> You people need to get some self-respect and stop working for free.
"You people" need to unionize. That's the only way you get some negotiating power. Alas, that won't happen until tech workers (and white collar workers in general) realize they're workers and not capital owners. We're closer to really well paid plumbers than to Bezos & co.
> Alas, that won't happen until tech workers (and white collar workers in general) realize they're workers and not capital owners.
Workers though they may be, it is within reach for most programmers to jump on the real estate ladder, heavily invest, and retire comfortably.
> That's the only way you get some negotiating power.
For the duration of this bull market, Software Jobs have been easy to come by. Negotiating power, while never completely in employees favor, has given most programmers the chance to live _far more comfortable lives than anyone else they know or went to school with_.
> it is within reach for most programmers to jump on the real estate ladder, heavily invest, and retire comfortably.
In Amsterdam, where I currently live, I would say a normal salary for a senior dev would be ~ 80k euros gross. A decent apartment somewhere in the city could be ~ 500k. Unless you can pay a pretty significant deposit you won't qualify for a loan (rule of thumb is you get 5x gross salary = 400k in this case).
Back in the day the same kind of apartment could probably have been bought on a working class salary.
Climbing the real-estate ladder is hard for a dev, impossible for anybody making less than dev salaries.
In Australia the average is over $100k and it tends to be younger people under and people with 10 years experience way over that amount. An average apartment is still $500k which is very affordable. Chuck in a second income and it’s basically cheap.
Unions in general are overly focused on job security and fairness in pay at the expense of other things like total salary. While there may be a place in tech for unions the last place that would want to unionize is a big tech employer. A grift mill that churns through underpaid consultants needs a union.
> Unions in general are overly focused on job security and fairness in pay at the expense of other things like total salary.
Not necessarily true. Pro sports athletes have unions, and their compensation is usually much larger than ours.
But there's almost always a power differential between employers and employees, which is why collective bargaining can be helpful. And it's not just about pay, it's about working conditions. There's a massive controversy nowadays about WFH for example.
> Pro sports athletes have unions, and their compensation is usually much larger than ours.
I would be curious to see an analysis of all professional athletes. Looking at baseball, the sport I'm familiar with, shows that there are huge salary disparities between the major leagues (who have the MLBPA as their union) and the minor leagues (who have no union, this is news to me). Both are still considered pro sports athletes, though I'm sure you meant only MLB athletes by that term.
There are 902 major league players and a conservative estimate of 3,000 to 4,000 minor league players (excluding rookie and international players).
The major leagues have an average salary of $4.17 million, with a median salary of $1.15 million. But compensation is not distributed evenly. 33.4% of all pay goes to the top 50 players. 52.4% goes to the top 100. Of 902 players on opening-day rosters, 417 (62%) had salaries under $1 million, including 316 (35%) under $600,000. Details taken from [1].
Minor league salaries have minimums that are at most $700 per week for AAA players, and lower minimums for the rest of the minor leagues. For a 10 week season that gives $7,000 for the maximum minor league minimum. There are some exceptions with players on the 40 man MLB roster playing in the minors that make a minimum of $46,000 / season [2]. The interesting part of [2] is the comparison with the NBA minor leagues (they have union representation) which has a minimum monthly salary of $7,000, and the AHL (also has union representation) minimum season salary of $52,000.
Another source for athlete salaries is the BLS, which seems to show there are 16,700 athletes and entertainers with a median salary of $77,300 per year [3]. BLS shows higher median salaries for developers.
So, I guess if you include all professional athletes, then the median software developer makes more than the median professional athlete. I have heard of Google giving an employee $100 million in stock to stay at Google, but I'm not sure what the stock options are like for early developers at start ups. I guess that would be the equivalent to the top talent in the professional sports leagues making 10s of millions a season?
That's the kicker, nobody wants to unionize because they're actually pretty well off - and (and this may be an anti-union talking point) it has the risk of actually lowering the income for some, so that the lower-paid people get paid more.
Anyway that said, if you're working in tech and feel like you are being exploited - underpaid, overworked, unpaid overtime, expected to be always online / on call without specified pay, etc - by all means, unionize.
Another issue is that there's a lot of naïve, young people who still have the energy and lack the corporate culture cynicism who do end up working 14+ hour work days and ask for seconds; this is what people are up against as well. But this is where the awareness has to come in; if you do not get paid for those hours, you are being exploited. The hours you spend, you will not get them back. And, just spending long hours when you're still young does not automatically translate in success later on. If you're unlucky you'll end up with burn-out. And of course, if you need to work long hours or multiple jobs, you're not being paid enough. I know the housing market especially in SF is fucked, but working more will not unfuck that. Look into remote work and live somewhere cheaper.
As a manager I would love to see this happen to our field; I would also be disqualified (being lower-rung management) but there are reasons beyond just exploitation.
If information and data is valuable, then the market hasn’t correctly adjusted.
That is, there’s value in paying and retaining intelligent engineers with a low appetite for risk, who value longevity over a quick
pay-off
I personally feel that I have more negotiating power and can better apply it when I'm acting as my own advocate, rather than relying on others to advocate for me on my behalf.
With that said, I have no objection with others unionizing if they feel that they don't have sufficient negotiating power on their own; unions are really helpful in these kinds of situations.
Unions with their "someone else's job" attitude have soured me on the whole concept. They need to clean up internally before they can attract me.
I'm given the impression that unions in Europe are not as bad as Unions in the US though. Maybe if I lived in Europe I'd me more willing for the unions there, I'm not sure as it isn't an option I have and thus isn't worth investigating.
I've never been in a union, so I can't assess their inner workings.
However, nobody says you have to join an existing one - you can just make your own. Amazon and Starbucks workers are doing it in much harsher conditions, so why wouldn't developers be able to?
Unions could insure that you get some sort of compensation for the work you put in during your application. If you just try to ask for the money on your own they'll laugh in your face and show you the door.
"You people" need to unionize. That's the only way you get some negotiating power. Alas, that won't happen until tech workers (and white collar workers in general) realize they're workers and not capital owners. We're closer to really well paid plumbers than to Bezos & co.