==We can form a union when we need to form a union.==
In my 35 years of life, it has become harder to start a union, so it isn't out of the question that it becomes harder and harder to start a union when software engineers "need to". There's no guarantee that what exists today will exist tomorrow.
==Do people actually think that software engineering is going to become a job that isn't skilled, and isn't sought after?==
I'm not sure why you would be so sure it wouldn't. Are the software engineers of today truly that different from the machinists of yesterday?
If you believe in the free market, then it is elementary that more people will flood into these careers which will lower the wages and diminish the bargaining power of existing software engineers.
If your argument about it being elementary for people to flood into the career were true, then why have far older and desirable professions like law and medicine continued to be incredibly well paying?
Software is hard, humans have a hard time doing hard things, that's why we get paid more.
==then why have far older and desirable professions like law and medicine continued to be incredibly well paying?==
These are actually two perfect examples to illustrate my point. Both industries are represented by organizations that systematically make it harder for more people to enter the profession (AMA for medicine and Bar Association for legal). They have eschewed the free market in favor of regulatory capture in order to maintain their market advantage.
==Software is hard, humans have a hard time doing hard things, that's why we get paid more.==
Same could have been said of building cars and planes 50 years ago.
But not all tech workers are programmers. To compare to another union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) represents machinists from Boeing and Harley-Davidson, distribution center workers at IKEA, and also wood, pulp and paper workers.
Its employee choice. People get bored, they get tired of processes, and there are plenty of companies willing to hire them that will allow them to try something new, do something different, and deal with different processes.
Please don't move the goalpost. My comment was responding to your comment about average tenure, not unions specifically. You didn't raise any questions on how unions played into average tenure or provide any example of how they could help.
No goalposts were moved. I questioned the premise of OP's comment on whether unions can exist in a world where employees choose to switch jobs every 2-3 years.
You responded with an authoritative answer backed up with zero evidence or supporting data. That it was about unions is an embedded assumption based on that fact that the entire discussion is about unions.
There is no help needed. People are perfectly happy switching employers, and companies are perfectly happy paying to get or retain talent. This ecosystem has made Silicon Valley what it is today.
==This ecosystem has made Silicon Valley what it is today.==
I assume this is referring to the technological innovation and corporate profits of Silicon Valley. I would ask you to consider, from a broader perspective, what Silicon Valley is today. Specifically, in relation to elevated levels of depression [1], suicide [2] and inequality [3].
Isn't it worth exploring whether the same working conditions that benefit the top 10-20% are having a negative effect on the other 80-90%?
I believe it's the result of the system we've created. Frogs leap from boiling water, and there's no sense in calling that "frog choice": obviously, the water is too hot.
That workplaces are universally intolerable after 2-3--as is accepted industry common knowledge--is not a matter of individual preference, but systemic inadequacy of workplace conditions.
Burnout is not a personal problem, it is an institutional pandemic.
> One of the first things we discover in these groups is that personal problems are political problems. There are no personal solutions at this time. There is only collective action for a collective solution.
-- Carol Hanisch, "The Personal Is Political", in Notes from the Second Year: Women's Liberation
Good point. Employees are often promised very interesting projects, career growth and salary increases. Very often it turns out to be a bunch of lies and people move on and the cycle continues.
Despite all the claims on HN on how good life is for software engineers, our field has very high burnout rates and it's very ageist.
==makes everyone spend money they don't actually have.==
So much for all that personal responsibility we used to hear so much about. Far easier to blame the government for everything.
Companies use credit to buy back stock because we deregulated that activity. It used to be that the government didn’t allow it. This point is actually a counter-point to your theory.
Correct, it's been twelve years. Nacchio was the most recent person stupid enough to say no to the US government. They made an example of him. In recent years, US telecom CEOs know they should quietly say yes, and not put up a fight.
There is no reason to believe that the NSA doesn’t have the ability to access iPhones [0]. Either through explicit help from Apple or otherwise.
Tim Cook’s stance was within the fiction of constitutional order. The FBI wanted to pretend that they couldn’t access the phone and bully Apple to give them access. This is to:
1. Legitimize their own access
2. Be able to, more easily, use the courts to punish someone (instead of droning a foreigner)
That last one is important. The DEA is known to use (unconstitutional) parallel construction to prosecute drug smugglers. If they have legitimate access to your phone, it’s easier to pretend that they obtained their evidence legitimately.
Tim Cook also has an interest in maintaining the aura that iPhones protect your safety. There’s no reason for you to believe that w/out having the source.
[0] or do you believe that no one working on the iPhone has secrets that the NSA can’t leverage? Or that the richest security service can’t manufacture custom chips as needed to clone the devices SSD? Or hasn’t capped the chips in the iPhone already? Or run it through the most through fuzzer?
I think the point is that once the cat is out of the bag it’s hard to put it back. For example, at first more people were helped by opiates than harmed. As time passed, by the time we realized that relationship had changed, we already had a bunch of addicted citizens.
It isn’t too much of a stretch to imagine an authoritarian government using our own surveillance video for nefarious purposes.
I think his biggest miss was failing to connect the region to the rest of the country. He could have easily compared Appalachia to Rust Belt cities facing urban decay but never made the connection. It could have made the story of the region more approachable to more people. It seemed so obvious to me how the areas are linked by economic circumstances, environmental degradation, poor education levels, distinct culture and problems with drug addiction.
> He could have easily compared Appalachia to Rust Belt cities facing urban decay but never made the connection.
Did you and I read the same book? Most of this story is occurring in the Rust Belt[0], in Middletown, Ohio[1]. He discusses the mass Appalachian flight into Rust Belt towns and the mixing and clashing of culture.
If anything, I'm glad the author kept things largely, as the subtitle would imply, a memoir of sorts. He focuses on his family history and his life to give a face to the problem, but makes you aware that these are major problems in that community. From there you can draw your own comparison based on your experiences.
I think we read the same book. I don’t really think of Middletown as a Rust Belt city. It’s a town of 50,000 people. I am talking about big cities like Detroit, Milwaukee, Chicago, Cleveland and smaller ones like Youngstown and Erie.
As someone who lives in one of those cities, it seemed like a clear correlation could have been made. It was chance to unite a rural and an urban problem across race and I thought it was a missed opportunity. I still enjoyed the book, but think it is even more powerful when read in tandem with a book like Evicted [1] that views the problem from another perspective.
Not what I said at all. I thought there was an opportunity to make a larger connection between what has happened in the Appalachian towns he focuses on and larger Rust Belt cities who face much of the same issues.
