Some people care about highly talented software engineers.
But not all corporations do. Many just want somebody to make the app go boop. Or the website show a bigger picture.
Rhetorically, Wouldn't it be nice for those people if there were Fair rules that protected against abusive hiring, abusive firing, abusive management, which can wreck a person's career trajectory.
We technology people invest our brains into specialties. We solve the specific problems of a business. There is no one size fits all solution in our industry. So as we specialize for each job, if that job terminated us unfairly, that would just suck. So Unions may help balance the scales when working for the powerful corporation.
This is because software dev is a volatile market. It doesn't matter how "talented" you are, it's about your rank in the social circles and it shows in the product.
There is now far more devs than there is work for them. This is a planned strategy to reduce salaries.
If you're "talented". Make your money and get out asap.
This is what I preach to my kids. Get to work, live at home, save everything and invest. There is a huge difference between kids attitudes these days and those of the gen-x crowd. I loved my first jobs, they were so fun and people treated me very well. My children have dipped into the work force a bit and found it very nasty and hostile across various industries. My son trained as a machinist. A job that is very well suited to him. He asked for PPE (respirator, gloves) at his first job and was educating himself on the chemicals used in his area. After incurring chemical burns and respuratory issues he had them put the labels back on the barrels and again requested PPE. They threw him out on his ass, but not before attempting to humiliate and denigrate him. He is traumatized now and seeking disability benefits from the government. I don't have much to stand on when trying to convince him to keep trying.
It's among the most meritocratic I have a view into (from conversations with friends in.. mechanical engineering, entrepreneurship, academia, nonprofit, sales, education, ..)
All of those things are based overwhelmingly on social circles and politics. Not merit. If the world were based on merit we wouldn't be afraid of free markets and we wouldn't have mega corps. Yet, here we are.
You're not getting a job in programming without a social in. The people hiring you don't understand the job. That's what happens when things become big, bloated, and need to be popped. Tech has control of all modern nations down to the military and infrastructure. Nobody is tangibly regulating and pushing back on their power.
