> The list she talks about is needed. She also has another point no one
> has picked up on, What about us HAVING A UNION. The all contracts
> would go thru the Union anynone not paying would be sued by the Union.
> Programmer would not need to come up with $2000 just to get back
> $2500. Instead they could pay 120 a year or $10 a Month to belong to
> a "National Technology Workers Union" that would have attorneys on
> staff would could deal with this mess,
Discussions like this always make me a bit uneasy, partly because I tend
to be "the odd man out" in conversations in general. Which makes it
tough for me to throw my hat in the ring on really controversial
subjects. Putting aside the current laws on the subject, I would like to
comment about public opinion and people's perception.
The mention of a union for IT workers actually reminds me of things I've
read or heard about the creation of the Screen Actors Guild. Many of the
reasons IT professionals cite for feeling exploited are similar in theme
if not in scope to the reasons actors felt exploited prior to 1937 when
producers finally agreed to negotiate with SAG. But in order for them to
get to that point they had to start bitching in 1925, over a decade
before hand. And I say bitching as no disrespect to the actors -- it was
absolutely necessary that they "bitch", loud, often and public.
It's not just on contract jobs either, but on full-time gigs. How many
companies demand more than 40hrs per week arbitrarily? I saw one company
in Texas that was ballzy enough to state 50+hr weeks in their job ad.
That's an extreme. How about keeping people on call and then insisting
that time spent working on call is not included in your 40hr week? How
many companies refuse to hire any kind of QA team in favor of using the
lack of QA as an excuse to make their programmers feel like shit for the
slightest mistake? What amounts to an excuse to make them feel like shit
for being human. Since they can be guaranteed that the programmers will
make mistakes, they can be guaranteed that they'll have their excuse for
berating them, so there's a constant steady stream of psychological abuse
from management and imo in many cases it's deliberate.
There's mention in Alan Cooper's book the Inmates Are Running the Asylum
of one of the early and influential IT managers who admitted to a
strategy of deliberately underestimating deadlines at roughly 50% of the
anticipated timeline for the express purpose of riding his programmers
like a jockey so that he could perpetually whip them into a frenzy with
comments about how they were behind schedule. And this guy was very
influential in the early days. Anyone want to guess why so few companies
have realistic deadlines in the software industry today?
I'm convinced honestly that things would be much worse for us if it
weren't for the fact that basic labor laws have improved so much since
1933 when SAG was first formed. Were it not for the fact that there's a
limit to how much companies can get away with pushing the work hours
laws here, we would probably be faced with something much more like the
MMORPG sweat shops in China or the much more exploitive contracts of
movie houses prior to 1937. The fact that our situation is better than
theirs doesn't make our situation reasonable, it just makes it not as
bad. There is no viable justification for continued psychological abuse
and fiscal exploitation (which imo are pretty closely related).
A large part of the reason we put up with it is because we're
conditioned to accept an unacceptable situation. Programmers given a
continued stream of psychological abuse from their managers over time
learn to believe that problems with the software are their fault, not
the fault of the company for refusing to hire QA. And then they start
flogging themselves on the company's behalf -- it just makes the
manager's "job" of abusing them that much easier. I've done it. I've
seen other programmers do it.
It's a well known phenomenon that abused people learn to expect the
abuse and then to justify it themselves. It happens with battered women,
etc. And it happens to programmers pretty much daily. So by the time any
of us strays from the standard response of "get it off your chest in
private, get over it and move on", the rest of us who are still
compliant automatically perceive whatever they have to say as being
indicative that there's something wrong with the person who's
complaining about the abuse, rather than being able to consider that
there might actually be abuse going on. The abuse has effectively become
invisibile to the abused.
So although a statement like "if several companies failed to pay you,
then that's got to be a problem with you" might seem rational, it only
seems that way. Without being intimately familiar with the specifics,
usually from the perspective of an impartial 3rd party, it's virtually
impossible to make that assessment with any veracity. It could be that a
person who charges very little for their services ends up frequently
subject to a poor perception of him and his work quality, i.e. that the
people hiring him are frequently hiring him because "he's cheap" with
the expectation that they can get away with exploiting him because "he's
cheap". Conversely, different types of abuse might be more common
amongst people who are paid higher amounts, with the perception that
"he can take the abuse, I pay him well enough". Frequently even the
"impartial 3rd party" can't be trusted, as judges will often simply side
with whomever the culture perceives to be "in the right", irrespective
of the facts. Five minutes looking at a few family-law cases is all the
proof you need that judges are equally susceptible to cultural illusions.
So the judge might be equally as apt to side with the "several people
didn't pay you -- it must be your fault" assessment, purely on the basis
of it being a popular opinion, irrespective of the facts.
I guess ultimately what I'm saying is if you find yourself reaading
complaints from someone else and saying "oh he's just bitter", it might
be beneficial to take a few minutes and try and get in touch with a
different headspace. He might "just be bitter" -- on the other hand, he
might just be pointing out a situation where as has been the case
repeatedly throughout history, abuse of a certain class of people is the
accepted norm.
--
s. isaac dealey ^ new epoch
isn't it time for a change?
ph: 503.236.3691
http://onTap.riaforge.org/blog
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