Dare I say it... but could part of the problem be a complete lack of unions? Not to suggest every programmer who wants a job needs to join a union, but AFAIK there are very little programming jobs which are part of a union. Here are some thoughts.
The reason hockey players have agents is because the hockey players focus on playing hockey, while the agent focuses on understanding how much value the player brings to the team, and tries to extract at the margin the price a team is willing to play. Likewise with unions, they have negotiators who understand the value that these employees bring, and try to extract how much the company is willing to pay these employees at the margin to still turn acceptable profits.
Programmers do not seem to have this - many program because they enjoy it, and companies take advantage of this fact. I believe many doctors are part of organized unions, as well as other engineering professions. I do not suggest that startups should have unions, but maybe unions should be introduced into companies which employ a large number of software engineers, that way they can worry about coding, and the union can worry about salaries being fair. Thoughts?
This. Take for example the American Medical Association:
From Wikipedia:
Economist Milton Friedman, [has] asserted that the organization acts as a guild and has attempted to increase physicians' wages and fees by influencing limitations on the supply of physicians and non-physician competition. In Free to Choose, Friedman said "the AMA has engaged in extensive litigation charging chiropractors and osteopathic physicians with the unlicensed practice of medicine, in an attempt to restrict them to as narrow an area as possible."
So AMA works to increase physicians' wages. Now let's think about what the ACM is doing:
- Trying to increase international membership. This benefits ACM in terms of dues, but I'm not really sure how it benefits members as programmers. If anything, it could hurt them. Don't we face enough international competition as it is?
- Promoting programming education as part of core curriculum in high school. WTF? Last thing I need is every dipshit who ever took a class thinking he can write software.
TL;DR: American Medical Association serves its members. ACM doesn't seem to help its professional programmer members whatsoever.
Edit: I suppose ACM is serving teachers on the above points? ACM has a lot of academic members. Maybe what's need is a separate programmer's association.
Thread winner right here. CEO's have no problem making more and more even though many of the productivity gains are coming from us. The issue is absolutely that we have no representation.
No we don't. Recruiters do not represent workers, they're payed directly by the companies. Their goal is to hire as many qualified people for as little as they can. Sure, recruiters will tell you that they have your benefit in mind, which is partly true because they want the people they recruit to work out in the long term, but they never lose sight of whom they're representing.
The reason hockey players have agents is because the hockey players focus on playing hockey, while the agent focuses on understanding how much value the player brings to the team, and tries to extract at the margin the price a team is willing to play. Likewise with unions, they have negotiators who understand the value that these employees bring, and try to extract how much the company is willing to pay these employees at the margin to still turn acceptable profits.
Programmers do not seem to have this - many program because they enjoy it, and companies take advantage of this fact. I believe many doctors are part of organized unions, as well as other engineering professions. I do not suggest that startups should have unions, but maybe unions should be introduced into companies which employ a large number of software engineers, that way they can worry about coding, and the union can worry about salaries being fair. Thoughts?