Agreed. My dad was raised strongly fundamentalist, and in North America, that included (back then) strongly resisting unions. In hindsight, I've come to realize that my parent's weren't maybe even of average intelligence, and definitely of above-average gullibility.
Unionized software engineers would solve a lot of the "we always work 80 hour weeks for 2 months at the end of a release cycle" problems, the "you're too old, you're fired" issues, the "new hires seems to always make more than the 5/10+ year veterans", etc. Sure, you wouldn't have a few getting super rich, but it would also make it a lot easier for "unionized" action against companies like Meta, Google, Oracle, etc. Right now, the employers hold like 100x the power of the employees in tech. Just look at how much any kind of resistance to fascism has dwindled after FAANG had another round of layoffs..
Software "engineers" totally miss a key thing in other engineering professions as well, which is organizations to enforce some pretense of ethical standards to help push back against requests from product. Those orgs often look a lot like unions.
Unionized software engineers would solve a lot of the "we always work 80 hour weeks for 2 months at the end of a release cycle" problems, the "you're too old, you're fired" issues, the "new hires seems to always make more than the 5/10+ year veterans", etc. Sure, you wouldn't have a few getting super rich, but it would also make it a lot easier for "unionized" action against companies like Meta, Google, Oracle, etc. Right now, the employers hold like 100x the power of the employees in tech. Just look at how much any kind of resistance to fascism has dwindled after FAANG had another round of layoffs..