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Should IT Unionize?
snydeq writes "Sixty-hour work weeks with no overtime or comp time, a BlackBerry hitched to your belt 24/7, mandates from managers who have no clue what you actually do — all for a job that could be outsourced tomorrow. 'Is it finally time for technology workers to form a union and demand better working conditions?' InfoWorld's Dan Tynan asks. To some, the odds against IT unions are long, in large part because the 'lone gunman' culture is pervasive. Diversity of skills and job objectives is another hurdle for rallying around common goals. But that has not dissuaded several union-minded groups from cropping up across the industry as of late, Tynan reports. In the end, the best bet for IT may be a professional organization modeled after the American Bar Association or the American Medical Association, one that could give IT professionals a single voice for speaking out on issues that affect everyone — such as H-1B visa limits or tax incentives to keep IT jobs onshore."
Well, gee, lets see. Setting aside the economic issues, the inertia and sloppy work that comes with systems where "seniority" is more important than "ability", lets talk about the Bar thing.
What does the American Bar Association do? Primarily it sets standards for it's members, and enforces them. Almost all professional associations do this, whether it's lawyers, accountants, or plumbers, you can't practice your trade unless they say you can...In Union strong states, you aren't allowed to hire plumbers and electricians who haven't jumped through the hoops, regardless of qualifications...Which is to say Joe Bob with his Master Electrician badge is more fit to wire your house than a guy with a PhD in electrical engineering who has 20 years experience in the field. Not only is he more fit, but you can't even hire the other guy because he can't get licensed without jumping through the union hoops.
Now, how many people get into IT through "non standard" channels? How many self-taught pros are there out there? How many people have a non-IT educational background? How many people from other countries?
Do you really want a bunch of senior people telling you what qualifications you need to have? This is a young industry, and it's changing all the time. What you need to know changes all the time. And they think setting up a professional organization is a good thing? Instead of clueless PHBs, we'll have 30 year vets telling us that our modern methods are crap compared to the work they did, back in the day, with punchcards.
Jesus. If you want to drive offshoring, that's the way to do it. Make American IT more expensive and less efficient than everywhere else in the world, and the work will flee this country and leave us longing for the days of H1-Bs and mere outsourcing.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
This article answers it's own question. "... all for a job that could be outsourced tomorrow." What better way to ensure you don't have a job than to make yourself more expensive than a contractor?
Whale
IT unions would turn Silicon Valley into the next Detroit.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
If you unionize, your employer has far less rights regarding workmanship and professionalism than if he can simply fire someone who displays neither. He also has fewer options come hiring time.
By all means, lets restrict all IT work to people who have the piece of paper, rather than the actual ability. In my experience the people who want the former, are the people who lack the latter.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Isn't this really what is comes to? You're just paying money out of your check for someone else to tell you what to do.
No thanks. I'd rather stand on my two feet.
Imag0
The only way this would work is if it was implemented like the way effing lawyers do it.
"No I will not fix your computer for free."
"It's $1000 a hour and the clock starts ticking now."
"No I will not give you free computer advice."
"Oh, and we need to get that retainer agreement signed before we proceed further."
Now if we could figure out a way to make the IT equivalent of ambulance chasers, we'd be on to something. "Did you or any member of your third-cousin twice removed family get the Britney Spears virus? Call the IT offices of James Suck-A-Glove. And we only speak english, dammit."
Trouble is that it's way too late for this. There are too many people willing to prostitute their geekdom for free.
need to become a bit more business savvy. contract workers tend to get tacitly screwed (speaking from experience) in that if management says "we dont do overtime," they tend to hope we believe them.
unpaid overtime for hourly workers is bad in IT, because youre usually on call when a blackberry even when youre not in the office.
or flat out asked to be on call in that "keep your phone on you/near you" sort of way.
blackberry during your off hours=billable hours for each call/page/message you check. no exceptions.
i was burned once by a fortune 500, but never again.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I don't agree with that assertion at all. In my experience, IT people are scattered all over the political spectrum. Sure, the libertarian types tend to yell the loudest, but the libertarian types yell the loudest everywhere.
Personally, I think unions are a good thing for a lot of industries. However, I don't think they're good for IT. Management in many places already see IT as nothing more than an expensive but necessary burden, and putting a union on top of that just makes the perception worse. In places where IT is seen as a vital component to the overall health of the company, techs tend to be treated much better.
The bottom line is that for most positions within IT other than the low-level button pushers, demand and pay are still high. However, it always has been and still remains to a large extent a meritocracy, so all the people who got into the field in the late 90s because they heard it was easy money now find themselves working the grunt jobs at the bottom of the totem pole with no hope of advancement. Unions may give these people opportunity to advance based on seniority alone, but doing so would be bad for the industry as a whole.
The current Indian Government pre-empted such a move by classifying IT as a "Profession", meaning no fixed working hours, no overtime pay, no benefits, but, we do need to pay close to $50 a year as Profession Tax.
Plus major indian IT cos have gone on record stating that long hours are simply "fiction" and each employee works only 8 hours a day: The last time i checked my team was working 14 hours a day.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
I understand. You found paradise in America, you had a good ping times, you made a good connections. The firewalls protected you. And you didn't need a friend like me. But uh, now you come to me and you say - 'Give me bandwidth.' But you don't ask with respect. You don't offer friendship. You don't even think to call me System Administrator. Instead, you come into my house on the day my daughter is to be married, and you, uh, ask me to take down some servers for money.
All the above will by deducted from your paychecks. You'll NEVER notice because I will be getting you BIG BUCKS!
Is that one of its first tasks will be to lobby for a law requiring that membership in it become mandatory for anybody practicing in the field. No thank you.
Unions are broken for very similar reasons. Basically, any large organization that claims to 'represent' you actually represents itself and only has your interests as a peripheral matter because appearing to cater to them is how it gets political power.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I don't like political parties. I don't unions. I don't think either organization should have a long life span. They should create, fight for a cause and then disband. Standing unions I think become evil, like many large organizations.
Unions or bar associations would become money sucking parasites on the backs of the workers, as if the workers didn't have enough problems. Having said that, uniting against clueless management seems like a good idea, just don't call it a union, and don't charge dues.
Think Deeply.
...or comp time sounds like it's time to change jobs, not unionize. Unions correct for errors in the free market, and are not effective in situations where the market already has checks and balances in place. And in any case, there are few companies with large enough IT workforces to make unionizing a viable idea.
I think what you need to look at is the fact that IT jobs are becoming a blue collar skill. Just about anyone with a computer can pick up enough training to do the majority of desktop and server support work that the market demands. On-Site support for mission critical machines are increasingly being moved to co-location centers who have highly trained staff available. What this means is that there is an overabundance of workers in the field, thus decreasing the value of the service.
If you want to get more respect in the IT field, I recommend that you move to large data center work rather than desktop or small server support. Another idea is to develop industry-standard certification programs (not MSCE) that show qualifications for work in sophisticated environments, thus further helping differentiate desktop support from high-end IT support. These certifications would work a bit like the Engineering or Electrician certifications that differentiate true professionals from the trade-school material entering the field.
That being said, let me turn this thing on its head. Has anyone thought of addressing the reasons behind why you work 60 hour work weeks? Is it truly because the field demands it or is it because your environment needs improvement? Whether it be greater automation, additional help, or better procedures, you need to be making an effort to help reshape your environment so that you can accomplish your job more effectively. Not only will it help reduce the hours you work each week, but shaping your environment displays the true mark of a professional.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Isn't this really what is comes to? You're just paying money out of your check for someone else to tell you what to do.
I already give money to one protection racket: the government. Why should I give money to another, run eventually by the mafia?
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Ah, yes-- the siren song of unionization, born out of the early 20th century labor struggles where socialism was still an idyllic future utopia, and factory conditions were truly brutal.
Collective labor bargaining has a brinksmanship game at its very core: give us what we demand or we all quit. The problem is that this brinksmanship is all too easy to call bluff now: globalized workforce, wider literacy, part time contractors, etc. Beyond the obvious changes to the labor pool, the idea that IT work-- one of the most portable sectors in the economy-- could be unionized is laughable.
The AMA and ABA are possible because the inflow of labor is restricted from the beginning: one must graduate Med School or Law School from an accredited university. The AMA and ABA have very strict tests before one gets into these schools, and even harder tests at the end of them before they'll let you in the club. In that way, each association has monopolized the labor force by severely restricting membership. Would such a scheme be possible with IT?
An ITPA (IT Professionals Association) would require specific graduate schools and horrendous tests. The last thing IT needs is an officially ordained priesthood about what is IT and what is not IT. This would restrict the labor pool so tightly that businesses would freak out, the hopeful students would freak out, then the government, and the whole thing would fall apart before it got started.
I consider myself an IT professional, and I got my degree in Japanese Literature.
davejenkins.com |
Unions themselves aren't "bad". They are just bad for all who aren't members.....
Business are hurt by unions because of higher pay demands, strikes, etc.
Other businesses are hurt when they rely on businesses subject to unions (manufacturers impacted by shipping industry unions that are on strike).
Customers are hurt by unions in that higher business costs are then transferred to them in terms of higher prices.
Employees who aren't members are hurt by exclusion of job potential.
The Union members benefit from higher pay, better benefits, etc. For them, Unions are good.
Layne
I'm going to take a purely myopic, personal stance on this. I got into IT because I was interested in technology. I have seen more burnout and sacrifices by coworkers in this industry than any other. I have seen people responding to Blackberry messages at 2 AM (when they work 9 to 5), spend their days freezing their bodies slowly in server rooms and watched IT managers lose their hair trying to explain that "technology" doesn't mean "magic all the time" to executives.
I always thought there were worse occupations out there. Surely the garbage man or coal miner has a less satisfying/harder job than me. However, at the end of the shift, these guys go home. The garbage man doesn't need to pick up heavy cans in his living room. The coal miner doesn't need to chip away at the walls in his bedroom. In no other industry is the disconnect between work and life non-existent like in IT. Hell, even doctors have calling services.
The joy of learning new things was quickly squashed by the nature of this industry. Even when I'm programming or building new hardware, I'm connected to the responsibility of maintaining 24/7 systems on a 24/7 schedule.
I know some are saying "You don't need to have a job like this. There are other jobs in the IT industry that don't demand this kind of schedule." Bullshit. We brought this unto ourselves. We were the ones arguing for telecommuting. We were the proponents of portable tech. And now we have to "eat the dog food". We sold people on it, we have to bow to it ourselves.
I was thinking about this the other day. I'm almost 30. The internet came about in my generation. IT has been going on much longer. How was it done before "always-on", "always-connected"? Surely it was less efficient. And yet, you hear about IT people from that time staying in their jobs for decades, loving what they do, etc. Nowadays you're surprised to see someone stick around 3 years in a "permanent" job.
What did we do to our industry? How bad have we fucked it up? Can we change it by unionizing? I'll do anything at this point.
Let me fix that -
1) Unionize and loose your job to outsourcing or contractors in a few years
2) Continue to be abused, until you work with your employer to fix the situation, or quit and go work somewhere else
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
"By all means, lets restrict all IT work to people who have the piece of paper, rather than the actual ability. In my experience the people who want the former, are the people who lack the latter."
So what are you saying? That people with the ability couldn't get the piece of paper?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Are we talking about sysadmins, application developers, support staff, programmers, testers, system analysts, etc.?
That's because it's only a specific selection of writers. It's not like there's a union for all writers (fiction authors, non-fiction authors, columnists, manual authors, speech writers, journalists, etc.).
All those posting here believe that they are of above average quality and that their job is not going to go away merely because they are so damn important. The only people who would lose their jobs are those incompetent anyway.
... just too inconvenient to consider ... so no unions or trade association. Only *losers* would need those things after all
The fact that they have no bargaining power or that their skills are irrelevant when it comes to cutbacks
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
...just don't come crying to me when the union--after having gladly taken your money every two weeks in return for getting you a paltry night shift differential--tells you to fuck off when you ask about job placement options after the company lays off 60% of its workforce in an effort to bolster failing stock prices.
Hi, Lucent and Communications Workers of America! Not that I'm naming names or anything. At least, I'm pretty sure I didn't mention Carly Fiorina in there anywhere.
An organization that gives "a single voice for speaking out on issues that affects everyone"?
Uh, what?
The ABA does play many important roles in the practice of law, but it is hardly the only body to which lawyers belong, and a great many attorneys are recoiling away from the ABA based on its continuing politicization of virtually everything it touches - everything from who law schools must admit to what recruiters should have open access to law students, etc.
If you're looking for an example, the ABA is probably not the best one.
The only way workers can have any bargaining power is if they organize. Particularly when management sees employees as "fungible" where it doesn't matter if the work is done here or in Bangalore, unionization is the only way to protect workers. This is especially true for IT and support departments where techs are expected to provide 24x7 support for bargain basement wages, limited time off and laughable job security. Engineering jobs probably aren't there yet (for needing a union), but in a lot of places it's getting close.
The UK has some very strong employee rights - but I would still recommend that anyone join a union.
I'm a member of Connect which is a specialist union for professionals in the Telecoms sector.
The way I look at it is like this: my employer has several floors of lawyers - how many do I have? I hope never to have to fight my employer for my rights (sick leave, working time directive, disciplinary etc) but if I do - I want a team of lawyers on my side.
I realise that the situation in the USA is different - the corruption and ties to organised crime that you see doesn't seem to have affected unions over here.
It's important to draw a distinction between "You can't do that - it's not your job" unions and "You can't do that to me - it's illegal" unions. The former are usually found with low-paying, blue collar works who have a vested interest in protecting their job at the expense of all else - including the company. The latter are usually composed of professional members who own shares in their employer and who want reassurance that should the worst happen, they're legally protected.
I view my union dues (less than £10 per month) on the same level as life assurance, building insurance etc. I don't want to pay them - but I realise it's probably a good idea. In fact, as well as all the legal help, my union also provide me with sickness and death benefit as well as good deals on general insurance etc.
Basically, if you think your employer is perfect and would never shit on you from a great height - don't join a union. If you live in the real world - sign up.
T
If a square is really a rhombus, why aren't all triangles purple?
I've seen the way unions run in a scienc-ey type background. My gf is an immunohemotologist for a large non-profit organization. She's a lab scientist that tests blood for matches with specialized requests from hospitals.
Because the blood bank uses a manufacturing component to bag the blood and ship it to area hospitals, the lab workers are forced to be unionized. She can't earn a larger raise for doing better work than her peers because the union sets the pay increases during negotiation. She is the last in line for a day shift position since she was the last to join 2 years ago. Senior people have transferred departments at will, opening a day shift position up, yet she's unable to apply for the position since it's pretty much held open until the person who left decides to come back (which they usually do). That leaves them both short staffed on the day shift as well as relatively disgruntled on the second and evening shifts.
Pay is based on years in the union, not on merit. Vacation is not negotiable. Promotions grant increased responsibility without pay jumping along for the ride. Incompetent people within the lab are still continuing on just fine since the non-profit can't fire them. Union dues are about $60 a month, plus the union actively endorses (and this is a personal gripe, I know) political candidates that are the polar opposite of our personal politics.
Long ago unionizing helped workers and looked out for their best interests. I don't think it would be a fit at all for our industry.
The thing about unions is that they require basically 100% participation in order to function. The monopoly on labor is where a union's power comes from; without it, companies can simply look elsewhere for employees.
In the past, this has not been so much of a problem, because most jobs have required the worker to be physically present at the work site. This makes the process of maintaining a monopoly much easier, because you only have to focus on one region. The employer can't feasibly move elsewhere, and so if you have a lock on the region then you have a lock on the employer.
The problem with unionizing IT is that you can't do this. IT jobs, by their nature, no longer require the worker to be present at the work site, and in fact much IT effort has gone into making this a reality. This effectively expands "the region" out to the whole world, and so you would need a worldwide union that all IT workers are required to join. This is not going to happen; not now, not in the near-term future, and likely not ever.
None of this is to say that IT workers don't need better working conditions. We clearly do. But the nature of our field makes the union approach impractical: those who fear outsourcing are correct in that. What we need to do is find another way.
What's the answer? I don't know. But we need something that works for us, and something that requires a monopoly we can't obtain is not it.
I cannot think of a single thing that would make employers and customers abandon US IT more than if we unionized. We'd be signing our own death warrants. It's _already_ incredibly easy to fire up e-lance, and grab a Romanian and Indian developer, even if there are the quality and language issues. If we unionize, we'll only increase their incentive to do so by burdening them with all of the baggage that comes along with having unionized employees.
Unions rely on the ability to have a monopoly on labor (and violence, and backing from the government for their violence, but those aren't relevant to my point). With manufacturing jobs, where the physical presence of the employee is a requirement, their hold over an industry is far greater than it would be over IT services, since it's very very easy to utilize non-local labor that doesn't care about the fact that there's a union that went on strike.
Furthermore, I think that it'd be a straight up financially bad idea for almost everyone. In addition to making the barriers to entry for new developers and IT professionals higher, we'd all suffer in terms of the actual money we take home. Union contracts base pay around seniority, not productivity. In fact, most unions violently oppose productivity-based pay scales. That'd remove a lot of the incentive for new, young developers who are just _better_ than their older co-workers to excel at their jobs. They'd be locked into their pay level. It'd also make it MUCH harder to fire shitty employees.
I also reject the concept that there CAN be a single IT voice to represent us all. We're a fairly diverse group of people, from all backgrounds and with all goals in life. The incentives of, say, a sysadmin working for a NOC are not the same as a web developer working for a small business. They have different sets of priorities, both of which are completely valid to their particular situation. Say, for example, that the NOC guy is a little older, has some kids, and wants benefits, while the young kid doesn't care, and just wants as fat of a paycheck as he can get. How do you resolve those competing, equally valid desires? As it stands now, we negotiate our own contracts according to our desires. With unions, we'd be locked into the choices made by other people.
Another problem with unions, highlighted by this article, is that they're often ideological tools of the leadership. I don't have a problem with H1-B visas (except that I think they're too restrictive) or offshoring. I think both things are awesome. It's the market at work, and forces us all to be competitive at SOME level, whether that be on quality or price or reliability or whatever. Competing against a guy in India or a new Chinese H1-B immigrant is no different than competing against a college kid. The idea that we need political protection from that is absurd.
We also shouldn't ignore the negative impact that unionization of IT would have on the economy. You want to see the long-term effects of unionization? Take a look at the auto industry. Completely saddled with legacy labor costs imposed by union contracts, they're in many cases simply unable to compete on price. Unions are little more than mechanisms for imposing arbitrary minimums and caps on the costs of doing business, which decreases the flexibility of businesses when responding to changing market conditions. The only reason that Japanese automakers hire anyone over here is because we force them to by law.
There's nothing that a union can give you that you can't achieve for yourself by paying attention to your contract. Do you want a guarantee that you'll never be asked to work more than 40 hours in a week? Put it in your contract. Do you want cash instead of benefits? Put it in your contract. Do you want to get paid better? Don't work for less. You make the choices that you want to make, and don't impose them on the rest of us. We'll do likewise, and we'll all be happier.
Ignorant you may be, but you hit the nail on the head.
Unions don't make any industry more efficient, and that loss of efficiency can mean the difference between a successful company and an unsuccessful company. If the work can be done more efficiently by non-union employees, it will be, and IT work is very portable...You can't do the old Union trick of changing the laws in a geographic area when someone across the world could be doing your job remotely.
It comes down to market issues. If you're top notch at what you do, and there is demand for that skill, you'll have work. If your skills are dated, if you're not qualified, you could have problems. Lot of people jumped into the industry in the 90's with extremely limited skillsets. If you can't roll with the changes, you're going to get pushed out.
The industry is really volatile right now, and that makes people crave the sort of stability that Unions seem to provide, but there is a difference between stability and stagnation.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I'm in IT and in the public sector represented by the CWA. The pay is crap but I work 5 days a week seven hours a day (plus an hour lunch) and get paid OT or time and a half back for extra work hours. I make more than enough to live.
a teenager could be more knowledgable and do a better job at a certain technology than a guy in his 30s
meanwhile, if you are talking acting, or steelworking, fields that are unionized, your set of methods is pretty standard and unchanging
what this means is that barriers to entry can be established, means to control who gets in and out of the workforce, seniority can take hold, and unionization becomes effective
unionization is not effective when who you are hiring for what is still such a fluid skillset in IT work. today's buzzword technology is tomorrow's joke
comparisons to associations such as in law or medicine are not applicable either, because again, these fields are ossified into pretty rigid standardizations of education and certification
no one is going to lecture the guy on intellectual property law who works in the field, and certainly not a nonlawyer. but a teenager could very much lecture a thirty year old on the properties and methods of a new toolset library
therefore, without any rigid system of seniority, unionization is frutless
which is kind fo good i guess. IT, at least until (if ever) its technology skillset hardens, is a pure meritocracy. and that will be reflected in payscale as well, so there is no need to unionize, just get very good very quick at the next big thing
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yes. It is the corporate DNA to pay workers as little as the can get away with and produce as much work from workers as possible. That's just the nature of capitalism. By joining a union, workers can push back against being treated as nothing more than a disposable tool.
Are unions perfect? Of course not. But neither is anything institution run by mortals. But like anything, you have to weigh all the advantages and disadvantages.
There's no question unions have brought more balance to laissez faire capitalism. Unfortunately, they have become victims of their own success. Health care, vacation pay, pensions, 40 hour work weeks, overttime, health and safet regs, etc. All of these were the result of workers pooling their money and getting themselves political muscle. Believe me, it wasn't given to them. Ask you grandfather or great grandfather who got his head cracked open with a club for participating in a strike.
Unfortunately, it's in most people's nature to be sheep and be complacent to try to protect what they have. Why risk your job by going against the company's wishes to remain union free. It won't be until workers really feel the sting of boots on their necks grinding them into the pavement will workers actually get pissed off enough to fight back.
So, look for your hours to get even longer, your paychecks to shrink even more, and lose more benefits before unions can become a reality.
But ff they were smart, and could learn to stick together (get over that rugged individualism bullshit they like to believe), techs could do a lot for themselves here and now.
I should know. I'm a union guy working in the tech industry.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
Unions aren't a good idea any more. When they first started up, employee's had very few rights. Now the rights unions fought for are enshrined in law.
A union won't save your job, and to be frank, if you're job is at a high risk of being outsourced, or management is being retarded then you need to get a new job, because just as you have the 'right' to walk out in protest, an employee has the right to save their business by dropping you as an employee for any reason and going elsewhere.
Unfair dismissal doesn't work if you put their business at risk by striking, even if you have a union telling you to do it, not any more.
There is also the fact that employers need not employ anyone who is in a union. Join/form one if you like, but after the first time you 'punish' a company, I'd bet actual English pounds that none of your members will work in the IT industry again.
I was a member of a union when I was a teenager. The damn thing nearly fucked me by saying we had to go on strike. I didn't want to, I had rent and a bike to pay for, and the last thing I needed was no pay for a week, or even a few days.
Luckily the strike was averted because the management pretty much said 'sure, go ahead and leave, but you won't get the pay rise anyway, and you put your jobs at risk if the factory closes for long'. Seemed fair to me.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Given that the whole point of a union is to create a monopoly on one form of labour, I'd have to say the idea is laughable.
I think most slashdotters agree that monopolies=bad, and in a field as fluid and as locationally independent as IT, I'd add that monopoly of labour = impossible, as well. This isn't coal mining or manufacturing, where it might be feasible to completely control the labour supply in a city.
As a provider of IT services, I'm quite content to sell my services to the highest bidder, and I've had no problems funding a comfortable lifestyle doing so.
As a consumer of IT services, I glad when I have the freedom to choose the best individual or company for the services I want. It's bad enough when there's only a single provider of, say, operating systems or cable internet available. Restricting the supply of labour further would not improve things.
We already have an association: ACM.org
I had to quit the ACM because I could not ethically comply with their Code of Ethics:
First, I do not feel morally obligated to agree with EULAs, nor will I ever. If the law eventually says that they're binding, then I'll go along grudgingly, but I certainly won't voluntarily submit to hidden contracts.
Second, it is impossible to write a modern program without violating patents. Even if I believed that software patents are legitimate - and I don't - there are simply too many to avoid stepping on a few in all but the most trivial of applications.
I like the ACM in general, but don't support their core values. As such, I can't be a member anymore.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
lets restrict all IT work to people who have the piece of paper
HR Departments do that just fine without needing a union.
My personal view of unions is that too often they cease to be a "voice" for the employers and just suck up money for the political ambitions of the "boss".
I suspect that the "techie" solution to this is to pass around a hat and hire a lawyer when it comes time to renegotiate a contract, rather than trying to create and fund an entire perpetual organization that is only needed once in a while.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
All this kind of stuff has been observed by me with my father who was a loyal union man his entire career.
What happened to him? He was forced to retire early because the people above him either just didn't like him for some reason or were indifferent to the fact that others didn't care for him and were consistently fucking him out of decent positions, and couldn't get another position in a reasonable amount of time before various major bills came due. Now he gets to sit and anticipate how much his benefits get slashed every year. It's almost to the point that he may as well have worked at a job with NO retirement benefits now. And I get my grandfather, who was also a union man trying to rationalize my father's treatment because "he" was treated OK.
So you know what I have to say to "should IT unionize"?
FUCK THAT NOISE!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
But our parents and grandparents had jobs back then. Now that all factory workers are unionized, they're kids and grandkids out of a jobs because the factory moved to places less expensive and less complainy.
If you're abused at your job, go and find another one. This can be done in any field. If you see that your field is always being abused, go to another field. There is no shortage of jobs in the US. I drive around times and it seems like everybody is hiring from small stores that anyone can do, forklift operators at big box stores, drivers for all types of vehicles, cashiers, desk and management jobs and even medical and IT. People are afraid of change and seem to want to hang around in an "abusive" environment too long and then they complain. I'm a young IT guy without any type of meaningful degree and I haven't been out of a job for more than 30 days. Sure, sometimes I have to move to a better place but I'm open to do that.
If our grandparents and parents would've walked out of their factory where they were "abused", management would've changed it after the first 10 left because without workers, there is no product. Those 10 would be either out of a job for a while but eventually they would get into another job. I know my grandfather did it, he refused to get unionized instead he stood up to management, took his experience elsewhere and earned a good penny being a foreman in a chemical factory until he retired.
I see the problem where I currently work too much. The facility people are unionized which makes it that they can't get fired. But our offices are never clean and nobody can help it, everything is leaking and we're out of heat or airconditioning at least twice a month. And they're definitely not short-staffed, they consist of about 10-15% of the workforce. On the other hand, they have recently reduced part of that workforce because it's apparently cheaper to get a contractor to renovate an office for $120,000 than let the paid-for facilities people screw it up (they renovated that same office 3 times and every time something was wrong).
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
What if, per chance, you're not being abused? I have far fewer complaints about my workplace than my father (UAW) had about his.
If we were talking an 'ideal' labor union I would not for a second oppose it but Unions today are nothing but political PAC's that coerce money from their members.
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
Of course IT should unionize. If you unionize you'd get overtime pay. Most IT people don't even get overtime that they are legally entitled to.
And if we don't like outsourcing we can stop it with strikes. It'll work because they can't stop the company from functioning this year just to save money for next year.
Will IT unionize? Probably not. There are plenty of shrill libertarian types who all think they are headed for upper management. Even on this site, you see tech workers cheering for lay-offs and fewer job opportunities. They usually say absurd things like it's good because they'll only fire people who don't love tech or only untalented people are hurt by a slow economy.
I also think a lot of the problem is IT workers are usually doing very well or very poorly. When they do well money is thrown at them so why unionize? When it's bad, they are just scared of being fired.
And if you happen to be an H1-B you're scared of being sent home. It's not like there's even a pretense companies want to pay them their value.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
Day 1: Really excited by my new development job, even though I have no seniority. Was trained by the person with second-least seniority, who told me my job was to access the bug database and make a graph in powerpoint of "severity x days open."
After about 5 minutes of this, I said You know, I could write a perl program to do this in less time than it would take to do it by hand.
He smiled, and said that's what he thought on the his first day. However, we were programmers and the IT people had the responsibility for the bug database and they were in a different union. Ergo, we weren't allowed to build programmatic interfaces to their tools.
Day 10: I've got building the chart down to taking only six hours a day, and have spent my other 30 minutes (minus union-mandated lunch and coffee breaks) a day looking at the code in read-only mode, trying to familiarize myself with it. Having worked on open-source projects, I knew how to use the SVN web-viewer.
Day 20: I noticed a quite-obvious buffer overflow in the code, and went to the developer who wrote it to point it out. She was quite upset that I had been looking at the code, and filed a union grievance about me exceeding my job responsibilities.
Day 22: Grievance day. The shop steward yelled at me for a while. Afterwards, Management took me aside and told me it was nice to see someone who had some initiative, and they'd see if they could find me something interesting to do...
Day 41: Time to build PPT charts now 7 hours. I had gotten it down to 5, but there have been a rash of bugs and features over the past few weeks.
Day 52: Management tells me there's a small feature they've wanted developed for years, but it never seems to get done. It's completely self-contained and sounds pretty simple. They give me the bug # for the requirements list, and caution that I can only work on it in my spare time, and not generate overtime.
Day 56: I've done a bit of looking into it, and now understand how to do the side project. The problem is, I'm already at 15 minutes of overtime a day because of making those stupid charts. I think I'll work on it at home.
Day 57: Tired at work today, since I stayed up until 3 AM working on the side project.
Day 58: Gave the completed side project to Management, along with all the source code. They thanked me profusely, saying it's nice to see people who can get things done.
Day 59: Called into a meeting with the shop steward and one of the senior developers. Apparently, the task that I did had done was assigned to the senior developer, and Management had given him my source and said "We got something off your plate for you." It turns out the task had been on his plate for a year, and he had never done it. I asked "I know it wasn't my responsibility, but isn't it good to have something off your plate so you don't have to deal with it?" He exploded and said he was saving it because it was a simple task, and if he ever had to raise his productivity to meet a quota, he could have done that.
The shop steward said that it didn't look as if I was going to fit in, and they terminated me on the last day of my probationary period.
...the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) already does lots of lobbying on behalf of IT and CS professionals. There's also the AITP (Association of Information Technology Professionals) which has more of an applied/business slant to it than the ACM.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
For all you nice folks who claim working 60+ hours a week is expected. I claim that you are PW'd. Get a backbone.
Say "no."
Now, you can't do this overnight. You have to talk with your boss and let him know that you aren't happy with the work expectations for time.
Make suggestions for how to improve the time issue that doesn't include hiring 20 more people next week.
Could it be that he doesn't know how much time you are actually spending doing work?
I've been in situations where 80+ hours appeared to be expected. First thing my team did was start tracking our hours and time spent on tasks. After a month, I provided that report to my manager. It was overwhelming proof that
a) we needed more people
b) we were working WAY too long over weekends
c) we were spending too much time on stupid things like password resets.
A few months later, we had an automated password reset web page up and running that made Security happy.
If you were working weekends, you didn't work the following 2 days (Mon-Tues).
My team of 20 people grew to over 70 in the next 16 months. Somehow the total work didn't get less because we were adding value to the projects we were on. The work was just spread over more bodies.
We still track hours and time spent on tasks so management knows where we are spending our time (as close as is reasonable). One of our key SAN disk guys left and the time to work on disk stuff sky rocketed for a few months! We hired an expert to take over and it went back down, overall.
Don't just whine, bring facts and data that help decision makers actually make good decisions.
Certainly, with a union, 50% of our jobs would have been outsourced offshore. Fortunately, they haven't figured out how to have someone in India change a bad disk or SAN cable in Atlanta, .... yet.
How's that? My doctor knows what her job is better than I do (at least, I hope!); that's professional.
I know tech better than my boss. He's an antiques dealer, for crying out loud. Of course I know better than him what my job is. That's professional.
When an architect is hired, he very often has to tell his client things like "no, we can't build you a building that high out of sticks and mud, because of local codes and because of the laws of physics." I often have to tell my boss "no, I can't create code to do that in a week, because we don't even fully understand the requirements yet, and the package you've required me to use doesn't have the functionality to do what you want."
Telling bosses and clients "no, you can't have that" is professional. Indeed, I'd have to say it's one of the hallmarks of professionalism: displaying greater loyalty to the art and to the impact on society as a whole, than to the desires of your current client or employer.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Most of what you said is spot on, but something about your comment is bugging me.
You're one of those managers that looks for a CS degree when you're hiring admin and support staff, aren't you? I don't know why, but many managers can't seem to figure out what the differences between an IT worker, a programmer, and a Computer Scientist are. And they are three *very* distinct things.
When all those people were getting CS degrees, they didn't learn how to fix your computer. They didn't learn how to set up your servers. They didn't learn how to manage your datacenter. They may have picked up a little of that along the way, because they need to use servers, computers, and datacenters as tools. But what they learned was math, and probably a little programming. If you need to scope a project, or design an application, a Computer Scientist is for you. If you want to build a website, you probably want IT workers and programmers. Not Computer Scientists.
If you refuse to hire people for IT type positions unless they have a CS degree (which is a ridiculously common practice these days), you're limiting yourself to a very small pool of people who learned the math, but also have IT skills, and are willing to use them professionally. You also bumped your costs way up, because you're hiring overqualified people in to a commodity position. Meanwhile there are plenty of people out there in the labor pool who are as good or better at the tasks you need done, have been trained speciffically for those tasks, and they won't cost you as much because you're not paying for their degree.
I linve in New York, a union strong state. Here the only place you can't hire non-union labor for SOME job is in NYC. Most other places in the state where licensing is required it is called for by the municipality (town, or city). No one up here requires a union to work.
I've met people who are in the Manhattan electricians union who got there by non-traditional methods. They are truly skilled professionals.
What I do want is a bunch of senior people telling the company management exactly how long my shift should be, exactly when it starts and ends, exactly how much overtime I get for which extra days and hours.
Around here, in the Hudson Valley we have carpenters schools, steamfitters schools, I don't know how many union schools we have, beautiful campuses where the union membership goes to get their training updated regularly. Paid training in skills they will then get to use.
You know what the Teamsters still have that IT workers at Enron didn't? Guess. I'll make it easy for you. The answer is a secure retirement.
How do you explain all the IT offshoring that already happened? The overwhelming presence of the union? What drove all those call centers offshore? It wasn't the union.
Look, I know your 4th grade teacher told you that someday you would be rich and the schoolyard bully would work for you. They told you that a lot, that someday you will be the boss by right of your superior intelligence. Ayn Rand is wrong, sure you can excel on your own and protect yourself and what you care about and all that. If you want to make real change, and not remain insignificant, you need to be part of a group that has influence.
Here's a list of people doing well in unions...
Cops
Teachers
Truck Drivers
Carpenters
Plumbers
Actors
Screenwriters
Here's one more thing an IT union would be able to do. It could help define best practices. As in "Nope, that software is not union-spec. If you want our guys to use it you're going to have to pay for their training." Then the union membership (IT workers) would have some say over whether or not non-standard or poorly written software gets union support. As union members we would be protected from having the blame on us for every piece-o-shit software.
Don't focus on the abuses of power, that always happens. Can't not do something because someone might misuse it. Or do you not use filesharing?
You know, you sound just like a battered wife. You're being robbed, and instead of rebelling you insist on defending the people who rob you. Ever hear of Stockholm Syndrome? You're a poster child for it.
By the way, I'm posting this from Montana. I just harvested a nice big crop of dental floss.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
That should have been obvious by the asshole getting the Defcon scale backwards.
Anywho, I bring it up to Deffcon 5. I slam the gas and pass the woman, then cut her off.
Defcon 5 is peacetime readiness. Defcon 1 is maximum readiness. Watch Wargames at least, you're on /. for fuck's sake.
From the reactions, I would say that most people here are against unions. I say, let us all take a stand together against unions.
Unite against Unification!
We'll form the Anti-union Union!
All those that don't wish to be part of a Union are now part of the Anti-union Union. Union dues are payable to me.
Great civilizations have lived and died on false theories. Don't mess up mine with a few facts.
Also, let's not forget that Unions helped bring about the 40 hour workweek, overtime, and other such. They help even non-members when they have enough push to get labor-friendly legislation passed.
And yes, unions exert pressure (or harm, if you prefer) on businesses WHEN THEY'RE ON STRIKE. That's the effing point. Striking is a response to management harming the workers through failing to provide a decent work environment. If a business is "hurt" by a demand for a living wage, well, it deserves the pain.
Certainly it's possible to go overboard the other way, and destroy the ability of businesses to function... in theory. In PRACTICE, right now, businesses have more rights and power than the citizenry, and it's catastrophically not good.
No. I like working longer hours some days and spending the odd afternoon at the pool. I like having a non-adversarial relationship with management and playing foosball with my boss. I like being free to negotiate my OWN salary. I like participating in an industry where free thought reigns, not a mob mentality.
It's the union members who are sheep and do whatever the union tells them to do.
Unions don't care about the people they care about keeping the Union strong.
1. They will agree to Layoff 100 High Paid and skilled programmers to hire 500 low paid and low skilled programmers. (as more people and more union dues and strong union)
2. They work on averages. On average Union employees do get paid more then non-union. However the trimming of pay cuts both ends of the bell curve. That includes getting paid more for a better job.
3. Less American Jobs. What Unions are suppose to try to keep American jobs? Yes but companies are smarter then that. Oh gee it looks like we are going forced to unionize... That is going to be a big overhead. Lets outsource now before the Union formalizes. Even if it does and a company can have enough infrastructure outsourced they can survive and thrive on the outsourced employees, or foreign devisions of their company as they strike for as long as they wont until they starve, give up, or get a new job.
4. Loss political power. You are Unioned and you are aligned with the Democrats. That means the Democrats don't need to worry about pleasing you as you will help them anyways as they focus on swing voters. And Republicans will see you as a hopeless cause and ignore you. Besides your voice will have to go threw extra layers of beurocrasy just to get your personal voice heard.
5. All Management hands are tied. Even the good ones. So they cant fire the bad employees and promote the good ones.
6. An other layer to please. You are no longer allowed to take the torch and get it done. As if you do too good of a job you make the poor employees feel bad and then you need to explain yourself to the union.
7. Unable to get outside help. Gasp hiring a consultant or someone else to help brings up the question what can this scab do that a Unioned employee can't. Heck for some jobs you need temporary people to do some work and then let them go when they are done. Hiring for Max productivity is stupid.
I will give them credit for many things they have done. But for many jobs they have outdone their usefulness. IT is too of a diverse area to Unionize.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It seems unusual in the USA, but in the UK it is common for a profession to be represented by several unions or professional bodies. There are three big teachers' unions, for example. If one isn't representing you, then you're able to switch to another, and there are laws in place to protect non-union workers (it is illegal to make union membership a factor in hiring decisions - you can't specify only-union or only non-union employees).
If you allow a union to be a monopoly, expect the same treatment you would from any other monopoly.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Bingo.
One reason we moan about lawyers is the artificially protected fees. For simple filings the level of knowledge "should cost" some $50 an hour tops, and small cases could escape under a grand.
Then Orgs. like the RIAA reverse-leverage this fact to pull their copyright stunts.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
> Unions don't make any industry more efficient, and that loss of efficiency can mean the difference between a successful company and an unsuccessful company.
Gonna burn some karma here...
In fairness, efficiency is not the goal of unions. The theory is that the collective bargaining means the workers can get a better deal for themselves, because they're in a stronger negotiating position as a group than any of them is individually. Of course the company will be less efficient.
Protecting people is always inefficient. The leading example in this topic was about electrical codes, and I think it was interesting that the virtue of electrical codes was assumed in that discussion right alongside the demonization of unions.
But if we really value efficiency, shouldn't we dispense with electrical codes? Real electrical experts will use their knowledge to wire things safely, and people who do dangerous work will be weeded out by their bad reputation, and everything will work better and cost less, right?
Enforcing electrical codes compromises efficiency in the name of safety, so people's lives are protected.
Collective bargaining asks for a similar trade-off, compromising efficiency in order to better protect worker's livelihoods and worker investments in their careers.
That isn't to say that an IT union is necessarily a good idea or a bad idea. I'm just trying to get across the radical idea that "it reduces efficiency", concentrating on the cost and ignoring the benefit, isn't a compelling, or even sufficient, argument.
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
It's the National Fire Protection Association who writes things like the national electrical code. It's all about avoiding things that have caused fires.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
I work for a large state university. All full-time professional jobs have the option of being part of the union. If you're not part of the union, you're required to pay them a fee for doing all your contract negotiation -- dues turn out to be about $15 a month higher, but they buy you great dental insurance and discounts on things like museum admission (actually, most are free), travel arrangments, cell phone service, and all sorts of other things.
Working under a union-negotiated contract, I'm also guaranteed a 40 hour work-week, reasonable vacation and sick leave, decent pay (I work for the state, so it'll never be great, but it's decent), and I can't easily be fired without cause.
Now, that said, I think the union has too much power here. There are people who can't be fired, even though everyone knows they're incompetent, simply because the paperwork is a pain. The amount of administrative overhead for dealing with the union is horrific; it mostly comes down on the university administration, so I don't have to deal with much, but there's a tremendous amount of it. There are a lot of other issues, as well. The examples other people have come up with -- states where union workers are required by law, where no one can do anything without the union's approval -- are all good examples. They're rediculous. The point of the union is to keep the company from taking advantage of the workers, not to allow the union to take advantage of everyone else.
But overall? I'm glad to be working a lower-paid union job. I've been offered higher pay in industry jobs (more than doubling my pay, actually), but you know what? I think it's unreasonable to be expected to work 80 hours a week and be on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all year. I'll take my moderate pay and pleasant working environment any day.
Given that the whole point of a union is to create a monopoly on one form of labour
No, the point of unions is to give workers a modicum of power in negotiations, as opposed to having to take asinine demands from management, and liking it.
I am a former member of the Communications Workers of America. I was a Production Control Data Processing Associate (read Operator) in a large datacenter. It was a not requirement of the job that I join the union though it was emphatically "recommended" that I join. I enjoyed some excellent benefits as part of the union: scheduled pay raises, 8 hour days with night and weekend differential pay, good insurance, etc. but ultimately lost my job thanks to the union. Most of my coworkers were in the "30+ year vet" category and had only ever worked on mainframe machines. Since the union voted on such things as "job description changes" the big expensive-to-maintain-and-run machines had to stay in order to retain the expensive-to-utilize-or-retire veteran employees. As of 2003 the datacenter had 60 full time operators running 3 OS/390 machines 24/7 . This meant that they paid me (only a 5 year vet) a crapload of money to watch a couple of backups run every day. Eventually the company moved all processing to UNIX servers in an outsourced datacenter, told the union to go to hell, and closed our datacenter. I might still be employed there today with a nice pension to look forward to had the union been respectful of the company's needs and less self-serving. Sadly *all* unions are self-serving to the point of eventually bringing about their own demise.
We really need your help
http://www.gofundme.com/help-sherry
I'm surprised by all of the anti-union sentiment here, which I guess explains why IT has no unions. What other group of workers would stand for wage cuts, unpaid overtime, reduction and benefits etc. all at the whim of management? Where I live, Nurses and Teachers are both on strike because their salary increases are not keeping up with inflation - never mind a salary CUT which is standard operating procedure in IT. Sure, that might help keep some business afloat, but at what human cost? And what is the logical extension of this - back to the days pre-labor laws of 6 or 7 day workweeks and no minimum wage? Back to the days of slavery? Now THAT was "great" for business - workers for free!
I'm a software engineer. Back in the early 90's My boss sent me on loan to a GE Aerospace facililty (Now Lockheed Martin) in Camden, NJ where all the engineers were unionized. That included my fellow software engineers.
All the scare scenarios I'm reading here are complete BS. They had pretty much the same working environment as me, the same procedures and methods, etc. The only differences between them and me (as a non-unionized engineer) that I can remember were:
Oh, and I worked there on loan as a non-union person for two years. I was never treated any differently than anyone else by my co-workers. No harrassment, no attacks on my car, nothing.
This is just one person's story of course. But perhaps we should look at the actual real-world experience of unionized software shops before we start listening to scare stories about totally different industries.
There are too many problems with your post, so I'll just name a couple.
The auto jobs that are here (and aren't in danger of being lost by imminent bankruptcy of GM, Ford, and Chrysler) are the non-union jobs from Honda, Toyota, and Nissan.
Since when do assembly line workers get to plan and design cars? Union assemblers build em' good or bad and they've been building products nobody wants for decades. Pontiac Fiero anyone?
The textile workers
Huh? The products that can't be made anywhere else have stayed in the U.S. Your generic t-shirt has been made abroad for at least a generation.
The steelworkers, who through a combination of union tactics AND environmental laws
You need a better understanding of the history of the American steel industry. Those mills were booking work *years* in advance. Instead of expanding capacity (which lowers prices) they stuck to their high price, let 'em wait attitude. It's very difficult for me to see how floor workers were to blame for that.
See, I was supposed to wait for one of the union electricians to come over and move my stuff.
Did it ever occur to you there might be a reason that is more important than your immediate need to use another cubicle? Imagine a worker who brings an electric heater to her new cubicle.. No problem right?? Well, he's probably the one that screwed it up for you.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
First, I RTFA:
Let's be very clear about this, while you have a right to work in America as well as a right to seek work, quit work, work well or work poorly, even a right to not work at all, you do not have a right to have a job.
Arguing that you have a right to a job is tantamount to arguing that you have a right to force someone to pay you regardless of your qualifications, skills, effort or quality of work.
Secondly, lets talk about incentives.
I used to work in Washington State and ran into a few people who were interested in this WashTech thing. I didn't meet ALL of them, so please don't be offended when I say that those I met were easily in the lower 50% competency bracket. Unionizing has always been about leveling the field. Providing equal or more equal pay and benefits to the lesser capable at the expense of the more capable. I suppose that is a good thing if you are in the lower half or even lower two-thirds since no-one can be accurately placed on a sliding scale. But it's not a good thing if you are at the top of your field.
These incentives are all wrong. They encourage solidarity to the union and your peers, not the business or the underlying profit motive that makes your paycheck possible. They encourage seniority rather than excellence. This is the death knell for businesses even though it can take generations. We are witnessing the effects now in the way Detroit is losing to Japan. If you don't understand why a healthy business environment and support for the profit motive are important to your employment options then please stop reading now and go mark some other post as funny, the rest of this is beyond you.
Thirdly, lets talk about hiring.
I don't know why corporate lobbyists are fighting for H1B visas so hard. It cannot be about the volume of candidates because I have no trouble finding a volume of non-H1B people to apply for my open positions. It also cannot be about quality of candidates because I don't see the H1B applicants as any better (or worse) than the standard US Citizen candidate. I also don't see Unions protecting us against H1B candidates or offshoring taking "our jobs." There are financial costs to H1B hiring that level the salary with US workers. There are also stability costs... will their visa be renewed or will you have to replace them in a few years after they've gotten up to speed? Offshoring is also immune to Union protection. If anything, a Union threatening an employer will chase all the jobs overseas rather than none. Companies go offshore because cash is tight and their goals are big (and they're run by inexperienced management that hasn't been burned sufficiently by offshore teams). Sure some jobs can be compartmentalized or are documented well enough to be regimented and executed by offshore teams... but are those really the jobs you want to fight for? Do you WANT to work in textiles or a call center where you just follow a script? Are those the jobs you want to fight to keep in the USA?
When I'm hiring, I look for the most capable candidate with the best experience and attitude that I can find. I pay handsomely to retain this person because I want those skills and don't want to have to settle for second rate. You, as a free American, have a right to acquire those skills. In other words, you won't be forced into a gymnast training camp at a young age because your body type is right for it and the olympics are coming. You have a right to educate yourself. The Internet is a sufficient tool, you don't need a college degree, you just need motive, time, the web and a cheap computer to play on.
If you bust your ass and become highly skilled/knowledgeable in a desired field (choose wisely) then you can be c
These opinions guaranteed or your money back.
That's greedy employers and a congress who refuses to protect the domestic job market.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Easily fixed by going to a "loser pays" court system.
+++OK ATH