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Nearly 40% of software engineers will only work remotely (2023)

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72 points jakey_bakey | 1 comments | 22 Oct 24 17:50 UTC | HN request time: 0.218s | source
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ramesh31 ◴[22 Oct 24 18:00 UTC] No.41916906[source]▶
I suspect that 40% drops quite a bit after 6 months of unemployment in the current market. Boom times are over. We're back to falling in line with the rest of the working class, as the capitalists have captured enough of the market to force our hands. It was nice to feel special for a while, though.
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sdenton4 ◴[22 Oct 24 18:15 UTC] No.41917070[source]▶
With bosses doing stupid shit and increasing efforts to treat engineers as replaceable cogs, I think we're in a great moment to work towards unionizing larger swathes of tech.

Unions are a way to collectively make sure that we (as workers) get what we need from our jobs, like optional remote work, lay-offs structured to minimize disruption (eg, volunteers-first, ensuring options for internal moves), and so on. Things we'll be hard pressed to argue individually, especially as the McKinsey increasingly colors us as replaceable components.

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1. rachofsunshine ◴[22 Oct 24 18:24 UTC] No.41917163[source]▶
The problem with that is that pushes towards collective action come when people feel weak - which is exactly the time at which they have the least leverage. Good bargaining power comes from a place of strength, like what SWEs had 5 years ago. But in that environment, it's easy to think of your boss in non-adversarial terms, because they're incentivized to keep you happy because they know someone else could poach you. Tech workers, and SWEs in particular, mistook their market power for virtue on their employers' part.

When it's a sunny June day, it's too easy to blow off why anyone would ever want a jacket.