I worked in a unionized IT shop for 6 years (now in SV) and here's my take:
Pay transparency: union mandated pay band helps - no 2x/3x pay for the same position that's for sure. Though I do think this problem could be solved without a union. It's really about opening up compensation information.
First of all, broken processes are not going to get better with a union. They will still be broken, just in different ways.
Union favors/protects seniority therefore the promotion process will still push out high performing employees because they need to "wait for their turn". In fact the running joke we had about promotion was that you could only get promoted if someone:
1. Dies
2. Retires
3. Quits
Age discrimination happens less than in SV tech companies but not by design. In general the workforce in a union shop is older but you also have a lot of low performing lifers counting their days to retirement. On the other hand, interview is far less rigorous since the key factor is "likability" (aka culture fit). Many interviews took place just to satisfy a policy when a pre-determined candidate was already chosen.
Will I ever work for a unionized IT shop again? Not a chance.
Thanks for this interesting bit of info. To be fair I think none of these issues has to have a union to solve it, its just the majority of tech companies are really not fixing these major issues and most likely will never fix them.
> but you also have a lot of low performing lifers counting their days to retirement
I see this as a huge issue with unions. But I feel you have the same folks in large tech companies, they fall into a large team, the company is profitable so its not looking for layoffs, the person/s fall under the radar and they contribute as little as possible.
Yes - if it's setup like Google's union. It's optional and at this point, simply does not have enough clout to make any significant changes to affect my experience :)
Pay transparency: union mandated pay band helps - no 2x/3x pay for the same position that's for sure. Though I do think this problem could be solved without a union. It's really about opening up compensation information.
Broken promotion process/age discrimination/interviews:
First of all, broken processes are not going to get better with a union. They will still be broken, just in different ways.
Union favors/protects seniority therefore the promotion process will still push out high performing employees because they need to "wait for their turn". In fact the running joke we had about promotion was that you could only get promoted if someone: 1. Dies 2. Retires 3. Quits
Age discrimination happens less than in SV tech companies but not by design. In general the workforce in a union shop is older but you also have a lot of low performing lifers counting their days to retirement. On the other hand, interview is far less rigorous since the key factor is "likability" (aka culture fit). Many interviews took place just to satisfy a policy when a pre-determined candidate was already chosen.
Will I ever work for a unionized IT shop again? Not a chance.