> I have to sleep in the bed I made.

If its any consolation, its the bed we made collectively. It was easy to push back against unionization early on, we were likely better off individually. I too am self taught, although I went the ops route, and enjoyed making more money than I thought I deserved from basically a hobby, and a skill so in demand that I could effectively just go to any company I wanted at any time.

I'm also turning 40 this year, and can look back and wish we all did things differently but the wild west nature of early tech that allowed a self taught college dropout to build a successful career was too good, beneficial. It was one of the rare times that true upward class mobility was possible for anyone with a little bit of tech aptitude, so I think it can be forgiven that we didn't unionize or push for it back then.

I do feel bad for anyone graduating right now or just trying to enter the field though. The ladder has been pulled up.

How is unionization gatekeeping? I honestly don't understand what you mean. I can't see any disadvantage for the employees in joining a union.

Unions have 33% voting power in Volkswagen board.

Germany has very strong labor protecting laws.

Replacing line engineers and operators is very difficult.

Volkswagen is firing 100k employees in Germany none the less.

The idea that you can successfully unionize in software..in US..Where you could simply retain a small number of staff key members pay them very well and put them on a mission of outsourcing and milking the IPs..I don't see it.

The best moment to unionize wad 20 years ago.

Now there's not enough leverage by the staff.

> If the software engineers strike, who’s going to be left to wrangle the AI?

The scabs who don't strike?

I'm pro-union and unlike the person you are responding to I'm not sure things are "dead in the water", but I do think software developers had a much better leg to stand on to push for unionization a few years ago than they have now (and, probably, going forward).

I read the book and that's not the first thing that comes to mind.

What comes to mind is whole towns made of dockworkers which disappeared, and some places like Manchester lost their port and their industry died too, and it took them decades to recover.

Of course, some other like Rotterdam flourished.

I do recommend the book, but I think it shows many sides of what happens when a large change happens.

Yeah I think the 19th century was a little bit different than today. Unions only work as far as you, the worker, are irreplaceable. Plumbers, electricians, etc. -- all that work has to be done "here and now." You can't just instantly teleport a bunch of Indian plumbers to fix a broken water main in downtown New York. Those tradeworkers have actual leverage. And, to your example, what is feasible to outsource (either to other countries or technology) shifts over time.

You _can_ do computer-based work anywhere, anytime. People working in software have no leverage at all, between India and AI. Software unions will kick the race to the bottom into overdrive.