Programmers then: "We don't need unions, it's a bunch of communism that keeps me from making as much money as possible"
Programmers now: "Oh no, holy shit, what am I going to do as the market forces us to be a bunch of fucking gremlins. Too bad I threw away the power of collective bargaining"
It seems people keep forgetting why unions formed in the first place. Given a chance a company of any size will fully optimize for its own profit regardless of how awful the side effects are to individuals, the environment, and society at large.
I don't think there are successful examples of unions being able to fight major technological shifts in the long haul. At best, they can force the management to accept a suicide pact - we're all slowly going down together. That may be preferable to sudden layoffs, but it's still not great, as evidenced by the troubles of the US auto industry.
Instead, I think that doctors and lawyers have it right: they effectively have the authority to decide who's allowed to practice the profession, so ChatGPT can't write you prescriptions or defend you in court.
I love the pro-union sentiment, but I don't think we need to treat "programmers" so monolothically, and we definitely should act like its too late. Now is the perfect moment to unionize!
Yeah. But, unlike China, the West doesn't seem to want to invest very much into real-world engineering. Except maybe military for forever wars, which is ethically way worse.
This is a side effect of capital accumulation. There's no one to buy the products (as low/middle class gets squeezed) so no reason to invest. Instead, oligarchs hold money in assets and compete over control, ultimately with violence.
See West Virginia coal mining in the early 20th century. Resulted in a lot of violent conflict as desperate workers were getting squeezed for every penny and owned little of their own, often working in company towns.
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Programmers then: "We don't need unions, it's a bunch of communism that keeps me from making as much money as possible"
Programmers now: "Oh no, holy shit, what am I going to do as the market forces us to be a bunch of fucking gremlins. Too bad I threw away the power of collective bargaining"
It seems people keep forgetting why unions formed in the first place. Given a chance a company of any size will fully optimize for its own profit regardless of how awful the side effects are to individuals, the environment, and society at large.
I don't think there are successful examples of unions being able to fight major technological shifts in the long haul. At best, they can force the management to accept a suicide pact - we're all slowly going down together. That may be preferable to sudden layoffs, but it's still not great, as evidenced by the troubles of the US auto industry.
Instead, I think that doctors and lawyers have it right: they effectively have the authority to decide who's allowed to practice the profession, so ChatGPT can't write you prescriptions or defend you in court.
Other engineering specialties are typically protected under law in many states as well.
I love the pro-union sentiment, but I don't think we need to treat "programmers" so monolothically, and we definitely should act like its too late. Now is the perfect moment to unionize!
If the problems are solved, wouldn't you rather all those programmers use their productive systems-oriented brains on other problems?
Yeah. But, unlike China, the West doesn't seem to want to invest very much into real-world engineering. Except maybe military for forever wars, which is ethically way worse.
This is a side effect of capital accumulation. There's no one to buy the products (as low/middle class gets squeezed) so no reason to invest. Instead, oligarchs hold money in assets and compete over control, ultimately with violence.
See West Virginia coal mining in the early 20th century. Resulted in a lot of violent conflict as desperate workers were getting squeezed for every penny and owned little of their own, often working in company towns.
I was about to say, it's not just IT industry, it's capitalism leading to this.