Hi-tech Work Places no Better than Factories?

Anonymous Coward writes "A tasty bit of truth. Again, a Sociology Professor has found out what we all know. He wistfully comments on the state of geekdom in the modern corporation: "They face the lonely insecurity of the individual entrepreneur in a marketplace and culture that stresses, with macho imagery from war and sports, that they are ultimately alone" and adds that... "For many this may be the shape of work in the 21st century." You want to start a union? I mean how much is your boss making at your expense even if he did start the company long before you joined up?"

Comments

negative, much?

[spacefem]

We're safer, we breath cleaner air. We don't suffer from hearing loss. We're not on our feet all day and we make good money.

Yeah, life sure is tough.

If you think a factory is better, go work in a factory! I'll stay in my cubicle and deal with being "lonely and insecure". I'm very thankful for my job and anyone who thinks a career in an office is difficult needs a big reality check. We have it very good, people.

Re:negative, much?

[Dun Malg]

If you think a factory is better, go work in a factory!

Say it again, brother. I once worked in a factory that made plastic buckets. You know how handles get put on buckets? It ain't a machine what does it. It's people. People standing at tables and trying to make a quota for minimum wage. Argh. I have a co-worker who once worked in a factory where they made the coily handset cords for telephones. When the "kids" at our workplace complain about their slacker jobs, we like to trot out our factory stories. Doesn't help though. People who haven't worked in factories usually don't appreciate the mind-numbing repetition that goes on in a factory. I'd rather be exploited for $30K a year in a job that requires thinking than be exploited for $9K in a job that encourages brain death.

Re:negative, much?

[Skjellifetti]

This is similar to the complaints made during the early industrial revolution about how hard and terrible factory work was. But the choice then was factory work or farm work. And I'll bet for most people who didn't own their own farm (and likely many who did) factory work won hands down.

OTOH, factory work is tough and in the early days abusive employers could get away with lots of nasty things we consider illegal and/or immoral today. It took a combination of public outrage, progressive politicians, and organized labor to fix many of the worst ills associated with factory labor conditions.

Just because code serfdom is a better choice than factory work does not mean that all is well or that conditions cannot or should not be improved.

Re:negative, much?

[Lethyos]

I couldn't agree with you more. Anyone where with a high-school history lesson under her belt will remember a few things about factories back in the day:

- Employees would frequently lose digits of their hands, whole limbs, or even be killed on the job. As a result, they were simply replaced with someone else with no compensation to the original employee or their family. It's not so far off today.

- If employees didn't like their conditions, and went on strike, factory owners would often choose to just ignore them, and then bring in Pinkerton guards. These would then bust up the unions, force employees away at gun-point while the factory brought on cheaper people. Even today, factory workers complaining of insufficient compensation are ignored.

- Now while some tech jobs require exposure to nasty chemicals (chip manufacturing for example), most certainly do not. People working in factories, even today, are exposed to substances that cause severe birth defects, mental illness, and a plethora of other nasty side-effects.

So, do you think you geeks really have it so bad on the job? I highly disagree. I have never worked in a factory (and I consider myself fortunate), but from a tiny little research, it's easy to see how much worse it is for people who aren't working in Tech.

Not for me

[redfiche]

I work in a highly collaborative, challenging environment. I sometimes work long hours, but my time is extremely flexible and I am almost entirely self-directed. The job has it's stresses, but it's the best job I've ever had, and I wouldn't trade it.

When I talk to the other employees in other departments, I see that the developers have much more security, and much better working conditions, than anyone but the executives.

Re:Dont like it?

[BHearsum]

Not everyone has the skills to start a business. Some of us of the skills to be employees. A business needs employees just as much as it needs a boss.

What about academia?

[Jaalin]

I have never understood why all CS majors want to end up with programming jobs. CS is much more than software engineering, but I know exactly 2 other CS undergrads at my school that want to go into academia. Being a professor is a great job, and doing research in an area that you enjoy (for me, graph theory and combinatorial design theory) is fun and rewarding. And if you love to program, you can always do research into language design, software engineering, etc. Why go to Silicon Valley looking for a job which will drive you insane and burn you out by the time you're thirty when you can have fun doing original research and can't be fired thanks to tenure?

Re:What about academia?

[reynolds_john]

I believe you are a bit behind the times. My father recently retired from a major university here in Arizona. One of the things on the plate right now is to remove tenure for teachers.
Increasingly, universities are run as corporations, complete with greed, terrible politics, and lack of interest in their teachers. ASU is a wonderful example of this - there have been articles in the Arizona Republic newspaper about the 'brain drain' hemmoraging from ASU because they just won't pay their teachers even close to what they deserve.
As for any business, you must eventually understand that the future is already written; we are all to be temp workers. I'm not sure how painful this transition will be, but already there are very few bastions of stable, long-term work. Heck, just look at what our president passed (or should I say "snuck" through) on Friday - ability to hire/fire workers, displace federal workers in place of the private sector, etc. etc.
A good friend of mine has tried over and over to get a stable IT job - he's been through it now about ten times in the last year. Each time there was a different excuse, and the last few times they've fired and re-hired the next day for someone who was willing to work cheaper! In his words, "Welcome to Corporate America: do what you can, just don't get caught."

Re:You wanna start a Union?

[Subcarrier]

HELL NO.

Damn right! For a geek a strike would mean not touching the computer for an extended period of time. Can you imagine abstaining from games and pr0n for that long? A few days and we'd be ready for a pay cut...

I'll never work for someone else again

[Jafafa Hots]

Why pay someone 90% of the proceeds of your labor for the priviledge of working for them? I am self-employed now (as much as I can be, with disabilities) and even if back to 100% health would never go to work for someone else again. A friend is a mechanic, works for a big chain, doing mufflers and brakes. When the company has billed the customers $4000, his cut is about $300. His customers are so loyal to his work that when he left one place and went to another, they followed. So I ask him "Why not just work for yourself, start out on your own?" After all, he manages the day to day operations, knows all the ins and outs of ordering, etc. Answer? NO GUTS. For generations we have all been fed this lie - the American work ethic, that says to go to work for someone ELSE and work HARD, 40, 50, 60 hours a week to get by. Corporations count on us buying into that so they will have a ready source of peons.

Re:I'll never work for someone else again

[Surak]

When the company has billed the customers $4000, his cut is about $300. His customers are so loyal to his work that when he left one place and went to another, they followed. So I ask him "Why not just work for yourself, start out on your own?" After all, he manages the day to day operations, knows all the ins and outs of ordering, etc. Answer? NO GUTS.

Hmmm..well, the thing is out of the $4000 that was billed, on average, about $2000 is overhead -- rent or mortgage, utilities, marketing and so forth and materials. Then he gets his $300, plus it costs the company an additional $150. That leaves about $1550. Unless your friend reinvests part of that into the company, Uncle Sam gets about 1/3rd of that, or about $520. That leaves $1000. That's *IF* the shop is getting good margins. Most likely, the margins are a lot less than that and the overhead is more like $2500-3000. Meaning that the shop probably makes a whole $200-400 (not much more than your mechanic friend) or so on the whole $4000. Assuming everything's going well of course, and there aren't unforseen costs.

That $4000 sounds like a lot of money. Trust me, it isn't.

Bollocks.....

[crivens]

You don't get your fingers crushed in a high-tech workplace by dodgy machinery, you earn a much better salary, you're not breathing dangerous toxins and you are able to afford a life. I'd rather work in cubicle land than in a 19th century (or even 20th!) factory.

Does this differentiate between R/D and coding??

[MarvinMouse]

If it does, then I can understand.

This is the main reason why I want to involved with Research and Development and become a professor. I would rather create new things than (as one of my old bosses put it) "Tell a computer what to do" for the rest of my life.

In a factory, just like behind a computer programming, you somehow become subordinate to the machine. That is what leads to employee unsatisfaction in my opinion.

Mathematics

[div_2n]

It all boils down to mathematics. Every employee costs money. Consider the following:

S = Salary/Hourly Wage
B = Benefits
A = Administrative overhead (payroll, etc)
I = Business insurance cost per person
R = Revenue from your work
P = Profit from your work

P = R - (S + B + A + I)

Viewing this model you can draw several quick conclusions. First, if you are doing billable work, then the quickest way to get a pay increase is to increase your billable rate.

Second, no matter how long you work for the company, at any given moment there exists a maximum amount you can be paid before your company loses money.

It is pretty standard to get paid between 25 and 33 percent of your billable rate. Any less than that probably indicates a boss that is ripping you off royally.

Stupid article

[johnburton]

The article makes it sound like having to learn new things to keep up is a bad thing. It's what makes the job better than most.

Poor geeks ...

[Etyenne]

I did both white-collar and manual labor. When you had been carrying brick 12 hours a day for 6$/hour, you don't complain about being lonely and insecure from your climatized office. I'll take my high-paying, challenging and virtually risk-free tech job anyday, thank you very much. Comparing 21st century techies to 19th factory worker is ridiculous self-pity; the author

Re:You wanna start a Union?

[Allthefuckinggoodnam]

One of the big problems that my company (a consulting firm specializing in custom software development) faces is rate pressure due to off shore options. Much like the other industries in our country in the past, economic tough times have forced companies to look for cheaper work elsewhere.

I personally am tired of hearing people complain about this phenomenon and come up with bad answers to a very real problem. Creating a union is one "solution" i've heard. The people who make these claims will read an article like this and feel even more strongly that we need to be unionized. I believe this is the worst thing we could do. It will accelerate the trend to go offshore.

The real answer to the job security problem is to find new ways to add value, above and beyond custom development skills (which in many C level executives eyes has become a commodity). Had the steel, audio/video, and textile industries taken a different tact than hiding behind a union to avoid the "constant upgrading of skills" that the author of the articles derides, perhaps they would still be industries that employ millions of Americans.

Just like when I was in school, the sociology professor offers a very bad answer, one that will compound the problem. It amazes me how little things have changed.

A bit of perspective here

[inode_buddha]

Spacefem wrote that "we have it easy..." and I strongly agree, based on experience. I have worked in factories for most of my adult life (I'm 35 now)
and I'm here to tell you that it can be quite debilitating. Medically and physically, it becomes quite expensive when your living depends on your good health and you have to take off a week or two for medical problems. In other words, a week or two of no income.

It's not the Golden Era of manufacturing anymore in my part of the US; $25k gross is considered a decent middle-class income here. If you are fortunate to have any financial reserves, they are probably very slim.

It's mentally debilitating; there are no fellow geeks, so it tends to get lonely beyond a certain point. (my answer is to do Linux at home). Certainly, there's little of the intellectually stimulating debate that I love. (I majored in English, with a few years each of Philosophy and Art. Now I'm into networking)

Now for the perspective: I have to wonder how much of this sociologist's observations are specific to the IT industry, or is it all just becoming part of the US corporate ethos? IMHO, business is a very human activity, but the way we go about it certainly isn't sometimes.

Been There, Done That

[DrDeaf]

In my experience, the same things are wrong with "Big Labor" as "Big Business" and "Big Government". These common difficulties are rooted in the foibles of human behavior and are spawned by the types that are attracted to the controlling positions.

There is a chance that a "Geek Guild" would be a good thing. If anyone has a chance, this bunch might... However, anyone remember the old FidoNet power struggles?

Anyway, it might be wise to check out the experiences of today's Engineers unions (mostly aerospace as far as I know) as well as study the Guilds of Renasaissance times.

Keep the "Good", avoid the "Bad".

Cheers!

Dockworkers Union was right!

[Genady]

I've said that lower trained IT staff, Helpdesk, Support, even SysAdmins need a union for years. Of course if the industry were unionized that would be the end of the 25 year old engineering manager. Then again is that such a bad thing?

I think that thing that everyone is scared of is a Union coming in and telling them that they're relegated to Jr. SysAdmin while the mainframe guys are trained and promoted. People are afraid that they won't be allowed to rise to the level of their competance as quickly as they saw people do during the boom years.

Ultimately any union that is created for IT will be started by IT workers, remember that. It's not like the UAW is going to come in and force their methods of union dirty tricks on the IT industry. Would any of you have a problem with an IT Union that was built by Sage/USENIX, or a like organization? If there actually were an IT union and it had some clout who do you think could be lobbying in Washington against DMCA and the like?

The problem is we all still have some of that cowboy glint in our eyes. "Yeah I can be a CIO by 30, I know more than the doofus sitting in the executive suite does anyway" Grow up a little bit and see that while not perfect, in the face of a declining IT industry a Union is one thing that can give you some power back, on a large economic sized scale.

Re:Dockworkers Union was right!

[Wyatt Earp]

After seeing the shenanigans the Teachers Union pull I'll never join a Union.

Look at the crap the Unions are pulling with United. UAL has been in serious finacial shape since before the attacks, and now that it's in worse shape, the unions are asking for more and more money.

From what I've seen, all Unions pull dirty tricks. Have you seen a co-worker cry because she's scared to vote against the Union line?

Oh the Teacher Union wants more money, lets park in the spots the poor IT people park in and make them walk a half mile to and from thier cars, that'll make a point.

Screw Unions.

Make an Informed Decision

[Flamesplash]

All I can say is that the individual coder is partially responsible for putting themself in such a position. Research the company, talk to the employees. Don't just jump into a job not knowing what the culture is like.

Perhaps the problem is that there aren't enough good companies out there along with the dilution of the number of tech workers and the dot bomb is forcing people to take jobs they otherwise would not.

Long gone are the days of drive up dentists to Yahoo's main offices

Get used to it.

[hector13]

software programmers are often cited as living out the dream of modern flexible working, ... able to work on their own initiative and offered stock options in their firms.

IT people think they have some right to work 4 hours a day and get paid 200k a year. The .com boom is dead, get over it.

The dot.com downturn has added job insecurity to the list of stresses for the workers in the technology industry.

Welcome to the real world; job insecurity and other "stresses" are what all other workers have always faced. IT people are no better. In fact, programming has become more of a commodity than most other fields. If you aren't adding any real value, than you shouldn't have a job. Simple as that.

Blue and White

[failrate]

I've also spent most of my career working as a janitor, a factory worker (Chain mail gloves, anyone?), carpenter, or a food service worker. I don't care whether an office programming job is isolated or anything like that. I just want one because I love to program. It's a job that I can do. I'm not a mechanic, and I'm a pretty lousy carpenter, but I'm a half-way decent programmer.

Sign me up for the white collar nightmare.

Re:Dont like it?

[FauxPasIII]

> Go start a business, THEN you can comment on how to do or do not like the salary structure.

So... only the rich mangement class are allowed to even voice an opinion on pay structure and labor issues ? That sounds... surprisingly like the current U.S. system, actually.

Re:You wanna start a Union?

[perljon]

I agree with you that Unions can be the death or cancer of an industry. For example, in the late 70 and early 80's the car unions fought the implmentation of robots to replace workers. At first, the union kept jobs. But the plants in Japan implemented robots and were able to produce a car quicker, with higher quality, for cheaper. The end result is that the sales of Japanese cars sky-rocketed in the US at the sake of American cars. And all those jobs that were saved from not implementing robots were lost plus tens times that because the industry just couldn't compete. In this case, Unions inhibited inovation and in effect, killed themselves.

On the other hand, in America and all modern productive countries, the masses have given up their freedom to further the goals of the employer. As an employee, I spend most of my life serving my employer. So much of my quality of life is controlled by my employer. (And all full time employees). I think it is reasonable to expect and ask for job security, freedom from wrongful financial persecution (someone firing you 'cause they don't like you), and a reasonably comfortable work environment. After all, I am giving my employer my life. The least I could expect is to be treated fairly.

In conclusion, Unions can be horrible for an industry when they don't consider the business needs of the company. On the other hand, Companies need employees to make money. Employees sacrafice a great deal of control in the employee-employer realtionship. The least a company could do is provide employment fairness and comfort, and restraint on cracking the whip.

Very interesting point

[0x0d0a]

That's a facinating thought. Sure, replacing engineers with an offshore worker saves money...I wonder how hard it is to H1B executives as well? Wouldn't that save...more money per visa, which is a constant cost to the company?

Seems like H1Bs should be aimed at execs, since each visa can save the company more money. Aiming them at engineers is a misuse of company funds.

Want out of the "factory"? Become management!

[StandardCell]

I wasn't a coder (fortunately), but I was a design engineer. The long hours and social isolation made my life very hard, and I was getting dissociated. Being a social person, I had to change something, and that was to get a business degree (MBA in my case). I got it not so I can wave the degree around, but to add a business dimension to my engineering brain, and boy did it help. I'm extremely versatile, I'm working in a business environment where I not only chase down business with the business portion of my skills, I help define new products for customers with my engineering portion of my skills and my heart. And I always remember the engineers and don't sell them short like so many of the idiot sales guys and managers had when I was the design engineer.

In short, do your best to infiltrate the top ranks now. We may hold a lot of resentment towards PHBs, but with a little tact we can defeat the PHBs like the Mandarin Chinese defeated the Mongols - not by force, but by integrating them into our culture.

I leave you with this quote:
"If you hire someone smarter than you are, you prove you are smarter than they are." - R.H. Grant

Re:Sociology? At your expense? WTF?

[velco]

Is this Marxism-101? An Anonymous Coward posts something about how we're all exploited by the Bosses, and it makes the Front Page?

Labeling something "Marxism" gets you nowhere and effectively stops the reasonable discussion.

I can too label the current state of the affairs "Wild Capitalism".

Nobody is "exploiting" you. If you work for what they pay, then its a business deal, and done.

That's right.

If you don't like your pay, renegotiate, quit, or SHUT UP.

And that's not, except "renegotiate". However, the problem is that you're not ABLE to negotiate, because there are some 10 people outside, waiting for the same job and they have all to insist in same benefits.

Because your company founder put his brains, personal capital, and personal life on the line to start a company, WHICH PUTS THE FOOD ON YOUR TABLE, and now makes more $$ than you, doesn't mean he's "exploiting" you.

Yes, it means. Because I put my brains too, I put my personal capital too (be it time or knowledge or abilities) and I put my personal life too for the company, WHICH PUTS THE FOOD ON HIS TABLE, and in addition puts the mannor, the spa, the limousine, the jet, etc.

It is OK, if he makes more than me, but making 500 times more is RIDICULOUS.

If that bothers you, start your own company.

This is just outrageous. You effectively claim the workers have no rights, and if they want rights they must become employers first !

~velco

Class warfare beats the drums...again

[prisoner-of-enigma]

I used to think an awful lot like the author of this article. I was fed up with how stupid my bosses were, how poorly I was treated and paid, and how wasteful I thought the company was.

So I started my own business. What an education that was!

I've found that, as a business owner, I have to work far harder than I ever anticipated in order to keep the company viable. There's a tremendous amount of work going on that employees of a company never see and are rarely aware of, work that has to be done by someone with good management skills. If that work is being done properly then the employees never know about it and they're able to do their jobs.

I have a great deal of respect now for entrepeneurs who risk a great deal to start a new business. It takes guts, patience, perserverance, and more to do that.

Any fool can sit around and bitch and moan about how much they hate their company/boss/workplace/insert-bitch-and-moan-noun- here, but how many of those very same people could effectively run a business, turn a profit, and employ someone else? This is not meant to be condescending, but instead a wakeup call to geeks. If you don't like how someone is doing something, go try doing it yourself. You may find that it's much harder than you first supposed.

factories are NOT like tech jobs.

[Lumpy]

I highly doubt that any of you hever spent 10 seconds inside a factory liek a foundry. try running a snag grinder for 8 hours a day lifting and holding against a high speed grinding wheel a 10-50 pound casting... watching that weekly some of workers you eat lunch with go to the hospital and lose fingers, hands feet or a leg due to accidents.. or watch a newly installed snag grinder grinding wheel explode and kill a foreman. Or how about watch a pouring ladel run out (the term used when the molten metal inside finally ate through the ladel and is gushing 3000 degree metal all over the workers and floor) and severly burn 5 people.

Sorry, but none of you have a clue what it's like in the real world. fortunately I was one of those that did the grunt work whil I attended college full time. so I got to live the live that I never ever would wish on the worst of my enemies. Yes some places in the tech industry suck, with bosses that are basically robbing everyone blind to keep his ferarri detailed... but... you can always work elsewhere (relocate! what the hell are you still doing in your location? if you wont relocate then you're just throwing excuses... or you really dont want a different job.

There are employers out there that care for the employees and recognize that the employee is what makes his business work and profitable.. anyone that doesn't is of course.... an idiot.

Re:You wanna start a Union?

[0x0d0a]

If you work for a software company on a piece of software and go home and start writing an open source equivalent during your strike time?

Nah, I'd say that this would be significantly more influential than drinking beer at home or picketing or anything that the steelworkers did... :-)

Re:You wanna start a Union?

[fmaxwell]

Em Emalb wrote "HELL NO."

I used to feel the same way. I viewed unions as a blue-collar tool to protect people in low-skill jobs. Then I recognized that skilled professionals like airline pilots were unionized. I have started to realize that it would not be such a bad thing to have a tech workers union.

Can you imagine what the Teamsters would do if companies started bringing in the equivalent of H1-B visa workers to drive trucks at below-normal wages?

If we had a union, do you think that Congress would have been able to pass legislation that specifically exempted hourly computer professionals from receiving 1.5x overtime pay?

Do you think that a union would stand by idly while temp agencies regularly skimmed 30% and more off of the pay earned by immigrants and recent grads in the tech sector?

Do you believe that our industry would consistently lay off older, better-compensated workers only to replace them with recent grads if we had a union?

I know that there is going to a lot of macho posturing on here with people boasting that they are so good that they can set their own terms. But posturing is all that it is. For every 100 people that claim to be in the driver's seat in such contract negotiations, maybe one really is. The majority of companies have standard terms and don't deviate from them except for the most highly compensated corporate officers. Tell them you won't work for them unless they agree to include a buyout clause on your contract and they will tell you to take a hike. Just take a look at the average software engineer's office and compare it to the offices of people in other jobs that require similar quantities of skill and education. Do you think that corporate attorneys regularly sit in cramped cubicles?

The longer I am in this field (now more than 20 years), the more I start to believe a union would be a good thing.

Union needed for IT workers?

[William.Bertram]

How many companies have you seen cut IT staff for financial reasons, realize that the company actually NEEDED the terminated job functions, and then hire contract workers or consultants? I've worked in the IT department for 4 small to large sized corporations, and have seen the above scenario happen 2 times. I've actually had a company recruit me from an existing job, only to downsize me (along with several co-workers) a year later. A good friend of mine was recruited by a company with no IT staff, cleaned up their network and userland, then was promptly "downsized". There are a million horror stories. Some companies seem to now realize that if you continually cycle IT consultants and contract workers through a complex infrastructure, the quality and efficiency of support will drop dramatically, and in most cases the salaries will actually increase.

Of course the ugly side of forming a union would be that eventually the standard industry qualification for joining would be "MS Union Certification.NET".

Do we really need a union? How many of our lazy IT buddies are willing to go on strike, and walk a picket line? Is Dilbert really up to "scrub busting"?

Personal experience with unions in Europe??

[openbear]

Does anyone have any personal experience working with unions in Europe?

The company I work for is based in Europe, and I work in their US based headquarters. In the last year we have had five rounds of layoffs resulting in a massive (measured in thousands) number of US employees losing their jobs. With each round of layoffs the company had to spend tons of time negotiating with the unions in Europe before they could do anything. From the people I know overseas they tell me that (because of unions) it takes an act of god for someone to lose their job. Most of them are shocked to find out that 1) we get no vacation time compared to them, 2) we have to pay for our own education, and 3) we can get fired without any notice in most US states.

If unions can improve the quality of life and make it easier for us (in the US) to get training (for example) then what is wrong with that? I think we can learn from the mistakes of the auto industry unions and do better. After all we are talking about a totally different class of people here. How many people that worked on a car assembly line have graduate degrees? How many people that worked on a car assembly line started intellectual revolutions like open source and Linux? A majority of us are people who enjoy challenges, want to constantly improve ourselves, and want to work hard to see our employers succeed in the marketplace!

Of course all of this becomes a moot point when you consider that there are countries like India where people are willing to take our jobs and do them for something like $4 an hour.

A Little Perspective

[mwdib]

Let's try to remember that unions were formed - despite significant governmental repression - to solve a very real set of problems being experienced by the vast majority of industrial workers. Unionizers were not campaigning for longer coffee breaks or free dental. Early labor organizers were fighting for basic human rights and what we would consider the most fundamental of humane treatment. This was done when government and private agencies (remember Pinkerton?) employed violence, torture and executions to enforce the employer's "rights."

Certainly unions became something else after the years of struggle ended. They shifted their concerns. Like any other institution, they evolved, and not necessarily in consistently productive directions. Consequently, we tend to emphasize the negative effects of present-day unionism and forget how it came about. This is a common phenomenon -- another quick example: the FDA, designed to make sure you didn't fall over dead when you ate your hamburger, is now derided for being slow and bureaucratic. So, a basic historical principle: you can't understand a mature institution by looking at it's mature behavior.

That said, let's look at the present discussion.

Unless and until current employment conditions are perceived as inhumane, unjust and evil by a substantial number of employees, employers will basically have carte blanche within those parameters. Unless conditions become (or are perceived to be) so intolerable, there will be no real attempt to find solutions that better those conditions. It is in the interests of employers to better conditions only if it improves productivity.

Besides, the solution to the problems of the capitalist triumph -- anarcho-syndicalism -- has already been found. We simply have to wait until the capitalists, unrestricted by a government they own and laws and law enforcement they control, decide to tighten the reins a little too far. Of course, well-educated employers probably won't regard their employees as mere resources, but continue to regard their employees as people.

Damn. No grounds for revolution.

Trained as an historian, living as a coder.

Re:Sociology? At your expense? WTF?

[matastas]

No, he's not claiming anything of the sort. What he's claiming is that, in a captialist society, with competition both for the companies and the employees, you've got a few choices:

-Accept your current working conditions
-Work out new ones with your employer
-Leave and find new sources of work

Our industry is in a slump, and a bad one. We just came off one of the biggest booms of the modern economy, and we're hurtin'. It'll turn around, it always does. But while it's bad, it's going to suck. And people are very eager to find new work. You don't like your current job? Go find a new one. Oh, wait, none out there? Tough shit. This is what the market will bear, if you think you can do better, go do it. With the employment market so tight, you probably can't, unless you're Just That Good. It's reality, nothing more.

But get this: we did the SAME THING to our employers not two years ago. Don't want to pay me $100K/yr., pay my cell phone, and let me wear ripped jeans to work? Tough shit: go find another techie. Oh, they're really hard to find? That's too bad. The shoe's on the other foot, and we don't like it. It'll all even out, but until then, you put up/shut up, or bide your time. Stop whining about corporate greed/getting it from your boss. It's a symbiotic relationship.

Personally, I've been laid off twice this calender year, by two separate companies. Do I begrudge the executives? In the end, no: they're making business decisions, and while some of them are really stupid, in the end, their responsibilites are to their shareholders, and the greater good. I notice folks here screaming away about the burgious executives of the world trampling the masses. News flash, people: IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN THIS WAY. Now, we simply have more visibility and awareness of the robber-barons, that we actually have a chance to get pissed off about it.

Take it from this perspective: do some research about starting a small business, or work for a small business (50 people). I have, on both accounts. Some of my best knowledge and insight into a business was from watching my bosses (the president and another officer) sweat payroll. And when you look at the sheer amount of effort in management and planning, administritivia, guiding the vision, hiring/firing, sweating the money, the details, the long hours, *plus* actually producing for the company...

I'll tell you what: if I'm ever lucky/good enough to put that business together, you're goddamned right I'm gonna be one of the highest, if not *the* highest, paid SOB in the group. And I'll do my best to treat my employees like gold. But this is not a charity-fucking-ball. Corporation exist to make money, and for no other reason. The balance will swing the other way. In the meantime, sharpen your skills, build that resume, and wait.

Fifteen Years in a Union. . .

[ancarett]

As a union member these past fifteen years (two different unions at two different workplaces), I have to ask: How many of you have even belonged to a union? How many of you have firsthand experience being on a union negotiating committee, walked a picket line or have seen a horrible injustice averted by a grievance? I have, and that has helped me see how I get value from my union. (And, no, I don't hate my employers or have a bad relationship with them -- we're all professionals.)

Yes, unions can have their bad sides, but so do some employers who take advantage of employees unwilling to rock the boat when their employment rights are violated.

So don't dismiss unions out of hand. At least learn a bit more about them first.

Re:Dont like it?

[sql*kitten]

the rich mangement class are allowed to even voice an opinion on pay structure and labor issues

What on earth are you talking about? There is no "management class". You think all the managers in the IT industry went to the same prep schools, joined the same fraternities at college, play golf together at weekends? What rubbish, if anything the "management class" is more diverse than the "programmer class"

If you're talking about the company owner, then it's up to him/her to set pay structure... and it's up to employees to decide whether or not they want to work there. That's it. The system works remarkably well, and is the basis of all the successful economies in the world. Class War rhetoric is the hallmark of the world's economic basket cases.

Re:Sociology? At your expense? WTF?

[Maxwell'sSilverLART]

In a tight market, though, you are forced to take what you can get, and employers know this.

That's because, in a tight market, you're worth less. Supply and demand: when supply exceeds demand, as in a tight market, price will decline, because there are more options available. It's called "competition," and it's amazing how certain Slashdotters call it a good thing when there's competition in the consumer goods market (lowering prices), but a bad thing in the employment market (lowering wages). The world is not structured to benefit you (the collective you) all the time; sometimes, you have to take your lumps, suck it up, and survive until you get another chance to thrive. Matter of fact, that's been a pattern in life since, oh, about the time life began. Famine and feast. You want to improve your value? Reduce supply. No, that doesn't mean getting rid of other techs, it means making yourself more valuable. If you add to your skillset, you move yourself to a new market, essentially the Skill +1 market. That's smaller than the Skill 0 market. Do it again, moving to Skill +2, and there are even fewer people against whom you'll need to compete. As you do so, you make yourself more valuable; you're worth more, and you'll get paid more. Just don't sit and whine because you're not living in a permanent "feast" time, and able to pull down the same salary you were five years ago because the supply was tight relative to demand.

Re:You wanna start a Union?

[fmaxwell]

But since we (most of the Slashdot readership) do not drive trucks for a living this argument is a moot point.

No, it is not a moot point. It is an analogy. It shows what happens when a union is there to protect employees from unfair hiring practices.

Part of falling being a professional is negotiating your contract with your employer.

You don't get to. Employers aren't going to have staffs of tech people, each of whom bargained for different compensation related to overtime, office accomodations, hours, signing bonuses, severence packages, etc.

If you want overtime, ask for it.

I want a Mercedes Benz company car. I'll ask for that, too. That's the point of collective bargaining. The compensation is not set by the most desperate worker.

If they won't give you the hourly wage requested for overtime, you can always work your required 40 hours and be done with it.

And they can fire you and replace you with someone willing to work 80 hours per week.

You can try and find another position that doesn't require as much overtime (although in this economy it might be damn near impossible)

That's another argument in favor of union contracts. They prevent companies from taking advantage of workers during a bad job market.

If you can't tak ethe heat get out of the kitchen.

And here's the bravado I predicted. So, if I can't deal with excessive overtime, I should just drop out of the tech industry and work at McDonalds? Just give up 20+ years of experience and apply to be laborer on a construction site?

I'll fight you to the bitter end before I let you destroy my profession by unioniziing it.

I would not try to unionize something to destroy it. I would unionize it to improve conditions for the members.

If you want a bigger office go ask for it. Asking for a Union to step in and negotiate office space for you is pretty needless. If you can't have a talk with your boss in a constructive way about your needs then I feel sorry for you. It seems like alot of nerdy types lack the people skills required to carry on normal human conversation.

I am probably both more eloquent and convincing a speaker than are you, so don't talk down to me. You just don't get it. Companies are not going to give you a bigger/nicer office just because you want it. They are not going to piss off 40 of your coworkers by leaving them in cubicles while giving you a corner office from which you will do the same type of work. Have you ever managed professionals before? I have and I can tell you from experience that people will get jealous when a coworker's monitor is 1" larger. If something that petty upsets them, how do you think they would react to one of their own being moved out of a cubicle and into a windowed office?

But then again, it is easy for an Ivy Leaguer to come off as a pompous jackass.

Apparently so.

dumping/unemployment/manipulations

[zogger]

--what you said is true, but it's not an either/or situation. A long time ago I was in the UAW, and for sure the rank and file completely dismissed the threat of japanese inroads, it was laughable to them (not to me I saw it coming) and managment back then was completely out to lunch coke addled morons. BUT, another thing happened, japan not only sold cheaper cars initially, they "dumped" them, ie, sold them BELOW COST to themselves in order to garner longer term brand loyalty and market share. Exactly what they are currently doing with the hybrid cars as well. They also put a HUGE number of restrictions on US imports into japan, and we-our "leaders" just ate it.

To me it should be a quid pro quo, you tariff us, we tariff you right back. You won't allow US people to own property there (japan, mexico, china) they shouldn't be allowed to purchase and own anything here.

Our leaders are sell-outs, and they play the left versus right, repub versus dem,white collar versus blue collar angles against us, keep everyone faked out as they are creating a global two class technofuedal society. The US middle class is the biggest hindrance to those efforts, that's why you see them gleefully destroying first the blue collar manufacturing and agricultural jobs (white collars never cared for those people while this was happening), now they will be destroying the white collar jobs (and of a suddent the white collars are going HEY! what's going on?). They won't "run out" of technology, nor will these uber international pirate bosses "go broke" or lack for anything, they just prefer the master/serf style society, and are willing to trade off the loss of customers to a great degree. The bonus money to them is they get to keep constantly keep transferring ownership of all the land and buildings upstream into fewer hands. A headline last night, mortgage defaults at 30 year high. This isn't an accident, it's part of "the plan". Get people to establish credit well beyond any rational level, WELL beyond that, get them shilled into the phony manipuylated stock market, then destroy their jobs and income, poof, the uber bosses get to legally own everything. In the meantime they set people -the white collar and blue collar victims-squabbling with each other using propoganda and media manipulation with the "political" system with *one* political party with two names. It's a great scam for them and is working right on schedule. One of the easier ways to see the scam is to look at "official" unemployment figures, which are approximately 1/2 of what the real numbers are. How they do that? simple, they stop counting people who have exhausted unemployment insurance, they don't count people extremely under-employed in very low paying part time jobs, and they also really messed with consumer cost of living indices by taking out food and energy costs, which they used to include.

The economy is much worse than they admit to, despite wallmarts impressive figures. I'd like to see a breakdown of how much walmart's sales are cash versus credit card the other day.

Two other economic indicators, look at large banks derivatives exposure, then look at fortune 500 pension funding, and government pension funding and projected cost of social security and medicare/medicaid.

It's pretty dismal right now.

It's more complex than that obviously, but that is a good gist-cliff notes version over-view.

Yep, the man don't want you unionizing, they want you to keep voting for either crips or bloods gang at the polls, they don't want you to notice the daily factory closings and the daily importing of second world labor, white or blue collar. They want you to keep with the safe little finger pointing "it's all the dems fault, no it's all the repubs fault". They love it when people stop looking at that bare minimum level. They love it when 99% of the population is more interested in professional sports, movies, music, games, mindless TV shows and etc. They want you concentrating on ANYTHING but looking real hard at what's going on now and using common sense and logic to make a rational projection of events with some sort of realistic timeline. they want you to focus on "homeland security" and "terrorists" as they remove border patrol people and abandon the southern borders to humongous invasion. they want you to think "cheap prices on gadgets" now as these so called "american" companies all move off shore in search of the last dregs of short term profits. They want you to constantly take any "spare" cash you got and pump it into the magic beans stock market, or even buy government paper, which is just another form of indebtedness that falls right back on you in the form of future higher taxes to pay this paper off. You won't see any of those TV shills recommending people pay off their mortgage early, or perhaps get a smaller and more modest place so they can do that, nope, they still want you to buy-buy-buy, get those 30 year notes on fancy foyers and gimgrack houses and shiny things in the rooms. Just keep doing it on credit, that's all they ask, and don't look any farther than that. On and on. They baited the trap years ago, most people took the bait. The bad part is, people will still argue there is no trap.

Oh well.

The author has never been in a factory

[sjbe]

At least as far as I can tell. High tech jobs are not much like working in a factory.

Look, I'm an industrial engineer who specialized in manufacturing systems. I've worked in factories and I spent the last few years doing computer simulations of factories. This meant I have spent a LOT of time in factories as well as a lot of time as a high tech worker doing programming. I have lived in both worlds and let me clue you, high tech jobs are cushy by comparison.

Yes high tech workers have their problems. Project managment tends to be poor, hours are long, bosses can be clueless. Lots of folks here on slashdot are well aware of the problems and I don't mean to trivialize them. But I do mean to give a dose of reality.

Working in a factory is in many ways harder. You are on your feet all day, every day, often 6-7 days a week. The work is usually physically tiring, repetitive, and mind numbing not to mention dangerous. (sorry carpal tunnel just doesn't compare to getting run over by a forklift) If someone doesn't show up one day you get to cover for them which means your day just got significantly longer and harder. Even the best plants are not exactly comfortable to be in and are loud, smelly and often dirty. You'll be wearing ear plugs and safety glasses all day long. Any office is plush by comparison.

If you are skilled labor you might pull down a decent wage, though you will never be rich. If you are unskilled labor, you will make minimum wage or close to it, and you will be stuck with the crappiest, most mind numbing jobs you can imagine. And you can be replaced in a heartbeat with pretty much any monkey off the street unless union rules prevent it.

Your co-workers will be a mixed bag of intelligence, but generally uneducated past high school. We're talking the same crowds you find at your typical NASCAR or WWF event. Piss someone off at work and you might find your tires slashed. (especially if your are a manager) Never drive a nice car to work if you work in a factory.

Want to join a union? Let me clue you in about unions. (I'm speaking in generalities here, there are exceptions to everything I'm about to say) They *can* serve a useful purpose but you don't really want to be in one if you can avoid it. Unions are all about rules and they will define job descriptions to the Nth degree. Only certain people are allowed to do certain jobs. Unions will remove much of the flexibility from your job. Want merit based pay increases? Dream on. Unions are about preserving jobs with a relatively high average pay, not promoting individual achievement. You'll get the same pay increase as everyone else no matter how hard you work. And since people know this, they tend to not work very hard. Want a close relationship with managment? Not very likely with a union. You'll often have a shop steward present for every conversation you have with management.

Anyway, the point is that unions are sometimes necessary to avoid a truly abusive work environment, but frankly very few white collar jobs even come close. If you are a skilled worker with talents that are in demand, I cannot see any logical reason you would want to join a union. It would only hurt you in the long run.

To get back to my original point, factory jobs and hi-tech jobs just aren't the same. Sure any job can be hard and you can get a pointy-haired boss who will make your life miserable. But I don't think anyone who has actually spent time in a factory could agree with this author.

Unions are not the answer!

[zerofoo]

Name one industry that has benefited from the introduction of unions. Steel, Education, auto; of these industries would have been better off without unions. Sure the very vocal bottom 20% loves the fact that a union virtually guarantees their pay and job security, but what does that do to the final product?

Unions only increase costs, decrease productivity, and guarantee that the industry will need a government bail-out or protection in 20-30 years.

These down times are just what the tech industry needs. The excess capacity of HTML jockeys and MCSEs will go find other jobs flipping burgers where they should have been in the first place if not for the dot com boom.

-ted

Re:OK, I will bite

[fmaxwell]

Let's blame H1-B because they are all underpaid.

I'm not blaming you for anything. I don't blame you for taking advantage of a situation where the U.S. government allows large companies to employ foreign nationals to keep down costs. I blame the U.S. government.

It took me a week to find a new job, and I even got a signing bonus. Hmmmmm, why would they do this, since they can so nicely underpay me?

Because they can afford to.

Could it be that a degree and experience matters again all of a sudden?

Probably not as much as you would like to believe. I know plenty of people with one, two, or more decades of experience that are looking for work while newbies and H1-B workers are being hired much more quickly. Look around your workplace and see how many 55-60 year old software engineers you see and then tell me about how valuable experience is.

How About Respect & Appreciation?

[DonWallace]

Many have already sounded off on the non-Dickensian nature of most technology work. The work is generally physically safe, conducted in generally well lighted and air conditioned/heated offices.

What I want to know is - how old are those posting the anti-union, pro-intelligentsia drivel that is in this thread?

So many here are missing one basic issue that the BBC article alludes to: IT work itself is ABSOLUTELY NOT RESPECTED by most companies nor managements, and neither are the practitioners. I think that is the underlying problem that is reflected in poorly designed, one dimensional, excessively macho work culture in this field.

To reflect this assertion, the proportion of top executives in most large companies whose background is engineering or applied sciences is truly insignificant, and the career track in IT and engineering is absolutely non-existent and must be manufactured ad hoc by the individual. This is as truly a young person's game as major league "anything".

My post is not about wanting anyone to guarantee me a job, nor a plea for anyone to kiss my ass in gratitude for knowing how to code a constructor or a GUI. I simply would like to see some genuine appreciation from the people whose businesses I help. Alas, I find that I am expected to: shut up; code my nuts off; not express any opinion; and conveniently disappear when my piece is done.

You may feel that you're doing great at 25 or 30. I challenge those beating their chests in shared exultation at the primacy of the uber-geek to say the same things at 40 or 50! At some point real soon now, unless you enter into some sweetheart partnership or start your own company, you're going to see your options shrivel unless you *aggressively* re-make yourself. In my area, I simply see almost nobody over 45 in high tech.

My background and perspective: I am a self employed IT contractor and have done this for 9+ years. Prior to that I was employed in several jobs for a total of 20+ years of experience in mixed HW and SW applications. I have mainly developed shrink wrap resalable applications for my clients and I have represented myself, so I have not had to contend with any static from a body shop agency.

My experience, overall, has been that I have pretty much been treated more as a temp or grunt worker along the lines outlined above. Here are some of the wonderful roses and tokens of appreciation thrown to my feet for developing mission critical applications for my client base.

- Threatened with death/disappearance/lawsuit/other by a startup's paranoid CEO if I were to quit a 1099 contract or reduce my work hours.

- Bullied continually by another company when working on a fixed cost contract, and treated like I was their janitor and their property - it was a conversion of their flagship vertical product to Windows. I pulled it off in a reasonable time and cost and I was told later that they felt I was 'sleaze'.

- The president of a long term client took something like four months and much wheedling and begging from me to write a simple stinking letter of reference. This from a guy that claims that he was grossly underpaid and abused when
he was "just" a programmer... IE: my brother, a corporate controller, says that he dashes off letters like this on demand within 2-3 business days so that he doesn't forget.... and feels that it's his duty when someone does their job well.

- Another client's owner insists on using me pretty much like a robotic pair of coding arms, reserving all design decisions for himself and treating all developers in his company like code technicians. "Here, put this 'Begin' starting at column 4, and space down two lines, and put a 'writeln()'.." etc.

- Got shingles (at age 37!) working in a boiler room office coding VB apps while the office's tech writer is constantly over my desk grunting inane questions at the other developer in the office.

Mostly, I find that flagrant hypocrisy, psychological abuse, ingratitude, and snotty holier-than-thou "I was a coder once but now I'm not a loser like that" attitudes are bestowed on software and engineering types by business owners and managers.

So why am I still doing this crap, you may ask? The major reason is degree of investment in the industry - at some point, age, cunning and (my) nastiness ;-) have to count for something. Put another way, I am much better at this stuff than anything else I could choose to do. And with age comes the wisdom to see through the pretense of those on the other side of the negotiation fence for what it is.