With today’s ChatGPT-5 release it feels like the time to say this. If you don’t think AI is going to take your software job, you haven’t been paying attention.
The last thing I worked on was AI and let me tell you, the people working on it are scared for their jobs but they don’t know what to do about it. It feels inevitable. While AIs progress may be inevitable because of the market forces involved for those who achieve AGI and super intelligence first – we don’t have to use it the same way we don’t have to use nuclear weapons just because they exist.
Would you have liked a say in how your company can and can’t use AI instead of having it foist upon you? I guess you should have formed a union. Like the writers guild.
Want a quiet office for complex work instead of loud open office space? I guess you should have formed a union
Want a say in Return to Office policy? Union
Think your company is abusing the H1-B visa system by tailoring job descriptions to match specific candidates so tightly that literally nobody else qualifies as justification for the visa?
How about just better quality toilet paper?
No one person can fight these things on their own because they are economic forces and economics always wins over personal preference. Open Office spaces are cheaper than private offices. You’ll never convince your employer to switch. They’ll just push back saying their competitors are doing it and will save so much money they’ll out compete us unless we do too. Sound familiar?
Unions are about way more than just pay and benefits. “We make enough” is the most common argument I’ve heard against Unions.
It doesn’t feel that way when you work your ass off on a product that launches, get laid off but all your work is still driving sales – as has happened to me several times in my career. It feels that, like a book or a movie, the author should have gotten a part of the sales for as long as their IP was being used. Software should have royalties, but it never will unless our work can be withheld until things change.
It’s probably the too late now anyway. I really like coding with the AI agents and it’s unlocked a new era of software, akin to the boost Excel gave back when if you wanted to calculate mortgage interest you needed to code a custom application in assembly. Even if these models never got any better than they are today that change is here, but they are getting better. 2x better every 7 months.