The downvotes speak volumes of the cognitive dissonance. Everone is fully in control of their destiny through their rugged individualism and bootstraps until they're laid off and packing up to head back home from SFBA because they have no worker protections.
I suppose everyone has to learn the hard way (again) during the next downturn.
Have you ever thought that programmer pay is as high as it is because of the lack of those protections? It's pretty well established that programmer interviewing is hard for businesses and when they get it wrong everybody needs to be able to part ways.
The speed at which this field moved is almost entirely due to the lack of encumbrances. That includes having to pay a state licensing group to say you are professionally certified in Java, risking losing your job if you fail to renew on time, having the state lock out anybody from the profession who does not meet these requirements, having unions require these certifications and pressure companies to only hire based on them.
It's a long, inefficient and useless money grab who's costs far outweigh the benefits.
I'm not arguing that on-average union workers don't make more, only that we're in a high demand and fast-moving field with rampant innovation.
How much innovation happens in unionized fields?
How much work did Uber have to do to essentially go full on rogue to get around the system built up by taxi unions?
How much union work ends up getting either automated or outsourced to countries without union workers?
Do lost jobs count against that average pay stat?
Look at the hoops that Tesla has had to jump through just to sell cars to you directly? Those local car dealers...that's a sales union.
I mean, the National Labor Relations Board gets called in when Boeing wants to open a plant in the south east. We're not even talking off-shoring or cutting jobs.
Unions, like anything, have cyclical benefits. There are times when they make sense. There are others when they don't.
> It's a long, inefficient and useless money grab who's costs far outweigh the benefits.
Everyone's entitled to their opinion. Perhaps some people want the worker protections other industrialized countries have? And if those people are the majority, they can get it.
EDIT:
> The speed at which this field moved is almost entirely due to the lack of encumbrances.
Maybe this field needs some encumbrances and its time its no longer the wild wild west. Credentials aren't bad, peer-review isn't bad. Maybe I want my software built like my bridges? To standards and reliable.
If it took as long to build a web app as it did to build a bridge, and as much bureaucracy to go through, tech would be dead. Not every application should be built using NASA-like standards, which is the closest analog I can think of.
> Not every application should be built using NASA-like standards, which is the closest analog I can think of.
I agree. But more developers should know those standards. Don't call yourself an engineer if you're not willing to follow how legitimate engineers operate.
The comment you're replying to conflated gatekeeping associations, which aim to keep people out of the field to bolster demand, with worker protections.
Ignoring the ethics of the matter, I suspect that those already in the field would consider that a form of protection and hence a union would take on gatekeeping functions.
I suppose everyone has to learn the hard way (again) during the next downturn.