Rising anger over widespread layoffs, disillusionment with Big Tech, and threats of mass displacement by AI have tech pros taking a good, hard look at unions.
    • Hozerkiller@lemmy.caEnglish
      9 hours

      I can tell it’s too early, I read that twice as “unionize on prem!”

  • melsaskca@lemmy.caEnglish
    9 hours

    Living wage, universal basic income. The cure for failing capitalism. If this happened, the entire population can now be included in the system, rather than marginalized and pushed further away.

  • ITGuyLevi@programming.devEnglish
    10 hours

    I just lost my union a couple months ago, they still exist I guess the government decided they didn’t want some of us to have a union going forward.

    • DrPop@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9 hours

      Same, apparently its a “national security” risk.

  • Gsus4@mander.xyzEnglish
    9 hours

    let them eat AI costs, if they don’t want to deal with unions!

  • darthsundhaft@piefed.socialEnglish
    20 hours

    What I hate about IT is that you have to wear multiple hats. Not unique to IT in the slightest, but IT often has to do weird shit that IMO should not be at all in the job description. Management for some reason is convinced IT should be ok with doing physical labor to move shit around, should be ok to be part time logistics department, should be part time project manager, should be part time janitor, should be like HR, should be sales people, should be public speaker, should be part time QA, should be part time in legal, etc etc etc. It’s fucking ridiculous.

    I just want to work with the tech. Get the people out of the fucking way. All I want is the tech ffs. It’s in my fucking title.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
      13 hours

      The reason that IT often gets lumped with this stuff is because if you leave it to anybody else they do it wrong especially logistics.

      Everyone except the IT department is now banned from ordering new IT equipment because they’ll order a bunch of laptops and then act all surprised when this huge pallet of devices arrives as if they didn’t just order one. So then it just sits in the entrance lobby the days on end until someone from IT comes and opens the pallet and takes the laptops upstairs. If they do that with new pens that’s fine, no one’s going to steal them.

    • cecinestpasunecommunication@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      12 hours

      The thing is: that’s my favorite part about it. I’m sitting at a keyboard for five hours, then I spend a week building shit with my hands-not low level building shit, but still fun, then I’m talking to grandma doing troubleshooting.

      If everything else about it weren’t a nightmare shit show where you’re the devil if someone else fucks up in a year, I’d be very happy in that kind of career.

    • GoatSynagogue@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12 hours

      IT is a giant umbrella. Many of those things you listed are absolutely part of “IT”.

    • demonquark@lemmy.mlEnglish
      19 hours

      Omg, this. The part time legal thing is happening to me right now.

      I’m building a small app for a (multimillion dollar) company. Nothing major. I tell the project manager: “hey, you guys need a EULA to publish in the app store. You can use the std apple one or write your own. Tell me what you want to do.”

      This woman comes back to me with: “what do you think we should do?”

      Like b#%^!, I don’t know! Why would you want me to tell you how define the legal relationship between you and your customers?

      After some prodding, she forwards the request to legal and sends back a DRAFT EULA asks: “Can you review this?”

      NO. I cannot review legal documents. I’m horrendously under qualified for that!!!

      /end rant

      • cecinestpasunecommunication@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        12 hours

        The correct answer is write one that benefits you and say “well I would like if you used this one, but it seems like it would be very silly of you to do that. You should get one from your legal department if you want one that benefits you.”.

    • [object Object]@lemmy.caEnglish
      1 day

      You get people pushing for unions because you deserve unions.

      The tech industry is such a shitshow right now they deserve unions.

      • yaroto98@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1 day

        Hard agree. Every other day a big tech firm will conduct sweeping layoffs of thousands or tens of thousands of employees. These companies are not on the verge of bankrupcy.

        • [object Object]@lemmy.caEnglish
          1 day

          The other thing is the management and boards of tech companies are incredibly incestuous. Your board is made up the boards of everyone else, they’re all CEOs competing for the same workers.

          You’ve got two or three big investment firms that run the boards of all the major companies, which is anti competitive too. They’ll always push for a product they own to their other companies. They know when their other portfolio companies are doing layoffs, what they’re paying their staff, etc. they even share that with other companies so they can “compete” on salaries.

          For an industry that cargo culted anti cargo culting, the management and execs all cargo cult the same over hiring and mass layoffs.

          Employees get treated like crap now.

          10 years ago I’d work overtime near a big release or when there was an outage. But now you get pinged all the time, there are no boundaries, and there’s an expectation. I’ve had CEOs joke about 9-9-6 work schedules and just openly flaunting how much worse they can make your life.

          The terminal rot starts when your company brings in some ex Amazon or Meta execs (C suite, VP, director, whatever). They push for an almost pure numbers perspective. Judgement and morality be damned, think of the metric first.

          Numbers are what these people know — these people survived the natural selection process at the most hostile and politicking companies you can think of. They’ll do anything to survive and get ahead.

          You cut your support team as a cost centre — support doesn’t scale.

          Then before you know it you’re 4 years into “we just have to push extra hard this year guys, the pace will slow down next year, we’ll get headcount too”. The whole time your performance reviews are getting more frequent and become more invasive — we’re adding an AI use component, make sure to list your growth areas and the impact (metrics!) of everything you’ve shipped. Remember, you’re competing with everyone we could hire, so how did you get better than them this quarter?

          This field used to be good. And no, it wasn’t free lunches that made it good. It was having teams that gave a shit about the customer, it was putting the customer above all else, and it was going home feeling like you worked on something useful and good. You worked hard, you delivered value, and you got paid well.

          • StarryPhoenix97@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1 day

            It was good when it was new and growing and adding to innovation. Once the bean counters figured out the grey beards’ magic it got corrupted.

            I grew up with stories of kids my age literally changing the world with new technologies and standards for the tech world. All the way into college, those people were innovating and developing things and having ethical back bones.

            We were a generation of Nikola Teslas, but we didnt see the Edisons that were hiding in the wings.

          • WanderingThoughts@europe.pubEnglish
            1 day

            It was having teams that gave a shit about the customer, it was putting the customer above all else, and it was going home feeling like you worked on something useful and good.

            That was because there weren’t enough engineers back in the day. Then everybody went into learn to code, visa programs got scaled up, the after covid boom faded and the market became flooded enough to be employer owned.

            • [object Object]@lemmy.caEnglish
              1 day

              Yeah, I fucking hate working with people who are those “learn to code for the paycheque” types.

              I mean I get it, it paid well. But I can’t stand working with these people — they have no taste, they have no standards, they make it harder to get good jobs.

        • Batmorous@lemmy.worldEnglish
          23 hours

          Its like a bad ex you dont go back to them. You move on and find better. In this case join/make a better one, or if still in a company then mass unionize

    • GalacticSushi@piefed.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      1 day

      Depends on how you define “the industry.” The tech workers are the ones driving the actual production of goods and services, so it’s pretty reasonable to say that the workers are the industry.

      Obviously this headline assumes that CEOs, managers, and investors are “the industry” in question, but I don’t necessarily agree.

  • Leon@pawb.socialEnglish
    24 hours

    Fuck the labour purchasers. The best time to unionise was decades ago, the next best time is right now. Fucking unionise now.

    • Batmorous@lemmy.worldEnglish
      23 hours

      And help each other unionize!!!

      Stealth mass unionize the company with a matrix community that helps coordinate everybody

      Also making private unionized competitors to compete with stock non-unionized companies. The former will every time especially by making a better product, and take care of employees and customers

      Let’s fucking goooooo!!!

  • Dryad@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1 day

    The workers are the industry. The greedy shareholders are the problem.

    • Batmorous@lemmy.worldEnglish
      23 hours

      Time to go to private unionized companies for existing and new alternatives to existing ones

  • plant@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    24 hours

    WHAT? I’m shocked. I like dancing with AI and training them to make me homeless

    • Batmorous@lemmy.worldEnglish
      23 hours

      I like dancing to businesses that value AI more than employees bankrupting themselves and being replaced with better. Let them be companyless and us owning all our stuff including our homes