Comment by project2501a

15 hours ago

> but I'm not sure I know another path of life.

Unionize.

So exactly what will the magic of unionization do when any company can hire developers from LatAm (much easier to deal with in the same time zone) that are good enough enterprise devs for half the price?

If we unionize, will I still be paid $500k with four years of experience?

  • Why should tech workers care about the small minority of tech workers that make obscene amounts of money? The median dev salary in the US is ~$130k. [1]

    Besides that point, I would very much like to get paid over time for being on call. I would very much like a preplanned process that comes to layoffs rather than firing people at random. I would like paid paternity leave.

    Always a classic HN post about the rockstar dev willing to fuck over their fellow workers so they can make a quick buck then feign upset over how meaningless their lives are because they devote so much time making capitalists more capital rather than bettering their community.

    [1] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

    • I would like all these things too but I wouldn't like the downstream side effects:

      a) Fewer companies taking a chance on people because the cost of firing has risen.

      b) Lower productivity growth leading to lower wages in the long run because adversarial union restrictions lead to less dynamic companies.

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    • Cry me a river for the “average” senior developer who as a rule, makes twice the median income of whatever city they live in. It’s called saving money and living below your means. Yes I was a standard enterprise dev for 25 years before 2020 living in a second tier city.

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    • This is a terrible plan to get those devs onboard, and unless your theory is "these companies are idiots who don't know how much to pay for devs" they're still gonna try and find ways to hire them.

      Really, it sounds like what you want is the European system where employee protections are so strong that the tech industry is barely willing to hire and is crippled as a result. Layoffs suck but the alternative (turning hiring into a patronage system) is worse.

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