Sure we do. Do you want to code shitty social apps that separate fools from their personal data?

If your ideals actually meant anything to you, you'd despise corporations and government itself with the same fervor with which you speak against unions. Instead, you're a typical secular Republican: you rail against any form of collectivism that helps workers, but rally around all forms of collectivism that serve to preserve the privileges and wealth of America's ruling classes.

Get rid of corporations and government, show me a real free market, and I'll happily compete without seeking recourse from a union of my fellow workers.

But corporations getting special privileges is fine with you? You think you're going to be rich someday, don't you.

Is there a threshold value at which conditions do become bad enough to warrant organization? Private-sector unionization is on life-support, and the public sector isn't much better. Meanwhile, wages for the average worker in constant dollars have stagnated while prices and corporate profits continually increase. It's not like the government gives a shit about us, so maybe it's time we banded together and started looking out for ourselves and each other.

And drinking beer is a basis for a life? Look, AC, I started writing because I wanted something in my life that was wholly my own. I gravitated toward SF because I OD'ed on Judas Priest albums and thought androids on nuclear-powered motorcycles were cool.

I assume the guy succeeding me has nastier anger issues than I do, lacks my reluctance to initiate violence, and knows where I live.

You think talking union is left-wing? Man, your perspective is fucked. I haven't even started talking about work-for-hire alienating developers from their work.

Try DuckDuckGo. No ads, no tracking, no Microsoft.

Can you get manage a 40 hour workweek as a coder in NYC/SF/Austin/Boston or Chicago (as another reply mentioned)?

I write SF, but it's hard to let go and not give a shit at my day job because I'm still enough of a Randroid to want to give people their money's worth.

As somebody who started working in the trade in 2000, what do you mean by 'good times'? :)

Going by my wife's experience, I can suggest a better way to discourage somebody from learning to code. It's called Java.

Save the right-wing talking points for somebody who gives a shit. And stop conflating unionization with government-mandated licensing. If you're smart enough to code for a living, you're smart enough to know better.

Pay me enough, and I'll happily GTFO of the programming trade. $50,000/year will do.

I wish I had known to pick a different trade instead of programming. Programming isn't a profession like law or medicine. It's a skilled trade like plumbing, masonry, or electrical work. But unlike plumbers and electricians, programmers aren't smart enough to unionize, and so they get fucked in the ass by management. If you have to live in the United States, don't become a programmer. There are better ways to earn a living.