> due to the constant influx of young people willing to take it on the nose to get into the industry.
I mean, I guess. I'm in my late 30s and I just got sucked in to a project that was behind schedule by miles to try to meet an impossible deadline. The expectation seems to be that the 90 hour week I had last week is going to be repeated again this week and, most likely, also next week, come hell or high water, and any sort of common sense or evidence about how short-sighed this effort is be damned. I like my job, for the most part, but this has me considering my options.
My point is, I see this as an upper management issue. I can't fault people, including myself, for doing what we have to do to keep the paychecks rolling in, and especially when the power dynamics are as uneven as they are. You are right that younger people (and, also, let's not forget our friends in this industry on work visas) are less capable of dealing with the issue than veterans. But, from my point of view, it's not us who are wrong. Instead, it's the management chain who is unaccountable to their bad planning, poor decision making, etc... who create this situation.
I think a lot of the HN crowd has enough experience and clout to keep from getting exploited, but I'd personally love to be a part of a large union where I can help mentor junior engineers and get help in turn from more senior ones.
I think beyond shared negotiation, what a union could really help with is managing younger engineers' careers. I stuck around in a bad first job way too long because I just didn't have enough experience or exposure to successful engineers to realize how crappy my job really was.
To be fair, there are a lot of senior developers telling upper management what they want to hear, including by saying nothing and charging once more into the breach.
Yeah, and that's exactly how I ended up in my situation. I was pulled off of one top-priority project to another, magically higher, top-priority project because a so-called senior engineer wrote some checks he couldn't cash.
I mean, I guess. I'm in my late 30s and I just got sucked in to a project that was behind schedule by miles to try to meet an impossible deadline. The expectation seems to be that the 90 hour week I had last week is going to be repeated again this week and, most likely, also next week, come hell or high water, and any sort of common sense or evidence about how short-sighed this effort is be damned. I like my job, for the most part, but this has me considering my options.
My point is, I see this as an upper management issue. I can't fault people, including myself, for doing what we have to do to keep the paychecks rolling in, and especially when the power dynamics are as uneven as they are. You are right that younger people (and, also, let's not forget our friends in this industry on work visas) are less capable of dealing with the issue than veterans. But, from my point of view, it's not us who are wrong. Instead, it's the management chain who is unaccountable to their bad planning, poor decision making, etc... who create this situation.