Yeah just wait until you get laid off

jamestimmins an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I've been laid off. It was fine because software is literally the most marketable skill in the world.

Edit: But also, this was a pre-profit VC-backed company. If those companies can't lay people off, it's not like you make good money with more job security. Either the company just has less runway (so I still lose my job, just later and with everyone else) or they adapt by hiring fewer people at lower salaries.

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Apocryphon an hour ago | parent [-]

Within the last four years?

	▲	hylaride 36 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I was canned early last year. Looking for a new job was mostly fine. It wasn't insanely easy like 4 years ago and I had to network a bit, but there very much is still demand for qualified people. Would suck to be in this market as an entry-level engineer, though.

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missedthecue 39 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Most tech workers I have met with parent commenters opinion have been laid off at various times in their career.

I think it's important to note that unions aren't very good tools to avoid layoffs. If there is a company specific hardship, the union can't simply force the company to maintain headcount all the way into bankruptcy. On the other hand if there is a secular change across the industry, the unions can't prevent that change either. Easy example is how Big 3 automakers were 100% unionized in the 1970s and have since shed about 500,0000 American jobs despite producing more automobiles than ever.

Unions tend to be good at bargaining for better pay and benefits, but the current status quo is that most tech workers already have decent pay and benefits anyway.

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DiscourseFan 12 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

A friend of mine at Amazon got laid off during their big stupid AI push last year and yeah, being paid like $150k a year sounds nice until you realize that only covers basic living expenses in, say, Manhattan. Now was Amazon right to fire so many people for basically no reason? No, but software on its own is no longer marketable. One person can generate a hundred times more code than before the advent of LLMs, so you only need one person to do the job of a hundred. Now, it takes some skill, that takes years to develop, to use LLMs effectively in the workplace, so Amazon was incredibly short sighted to believe it was just some magical box that fixed everything automatically. But that doesn’t mean companies won’t be making similar moves, in the aggregate, in 10 years, when leaner competitors come to rip a chunk out of their profits. Do you see the capex of major tech companies now? They are _scared_, they have every right to be. You have to be just as nearsighted as those Amazon bosses to believe that things will continue as they always have, that this is just a short dip in a long term regression to the mean.

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triceratops 36 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

> most tech workers don't have bad pay or benefits anyway.

But what if they could be even better? This is an industry with 75-80% gross margins, quite unlike any other industry in history.

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missedthecue 33 minutes ago | parent [-]

But despite those margins, it's also an industry with a LOT of unprofitable businesses, unlike any other industry in history. From many people's perspective, if they already earn well, why rock the boat in a high effort high risk way so that the union can negotiate an 8% raise instead of a 4% raise. I don't need the money. And the bad to worst case outcomes could give me serious irreversible buyers remorse.

	▲	triceratops 25 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> I don't need the money. I promise you, management doesn't think that way.

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throw-the-towel an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's still not clear to me whether union protection is going to be worth the decrease in job creation. There's a reason Europe has way less IT positions with worse salaries.

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DiscourseFan 26 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I think you’ll find that at the very least unions preserve jobs in contracting industries, which software is clearly in the process of.

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braiamp 28 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Salary isn't even be all end all. In fact, higher salary might be worse, because in total you have to pay out of pocket for things your europeans counterparts. Therefore they should have more discretionary income compared to a US worker (I don't think I have to source this).

	▲	throw-the-towel 26 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		This gets trotted out every time, but let's be realistic: you can't pay your rent in European good vibes.
	▲	satvikpendem 26 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Actually it is, because you can make money in the US and then retire in Europe or wherever else you want and live like a king, as many people I know have done.
	▲	DiscourseFan 25 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		No, the benefits Europeans get do not translate to any equivalence to the money an Average American makes. The per capita income is like 100k a year now.

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eatYourFood 37 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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alephnerd an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Unions don't help with that as can be seen with Volkswagen or much of Detroit.

Or, from an IP-driven industry perspective, the offshoring of Hollywood following the SAG and WGA strikes in the early 2020s.

If IATSE couldn't stop VFX from being offshored back in the 2000s and 2010s, then tech unions wouldn't be able to either.

Edit: can't reply

> Without film industry unions, might the offshoring have been undertaken even earlier?

Not really. VFX was already largely offshored by the early 2010s despite only starting as an industry in the 1990s.

> Yeah but this is a limited perspective. If the union was truly international (like they _used_ to be) VFX workers could push for high wages wherever they worked.

VFX workers in most countries are not unionized either, and much of the industry has now shifted to ASEAN, China, and India where there is no real unionization to begin with.

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DiscourseFan 19 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah but this is a limited perspective. If the union was truly international (like they _used_ to be) VFX workers could push for high wages wherever they worked.

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Melatonic 28 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

VFX workers did try to unionize along with software engineers. Major tech companies colluded illegally and were caught doing this. This was way before the AI boom

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Apocryphon 31 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Without film industry unions, might the offshoring have been undertaken even earlier?

	▲	throw-the-towel 28 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		History knows no conditionals.

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mikojan 37 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Volkswagen is perhaps the greatest counter-example. The union in Germany converted every layoff initiative in whole or in part (more often in whole) into partial retirements, backfill stops, reduced working hours, compensation freezes.

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alephnerd 32 minutes ago | parent [-]

100,000 jobs were still lost and there is no one else who can absorb them.

And the experience of the VFX industry is probably the best example of what would happen to a heavily unionized software driven industry.

Edit: can't reply

> are you arguing that it’s better to just straight up fire people

Nope, but there is a real risk that what arises is labor immobility and blocking new entrants.

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DiscourseFan 28 minutes ago | parent [-]

Wait a second, are you arguing that it’s better to just straight up fire people? In that case, the company is absorbing the lion’s share of the profits (or whatever profit is left) so you are effectively arguing in favor of shielding an entity over the livelihoods of the people who work within it.

	▲	throw-the-towel 2 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		To butcher a famous poem, it's better to have hired and lost than never to have hired at all. Restrictions on letting go of enployees mean that companies are scared to hire. They double check and triple check, they reject everyone they feel even the tiniest bit suspicious of, they try to protect themselves with ultra long probation periods, etc. I don't know about the US, but I spent 4,5 months trying to get a new job here in the EU as a senior dev. Everyone tells me that was quick.