Originally written by Biozombie, published in 2600 Hacker Quarterly, Autumn 2024
Let’s get real for a minute: the tech industry loves to sell us on the myth of the “dream
job.”
You
know
the
pitch – beanbags in the office, free kombucha on tap, and “Agile” processes that are supposed to
make
everything
more flexible, more efficient. But the reality? It’s a meat grinder that chews up developers,
sysadmins,
and
infosec pros and spits them out the other side – burnt out, disillusioned, and disposable.
We’re living in a world where billion dollar tech companies expect us to live and breathe code,
demanding
80
hour weeks under the guise of “passion.” And what do we get in return? Burnout, anxiety, and the
constant
threat
of layoffs. It’s time to face facts: this industry is not your friend. It’s a machine, and
unless we
start
organizing, it’s going to keep grinding us down. It’s time to talk about unionizing tech jobs.
Remember when Agile was supposed to save us all? Flexible sprints, self-organizing teams – yeah, right. In
practice, Agile has been twisted into a tool for management to push us harder and faster. They say
it’s
about
“responding to change over following a plan,” but let’s be honest – it’s about dangling
more
carrots
and keeping
us on a treadmill that never stops. The sprint becomes a marathon, and we’re the ones paying the
price.
And then there’s burnout. We’re in an industry where burnout isn’t just common –
it’s
expected. If you’re not
pulling all-nighters, you’re “not committed.” If you’re not answering Slack messages at
midnight,
you’re “not a
team pla
16 Comments
kelseyfrog
We joined the burnout machine under our own free will. What else did we expect? Moloch's not getting any less hungry.
terminalbraid
Have there been successful general-software unions formed before? I see and hear this idea relatively frequently, but never past that.
I sort of feel like most people don't stay at a place long enough to get cohesion or see enough they don't want to stay in the first place, good people chase better job offers (and congratulate themselves for doing it on their own), less good may stick around longer because they can't move but also are more focused to just stay employed.
Software is also a broad industry in terms of the type of deliverable work (e.g. think buy-once software vs. SaaS vs. in-house industrial controls), skillsets, and environment. It's also hard for me to even conceive of what a typical fast-moving startup would look like full union. Lines between ownership and management and labor can get very blurred.
Is the best hope to look at things like the entertainment industry which are also extremely fluid, but have been very successful? Do we need a long-term period of dev salaries coming closer to median pay (which we might be entering now)? Do we need to better address the ageism monster?
The games industry recently made some real headway [1], which I applaud. Maybe focusing on smaller sectors is the right approach.
[1] https://www.gamedeveloper.com/production/industry-wide-union…
linksnapzz
What happens when your employer replaces union workers w/ more pliant immigrants on visas? Or just outsources their work entirely?
Are you going to picket an AWS DC in Ashburn?
rglover
The ideal is to encourage developers to start their own small businesses and support each other by being customers. That, and when you find success/profitability, don't sell to a big tech nightmare or PE—just run the business.
The "machine" is a natural side-effect of mega corporations and creating unions will just encourage more creativity around stealing your soul or getting rid of your entirely.
film42
I think unions need to work on their marketing. I resonate with all of these problems, but the "fixes" sound like a politician saying, "elect me and I'll solve your problems."
What's the A+ example out there of a unionized engineering team that has been able to find a great work-life balance, great benefits, and a fun product development life-cycle that is profitable or clearly on its way to profitability? Show me this company.
I have family and friends who work for airline unions, parcel unions, teacher unions, etc. Some love it, some hate it. Those who love it had a broken fan in the van all summer with no air conditioning until the union stepped in. How would a union meaningfully improve that situation at a tech office with paid lunches and decent benefits?
Like, the promise of a better tomorrow from unions carries the same tone as a promise to IPO "really soon" from the CEO/CFO tag team at the annual kick-off meeting. What does it look like when rubber meets the road?
limusrazor
How do you then compete with companies from other geographies willing to overwork US companies? Sounds great on the surface, but if you slow down the treadmill too much, you risk falling off completely.
zer0zzz
https://youtu.be/DwbzxemJZIc
mattgreenrocks
Class consciousness is firmly in the zeitgeist: witness season 1 of Severance.
There is no going back from this, as once you are disillusioned it is much harder to be re-illusioned. There will be some sort of collective response by white-collar professionals at some point. I think people are ready for change.
jegp
As an outsider, I'm astounded why workers aren't unionizing to a much higher degree. It's been proven to work [1] against the misinformation, discord, and wealth inequality that companies will, inevitably, cause. Despite the small union fee, the individual clearly stands to benefit[1]. Is it because people are cheap? Or not familiar with history? You'd think that tech workers were quite informed.
[1]: https://nordics.info/show/artikel/trade-unions-in-the-nordic…
protonbob
The author seems to think that everybody works this way. In reality, many of us work 40-45 hour weeks with no on call and low amounts of meetings. These jobs are in the boring (military, banking, insurance etc) sectors but I make a good, not great, living.
deedubaya
Burnout? Yes. Overwork? Maybe. Unionize? Eh…
The post rinks of privilege.
Go work a manual labor job outside in the sun for a few weeks and tell me how bad tech employees have it. Most of non-tech America is not empathetic to our plights. They’ll probably cheer on the offshoring of our jobs.
thom__
Awesome to see something like this on HN. As we keep working for less pay, more hours, the constant threat of layoffs, and business leaders frothing at the mouth to replace us all with AI, it's important to remember that we aren't powerless as workers. It's also important to remember that your relationship to the higher-ups is adversarial. They want to get as much productivity out of you for as little pay as possible. It's not because they're evil, it's just good business. Organizing helps protect us as things get worse.
I see a lot of my colleagues resigned to the reality we live in and just hoping they get lucky enough to come out on the right side of the meat grinder by making a few bucks at a startup. I've worked in a couple industries, and tech workers seem to lack solidarity in a way I haven't seen elsewhere. I survived three rounds of layoffs at a startup, and every time the attitude among some of my colleagues was that we "trimmed the fat." I somewhat agreed and got caught up in that culture until I got picked up in the fourth round of layoffs at a time when I felt I was doing my best work. We need each other as workers to get through a future that looks gloomy for technology developers. As the saying goes: "united we bargain, divided we beg." A better world is possible!
legitster
This write up sounds like it describes a very particular subset of companies. If you only want to work at the flashy unicorns in downtown San Francisco, you are signing yourself up for exploitation.
Like any career, if you get off the beaten path there are plenty of pretty okay jobs out there. Especially if you have a marketable skill. This is software, if you have a brain and functional hands – you already own the means of production!
I absolutely support unions – but you're going to personally be better off changing companies and working your career ladder and finding the spot for you than sticking around at an exploitative company just because they have a union.
dadrian
What Big Tech companies are demanding 80 hours a week?
umvi
How many tech jobs are 80 hours a week? My work life balance is pretty good at a smaller tech company, so is it the FAANG jobs expecting 80 hour weeks?
didgetmaster
I worked for 8 different companies over my 35 year career. Not once did I feel exploited and wanted a union to come to my rescue. But that is just my experience.