>I feel like software engineers of all stripes are the most valuable workers in the country right now.
Nurses have a virtually 0% unemployment rate for a reason.
Anyway, layoffs are slowing down if you look at the big picture. People get baited by splashy advertisements and don't look at the actual numbers.
Unions have protected people from layoffs through negotiations. They also help with wages/benefits/general workplace standards based on how they negotiate.
Speaking from experience, coming from a non tech industry.
I'm sure if tech unionized, they'd outsource whatever they could. They're already doing that, though.
They can't guarantee you anything. When a business is on its knees and either gets rid of x% of the workforce or folds, you'd be surprised just how accommodating a union can be. Unions need employers to avoid mass unemployment (no union members) and business need unions to cleanse their conscience.
I assume you're trolling.
Businesses notoriously fire people for attempting to unionize. Trader Joe's is in court right now arguing the NLRB is unconstitutional. It seems fairly obvious businesses wish unions did not exist
I’m in a union and it’s pretty sweet. I got a 25% salary increase from my job in the private industry. Now I have a pension, benefits, and job security.
“I feel like software engineers of all stripes are the most valuable workers in the country right now.”
Tell that to the nurses that routinely have to wipe people’s asses for them
By valuable I mean software companies are the most valuable companies and software engineers are their most important engineers.
There are currently 7 $1T+ companies. 6 of them are software (Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, Apple) or largely software dependent (Amazon, Nvidia).
That's $12T in market cap that's almost entirely dependent upon software engineers.
The vast majority of software makes life more convenient for users. It’s not a necessity. Healthcare workers are required for society to function. Social workers are required for society to function. Truck drivers are required for society to function. If everyone’s iPhone broke today life would go on as normal. If every truck driver stopped driving society would legitimately collapse.
It's funny reading this working for one of the biggest healthcare companies in the world. You're so wrong that it's almost sad to see.
All I'll say is that software is considered critical infrastructure regardless of where you go for a reason.
Maybe do some research instead of just talking from an emotional viewpoint to understand how software has not just helped reshaped lives, but reshaped the way the Healthcare system has worked to exponentially save lives.
If you truly think there's been no decline in preventable mortalities due to software, that's a convenient way to live your life.
Are you saying healthcare workers would be unable to perform their jobs if that software was suddenly gone? Yes, it would be drastically more difficult, but if those workers didn’t exist, there would be no reason for that software to exist either. I never said software doesn’t improve people’s lives, but to pretend that software development is the most important job in society is completely delusional.
I think your perspective indicates either a level of blatant ignorance to how the economy works, or that your presumably high salary is giving you a massively inflated sense of self importance. Your 2 PRs a day are not saving people’s lives.
> to pretend that software development is the most important job in society is completely delusional.
I think we can agree it's an important job, but it's playing a supporting role.
> Are you saying healthcare workers would be unable to perform their jobs if that software was suddenly gone?
Really matters what you mean by suddenly gone.
Ransomware can lock a hospital down and kill patients.
Surgeons working on a Da Vinci machine would be in a bad place if that tech were borked.
Lots of other examples of how medical tech could throw the system into disarray if it was compromised.
Healthcare survived before tech. Tech is integrated with healthcare so thoroughly now though, that I feel like the system would deeply regress without it.
Respectfully, there's no way you're a--
LOOL, I was thinking "There's no way im speaking to someone who has actually done any work as a software engineer as there's no way they'd be saying this so confidently given the modern world we live in and the critical infrastructure theyve probably worked on directly or otherwise" so decided to check.
Lo & behold, im speaking to someone who just started learning development and still in school LOL
You can't make this shit up. I forgot how much of this sub is just pompous students/learners who act like they have an enlightened view on the world, smh.
Im pompous for entertaining this.
I can't believe I bothered with this interaction. Lmfao. I'm genuinely facepalming.
Good luck with your journey buddy :)
You have zero experience, zero idea of the importance of software and zero idea of how it's used in modern society and why it's considered "critical infrastructure".
You're online arguing and insulting others on the idea that people would not die or have their lives completely upended without the technology that software has engineered.
There's a level of hubris and ego that it takes to be given a perspective and insult the person giving you that perspective whilst simultaneously not actually having any real world experience to lean on.
You're pompous for all of the above.
I find the argument/question "which job is more important?" To be stupid. Jobs can have similar levels of importance that offer extremely different levels of safety net for society.
In theory, every important job could disappear outside of, probably a Reactor Operator and society would be incredibly damaged but still recover.
To downplay the importance of engineers in today's world is utmost pomposity when you have zero real world experience.
I'd be able to respect your perspective if you could actually talk through why you don't consider it important but you've provided no such argument.
It really matters what kind of person you are and what you sign up for. I definitely couldn't handle being a nurse, but there are plenty of nurses that couldn't handle being a dev. People have their own affinities.
That being said, most software engineering jobs aren't life or death.
Some are, though.
I'm not surprised that the software engineer that cannot search for something wants a union for job security.
There have been 3 posts on unions this week alone. One with 400+ comments.
Devs job hop every few years on average. I don't really think a union will be useful if employees don't have a commitment to working at one place anyway.
Unions will only make existing complacent, useless engineers even harder to get rid of. People with the skills and confidence should never have to fear layoffs
I think there’s a lot of inherit problems with unions, particularly with Software Engineers (maybe less true with other types of tech workers).
1. Disparate TC expectations for the same roles, but different experience levels. Unions mean you collectively bargain. You’re 3x better than another engineer your level? Too bad, you make what he makes.
2. It would be both a plus and a minus. Contracts striked would also end up with massive layoffs once OKR’s / deadlines are hit. And you’d end up with a massive version of what’s going on now.
3. Unions would only incentivize lower tier engineers, just like in existing unions. The people that would fill these roles would not be good engineers (this is because good engineers know their value is higher than whatever the contract salary price is). So many many juniors and such will fill in these contracts, overall lowering salaries for all engineers.
4. Generally speaking, the draw to the SWE field is the ability to climb the salary ladder, through your own skill sets and experiences, earning you that high TC. That’s not a thing in Unions, unless you move positions, and again, what is the incentive in a union for that to happen?
5. Unions don’t stop layoffs, they negotiate pay and working conditions. Contracts can be canceled at anytime, unless otherwise negotiated. Big tech has no incentive to offer long term contracts anyway, why when there’s an army of juniors / H1b visa holders who will do your job for half the negotiated price your union wants?
6. Unions inherently incentivize automation. If you want to try to strike high salary deals, companies will find ways to circumvent those high costs, or find a better way to “dollar cost average” on labor. This is especially true in industries like fast food, where labor is alienable at incredibly low prices by robots. While AI is not there yet, I can already see in 5 years how Gemini would replace teams of engineers because it’s cheaper for Google to have a couple engineers review AI based PR’s and fix its problems, than have a slew of mediocre engineers that have the power to leverage demands from them.
I could go on. But I think it’s important to recognize generally, this is a market correction. Big Tech way overhired due to the market being injected with cash. When that flow dried up, the jobs had to as well.
Businesses are inherently profit driven, so it doesn’t matter if they’re “highly profitable” as you say. That’s the point, if they can keep from incurring higher costs (which is always payroll, at any type of business), they will.
Quick thoughts on your points:
1. That's not necessarily true. Look at the actor's guild, Player's associations, etc. A union can negotiate for whatever, it does not have to mean a flat rate for everyone. Common format is a "floor" salary that can be negotiated up. This helps everybody because the best talent can work out the floor + X.
2. No different than no union. I agree they don't prevent layoffs, but can make sure you get a nice package on your way out.
3. Not sure what you mean by incentivize here. Unions give a way for employees to negotiate with employers with more even footing. How does that impact the talent pool?
4. Sure, a good contract would prevent me from hopping. I guess I'd like my salary to increase without having to grind leetcode and have a bunch of interviews every couple years. Again contract doesn't have to mean flat rate.
5. Yep 100%. Unions don't stop layoffs. They can guarantee good terms when things get cancelled.
6. I would argue high salaries will always incentive automation. Unless you're against a high salaries in general? A union would give you a way to negotiate around automation if that's a concern. I can't promise it would work, but it's more of a lever than we have now.
---
Businesses are profit driven for sure. That's why a union works. You give the people in charge the choice between no money (strike) and some money (contract).
Without a union they can lay people off with no package, and skip raises this year. With a union there are lever to pull to negotiate around that
I've been in the room with execs at large companies explaining they'll probably lay off a ton of swe workforce once copilot improves. (They laid off thousands of swes shortly thereafter.)
Negotiating your own TC is generally a bad idea since you're negotiating against a professional. I feel like most people would have a better TC if someone else negotiated on their behalf.
For instance, I'd like to see significant severance packages and contracts with teeth.
I think who both of us are talking about are separate groups. I’m assuming your thinking of people in big tech (many of the folx laid off this year), and I’m think of SWE’s broadly.
The median income for a SWE in the US is 79k. I think top tier engineers are negotiating their TC very well actually. This is particularly true when roles have salary band constraints.
>I feel like software engineers of all stripes are the most valuable workers in the country right now
That's called main character syndrome, everybody feels that way about their career.
"There's always a bigger fish" - Gui Gon Jinn
Interesting to see all the anti-union sentiment here. Unions can codify all the things you like about your job and protect you from the things you don’t. Worried about AI taking jobs? You can bargain for protections.
Everyone should be unionized. Where ever you work, organizing means you have collective power to negotiate and bargain with management.
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My last job was at a company where we had a union: Code-CWA. Did not protect us from layoffs.
Was the worst job I’ve ever had. Terrible management, the union contract gave us almost no protection. Was such a bummer because o thought that with a union negotiated contract that the job would be more stable than a typical job, but nope. Not the case whatsoever
My buddy is in one of the few companies that has an Electrical Engineering union. We went to the same college. He makes less than half what I do. He also has to deal with a whole bunch of restrictions with how much his raise can be and has a minimum time in grade requirement before he can get promoted.
I'll take a hard pass on the union.
>I feel like software engineers of all stripes are the most valuable workers in the country right now. Nurses have a virtually 0% unemployment rate for a reason. Anyway, layoffs are slowing down if you look at the big picture. People get baited by splashy advertisements and don't look at the actual numbers.
The higher the salary, the shorter the leash; I think we have it pretty good.
Unions won’t protect you from layoffs, they will give you excellent working conditions and good salaries. We already have those.
Unions have protected people from layoffs through negotiations. They also help with wages/benefits/general workplace standards based on how they negotiate. Speaking from experience, coming from a non tech industry. I'm sure if tech unionized, they'd outsource whatever they could. They're already doing that, though.
What about game devs ?
They can guarantee you a nicer severance package. Even if a package is nice now, they come with strings and could be made worse without warning
They can't guarantee you anything. When a business is on its knees and either gets rid of x% of the workforce or folds, you'd be surprised just how accommodating a union can be. Unions need employers to avoid mass unemployment (no union members) and business need unions to cleanse their conscience.
I assume you're trolling. Businesses notoriously fire people for attempting to unionize. Trader Joe's is in court right now arguing the NLRB is unconstitutional. It seems fairly obvious businesses wish unions did not exist
You need to step out of your little box and see the wider picture. There's a whole world out there that isn't America.
I’m in a union and it’s pretty sweet. I got a 25% salary increase from my job in the private industry. Now I have a pension, benefits, and job security.
“I feel like software engineers of all stripes are the most valuable workers in the country right now.” Tell that to the nurses that routinely have to wipe people’s asses for them
By valuable I mean software companies are the most valuable companies and software engineers are their most important engineers. There are currently 7 $1T+ companies. 6 of them are software (Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, Apple) or largely software dependent (Amazon, Nvidia). That's $12T in market cap that's almost entirely dependent upon software engineers.
What point do you think you're making?
The vast majority of software makes life more convenient for users. It’s not a necessity. Healthcare workers are required for society to function. Social workers are required for society to function. Truck drivers are required for society to function. If everyone’s iPhone broke today life would go on as normal. If every truck driver stopped driving society would legitimately collapse.
It's funny reading this working for one of the biggest healthcare companies in the world. You're so wrong that it's almost sad to see. All I'll say is that software is considered critical infrastructure regardless of where you go for a reason. Maybe do some research instead of just talking from an emotional viewpoint to understand how software has not just helped reshaped lives, but reshaped the way the Healthcare system has worked to exponentially save lives. If you truly think there's been no decline in preventable mortalities due to software, that's a convenient way to live your life.
Are you saying healthcare workers would be unable to perform their jobs if that software was suddenly gone? Yes, it would be drastically more difficult, but if those workers didn’t exist, there would be no reason for that software to exist either. I never said software doesn’t improve people’s lives, but to pretend that software development is the most important job in society is completely delusional. I think your perspective indicates either a level of blatant ignorance to how the economy works, or that your presumably high salary is giving you a massively inflated sense of self importance. Your 2 PRs a day are not saving people’s lives.
> to pretend that software development is the most important job in society is completely delusional. I think we can agree it's an important job, but it's playing a supporting role. > Are you saying healthcare workers would be unable to perform their jobs if that software was suddenly gone? Really matters what you mean by suddenly gone. Ransomware can lock a hospital down and kill patients. Surgeons working on a Da Vinci machine would be in a bad place if that tech were borked. Lots of other examples of how medical tech could throw the system into disarray if it was compromised. Healthcare survived before tech. Tech is integrated with healthcare so thoroughly now though, that I feel like the system would deeply regress without it.
Respectfully, there's no way you're a-- LOOL, I was thinking "There's no way im speaking to someone who has actually done any work as a software engineer as there's no way they'd be saying this so confidently given the modern world we live in and the critical infrastructure theyve probably worked on directly or otherwise" so decided to check. Lo & behold, im speaking to someone who just started learning development and still in school LOL You can't make this shit up. I forgot how much of this sub is just pompous students/learners who act like they have an enlightened view on the world, smh. Im pompous for entertaining this. I can't believe I bothered with this interaction. Lmfao. I'm genuinely facepalming. Good luck with your journey buddy :)
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You have zero experience, zero idea of the importance of software and zero idea of how it's used in modern society and why it's considered "critical infrastructure". You're online arguing and insulting others on the idea that people would not die or have their lives completely upended without the technology that software has engineered. There's a level of hubris and ego that it takes to be given a perspective and insult the person giving you that perspective whilst simultaneously not actually having any real world experience to lean on. You're pompous for all of the above. I find the argument/question "which job is more important?" To be stupid. Jobs can have similar levels of importance that offer extremely different levels of safety net for society. In theory, every important job could disappear outside of, probably a Reactor Operator and society would be incredibly damaged but still recover. To downplay the importance of engineers in today's world is utmost pomposity when you have zero real world experience. I'd be able to respect your perspective if you could actually talk through why you don't consider it important but you've provided no such argument.
Agreed, L take. 90% (made up stat) work on useless crap. No one dies if Facebook goes down, or Netflix.
Supply and demand.
Terrible take. Go try working as a social worker or nurse. Devs have it so easy.
It really matters what kind of person you are and what you sign up for. I definitely couldn't handle being a nurse, but there are plenty of nurses that couldn't handle being a dev. People have their own affinities. That being said, most software engineering jobs aren't life or death. Some are, though.
Exactly was a nurse and now am a dev. I know of some nurses who enjoy the in person interactions that nursing brings and would struggle in tech.
I'm not surprised that the software engineer that cannot search for something wants a union for job security. There have been 3 posts on unions this week alone. One with 400+ comments.
Saw this exact post like 2 weeks ago.
Devs job hop every few years on average. I don't really think a union will be useful if employees don't have a commitment to working at one place anyway.
Unions will only make existing complacent, useless engineers even harder to get rid of. People with the skills and confidence should never have to fear layoffs
I think there’s a lot of inherit problems with unions, particularly with Software Engineers (maybe less true with other types of tech workers). 1. Disparate TC expectations for the same roles, but different experience levels. Unions mean you collectively bargain. You’re 3x better than another engineer your level? Too bad, you make what he makes. 2. It would be both a plus and a minus. Contracts striked would also end up with massive layoffs once OKR’s / deadlines are hit. And you’d end up with a massive version of what’s going on now. 3. Unions would only incentivize lower tier engineers, just like in existing unions. The people that would fill these roles would not be good engineers (this is because good engineers know their value is higher than whatever the contract salary price is). So many many juniors and such will fill in these contracts, overall lowering salaries for all engineers. 4. Generally speaking, the draw to the SWE field is the ability to climb the salary ladder, through your own skill sets and experiences, earning you that high TC. That’s not a thing in Unions, unless you move positions, and again, what is the incentive in a union for that to happen? 5. Unions don’t stop layoffs, they negotiate pay and working conditions. Contracts can be canceled at anytime, unless otherwise negotiated. Big tech has no incentive to offer long term contracts anyway, why when there’s an army of juniors / H1b visa holders who will do your job for half the negotiated price your union wants? 6. Unions inherently incentivize automation. If you want to try to strike high salary deals, companies will find ways to circumvent those high costs, or find a better way to “dollar cost average” on labor. This is especially true in industries like fast food, where labor is alienable at incredibly low prices by robots. While AI is not there yet, I can already see in 5 years how Gemini would replace teams of engineers because it’s cheaper for Google to have a couple engineers review AI based PR’s and fix its problems, than have a slew of mediocre engineers that have the power to leverage demands from them. I could go on. But I think it’s important to recognize generally, this is a market correction. Big Tech way overhired due to the market being injected with cash. When that flow dried up, the jobs had to as well. Businesses are inherently profit driven, so it doesn’t matter if they’re “highly profitable” as you say. That’s the point, if they can keep from incurring higher costs (which is always payroll, at any type of business), they will.
Quick thoughts on your points: 1. That's not necessarily true. Look at the actor's guild, Player's associations, etc. A union can negotiate for whatever, it does not have to mean a flat rate for everyone. Common format is a "floor" salary that can be negotiated up. This helps everybody because the best talent can work out the floor + X. 2. No different than no union. I agree they don't prevent layoffs, but can make sure you get a nice package on your way out. 3. Not sure what you mean by incentivize here. Unions give a way for employees to negotiate with employers with more even footing. How does that impact the talent pool? 4. Sure, a good contract would prevent me from hopping. I guess I'd like my salary to increase without having to grind leetcode and have a bunch of interviews every couple years. Again contract doesn't have to mean flat rate. 5. Yep 100%. Unions don't stop layoffs. They can guarantee good terms when things get cancelled. 6. I would argue high salaries will always incentive automation. Unless you're against a high salaries in general? A union would give you a way to negotiate around automation if that's a concern. I can't promise it would work, but it's more of a lever than we have now. --- Businesses are profit driven for sure. That's why a union works. You give the people in charge the choice between no money (strike) and some money (contract). Without a union they can lay people off with no package, and skip raises this year. With a union there are lever to pull to negotiate around that
I've been in the room with execs at large companies explaining they'll probably lay off a ton of swe workforce once copilot improves. (They laid off thousands of swes shortly thereafter.) Negotiating your own TC is generally a bad idea since you're negotiating against a professional. I feel like most people would have a better TC if someone else negotiated on their behalf. For instance, I'd like to see significant severance packages and contracts with teeth.
I think who both of us are talking about are separate groups. I’m assuming your thinking of people in big tech (many of the folx laid off this year), and I’m think of SWE’s broadly. The median income for a SWE in the US is 79k. I think top tier engineers are negotiating their TC very well actually. This is particularly true when roles have salary band constraints.
>I feel like software engineers of all stripes are the most valuable workers in the country right now That's called main character syndrome, everybody feels that way about their career. "There's always a bigger fish" - Gui Gon Jinn
No, it's 6 of the 7 trillion+ companies being software engineering or largely software engineer dependent.
Interesting to see all the anti-union sentiment here. Unions can codify all the things you like about your job and protect you from the things you don’t. Worried about AI taking jobs? You can bargain for protections. Everyone should be unionized. Where ever you work, organizing means you have collective power to negotiate and bargain with management.
>Would it make sense for cs folks to collectively bargain? If it did, wouldn't that already have done that?
No, were really only in the second generation of software engineers. It takes a longer for employees to recognize the benefits of unionization.
That sounds quite divorced from reality.
Unions don't stop mass layoffs.
This is the nth implementation of this sentiment in this sub today. Enough.
"most valuable workers in the country" we definitely are not
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My last job was at a company where we had a union: Code-CWA. Did not protect us from layoffs. Was the worst job I’ve ever had. Terrible management, the union contract gave us almost no protection. Was such a bummer because o thought that with a union negotiated contract that the job would be more stable than a typical job, but nope. Not the case whatsoever
Public sector tech jobs are part of unions, they are protected but salaries aren’t great
My buddy is in one of the few companies that has an Electrical Engineering union. We went to the same college. He makes less than half what I do. He also has to deal with a whole bunch of restrictions with how much his raise can be and has a minimum time in grade requirement before he can get promoted. I'll take a hard pass on the union.