Sadly, "tipping culture" is all too often a product of employer refusal to pay employees a living wage. They shift that burden onto their patrons, forcing servi

Sadly, "tipping culture" is all too often a product of employer refusal to pay employees a living wage. They shift that burden onto their patrons, forcing service workers to be dependent upon the generosity of their employer's customers. Why on earth we'd ever want to see "tipping culture" brought into the world of software development is beyond me. Worst-case scenario I'm imagining right now: This whole "tipping culture" thing catches on. A rough amount of tips developers earn becomes public information somehow. Unscrupulous employers use this to offer lower salaries and/or raise increases. This persists for years, allowing salary negotiations industry-wide to employ an expectation of tipping to replace good wages, driving salaries down to incredibly low levels. This becomes institutionalized to the point that developers become just another kind of service worker, dependent on their tips to actually survive. Best-case scenario I'm imagining right now: Worst-case scenario happens. SV Developers get a harsh dose of reality and humility by learning what a horrible thing "tipping culture" is. SV Developers become incredibly more conscious of how people live on non-SV salaries.