It's been an interesting week and it has me thinking about labor in the software industry.
There's a lot of talk about toxic cultures that create crunch and harassment. There's a well-known history of exploiting developers who think it's their dream job. These people are cut to the bone because it's assumed that there's a thousand starry-eyed candidates in line behind them waiting to voluntarily get churned up instead.
But what if the pay is good? And the culture is good? And you're being taken care of with raises and benefits? What if you like everyone in your department and morale is high and people openly discuss their pay and conditions and everything a union might fight for is mostly taken care of?