Let’s all remember that the vast majority of programmers are not mathematicians, nor logicians, nor authors, we are tradespeople. And you’ll notice that tradespeople in almost every other industry unionize.
Doctors have cartel though, instead of union that protects their jobs by limiting number of residency slots that limits number of new licensed doctors
In any case, we should aspire to follow the model of unions and not cartels.
the best engineers I know have been coding since middle school and by the college graduation have 10+ experience coding at internationally competitive level.
this is comparable to medical profession.
if you ever meet an exceptionally good engineer - just ask him for how many years has he been coding? plenty will say at least high school if not earlier - all the way till their PhD that makes it two decades of learning+coding+improving.
as for model: I am anti union and anti-cartel. Just free market as it works in the silicon valley. The competition is actually good, even from offshore workers - because it forces productivity to increase and constantly filters out the bottom ranks of the profession - they leave coding to something they are more capable of: people management, product management, program management, etc etc
same regrets exists among engineers who go to CS for money and faang jobs, and then realize how miserable they have become in the process of chasing the gold
it only limits as a Cartel to limit the supply of new doctors (and keep foreign licensed doctors away from the market) - this is typical cartel behavior, not union
lower tier productivity engineers are being filtered out continuously, and being replaced by higher productivity new grads with chatGPT types.
same as professional atheletes (like olympic athletes) retire rather quickly and do something else (coaching, brand advertising, etc).
Programmers are not "tradespeople." What an insane claim.
Doesn't mean they can't create/join a union, but they are not really in the tradesman category. White collar unions are much tinier.
I kind of doubt actual tradespeople would be fond of us referring to ourselves as one of them
Trades are skilled labor, professions are knowledge specialists.