Do you think the mass layoffs will lead to any broader labor movements?

Question

For the last decade or two, tech workers have enjoyed the easy money of speculation bubbles and widespread investments, from tiny startups flush with cash to huge companies with nearly infinite resources. Seems like that era has come to an end, and what's left of the capital has moved towards AI instead.The tech sector has also traditionally been averse to labor organizing, with unions far and few in between. Understandably, nobody really cared about them when you could make 6 figures working 4 days a week from home straight out of boot camp, and double your salary every few years just by changing companies.Well, that world's gone now, with hundreds of thousands of jobs gone and probably never to return. Employers and capitalists have their pick from the best of the best, while the average and below-average workers have been unemployed/underemployed for months.To me this feels not that different from previous boom and bust cycles in, say, coal or manufacturing or cars or other industry, with a generation of workers displaced and very few re-skilling options available to them. I can't imagine most of those laid off becoming ML engineers within a reasonable timeframe.So, what's next? Do you think this will lead to any sort of broader labor changes, either grassroots from the workers themselves, government interventions, local cooperatives, or anything at all? Or will we just continue on as before, finding jobs here and there where we can, hoping for another upturn, chasing the next bubble before it bursts, driving for Uber in the meantime?Demographically, I wonder if this will also lead to US tech workers feeling more empathy with displaced red-state workers who saw similar career losses in the years prior, falling off the middle-class ladder seemingly overnight with no way to climb back up. No matter one's job, it's not a fun country to be unemployed (and unemployable) in.Just thinking out loud here. What do you think?

mech422 · Accepted Answer

I think this is like third? fourth? time I've been thru it.. God knows how many times in my career I've been told programmers were all gonna be replaced (Hell, COBOL was IBM's ploy to make programming an 'entry level' job!). First AI craze I remember was reported in Doctor Dobbs in the '80s - first no-code craze was what - about 2000 ? And DBase/Clipper predated that. I remember layoffs in the 80s, the dot com bust, the 2008 crash....
It always comes back, fact is - there's not enough geeks to go around - and 10K boomers/day are projected to retire for the next 7 years.
I'm currently just _starting_ to look for work after 6 months off, as I think its gonna start ramping back up in the next couple of months. I'm seeing plenty of openings, though I'll admit lots of them sound fairly boring. Still seeing a lot of non-AI jobs that pay well being offered (I'm in cloud infrastructure mostly). So I'm actually optimistic - and dam near everything is remote, which is a nice improvement over the last 20 years (I started WFH around 2000..)
Talk of Unionizing tech has gone on for 30+ years as well... Don't really think it'll happen now.

sokoloff · Answer

I&rsquo;d expect it would be a better time to organize/unionize when employees have the relative power. That was 2010-2021. Right now, the few employers who are hiring have the relative power.I&rsquo;m not pro-union by any means, but I do believe that repairing your roof is best done when it&rsquo;s not raining.

CM30 · Answer

Well, we're definitely seeing more interest in unions and work/life balance among younger generations now, and more people pushing back on the insanity of job applications, the attempts to force them to return to the office, etc. There's a growing attitude from millennials and younger that work shouldn't define your entire life, and that being paid a pittance to work in poor conditions while the bosses reap huge salaries isn't a justifiable setup for work.
Tech was the one exception to this, with a lot of folks in this industry seeing labour movements as irrelevant and having more of 'every man for themself' attitude brought on by high levels of compensation and cushy working conditions.
But that may definitely change now. We all got too complacent due to the startup and tech industry bubble, and the insane benefits this industry offered, and thought we were irreplaceable as a result. Now things are looking a bit more grim, it feels like this attitude is going to die down a lot more.

ycdxvjp · Answer

Dont worry about the macro trends. Its a distraction. Just move to where ever the cash is. The cash is always moving. Like water searching for level. This is what the average tech worker from the rest of the world has done to survive. Moving to South Korea or Dubai is better than driving for Uber.

giantg2 · Answer

Sure, it's already leading to labor movement - the movement of labor to cheaper markets.

necovek · Answer

There are always those willing to work in harsher conditions, esp when the pay is still this good.
If actively employed tried to unionize and got fired, there'd be troves of those waiting to replace them.
If IT workers unionized 2-3 years ago to ask for even better conditions (regular 4 day weeks with 6-7h days, for instance), there would still have been plenty of them who'd be willing to work 9-10h 5 days a week for the great pay, and the unionized wouldn't get any "bite" from the employers. Esp as the field is swamped with young talent coming in.
I do wonder at what point do we get to a turning point where it's worth standing up for others as well (compared to just looking out for yourself), but it seems the market situation is exactly not it today.

keikobadthebad · Answer

Think about the mentality of your fellow workers... they're very happy if as an individual, they are paid three or ten times what you are. They don't have a hard time explaining to themselves that it is because they are 'better' than you.
They might be self-aware enough to acknowledge it's because they'll trade adherance to their ethical or moral system for money more than you will. But that's it. They will never rock the boat to unionize. At least many people trying to be first down that road will get shed and blacklisted and few people are brave enough to risk it.
Chances are better first with Tesla that straddles business that's normally unionized with tech, they might open the door eventually.

ddgflorida · Answer

No.