They could sack all of those people and give me a payrise and be hundreds of thousands better off.

I wish I could say it’s just this project, but it’s a real theme at this point. There are so many layers of fake jobs in every organisation.

Of course, the truth is you can have too many middle managers or too few (it really was bad that in 2017, the biggest achievement was "growing headcount"). But fads have a tendency to overcorrect.

HR is rarely involved in hiring decisions, that’s the responsibility of the hiring manager which is typically the new hire’s manager. At a very big company you might have HR screening applicants but that’s to save time for hiring managers.

[1] just as engineering ends up doing a bunch of nonsense when the money is flowing.

But I quite vividly remember any mention of that here on HN back then was responded to with "I'm paid great and can easily change jobs why would I want a union?" (with many engineers only thinking of factory worker unions as a model and forgetting that very highly paid and in demand actors also belong to a union).

You negotiate when you're in a position of strength, not while your value is rapidly falling through your fingers.

With AI and a growing population of ex-corporate workers desperate for work breaking up attempts to unionize would be easier than ever.