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The only union I know much about is IBEW. My dad's family is huge, and everyone in it is an electrician basically.

The way it seems to work is that a contractor wants N number of electricians for a contract, so the first N electricians in the queue are laid off get dequeued and sent to work.

This is a really interesting system, and I think if there were subgroups of software engineers it would pretty much work fine. I think at the end of the day, SWEs tend to be picky about where they work, and employers tend to want SWEs with backgrounds that perfectly match their needs.

I dunno, I think if someone could figure out how to make a queueing system work, it could work for a lot of people and businesses.

It seems close to the agency model already. Only problem is, I don't see how you're going to get top engineers to join. Most of them are already making bananas money, and I don't see how highly compensated engineers would fit into this model at all.




> Only problem is, I don't see how you're going to get top engineers to join.

You appeal to their boredom. FAANG pays people to not compete more than anything. Rotation is a chance to break the monotony and actually be able to steer the ship for a change.


Engineers care about teams too though. Could a unionized software engineer choose to avoid or prefer people they do or don't work well with?


Why not? Unions are restricted by law in funny ways, but I can't see why they would be constrained around this.




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