From TFA: "Already, 70% of engineers with PhD’s who graduate from U.S. universities are foreign-born. Increasingly, these talented individuals are not staying in the U.S – instead, they’re returning home, where they find greater opportunities.
Part of the problem is the lack of priority U.S. parents place on core education. But there are also problems inherent in our public education system. We simply don’t have enough qualified math and science teachers. Many of those teaching math and science have never taken a university-level course in those subjects."
Um. If the jobs aren't there for US grads, it's the fault of their parents and teachers? Logic much? Seems like a rational choice to avoid areas where there's not a lot of work on.
Why not look at how entrepreneurs are funded -- by VCs who fund almost exclusively men, even though businesses started by and run by women are twice as likely to succeed.
Why not look at the gross discrimination against women in engineering, science and mathematics at all levels -- we could easily double the pool of US engineering talent by simply developing more objective measures of success, or at least heeding them where available.
"The campaign to regulate the Internet was funded by a who's who of left-liberal foundations."..."(They are the Pew Charitable Trusts, Bill Moyers's Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, the Joyce Foundation, George Soros's Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.)"
you know, the same people that fund the Evil Crazy Scary Commie Socialist Dirty Hippie Kids Show uh...what was the name of that again?
Well, you'd be more fun to talk to if you'd stop insinuating that any union talk must mean I'm a bad programmer or poorly educated. I am neither.
But of course, you're starting to struggle with the substance of the argument, so you start attacking the person. Fox news much?
Anyway, here is how it works with the classes. First off, you're an apprentice for five years before they set you loose on a job on your own. You have some work (for a lot less money than a journeyman) and some classes -- for free.
Now this "someone has to pay for it" is absolutely true. Union dues might seem like a burden to someone on salary -- but think of the contractor.
How much does that contracting outfit get? Much more than your union dues. When I was fresh out of grad school, I got thirty-five bucks an hour, and that was back in the early 90's.
But the contracting outfit got more than three times that -- for doing sweet fuck-all. That's right, they were charging the company like 125 an hour and giving me 35. Hey it was twice what I was making as a post-doc, what did I know? Fresh out of school.
Now, say you took what the contracting outfit was getting off of your labor -- and split it three ways: you, the union and business.
The business gets a better deal. You get more money. And the other third goes into your dues which in turn goes straight into benefits, training, unemployment insurance and a defined pension plan.
Now think of the person on salary. If he or she joins the union, the benefits are managed by the union, not the business. Here, you and the business might break even if that money the business had to spend on benefits were going to the union instead.
You could say that this would be a case for going solo on a 1099, but the fly in that ointment is health benefits -- with a union you're part of a group with massive bargaining power. On your own, you're just...you.
So...you can take care of yourself, can you? How's that individual health plan workin for ya?
Compared to the defined benefits plan my dad had with his union, 401k plans stink to high heaven.
Now you go look up what a "Defined Benefits Pension Plan" is. You don't even know, do you?
You'll NEVER get one. You'll have all your money in the stock market in your 401K and it will TANK the day before you are eligible to retire. Right after your house suddenly becomes worthless -- again. Right after your fabulous republicrat gubmint has "privatized" Medicare and Social Security out from under you, and that's disappeared as well.
Well trained people that produce a good product at a fair price, and can be properly supervised because they're on-site? Yes, a union that provides this would definitely help keep companies from going broke.
What happens to tech businesses now is they get all kinds of snake-oil coming at them from all directions, and they solve the same problem at least three times while circling the drain.
The only ones that even survive their first round are the ones where the people in charge are themselves programmers and can smell the bullshit a mile away.
As soon as the money men and the managers take over, the company circles the drain a few times with first massive staff turnover, then attempted outsourcing, then re-in-sourcing with way overpriced contractors to get enough lipstick on the pig to flog it.
We've all seen it. I've even shamelessly benefited from it. Though the contracting outfits that do the re-in-sourcing and take a *huge* cut benefit a whole lot more without doing jack. Quite frankly, I'd rather see that cut going to the AFL-CIO or even the Teamsters or the UAW than to whoever it is that owns TekSystems, Addecco, or any number of other body shops out there.
Oh, and my undergraduate degree is from Cornell.
Home of the NYS School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Except my degree was from the Engineering school. I spent a lot of time with ILRs, because my father was a union man, so we had some basis of communication.
Of course, I suppose it's better to get your education on how unions work from FOX news than from being close friends with ILR students at Cornell, or by direct experience with the unions themselves.
While boat-builders use Simpson's rule on hull surfaces to estimate the displacement...with a slide rule and a sharp pencil.
Oh, but they're trained in Union apprenticeship programs and so could not *possibly* be as bright or talented or well-trained as a Doctor who went to University. And see? This Doctor has a publication! He must deserve 10X the salary of a boat builder.
Oh it *is* legal and ethical to explain a value proposition in the course of a negotiation.
This makes people "criminals and scum"? What, because they represent the interests of people with dirt under their fingernails? People who do actual work?
Now, I'm sure you don't put your money in a bank either, or take out a mortgage, or invest in the stock market through your 401K -- because last I checked, *those* people were the real criminals and scum.
Actually, the training programs offered by the steamfitters and pipefitters -- and by the brotherhood of carpenters -- are very effective, and people are constantly taking more courses to keep their skills up.
Courses offered for free by the union.
No, scratch that, courses that you actually get paid for while you take them, and get college credit for besides.
By new skills, I mean new welding techniques made possible by advances in materials science, new construction techniques, engineering courses (yes, engineering courses) and management courses -- particularly in site planning and project management.
So, if your DBA was not availing himself of the training opportunities his union provided, he can stay at whatever level (at a lower level of pay) he chooses, but it's still your bad for not specifying that you wanted a DBA that would verify the system *with* *SQL* when you were negotiating the contract.
Possibly those "niceties" were rejected by your management at either the planning or the staffing phase.
But that goes on all the time, whether the labor is union or non-union.
No, their current skill set is currently worth that. As soon as the "fashion language of the week" changes, or another wave of programmers in India or China learn that skill set, it's goodbye charlie to them.
They'd better save some of that "200K+" today, because it could go down to less than 20 tomorrow.
"When I hear 'union', I think seniority, inefficiency, union dues, and another layer of administrators to deal with."
Funny, that's what I think when I hear "corporation."
But seriously, I think the "situation" orphiuchus is referring to is the situation where we don't have an effective lobby when our elected representatives claim that we need to approve more H1-B visas and make it easier for corporations to offshore large segments of the technical work force, including programmers.
Or maybe the situation where there is no effective training outside the universities (who are hopelessly out of touch with the industry to the point that you're often better off quitting school and teaching yourself how to do things you've already seen are useful in the real world).
Or maybe he (or she) was referring to the situation where there is widespread sexual harassment and all HR does is figure out legitimate ways to get rid of the *victims* if they have the temerity to say *anything* -- rather than solving the problem.
Or maybe the situation where you are one change of ownership or one change of the-latest-fashion-in-programming-languages away from losing your current sweet deal, no matter how good you are.
Or maybe the situation where businesses go broke going around in that sorry circle too many times before getting the right people for a fair price and not having to worry about paying health benefits or pension plans.
BTW, the unions I've worked with offer real pension plans, and health benefits in retirement -- not your pathetic up again down again 401Ks.
My experience with unions -- my dad's, my brother's, my other brother's and my brother-in-law's -- have been uniformly positive.
Sounds like Oak Ridge National Laboratory has people that are completely incompetent at negotiating with the unions. Sucks to be them -- elitist academic narcissistic a-hole administrators with only a university education, and no actual labor negotiating experience.
The manufacturing industry unions have had a completely different approach and history than the skilled labor unions, particularly in the south. I agree with you that they have screwed their membership.
But I think it is a mistake to think of unions as one entity that unionizing would bring us "into" -- if a segment of labor organizes *itself* it makes its own rules. More to its liking, and learning from the mistakes of other unions.
Think of it as a professional society with balls.
Re:Programming is skilled labor and should unioniz
on
'I Just Need a Programmer'
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Actually, the industry is rapidly realizing that offshoring only works in certain very limited situations, and that any "key performance metrics" you put in place can be easily gamed by people too far away to throttle when they start in with the malicious compliance and the stringing out jobs forever with their poor quality work.
The key to a successful union would be to provide better quality work for a lower price overall. Would you rather work with a union rep who in his or her heart of hearts wants your enterprise to succeed and can get you the people you actually need quickly and effectively and at a fair price, with no dickering over 401K's -- and to work on-site?
Or would you rather work with some outsourcing outfit that undercuts and way under-delivers and then has the cheek to insist that you have them fix their mistakes? Or a contracting outfit that charges like a wounded bull and whose people are no better than cheap overseas labor anyway?
Slashdot Mirror
Two problems -- lack of business leadership in engineering fields, and lack of US grads in Engineering.
You could easily double pool available in both areas by simply treating women more equitably.
Women are better business leaders, and yet are actively excluded by the VCs.
Women engineers are treated to exactly the kind of asshole misogynistic remark you just made on a daily basis.
From TFA: "Already, 70% of engineers with PhD’s who graduate from U.S. universities are foreign-born. Increasingly, these talented individuals are not staying in the U.S – instead, they’re returning home, where they find greater opportunities.
Part of the problem is the lack of priority U.S. parents place on core education. But there are also problems inherent in our public education system. We simply don’t have enough qualified math and science teachers. Many of those teaching math and science have never taken a university-level course in those subjects."
Um. If the jobs aren't there for US grads, it's the fault of their parents and teachers? Logic much? Seems like a rational choice to avoid areas where there's not a lot of work on.
Why not look at how entrepreneurs are funded -- by VCs who fund almost exclusively men, even though businesses started by and run by women are twice as likely to succeed.
Why not look at the gross discrimination against women in engineering, science and mathematics at all levels -- we could easily double the pool of US engineering talent by simply developing more objective measures of success, or at least heeding them where available.
oooh aaagh dirty hippie government socialist commies!!!
controlling the internets and sesame street!
dear god will someone please think about the children?
Exactly
"The campaign to regulate the Internet was funded by a who's who of left-liberal foundations."..."(They are the Pew Charitable Trusts, Bill Moyers's Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, the Joyce Foundation, George Soros's Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.)"
you know, the same people that fund the Evil Crazy Scary Commie Socialist Dirty Hippie Kids Show uh...what was the name of that again?
Oh yeah. SESAME STREET.
Mailinator was made for sites like this.
nt
Yah and they're all bullshit. You haven't read the fine print on those puppies, have you?
You still haven't figured out the difference between a lousy 401k and a defined benefits pension, have you?
Probably because the latter as all but ceased to exist outside of the unions.
Yah, and we do it on our own time, as well.
Everyone does. Consequently, skills briefly worth a quarter mil aren't worth that for very long.
How does union membership change that?
Well, you'd be more fun to talk to if you'd stop insinuating that any union talk must mean I'm a bad programmer or poorly educated. I am neither.
But of course, you're starting to struggle with the substance of the argument, so you start attacking the person. Fox news much?
Anyway, here is how it works with the classes. First off, you're an apprentice for five years before they set you loose on a job on your own. You have some work (for a lot less money than a journeyman) and some classes -- for free.
Now this "someone has to pay for it" is absolutely true. Union dues might seem like a burden to someone on salary -- but think of the contractor.
How much does that contracting outfit get? Much more than your union dues. When I was fresh out of grad school, I got thirty-five bucks an hour, and that was back in the early 90's.
But the contracting outfit got more than three times that -- for doing sweet fuck-all. That's right, they were charging the company like 125 an hour and giving me 35. Hey it was twice what I was making as a post-doc, what did I know? Fresh out of school.
Now, say you took what the contracting outfit was getting off of your labor -- and split it three ways: you, the union and business.
The business gets a better deal. You get more money. And the other third goes into your dues which in turn goes straight into benefits, training, unemployment insurance and a defined pension plan.
Now think of the person on salary. If he or she joins the union, the benefits are managed by the union, not the business. Here, you and the business might break even if that money the business had to spend on benefits were going to the union instead.
You could say that this would be a case for going solo on a 1099, but the fly in that ointment is health benefits -- with a union you're part of a group with massive bargaining power. On your own, you're just...you.
So...you can take care of yourself, can you? How's that individual health plan workin for ya?
Measured differently.
America doesn't measure the long-term unemployed, Europe does.
Oh, no, I HAVE a 401K.
Compared to the defined benefits plan my dad had with his union, 401k plans stink to high heaven.
Now you go look up what a "Defined Benefits Pension Plan" is. You don't even know, do you?
You'll NEVER get one. You'll have all your money in the stock market in your 401K and it will TANK the day before you are eligible to retire. Right after your house suddenly becomes worthless -- again. Right after your fabulous republicrat gubmint has "privatized" Medicare and Social Security out from under you, and that's disappeared as well.
Good luck.
Well trained people that produce a good product at a fair price, and can be properly supervised because they're on-site? Yes, a union that provides this would definitely help keep companies from going broke.
What happens to tech businesses now is they get all kinds of snake-oil coming at them from all directions, and they solve the same problem at least three times while circling the drain.
The only ones that even survive their first round are the ones where the people in charge are themselves programmers and can smell the bullshit a mile away.
As soon as the money men and the managers take over, the company circles the drain a few times with first massive staff turnover, then attempted outsourcing, then re-in-sourcing with way overpriced contractors to get enough lipstick on the pig to flog it.
We've all seen it. I've even shamelessly benefited from it. Though the contracting outfits that do the re-in-sourcing and take a *huge* cut benefit a whole lot more without doing jack. Quite frankly, I'd rather see that cut going to the AFL-CIO or even the Teamsters or the UAW than to whoever it is that owns TekSystems, Addecco, or any number of other body shops out there.
Oh, and my undergraduate degree is from Cornell.
Home of the NYS School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Except my degree was from the Engineering school. I spent a lot of time with ILRs, because my father was a union man, so we had some basis of communication.
Of course, I suppose it's better to get your education on how unions work from FOX news than from being close friends with ILR students at Cornell, or by direct experience with the unions themselves.
Until the new tech bubble pops.
Then you'll be wishing you had that supplemental unemployment benefits unions offer, along with the free classes to add to your skill set.
You people have short memories, don't you?
While boat-builders use Simpson's rule on hull surfaces to estimate the displacement...with a slide rule and a sharp pencil.
Oh, but they're trained in Union apprenticeship programs and so could not *possibly* be as bright or talented or well-trained as a Doctor who went to University. And see? This Doctor has a publication! He must deserve 10X the salary of a boat builder.
Oh it *is* legal and ethical to explain a value proposition in the course of a negotiation.
This makes people "criminals and scum"? What, because they represent the interests of people with dirt under their fingernails? People who do actual work?
Now, I'm sure you don't put your money in a bank either, or take out a mortgage, or invest in the stock market through your 401K -- because last I checked, *those* people were the real criminals and scum.
Actually, the training programs offered by the steamfitters and pipefitters -- and by the brotherhood of carpenters -- are very effective, and people are constantly taking more courses to keep their skills up.
Courses offered for free by the union.
No, scratch that, courses that you actually get paid for while you take them, and get college credit for besides.
By new skills, I mean new welding techniques made possible by advances in materials science, new construction techniques, engineering courses (yes, engineering courses) and management courses -- particularly in site planning and project management.
So, if your DBA was not availing himself of the training opportunities his union provided, he can stay at whatever level (at a lower level of pay) he chooses, but it's still your bad for not specifying that you wanted a DBA that would verify the system *with* *SQL* when you were negotiating the contract.
Possibly those "niceties" were rejected by your management at either the planning or the staffing phase.
But that goes on all the time, whether the labor is union or non-union.
Oh. So if you tried to form a union you would try and institute crazy things?
No, their current skill set is currently worth that. As soon as the "fashion language of the week" changes, or another wave of programmers in India or China learn that skill set, it's goodbye charlie to them.
They'd better save some of that "200K+" today, because it could go down to less than 20 tomorrow.
How's that 401K think workin' out for ya?
You know the one that lost 50% of its value year before last. And has yet to recover.
The AFL-CIO is one of the last organizations in the country to offer a defined benefits pension plan, and they still deliver.
Think of *your* union as a professional society with balls. And a pension plan.
Union Steamfitters in NY make nearly six figures.
You're paying Java code monkeys fresh out of college that? L053r.
"When I hear 'union', I think seniority, inefficiency, union dues, and another layer of administrators to deal with."
Funny, that's what I think when I hear "corporation."
But seriously, I think the "situation" orphiuchus is referring to is the situation where we don't have an effective lobby when our elected representatives claim that we need to approve more H1-B visas and make it easier for corporations to offshore large segments of the technical work force, including programmers.
Or maybe the situation where there is no effective training outside the universities (who are hopelessly out of touch with the industry to the point that you're often better off quitting school and teaching yourself how to do things you've already seen are useful in the real world).
Or maybe he (or she) was referring to the situation where there is widespread sexual harassment and all HR does is figure out legitimate ways to get rid of the *victims* if they have the temerity to say *anything* -- rather than solving the problem.
Or maybe the situation where you are one change of ownership or one change of the-latest-fashion-in-programming-languages away from losing your current sweet deal, no matter how good you are.
Or maybe the situation where businesses go broke going around in that sorry circle too many times before getting the right people for a fair price and not having to worry about paying health benefits or pension plans.
BTW, the unions I've worked with offer real pension plans, and health benefits in retirement -- not your pathetic up again down again 401Ks.
LOL and watch those jobs bounce back to overpaid contractors here because nobody can control people they can't stand over when necessary.
It depends on the union.
My experience with unions -- my dad's, my brother's, my other brother's and my brother-in-law's -- have been uniformly positive.
Sounds like Oak Ridge National Laboratory has people that are completely incompetent at negotiating with the unions. Sucks to be them -- elitist academic narcissistic a-hole administrators with only a university education, and no actual labor negotiating experience.
The manufacturing industry unions have had a completely different approach and history than the skilled labor unions, particularly in the south. I agree with you that they have screwed their membership.
But I think it is a mistake to think of unions as one entity that unionizing would bring us "into" -- if a segment of labor organizes *itself* it makes its own rules. More to its liking, and learning from the mistakes of other unions.
Think of it as a professional society with balls.
Actually, the industry is rapidly realizing that offshoring only works in certain very limited situations, and that any "key performance metrics" you put in place can be easily gamed by people too far away to throttle when they start in with the malicious compliance and the stringing out jobs forever with their poor quality work.
The key to a successful union would be to provide better quality work for a lower price overall. Would you rather work with a union rep who in his or her heart of hearts wants your enterprise to succeed and can get you the people you actually need quickly and effectively and at a fair price, with no dickering over 401K's -- and to work on-site?
Or would you rather work with some outsourcing outfit that undercuts and way under-delivers and then has the cheek to insist that you have them fix their mistakes? Or a contracting outfit that charges like a wounded bull and whose people are no better than cheap overseas labor anyway?