries are not skyrocketing. Open reqs attract hundreds of unqualified applicants, at least, that was my impression.

Then you should probably hurry up and skyrocket your salaries.

Thus far, the only way I've found to do this is by changing jobs. I've been somewhat successful at it, I think, but that somewhat puts a limit on how frequently I can do this, and I'm not fond of the negotiating.

The world would be a better place if people just paid people what they were worth. If we could start having more honest conversations about salary (e.g., talking about salary, and comparing salaries should not be taboo…), I think it'd go a long ways.

The only thing tech unions would enshrine is the use of certain companies' proprietary technology, by way of requiring entrants to be qualified in it as part of a licensing regime.

In short, I have zero confidence tech unions wouldn't be owned by the big tech industry companies.

This isn't really a good thing.

Unions do things like engage in age discrimination by favoring senior members over all else.

They do things like throw up oppressive barriers to entry, and limited licenses, in order to F over everyone who is not already in the club.

Unions are only a good idea for exceptional 1 size fits all situations.

For example, there are only a couple major airlines in the industry, and if you get fired or leave, your career is permanently messed up, even though you spent a decade training to be a pilot and getting the necessary flight hours.

In this kind of situation, where an airline has excessive bargaining power, and workers have no other option, a pilots union makes sense. Even though a pilot job is a high skilled position.

But for tech? No way. Engaging in collective bargaining to get the small amount of negotiation power just isn't worth the drawbacks of a 1 size fits all solution.

>Unions do things like engage in age discrimination by favoring senior members over all else.

I think you mean unions negotiate for relatively higher pay for people who have been with the company longer, or with more experience, but it would also negotiate higher pay for new hires relative to a non-union shop.

You're also thinking of manufacturing unions. I suspect a tech union would be a little different. Things like The Writer's Guild are also unions.

I'd certainly be willing to try it. I suspect pay would at least double. I mean right now you hear about high demand for tech people, but wages don't reflect that. Unions would help that problem. Unions would also prevent offshoring which drives down wages.

> I mean right now you hear about high demand for tech people, but wages don't reflect that.

By what metric? Software developers can make $250k+ in SV.

I have a hard time imagining pay doubling broadly. Only a small cohort of employers could sustain paying engineers $500k+, though I suppose it is possible.

Software developers wages have stagnated for at least the last 10 years.

http://www.theserverside.com/discussions/thread/81424.html

So I'll ask again, since developers are in such high demand, why do you think wages haven't increased?

Pretty much everything that article says about SF is wrong. A "small detached bungalow" in the suburbs will probably go for half what they suggest, and 120K is not subsistence wages. I currently live on less than that, in a nice area, spend money on things I want to, don't budget aggressively, and save a significant portion of my income.

Sure, you probably won't be purchasing a family home on a single (entry level) income, but that's true in pretty much any suburban or urban area.

That's in SV. And the vast, vast majority aren't making that.

I know good people in Europe making 14k - 23k per year.

I am not going to support anyone or any group that plans on putting up barriers to entry or outright discrimination.

If a company wants to hire someone, they deserve that job, and it is ridiculous that an uninvolved group would be able to stop that hire from happen.

Them have different color skin, because they were born in an "off shore" country is no excuse to discriminate against them.

>I am not going to support anyone or any group that plans on putting up barriers to entry or outright discrimination.

You mean like pointless tech quizzes on minutia that only a young college graduate with zero experience (and cheaper) would remember?

>it is ridiculous that an uninvolved group would be able to stop that hire from happen.

I don't believe unions prevent companies from hiring people.

>Them have different color skin,

Looking at tech companies, they don't seem to be bothered by skin tone.

>because they were born in an "off shore" country is no excuse to discriminate against them.

If they aren't citizens, there is absolutely an excuse to discriminate agains them, just like their "offshore" home country discriminates against foreign workers trying to work there. There have been countless articles about TATA and their ilk not only discriminating for positions in their home countries but for positions they've won the US.

And that's called racism. I don't care if other countries discriminate against us. 2 wrongs don't make a right.

I will not ever support an organization that is outright discriminatory like that, whether it is based on skin color or citizenship.

Also, unions DO indeed prevent people from being hired. That's why right to work laws exist.

Right to work is the idea that if a company hires you, it is illegal for a union to force you to join.

There are companies where you are forced to join the union.

Ex, the screen writers and actors guild require people who work at certain companies to join them.

>And that's called racism. I don't care if other countries discriminate against us.

Lol. No it isn't, it's called nationalism. Racism is about the race of a person regardless of citizenship, nationalism is about citizenship regardless of race. You probably should look up words before you throw them around.

>I will not ever support an organization that is outright discriminatory like that, whether it is based on skin color or citizenship.

That's a straw man. No one said anything about discriminating based on skin color except you.

>Also, unions DO indeed prevent people from being hired. That's why right to work laws exist. Right to work is the idea that if a company hires you, it is illegal for a union to force you to join.

So where in that sentence do you explain that a union can force a company not to hire you?

>There are companies where you are forced to join the union. Ex, the screen writers and actors guild require people who work at certain companies to join them.

Yes, the logic being is the union is the reason people get higher wages, so they should pay union dues to support the people (fellow employees) that earned those higher wages. Many states have done away with that though as a direct attempt to weaken unions.

Here's a decent breakdown of the pros and cons:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law

Nationalism is indirect racism.

IE, if you make a law banning hiring anyone with an African citizenship, that is still racist, even though technically it still effects people from South Africa.

If you make a law that "coincidently" only effects countries that are majority not white, guess what, that's racist.

Any offshoring law would mostly effect non white countries, and wouldn't do much to effect European countries.

If your proposal 90% effects people who are of a different skin color, thats still racist, even if the net is a little wider, and still 10% effects white people.

I don't care what word you use for it. Discrimination is discrimination.

"So where in that sentence do you explain that a union can force a company not to hire you?"

The literal next sentence of your post.

If you don't join the union, you are fired. There is literally a word for this. It is called being a union shop. And it is what right to work laws protect against.

I don't care what justification is used to force people to join them. I do not want them to negotiate for me.

And I will fight all attempts that try to force me to join them.

Fortunately for me, most other people in tech oppose them.

>Any offshoring law would mostly effect non white countries, and wouldn't do much to effect European countries.

Is your argument that since the majority of the world population is not white, anything except wide open free trade with no borders are racist? Give me a break. There is plenty of offshoring to eastern bloc European countries.

Research some of this stuff. It sounds like you read a hugely biased article as the sole source of your information on this topic.

I used to be a school board member and have seen this first hand. Our unions preferred that we lay off younger teachers so that the more tenured ones could receive raises.

Who said anything about a 1 size fits all solution? Why do you insist that's how it has to be?

The Screen Actors Guild, the Directors Guild, and the Writers Guild don't work like that. Pro athlete unions don't work like that. Why would you think that tech would have to?

The whole point of those groups is to put up barriers to entry, which is something I extremely oppose.

It is also about forcing people into their collective bargaining process. I do not want anyone else to ever negotiate for me. I will negotiate for myself, because I am the one person who is most incentived to look out for myself.

Furthermore, once a union is established, it is very difficult to opt out. The screen actors, writers, ect guild have contracts with companies that FORCE you to join their group if you want to accept the job.

I oppose that wholeheartedly. I will never support groups that either put put barriers to entry, force me to have them negotiate for me, or that attempt to force people into joining them on condition of employment.

No. Instead of ever being put into a position where joining the union is a precondition for employment, I will just oppose unions in my industry before they can even get a foothold.

"The whole point of those groups is to put up barriers to entry, which is something I extremely oppose."

No, it's not.

Yes, it is. The whole point of a union is making labor more expensive to drive up wages.

Value add is not always how people get paid. For instance, say a GOOG/FB/APPL driver drives 100+ engineers and saves them 100 hours/ride on commuting time. That doesn't mean that the driver reasonably deserves the cost of 100 hours of engineering time per ride even though he does provide that service.

But yes, I do agree that it would significantly raise the wages if we were able to collectively bargain.

> Value add is not always how people get paid.

It's never how people get paid, at least not on the open market. You get paid based on what the market will bear for your skills, based on supply and demand. If you have the unique skill to create exceptional Renaissance Italian stained glass then you may be paid a mint if there is demand, or you may he waiting tables if not. Same thing if you are an expert in Vax machines.

Eastman Kodak was a technology innovator. Where are they now?

Unions were/are a huge drag on them.

In order to 'protect' workers, unions define job functions. This prevents an engineer from being moved over to bathroom cleaner. However, it also locks people into job descriptions that may have made sense at one time, but no longer do. It also makes the business unable to respond flexibly to new conditions.

A friend of mine worked at Kodak. It took months to get a photocopier installed because the movers were unionized, and they wouldn't move the old one because it was plugged in. Only the unionized electricians were allowed to unplug it.

Non-unionized workplaces can also have ridiculous, bureaucratic rules.

Ya, I've heard stories about people getting in trouble for moving a printer because it's a union job. Like I said before, not all unions are the same, just like not all developers are the same.

BTW, unions didn't kill Kodak. Executives love to blame unions for their own ineptitude.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/01/what-ki...

IBM is not unionized and has fought unionization since forever. They didn't need unions to have ridiculous rules pegging people into hyper-specific roles at the cost of productivity.

If the company cared about that being a huge drag on productivity, it would bring it up with the unions. Pathological management is around everywhere.

As someone who's lived through two awful tech downturns so far, now is also the time because the going is relatively good. People will be wishing they did the next time tech downturns and the layoffs begin...

Do you want the layoffs to be based solely on your union seniority number rather your individual value to the on-going company?

You give companies too much credit. When it comes to layoff time, most companies don't know or don't care what your individual value is. They need to make a number and will cut whatever they think they can to make that number. Most of the time, if they actually try to "rightsize," which isn't that often, it's the new guys who don't have the domain knowledge or the expensive guys who are assholes and redundant.

This goes back to my favorite adage:

  1. Be good at your job
  2. Don't be an asshole

Those two points are undeniably sound advice, simple to state, and hard for some people to apply.

Indeed.

It 100% would raise the wages of tech workers, but it could also hurt the stock price of many tech companies from which many senior employees make such kinds of wages anyways. Additionally, there is complexity around where goods are produced and where they are sold in regards to taxes, so some of these numbers I will list aren't exactly simple.

But anyways, Apple makes 600k in profit a year per employee, meaning they can increase the salary of every employee in the company by 400k (ignoring tax issues) and still turn a crazy large profit. Companies such as Google and Facebook have a revenue per employee that is well over 1 billion dollars, and in turn could theoretically return that money to their employees rather than putting it towards some of the other expenses that they do. However, due to stock compensation, it is for the benefit of existing employees that these companies do focus on continuing to monopolize.

> a revenue per employee that is well over 1 billion dollars

...

These figures are from 2015 numbers, so a bit old. No billions per employee, but still not too terrible: http://www.businessinsider.com/revenue-per-employee-at-apple...

Apple is listed at $2.1 mil/employee, Google at $1.2 mil, FB at $1 .4 mil.

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