Bashing people who hold opposing views with harsh phrases driven by pre-existing emotion is not only not curious conversation, it poisons it.
Unfortunately, quite a few of you have been doing that in this thread. That's not ok, and no, the topic does not excuse it—on the contrary: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
If you aren't feeling curious, or can't post thoughtfully and substantively, please take a break until you are and can.
parpfish · 6h ago
Why don’t labor issues resonate more with tech workers?
I know that we’re not a monolith and are actually a heterogeneous mix of opinions, but there frequently talk about job dissatisfaction (career burnout, comically stingy equity grants, etc).
But when organizing comes up, it’s usually treated with disdain because so many have bought into highly individualistic hustle-culture and the narrative that unions only exist to help lazy freeloaders
aaronbaugher · 5h ago
We tend to think like this, unconsciously if not outright: "I'm smarter than the next guy, so in a dog-eat-dog system I'll come out ahead. Organizing with a bunch of less-smart people would only hold me back."
Plus, at the risk of too much head-shrinking, I've never gotten the impression that tech workers liked each other very much. There's a lot of disdain in the industry, for the guy who uses that language or framework or operating system that I think sucks. You don't see that so much with, say, truckers. There may be some good-natured rivalry based on truck brands or long-haul versus short-haul, but not the real disdain you see in tech.
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dragonwriter · 5h ago
> Why don’t labor issues resonate more with tech workers?
Because many tech workers don't see themselves as workers, with some justification, many having substantial capital investments alongside labor income, making them, in class terms, petit bourgeois or at least close enough to it to perceive their own interests in more bourgeois than proletarian terms. And even the tech workers that are clearly part of the proletarian intelligentsia tend see themselves (rightly or wrongly) on a path that leads into the bourgeoisie, with bourgeois interests.
bee_rider · 4h ago
I’ve always thought of it in these terms:
Working class: you are sustained by your current labor.
Upper class: you can sustain yourself based on the returns from your investments more-or-less indefinitely.
Middle class, between the two: you can sustain yourself off your investments for so long that you can’t practically be threatened by unemployment.
It is a labor relations issue explicitly, you need a union if you are in the first of the three classes, because otherwise you can be threatened by unemployment to do something dangerous or dehumanizing.
In the middle class definition, practically there’s some element of the fact that our skills are in high demand, so you can become unthreatened by unemployment by having just, like, a 1 year buffer. But I do think we can overstate how in-demand our skills to satisfy our egos…
reillyse · 2h ago
I honestly think the "middle class" idea is just a fallacy. It feels like it's used by people to distance themselves from "working class" because they feel that working class is somehow beneath them. All of the middle class in todays parlance are just slightly more affluent working class. If you sell your time for money you are working class. If you make money from having money you are bourgeoisie.
If you have to think about which one you are you are working class. At a stretch you might consider the owner of a small tech company (say 5-10 employees) as petit bourgeoisie but the vast majority of small business owners (say mechanics, shop owners, small companies) are squarely in the working class. They may have employees but they still work, either for wages or as managers of those employees - which is work.
dragonwriter · 2h ago
The usual American idea of “middle class” is mostly (thoufh it tends to be defined more by income than actual means of relating to the economy) a mix of the upper income segment of the primarily labor-dependent class (working class/proletariat) and the lower (comparatively) income segment of the mixed labor/capital-dependent class (petit bourgeoisie).
The middle class (petit bourgeoisie) is real, but its not centered around middle income (it is middle in the sense of being between the dominantly capital-dependent class and the dominantly labor-dependent class, primarily in how it relates to the economy, but in practice also on average, in income and wealth, but it is still an elite minority, just less so than the haut bourgeoisie that sits at the top.)
bee_rider · 1h ago
What is it about the owner of a small tech company that potentially bumps them into the middle class, in your view?
I like the definition I provided because it seems functional to me; it describes classes with labor-capital relationships, and describes how the incentives influence their behavior.
throw0101a · 1h ago
> I honestly think the "middle class" idea is just a fallacy.
One definition I found reasonable was that it it "starts" with those that can meet their basic necessities (housing, food, transportation, healthcare) and still have funds left over for discretionary spending:
Where it "ends" at top-end is perhaps more arbitrary (not Top 10%? 20%? 1%?).
flmontpetit · 5h ago
It's crazy how we've abstracted financial serfdom out of the status of being a property owner. Contrasted with renting it surely seems like independence, but whether the bank squeezes extra value out of you directly or through the proxy of a landlord, the end result is similar.
zackmorris · 3h ago
The simplest answer tends to be the right one, so in the face of the inexplicable, the answer is usually ignorance.
The tech track works great if one falls into line and doesn't rock the boat by questioning authority or trying to see the big picture. If one clings to original teenage fantasies like the idea that intellectual prowess and financial success eventually bring esteem and a social life. If one chooses to avoid becoming mired in dead end physical labor jobs like everyone else, even for a time, in worship of their own cleverness.
But should the unthinkable happen, say, the loss of a loved one due to a hyper focus on work, or witnessing one's work being used to take from others, or waking up one day to find oneself disillusioned with the direction tech is going, then suddenly tech loses its luster. One starts to recognize it for what it is - just another way to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the few.
Tech has come to symbolize sheltering from reality, like a state sanctioned drug. It's a way to pat oneself on the back and downplay the wisdom of those outside it. Blindly worshipping it to the exclusion of the other wonders of life is the surest way I know to separate oneself from the soul, other than money perhaps.
In good conscience, I must add that the vast majority of tech today is phantom tech, not real tech. It serves to entertain and distract rather than be a labor-saving device. So in that sense, it's understandable that people invested in solving anything except any real problem have a disdain for the plight of labor.
dauertewigkeit · 5h ago
What makes solidarity between workers possible is the homogeneity of their labour. This condition is not present for tech workers. Labour market conditions are completely different from those of say, a meat processing plant or a factory assembly line.
throw0101a · 5h ago
> What makes solidarity between workers possible is the homogeneity of their labour.
Ethan Hunt play by Tom Cruise and Waitress #2 played by Jane Doe aren't very homogeneous with regards to pay and fame, but they're both part of SAG.
bee_rider · 4h ago
Doesn’t the “G” in SAG stand for “Guild?” A guild is different from a union, right? It is more like a bunch of independent contractors making connections or something like that.
unionthrowaway · 1m ago
This exact exchange (Unions are great for fungible labor but computer programming isn't like that / But Hollywood A-list actors are unionized and they're the polar opposite of fungible labor / Oh but SAG is a Guild not a Union) plays out in every HN thread I've seen which mentions unions.
As a union member (not SAG-AFTRA), I find this curious. SAG-AFTRA is a Union. They have a cool name but, like many other groups with Guild in their name, they are recognized by the NLRB as a Union. There's no special classification for Guild, at least in America.
When you look at Wikipedia's list of largest unions in the US, only 2 of the top 10 have Union in their name, but that doesn't mean the other 8 aren't actually Unions. Or that the ones with Brotherhood in their name don't allow women, or any other silly extrapolation someone wants to concoct. It's just a name.
We're not in the 13th century any more. There is no longer any functional difference between Guild and Union. Of the alleged benefits of Guilds enumerated in HN threads (vetting and certification of members, continuing education, ability to be paid above scale, etc), literally every single one is already offered by unions today. And if you thought of a new one that wasn't, you could bring it up at your next union meeting and vote on it.
It's frustrating to read discussions of unions by online commenters who have never been union members or paid dues, never attended a union meeting or voted with their coworkers, never worked similar jobs in both union and non-union workplaces. It's like a bunch of people who have never lived in a free society arguing over whether they should form a Democracy or a Republic, by picking countries with these words in their names, and selecting attributes of those countries they do or don't want to emulate. That's not how it works.
parpfish · 3h ago
a guild for software would be interesting.
not only would the collective provide benefits to the individual workers, but it would serve as an (optional) form of licensure/credentialing that ensures each member has a baseline level of competence. it could make hiring so much easier if you could skip the fizzbuzz screening rounds by pulling from a pool of vetted talent.
bee_rider · 3h ago
Yeah. There are groups like ACM, IEEE has some computer sub-group if I recall correctly, and there are more niche groups like SIAM. But, they all seem to have a somewhat academic focus, at least in my (very limited) experience.
dauertewigkeit · 5h ago
Good point. I am not familiar with Hollywood to know what their job market is like.
EDIT: another commented mentioned that NBA players are also unionized. I think there is a second element to it, which has to do with how monopolized the employer market is.
vuggamie · 5h ago
There is more than enough homogeneity of labor in this industry. All workers should organize.
int_19h · 2h ago
Seeing how the article link is to IWW, it might be interesting to bring up their take: not only all workers should organize, but they should organize in a single union cutting across industries to maximize their collective power vs holders of capital. IWW strives to become exactly that.
flmontpetit · 4h ago
The real homogeneity is class, thus the need for developing class consciousness in all workers.
dcre · 5h ago
This is the exactly the right kind of question to be asking, but I think your conclusion is wrong. Why think the painters and the welder in an auto factory have more in common than 20 different kinds of programmers do?
KiranRao0 · 5h ago
I think this is the right line of thinking. My understanding of the grandparent's argument is 2 pieces:
1. Heterogeneity/homogeneity of labour.
2. Tight/lose labour market.
I think Argument 1 is the weaker argument. There's a lot of fungibility between software roles. However, there's a higher learning cost. Moving to a new software company requires a few months before someone is close to full productivity. This in contrast between a painter moving from a Ford supplier to a GM supplier will likely close to full productivity within a few weeks. The cost (to the employer) is lower to rehire someone.
Argument 2 is the stronger argument, but may not be forever. In a tight labour market, I see very little need for unions. If the marginal worker can (and will) leave their position for a better position (pay, benefits, culture, etc), I see little need for unions. However, if the labour market for software engineers shifts in favor of businesses, this will change rapidly.
dcre · 4h ago
Tight labor markets don't last forever!
matkoniecz · 5h ago
As far as I know workers in auto factory work on assembly line with very standardized amount of work and with work itself being highly repetitive.
Also, their output is relatively easy to measure and stand arise.
This is not true for programmers, making standard pay increase for programmers less useful as a target. What would be measured? Hours in office? Commits? Lines of code?
ses1984 · 5h ago
Most of us have way, way more in common with a meat processing worker than we have in common with the people who sign our pay checks.
The wealthy class makes multiples of your salary in passive income and their marginal tax rate is lower. You work and fork over 40%. They do nothing and pay 15% or less.
You put your retirement money into a 401k. They put their retirement money into a “charitable foundation”.
You draw down from your retirement money. They take a loan against it.
What’s the difference between a billionaire and a meat packing worker? Billions of dollars.
What’s the difference between a billionaire and a faang engineer? Also billions of dollars.
dauertewigkeit · 5h ago
I said nothing about belonging to different economic classes.
My point is simply that if you are 1 of 50,000 in a meat processing plant, you do not really have any way of competing with your fellow workers. You might try to work harder and faster, but then you end up raising the bar for all, and you now have to maintain the new pace. And once the rest catch up with your pace, the pay for all will be lowered again.
In tech, every job is slightly different, and there is a real opportunity to meaningful differentiate yourself from the rest and compete in a much more dynamic job market.
Also, who are the ones hurting currently? The juniors or the seniors? Seniors are mostly doing fine. Juniors are the ones hurting. And juniors would have an even harder time, if you transitioned to a unionized system, because entry requirements would be raised significantly to account for the fact that you cannot fire people so easily.
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cratermoon · 5h ago
generative ai is rapidly homogenizing tech labor. By design.
dcre · 5h ago
Capital sowing the seeds of its own destruction! Where have I heard this before?
AndrewKemendo · 5h ago
I’ve been a manager in tech for the last 11 years full-time
Prior to that I was a military commander as a Major in the United States Air Force
Before joining the AF I had jobs in construction, freelance web design and car stereo installation in high school
The singular difference is the personality of tech workers is “I can do this faster and easier by myself - I have no desire to communicate with other people”
It seems to stem from a large swath very technical people coming from isolated environments when they were children.
Specifically ones in middle to upper middle class families, where the computer was their creative outlet and they were spending more time with a computer and understanding the computer than they were other people.
They were able to get excited about and learn and get deep into a topic where you really didn’t need other people — you need to documentation you needed books and you needed time to experiment.
Almost every single other job I’ve ever worked in you *need* other people in order to make progress. That is not true for writing really small functional and precise software which is the “job” of most swe.
As a function of that the majority of SWE’s (and frankly this applies to most technical experts who have a very specific niche) have neither of the interest nor the belief that the organization is valuable in of itself as the organization and they are way more excited to jump companies in order to promote themselves because that is how they are incentivized and are happy to find themselves in that position.
If you wanna actually make an organization that creates sustainable software, you need an entirely different way of thinking. you need to think organizationally you think you need to think about how to help people how to get things out of their way communication etc. etc. etc. all these things have nothing to do with“shipping code “
And for a lot of people who are good at programming they really genuinely could not care or have the capacity to understand about anything other than their narrow frame of view and they do not see their coworkers as part of their community they see them as competition.
9rx · 4h ago
> Why don’t labor issues resonate more with tech workers?
They do! What doesn't resonate with many tech workers is working together with other people. Tech workers are largely used to working alone, and many even struggle in social situations more-so than in other industries, so when a labor issue arises they believe it is a problem they must solve on their own.
johngossman · 4h ago
The many people working in big tech are certainly used to working together and solving problems together. I think others on this thread are closer: generally high economic status and greater perceived career autonomy than in other industries
9rx · 4h ago
They are used to working together to the extent that is necessary to further their own self-interest (i.e. get promoted). That competitive environment is not conducive to working together in a 'brotherhood' sense that a union requires, through.
Industries with significantly higher economic status and autonomy are all over unions (sports, entertainment, politics, medicine, etc.), so that doesn't really explain it.
bee_rider · 4h ago
We’re convinced we’re be court wizards, not peasants, in a fantasy setting. Wizards join guilds, not unions.
flmontpetit · 5h ago
Self-advocacy for tech industry professionals largely manifests itself in the form of job hopping.
ferguess_k · 3h ago
Tech workers, or white collars in general, believe in the law (I'm Not A Lawyer, as well as looking as the union as a solution) and sort of peaceful solution, without much violence.
dgrin91 · 5h ago
Tech workers tend to get paid very well. That limits incentivization for unionization. Also there is a stigma that unions tend to be for the middle of the road workers with modest salaries. All the senior leaders with big salaries are not union, and everyone wants the big salary.
citadel_melon · 5h ago
It’s silly. MLB players are unionized and they make more money than tech workers. The reason why management don’t need a union is because they have much more say in determining their own wages.
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0xbadcafebee · 4h ago
We make a lot of money. Money pays for healthcare, childcare, paternity/maternity leave, retirement, food, housing, transportation, in addition to recreation. Our "struggle" is invented. Oh, career burnout huh? So you're working yourself harder than you have to in order to make more money? Sounds tough. And small equity grants? Oh gosh, how dare they not give us even more money.
People who don't make a lot of money struggle to afford all those things, and are worked to death despite it. They don't just have enough and want more. They literally don't have enough to live a life free of struggle.
Unions exist because workers were literally being killed by their employers. What's a tech worker's biggest gripe? Being on-call? Not getting a bonus on top of their fat salary? The only time I've ever done a hard day's work as a tech worker was when I joined a shitty startup that was abusive with long hours. I left and joined a normal company and it was smooth sailing. The most painful part of the job is my tennis elbow, but hey, I have a corporate healthcare plan and a $1000 swivel chair. I don't see the point of a union in this environment.
9rx · 2h ago
> We make a lot of money.
Not compared to many unionized industries. Workers in professional sports and entertainment, for example, which fully embrace labor unions, make software developers look like they work for peanuts.
> Unions exist because workers were literally being killed by their employers.
Labor unions have formed when death was actually on the horizon because death was on the horizon, but labor unions today are almost exclusively a rich man's sport. The poor aren't poor enough to face certain death, but aren't rich enough to risk the consequences of not working (i.e. striking) for beneficial-but-not-life-threatning demands, so it is not a reasonable choice for them to make. Hence why you almost never find labor unions in low paying jobs.
Tech doesn't like unions simply because, as a group, tech doesn't like people. That's what a union is, after all: A group of people who have decided to associate with each other.
matkoniecz · 1h ago
> Workers in professional sports and entertainment, for example, which fully embrace labor unions, make software developers look like they work for peanuts.
I am pretty sure that union is not the most significant part why pay is high here.
9rx · 1h ago
We're all pretty sure of that. How did you come to conclude that others might have thought differently?
dang · 42m ago
Please don't post flamewar comments to HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
What do you mean by flamewar? The dictionary defines it as "an online dispute or argument characterized by heated, angry, and often abusive exchanges between multiple participants.", which is in line with my understanding, but that isn't applicable here, so I am unsure how to interpret it. Further, the link states that the site is for "Anything that good hackers would find interesting.", which is what the question poses. The answer is something that would be found interesting – that is why it was asked, after all – so it seems the use is perfectly in line with expectations.
dang · 27m ago
I'm fine with that definition.
"We're all pretty sure of that. Where did you dream up this straw man?" is just the kind of provocation that produces that kind of discussion, though.
One thing to keep in mind is that most of us underestimate the provocation in our own posts (let's say by 10x) and overestimate the provocation in others' posts (let's say by another 10x) and that leads to quite a skew in perception [1]. I believe this is why everyone always feels like the other person started it / did worse [2]. Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear! [3]
Interesting. Not how I would interpret it, but I understand that communication is hard. I have edited in a hopefully successful effort to more accurately convey the question.
dang · 17m ago
Ok, that works! And I appreciate the thoughtful reply.
bethekidyouwant · 5h ago
Because you have to take more of men’s dignity before they collectivize against you
DrillShopper · 6h ago
The vast majority of tech workers I know come from comfortable middle class suburban backgrounds, so I'm not surprised they're anti-union and anti-labor.
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 · 6h ago
I will admit that the return to office push was the first time I actively considered forming a union or at least an org that would fight for that specific benefit. Covid changed me.
SirFatty · 6h ago
A lot of "comfortable middle class suburban" folks I know are in the trades. Hardly anti-union with that group.
gymbeaux · 5h ago
But they entered their field with the union already established. Humans won’t fight for a damn thing.
SirFatty · 4h ago
Ok? That has nothing to do with my comment pointing out that "comfortable middle class suburban" != anti-union and anti-labor.
gibspaulding · 5h ago
Not even anti-union, but comfy enough not to feel the need for the effort/risk involved in unionizing.
When you work in a trade where you could easily be killed or injured on the job the calculus is a bit different.
> nestling comfortably alongside of the idea that "I don't need a union, I'm a temporarily embarrassed founder."
matkoniecz · 5h ago
The unions I have heard about or seen in action (in Poland or from news) either
(1) demanded flat payment increases for all workers based on seniority etc. Which may make sense for factory workers but I am not enthusiastic about flat rates for programmers not taking into account actual experience/availability/output etc.
Factory workers in many cases do job that can be easily rated and measured and do some specific amount of it.
While measuring output of programmers is notoriously hard.
I expect that union agreement of this kind would in fact benefit only lazy freeloaders not doing any work but having seniority.
(2) are guilds that existed to keep jobs for members and to outlaw or ban hiring outsiders.
I strictly prefer for exclusionary guilds to not exist and one of my big worries is that one would be setup, in area affecting me. One way or another, not necessarily an obvious self-naming itself as a guild.
(3) are gangs existing to steal public money - for example, see coal miners in Poland. Main union achievements was to steal billions of public money to help lazy freeloaders doing work that was not worth doing or outright harmful.
I do not support theft, also in terms of parasiting on public resources. Even if I would get some of proceeds of theft.
(4) intended to achieve more free days, flexibility etc. On my freelancing agreements I sacrificed large part of earning to get about 100+ free days a year, very significant flexibility where and how and on what I work.
So this part is achieved for me - and I am not sure how many other tech workers would actually prefer more free time over being paid more.
I am not automatically against unions for tech workers but my first reaction and assumption is not that it will be positive or useful for me.
constantcrying · 5h ago
The union at my workplace is of the opinion that engineering jobs should be outsourced so that factory work can be kept onshore.
Do you think I would join an organization like that? There is a clear conflict of interest between blue and white color workers and the more numerous blue color workers push the union to prioritize them.
parpfish · 4h ago
if they're not fighting for you, they're no your union. it's a union.
cruzcampo · 5h ago
There should be a separate white collar workers union.
constantcrying · 5h ago
[flagged]
cruzcampo · 5h ago
Why is it a zero-sum game to you? Why not advocate for all workers in the name of solidarity? There's no enemy but the class enemy.
matkoniecz · 4h ago
> There's no enemy but the class enemy.
this is a bizarre simplification, sounding like some kind of silly propaganda
I am well aware of enemies not fitting into such labeling at all (and probably there are more less obvious ones)
cruzcampo · 4h ago
Could you name a few?
matkoniecz · 4h ago
Government of Russian federation and significant part of Russian society that supports reconquering territories Russia used to control.
Soccer hooligan vandals.
Corrupt local politicians.
Some vandals obsessed with damaging community-run geodata collection project.
People who thing that overregulating everything in Europe is an exciting adventure and we should have more of it.
Climate change deniers, people misunderstanding vaccines and in effect trying to resurrect diseases that were extinct locally.
People with Saruman-like approach to trees.
Coal miners parasiting on billions from public funds to fund coal mining (as selling coal does not allow to pay for it, at least with how much they are paid for it).
dang · 43m ago
Could you please stop posting political/ideological/national battle comments? You've done quite a bit of that in this thread. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
I realize that many other users have been doing this as well, but each HN commenter needs to stick to the intended use of the site regardless of what others are doing.
Fortunately, it looks like your comment history is mostly fine (at least the parts of it that I skimmed back through) so this should be easy to fix.
Because there are conflicts of interest. Factory workers create the products which create profits. I am paid with these profits, if the profits go down engineers loose their jobs.
If Factory workers longer and more efficiently my job becomes more secure. So obviously I want a union which advocates that factory workers work longer hours, it is clearly in my interest. The same goes for strikes, if factory workers strike they endanger my job and reduce the size of the engineering department, reducing my chances to get promoted.
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praptak · 4h ago
Labour issues? I'm afraid that most tech workers still believe that improving the technology is enough for the society to thrive, not rethinking capitalism (or at least its current implementation).
micromacrofoot · 4h ago
because generally tech workers are well compensated relative to other workers, the areas where this isn't true have had some movement in labor initiatives like the The United Videogame Workers
anovikov · 6h ago
Because tech jobs are one of the few career lines that create a realistic path to passive income => becoming an "evil of capitalism". In fact, life outcomes that fall between "failure and poverty in old age" and "generational passive income from capital", are infrequent in the tech industry, at least from the people i know.
pseudocomposer · 5h ago
Those who fall between the two are usually those who didn’t have a family nest egg to start with (ie, their parents were factory workers rather than accountants).
alabastervlog · 5h ago
... Unions would be a great way to fight for reductions in anti-moonlighting rules and over-broad IP claims, to protect and broaden that path.
gymbeaux · 5h ago
In my experience everyone thinks “we’ve got a good thing here, let’s not ruin it.”
Indeed the bar is so low that even with all the bullshit in the tech industry, we seem to have it better than most- on salary alone. Throw in “full remote” (although that’s disappearing) and it really can’t be beat, even when your boss yells obscenities at you every day.
hereonout2 · 5h ago
I think I agree. Objectively we do have it better than most and tech is generally an extremely cushy job.
Even here in Europe salaries can match Doctors and Lawyers but the barrier to entry is much lower and in my experience employment is still based on merit more than anything.
Perhaps there's some element of "don't rock the boat" but maybe some guilt too. We really have lucked out.
Not sure how comfortable I'd feel taking union action over my job that requires me to leave the house once a week but pays 3x a teachers salary.
constantcrying · 5h ago
[flagged]
masijo · 5h ago
You know, there's a lot more to the working class than just manual labor. Anyone that depends on a wage to live is a worker, and we all share the same struggles.
constantcrying · 5h ago
The same struggles, like the quality of the office coffee machine? Bike subsidies from the employer too low?
smallmancontrov · 5h ago
No, things like: we obtain money by working rather than by pumping assets. We pay income tax rather than capital gains tax. Our employers are always asking for more while paying less. We do not individually have enough assets to make individual lobbying efforts EV positive, but our employers and the largest shareholders sure do. Politics is an expense for us but an investment for them -- unless we join together.
Structurally we are more similar than different, even if tech workers have had it good for the last while.
GuinansEyebrows · 1h ago
Things like unpaid overtime, health insurance being tied to employment, the ability to afford a house on what should be a reasonable income, protections from harassment/discrimination... unions have worked toward democratizing access to all of these things.
brookst · 4h ago
Do you also think the working class have no business complaining about the struggles of the truly poor? And the poor can’t complain about people literally starving?
You seem to be claiming that empathy is always “hollow” but I think this is at most a statement about you. Many people can be both well off and want to make things better for others. Not everyone, for sure, not enough maybe. But attacking people for showing empathy seems weird.
jjj123 · 3h ago
You make it sound like organizing you and your peers is just virtue signaling toward the plight of the working class.
It’s not virtue signaling. There are material gains that could be made by organizing. Layoff protection and the power to set company direction are two big ones that come to mind.
It’s okay to want to unionize for selfish reasons. In fact, I think it’s borderline propaganda to suggest the only reason a wealthy person would organize is because of their own class guilt.
GuinansEyebrows · 1h ago
Unless you're part of the owner class, you're still working class.
keybored · 5h ago
Nothing sounds as made-up as people being mad at privileged workers being on the same team as all workers.
It sounds much better for them to be on the team of all workers rather than the other team, or to be out of the game entirely.
cruzcampo · 5h ago
But software developers are the working class. Anyone who derives their income from labor is.
parpfish · 5h ago
Sometimes I worry that all the stories about unions helping to end the most extreme exploitation and fix deadly working conditions has made them unrelatable.
If you make a cushy salary and the biggest physical risk is carpal tunnel, you might think ”I dont have it THAT bad. It’d be greedy and disrespectful of the sacrifices that were made to use unions in my situation”
constantcrying · 5h ago
What made unions unrelatable for me was them obviously pushing the interest of factory workers over the interests of engineers. Thanks for trying to get my job outsourced I guess.
cruzcampo · 5h ago
There's nothing stopping us from creating an engineers union. Each field should have their own organisation.
constantcrying · 5h ago
Yes there is. I hate unions and I hate union work and I love doing my job.
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9rx · 5h ago
More likely software developers are, for the most part, middle class – deriving their income from a combination of labor and land/capital.
While software developers just starting out are apt to be working class, when you receive a comparatively high income for your labor it soon becomes hard to find things to do with it if you don't start investing in land/capital, so one in that position doesn't stay working class for long.
constantcrying · 5h ago
Sure. And that is why protesting looks so ridiculous. The oppressed working class, making six figures typing away in a well furnished office.
freeone3000 · 5h ago
The top-end of the working class shares more with the low-end of the working class, than the top-end of the working class shares with the low-end of the upper class.
I have never been to a politician's dinner. I have never changed a law. If I were fired, which can be done at any time for no reason, I would have no source of income. Money is the weakest form of power, and a well-paid job is the weakest form of money.
trgn · 5h ago
the labor movement really needs to get beyond this stereotype that it is to lift all these hunched poor little downtrodden suppliants out of poverty. workers who have successfully organized are not pitiful schlubs, and their affluence is a testament to the success of their organizing, not its triviality. political interests of the labor class just are not the same as those of capital, and therefore its methods and aims should be different as well.
parpfish · 4h ago
one thing that i've been repeating for years now is that if you want tech to organize, unions need to sell themselves differently.
unions in the past are portrayed as remove physical dangers, limiting to reasonable hours and fair wages. but tech workers already have that stuff, so they don't see an upside.
codetermination (getting workers on the board), four day work weeks, full-time remote, sabbaticals, open source support, rethinking startup equity, ... there's all sorts of things we could be pushing for that would make our jobs better that we could to push for if we worked together.
trgn · 1h ago
great list. another thing to add, credentialing so we can stop the leetcode gating at the interview stage.
masijo · 5h ago
> making six figures typing away in a well furnished office
I don't know about you but I don't make anything even remotely close to six figures...
It is still labor and we are still exploited - most the revenue we generate goes to capitalist interests, not us, the laborers, which are the creators of all revenue.
It's just that we have it comparatively good and so are less inclined to seek out systemic change - a less favorable reading would be that we are bought off to split us off from the rest of the proletariat.
constantcrying · 5h ago
Uhm, my revenue goes to the shareholders of my company. Among those shareholders are me, my colleagues and the state.
cruzcampo · 5h ago
Most of the shareholders are random rich people that have never lifted a finger in their life, yet get to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
naming_the_user · 5h ago
From a personal perspective -
I don't care that much about "labour issues" because it seems like a logically flawed avenue to explore to begin with.
To be financially successful under any market system I can think of requires you, in a mathematical sense, to be close enough to the top within a company that you get a greater proportion of the profit than simply 1/employees.
In simple terms - I can't employ a maid unless I earn more than a maid, a maid can never be paid enough that I would want to be a maid (being the maid's employer, or at least having that optionality, is strictly superior).
Some jobs have comparative advantage, e.g. I might enjoy working on my car but know that a mechanic can do the same job in 1/10th the time. But a lot of stuff is just straight - I earn more than you, you do it for me, so I can get more things done.
smallmancontrov · 5h ago
No, it is not mathematically ordained that conditions must suck on the bottom of the pyramid in an absolute sense. In a relative sense, your argument isn't wrong, but in an absolute sense, the failure of our economy to bring modest levels of comfort on the bottom despite truly astonishing advances in fundamental capacity is a scathing indictment.
naming_the_user · 5h ago
In the absolute sense, from my perspective as someone who was born with not much (I often have a sense that this discussion is driven by people who were always fairly well off and see "the poor" as a different species) the primary issue is excessive regulation, resulting in things like property being hilariously expensive, so that it's difficult to afford a house or start a business.
Wages and hours for low level jobs feel like a distraction, barely anyone needs more toys, the issue is that the necessary items for life are monopolised.
So from my perspective the only thing that labour regulation can achieve is to basically just compress that experience, we still won't build more housing or make it easier to do so etc.
flmontpetit · 5h ago
Can you employ a doctor even if you don't make more than a doctor? I would hope so.
stuaxo · 2h ago
It's been a long time, and the 8 hour day was a good advance back then.
Now, we need a 4 day week (1 day less work) at the same pay, just as back then they moved from 10-16 hour working days to 8, for the same pay at the end of the week.
navigate8310 · 5h ago
Is there any link to May Day with the emergency distress call of an airline?
voidUpdate · 5h ago
Mayday is from the french m'aider (a short form of venez m'aider, "come [and] help me")
graemep · 4h ago
May day has much older, possibly separate, origins as a celebration of the start of summer.
OJFord · 2h ago
As usual for the US, this is really The Brief Origins of US May Day, or charitably perhaps the socialist May Day, and otherwise May Day has its origins centuries before the existence of the US.
The US does have a rich history of labor movements and it's sad that they've been diminished - arguably because of perceived and actual corruption in living memory - while working conditions for many haven't really improved.
In the UK, also a nation with a very rich history of labour movements and philosophy (Engels family owned factories in Manchester, which he and Marx used as justification and evidence for many of the points made in Conditions of the Working Class), has also seen a recent decline in labour movements - but that's partly because working conditions have improved so massively in recent decades: employment rights, statutory holidays and minimum wage have all improved.
However, in recent years something has changed, and I think a lot of people are now looking at holidays and working conditions in other countries: France (a socialist republic), Germany and Canada all seem to have better work/life balance, strong productivity, remain in the G7 and the roof hasn't fallen in.
I do wonder whether the rise of zero-hour contracts and the gig economy, the debate in the US over tipping as a basis for not paying a higher minimum wage, the lack of holidays and so on, might lead to more interest in either new labour movements or reinvigorating the old.
What's interesting for me is the productivity data shows that many businesses that need knowledge workers to function make more money and grow faster if they allow more work/life balance, but the messaging from the leadership pushes back against it. RTO and 5 days working weeks seem to be less effective than nomadic/remote work and 4x10 or even 4x8 working weeks. AI should, in theory, make that even more possible, but I don't think that's how most in the upper echelons of the Fortune 500 or FTSE 100 want it to work out.
It's going to be an interesting thing to watch/be part of in years to come, but history tells us transition moments are often violent: can that violence be avoided?
DrScientist · 6h ago
> RTO and 5 days working weeks seem to be less effective than nomadic/remote work and 4x10 or even 4x8 working weeks
It does depend on how you measure it. Given diligent workers you could argue that working from home is better for 'on task' work, than the distractions of the office - however some of those distractions create value for companies that's hard to measure.
I've lost count of the number of times I've had the polite - how are you type conversation - via a chance encounter in the office, that has lead to an idea or new connection that moved something forward, ( have you tried X? Have you talked to Y ).
These don't happen when you are on task working from home.
For companies which are knowledge based - this sort of spontaneous creativity happens more when people are all together and less when people have to intentionally reach out.
Companies aren't just the simple sum of the individuals and a lot of the creativity happens off-task.
PaulRobinson · 6h ago
If you look at layouts of buildings for organisations lauded for unusually high output - I'm thinking Bell Labs, Xerox, MIT Media Lab, and others - historically there has been mixed mode: the ability to do focus work, and also the ability to step away from focus and bump into people on the way to get a coffee or lunch.
Today's working environment is 40+ hours in open plan offices with too few social spaces or meeting rooms for meaningful collaboration, so both focus work and casual collaboration have to be fought for.
Regardless, what's interesting to me at least is that even while we can see productivity rose for many decades even as people moved to the 5 day, 8-hour week (which must was counter-intuitive - there was an expectation of a drop in outputs), we're seeing potentially more gains from moving to a 4 day week.
RTO - for my type of work, and most work that needs "flow" for 2-3 hours a day, minimum - doesn't work for most people in 2025. Leaders are holding onto it in an irrational way, and that is leading to growing resentment. That, coupled with trying to pay people who have to show up (service workers, gig economy workers), with ever fewer working rights and poorer conditions, means something's going to give at some point.
If all the menial work was done by robots, and we were all going to Bell Labs-style environments for 3-4 days a week, I think we'd all prefer that and actually, society might be a lot more productive as a result. But it's never going to happen. Not in our lifetimes, any way.
briandear · 6h ago
Except when a company like Best Buy can fire a bunch of workers and replace them with Accenture who are paying workers $40/hour while holding them hostage with the H1B. At least 20% of workers in US construction (and even higher for residential) are illegal aliens. Then there is the offshoring of manufacturing: your local workers get too uppity? China can supply whatever you need. Don’t like the United Auto Workers? Move your factory to northern Mexico.
What’s interesting is that tariffs helped American workers back in the day — whether or not that happens again remains to be seen.
Unless the entire world gets onboard with worker rights, trade barriers remain one of the only ways to improve the working conditions of local people.
Regarding the French example: they do have the so-called 35 hour week, but compare disposable income for the same job in the U.S. versus France: Americans have much higher disposable income than the French (even after accounting for health care costs.) The US could improve conditions, but pay will drop accordingly. That might be ok or it might not, but there is no free lunch.
PaulRobinson · 5h ago
While trade barriers might improve working conditions, as you hint, it's going to come at a cost of disposable income.
Those barriers work by raising the minimum price of a product, making it profitable to produce it in a more expensive labor market. When you make products more expensive though, it comes out the other side as people have to pay more to get the things they want, and you get inflation.
If that is what people want, OK, fine. I don't think it's what has been sold to most Americans though - not only is the narrative that inflation going to be avoided, but income tax is going to be scrapped too. It's hard to find credible economists from any part of the political spectrum who agree.
I hope it does work, because if it doesn't, what will follow will be horrible to watch from afar, even if as a result we end up with prices for most things coming down (if Chinese companies can't sell to the US, they'll just dump to the rest of the World).
malcolmgreaves · 5h ago
The Republicans’ trade barriers do not solve any labor problems. They contract the total market size and tax economic activity.
The French have higher disposable income because Americans are too busy wasting their income on sky high rents, sky high healthcare costs, paying for cars because it’s necessary, higher food and alcohol costs, etc. (Plus they have more of the thing money can’t buy: time). And these tariffs are going to make American’s lives even more expensive. (No one release in the world is going to oh these taxes: only Americans).
0xbadcafebee · 5h ago
> Literally thousands of working people embraced the ideals of anarchism, which sought to put an end to all hierarchical structures
Something that groups of people rarely seem to realize: you don't have to accept a binary. You don't have to put all hierarchical structure to an end. You don't have to do ONLY one thing or ONLY another. Life is about balance.
Doesn't matter what side of a spectrum you're on. Conservatives, capitalists, evangelicals, anarchists, socialists, leftists. Each group is often dominated by a polarizing, binary force. Some fiery personality is agitating so hard for their point of view that they will only accept total capitulation and domination of their position. But that doesn't leave room for the middle way, compromise, a diversity of states of being. And so it creates conflict, even warfare.
I've worked in both systems (capitalist hierarchy, anarchist non-hierarchy). Both are useful. Both suck. The reason they both suck, is their incapacity to accept that sometimes the "other way" is better to get a specific thing done. But they can't see outside their own limited model. They're 2-dimensional, when they need to be 3-D.
They won't allow the "other way" in, because they're afraid it will taint "their way", and in some way ruin or defeat it. But if they did finally compromise and allow an alien system to co-habitate with their own, they'd see the truth. A composite of glass and plastic is better than either of them alone. Foreign organisms living in your gut make you healthier. It's the sum of the good properties, closely aligned, that contribute to a better whole.
pessimizer · 3h ago
> Something that groups of people rarely seem to realize: you don't have to accept a binary. You don't have to put all hierarchical structure to an end. You don't have to do ONLY one thing or ONLY another.
I do not understand your framing. You don't "have to" do anything. These are people talking about what they wish to do.
> Life is about balance.
Pseudo-Buddhist bullshit.
You are lost in abstraction. These arguments are actually about material conditions, they're not just personality conflicts. Middle-class people lose contact with this fact, because they have no material worries; or rather their material conditions are simply tied to whether their employer believes they are profitable to employ. Of course middle-class people have to "compromise." Or rather they have to paint their total and continuous submission as a compromise, complain about the inflexibility of their bosses, and dream of one day having the leverage to order people around themselves.
Arguing that the best solution is in the middle is just the moderation fallacy. It's not profound, it's the law of averages. It's the kind of thing you can say regardless of subject, an invariant, that will always make people who believe in the law of averages believe you said something profound.
candiddevmike · 6h ago
Happy Beltane!
throw0101a · 6h ago
It's a bit amusing that May Day was due to the major strike in the US, but the US doesn't celebrate on that day, but in September:
> There was disagreement among labor unions at this time about when a holiday celebrating workers should be, with some advocating for continued emphasis of the September march-and-picnic date while others sought the designation of the more politically charged date of May 1. Conservative Democratic President Grover Cleveland was one of those concerned that a labor holiday on May 1 would tend to become a commemoration of the Haymarket affair and would strengthen socialist and anarchist movements that backed the May 1 commemoration around the globe.[18] In 1887, he publicly supported the September Labor Day holiday as a less inflammatory alternative,[19] formally adopting the date as a United States federal holiday through a law that he signed in 1894.[2]
I wish we were off today in the US. This holiday makes me jealous of my international friends :)
soupfordummies · 6h ago
Badass read. Geez we are soft today…
pera · 6h ago
We have been conditioned to fear the idea of demanding a more fair distribution of wealth: My great grandfather for example was shot dead by a cop during a union strike. Nothing happened after that event, just silence, fear and a deeply traumatized family.
It is very important to remember that many of the things we enjoy today as workers only exist because of the enormous courage of workers from the 19th and early 20th century who fought really hard for a better future.
irrational · 5h ago
And a reminder that the police have never been on the side of the people. They are they muscle of the state.
kergonath · 5h ago
Ideally, the interests of the state and of the people coincide (otherwise you cannot have a democracy). It is very unhelpful to say that the police is by nature hostile to the people. It does not have to be that way, and we should demand that it is not. The police is the enforcement arm of the State, true, but we are the State.
matkoniecz · 5h ago
> police have never been on the side of the people
that is a remarkable generalization, that overstates things to the point of being misleading
> They are they muscle of the state.
still, there are better and worse states
if you go fully pacifist and disempower yourself and your state it will not result in peace - it will result in someone else, likely worse, taking over
Police in my country did some bad things (and far more bad things when we were a Russian puppet state) but last time I had an actual contact with police it was on railway station when they have cordoned off a group of aggressive football hooligans.
I assure you that I preferred policeman over group of drunk abusive hooligans. And some kind of "muscle of the state" is needed to keep such people in check.
(at the same time, police power should be kept on a leash)
monkaiju · 5h ago
Its only a generalization in so far as that is and always has been their direct purpose. The history of policing is, regionally, either rooted in slave catchers or as muscle to disrupt labor organizing.
matkoniecz · 5h ago
> The history of policing is, regionally, either rooted in slave catchers or as muscle to disrupt labor organizing.
Not really? It may apply in some very specific area but it does NOT generalize worldwide.
And for direct purpose: even taking maximally cynical view and seeing police as muscle power existing to enforce tax payments by threat of force and to disrupt threats to state...
Then I, as a citizen (and many other people) would agree that gangs should be disrupted and that they prefer to pay taxes over every lowlife able to steal all their stuff and burn down their home.
Sadly, it takes only few people to make area terrible for others. Some do it with no benefit for themselves and there is no way to reason with them. Taking out such people (for whatever reason) by police is an useful service. That - even with quite badly managed police - is overall beneficial.
int_19h · 2h ago
Seeing how the atticle link is to the website of the IWW (International Workers of the World, a very oldschool union dating back to the early days of labor movement), why not take the first step today and join it?
I have a feeling this submission will be [flagged][dead] in the next half hour - that's how soft we are.
No comments yet
ramesh31 · 6h ago
Solidarity forever.
int_19h · 2h ago
An injury to one is an injury to all.
bsnnkv · 5h ago
For the union makes us strong
constantcrying · 5h ago
[flagged]
bsnnkv · 5h ago
Making the generous assumption that there is a gap in your cultural knowledge and sharing the source of these two lines with background context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_Forever
constantcrying · 5h ago
I have clear conflicts of interest with the working class, who work in factories. If I were in a union it should advocate for factory workers working more.
bsnnkv · 5h ago
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
The union wants my job outsourced so that factory workers can keep theirs.
Please tell me why I should have solidarity with them.
flmontpetit · 3h ago
The core proposition of syndicalism is that the workplace should be democratized. Democracy is far from perfect, and if often fails, but we believe in it nonetheless because everything else is worse.
bsnnkv · 5h ago
You keep repeating this in various comments throughout this submission- can you share links to the materials of the union(s) you are referring to and point out the relevant sections where they are advocating for this?
I am curious to take a read for myself, as I'm sure many other readers are
constantcrying · 4h ago
It's the IGM and of course it isn't their public position, but it is clear that this is what they think and how they behave. They also are extremely influential in my company, as part of the Betriebsrat, and try to steer it in that direction.
I recently had to deal with them (as part of the Betriebsrat) and, just as human beings, they seemed to be some of the worst people I ever met.
p_j_w · 3h ago
[flagged]
dang · 40m ago
Please don't cross into personal attack, regardless of how bad a comment is or you feel it is.
(btw just in case this response feels one-sided, we've already asked the parent twice to stop breaking the site guidelines, so I'm not going to pile on here with a third)
GuinansEyebrows · 1h ago
Are you an owner? If not, you're working class.
brickfaced · 6h ago
[flagged]
· 1h ago
parpfish · 6h ago
Then you better not watch any fireworks on Independence Day either
brickfaced · 6h ago
Comparing the American Revolution to random anarchist terrorists throwing bombs into crowds is... certainly something.
ebiester · 5h ago
The founding fathers would have been called terrorists today by the British. Past the Boston Tea Party, the Green Mountain Boys is a pretty good example. "The Green Mountain Boys stopped sheriffs from enforcing New York laws and terrorized settlers who had New York grants, burning buildings, stealing cattle, and administering occasional floggings with birch rods." - https://www.britannica.com/topic/Green-Mountain-Boys
amarcheschi · 6h ago
[flagged]
dang · 1h ago
It's not ok to post political or ideological flamewar comments to HN, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.
"Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle."
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
That means the users who flagged your post were correct to do so.
justinrubek · 5h ago
Unfortunately, I don't think this is a good place for discussion, and it isn't being addressed properly by the moderation team.
No comments yet
matkoniecz · 5h ago
> Tell me which rule I broke.
hard to say without knowing what was there
gymbeaux · 5h ago
I’m obviously addressing the mods (perhaps facetiously). No, I didn’t break any rules (except for “fuck this place”)
No comments yet
flmontpetit · 5h ago
Social media cracking down on leftist ideology is something that needs to be studied. They are very slick about it, and will usually find some way to make it appear legit (eg: deliberately interpreting obvious sarcasm as literally as possible and then hitting you with the content policy) but at the end of the day anybody can see that reactionaries can get away with calls to violence and war crime apologia while the rest of us have to be on their absolute best behaviour.
It really goes to show you that capital has no ideology and will adopt whatever shape it needs to as the political climate changes. The United States government is now fascist, and therefore the investor class is also fascist.
cruzcampo · 5h ago
There's a lot of regressives here actively abusing the flagging functionality for censorship - ironically the same kind of people that'll tell you how much they care about freedom of speech (the unspoken part: but only if its speech they agree with)
Bashing people who hold opposing views with harsh phrases driven by pre-existing emotion is not only not curious conversation, it poisons it.
Unfortunately, quite a few of you have been doing that in this thread. That's not ok, and no, the topic does not excuse it—on the contrary: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
If you aren't feeling curious, or can't post thoughtfully and substantively, please take a break until you are and can.
I know that we’re not a monolith and are actually a heterogeneous mix of opinions, but there frequently talk about job dissatisfaction (career burnout, comically stingy equity grants, etc).
But when organizing comes up, it’s usually treated with disdain because so many have bought into highly individualistic hustle-culture and the narrative that unions only exist to help lazy freeloaders
Plus, at the risk of too much head-shrinking, I've never gotten the impression that tech workers liked each other very much. There's a lot of disdain in the industry, for the guy who uses that language or framework or operating system that I think sucks. You don't see that so much with, say, truckers. There may be some good-natured rivalry based on truck brands or long-haul versus short-haul, but not the real disdain you see in tech.
No comments yet
Because many tech workers don't see themselves as workers, with some justification, many having substantial capital investments alongside labor income, making them, in class terms, petit bourgeois or at least close enough to it to perceive their own interests in more bourgeois than proletarian terms. And even the tech workers that are clearly part of the proletarian intelligentsia tend see themselves (rightly or wrongly) on a path that leads into the bourgeoisie, with bourgeois interests.
Working class: you are sustained by your current labor.
Upper class: you can sustain yourself based on the returns from your investments more-or-less indefinitely.
Middle class, between the two: you can sustain yourself off your investments for so long that you can’t practically be threatened by unemployment.
It is a labor relations issue explicitly, you need a union if you are in the first of the three classes, because otherwise you can be threatened by unemployment to do something dangerous or dehumanizing.
In the middle class definition, practically there’s some element of the fact that our skills are in high demand, so you can become unthreatened by unemployment by having just, like, a 1 year buffer. But I do think we can overstate how in-demand our skills to satisfy our egos…
If you have to think about which one you are you are working class. At a stretch you might consider the owner of a small tech company (say 5-10 employees) as petit bourgeoisie but the vast majority of small business owners (say mechanics, shop owners, small companies) are squarely in the working class. They may have employees but they still work, either for wages or as managers of those employees - which is work.
The middle class (petit bourgeoisie) is real, but its not centered around middle income (it is middle in the sense of being between the dominantly capital-dependent class and the dominantly labor-dependent class, primarily in how it relates to the economy, but in practice also on average, in income and wealth, but it is still an elite minority, just less so than the haut bourgeoisie that sits at the top.)
I like the definition I provided because it seems functional to me; it describes classes with labor-capital relationships, and describes how the incentives influence their behavior.
One definition I found reasonable was that it it "starts" with those that can meet their basic necessities (housing, food, transportation, healthcare) and still have funds left over for discretionary spending:
* https://ofdollarsanddata.com/the-biggest-lie-in-personal-fin...
Where it "ends" at top-end is perhaps more arbitrary (not Top 10%? 20%? 1%?).
The tech track works great if one falls into line and doesn't rock the boat by questioning authority or trying to see the big picture. If one clings to original teenage fantasies like the idea that intellectual prowess and financial success eventually bring esteem and a social life. If one chooses to avoid becoming mired in dead end physical labor jobs like everyone else, even for a time, in worship of their own cleverness.
But should the unthinkable happen, say, the loss of a loved one due to a hyper focus on work, or witnessing one's work being used to take from others, or waking up one day to find oneself disillusioned with the direction tech is going, then suddenly tech loses its luster. One starts to recognize it for what it is - just another way to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the few.
Tech has come to symbolize sheltering from reality, like a state sanctioned drug. It's a way to pat oneself on the back and downplay the wisdom of those outside it. Blindly worshipping it to the exclusion of the other wonders of life is the surest way I know to separate oneself from the soul, other than money perhaps.
In good conscience, I must add that the vast majority of tech today is phantom tech, not real tech. It serves to entertain and distract rather than be a labor-saving device. So in that sense, it's understandable that people invested in solving anything except any real problem have a disdain for the plight of labor.
Ethan Hunt play by Tom Cruise and Waitress #2 played by Jane Doe aren't very homogeneous with regards to pay and fame, but they're both part of SAG.
As a union member (not SAG-AFTRA), I find this curious. SAG-AFTRA is a Union. They have a cool name but, like many other groups with Guild in their name, they are recognized by the NLRB as a Union. There's no special classification for Guild, at least in America.
When you look at Wikipedia's list of largest unions in the US, only 2 of the top 10 have Union in their name, but that doesn't mean the other 8 aren't actually Unions. Or that the ones with Brotherhood in their name don't allow women, or any other silly extrapolation someone wants to concoct. It's just a name.
We're not in the 13th century any more. There is no longer any functional difference between Guild and Union. Of the alleged benefits of Guilds enumerated in HN threads (vetting and certification of members, continuing education, ability to be paid above scale, etc), literally every single one is already offered by unions today. And if you thought of a new one that wasn't, you could bring it up at your next union meeting and vote on it.
It's frustrating to read discussions of unions by online commenters who have never been union members or paid dues, never attended a union meeting or voted with their coworkers, never worked similar jobs in both union and non-union workplaces. It's like a bunch of people who have never lived in a free society arguing over whether they should form a Democracy or a Republic, by picking countries with these words in their names, and selecting attributes of those countries they do or don't want to emulate. That's not how it works.
not only would the collective provide benefits to the individual workers, but it would serve as an (optional) form of licensure/credentialing that ensures each member has a baseline level of competence. it could make hiring so much easier if you could skip the fizzbuzz screening rounds by pulling from a pool of vetted talent.
EDIT: another commented mentioned that NBA players are also unionized. I think there is a second element to it, which has to do with how monopolized the employer market is.
1. Heterogeneity/homogeneity of labour.
2. Tight/lose labour market.
I think Argument 1 is the weaker argument. There's a lot of fungibility between software roles. However, there's a higher learning cost. Moving to a new software company requires a few months before someone is close to full productivity. This in contrast between a painter moving from a Ford supplier to a GM supplier will likely close to full productivity within a few weeks. The cost (to the employer) is lower to rehire someone.
Argument 2 is the stronger argument, but may not be forever. In a tight labour market, I see very little need for unions. If the marginal worker can (and will) leave their position for a better position (pay, benefits, culture, etc), I see little need for unions. However, if the labour market for software engineers shifts in favor of businesses, this will change rapidly.
Also, their output is relatively easy to measure and stand arise.
This is not true for programmers, making standard pay increase for programmers less useful as a target. What would be measured? Hours in office? Commits? Lines of code?
The wealthy class makes multiples of your salary in passive income and their marginal tax rate is lower. You work and fork over 40%. They do nothing and pay 15% or less.
You put your retirement money into a 401k. They put their retirement money into a “charitable foundation”.
You draw down from your retirement money. They take a loan against it.
What’s the difference between a billionaire and a meat packing worker? Billions of dollars.
What’s the difference between a billionaire and a faang engineer? Also billions of dollars.
My point is simply that if you are 1 of 50,000 in a meat processing plant, you do not really have any way of competing with your fellow workers. You might try to work harder and faster, but then you end up raising the bar for all, and you now have to maintain the new pace. And once the rest catch up with your pace, the pay for all will be lowered again.
In tech, every job is slightly different, and there is a real opportunity to meaningful differentiate yourself from the rest and compete in a much more dynamic job market.
Also, who are the ones hurting currently? The juniors or the seniors? Seniors are mostly doing fine. Juniors are the ones hurting. And juniors would have an even harder time, if you transitioned to a unionized system, because entry requirements would be raised significantly to account for the fact that you cannot fire people so easily.
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Prior to that I was a military commander as a Major in the United States Air Force
Before joining the AF I had jobs in construction, freelance web design and car stereo installation in high school
The singular difference is the personality of tech workers is “I can do this faster and easier by myself - I have no desire to communicate with other people”
It seems to stem from a large swath very technical people coming from isolated environments when they were children.
Specifically ones in middle to upper middle class families, where the computer was their creative outlet and they were spending more time with a computer and understanding the computer than they were other people.
They were able to get excited about and learn and get deep into a topic where you really didn’t need other people — you need to documentation you needed books and you needed time to experiment.
Almost every single other job I’ve ever worked in you *need* other people in order to make progress. That is not true for writing really small functional and precise software which is the “job” of most swe.
As a function of that the majority of SWE’s (and frankly this applies to most technical experts who have a very specific niche) have neither of the interest nor the belief that the organization is valuable in of itself as the organization and they are way more excited to jump companies in order to promote themselves because that is how they are incentivized and are happy to find themselves in that position.
If you wanna actually make an organization that creates sustainable software, you need an entirely different way of thinking. you need to think organizationally you think you need to think about how to help people how to get things out of their way communication etc. etc. etc. all these things have nothing to do with“shipping code “
And for a lot of people who are good at programming they really genuinely could not care or have the capacity to understand about anything other than their narrow frame of view and they do not see their coworkers as part of their community they see them as competition.
They do! What doesn't resonate with many tech workers is working together with other people. Tech workers are largely used to working alone, and many even struggle in social situations more-so than in other industries, so when a labor issue arises they believe it is a problem they must solve on their own.
Industries with significantly higher economic status and autonomy are all over unions (sports, entertainment, politics, medicine, etc.), so that doesn't really explain it.
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People who don't make a lot of money struggle to afford all those things, and are worked to death despite it. They don't just have enough and want more. They literally don't have enough to live a life free of struggle.
Unions exist because workers were literally being killed by their employers. What's a tech worker's biggest gripe? Being on-call? Not getting a bonus on top of their fat salary? The only time I've ever done a hard day's work as a tech worker was when I joined a shitty startup that was abusive with long hours. I left and joined a normal company and it was smooth sailing. The most painful part of the job is my tennis elbow, but hey, I have a corporate healthcare plan and a $1000 swivel chair. I don't see the point of a union in this environment.
Not compared to many unionized industries. Workers in professional sports and entertainment, for example, which fully embrace labor unions, make software developers look like they work for peanuts.
> Unions exist because workers were literally being killed by their employers.
Labor unions have formed when death was actually on the horizon because death was on the horizon, but labor unions today are almost exclusively a rich man's sport. The poor aren't poor enough to face certain death, but aren't rich enough to risk the consequences of not working (i.e. striking) for beneficial-but-not-life-threatning demands, so it is not a reasonable choice for them to make. Hence why you almost never find labor unions in low paying jobs.
Tech doesn't like unions simply because, as a group, tech doesn't like people. That's what a union is, after all: A group of people who have decided to associate with each other.
I am pretty sure that union is not the most significant part why pay is high here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"We're all pretty sure of that. Where did you dream up this straw man?" is just the kind of provocation that produces that kind of discussion, though.
One thing to keep in mind is that most of us underestimate the provocation in our own posts (let's say by 10x) and overestimate the provocation in others' posts (let's say by another 10x) and that leads to quite a skew in perception [1]. I believe this is why everyone always feels like the other person started it / did worse [2]. Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear! [3]
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
When you work in a trade where you could easily be killed or injured on the job the calculus is a bit different.
Particularly this part:
> nestling comfortably alongside of the idea that "I don't need a union, I'm a temporarily embarrassed founder."
(1) demanded flat payment increases for all workers based on seniority etc. Which may make sense for factory workers but I am not enthusiastic about flat rates for programmers not taking into account actual experience/availability/output etc.
Factory workers in many cases do job that can be easily rated and measured and do some specific amount of it.
While measuring output of programmers is notoriously hard.
I expect that union agreement of this kind would in fact benefit only lazy freeloaders not doing any work but having seniority.
(2) are guilds that existed to keep jobs for members and to outlaw or ban hiring outsiders.
I strictly prefer for exclusionary guilds to not exist and one of my big worries is that one would be setup, in area affecting me. One way or another, not necessarily an obvious self-naming itself as a guild.
(3) are gangs existing to steal public money - for example, see coal miners in Poland. Main union achievements was to steal billions of public money to help lazy freeloaders doing work that was not worth doing or outright harmful.
I do not support theft, also in terms of parasiting on public resources. Even if I would get some of proceeds of theft.
(4) intended to achieve more free days, flexibility etc. On my freelancing agreements I sacrificed large part of earning to get about 100+ free days a year, very significant flexibility where and how and on what I work. So this part is achieved for me - and I am not sure how many other tech workers would actually prefer more free time over being paid more.
I am not automatically against unions for tech workers but my first reaction and assumption is not that it will be positive or useful for me.
Do you think I would join an organization like that? There is a clear conflict of interest between blue and white color workers and the more numerous blue color workers push the union to prioritize them.
this is a bizarre simplification, sounding like some kind of silly propaganda
I am well aware of enemies not fitting into such labeling at all (and probably there are more less obvious ones)
Soccer hooligan vandals.
Corrupt local politicians.
Some vandals obsessed with damaging community-run geodata collection project.
People who thing that overregulating everything in Europe is an exciting adventure and we should have more of it.
Climate change deniers, people misunderstanding vaccines and in effect trying to resurrect diseases that were extinct locally.
People with Saruman-like approach to trees.
Coal miners parasiting on billions from public funds to fund coal mining (as selling coal does not allow to pay for it, at least with how much they are paid for it).
I realize that many other users have been doing this as well, but each HN commenter needs to stick to the intended use of the site regardless of what others are doing.
Fortunately, it looks like your comment history is mostly fine (at least the parts of it that I skimmed back through) so this should be easy to fix.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If Factory workers longer and more efficiently my job becomes more secure. So obviously I want a union which advocates that factory workers work longer hours, it is clearly in my interest. The same goes for strikes, if factory workers strike they endanger my job and reduce the size of the engineering department, reducing my chances to get promoted.
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Indeed the bar is so low that even with all the bullshit in the tech industry, we seem to have it better than most- on salary alone. Throw in “full remote” (although that’s disappearing) and it really can’t be beat, even when your boss yells obscenities at you every day.
Even here in Europe salaries can match Doctors and Lawyers but the barrier to entry is much lower and in my experience employment is still based on merit more than anything.
Perhaps there's some element of "don't rock the boat" but maybe some guilt too. We really have lucked out.
Not sure how comfortable I'd feel taking union action over my job that requires me to leave the house once a week but pays 3x a teachers salary.
Structurally we are more similar than different, even if tech workers have had it good for the last while.
You seem to be claiming that empathy is always “hollow” but I think this is at most a statement about you. Many people can be both well off and want to make things better for others. Not everyone, for sure, not enough maybe. But attacking people for showing empathy seems weird.
It’s not virtue signaling. There are material gains that could be made by organizing. Layoff protection and the power to set company direction are two big ones that come to mind.
It’s okay to want to unionize for selfish reasons. In fact, I think it’s borderline propaganda to suggest the only reason a wealthy person would organize is because of their own class guilt.
It sounds much better for them to be on the team of all workers rather than the other team, or to be out of the game entirely.
If you make a cushy salary and the biggest physical risk is carpal tunnel, you might think ”I dont have it THAT bad. It’d be greedy and disrespectful of the sacrifices that were made to use unions in my situation”
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While software developers just starting out are apt to be working class, when you receive a comparatively high income for your labor it soon becomes hard to find things to do with it if you don't start investing in land/capital, so one in that position doesn't stay working class for long.
I have never been to a politician's dinner. I have never changed a law. If I were fired, which can be done at any time for no reason, I would have no source of income. Money is the weakest form of power, and a well-paid job is the weakest form of money.
unions in the past are portrayed as remove physical dangers, limiting to reasonable hours and fair wages. but tech workers already have that stuff, so they don't see an upside.
codetermination (getting workers on the board), four day work weeks, full-time remote, sabbaticals, open source support, rethinking startup equity, ... there's all sorts of things we could be pushing for that would make our jobs better that we could to push for if we worked together.
I don't know about you but I don't make anything even remotely close to six figures...
It is still labor and we are still exploited - most the revenue we generate goes to capitalist interests, not us, the laborers, which are the creators of all revenue.
It's just that we have it comparatively good and so are less inclined to seek out systemic change - a less favorable reading would be that we are bought off to split us off from the rest of the proletariat.
I don't care that much about "labour issues" because it seems like a logically flawed avenue to explore to begin with.
To be financially successful under any market system I can think of requires you, in a mathematical sense, to be close enough to the top within a company that you get a greater proportion of the profit than simply 1/employees.
In simple terms - I can't employ a maid unless I earn more than a maid, a maid can never be paid enough that I would want to be a maid (being the maid's employer, or at least having that optionality, is strictly superior).
Some jobs have comparative advantage, e.g. I might enjoy working on my car but know that a mechanic can do the same job in 1/10th the time. But a lot of stuff is just straight - I earn more than you, you do it for me, so I can get more things done.
Wages and hours for low level jobs feel like a distraction, barely anyone needs more toys, the issue is that the necessary items for life are monopolised.
So from my perspective the only thing that labour regulation can achieve is to basically just compress that experience, we still won't build more housing or make it easier to do so etc.
Now, we need a 4 day week (1 day less work) at the same pay, just as back then they moved from 10-16 hour working days to 8, for the same pay at the end of the week.
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/discover/history/the-histor...
In the UK, also a nation with a very rich history of labour movements and philosophy (Engels family owned factories in Manchester, which he and Marx used as justification and evidence for many of the points made in Conditions of the Working Class), has also seen a recent decline in labour movements - but that's partly because working conditions have improved so massively in recent decades: employment rights, statutory holidays and minimum wage have all improved.
However, in recent years something has changed, and I think a lot of people are now looking at holidays and working conditions in other countries: France (a socialist republic), Germany and Canada all seem to have better work/life balance, strong productivity, remain in the G7 and the roof hasn't fallen in.
I do wonder whether the rise of zero-hour contracts and the gig economy, the debate in the US over tipping as a basis for not paying a higher minimum wage, the lack of holidays and so on, might lead to more interest in either new labour movements or reinvigorating the old.
What's interesting for me is the productivity data shows that many businesses that need knowledge workers to function make more money and grow faster if they allow more work/life balance, but the messaging from the leadership pushes back against it. RTO and 5 days working weeks seem to be less effective than nomadic/remote work and 4x10 or even 4x8 working weeks. AI should, in theory, make that even more possible, but I don't think that's how most in the upper echelons of the Fortune 500 or FTSE 100 want it to work out.
It's going to be an interesting thing to watch/be part of in years to come, but history tells us transition moments are often violent: can that violence be avoided?
It does depend on how you measure it. Given diligent workers you could argue that working from home is better for 'on task' work, than the distractions of the office - however some of those distractions create value for companies that's hard to measure.
I've lost count of the number of times I've had the polite - how are you type conversation - via a chance encounter in the office, that has lead to an idea or new connection that moved something forward, ( have you tried X? Have you talked to Y ).
These don't happen when you are on task working from home.
For companies which are knowledge based - this sort of spontaneous creativity happens more when people are all together and less when people have to intentionally reach out.
Companies aren't just the simple sum of the individuals and a lot of the creativity happens off-task.
Today's working environment is 40+ hours in open plan offices with too few social spaces or meeting rooms for meaningful collaboration, so both focus work and casual collaboration have to be fought for.
Regardless, what's interesting to me at least is that even while we can see productivity rose for many decades even as people moved to the 5 day, 8-hour week (which must was counter-intuitive - there was an expectation of a drop in outputs), we're seeing potentially more gains from moving to a 4 day week.
RTO - for my type of work, and most work that needs "flow" for 2-3 hours a day, minimum - doesn't work for most people in 2025. Leaders are holding onto it in an irrational way, and that is leading to growing resentment. That, coupled with trying to pay people who have to show up (service workers, gig economy workers), with ever fewer working rights and poorer conditions, means something's going to give at some point.
If all the menial work was done by robots, and we were all going to Bell Labs-style environments for 3-4 days a week, I think we'd all prefer that and actually, society might be a lot more productive as a result. But it's never going to happen. Not in our lifetimes, any way.
What’s interesting is that tariffs helped American workers back in the day — whether or not that happens again remains to be seen.
Unless the entire world gets onboard with worker rights, trade barriers remain one of the only ways to improve the working conditions of local people.
Regarding the French example: they do have the so-called 35 hour week, but compare disposable income for the same job in the U.S. versus France: Americans have much higher disposable income than the French (even after accounting for health care costs.) The US could improve conditions, but pay will drop accordingly. That might be ok or it might not, but there is no free lunch.
Those barriers work by raising the minimum price of a product, making it profitable to produce it in a more expensive labor market. When you make products more expensive though, it comes out the other side as people have to pay more to get the things they want, and you get inflation.
If that is what people want, OK, fine. I don't think it's what has been sold to most Americans though - not only is the narrative that inflation going to be avoided, but income tax is going to be scrapped too. It's hard to find credible economists from any part of the political spectrum who agree.
I hope it does work, because if it doesn't, what will follow will be horrible to watch from afar, even if as a result we end up with prices for most things coming down (if Chinese companies can't sell to the US, they'll just dump to the rest of the World).
The French have higher disposable income because Americans are too busy wasting their income on sky high rents, sky high healthcare costs, paying for cars because it’s necessary, higher food and alcohol costs, etc. (Plus they have more of the thing money can’t buy: time). And these tariffs are going to make American’s lives even more expensive. (No one release in the world is going to oh these taxes: only Americans).
Something that groups of people rarely seem to realize: you don't have to accept a binary. You don't have to put all hierarchical structure to an end. You don't have to do ONLY one thing or ONLY another. Life is about balance.
Doesn't matter what side of a spectrum you're on. Conservatives, capitalists, evangelicals, anarchists, socialists, leftists. Each group is often dominated by a polarizing, binary force. Some fiery personality is agitating so hard for their point of view that they will only accept total capitulation and domination of their position. But that doesn't leave room for the middle way, compromise, a diversity of states of being. And so it creates conflict, even warfare.
I've worked in both systems (capitalist hierarchy, anarchist non-hierarchy). Both are useful. Both suck. The reason they both suck, is their incapacity to accept that sometimes the "other way" is better to get a specific thing done. But they can't see outside their own limited model. They're 2-dimensional, when they need to be 3-D.
They won't allow the "other way" in, because they're afraid it will taint "their way", and in some way ruin or defeat it. But if they did finally compromise and allow an alien system to co-habitate with their own, they'd see the truth. A composite of glass and plastic is better than either of them alone. Foreign organisms living in your gut make you healthier. It's the sum of the good properties, closely aligned, that contribute to a better whole.
I do not understand your framing. You don't "have to" do anything. These are people talking about what they wish to do.
> Life is about balance.
Pseudo-Buddhist bullshit.
You are lost in abstraction. These arguments are actually about material conditions, they're not just personality conflicts. Middle-class people lose contact with this fact, because they have no material worries; or rather their material conditions are simply tied to whether their employer believes they are profitable to employ. Of course middle-class people have to "compromise." Or rather they have to paint their total and continuous submission as a compromise, complain about the inflexibility of their bosses, and dream of one day having the leverage to order people around themselves.
Arguing that the best solution is in the middle is just the moderation fallacy. It's not profound, it's the law of averages. It's the kind of thing you can say regardless of subject, an invariant, that will always make people who believe in the law of averages believe you said something profound.
> There was disagreement among labor unions at this time about when a holiday celebrating workers should be, with some advocating for continued emphasis of the September march-and-picnic date while others sought the designation of the more politically charged date of May 1. Conservative Democratic President Grover Cleveland was one of those concerned that a labor holiday on May 1 would tend to become a commemoration of the Haymarket affair and would strengthen socialist and anarchist movements that backed the May 1 commemoration around the globe.[18] In 1887, he publicly supported the September Labor Day holiday as a less inflammatory alternative,[19] formally adopting the date as a United States federal holiday through a law that he signed in 1894.[2]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Day#Labor_Day_versus_May...
Labo(u)r Day of US/CA/JP/AU/NZ:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Observance_of_Internation...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Day
It is very important to remember that many of the things we enjoy today as workers only exist because of the enormous courage of workers from the 19th and early 20th century who fought really hard for a better future.
that is a remarkable generalization, that overstates things to the point of being misleading
> They are they muscle of the state.
still, there are better and worse states
if you go fully pacifist and disempower yourself and your state it will not result in peace - it will result in someone else, likely worse, taking over
Police in my country did some bad things (and far more bad things when we were a Russian puppet state) but last time I had an actual contact with police it was on railway station when they have cordoned off a group of aggressive football hooligans.
I assure you that I preferred policeman over group of drunk abusive hooligans. And some kind of "muscle of the state" is needed to keep such people in check.
(at the same time, police power should be kept on a leash)
Not really? It may apply in some very specific area but it does NOT generalize worldwide.
And for direct purpose: even taking maximally cynical view and seeing police as muscle power existing to enforce tax payments by threat of force and to disrupt threats to state...
Then I, as a citizen (and many other people) would agree that gangs should be disrupted and that they prefer to pay taxes over every lowlife able to steal all their stuff and burn down their home.
Sadly, it takes only few people to make area terrible for others. Some do it with no benefit for themselves and there is no way to reason with them. Taking out such people (for whatever reason) by police is an useful service. That - even with quite badly managed police - is overall beneficial.
https://www.iww.org/membership/
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https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
The union wants my job outsourced so that factory workers can keep theirs.
Please tell me why I should have solidarity with them.
I am curious to take a read for myself, as I'm sure many other readers are
I recently had to deal with them (as part of the Betriebsrat) and, just as human beings, they seemed to be some of the worst people I ever met.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
(btw just in case this response feels one-sided, we've already asked the parent twice to stop breaking the site guidelines, so I'm not going to pile on here with a third)
Both of your posts to this thread (this one and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43857366) have broken the site guidelines.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
"Eschew flamebait."
"Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle."
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
That means the users who flagged your post were correct to do so.
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hard to say without knowing what was there
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It really goes to show you that capital has no ideology and will adopt whatever shape it needs to as the political climate changes. The United States government is now fascist, and therefore the investor class is also fascist.