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> You’re just a line in a spreadsheet.

Spot on. IT workers need to realise this and start acting accordingly. You are no more important to an exec of a tech company than a barista is to Starbuck’s exec.

Unionise and stop being jerks during technical interviews.




Or even better, use your skills to start your own company.

I’ve never seen a unionized software company make good software. And I’ve seen lots of different types of software.

I don’t think programmers are interchangeable cogs and there’s so much variance and diversity across people, I wouldn’t want to work for a company that paid me the same as everyone else and fired based on seniority.


> I wouldn’t want to work for a company that paid me the same as everyone else and fired based on seniority.

Are you insinuating that pay and layoffs are done based on merit today? Because that’s totally not my experience after a couple of decades in the industry. And I’m leaving myself out of the sample.

Not sure if you ever attended a meeting with just directors and above. If you do you will hear only one word used for engineers: “Resource”.

Also great software, made by the megacorps, has to do as much with the engineers as McDonald’s burger have to do with the person flipping the patties.

It’s just lies we tell to ourselves.


>I’ve never seen a unionized software company make good software.

This is a non-sequitur. Are you misunderstanding how unions work?

It's not that a particular company should unionize, but rather the software developers at every company.

The union's role is to advocate for the interests of software developers in the industry as a whole, not oversee particular software development projects.


Not everyone works for massive tech companies. If you work for a FAANG or MANTA or whatever it is, then sure, you're probably viewed as another cog in the machine.


Yeah, I completely agree. Sorry, I should have made this clarification that I am talking about software mega-corps.




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