Because there's a five-letter scare word you're not allowed to say that would be required for tech workers to have any power over their managers, but that sort of collective action is dead on arrival in the current milieu. If you don't want to go back into the office, you have the power to enforce that, but you have to like... work together.
even though biden's already left I am still quite surprised how little views his pro union videos got https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZpUD9KgYc4 this video was on whitehouse's youtube channel
I recently took a union software job after I was laid off due to the CEO having a tummy ache one morning. Many of my new co-workers were explicitly interested in the company _because_ there was a union.
It's very imperfect but such is life. It's all new to me but here's what I've seen so far:
a) Employees have a voice. That doesn't mean that management is forced to do anything, but at least it's possible to be vocally opposed to eating a shit sandwich.
b) We are protected by a contract. If you are called into a police station, you ask for a lawyer for protection according to the law. If an employee finds themselves in an adverse meeting/situation with management, they can call in a steward to protect them according to the contract.
c) The union is us, the workers. We self-organize. It simply gives us a structural framework to work within. An entity for my employer to recognize. It's not ran by an authoritarian who waves a magic wand to make things happen.
That's it. There seems to be this weird idea that I can screw around for 40 hours a week and have the union protect my job. The union told us that we very much still have to do our jobs (duh).
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To go on a little side tangent. Some countries, such as Finland or Norway, have no minimum wage because unions are (a) everywhere and (b) (allowed to be) powerful enough to protect workers. Honestly it's the best of both worlds. Less government intervention but at the same time workers hugely benefit from collectivization. They don't need to beg their politicians to raise wages - they do it themselves because they are given the power to do so. In the US, we instead rely on the lizards in DC to protect our wages because unions have been so stripped of power.
I dunno where you live but in my part of the country getting into union work is the best way to prosper and succeed as just an average person. Maybe that isn't true for tech work at the moment, but union carpenters, plumbers, HVAC, pipe fitters, arborists, linemen, auto and factory workers, all make significantly more doing union work with better and safer work conditions.
I think most engineers/developers/scientists would welcome, or at least be fine with, being a member of a guild like writers and actors. Their parent poster is suggesting that a traditional US union is the way, which I personally don't agree with and don't think I am unique in that regard.
To be honest, I'm not sure I know the difference. I got invited to SAG-AFTRA after doing a TV commercial and it seemed pretty union-y to me. Not that it's inherently a bad thing, and maybe I'm wrong in that there are differences but not aware of them.
Could you say more about the differences you see between a traditional US union and a modern day guild?
What I meant is that something like SAG-AFTRA provides some benefits and sets minimum standards for a work environment but does not limit your ability to negotiate a higher rate for your work, does not require promotion (whatever that would mean in this context) based on seniority, etc.
In the US, doctors, lawyers, and to some extent professional engineers and other licensed professions operate under a somewhat similar model in that they restrict supply of that class of labor through some sort of accreditation, apply minimum standards for the profession, and otherwise stay out of your business for the most part.
This is a frustrating comment. Please elaborate with a real point! Just highlighting something that used to be the case, does not imply that it should always be the case, nor does it imply that it reflects the case now.
Yeah, speak for yourself. I'd love to work at a place where I can't be fired because my manager had a bad day and I didn't move the right Jira tickets around to his satisfaction, where I'm treated like a human being in stead of fungible cattle. I also don't want to go back into an office. Ever. But if people actually want to affect change at their workplace, instead of just kvetching, that's basically the only way to do it, short of praying to Money Jesus for another ZIRP boom like the 2010s (I'm not a praying man, but I wouldn't hold my breath).
I'm just saying, if workers want control over their working conditions, they have to recognize the power they have. It's up to them if they decide to wield it. You don't have to, and that's fine! Enjoy your long Bay Area commute.
Though yes, I'm not sure if that union still exists now. The point is that you do not have to prefer working at every company that has a union over every company that does not have a union. It's enough to prefer having a union over not having a union at any company you do work for.
No, seriously, literally what does Apple or Google have over Boeing as a company to work at? Compensation? If money is all that matters to you, then there are several Web3/AI/etc startups offering absurd cash comp that you can go and throw yourself at.
Doubtful, we can see the products that come out of them these days.
> Better engineering culture.
Doubtful, we can see the products that come out of them these days.
> Bosses with engineering chops.
Doubtful, we can see the products that come out of them these days.
The rest of your list is just "money" written over and over and as I've already said, if that's all you care about, that's your prerogative but let's not pretend that makes somewhere a "good place to work".
So wait, your argument is that you actually think Boeing has a better engineering culture and smarter coworkers, than cream of the crop prestigious and high paying software companies.
You're just that certain that the vast majority of engineers don't care about money, and aren't competing to get in there? And instead work at Boeing. Where you think the engineering culture is better...even though their software has a reputation of being awful.
You must know a lot more than everyone here. You should really enligthen us. All those terrible products that all those people are using from Apple and Google.
On the contrary, I actually know that the median engineer at Boeing is working on much harder problems than the monumental amount of webslop that the median Google engineer is responsible for. And while the engineers at Boeing are not perfect on top of working under the constraints of the airline industry, I also have eyes to see the sheer enshittification of nearly everything that has come out of Apple and Google in the past decade. Google in particular - for goodness' sake just look at the state of YouTube web right now after their last "update", or the steady decline of Search, or the hatchet job they performed on apps like Fitbit after acquiring them - these are things we all know and bemoan even on here but sure, let's suddenly pretend that the company is a super bastion of quality. It's definitely not the name and the dollar signs flashing in front of the eyes.
As an aside, what I said is that if all you care about is money, then that's your prerogative. Plenty of us aren't slavering to work at The Empire Of Ads because they give free food. Apple at least has more dignity as a company, although outside of their silicon (which almost no software engineer is going to touch) they've been spinning the wheel for years papered over by vendor lock-in and their pricing strategy.
> All those terrible products that all those people are using from Apple and Google
If your argument is "well people use them", then I have some potentially really shocking news for you about Boeing products.
Now this is probably the part where you say a lot about MCAS without necessarily understanding what it is.
Not sure how it is in Nigeria, but in America people think much more highly of Apple products than recent Boeing planes. So by the logic of "Doubtful, we can see the products that come out of them these days.", Boeing does much worse on that metric than Apple.
Not sure what countries are supposed to have to do with anything but if that's where we're taking it, America is full of people who think all sorts of nonsense that is barely rooted in reality. I don't really see how the opinion of a public that revels in ignorance and is easily led by the nose (and I'm aware that this applies on both sides of the Atlantic) is supposed to be relevant to an engineering discussion.
I guess at least you didn't bother trying to argue that Google is a bastion of high quality products
