I don't feel underpaid, but I definitely feel like I've lost tons of ground in the last 2 years.
The floor has risen big time. Entry level jobs are paying up to 60k these days, whereas they were closer to 30k a few years back. Good for them, seriously. But watching the floor rise closer to you is never a great feeling.
To be clear, I do quite a bit better than that... I'm not complaining. But using 120k as an example...a person went from making 4x the typical full time salary to 2x the typical full time salary in a very short period.
> To be clear, I do quite a bit better than that... I'm not complaining. But using 120k as an example...a person went from making 4x the typical full time salary to 2x the typical full time salary in a very short period.
This is what I will never understand about most established tech people, they see all the widespread misery and poverty in SV and they still have the capacity to feel sorry for themselves for not making X times more than 'that other guy.'
It's always about what they don't have rather than see that they live in an insulated bubble existence that they could never really navigate if it weren't for that wealth disparity because they have such a narrow limited set of skills. aWant an experiment turn off the wifi, see how quickly these people lose their minds.
I'm not mad at you for it, for all I know you are self-taught guy that beat out a bunch Stanford grads by grinding since HS and making it on your own, but it's this never-ending need to beat that guy.
Its like that scene in American Psycho with those business cards, where for some odd reason people seem to have a need to over-embellish their existence's value with triviality that re-enforces the 'yeah, but I have more than that guy' narrative which is completely lost on me.
I hate to tell you but you will never have more than a Bezos or a Musk, either. Not to mention the Nation-state level despots of the World who don't have their net-worth listed on the Forbes 500.
Just enjoy what you have, while you have it, because I can assure those very same tech companies are pouring tons of money to render you obsolete as soon as possible.
People have expectations set by parents and society. Things like owning a house are socially expected and difficult in SV. It’s fairly natural to feel “sorry for yourself” when making good money if that good money either isn’t leading to a mortgage and a home or if that good money results in substantial challenges with said home and said mortgage.
Just because someone is more well off doesn’t mean they don’t have problems. It’s not enough to fix affordable housing and say job done if the housing market is completely broken solving the problem requires fixing housing for everyone including the well off.
The house trance in SV is very disturbing to me. I saw a lot- and I mean a lot of people move in with their families from the midwest to work at FAAMG, and then bought a house in sunnyvale which they absolutely HATE. From the high prices to the schools filled with grinds, they just want to move back to the midwest and live near the rest of their families in a place where land is cheap and people don't try to compete so hard in high school. Perpetual misery.
> From the high prices to the schools filled with grinds
Interesting to see the word "grind" word making a comeback. It's first manifestation was "greasy grind", used as a pejorative for academically hard working immigrant kids - usually Jewish - before WW2.
Before we start applying labels like that to people again, perhaps it would be better to look at the incentive structures that cause people to be so driven academically, even if to a fault.
For example, many of those people might not have a place like the Midwest to move back to, or even if they did, it would be even more hyper competitive (like much of Asia).
> they just want to move back to the midwest and live near the rest of their families in a place where land is cheap and people don't try to compete so hard in high school.
I sympathize with this as I think the SV style academic rat race damages kids' curiosity in the name of status, but the Midwest didn't sit still this whole time.
You will find such hyper competitive academic systems these days in many parts of the Midwest too, especially in the "nice" suburbs that people want to move to with cheaper land, big houses, "good" schools, and probably a short driving distance from a Whole Foods (or similarly posh supermarket).
Your argument I visualize as the floor falling from the room, the lowest paid have fallen, tech workers are “safe for now”
but they are concerned and are
trying to move to safer ground, and Bezos is in a spaceship above it all.
People who think techies are well paid probably haven’t tried raising a family yet.
> People who think techies are well paid probably haven’t tried raising a family yet.
I started my own fintech startup by bootstrapping and working 90+ hours a week and I managed to survive in Boulder where/when the average house price was over 1 million USD, you will get no sympathy from me.
My investments are the only thing that saved me, and I didn't have health benefits that entire time. I treaded water and almost drowned many times most of it's existence while disrupting an entire Industry in the process and eventually got head hunted by a mega corp.
When will you realize that are not one of the tech oligarchs? What part of that don't you get yet? You're an expendable part of the equation.
You guys have been coddled so much by these corps that insulate you from reality I almost wonder if you can see the trees from the forest and what your role is in all of this?
We are making the same point. I think few people are under any illusions, the “comparing total
compensation” movement probably came out of people wanting to get a
bit more out of the ogilarchs for that comfortable retirement but not thinking they are one themselves (numerically there can only be so many)
I get that and appreciate you calling it out, I'm not blind to how whiny it sounds. FWIW, I don't live in SV or make an SV salary.
I've always tried to stay at 2x the prevailing local wage, so that my wife can stay home and take care of the house and kid with no worry. That's really my only motivation. When you're doing more than 2x, you feel ahead of the curve. When 2x comes at you fast, you start to sweat a little.
But it's not lost on me that I'm lucky to be able to have such an existence.
> This is what I will never understand about most established tech people, they see all the widespread misery and poverty in SV and they still have the capacity to feel sorry for themselves for not making X times more than 'that other guy.
I don't understand this opinion. Why are the two feelings in conflict? I can be concerned for the people around me AND be concerned that I'm making less than X times more than the average.
I really don't think there's anything good about equality if it means a programmer is making the same as the unqualified people - to me that signals a completely broken world that can't function. This kind of equality has been tried and failed spectacularly, and I live in a place that still feels the catastrophe today, 30 years post-facto, and it will be felt for the next 30 years at least, too.
Overall, equality seems to me to be a misguided goal. We want people to have comfortable, healthy lives - I don't see how that relates to financial equality at all. Life needs to get cheaper so even the poor people can afford it - making everyone an equal millionaire will never work, that would just cause the prices to rise so much nobody could afford it and the meme of "equal misery" would become a reality once again. Let's talk about financial equality again once machines can do all the work.
> Why are the two feelings in conflict? I can be concerned for the people around me AND be concerned that I'm making less than X times more than the average.
Because as a tech worker your salary is likely already well above the level that it would need to fall in order for us to achieve meaningful level of wealth equality (not complete equality, but equal-ish)
> making everyone an equal millionaire will never work
Yes, exactly. But could work is having a scale of something like lower middle class to upper middle class incomes and getting rid of millionaires entirely (or making them as rare as billionaires are today). If we want to bring people out of poverty that money has to come from somewhere, and if you're making 6 figures some of it probably needs to come from you.
> Because as a tech worker your salary is likely already well above the level that it would need to fall in order for us to achieve meaningful level of wealth equality (not complete equality, but equal-ish)
Why would you want that??? I think it's awesome the common Joe can learn programming on the internet and earn huge bucks. Why cancel that of all things?
And then, I don't think your suggestion for equality would work. If my work was significantly taxed above $100K, I'd stop earning more at that point because work is very stressful to me and I'm not going to do it if I don't get the benefit of it; and I'd most definitely not go into any sort of risk (like starting a startup) in that world.
If I can't even bang on a keyboard without someone feeling entitled to get the majority of my product, well then I'm not doing it, sorry. Everybody would lose - I'd pay much less taxes overall, and innovation from my side would grind to halt.
(now I earn slightly less than $100k, but also live and work in Europe).
> If my work was significantly taxed above $100K, I'd stop earning more at that point because work is very stressful to me and I'm not going to do it if I don't get the benefit (now I earn slightly less than $100k, but also live and work in Europe). Everybody would lose - I'd pay less taxes overall.
Perfect. You get a less stressful life. And you working less creates job opportunities for others.
Other people win just by you (and other high earners) earning less. They don't have to earn more. Their money is worth more if there is less total money in circulation.
No, I don't get a less stressful life, I'd get a much more stressful one. One, maybe two years I earn a lot, and then 2-5 years next to nothing. I must plan my life according to the needs of my mental health, not fiscal calendars of some social engineers who can't understand that one size doesn't fit all and can seriously hurt some people (yeah, even those who earn a lot some years are still just humans, and sometimes sleep on the street another year too).
And it's a life where I am forbidden to do useful things that others want me to do and I am willing and able (which is not always, or often) - just because someone said "you did enough in this arbitrary period of time, give us your money or don't do it at all".
Don't even start about me owing the society, because in my view the society owes me a lot for the pain it caused me, gave me nothing of value, and tries very hard to keep me from obtaining the little I have. And the bill keeps growing. The idea that this should not only prevail but continue to worsen gives me chills.
Sorry - nothing personal, but I really, truly hate every bit of your idea of the world. From the beginning where people "should earn less so we are equal" to the end where it's "perfect that engineers work less" and the bit where you just assume I'd lead a less stressful life, even though you know nothing about me - typical of people of your opinions.
> And it's a life where I am forbidden to do useful things that others want me to do and I am willing and able (which is not always, or often) - just because someone said "you did enough in this arbitrary period of time, give us your money or don't do it at all".
No you're not. You're free to do whatever you like. You just won't receive as much money in return as you would otherwise have done.
> From the beginning where people "should earn less so we are equal" to the end where it's "perfect that engineers work less"
To be clear, to the extent that there is a difference, I think that people with high earnings should be taxed more not that their nominal income should be lowered or restricted. And I think that it would be good if people had the freedom to choose to work less while still earning enough to comfortably live on. If you want to continue working as much as you currently do then all power to you. It was you who said further up the thread that would choose to work less.
It wouldn't force you to work less. If you think earning less would have a serious impact on your mental health, then spare a thought for those who already earn dramatically less than you, and still would (although not by quite so much) after such a change was implemented.
I can't spare a thought for them when my own existence is endangered. I'm thinking about them a lot now, and donate when I can, but that would have to end.
The problem here is being forced to work less at a time when I'm able to work more. It's not fair to make me earn less just because I wasn't able to spread out my work across the calendar because of my mental health issues.
I don't see where your ability to spread out work is affected at all. Taxes are usually done annually, so how spread or concentrated work is over a year wouldn't affect the level of taxation. And it's already the case that this can't (easily - I suspect there are ways) be spread over multiple years. That wouldn't be a change.
I would also point out that those with lower salaries also suffer from mental health issues. I see no reason why yours specifically should take precedence.
Yes indeed, taxes are annual - and I told you clearly that I have years (usually less than one) when I can work well followed by years (usually multiple) when I can't work at all. E.g. in 2017 I was able to work 7 months and then nothing 2 years, then 3 months and nothing for a year, etc. I'd have passed your threshold in 2017 (if we adjusted by purchasing power) but thankfully there was none and so I was just barely able to make enough money to stay off the street during the two following years (but I wasn't that lucky the next period).
I shouldn't take any precedence whatsoever, but others shouldn't have any precedence over me. It's bad enough that I'm unable to get any assistance because "I'm rich enough" - actually I'm in serious debt.
The most draconian collector I had was the tax agency, which assigned me interest larger than the worst loan shark you could find anywhere in the world; they don't care that a court locked me up in a hospital and disabled my bank accounts, I got 0.3%/day (yes, per day) "to motivate payment ASAP". I guess I should've just unstrapped myself from the bed, get a gun, rob the bank of my own money, and pay? Other creditors like banks were just OK to chill a little until I'm back, even the gangster drug dealer guy I had to borrow from when banks wouldn't see me treated me with much more respect than the state.
That's what you want more of? GTFO with that, you will just fuck up poor people's lives even more - the stories in the hospital were very similar to mine, and those other people don't have the big annual wage I can get as a programmer. If you think the state will try to help poor people, tell me why is it not helping at least a little now? I'm from a poor family, where was the state when I wasn't a programmer yet? Let me tell you, it was working hard to fuck us up even more. And now after my hard work overcoming my own problems, in spite of everything the state has thrown at me, you're saying it should get even more of my work?
It sounds like you make a very high income in some periods of your life, but that you are unable to work and struggle to make ends meet at other times. What I would like is that make a little less in the good times, but that you have much better support in the bad times. Yes, the state would get more of your work when you can work, but in return you'd get support from the output of others' work when you can't.
That would include things like free health care, housing, and relief from tax burdens. Why doesn't the state help you? I'd argue that that's a lot because of lack of funding due to people taking your attitude that the state shouldn't take "your" money. I feel like you are someone who would benefit greatly from income redistribution that was well-implemented.
> I feel like you are someone who would benefit greatly from income redistribution that was well-implemented.
In theory, but I also can't afford illusions, if it doesn't work out it will be way too destructive to me - and I can't see any reason whatsoever why it should work.
I disagree the problems are because of a lack of funding. Any western state has loads of money they could be using to help people. I'd be happy to add more if it just wasn't enough, but we're very far away from states making a good use of what they get now.
As it stands, I don't think any increased income from taxation would translate into more support for poor people or people like me. Not a single cent. I expect the opposite - the states would pour the money into enforcement, and people would get hurt more.
> Sorry - nothing personal, but I really, truly hate every bit of your idea of the world.
Just so it's clear, I don't agree with what he said. I stand by my comments, but I don't agree that we should coax any of what the poster has said either.
I believe in equality of opportunity, not outcome. So, I'm absolutely fine with paying higher taxes if that money gets ear-marked for single payer healthcare, education, infrastructure, etc. See the nordics for an example.
I don't believe doing that would require making millionaires as rare as billionaires are today. The nordic countries have plenty of millionaires and billionaires, yet everyone has most of their basic needs taken care of and most everyone has the opportunity to make something of themselves.
Something I suspect we both believe in is that allocation of resources ought to be roughly proportional to value provided.
Where I suspect we differ is that I don’t believe that market value of services is an especially accurate measure of true value provided. And in particular I think it would be pretty much impossible for someone to provide enough value to society (relative to the average person with a normal job - many of which IMO provide huge value to society for little compensation) to warrant billionaire level wealth. I therefore think we ought to correct this discrepancy.
> This is what I will never understand about most established tech people, they see all the widespread misery and poverty in SV and they still have the capacity to feel sorry for themselves for not making X times more than 'that other guy.'
As opposed to who exactly? The system is based on greed and maximizing profits/salaries/status/whatever. Are doctors/lawyers/financial people not behaving this way? Some doctors earn around one million USD a year in the U.S, that's money that makes insurance more expensive and unaffordable for everyone.
> Some doctors earn around one million USD a year in the U.S, that's money that makes insurance more expensive and unaffordable for everyone.
You're seriously not comparing yourself to physicians in level of importance in Society, are you?!
As I said, after COVID we got a real wake up call of who mattered, and Nurses and Physicians deserve every penny that they get, its the system that is broken: see Stanford nurse strike.
Moreover, it's actually not the physician salaries that keep things unaffordable, but the over-pricing of every bloated expense, procedure, medication, drug etc... that keeps it at those levels and simply because they can.
Believe me, I just did 2 MRIs that I put off for several years because of COVID, physicians who I met before COVID who were doing well, and are probably better of financially now then before have been run-down significantly and they all had the same tells of using amphetamines/cocaine that I saw in my undergrad as pre-med students and bio students did the same courses.
The real blame is at the administrative level, and accounting not the physician or nurse level. My MRI required that 2 specialists sign off on it before the Insurance approved it and everyone took a cut, such that by the time I got my MRI it was actually less (in the 1000s) than the 2 specialist visits to get that one MRI. I did this once again for my 2nd one and the same thing.
I also got an EMG in 2019 and had to go for another one, it didn't matter that I had significant atrophy and weakness, not that I was approved for one before when it wasn't as bad as it is now. I had to go through the same process and everyone got their cut.
So, again... no you're embellishing YOUR value if you think you are comparing apples to apples, its simply not the same thing at all.
And none of you were working double shifts in an ER or Urgent care when COVID was at it's peak, or the large amount of attempted or successful suicides as lockdown, so really, get some perspective. You work on computeres, and many of you boast about really only doing 4 hours of work a day, the fact that you're posts counts are as high and still complaining about salary is testament of this very facade.
And no, I don't agree, the 'system' was not based on greed, you chose to make it about greed because so many other have as well and is another matter entirely, because most physicians and some nurses are drowning in debt by the time they get to earning a decent salary. I agree they should optimize for that given those circumstances and many have after COVID and those who haven't are jumping ship or leaving the Industry all together, which is why we should pay them whatever they deserve/ask for (within reason, of course) to retain them.
People aren't even aware of how many nurses are simply over the job entirely and will be quitting in masse.
> As I said, after COVID we got a real wake up call of who mattered, and Nurses and Physicians deserve every penny that they get
I'm not saying they don't deserve to get paid well but some doctors earn 10-15 times as much as the nurses they work with, so its not all about "value to society", it's simple market forces. I used the word greed which is very negative but we can simply call it market forces.
Also why do you think family doctors earn half as much as plastic surgeons for instance? Are plastic surgeons bringing 2X the value? If anything family doctors are first in line and responsible for hundreds of lives each year.
For the record I think both nurses and doctors oughta be paid very well, possibly much more than me, as do construction workers and kindergarten teachers. And no, I don't think a doctor should earn one million yearly but that's just my opinion. But anyway the system simply doesn't work like that. The market doesn't care much about who works the hardest or who contributes the most to society.
Few American dr's make $1M. Most of those that make many multiples more than nurses are specialists, and they are still much less than $1M. I do know ones that do better... Because they are involved in effectively second jobs around biotech startups, maybe clinical trials, vs the actual patient care. I've been curious on celebrity patients (who seem to be more about donations/endowments.) You can get $700k by being the only specialist in the middle of nowhere and working nonstop, but most prefer not to.
Instead, someone doing regular family medicine is more like $150-250k... Less than a US programmer with significantly less training & responsibilities. You don't get big RSU refreshers for saving lives.
But the interesting thing is comparing over time. Specialists not only likely took loans and no salary for the stressful years of college, med school, and then residency, but then did another 2-4 years of fellowship, and really good ones, another 4-7 years of underpaid phd. They are making up for 1-2 decades of being underpaid and even debt, beyond the daily stress. More fun? As all the pay comes deferred in big batches, it is also taxed at ~double the rate of everyone else. Triple hit for savings: they don't get the compounding investment bump of people who started to get paid 1-2 decades sooner. Insurance is high too - disability, liability, etc. that regular people don't pay.
After another decade or two it balances out and starts being more than others, and then they retire.
I am not really comparing whose situation is better but since you brought it up: Doctors in general earn more but work much much harder. They also have much much better job security, it is unheard of for a doctor to be considered obsolete at his 50s.
I wouldn't want the life of a doctor personally but financially it is the better field imo, on average.
Maybe put differently: You can be 9-5 FAANG type and retire as early as 40. In contrast, due to the delayed paycheck for specialists... they're looking at another 10 years after that. Likewise, at FAANG, you're living large as a 20-something, while specialists are running on debt & tiny stipends while going through crazy stress: you don't get to enjoy that paycheck while in your prime. There are always outliers, but with 500K+ well-paid folks just in FAANG, and probably 1M+ when other high paying are included, there's a reason even medical folks are getting squeezed out of the bay area.
> You're seriously not comparing yourself to physicians in level of importance in Society, are you?!
Oh please.
One of the fun things about MDs and dentists is that it's one of the only professions where the supply of those people is strictly controlled by the people who are in danger of being replaced. There are VASTLY more people qualified of being excellent cardiologists and neurologists than there are spots to be trained in those specialties. The exclusivity of the practicing physicians on the field is what limits supply and increases demand.
what a weird statement. Would doctors be as valuable without modern tech or medicine? I don't view any group as some sort of elite class, gracing the rest of us with their existence.
> what a weird statement. Would doctors be as valuable without modern tech or medicine? I don't view any group as some sort of elite class, gracing the rest of us with their existence.
False equivalence, and this is akin to one asking if you would be where you are if electricity ever got invented. It's all built on someone's else's shoulders, and the fact that you can say this underscores exactly what I mean.
They save lives, you are one of many who push code that could potentially be of use to use to someone who does is not the same thing.
It's only weird because it conflicts with your copium, you two are not the same thing and society doesn't rely on you as heavily as you think you do.
> One of the fun things about MDs and dentists is that it's one of the only professions where the supply of those people is strictly controlled by the people who are in danger of being replaced.
I'm aware of the AMA's practices, I did my undergrad with pre-meds; I know how the system works, That still doesn't change what I said, you weren't working doubles in an ER during COVID. You were likely at home working normal hours and on Zoom calls, you really can't compare the two professions at all.
Just because the medical system itself is broken doesn't detract from what I said either, it's entirely broken and I explained my situation that I feel best reflects that with an anecdote, too.
> No one deserves anything beyond basic human rights. I have great respect for the work done by doctors, but other countries pay doctors far less and still achieve better health outcomes. As a society, are we getting a good value for our money?
See above.
And just so it's clear the same goes for software developers; I think we can all agree that most coding interviews are a waste of time, and as most get more experience under their belt they are less tolerant of the absurdity of it all. That doesn't diminish the talent that exists in this Industry.
Personally speaking it's something that I'm dreading about coming back into the tech Industry; I come from startup land as a founder, and my only interview at a tech firm was just the telling me about what project I'd be working on if I decided to join, they didn't even probe me for anything as I got head-hunted and they already did their research on me before they ever reached out.
I'm pretty sure that will be the case this time around and sitting around white-boarding sounds like a total waste without more than 7 years in the Industry to me, too.
It is not a false equivalence. Doctors are not scalable. Is the physicality of it increase the value? The inventor of antibiotics has saved more lives than any single doctor. I might agree that a lot of developers are working on trivial things, but that doesn't take away from the fact that all modern advances in areas that save lives have software engineers directly involved somewhere in the chain to make that advance.
No one deserves anything beyond basic human rights. I have great respect for the work done by doctors, but other countries pay doctors far less and still achieve better health outcomes. As a society, are we getting a good value for our money?
Ok, let me spell it out: you're not special. Nothing about your profession makes you special, you are not somehow better than anyone because you can sit at a computer and write code.
It's a skill, a very highly compensated one for now but an incredibly narrow one that happens to be useful a select few corps, sure, but so was were many other things.
And if one thing that COVID has taught us is how incredibly unnecessary you are to maintaining civilization--unless you are some supply chain developer in which case you were doomed either way. No one was calling for the return for programmers like they were for even barbers or cooks, in fact people lauded the fact that FB went down.
In short, you like being told you're special, it makes you feel good. But you are not. Wide spread misery isn't about equality, I can assure this isn't what I'm advocating here, it's about a self-awareness issue.
> you are not somehow better than anyone because you can sit at a computer and write code.
You're right, any human being with a pulse can produce effective software with no training or education or experience or effort whatsoever, and nobody's better at it than anybody else, unlike every other single human endeavor.
>And if one thing that COVID has taught us is how incredibly unnecessary you are to maintaining civilization
I don't think you understand how the world dealt with COVID.
Governments needed software fast to deal with things like tracking the spread of the virus, ensuring people observe protocols (like in my country Greece where you had to go online or send a text to make sure that you're allowed to be outside during the peak of the pandemic). You do mention supply chain, like it's one simple job, but in fact software is now an integral part of selling anything to anyone.
People went online to do things like work, socialize, buy things they don't need, buy the things they need to survive, go to school or learn skills they now need to survive like how to cook, exercise, perform, have sex.
I don't think being a programmer makes me special either, I'm not attacking that argument of yours, but in trying to make that argument you make some very myopic remarks...
It's horrifying that any software developer would participate in a scheme that required people to get permission to go outside. That was a fundamental violation of human rights that can't possibly be justified for any public health reasons. Developers need a better sense of ethics, and the courage to refuse such projects.
I assume this is a reply to my comment. What you're saying here is right, but I have no idea why you're saying it as I really don't care about being special, at all. Never crossed my mind until now, and nobody ever told me so (except for the other meaning of "special", and that has a lot of truth to it).
And then, even if I thought I was special (I don't), I would still be fully capable of feeling concerned for other less fortunate people while feeling concerned about making less than X times the average.
Anyways, the demand for software engineers increased extremely significantly (multiples of open positions, rates doubled) when Covid started and all remaining companies hopped on the digital transformation trend; and that continues to today.
Every contract I interviewed for since it began, they literally begged me to work for them (previously it felt like we're equals, they were able to say no without fear of not finding anyone else). They don't even ask programming questions anymore, they just try to make their company look like the best place while apologizing profusely for their limited budget. Your characterization of the programmers market seems totally out of loop.
> (except for the other meaning of "special", and that has a lot of truth to it).
Haha, I appreciate the candor, and earnest response!
> Anyways, the demand for software engineers increased extremely significantly (multiples of open positions, rates doubled) when Covid started and all remaining companies hopped on the digital transformation trend; and that continues to today.
I agree, it's why I came back to tech actually; I wasn't satisfied with where the fintech Industry was heading in the 'blockchain' craze and decided that while the pay was good, the most I had ever been offered actually in any job, I'd be dedicating my life to something I knew was a farce and we couldn't deliver because of abject greed to cash-in on the flavor of the month.
> Your characterization of the programmers market seems totally out of loop.
I never said the demand didn't exist, I said that their is a deluded sense of self-worth that is so out of touch with reality from the comments I quoted that it's astonishing to hear people make so much and still be like 'well that guys has more, so I should too.'
That level of greed is what puts me off so much from this Industry because it resembles banking, its also a red signal that we have entered what is likely a bubble in programmer salaries which for me as a person just getting back in to tech after a 5 year absence to study AI and ML (arguably the most frothy of all programming roles) makes me step and re-evaluate things.
>"they just try to make their company look like the best place while apologizing profusely for their limited budget"
Do you not see how your 2 comments here give off the impression that you feel special? Maybe you don't feel special (like you explicitly say), but those two comments especially give a strong impression that you do feel special.
EDIT: I continued reading down this thread and I found a comment chain that perfectly encapsulates the "feeling special" observation: https://hackernews.hn/item?id=31336614
>"Well said. Working in tech is like writing a book with 50 people instead of 1."
I don't feel special because the same thing applies to every programmer I know. How could I in any way feel special when I'm just the same as others? I said it because I wanted you to feel how the market is, not because it makes me special.
And I don't think that a job makes a person special, why would it? It's just a job. I work on a hot market, someone else does not - that doesn't make any of us special people. To me, a special person is distinguished by much more than just working on a hot market.
I don't even know how much money the people who I think are special have or make, and don't care about it at all. Few of the best programmers I know make nearly zero money (of course, by choice). They're special by themselves, not because of their money.
Should I lie about the market so you don't think I feel special even if I repeat like 10 times it doesn't make me special, or what?
> "And I don't think that a job makes a person special, why would it? It's just a job. I work on a hot market, someone else does not - that doesn't make any of us special people."
Well, a job takes up roughly 1/3 of our working lives (minus 2/3 for sleep (8hrs) and "leisure" (8hrs)), so I would say that it defines us very much, and it's a lot more than "just a job". A "job" is stacking shelves at Tesco or driving lorries for Amazon. Tech is a career (and a lifestyle, given how much it seeps into one's personal life e.g. watching Defcon before bed, I doubt lorry drives watch Lorrycon talks before bed...)
As for your other point, fair enough, point taken.
> And if one thing that COVID has taught us is how incredibly unnecessary you are to maintaining civilization--unless you are some supply chain developer
Wait what? So you somehow realize that if you're a software engineer supporting some necessary field, you're necessary by extension, but apparently the only thing we needed during covid was a function supply chain. Impressive mental gymnastics.
No one was calling for the "return" of programmers because (almost) no one interacts with them directly like they do their barber. Do you think their barbers decided during covid that they no longer needed to support credit card payments, an electronic scheduling system, etc?
The fact that you cannot see that is what I mean, you take what I said as a personal insult while simultaneously having the collective view that if 'poor people want to stop being poor they should learn to code like me' around here.
It's cognitive dissonance and the part that I don't get is how you think people with other skills would want to do this even if given the choice were it not for the money.
I'm a self-taught coder and don't regard myself highly. I will be honest, I never thought it was easy but it's also not difficult in the same way that biochemistry, nuclear chemistry or organic chemistry is difficult either: it's more tedious than it is anything else. It's all relative to what you've done before, I suppose.
It's a lot of grinding, searching and revising and a war of attrition. All while putting up with people who quite frankly have the social skills of a lamppost and not giving into the urge of wanting to just quit and leave it all behind and start a hobby farm--as is so common in the tech circles towards the end.
I can see what you mean, I just don't agree about the skills.
I agree to a large extent about the social skills, and even the hobby farm seeing as I've considered it more than once... but being good in IT requires a wide range of skills.
It feels like most people that enter the field now are here because of the money, which is OK, but that doesn't mean they are any good, many are not, they are just taking advantage of a good opportunity. Again, that is OK.
This is a gig that won't last forever, like having a popular YouTube channel, so there is no reason to read into it any more than "people are jumping on the bandwagon during a gold-rush", and no reason to get so upset about it. There is no more or less social inequality because of IT workers than there was during the "house flipping" trend from a few years back, Crypto, social media influencer channels, etc.
There are a lot of good paying jobs, and no job will ever make you wealthy or powerful, so no reason to get worked up over ordinary working-class people (even if they make 6 figures, it's the 8+ figures that oppress).
> This is what I will never understand about most established tech people, they see all the widespread misery and poverty in SV and they still have the capacity to feel sorry for themselves for not making X times more than 'that other guy.'
Out of sight, out of mind? What does it matter whether the misery and poverty is in your neighbourhood, or in the third world?
> Out of sight, out of mind? What does it matter whether the misery and poverty is in your neighbourhood, or in the third world?
Or a level self-abosrbedness that can only be defined as peak narcissism, really.
I get wanting to be paid what you're worth, but when it comes to pretending you're some how any better than any other wage-slave is where I have trouble crossing over that level of hubris.
And that is not just keep up with jones syndrome: getting services
done like building work, cleaning, etc. gets more expensive. I am all for equality of that nature if everyone is joining in!
American cities don't ban housing construction (the one exception being San Francisco/Bay Area). Every other major US metro (literally everyone except SF) has been experiencing a massive housing construction boom for the past ten years straight now.
This isn't true. Most major metros are experiencing a serious housing crisis right now. We see similar problems to SF here in Somerville and Cambridge, albeit to a lesser degree. There's certainly not enough being built to keep pace with demand. The suburbs around us are even worse.
> We see similar problems to SF here in Somerville and Cambridge,
"Boston saw a historic building boom during the seven years (2014-2021) that former mayor Marty Walsh, a former construction union leader, occupied City Hall. The city’s skyline transformed, and continues to do so. Tens of thousands of new units of housing were created. An entire neighborhood rose from the ground."
- https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2021/07/19/boston-mayor...
> Most major metros are experiencing a serious housing crisis right now.
Completely agree. But your reasons are off. Most high prices have literally nothing to do with supply or demand in any traditional (person-based) sense. Boston certainly fits that model -- it's price problems have nothing to do with any shortage in construction (construction is booming) or 'housing ban' (obviously there's no meaningful ban, because construction has already happened in large numbers for over a decade)
> Boston certainly fits that model -- it's price problems have nothing to do with any shortage in construction (construction is booming) or 'housing ban' (obviously there's no meaningful ban, because construction has already happened in large numbers for over a decade)
This is poor reasoning. The fact that some housing got built does not mean that there weren't significant impediments to building it, many of which still remain. Or that even during the boom that enough housing was built to sustain increased demand. There has been a historic housing boom alongside an enormous population surge over the past ten years (nearly 10% in the city proper alone). The boom is still not keeping pace with demand, and restrictions on multi-family housing remain. Here's a good article that gives an overview of the policy issues locally: https://commonwealthmagazine.org/opinion/on-housing-wu-shoul...
In particular:
> In Boston, on account of its antiquated zoning laws, it’s easier to build a leather tannery than it is to site an apartment building. The zoning code is written in such a way that it is nearly impossible to build multi-family housing, without going through the time consuming and costly process to obtain a zoning variance. Even then, projects are at the mercy of abutters and neighborhood associations that are often diametrically opposed to any form of development in their backyards, particularly projects with a higher unit count.
Also,
> Most high prices have literally nothing to do with supply or demand in any traditional (person-based) sense.
Citation needed. Population is growing faster than housing supply. High prices are exactly what you would expect in this situation. Building more housing is the only long-term solution.
That's not true, every major city in the US is experiencing a major housing shortage. Not building enough units to keep up with demand can hardly be called a massive boom.
If only Americans reignited their imagination and didn't just settle on having a few big cities in opposite corners of the country.
America is huge. There's land everywhere. Start dreaming. China has 160 cities with 1+ million people. We have 10. Granted, there is a massive population difference, but we should most definitely have more than 10.
There are major issues when you only have a few cities with the bulk of the opportunity and high salaries for given fields. It stymies growth for the rest of the country, and for all the people we claim to care about: the poor and uneducated.
Greece has this issue with Athens being the only realistic metropolitan location. All the resources are there, and those left in the villages and small towns are finding it harder and harder to advance. If you aren't going to Athens (or immigrating to another country), you aren't succeeding. This is a big problem.
This is kind of ignoring all the positive effects from density. Yes, housing for density is hard. Yes, there are some negatives. But you would not get anywhere near the economic productivity you do from 330 Million people uniformly spread across the US as you do from having huge spikes in NYC and LA (and other metropolitan zones).
You also have to face the fact that as you spread people out, most costs go up. Cities subsidize suburbia and rural areas in the sense that cities generate more tax revenues of all types relative to costs. Suburban and rural areas mostly fail to raise enough tax revenue to pay for their own infrastructure and generally rely on various handouts from state and federal governments to build things like sewers and roads, which they then do not adequately maintain due to budget shortfalls.
The US has way more than 10 "cities" with over 1M population, unless you ignore ground truth (metro area) and only count people within random city boundaries
You may be conflating metro areas with cities. If you are, it's not a helpful distinction in either case, and not the point I am trying to illustrate.
For example, I could live in Wise County in Texas, and be technically counted towards the population of the Dallas/FW/Arlington Metro, but I would never dream of driving into Dallas from there daily for services, schooling, or work, and if I did, I would be severely disadvantaged, especially if I was poor or lacked resources.
I don't they are conflating metro areas, I think they're describing the accumulation of population a defined area. Metro area can make "cities" seem larger than they are because that population is spread out, but city is misleading as well because it ignores the surrounding population.
Let me put it this way. If you go by city population size, Columbus where I live is larger than San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Las Vegas, or Atlanta [1]. In fact, Columbus is almost the same size as Atlanta and and Miami combined. Does that seem right to you?
If I were you, for your argument I would use population densities.
But you can’t bucket a million people living in thousands of square miles as the same as a million locked together in a suburban sprawl connected with rail and roads. Look at London. Take away the boroughs and what is really left?
China may have a 160 cities with a million+ people, but, do all of these cities have the infrastructure and opportunities that are the same as or come close to Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzen? IMO, this is a case where quantity alone is a poor metric.
This is a difficult question to accurately answer because the only source of this information is an unreliable one (the Chinese regime). We can, however, assume via observation of how efficient and diverse their manufacturing is, which leads to some baseline assumption they all have above average infrastructure, housing, and other services, in addition to affording salaries to those millions of people that does not result in unmanageable civil unrest. Plenty of experts believe China's infrastructure is ahead of the US at this point. They build 100 miles of high speed rail for the same cost we build 1 mile of tunnel, or 10 miles of toll lane that 90% of commuters won't use.
There are other educated assumptions we can make based on the rapid response to the Wuhan outbreak and the surrounding cities, but in my opinion, based on inference from what we can observe from the outside, the answer is firmly yes.
Well, compared to the rest of the world, I found US diversification much better than most of other countries, that have only one major city to where everything flows in.
From an environmental point of view, it seems nearly ideal if most humans would live in a few big cities, than more of the rest of the earth could be given back to nature.
entry level jobs in software engineering at FAANG were over 120K about 10 years ago and that was already underpaid. California is a really expensive place to live long term and people generally do not do the math and do not account for child care, retirement, sickness or health issues or whatever. then there is the cost of (ongoing) education and issues of mental health in this industry.
And those who think remote will be long term to their advantage are wrong. All that will happen is that these companies will find a way to pay you less. The solution is to organize.
for those who will reply that people are making less in CA and also need to survive… i was in a black uber recently and the driver told me he was averaging 20K per month. not bad for driving a car with zero education or leetcode requirements.
Now that I think about it, you're right. The entry level in SF & Peninsula 10+ years ago was 120k (except startups). Entry level hasn't increased with cost of living so that 120k isn't the same as 10 years ago. Senior pay has increased a little at around 200k-300k. Depending on equity value that might be 300k-500k total comp.
based on levels.fyi senior comp should be somewhere around 800k TC which makes sense taking into account what living in metro areas in CA will cost taking everything into account long term. of course a large part of that is equity etc. 200k is still not very well paid taking into account many other ways you can make money and the crazy requirements put on engineers.
As somebody who looked into doing the highest echelons of Uber/Lyft in the most expensive parts of California - I do believe your driver was lying to you about $20k/mo.
Would be glad to be proven wrong, but I’ve looked pretty deeply into it.
this is not uberX but uber black or SUV. i think he is doing a lot of airport trips which are going to be at least $50 without tips. but you are right, i have no way of verifying what he said.
That's a strange concern you seem to have... why does it bother you that fellow programmers are getting salaries close to yours? Do you think it would feel better if your salary could be 5x higher than theirs? Why? That will not actually affect you negatively in any way! Unless you're being actually underpaid compared to your peers with the same experience and skills, there's only good things about people with lower skills getting higher pay.
If you're a senior delivering 10x the value of a grad, does it not feel fair to offer more than 2x the salary?
I'm torn tbh - there are various ways that a salary can be set, including the value people are delivering, market forces and in reference to others in the career ladder. There's a balancing act to be had, but I can see where the GP is coming from.
This is why I went into freelance. It’s not about being a junior, there are people that put in so little effort they basically bring negative value, and I’m being paid comparable to them
> you're a senior delivering 10x the value of a grad
Not arguing one way or another. But an alternate hypothesis would be this skill gap has closed.
Education might be better. Or tooling may have improved such that the tangible benefit of experience has, for most current applications, depreciated. Assuming the reduced innovativeness of the average tech worker today versus ten years ago, the equation balances.
Test might be measuring this skill gap in new industries (e.g. crypto) versus established ones (like adtech).
Even with the best education, tooling and copy-paste resources, it still takes at least 4-5 years to become competent. In my opinion, entry-level quality as consistently dropped over the last 20 years.
It's not, juniors are as bad as they were 2 years ago.
Generally it's politically easier to nerf better paid employees than cheap ones.
You can have the socialist argument of "hey senior engineer, take a salary cut / no raise for the common good, to avoid layoffs of junior engineers - which btw would be the first to go as they're not as productive as you are" and I've seen plenty of senior engineers accept that. Their livelihood are not as stake so they'll take one for the team, forgetting that it's a for profit company which can't find the money.
In the above scenario, I refused and I wasn't fired - but I also started looking for a job and switched 2 weeks after the above episode happened.
Do you still believe pay is directly correlated with how much "value" you deliver?
Maybe in an alternative world, it would... but in my experience, salaries are almost entirely based on market demand and supply, local regulation, and how much money the particular industry you can find jobs on can make, divided by how many people they need to make it happen (which changes how much they pay when they get desperate for experienced workers).
How much value you actually deliver depends not only on your skills, but on the company you're working on actually creating value (which depends on not only the product, but the marketing, sales, local conditions, competition etc.)... and even though that will affect your salary, as I mentioned before, the real driver of salaries is supply (more specifically, how many capable people could do the job besides you, and how much other companies would be willing to pay them)...
For example, we know lots of companies that made billions of dollars while only employing a few dozen engineers... I'm pretty sure those engineers were only getting the minimum possible salary to keep them from leaving for another job... despite them each arguably producing several million dollars of company value every year.
On the other hand, lots of companies make losses for year while still paying good salaries to thousands of people... would you rather see those people getting no salaries until the company turned a profit??
Now that we've established that there's no real correlation between the value an individual salaried employee produces and how much money a company is actually willing to pay them, let's look at the social aspect of the problem as well.
When everyone gets a decent pay (by us increasing the bottom relative to the top), society is fairer in a greater sense, as more people will have the means to have a good life regardless of their education or skills... those with greater skills will always be more highly appreciated and better compensated in a free economy (specially those willling to start their own business - which allows them to extract nearly ALL value they produce at the cost of high risk to themselves... by the way, that's why those who do it are not willing to give their salaried employees ALL the value they deliver). That has great benefits to society as a whole as there is going to be fewer people that resent the "smart asses" making 10x more than themselves, the economy becomes more vibrant as there's more people who can afford to spend money on fun things, and so much more... imagine your son turns out to be a bit dumb (it happens, unfortunately)... should he be doomed to a life of misery?
Finally, you assume you deliver 10x more than someone else but I bet you have zero evidence to back that up. Developers specially are extremely hostile to actually having objective measurements of anything, so we can't really know for sure.
So, that's why I think that no, it's not very fair for anyone to make 10x more than anyone else.
What a condescending tone. I guess you're an objective meritocracy absolutist or something. To me, it seems like anything but shifting the whole ladder would discount every year you spent at the company and your experience level up to whatever value your role creates. It means there's 30k more available per person, but maybe not for people already there, and that's a lower ceiling. Good time to consider trying to switch.
> What makes you think the inflation rate is under-reported
I hope I don't come across as a conspiracy theorist here... but based on my own experience and also how CPI is calculated. CPI constantly shifts out items to 'mimic consumer behavior' which coincidentally also makes inflation look lower. As someone who hasn't really changed much, our grocery bills went way, way over any reported number. It is probably close to 30-40% in total(2019 to today), but I can't find any old receipts proving as much...yet.
Rent for us is up from 1700 to 2750 for like sized houses (due to not getting renewed, it's admittedly not on the exact same property).
And gas well, that tells its own story.
> Do you see any concern with other people making more money that would not be reflected in an (accurately reported) inflation rate?
No way! If everyone could make 100k a year and we could have 2018 prices back...that would damn near be a utopia.
> No way! If everyone could make 100k a year and we could have 2018 prices back...that would damn near be a utopia.
OK, it's good we agree on that.
About inflation: CPI has some aspects that underreport inflation and some that overreport inflation.
This is actually a serious topic for economists, not just for in conspiracy theory nuts. Though you can imagine that the former focus on different aspects than the latter.
I can write a bit more about this from an economics perspective. Some interesting keywords to look into:
- hedonic adjustment
- gdp deflator
- Big Mac index
Slight tangent:
Partially because inflation is such a 'subjective' topic, and requires judgement about how much better or worse the new iPhone is compared to last year's model, my preferred model for central bank policy is nominal gdp (level) targeting instead of inflation targeting.
Nominal GDP is the same as total nominal income, and basically just counts up every dollar everyone in the economy spends/earns. No judgement about the quality of iPhones necessary.
(Alternatively, you could target total gross nominal wages. It's almost the same in practice, because the ratio of total wages / gdp is fairly steady over time in the short run.)
The floor has risen big time. Entry level jobs are paying up to 60k these days, whereas they were closer to 30k a few years back. Good for them, seriously. But watching the floor rise closer to you is never a great feeling.