As others say, one reason is that busts happen. I was reading the union contract for one of the local government unions (like you do…) the other day, and noticed they had a lot of provisions related to lay-offs. How much severance people get, how it's calculated, how it's decided who gets laid off, etc. This kind of thing would be very valuable if there's ever a tech bust.
The other thing is that not everyone experiences the supposed benefits of these careers. I talk to a lot of people who are exploited in the tech industry with long hours and salaries that aren't really that high for the high CoL we deal with. Talk to bootcamp graduates about their job experiences some time. PoC and women also report rampant discrimination—lower salaries for the same work, sexism, organizations providing cover and golden parachutes for harassers.
Finally, think of all the issues that we gripe about here on HN:
- Open office plans
- Horrible and overly-demanding hiring processes
- Lack of transparency or consistency around promotion processes and salaries
Fixing these types of issues are bread and butter for unions.
>This kind of thing would be very valuable if there's ever a tech bust.
Not if you're a top performer who switches jobs to find new interesting things. If you look into the details of the "who gets laid off", it's very frequently just all of the newest members of each department.
The other thing is that not everyone experiences the supposed benefits of these careers. I talk to a lot of people who are exploited in the tech industry with long hours and salaries that aren't really that high for the high CoL we deal with. Talk to bootcamp graduates about their job experiences some time. PoC and women also report rampant discrimination—lower salaries for the same work, sexism, organizations providing cover and golden parachutes for harassers.
Finally, think of all the issues that we gripe about here on HN:
- Open office plans
- Horrible and overly-demanding hiring processes
- Lack of transparency or consistency around promotion processes and salaries
Fixing these types of issues are bread and butter for unions.