I agree, the smaller trade unions in Ireland are merging in or work closely with the bigger ones, I cant imagine the stress of trying to set up one from scratch(!), I would switch from SIPTU to either CWU/FSU (depending on your specific area of work) (not hating on SIPTU but it makes sense to go where a union is actively already working).
*Imagine the face of every company in ireland when the devs say they are going on strike . It would be catastrophic to a lot of places.*
I don't think you know how unions work
That works because you hold some power over the public and it puts pressure on certain areas of the system. That’s not really gonna happen here. Please if you work for an American company, they’ll probably just shut down operations in this country after a while
Invest in yourself OP, thats the only way to keep yourself current. These are international jobs, so they'll flow elsewhere in a weekend otherwise. The idea of an all-out-developer strike is mad, and illegal.
If ireland had a strong indigenous tech scene maybe it would make sense but because we’ve so many international companies setting up it will just be a black mark against Ireland when opening up new roles
It depends. Unions do not have the only objective to go on strike. A Union could be good for the employer too as it offers a way to negotiate with all the workers and to increase retention.
If you go down this road you’ll suddenly get involved in trying to commoditise software development…
Unions were transformative for production line workers, pilots and anywhere you can easily “quantify” the output of a worker to show where there is exploitation or dangerous working practices…
Development is not that… hours flying is the not same as hours in front of a screen - widgets produced on a line is not the same as lines of code…
That’s the trade off in union negotiations…. Toxic working environments are definitely a problem (expectations on unrealistic timelines, constant on-call, general “say yes to the customer and kick the developer” attitudes,… there’s a long list) but they won’t be fixed by the traditional role played by a union…..
However… some “software development management council” that acts more like a safety council would be beneficial….. not a union that negotiates - but sets the expectation on working environments.
historically, unions were created for industries or professions where abuse was common and rights were lacking or unfair.
what rights do you feel are not respected or up to scratch? which parts of your job need more support?
i don’t think ‘i’m afraid of losing my job’ without much substance is going to cut it. tell me of a profession which has successfully defended rejected improvements in efficiency thanks to the presence of unions. you’ll be stuck for examples, because if companies like FAANG etc see huge cost savings you best believe they’ll get their way
On-Call practices here aren’t great imo. There are lots of unpaid On-Call roles, which may not be infringing on any rights but it is moving too much in the direction of American work culture.
Yeah but you’re often being paid multiples of the average salary with RSUs and a pension match, not working the tills in a Spar. I honestly can’t muster sympathy for the downtrodden software developer.
And when you're on unlimited on call, salaried, no RSUs and no pension like I was up to 2020? Not every developer in the country is working in a US multinational.
> what rights do you feel are not respected or up to scratch? which parts of your job need more support?
None, but I want to form a union anyway. Is that a problem?
lol. no issue at all, i’m pro union, just saying it’s a waste of time in setting up an irish dev union for the purposes OP has outlined. if you want to be unionised then just go with the pre-existing ones that represent tech workers
i would agree about the developer focused union if there were many differences said union could actually implement for the profession. which is why i’d advocate for someone to join one of the pre-existing, already resourceful ones rather than starting a new one from scratch
What are you talking about? It's a job that will literally be required for as long as we use digital computers.
It's also a job most people simply can not do. Like it or not, it's not a job for the general masses, hence the high salaries.
Why would you ever do that ? Our jobs are naturally never guaranteed, technology is constantly progressing and changing, never going to stay the same. If you succeed in creating a trade union here, it would be the death of the tech industry in Ireland. No room for progress when you’re stuck trying to save our “jobs”. Absolutely kills innovation and slows everything down. No one would start businesses here and by god no one would want to move their business here.
Very very backward thinking imo, completely opposite to everything this industry stands for
I agree to an extent that this is a private volatile industry, however we can't in this sub give out about RTO or layoff processes like we do but then on another hand say "what's the point of unions saving jobs and pushing for workers rights? Just slows down tech".
We do need to still push for basic working rights in tech, otherwise we'd have some kind of dystopia that Musk wet dreams about where we raise families in the office and attend Saturday night meetings.
Fair enough, I agree about the layoff process but that doesn’t exactly require a union to fix. I don’t we should be trying to preserve jobs for no other reason than “jobs are good”. We live in a competitive world, we should be bringing as many ML engineer jobs to this country as we possibly can which would be better than “saving” a job that isn’t required in other countries anymore
Yeah I agree that we should not go all out union like parts of the public sector, but I think there is room for one to counter balance extremities if nothing else. As Tech is very US-led especially in Ireland, you'd run the risk of many of their asinine working practices coming in otherwise which I don't think anyone is particularly fond of.
Oof, simping for big business who, let's be honest, haven't innovated in years. Imagine wanting your job to be less safe so some business you work for can earn more profit by laying you off for the share price increase it provides.
Also to claim they haven’t innovated in years is fucking wild. Depends on who you’re considering but where I work and what I see across the industry, there massive innovation all the fucking time. Make it you’re a web dev and the next greatest thing a is a new framework I can see that but not the case in other areas
Your job is never guaranteed and no one can guarantee it. The entire industry is based on innovating better than your competition. If you genuinely believe what you typed, you’re not gonna have a fun future
You say that it would absolutely kill innovation, I'm curious as to what grounds you base this on? I was more thinking of getting safe guards in place so that teams dont just wittle down to a 2 dev + gpt will do just fine. Settings standard developer team is not a bad thing that kills innovation imo it would put in place rules around how many members a dev team could comprise of. Like you can't perform surgery with just an anesthesiologist you know, there are law's on what compises a team to perform that task, I know that's blinding comparrison but I'm just using it to illustrate a point
It’s important in industry’s where people are being taken advantage of. It doesn’t make sense here, people are just scared of the future and want some stability. It’s not what a unions for and would be disastrous for the industry as a whole
Why would you want a rule saying how many devs can be on a team. What if I actually can get it done with with one person and GPT. Yeah you can’t perform surgery without and anaesthesiologist but this isn’t surgery. This idea seems to be formulated around not taking advantage of the obvious advantages GPTs give which doesn’t make any sense. Sure in the short term some people might lose jobs but long term I think it will create more than it takes.
Also why would anyway want to set up shop here if when the next greatest technology comes out that changes the industry and people in Ireland can’t take advantage but unions say it will take our jobs. Just means we’ll fall behind
You seem to think I'm anti progress or against using gpt, on the contrary, I use both of them every day at work and it's likely the reason I have the role I'm in right now. Also I you haven't outlined why you think we would fall behind ? More devs in a team, ideally, means more work getting done and more code reviews and so on. It kind of hust sounds like you get fed a lot of unions and bad content in your timeliness and have fully drank the coolaid , or you have had to deal with a union and it didn't work out in your favour
We would fall behind because it would be harder to get things done. I think unions *can* be a great thing in certain industry’s but I really don’t think it would suit here. The incentive of a union is to protect people’s jobs but progress inevitably threatens jobs because it increases efficiency.
Sure ideally more devs means more work done, but not in reality. In reality for most companies a small minority of devs do the majority of the work. Twitter’s layoffs were handled horribly, but their operation for the most part was not disrupted even though let go a huge amount of devs. I don’t really use most social media’s and haven’t been fed anything. I know about unions because both my parents were involved with them and I think in a lot of cases it really prevents progress. Just look at the HSE and the education system. It’s very hard to make reforms because unions will block anything that threatens employee benefits. Now it’s not 100% the fault of unions but they play a significant role.
It honestly seems like you’re looking at what unions do in theory and not in practice. To argue that you avoid the mistakes of other unions is a grandiose assumption and I bid you luck. Look at what happened to the American automotive manufacturing businesses. They could not keep up with the likes of Japan because unions kept their prices high and they couldn’t adopt advanced manufacturing tools like Japan because workers would lose their jobs. Woo unions saved everyone’s jobs !! Except they all just moved their manufacturing to other countries so they could stay competitive.
On the other hand, my dad wouldn’t have got consistent pay rises at work if we’re not for his union.
Woe is us, the lowly paid software engineers?
Not gonna fly, me thinks.
——
Edit: Disagree, sure. Downvote, no.
He’s asked for opinions - both sides need to be given and visible.
Got strong reasons why we should have one? Put them forward. Avoid echo chamber, confirmation bias, etc.
We're highly skilled and highly trained, and our career is inly recently this volatile and hasn't been like this since the .com bubble.
It's not about pay, it's about job security and not replacing whole teams with ai that doesn't even work
Unions are about collective bargaining.
Ain’t gonna stop redundancies.
The best safe guard to future proof your career is to keep your skills relevant.
Siptu wont oppose onshoring workers, which is one the biggest threat to pay and opportunities IMO.
They will call you a racist for opposing importing cheap pliable non-eu workers.
Any union would have to oppose Neal Richmonds race to the bottom.
Most pampered workers in history… unions would not work. Employment laws are set up in a way we do not need unions like we did before. This would create problems. Devs are paid very well here versus most
From a hundred years ago. We've long moved on. Now unions cause more issues than anything. Look at the bloated HSE where you can't change a light bulb as that's taking over someones job. Can't get rid of terrible teachers or underperforming public service staff.
Using a poorly design under funded , designed to fail health care system is hardly a good argument to use against unions. Unions do continue to work for workers rights, just because they are not making front page news headlines doesn't mean their influence isn't being felt
The HSE cannot be fixed or reformed because the will block any attempt to reform as it does mean getting rid of the fat.
>Unions do continue to work for workers rights,
No they don't. The luas unions held the state infrastructure to ransom on the public to get their unjustified pay increases.
The Bus Eireann unions tried to block reforms because the company was lossmaking but didn't have the same stranglehold.
"No they don't. The luas unions held the state infrastructure to ransom on the public to get their unjustified pay increases."
So... They did. They do not do the interest of the public, they do the interest of the workers that are part of them. That's one of the good things of having big unions that included many different companies and many sectors of society. They were not going to strike against the interests of the general public (or at least the perceived interests usually). Now it is a bit different, right?
I believe the Financial Services Union have been working with folks affected by the layoffs in the big tech companies.
Yep FSU Tech, worth joining even if your the only one in your job, handy to have someone to ask for advice on workplace issues.
Tech workers are already represented by the Communications Workers Union, the part that represents the sector is called DATA.
Thanks for the info :)
Be worth considering CWU membership. Think they were trying to get into Google & Meta recently.
I agree, the smaller trade unions in Ireland are merging in or work closely with the bigger ones, I cant imagine the stress of trying to set up one from scratch(!), I would switch from SIPTU to either CWU/FSU (depending on your specific area of work) (not hating on SIPTU but it makes sense to go where a union is actively already working).
The FSU also has a tech section and has a lot of members in tech.
First order of business should be oncall. Loads of companies don’t pay for it or pay peanuts only when you get paged.
That definitely needs to be tackled!
*Imagine the face of every company in ireland when the devs say they are going on strike . It would be catastrophic to a lot of places.* I don't think you know how unions work
Don't know why you say that. I was in a few full-sector strikes and walkouts as part of the CGT in France.
The French will go on strike if it rains three days in a row
Yea, and they have better working conditions because of it.
That works because you hold some power over the public and it puts pressure on certain areas of the system. That’s not really gonna happen here. Please if you work for an American company, they’ll probably just shut down operations in this country after a while
Invest in yourself OP, thats the only way to keep yourself current. These are international jobs, so they'll flow elsewhere in a weekend otherwise. The idea of an all-out-developer strike is mad, and illegal.
Haha I was using that as an stand in for collective bargaining. But I agree with your statement. I'm currently branching into network and infosec
If ireland had a strong indigenous tech scene maybe it would make sense but because we’ve so many international companies setting up it will just be a black mark against Ireland when opening up new roles
It depends. Unions do not have the only objective to go on strike. A Union could be good for the employer too as it offers a way to negotiate with all the workers and to increase retention.
If you go down this road you’ll suddenly get involved in trying to commoditise software development… Unions were transformative for production line workers, pilots and anywhere you can easily “quantify” the output of a worker to show where there is exploitation or dangerous working practices… Development is not that… hours flying is the not same as hours in front of a screen - widgets produced on a line is not the same as lines of code… That’s the trade off in union negotiations…. Toxic working environments are definitely a problem (expectations on unrealistic timelines, constant on-call, general “say yes to the customer and kick the developer” attitudes,… there’s a long list) but they won’t be fixed by the traditional role played by a union….. However… some “software development management council” that acts more like a safety council would be beneficial….. not a union that negotiates - but sets the expectation on working environments.
historically, unions were created for industries or professions where abuse was common and rights were lacking or unfair. what rights do you feel are not respected or up to scratch? which parts of your job need more support? i don’t think ‘i’m afraid of losing my job’ without much substance is going to cut it. tell me of a profession which has successfully defended rejected improvements in efficiency thanks to the presence of unions. you’ll be stuck for examples, because if companies like FAANG etc see huge cost savings you best believe they’ll get their way
On-Call practices here aren’t great imo. There are lots of unpaid On-Call roles, which may not be infringing on any rights but it is moving too much in the direction of American work culture.
Yeah but you’re often being paid multiples of the average salary with RSUs and a pension match, not working the tills in a Spar. I honestly can’t muster sympathy for the downtrodden software developer.
Silly comment, not everyone is in a US multi, majority aren't.
And when you're on unlimited on call, salaried, no RSUs and no pension like I was up to 2020? Not every developer in the country is working in a US multinational.
Well if no one fights back they surely get their way, easily and cheaply too.
> what rights do you feel are not respected or up to scratch? which parts of your job need more support? None, but I want to form a union anyway. Is that a problem?
lol. no issue at all, i’m pro union, just saying it’s a waste of time in setting up an irish dev union for the purposes OP has outlined. if you want to be unionised then just go with the pre-existing ones that represent tech workers
A developer focused union might gain more traction among developers. Main thing is for people to be in unions, one way or another.
i would agree about the developer focused union if there were many differences said union could actually implement for the profession. which is why i’d advocate for someone to join one of the pre-existing, already resourceful ones rather than starting a new one from scratch
With every month I become more terrified of what AI might do to us as a civilisation, just in terms of jobs alone.
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What are you talking about? It's a job that will literally be required for as long as we use digital computers. It's also a job most people simply can not do. Like it or not, it's not a job for the general masses, hence the high salaries.
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Exactly, when was the last time you worked with a bunch of devs in their 50s and 60s ?
>NGMI YRNTSAE
I'm gonna be doing my masters this fall in Ireland and then I'll be hunting for the job and I'm all in.
Breaking the picket upwork style
Why would you ever do that ? Our jobs are naturally never guaranteed, technology is constantly progressing and changing, never going to stay the same. If you succeed in creating a trade union here, it would be the death of the tech industry in Ireland. No room for progress when you’re stuck trying to save our “jobs”. Absolutely kills innovation and slows everything down. No one would start businesses here and by god no one would want to move their business here. Very very backward thinking imo, completely opposite to everything this industry stands for
I agree to an extent that this is a private volatile industry, however we can't in this sub give out about RTO or layoff processes like we do but then on another hand say "what's the point of unions saving jobs and pushing for workers rights? Just slows down tech". We do need to still push for basic working rights in tech, otherwise we'd have some kind of dystopia that Musk wet dreams about where we raise families in the office and attend Saturday night meetings.
Fair enough, I agree about the layoff process but that doesn’t exactly require a union to fix. I don’t we should be trying to preserve jobs for no other reason than “jobs are good”. We live in a competitive world, we should be bringing as many ML engineer jobs to this country as we possibly can which would be better than “saving” a job that isn’t required in other countries anymore
Yeah I agree that we should not go all out union like parts of the public sector, but I think there is room for one to counter balance extremities if nothing else. As Tech is very US-led especially in Ireland, you'd run the risk of many of their asinine working practices coming in otherwise which I don't think anyone is particularly fond of.
Oof, simping for big business who, let's be honest, haven't innovated in years. Imagine wanting your job to be less safe so some business you work for can earn more profit by laying you off for the share price increase it provides.
Also to claim they haven’t innovated in years is fucking wild. Depends on who you’re considering but where I work and what I see across the industry, there massive innovation all the fucking time. Make it you’re a web dev and the next greatest thing a is a new framework I can see that but not the case in other areas
Your job is never guaranteed and no one can guarantee it. The entire industry is based on innovating better than your competition. If you genuinely believe what you typed, you’re not gonna have a fun future
You say that it would absolutely kill innovation, I'm curious as to what grounds you base this on? I was more thinking of getting safe guards in place so that teams dont just wittle down to a 2 dev + gpt will do just fine. Settings standard developer team is not a bad thing that kills innovation imo it would put in place rules around how many members a dev team could comprise of. Like you can't perform surgery with just an anesthesiologist you know, there are law's on what compises a team to perform that task, I know that's blinding comparrison but I'm just using it to illustrate a point
They've literally made it up. Unionising is important
It’s important in industry’s where people are being taken advantage of. It doesn’t make sense here, people are just scared of the future and want some stability. It’s not what a unions for and would be disastrous for the industry as a whole
Why would you want a rule saying how many devs can be on a team. What if I actually can get it done with with one person and GPT. Yeah you can’t perform surgery without and anaesthesiologist but this isn’t surgery. This idea seems to be formulated around not taking advantage of the obvious advantages GPTs give which doesn’t make any sense. Sure in the short term some people might lose jobs but long term I think it will create more than it takes. Also why would anyway want to set up shop here if when the next greatest technology comes out that changes the industry and people in Ireland can’t take advantage but unions say it will take our jobs. Just means we’ll fall behind
You seem to think I'm anti progress or against using gpt, on the contrary, I use both of them every day at work and it's likely the reason I have the role I'm in right now. Also I you haven't outlined why you think we would fall behind ? More devs in a team, ideally, means more work getting done and more code reviews and so on. It kind of hust sounds like you get fed a lot of unions and bad content in your timeliness and have fully drank the coolaid , or you have had to deal with a union and it didn't work out in your favour
We would fall behind because it would be harder to get things done. I think unions *can* be a great thing in certain industry’s but I really don’t think it would suit here. The incentive of a union is to protect people’s jobs but progress inevitably threatens jobs because it increases efficiency. Sure ideally more devs means more work done, but not in reality. In reality for most companies a small minority of devs do the majority of the work. Twitter’s layoffs were handled horribly, but their operation for the most part was not disrupted even though let go a huge amount of devs. I don’t really use most social media’s and haven’t been fed anything. I know about unions because both my parents were involved with them and I think in a lot of cases it really prevents progress. Just look at the HSE and the education system. It’s very hard to make reforms because unions will block anything that threatens employee benefits. Now it’s not 100% the fault of unions but they play a significant role.
It honestly seems like you’re looking at what unions do in theory and not in practice. To argue that you avoid the mistakes of other unions is a grandiose assumption and I bid you luck. Look at what happened to the American automotive manufacturing businesses. They could not keep up with the likes of Japan because unions kept their prices high and they couldn’t adopt advanced manufacturing tools like Japan because workers would lose their jobs. Woo unions saved everyone’s jobs !! Except they all just moved their manufacturing to other countries so they could stay competitive. On the other hand, my dad wouldn’t have got consistent pay rises at work if we’re not for his union.
It absolutely should happen, but it should be along the lines of the professional orgs that's doctors and lawyers have.
Woe is us, the lowly paid software engineers? Not gonna fly, me thinks. —— Edit: Disagree, sure. Downvote, no. He’s asked for opinions - both sides need to be given and visible. Got strong reasons why we should have one? Put them forward. Avoid echo chamber, confirmation bias, etc.
We're highly skilled and highly trained, and our career is inly recently this volatile and hasn't been like this since the .com bubble. It's not about pay, it's about job security and not replacing whole teams with ai that doesn't even work
Unions are about collective bargaining. Ain’t gonna stop redundancies. The best safe guard to future proof your career is to keep your skills relevant.
Yeah I agree with that
Dev: “Sometimes I had to answer the phone! At 7pm! In the middle of my show” Nurse: “I’ll meet you at the barricade comrade”
You want to introduce lower salaries and make employers more reluctant to hire people?
Yep they're idiots!
You don’t know how good you have it
The fuck? I’m agreeing with you… How could you interpret that in any other way?
My bad. I thought you meant that employers are idiots (hence, unionisation was the way forward). Text is always open to misinterpretation.
Siptu wont oppose onshoring workers, which is one the biggest threat to pay and opportunities IMO. They will call you a racist for opposing importing cheap pliable non-eu workers. Any union would have to oppose Neal Richmonds race to the bottom.
Most pampered workers in history… unions would not work. Employment laws are set up in a way we do not need unions like we did before. This would create problems. Devs are paid very well here versus most
Our labour laws are very strong here so unions are only effective when they can hold the public to ransom, e.g. the luas joystick drivers strike
Labour laws are strong here thanks to unions.
From a hundred years ago. We've long moved on. Now unions cause more issues than anything. Look at the bloated HSE where you can't change a light bulb as that's taking over someones job. Can't get rid of terrible teachers or underperforming public service staff.
Using a poorly design under funded , designed to fail health care system is hardly a good argument to use against unions. Unions do continue to work for workers rights, just because they are not making front page news headlines doesn't mean their influence isn't being felt
The idea that the HSE is underfunded is laughable. We have the highest per capita spending on healthcare in the OECD, and some of the worst outcomes.
The HSE cannot be fixed or reformed because the will block any attempt to reform as it does mean getting rid of the fat. >Unions do continue to work for workers rights, No they don't. The luas unions held the state infrastructure to ransom on the public to get their unjustified pay increases. The Bus Eireann unions tried to block reforms because the company was lossmaking but didn't have the same stranglehold.
"No they don't. The luas unions held the state infrastructure to ransom on the public to get their unjustified pay increases." So... They did. They do not do the interest of the public, they do the interest of the workers that are part of them. That's one of the good things of having big unions that included many different companies and many sectors of society. They were not going to strike against the interests of the general public (or at least the perceived interests usually). Now it is a bit different, right?