

Programmers don’t need a union. We need a profession. - biesnecker
http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/11/18/programmers-dont-need-a-union-we-need-a-profession/

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jacques_chester
Guild unionism (which is still a union, just with a different name) is an
evolved strategy for managing the risks that exist in certain areas of human
activity.

If you give someone advice on medicine, law, accounting or engineering and
your advice is wrong -- the consequences can be dire. Very dire. Even trivial
mistakes can spiral out of control.

Even though guild unionism imposes enormous cost and drag on society at large,
it sufficiently damps the risk that the cost is probably worth it.

But for enormous swathes of software development, doing a hilariously bad job
doesn't lead to loss of life, limb, liberty or livelihood under any
circumstances. The risks are substantially lower.

But the cost of guild unionism would be the same.

