Comment by bob001
1 day ago
Until recently American engineers made a lot of money at comparatively cushy jobs. A decent engineer in the US could make 5x their equivalent in most European nations. Staff+ engineers at FAANG could make 5x that. People in a good position tend to not like rocking the boat.
Not just that, but the union would likely end up capping their salary much lower so the wealth can be spread around. How hard is the 10x engineer on the team going to work when the compensation is the same regardless? This is where people end up working multiple jobs, if they can keep up with their peers only working one day per week.
Why the fuck would an union cap anyones salary? Is this an American thing?
Over here the purpose of unions is to: Provide a strong enough legal response and guidance to deter companies from trying shady shit, pay better unemployment fees than the government and provide training/networking. They also negotiate collectively with the employers on behalf of everyone for things like paid sick leave, paid vacations etc.
I pay a flat fee every month because the union I'm in has always had relatively low unemployment, for others it's usually a percentage of their monthly gross salary (usually around 10-50€).
In what scenario would capping people's salary be good for the workers?
>Why the fuck would an union cap anyones salary? Is this an American thing?
No, it's a thing in most of Europe like France or Germany for unionized trades. All trades there have publicly documented salary bands based on education and YoE per job, where the negotiations starting point for a wage for a position must not be below the minimum threshold but also can't exceed a certain upper threshold. In some cases, the company can decide to place you outside the union agreed tariff/band range to give you a higher wage, but then you might be exempt from some strict union rules like 35h/week working hours and such.
And they cap the top end of the salary bands because the yearly budget for wage increases is a fixed pie for most companies, and so to have money left to give entry level workers the great wage increases as mandated for by unions, they need to cap the increases to the top wages to prevent bleeding/bankruptcy. Do you think all European companies have unlimited money to give all their workers X% wage increases?
This is how it works in Austria.
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Most unions in the US seem to have pretty strict rules about titles, who does what, and how much each role gets paid. It's not unreasonable to expect it'd happen with software developers, too.
That said, I always point to the NFL Players Association as one that seems to be able to provide value to highly and diversely paid talent apparently without kneecapping their high performers. Though it's not something I've researched deeply.
Seeing the wage difference in Europe and the UK even for enterprise developers let alone those who work for major (mostly American based ) tech companies, is not a rousing endorsement for unions for developers
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>Why the fuck would an union cap anyones salary? Is this an American thing?
Huh? If you have a collective agreement, all the compensation ranges are written down there. You get level 11 comp contract and your manager puts you at 85% of the scale, then the union decides the scale goes from say 85k to 95k. The next time the agreement is renegotiated, the scale gets bumped to 90k to 100k and you can't get past 100k until you promoted to the next function with a different comp level in a contract.
That's excluding pager duty hazard pay, may the God allmerciful steer your path away from it.
Unions are more about making the job conditions better than about maximizing the comp. Want to grind, go full 996 and sleep at work to afford that fancy house in Las Vegas.
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I think the truth is that there really isn't 10xers, and that's more or less a propaganda technique to get people to crab bucket each other.
Of course everyone likes to think they're santa's special engineer, so they don't need hurdles like protections and a level playing field. But, simultaneously, the industry has been doing everything in its power to make engineers as fungible as possible. The "wet dream" is to make engineers practically assembly line workers - you can just plop some rando in at any time, and it'll probably be fine. You can see this with the extreme turnover in a lot of the industry.
These concepts are in almost perfection contradiction, but they both have the same goal: to convince you and me that the status quo is desirable for each of us personally.
There are those who can provide 10x output in certain kinds of problems. Either due to experience or however their minds work. If their output is as a tech lead then even a 2x can provide an overall 10x increase through second order impact via their team. There are also those who provide 0.5x and 0.1x output on a wide range of problems.
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There aren't 10x ers, but there are definetly 0.15xers
I find it hard to believe workers would vote for a union to lower or cap their wages. That feels like a total straw man.
In my experience unions suck when they overemphasize fairness over real world practicalities (see almost anything seniority based). They don't have to be that way.
There is a large pay disparity. Why wouldn't someone at the 50th percentile vote to have those at the 95th get lower salaries so the 50th percentile goes up a bit?
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What you are saying is that companies would want to pay theor employees more money, but they can’t because of unions.
Sorry, hard sell.
> companies would want to pay theor employees more money, but they can’t because of unions
Well, inkind-of sort-of makes sense. It happens that companies would like to spread the salary increase budget as they please, while unions tend to request that the lowest salaries get a larger share.
That's right, no more "10xers" working 80 hr weeks making those who can't or won't look unproductive.
Couldn't unions just follow actors' guilds and the like where there are no salary caps?
When we're looking to the actors guilds for direction, you know the future of our industry might be in trouble.
It's not your choice. It's the choice of the average union member.
Reminder that unions don't have to do anything about salary.
I'd love a tech union that simply says:
Every time an on-call engineer has to work during off-hours, they get compensated 4x that time in PTO, and that PTO must be used during the next 30 days, or it is paid out at 20x their normal hourly rate.
This ensures everyone shares in the burden of off-hours work. If off-hours work is happening often, then engineers are going to be spending a lot of time away on PTO, and if the company pressures them to not take the PTO, then the company is going to be paying them a lot. Let's align incentives, I don't want to work on off-hours emergencies, and the company doesn't want me to either.
No mention of pay anywhere. Unions can do a lot of good without ever touching pay.
Unions aren't about what you want them to be about but what the average member wants them to be about. More or less.
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>Reminder that unions don't have to do anything about salary.
The union is the party that negotiates my annual salary increases that are not performance related. They will however not negotiate it up to FANG level because it's not FANG and I'm not in US. I will also get mostly the same comp as the guys on the left and on the right even if they aren't really bright (I'm not either).
>Every time an on-call engineer has to work during off-hours, they get compensated 4x that time in PTO, and that PTO must be used during the next 30 days, or it is paid out at 20x their normal hourly rate.
why not 100x? why work off hours anyway?
I had a job in twenty-nine When everything was going fine I knew the pace was pretty fast But thought that it would always last
When organizers came to town I'd always sneer and turn them down I thought the boss was my best friend He'd stick by me to the end
Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay! Ain't got a word to say He chiseled down my pay Then took my job away "Boom" went the boom one day It made a noise that way I wish I had been wise Next time I'll organize
Again see Steve. Something can look like a good position and still rapidly deteriorate.
This one wasn’t that rapid either, you had plenty of warning. I remember discussing inequality with friends in 2014, and probably knew about it since Occupy Wall Street (2011). Or earlier.
Engineers were the privileged class. They were part of the group occupy wall street wanted to bring down. Not hard to guess why they didn't want that.
Privileged is too generic of a word that does not accurately describe the cohorts. There is the capital class. Occupy was after the Capital class but im not sure if they accurately zeroed in on that. Its been too long since then.
Engineers were never part of that class. They work for a living while capital owns assets that work for them.
Engineers were part of the "Intellectual Elite" class that made good money but were super socially progressive. (Think putting BLM signs in their yards while at the same time pricing out the people they claim to help).
They ended up becoming a lot of the Elizabeth Warren cohort after being the Hillary and Obama cohorts(before it fractured into part Bernie part MAGA with the rest going to Hillary).
Extremely socially progressive but don't you dare touch economics.
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I would say more precisely, engineers are closer to the managerial or capital wielding class; usually the adversary of the union.
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>A decent engineer in the US could make 5x their equivalent in most European nations. Staff+ engineers at FAANG could make 5x that. People in a good position tend to not like rocking the boat.
So... 500k is the normal pay and 2.5mil is the staff+ pay, right? How many people you know actually make that?
SWE rarely earn $100k gross/yr TC in Western European nations. It's closer to $50k~$80k in many cases.
I rounded up a bit for nicer numbers, but it's more like 75-95 than 50-80 this year.
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It's higher in Poland lol.
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I was talking about the good days over the last decade and not now. As someone noted Europe made $50-80k. So around $250-400k. I knew a ton that made that. Basically anyone above junior at a tech company including late stage startups and second tier tech companies. Fully remote in many cases. At Staff+ FAANG if you were there a couple years then your RSUs would very likely push you above $1m and possibly above $2m. I think the most I heard of was someone making $10m/year and being deathly afraid of a layoff. Nowadays its AI companies which if you're lucky enough to get into and know ML will pay $2m+/year as your comp even at merely staff levels. If the bubble doesn't burst before IPOs then I know ICs whose next few generations won't need to work.
If you talk about before AI bullshit started, the numbers kinda make sense actually.
>I think the most I heard of was someone making $10m/year and being deathly afraid of a layoff.
Jeez, some people.
Until recently?
Now it's 20x at the AI labs instead of 5x at FAANG.
Still do