Fighting for a better world as a Django developer

Speaker 1: We are are we ready with the stream and everything? Yeah. We're ready up here with Joseph uh for the last talk of the day before lightning talks. Um I can say sort of loosely uh that uh there's a lot of uh freelancers, self-employed, uh consultants, however you may choose to identify uh in this audience. So probably a lot of people, uh target group of this talk and really exciting to have you on stage. Big round of applause for Joseph.

Speaker 2: Okay. Yes. We want to have a better world. And we're going to start creating the better world by creating a better workplace. because that's what we have the power to at the beginning. And the only thing you're missing out on is the pretty pictures. Yeah, and if we want to have a better workplace, it might help to know what would make our workplace what change in our workplace would make us happier. So anyone have ideas? What what yes? More money. More money, yes. That's a good one. Any other ideas? Yes? Let's working hours. Less working hours. Uh you can just shout them out. Nicer people. Nicer people? Okay. What else? Less scrum. Less scrum, yes.

Speaker 2: Some people might might want more scrum, some people might want less scrum. Work from home, yes, another idea. Less meetings, yes. Yes. I wanna say some more ambitious ideas. Maybe you want less racism or less sexism or you want um you wanna write some higher quality software even if your bosses think it's It's not necessary. Or you want to care about your users' privacy, or maybe you want to use free software at work, or maybe you want to publish free software, or maybe you want to attend Django Day and Bornhack on work time. Maybe you want to treat the climate emergency as an emergency and maybe you want to end wage slavery. Yes. But it starts with the simple things like we said. Like like uh fewer um fewer meetings change the

Speaker 2: if you don't like scrum, no scrum. Um Work remote? Yeah. So I'm gonna tell you a few ways you you might try to achieve these things, and I'm gonna tell you the one that I like, and I'm Mostly going to tell you like first I'm going to tell you like the normal summary of the normal things people tell you to do, and then I'll tell you the what it might look like in the context of Django work. So um yeah trade unions. Uh a lot of people know about those. Um if you're if you're alone and you don't have a union and you're just and you don't talk to your colleagues and you think Like we should have we should be able to work remote and you you could ask nicely to your boss and your boss can say no.

Speaker 2: So now what do you do? Okay, maybe you could change jobs, but you're Change jobs to another job that's just as bad. So that doesn't work either. So that's why one one approach would be with a trade union. And maybe uh I don't know, trade union on its own, if you're just one person connected to a trade union, it's not going to be so helpful for for like work remote. But it might be helpful with things like helping you negotiate salary, helping you understand your contract. If your employer is breaking the law, maybe they can represent you. They can also get you in touch with other union colleagues. And if it's a trained union, it'll be easiest for them to get you in touch with people in your trade. So that might be if you're So in the same union. So if you're maybe Ida

Speaker 2: or POSA in uh Denmark, they could get you in touch with others, but they can also connect you with people in other trade unions. And then you can then you connect with people and then you can you can also do other things. You can have actions that aren't just uh Employer, you need to follow the law. You could you could strike and you could do this sort of stuff. But um But what if sometimes trade union doesn't work and it's actually this the way you organize is the same regardless of whether you have a trade union, but it's a little it's a Well, I'm getting ahead of myself. So yeah, let's say you want to join a trade union, but you can't join a trade union, or you can join a trade union, but you're the only software developer at your company.

Speaker 2: So It helps, but it's kind of indirect. Or maybe your client is in a different country. And maybe you switch clients every year, so it it's kind of like too complicated to join trade unions. Or maybe you're ineligible to join a trade union because you own your company, because you're a freelancer, even though you really are a worker, but technically you're you're not. So um so then let's think about what a union is. Union is is just uh a bunch of people who are who are uh supporting each other. And so you are the union. So There's another approach to organizing, which is, and now I have a pretty picture that I can't show you.

Speaker 2: Industrial organizing. Instead of organizing the the uh trade first, we organize the people who work together. So we start with maybe your group at a company, and then the whole company, or maybe the whole office, and then the whole company, and then the whole industry. And then all the industries, and then and then and then uh then we can live in in peace and harmony with the earth. Um But here it's it's not organizing just the software developers at your company. It's just organize everyone. That way um gives us more power, we'll see. I'm going to really, really quickly summarize how to do it. If you want to learn more, there are courses you can take if you join the Industrial Workers of the World.

Speaker 2: And uh yeah, so the two the two steps, first you build a committee, which is a group of people that says like this is what we want to change and this is how we're gonna do it. So start talking with your colleagues one-on-one, however however you can do that, and start finding out what people care about and what people uh annoyed about the work and what people would it like to have changed. My experience in software, it's usually like people want to write better software. They're not they're not originally thinking about like I want more vacation or Yeah, but um but that's good. And then once you have a few people who you think are the right people, start start meeting as a group and Bring more people into the group. And now you have the group of people.

Speaker 2: Now you can make make the change. So the um You probably want to start with something easy and an action that's really simple. But then if you don't get what you want, then you have to be able to increase the pressure. And when um what to say? Yeah. So now I'm gonna give Just a a few examples of what it might look like if you're if you're a Django developer working in whatever company and And you're you're trying to start with trying to build a committee. So one thing you could do is say, uh, hey, uh, you want to go out um

Speaker 2: Fellow worker, would you like to go out for coffee uh next week? And then you coffee outside work, so there's no spying from your your boss. Then you can talk about what's going on at work. But the problem with this is then you have to go out for coffee and it takes time and I I I don't want to use extra time from outside my work. But that is that is an option that's like always there. Actually no. That's an option there if you work in the same place. But if your work remote that that Isn't there. Another place would be at work, but as as I said, it could be you might not feel comfortable talking there. Another idea is maybe you have a private work meeting because You're like you're actually working on something together, like uh migrating the legacy system or whatever, and you have two people in the meeting, and you just at the end of the meeting you say, okay, uh

Speaker 2: What what uh how's it going with work and is anything uh annoying you and uh what should we change here and yeah. Or another thing you can do, maybe you have colleagues you don't uh work with really that you would like to talk to. because they're like they're working on a different project. So you can just say, well let's say you're working remote. You can say, well I I never get to meet any of you so I want to have uh like uh fifteen minutes uh have a coffee with you over over the proprietary video service that this service that we we use. And and then when you're having the coffee with the person, you can have a coffee and then you can also ask like you know what what what things need to change here. Um yeah, so now you this is some ideas to get you thinking about how you might do it. Uh you figure out what makes w sense in your um company and there's also more strategy to like who you're going to

Speaker 2: to talk to first and um And yeah, where to meet. But that's the basic idea. Now some ideas of some actions once you have your committee. Well, you've probably heard of a petition. Uh that's good because it's a good thing about a petition is it's really easy. A bad thing about a petition is it's really easy to ignore it. So we want some other options. You've probably also heard of a strike. Strike is quite expensive and it's hard to ignore, but it'd be nice to have some things in between. Because uh Yeah, it's it's hard to go immediately from partition to a strike. So one one thing uh to keep in mind when you're planning an action is

Speaker 2: um That the only reason the company really cares about you is that you are providing labor that makes money for the company. So one of the few things you can do, like you have you maybe you have some s legal support from laws of the government, but the main thing you have is the ability to withhold your labor And you can also implicit uh implicitly threaten to withhold your labor, not actually withhold your labor. So that's the reason why a petition works. It's not you're not withholding your labor, but if uh if you if the employer thinks they might withhold their labor, well then Then maybe I should do what they say. So one technique is called the march on the boss, which is like the petition

Speaker 2: But instead of instead of saying here's a letter, please do what we say, we walk into the your office and we read out our letter and say you need to do this. And it's a lot more scary when the whole office is in your office saying do this. Um Yeah, and let's go of so for example, let's say let's say we think we need to fix those security vulnerabilities in our application and the boss doesn't care. Well then we walk into the office and And maybe the boss will will say, okay, fine, I'll let you do it. But another approach is uh not a march on the boss. Another approach would be you just don't tell the boss, we just do it anyway. And um

Speaker 2: So an example of this would be uh I think a really nice example of this is automated tests. A lot of times people say, well no, we don't have time for automated tests. But all the developers want to write automated tests. So you can just write the automated tests and hide them and not tell your boss that you're writing automated tests. You can do this as a single person, but it's even cooler if you do it as a group because it it saves you more time and stuff, but also because you you start to realize that you have power. Maybe um You are a Django developer, but maybe there's some other people in the company that work in tech support and they have some bullshit quotas or something and they have to answer calls within a certain period and they don't like that.

Speaker 2: And you could tell your bosses uh stop that, but you could also like make bullshit um tech support requests in order to gain the statistics to help them. So this is all uh awesome techniques. Another technique, we talked about strikes. Strikes are very expensive and if you're just doing this as like you're a DIY union in a in a company, you don't have a strike fund So if you're going to do a strike, you have to do it cheaply. So for example, we talked about uh we had uh Well, suppose you're you have um your company wants to migrate from PHP to Django, you know, whatever to modernize, but the real reason is so that they can fire the expensive old pro

Speaker 2: programmers and replace them with young Django developers who will work overtime for no money. So you could you could tell them that this is not okay, this is age discrimination. You could tell them it's a bad idea because we actually need these people because they help us a lot understand the legacy system. But you could also do is just Maybe you could say it once that it's not a good idea and and then and then when they start firing people, well you just reduce your productivity and you start creating bugs and They don't care what you you feel or anything, but they'll see, oh, okay, the the performance is going down, so maybe we should not fire all these people. Maybe you're um maybe you're this is again on the line of uh a cheap strike.

Speaker 2: Uh maybe you work at a consultancy. And like you make CMSs for different clients and your colleagues think that the climate emergency is an emergency and we should treat it as an emergency, so we don't want to work for petroleum industry companies. So if you give us a project with the petroleum industry company, we're not going to we're going to strike, but we're going to do a cheap strike that doesn't cost us any money. What we'll do is if you if you um Make us work on a petroleum industry project, we're going to comply with all of our company policies. And we're going to read all the terms of service of all these proprietary softwares that we use and all the licenses. And also we're only going to work during work hours.

Speaker 2: And then the productivity will go way down. But but uh but you're you're still working, you know, this is not a strike. What can they say? And it really doesn't matter what your your immediate workplace improvement thing is, um, because another thing you're learning is how to organize yourselves. You're also learning that you have power. You're also building a shell of the new society that will replace the existing structure. So one thing I struggled with for a while was like a lot of the work that's available in to a person with computer skills. uh is like really bad and should be criminal. So like for example if your industry is war, if you work for like one of the big tech companies and they're selling weapons to Israel, you're gaining you're you're making money personally off of war.

Speaker 2: But I still want you to have better working conditions. Because then once all the war industry companies have organized, then all the workers can decide, actually, we don't want to fight other workers in other countries. We want uh we don't want to make these weapons anymore. And they're doing that already. There's a initiative No Tech for Apartheid where people in big tech companies are are protesting that um Maybe you work for one of those anti-social media companies that um call themselves social media companies, but they're really anti-social, and your job is to get people addicted to social media. I still want you to work to to have better working conditions because then once you're all organized you'll you'll realize that the real fight is is not between you and the people you're trying to addict, but it's between you and the workers and all these anti social

Speaker 2: media companies, the whole industry can uh can say we refuse to provide anti-social media. And then once all the industries are organized, well then we'll we'll uh we'll live in uh love and laughter and we'll live in harmony with the earth And now it's time for the live demo. And I think I have some people preparing the live demo for me. Yes, great. I thought there needed to be a live demo because uh Yeah, there need to be a live demo and it needs to be something that can go wrong and I'm really bad at guitar. S I just started learning a couple weeks ago, so we're gonna have the live demo. Now the problem problem because I don't have the slides, you don't have the the the lyrics. So you can look up the song maybe on the internet.

Speaker 2: It's called The Commonwealth of Toil. And uh maybe you can find the lyrics. And um If you can't figure out the melody, just make one up. It doesn't really matter. Yeah. So yes. In the gloom of mighty cities, mid the roar of whirling wheels, We are toiling on like chattel slaves of old, And our masters hope to keep us. Ever thus beneath their heels and to

Speaker 2: coin our very lifeblood into gold But we have a glowing dream of how fair the world will seem When we each can live our lives secure and free When the earth is owned by labor, and there's joy and peace for all in the commonwealth of toil that is to be They would keep us cowed and beaten, cringing meekly at their feet. They would stand between each worker and their bread. Shall we yield our lives up to them for the bitter crust we eat? Shall we only hope for heaven when we're dead?

Speaker 2: But we have a glowing dream of how fair the world will seem When we each can live our lives secure and free. When the earth is owned by labor, and there's joy and peace for all in the commonwealth of toil that is to be Uh, where was I? They have they have laid our lives out for us to the utter end of time. Shall we stagger on beneath their heavy load Shall we let them live forever in their gilded halls of crime, With our children doomed to toil beneath their goad? But we have a glowing dream of

Speaker 2: how fair the world will seem When we each can live our lives secure and free. When the earth is owned by labor, and there's joy and peace for all in the commonwealth of toil that is to be When our cause is all triumphant, and we claim our mother earth, and the nightmare of the present fades away. We shall live with love and laughter, we who now are little worth, and will not regret the price we had to pay. But we have a glowing dream of how fair the world will seem when we each can live our lives secure and free.

Speaker 2: When the earth is owned by labor, and there's joy and peace for all in the common wealth of toil that is to be Very nice. Thank you. And and and that's all.

Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Do you take questions?

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 1: Yes. Do we have questions? Uh someone's forming committees already.

Speaker 3: Hello, thank you for an awesome talk and song. Is there a reason you didn't include discussing wages with your fellow laborers? Because I think that

Speaker 2: Yes, I didn't include it because uh it's a normal thing. And this is Django Day, so I wanted to talk about the things that would be specific. But yes, discuss wages with your your colleagues, yes. Uh yeah. It's also really fun, like like I was um I was working at a company, they were trying to hire me and uh and Um give me what I thought was low pay, but what other people would think was high pay. And I was just I they they caught me right before I said it, but I was I was in the middle of the conversation saying, like, what That sounds really low. Why would anyone work for much money uh uh with all these other people around to make them think oh you're you're not getting paid enough. You need to ask for more money, you know? It's uh

Speaker 2: yeah. Yeah. But also also privately is a good way to do it.

Speaker 4: So you talk about like like different ways of of of sort of like uh well what to do when the nego ne negotiations sort of like fail. If there's sort of like there's uh problem with the sort of like a workplace that doesn't like like get fixed and use of like thought ways of pressuring the uh employee employer How do you feel about the tactics that employers use? Like, do you f uh like what what do you feel about those tactics that sort of like the company could use to sort of like. like negotiate back.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 4: Do you do sort of like

Speaker 2: Union busting you're talking about?

Speaker 4: Well that or sort of like just let's say that if you go if you go to strike sort of like Like then the company would with should they sort of like be able to withhold work? So say that you okay you don't uh have to come next week. Sort of like Like not not sort of like like like putting do you think that there should be a like what do you feel if there would be a sort of like a balance between that the same sort of like tactics would be used? So so sort of your opinions.

Speaker 2: Okay. Is it perhaps that you have an example in mind?

Speaker 4: To strike, that basically means that you withhold the work from the company. But the company could also say then that hey, we'll withhold the work from you. You cannot go come to work and we'll not pay pay you.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 4: Sort of like

Speaker 2: This is a risk, yes. It is a risk that the company will fire you. So this is something you have to keep in mind. And that's maybe why you start with something smaller. That's maybe why you wait until you have a small group. That's maybe why you don't tell the work the You don't tell your bosses that you're negotiating them and that's why you instead just write the tests and don't tell them that you wrote the tests? Or You know? I guess one of the one of the advantages of organizing through an official union is is like It's um it's easier to say like we unionized and you fired us for unionizing and that's illegal. So you if you do it through the legal way, you get the legal protection. And if you do it this, I mean, you can join the industrial workers of the world and it'll you'll be part of a union, but

Speaker 2: if you don't do that, you just do these tactics, then um Well, it's still illegal to still probably illegal to fire you for organizing even if you aren't officially part of a union, but you do have less protection that way. Um does that answer your question? I guess not.

Speaker 4: Not totally. Maybe sort of like because my I might sort of like feel differently about these things. And that's sort of like I was more about like have you thought about the sort of like uh of the sort of like point of view of the employeur? I'm I'm I using the term slide. Is the employer the one that based on And maybe that's sort of like the reason is that I'm a small business owner and I'm part of Many small businesses.

Speaker 2: They are

Speaker 4: that kind of businesses that sort of like where uh sort of like I have to call if if there's pi if people have a bad day and they don't want to go come to work, I have to call them to get them to work because sort of like I need the work done so that sort of like my the customers don't come there. But how do you sort of like feel? Because you have pointed out uh really good cases how to use the pressure if the sort of like I'll say the sort of like normal way of of discussing breaks down. But how do you feel about the sort of like balance between things or like what What is your opinion on the when companies use those kind of like like pressure tactics? And I'm not uh speaking about union busting, but I'm speaking about those sort of like day. They'll use oppressor tactics back to the sort of like

Speaker 4: people.

Speaker 2: Yes. So I talked about workers and did I say employers? Well, but yeah, workers and employers, two classes, as if they're so clear. Um so if you like like have uh billion dollars and you yeah, then you're you're probably employing class or if you are like the commander of a military, you're employing class. And if you work as a as a Django developer and you don't have anyone reporting to you, you're definitely at work. But what if you're what if you have like one person reporting to you, or what if you have a small business? Then then a union will say you're not a worker, but you're actually much closer to the workers than to the uh

Speaker 2: to the the real employing class. So um it's kind of like a it's a tough position to be in, but I would um Like Yeah. I I I would see yourself as closer to the working class, but you ha you can only do this if you support your fellow workers. Now um what was the other thought I had? Just uh Yeah, then the other thing is trade unions th often the goal of a trade union is stated as to provide an efficient like work market and to have work continue being productive. So that's one goal you could have for organizing.

Speaker 2: Another goal you could have is to overthrow wage slavery and live in peace and harmony with the earth. So the the normal trade union view is closer to we need to keep the work work work going well so that's why we need to have good working conditions so that our workers won't strike. Yeah. Is that yeah , I could talk more about your weakness.

Speaker 1: It was a very good question, but uh answer has to be very long also. Uh we have time for an uh Another question? Yeah, there was one in the front. Oh, there's one in the front and one in the back. And then I think we have to close.

Speaker 5: So um you mentioned that one approach uh to resist kind of would be to outright write bugs in the code in the software. Isn't that a a a step too far because then you would be constraining your options. Um you're a professional and you you are your work is not just of poor quality but intentionally causing damage kind of. Um if our work wasn't Django developers but Instead we were running a nuclear plant, then would destroy the world. When does it become a step too far?

Speaker 2: Yes. This is uh This is something you you'd have to consider each case. So if it is a like a health risk, maybe you it's not the sort of place you want to create bugs. Maybe you want to create the bugs somewhere else. You don't necessarily have to create bugs, you could just be slow at developing. Or you could like open you could open tickets for bugs that aren't really bugs. You know? Just But I also want to point out um I think a lot of people have trouble with this that they take pride in their work. So I read a really nice report on uh from the CIA I think on on like well whatever suppose you're like um suppose you're imagine you're like a Django developer and you're in uh

Speaker 2: Russia and you're being made to make um Systems for controlling drones or something that are being shot to Ukraine. One of the best things you could do for the world is to make broken systems so that the drones just like don't take off or something. So like instinctively you say I want to write good software, but if I write good software, I'm contributing to uh death. And if I write bad software, I'm avoiding preventing death.

Speaker 5: Can't you avoid working for that employer in the first place?

Speaker 2: Well, sometimes. But if you find even if you find yourself working there, you can If you find yourself no i if you if you were stupid enough to hire me after hearing this talk to to write Like if someone were to give me a job like writing writing drone software for for Russia, well I'd be worried about sanctions, but like If I you know, I would I would take the job and I would write broken drone software and make make the make the drones crash and and not kill anyone. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Uh the yeah there was a question up here in the front, but then I think we n need to be mindful with the time. Who's in the front?

Speaker 6: It's actually more more of a comment, but um yes. But no, I think especially in Denmark when we are in a country where we have comparison relatively good working conditions or if we are in company that has good working conditions, it's really good to look at the cheap outsourcing that the company is probably doing and look at the working conditions of the people who have much less of a voice and and much less of a possibility and say, Okay, I'm not gonna work together with people in India who who are not on iT, who who who who don't have the same good working conditions that we have here.

Speaker 2: Yes. You can do even more than that. Thank you for this comment, even though it wasn't a question because because I I really want to talk about this. Um you can say I'm not gonna work with them or you can say I am gonna work with them and I'm gonna help them organize. I complain about trade unions, but um Trade unions do work relatively well in Denmark. POSA just donated money to a strike, gave money to a strike for Georgian IT workers. I think that's great.

Speaker 3: Uh final comment as someone who was uh fired about a month ago for standing up for our right to work from home, I can say that it was absolutely fucking worth it.

Speaker 1: All right. So these were some really g uh great ideas. Thank you so much for uh taking the opportunity to uh hopefully also get hired uh and uh and and thank you for also uh daring the musical venture it was great I think we should give a one round of applause for the talk and one for the music.

Speaker 2: For the music.