I just keep thinking about the fact that literally everyone in my family makes less than that. To say that a developer _only_ makes 110K is high level privilege in many places including tech hubs. 110K is more than a whole household makes in my metro area. The average dev out earns dual income family.
This is why I spend a lot of think wondering what could a union even do for me? I work in comfort. If I work long hours that's my decision because I can always get another high paying less stressful job. Over my career I've taken very high paying jobs with high stress for the money and also chill lower paying jobs. Every job I've ever had I've outearned my both my working parents.
> This is why I spend a lot of think wondering what could a union even do for me?
I mean the same thing it does for Tom Cruise.
You're really thinking about this the wrong way. Companies all the time join trade groups and pay membership fees to coordinate their efforts. Are you going to argue that companies are making a fiscally irresponsible decision?
A union is strictly the same thing as a trade group except its membership is labor and not management.
Tom Cruise is in an industry where he can be shut out at any given moment and there's only like 5 employers.
How does that match tech? FAANG pays outrageously compared to regular dev jobs, but regular devs jobs are still pay absurdly high for a job that has a lot of comfort. This is nothing like average actor.
So for me, average dev, what is a union doing for me? What can a union offer me that I don't currently get? I make far more than median income in my area. It has never taken me long to get another job even when I burned a bridge. I can't be "black balled". My benefits are stellar and every company I have interacted with has stellar benefits. Merely being at a company with developer bestows better benefits for all white collar workers in my experience.
What can a union offer me when unions in the US are prone to valuing seniority over all (I say this as someone with 10+ yoe) and prone to being sympathetic to companies over time and tending towards modest progress instead of allowing supply and demand pressure to be fully felt.
Software development is not at the stage where it has been whole consolidated and companies are insulated from market pressure. If you work for an airline what real threat is your quitting? You can only do so so many times. This is not the case for developers. Unions however would bring forth a kind of calcified standardization that will resist radical change. That's why I'm against it. If unions existed when I first started my career, I would have seen the rise of unlimited PTO that allows me EU level vacations. I never dreamed when I started that I'd take 5 or six weeks off a year and that would be fine. I could tell my interviewers I'd be doing that and that would be fine. Because as it stands companies need devs and I have power.
People are upset about layoffs but barring Twitter which was an illegal shitshow, was anyone really harmed by it? Layoffs are rare in our field (ignoring game development which does actually need a union for inhuman work conditions and general instability). Easy money ended and so they layoffs happen. Should financial professionals be so up in arms about what happened to them in 2008 because it was the same kind of shitshow looking at my circle.
I remain unconvinced at this moment that unions will help and in fact feel they will hurt our industry which hasn't settled into a bad state and unions could settle us at a point less than we could otherwise get.
This is why I spend a lot of think wondering what could a union even do for me? I work in comfort. If I work long hours that's my decision because I can always get another high paying less stressful job. Over my career I've taken very high paying jobs with high stress for the money and also chill lower paying jobs. Every job I've ever had I've outearned my both my working parents.