Comment by horsecaptin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by horsecaptin | Hacker News Reader

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When the industry is highly lucrative on the backs of overworked labor, some type of a union apparatus is the most affective way to ensure fair compensation.

Yes, we can educate others who want to enter the industry, but when you're graduating out of university with a fat debt, you'll accept the poor working conditions for long enough and the cycle will continue to perpetuate.

The best protection against predation is for the prey to act together. Predators will always divide and conquer and go after the weak, and so the weak must be protected. The other way is increased competition - but our environment is becoming more and more anti-competitive.

   is highly lucrative on the backs of overworked labor

You need to think about WHY this situation happens. I'm willing to believe grouped negotiations can bring value to a class of workers but it's a partial remedy to a bad situation.

  but when you're graduating out of university with a fat debt

Paying expensive university could be a really bad decision, especially in markets like game industry / software dev, which doesn't require by law that you pass some exams. Funnily, once you create huge syndicates / unions for the game industry or software dev, maybe you'll see these kind of "protection" to emerge

That's a good point about unions requiring minimum education levels for membership. I suppose this is where apprenticeships come in. There will still be non-union developers, just as there are non union plumbers.

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