You mean by someone who would be okay with their compensation being negotiated by collective bargaining? How many of the most aggressive, most talented engineers would be willing to give up their negotiating leverage to a union?
Most engineering roles don't require a "most aggressive, most talented" engineer. Someone less aggressive of modest talent is likely still a great fit for the work to be done. 10x-100x developers are overrated unless at an early stage startup where that skill level is crucial to get to product market fit and onward from there to sustainable hyper growth. Also, Dunning–Kruger. If you think you're super talented, allow the market to decide, and avoid organized shops.
The data is pretty clear that most folks aren't good at or able to negotiate an outlier comp package (with some orgs not even allowing comp negotiation for equity purposes), so collective bargaining would net them more than them attempting to negotiate on their own. Of course folks at the high end of the comp structure complain, but that seems to be a given regardless and will be ever present.
So, by your definition, the unionized shops would attract only “average” developers. How competitive will they be against companies that are more aggressive about recruitment by offering more talented people more money?
You work at a digital sweatshop (AWS [1], who cannot hire fast enough for the talent they bleed) but still don't believe in the merits of organization, so what would the value be in attempting to change your mind? Not rhetorical, I am genuinely curious.
Higher level, I have a hypothesis that this boils down to empathy capacity, which some cohorts have more than others (and there is likely a genetic component [2] [3]), and therefore appeals are unlikely to sway opinions). You believe in optimizing for the individual, others believe in optimizing for the collective.
I work in Professional Services. I don’t have those issues. I am very much in control of my own projects and calendar. I manage my customers expectations and make sure that they understand the holy trinity - time, cost and requirements. We agree on the scope of work before we start on a project and I manage the timelines not to overwork myself.
This goes back to ensuring that I had a set of skills and experience so when I was initially contacted about an SDE position, I could say “no”, and they suggested I apply for a position in the consulting department.
I also didn’t go through the DS&A leetCode monkey dance and could apply for a remote position.
I was very much prepared to say “no” to Amazon if all I could get was an SDE position which required me to be on call or relocate.
If AWS ProServe does every get to be an environment where I don’t like the work life balance, I will leave here just like I left my other 7 jobs.
