Tech workers are usually so buried, heads hunched over the keyboard, focused on the latest project, that they aren't even aware they are being used. They straiten their back one day, look around, and realize they've been working for 20 years and getting nowhere. They got good enough raises, but forgot inflation, and it was really nothing.
In what country? Software engineers have some incredible pay for pretty low effort in the last 15years. Even before that it was a pretty decent living for most of the time pretty non-unique software.
We are talking about them as an exploited working class, wild to me.
Very few tech workers get incredible pay – most people do not work for a FAANG, and far from all of the ones who do are getting paid lavishly, especially after you account for hours & cost of living (note the downward pressure against wages for anyone not in SF). Not bad pay by any means but people still have to go to work every day and are living in upper middle class but not upper class houses, etc.
This is especially true relative to the business revenues generated. A union helps workers get more of the value they’re creating and also helps avoid things like companies using layoffs as a tactic to keep employees from negotiating aggressively.
It also helps with less visible things like age discrimination – very few people are going to retire by 45 no matter what they tell themselves at 25 – and non-cash benefits like parental leave or not being discriminated against for politics or not fitting in with some group. I’ve heard a lot of bad things about unions, and seen some firsthand (the Teamsters are self-destructive), but everywhere I’ve worked the union was a net win for workers and literally every one of the times someone publicly blamed the union for poor performing workers it was an attempt to shift blame from management failures.
IMHO our profession's adherence to ethics and technical standards is shockingly low compared to others. If a civil engineer was asked to build a bridge that will probably be unsafe, I think they and their colleagues would have the power to refuse (right?). If a software engineer is asked to ship a feature that's probably insecure then... IDK, gotta get it to prod, move fast and break things, right?
I wonder if unionization could help us do a better job of collectively saying "no" to awful product demands.
Your civil engineer would also end up in jail or bared from working in the area if they made a mistake and has pretty strict criteria for becoming a civil engineer.
Yeah great point. It’s like why does my doctor have to wash their hands before operating on me but my CPA doesn’t have to wash their hands before doing my taxes?
Cute analogy dude, but it's startling that you think that the negative impact of software engineers is as contained as a CPA typing on their keyboard with dirty hands.
Equifax leaked PII for over one third of the entire US. The stress and financial loss of identity theft can take years off of people's lives.
That's just the big example, but there are countless other smaller examples of bad security and other bugs harming people in tangible ways.
Healthcare is pretty reliant on software, that's an area that strikes me as being susceptible to something like this. Banks and their associated (i.e. Equifax) are also in a position where this kind of feedback from developers could make a difference.
A whole lot of software just supports a business, and a non-critical business at that. If my buggy software takes down, say, pets.com, well, first, the world won't end because pets.com is down for 8 hours, and second, pets.com wasn't going to succeed even if my software was perfect. That kind of software isn't like building a bridge; it's more like building a birdhouse. Nobody's going to die if it collapses. (OK, a bird might.)
Some software is critical. Safety critical, or running critical financial processes, handling medical info, and so on. That software does have technical standards.
Sure, but if pets.com has a database breach and leaks PII, that could be used to help break into someone's email or bank.
I think a more apt analogy would be a pothole. It's probably OK, until it grows deep enough that someone hits it hard and veers into the sidewalk or the opposite lane.
> We are talking about them as an exploited working class
1. Workers don't need to be exploited to want better for themselves. There's nothing wrong with this.
2. There are a lot of tech jobs that have essentially become always-on, with no commensurate bump in pay. Think of the number of engineering positions that now require an on-call rotation, adding perhaps another effective day or more to one's working time. Pay has broadly not increased to account for this.
Given that they are typically salaried, I wonder what the hour adjusted pay is? The median for a dev in the US is $110k, and many of those jobs fall in higher than average cost of living areas.
It's possible that people in the industry want better working conditions or more equal/open pay systems, not just more money. Better hiring practices could be nice too.
The median software developer job is not in a high-cost area. $110k is less than what the median software developer is paid in e.g. Omaha, Nebraska, where the median house price is $275k.
In the US, software developers are highly compensated by local standards almost regardless of where they live. That was not always the case decades ago but it is today.
Any numbers to back you up? (Other than your one cherry picked city)
If you look at the top 10 states for software jobs, you will see that they fall in the higher end of the distribution for cost of living.
Even looking at your cheery picked example, we see the salary and cost of living track roughly - median dev salary is about $95k based on multiple sources and COL is about 7% lower than the national average.
Yes, devs do tend to fall on the higher side of a local median than others. Hence my point about unions not being just for more money.
The problem with looking at hourly pay is that I don't feel it applies well to the software industry. I can easily say there are some weeks where I have little to nothing to do and there are other weeks where I'm working a full day every day of the week.
There are also hourly jobs where you get paid for slow times of doing almost nothing. You would want to track hours worked (including hours that you did almost nothing but were still required to be at work or logged on) per year with pay per year.
It would be nice to work for a successful company, see that company earn record quarterly profits and then not have to worry about being laid off. Pay is important but, arguably, job security even more so.
Software engineers, like most workers, are exploited. Do you think that companies pay us well out of the goodness of their hearts? As soon as they can find a way to replace us or pay us less, they will. Currently they have to pay us well and give good benefits, otherwise we will move along to somewhere that will. The more likely scenario, is that they will start replacing the "non 10x" developers with AI soon. This may allow the 10x to demand a salary bump, but it also means that they will be cleaning up after AI and shouldering all of the extra work so it probably will be a net loss for most.
Sounds great to me. That’s how the market works. If a cheaper means of production exists, the industry should utilize it. While I think unlikely right now for it to vanish, it should definitely not be propped up.
Agreed, however, in practice I’ve found that companies replacing humans with AI is usually a disaster, and the only reason they get away with it is because they have some sort of near-monopoly. When’s the last time you got an automated customer support menu on a phone and thought “wow, I’m sure happy they figured out a cheaper means of production here”
Even in countries like India programmers make salaries in the multiples of the average (checking around on Payscale I see the average is around ₹60k, while programmers make on average ₹460k).
Sometimes programmers can have it rough, but that’s entirely their decision to stay. As a programmer you have unparalleled movement; the post-lockdown WFH standard and ability to code from basically any device show that readily. Combine that flexibility with high pay and long term career prospects and it shows that anyone begging for a union doesn’t understand what real working class struggles are.
Our employees are saving a lot of money from WFH, and they are not giving that to salaries.
You're saying that only the least paid profession should have a union and no other profession should have one? I don't think that makes sense. More than one union can exist at once.
Your reading comprehension is lacking. I’m saying programmers get paid well and have large opportunities, and that unions don’t serve a purpose. Care to enlighten me how programmers are some abused work force and need unions?
My reading comprehension is fine. You wrote an incorrect statement and I corrected you.
> Care to enlighten me how programmers are some abused work force and need unions?
Everybody who works for someone else does, not just programmers. And the expectation of working nights, do open source work to even be considered are all abuses that are happening.
I did not make an incorrect statement. I pointed out reality. Whether you accept reality or not is the question.
> Everybody who works for someone else does, not just programmers.
Speaking of incorrect statements.
> And the expectation of working nights, do open source work to even be considered are all abuses that are happening.
Those are not abuses. Working nights is part of the job, just like doctors and engineers. Don’t like it? Find a job at somewhere that doesn’t work nights. And contributing to open source is proof of your capabilities as a programmer in a real world environment. If you cannot do open source, you do not deserve to be hired.
These are at most minor inconveniences, and not something a union would even help you with.
> realize they've been working for 20 years and getting nowhere
How are you defining "getting nowhere"? At least in the US, the average software developer eventually becomes a millionaire working a pretty cushy job with good benefits. Most people in unions wish they could be exploited like software engineers.
Any bar set so high in defining worker exploitation that a software engineer can't clear the hurdle is not a constructive definition. If everyone is "exploited" then no one is.
Do you have a source for the claim of the average software engineer becomes a millionaire? As a software engineer I would really like for you to be correct.
There are no definitive studies but reports I've seen suggest the typical software developer these days crosses that threshold about 20 years into their career. Something like 80% of all millionaires in the US are so due to 401k + savings, which is something software developers are exceptionally well positioned to easily take advantage of.
I know several non-software people in boring industries that managed to accumulate $1M in their retirement accounts by the age of 50 while living a non-austere lifestyle and making less money than the average software developer. It isn't that hard to do in the US. Anyone making above average wages with decent savings discipline can do it, the financial math makes that obvious.
It is funny how many people just read a few articles about salaries at a FAANG and think Software Devs are all rolling in the money.
Or the free-market cheerleaders that actually just flat out agree that exploitation is the natural order of the universe and we should all just suck it up and do nothing.
