Let’s all remember that the vast majority of programmers are not mathematicians, nor logicians, nor authors, we are tradespeople. And you’ll notice that tradespeople in almost every other industry unionize.
I've always thought that if a union is good enough for LeBron James and Tom Brady and Mike Trout, it's good enough for anyone. The same reason professional athletes have a union and would not dream of doing without one still fully applies to everyone else.
I agree with you, but consider the "outplaying your contract" and bad blood via arbitration problem we see in more and more (American) sports. Tech jobs aren't like being a plumber, one can't exactly say you need X amount of hours to be ready to do something, even only in the eyes of the law.
Not all programmers have high comp, and high comp are extremely dependent on market conditions and skills. And a programmer career can be rather short too due to ageism. Doctors have a much more stable and predictable compensation.
it only limits as a Cartel to limit the supply of new doctors (and keep foreign licensed doctors away from the market) - this is typical cartel behavior, not union
Not even close to comparable. Becoming a doctor takes many more years than becoming a programmer. They have legal ramifications if they make mistakes instead of “teehee oopsie all our data leaked sorry”. The vast majority of programmers have a bachelor’s degree or lower. It is actually laughable to me that you would compare programmers to doctors.
In any case, we should aspire to follow the model of unions and not cartels.
becoming a good engineer takes a lot of years too.
your average 4 year college degree does not guarantee you become an engineer, plenty of new grads are without jobs.
the best engineers I know have been coding since middle school and by the college graduation have 10+ experience coding at internationally competitive level.
this is comparable to medical profession.
if you ever meet an exceptionally good engineer - just ask him for how many years has he been coding? plenty will say at least high school if not earlier - all the way till their PhD that makes it two decades of learning+coding+improving.
as for model: I am anti union and anti-cartel. Just free market as it works in the silicon valley. The competition is actually good, even from offshore workers - because it forces productivity to increase and constantly filters out the bottom ranks of the profession - they leave coding to something they are more capable of: people management, product management, program management, etc etc
Has anyone studied career satisfaction among licensed doctors versus unlicensed software developers? It seems very common for doctors to feel locked into a choice they now regret. In equilibrium a barrier to entry benefits the marginal successful entrant not at all.
these are people who go to medical profession for money and prestige.
same regrets exists among engineers who go to CS for money and faang jobs, and then realize how miserable they have become in the process of chasing the gold
Most tradespeople are not unionized. Even the most highly unionzed trade - electricians - are only 1/3rd unionized. The most unionized jobs are not tradespeople, they're teachers and police officers. https://smartestdollar.com/research/the-most-unionized-occup...
A lot (not prepared to say majority) of tech workers aren't programmers. If you spend your day plugging services together through standard interfaces, that's very much akin to plumbing, just without the occupational hazards.
