[eaton]

I've been doing software professionally for about thirty years now, and what's interesting to me is that the conversations I had with my grandfather about factory work involved all of the same dynamics. Prototyping new solutions versus consistent reproduction of known solutions? People who only understand their own tasks versus those who have a holistic understanding of the components, the process, and the final product? Troubleshooting unexpected failure states in complex systems and fixing mission-critical problems that can make or break the business, versus checking out when The System Breaks? Conflicts between book-smart college grads and grizzled vets who know how things "really work" under the hood?

Those are the stories he told me about working in a factory, and frankly the lessons I learned from him were just as valuable as any "fifteen lessons for software architects" books our industry has produced. Sure — software is unique! So is food, so is metal, so is film, so is concrete…

People don't deserve unions because they're 10x workers. People deserve unions because they're workers.

[TimPC]

I think a working model of a technology union would have to work closely to professional sports unions or acting unions that support wide disparities in pay. I think historical tech opposition to unions is people not wanting the idea of a standardized wage and extremely high job security (which acts as a downward force on wages). Many people look for something like the Netflix model where you're expected to move on if you're not producing lots of value, but you get compensated more for it. The thing about having 10x engineers being possible is that everyone thinks they are above 1x and deserve above average pay.