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?
Even if things are good! Especially if things are good! Yes, just walk out if things are untenable and there's no successful organizing campaign in the tolerably near future, but something this take is missing is that this is part of the reason the industry is so fucked up.
When I started at my current job many years ago, the median retention at my company was less than two years. It wasn't considered good for your career to stay in a single tech role for more than two years because that wasn't the way to getting a good jump in pay, career progression by promotion was considered a thing of the past (much like unions!), and if you stayed in a job too long it would look like you weren't Sufficiently Ambitious and it would limit not only your current role but any future prospects.
This leads to no worker solidarity, even down to people talking about the hours they work. This leads to companies feeling free to run their people into the ground because they're just gonna fucking leave no matter what you do anyway, might as well get what you can. This leads to people not having any stability in their lives and being willing to take the next shit job that's gonna run them into the ground.
This is systemic and the capitalists are not gonna break it for us. ORGANIZE YOUR WORKPLACE.
