Rising Star
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Hi Fisher,
I am working in TCS with total year of experience as 3.8 Yrs. I am having an offer of 14 + 1 LPA ( joining bonus ) from prod based company in Mumbai. I got selected in CTS. Can CTS provide me 20 LPA with this experience. ??
Please do reply.
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I’m an L6 SDM at Amazon but a Meta recruiter sent me an M2 sdm job description. I have all the XP I need from previous job experience but does Meta keep your same level as Amazon? Meaning if I am an L6 at Amazon am I automatically interviewing at M1 or can I jump to an M2?Amazon Facebook (Meta)
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We went through this in the 1990's with the tech boom of that era.
One camp thought it would be the perfect time to introduce and push some sort of Union or technical guild. For purposes of solidarity and in order to codify the technical jobs, skills needed, education and so forth.
The other camp said "we are sooo important, so VITAL to companies that we will NEVER have to worry about companies mistreating us". They also poopoo'd unions as taking your money without return to subsidize union fatcats. IOW they swallowed all the lies of the AntiUnion industry.
Guess what happened? Tech crashed hard in 2000-2001. Turns out companies will mistreat ANYONE.
Now I'd say the stakes are even higher, but now we face job extinction from AI.
Way to go, 90s tech bros! Maybe it's not too late now?
I’m teyired
We should unionize ASAP. Look at arguments and disrespect in this thread from directors.
1. Mental health is a huge safety concern (once you become responsible for large projects you are managing risks the same as c suite but without the rewards)
2. Managers and especially team leads can join unions if they aren't responsible for firing ppl. Part of the ratification should stipulate this as first level software managers are doing 3-4 jobs at many companies today.
3. There is more at stake than just our livelihood. Directors think AI can build/write entire apps. I'm watching my employer hire contractors making 10 an hour to replace mid level engineers and move up deadlines. I'm working 60 hours a week essentially fixing AI bugs and teaching ppl who only know how to prompt and can't read the code they are committing why they are crashing an app used in hospitals to make medical decisions. the directors are either too naive or just don't care because they are short sighted. There won't be working software anywhere in 3 years of we don't organize. Then it will be too late.
Chief
It won't. Tech workers are too well compensated, too affluent, and too tied to their individual compensation to agree to be stuck under an archaic union agreement that strips them of negotiating powers.
Most people calling for unions don't seem to understand what they do. They do not prevent layoffs. They don't stop RTO. All they do is create collective bargaining agreements.
Rising Star
OK, let's assume that's market rate. Now consider this situation...a company decides to locate in a location where rent+food+utils+gas (on average costs) ~$120K/yr (before tax) and they refuse to allow remote work. Now they claim "market rate" is $80K and all you need is maybe 3 roommates to afford this. How do you think that will turn out?
Unions only protect the lazy & incompetent
Rising Star
Yea maybe.
Rising Star
Unions served a purpose to lobby for worker safety. Everything after that has just been greed.
Rising Star
Well if companies buy 100% of your time that right to life and happiness kind of takes a flush.
I worked IT at an company where 90% of all other employees were unionized and I can tell you that I wish our department was unionized. We were the most abused department in the company. I am pretty sure labor laws where brocken with us at the time, I know for a fact they were. I worked a constant 80+ hour week not including traveling and only got paid for 40 hours because they claimed we were salaried. They sure took advantage of that. Even the other departments would come to us and try to get us to join their union as special something, don't remember the term but because we worked on tickets and electronics and such we qualify for their union somehow. We were almost ready to but then the 2 level up IT ppl refused (system admins and developers) offcouse they got treated heck of a lot better. About 4 months later my entire team quit
There already are tech unions for games and some for generic tech workers in the UK. https://utaw.tech/ for instance which I am part of. I think on a individual level it's important to be a union purely for getting help with your base employe rights.
I worked for UPS as a union employee for a time before my career as a Software Engineer. Dealing with the union was terrible. I've had to deal with plenty of crap over the years and across multiple companies, but nothing was ever bad enough that collective bargining and a union contract would have improved things. It would have just traded one terrible thing for another and cost something in the middle. Unions can have a place and the threat of unionizing is important. But after you've dealt with a union you get a heavy reality check from all the pro union rhetoric.
100% this is my exact situation. Unions, like any other form of Marxism/socialism is designed to benefit those in control. Unions take your money and do little for you unless you just want to be an underachiever.
I have been pushing this for years now. Imagine 2023 if were unionized and FB etc couldn't dispose of people like red solo cups.
The 90s tech bros didn't want it becuse they all thought it would hurt IPOs.
It takes all the employees of the industry to come together, in the same manner Hollywood has unions. We need protections by role, we need pensions, we need insurance, and we make these companies what they are. I don't understand how we all haven't come together to say "doneski, you like your smart phone maps Apple, I like knowing I can retire one day."
Hopefully never... the Chinese engineering brain drain is a separate problem. Unionizing would make our tech slow down
Rising Star
Well my sarcastic brain would say it's great companies could save some money training future engineers who will now make better silkworms
Let's hope not. In the US with at-will employment, unions provide very little except high-cost oversight. They are self-serving entities that end up protecting low achievers. If you don't like your job, or the pay, or the benefits, or the hours, then you are free to quit and find better employment. If somebody is happy to take your place because those are satisfactory conditions to them, then the new employee and the company are happy. And you have moved on to a better place to work. If enough people refuse to work under that scenario, then the company will be forced to change in order to attract employees.
Certainly interesting twists on what I said. Everybody is different and will look at their job in different ways and have different experiences. You don't have to "stay quiet" and "comply", but ultimately it's up to you to decide if it's the right fit. It's not your right to demand a company change. That's what you get to do when you start your own company. The employees of a company are given work to do, are compensated for it, and can leave whenever they want. Unions are also corporations except they feed off of the union members for their existence working in their own self-interest under the guise of helping the employees. As such, the health of the company is impacted by being shackled to a union. Any semblance of a union being "toothless" should be welcomed as the parasitic entity that it is.
NEVER. Be careful what you wish for.
It's my understanding that Amazon has people in place to fight tooth and nail efforts to unionize because they know that unions are the bain of management's existence, and won't allow management to do whatever they want, which includes mistreating employees.
Rising Star
Maybe...but what happens when ALL companies adopt the same environment? Then what? And you do make a good point though, I'm pretty sure that some people quit for this exact reason. This is something that prevents me from looking...when the economy is slow it's quite possible that the job you are offered came from someone who quit for some (probably good/hidden) reason.
about 5 minutes before it is fully automated.
unions rely on a premise of a pay band fitting a strictly defined job description and tenure and those descriptions being next to impossible to change without a contract renegotiation or significant concession to any worker affected by the new description.
In the present day any tech company moving that slowly is already dying and having their lunch eaten by companies younger than their last union contract.
As expert systems have evolved it has become very clear that any job that can be so tightly defined as what you see in a union contract can almost always be easily replaced with automation unless there is a physical skill involved.
Unionized IT exists in government and the slowness combined with the bureaucracy is the main reason everything is 10-15 years out of date when it is "new" in government and is one of the primary motivators for outsourcing RFPs in that sector.
Rising Star
Well I agree with keeping up/staying cutting edge. But there are a couple factors involved. First, there is a view in some groups that tech people do their work because it's fun. Sometimes it can be but there is an attitude that "they'd do it for free"...which at least in my case is incorrect. Then there is the question of how is excellence rewarded? If you are better you should earn more. But if you earn more you'll be a target for outsourcing or being replaced by cheaper NCG. So what is the incentive?
WE ARE. Alphabet Workers Union is growing and growing. Please join us and start a union chapter at your workplace!
You want a solidarity walk out over a layoff? Why do you think layoffs happen?
Rising Star
But I have been involved with layoffs when the company was under financial strain and saw good tech people being walked out in one direction while brand new custom made desks were being walked in for the VPs in the opposite direction. I was so proud that these VPs could make these "brave decisions". They also talked about transparency being a core corporate value, but I always found out about their layoffs on the local morning news. So yeah I quit, sometime later that division shut down. Too many "brave decisions"...not enough innovation.
I don't know when tech will unionize. But I do know that it will accelerate the decades-long trend of moving tech jobs out of the US.
Pro
It is starting in video game development. Overwatch team and some other Microsoft studios.
However, you need to have a hit and generate live service revenue to get away with unionization. It is unlikely to succeed if your last game was a flop as the company would just fire everyone instead and close the doors.
About the same time as doctors and lawyers unionize.
Rising Star
Well let's see. The first job I had offered free health insurance (i.e. company paid premiums for employees &family) we also had a pension. I get people are against unions but for *at least* these two benefits...how successful has your independent bargaining gone to retain these benefits? I know for me I have to pay out of pocket for oral surgery because I let my dental care go because our company max annual coverage is low. Oh and what happened to my pension? I got to give up those benefits because I'm lazy I guess...oh but in exchange I do get a 1% COLA. I wonder if CEOs do this well?
I’m retired but back in 1967, I worked for RCA in Camden NJ as an engineer as a June graduate. They had a very big union strike so lots of empty desks and a few managers. I was employed by a different division so no conflict. The strike went well but slowly more engineers showed up at their desks. RCA had a lot of building connected with bridges and tunnels. They were entering three blocks away.
The whole thing failed after a month or two. The attitudes of white collar versus blue collar workers is too great apparently.