4 ms·

This isn't too surprising. IT salaries have not even come close to keeping up with inflation. It's even worse in the cities. In the Silicon Valley your average

This isn't too surprising. IT salaries have not even come close to keeping up with inflation. It's even worse in the cities. In the Silicon Valley your average engineer making $100k whose wife makes $40k and has 2-3 kids can't afford to buy a home. Especially considering the 9% sales tax and the 9.3% state income tax. Combine that with expectations to commute 10-14 hours a week, and put in 60 hour weeks. Why should they be happy? Throw in there the decimated banking system making it impossible to get a loan, and the American dream has been replaced with corporate wage slavery. It's a messed up system we're in right now. But hey, at least banks are seeing record profits, and we've spent 1 TRILLION DOLLARS ON TWO WARS IN JUST A FEW YEARS. Of course IT people are unhappy. Everybody is unhappy. Some executive at a large company whose compensation is 150x that engineer's meager salary wants him to work 60-70 hours per week? Fuck that.

codexon 17y ago
This is the natural state of the economy though and quite expected. Every business wants to reduce expenses, and if that means importing H1-Bs, then it is going to happen bar government intervention. Satisfaction obviously goes down because that's what it takes to compete with workers who are used to non-first-world living conditions.
- dnsworks 17y ago
  The tech industry is designed to profit off of young, single, impressionable white boys who are more than willing to drink the kool-aid. As you get older, say 30-35, all of a sudden the world changes on you. Relationships happen, families emerge, and the same industry you gave your youth too all of a sudden just doesn't fit you anymore because you are no longer it's ideal employee demographic.
jrockway 17y ago
Sounds like people like this have made their own lives unhappy. I ran the numbers, and $140k/year is more than enough money for a family of 5 (even including the taxes you pay to that evil warmongering government). You can comfortably spend $2000/month on your house/apartment, which gets you a nice size space even in major cities. (This assumes $6000/month after taxes; a 50% tax rate. You get to save $1000 and spend $1000 on non-essentials, and still have $2000 for food and bills with this plan.) 9% sales tax and 9.3% state income tax doesn't really matter. 9% sales tax doesn't affect essentials, like food. It just means that your new flat-screen TV is going to cost $1100 instead of $1000. Big deal. In exchange, you get a free school system, free roads, police / fire / etc. Taxes are a fact of life when living in a developed society. Lop the 9.3% off your salary and forget that money was ever even yours -- it's an employer's expense, not your expense. Anyone making this amount of money can have a large living space 10 minutes away from work, savings, and plenty of money to pay your bills. And $1000 to spend on whatever-you-want every month. If this doesn't make you happy, I guess it's time to work harder, or something. Most people would consider this a very comfortable life, perhaps even "the American dream". But taxes, the government, and society in general is probably not keeping you down, as your post seems to imply.
- dnsworks 17y ago
  Clearly you've never been to the bay area. Especially if you're working in San Francisco, then you're looking at living in the outer richmond or sunset if you want $2k to stretch out to enough space for a 5-person family. Expect to pay more like $3k on rent, or $5k on a mortgage. Anybody spending more than 25% of their net-income on housing is living beyond their means. Add in $700/month in food, $300/month in insurance premiums, $1,000/month for a car (between car payments, gas, insurance, average of 10 parking tickets per year and $200/month for a garage parking spot). All of a sudden you're living paycheck to paycheck. My point is, executives in that article are complaining that they are unable to coerce engineers into giving their companies an extra 50% of their time for free. I'm not saying it's poverty, but I fully understand how the life of a corporate wage-slave is stressful enough to induce unhappiness and an unwillingness to go the extra mile. The past decade has been a loss for the economy. IPOs are gone in exchange for M&As which only benefit the founders and investors in any signifiant way. Yet startups still dangle football of IPO-induced wealth to hoodwink engineers into working themselves into an early grave in order for the founders to become marginally wealthy. And the big companies who would like us to work ourselves to death would gladly outsource our jobs if they could overcome the lack of talent and communications issues of workers abroad. And in the end they're still renting, and not able build wealth of their own.
  - patio11 17y ago
    Clearly you've never been to the bay area. Apparently dating sucks, IT careers suck, housing sucks, transportation sucks, (... list continues ...) if you've been to the Bay Area. I have an alternative explanation which is quite a bit shorter...
    - bsaunder 17y ago
      The weather is nice...
      - rwhitman 17y ago
        Its COLD in July.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

codexon 17y ago

This is the natural state of the economy though and quite expected. Every business wants to reduce expenses, and if that means importing H1-Bs, then it is going to happen bar government intervention. Satisfaction obviously goes down because that's what it takes to compete with workers who are used to non-first-world living conditions.

dnsworks 17y ago
The tech industry is designed to profit off of young, single, impressionable white boys who are more than willing to drink the kool-aid. As you get older, say 30-35, all of a sudden the world changes on you. Relationships happen, families emerge, and the same industry you gave your youth too all of a sudden just doesn't fit you anymore because you are no longer it's ideal employee demographic.

jrockway 17y ago

Sounds like people like this have made their own lives unhappy. I ran the numbers, and $140k/year is more than enough money for a family of 5 (even including the taxes you pay to that evil warmongering government). You can comfortably spend $2000/month on your house/apartment, which gets you a nice size space even in major cities. (This assumes $6000/month after taxes; a 50% tax rate. You get to save $1000 and spend $1000 on non-essentials, and still have $2000 for food and bills with this plan.) 9% sales tax and 9.3% state income tax doesn't really matter. 9% sales tax doesn't affect essentials, like food. It just means that your new flat-screen TV is going to cost $1100 instead of $1000. Big deal. In exchange, you get a free school system, free roads, police / fire / etc. Taxes are a fact of life when living in a developed society. Lop the 9.3% off your salary and forget that money was ever even yours -- it's an employer's expense, not your expense. Anyone making this amount of money can have a large living space 10 minutes away from work, savings, and plenty of money to pay your bills. And $1000 to spend on whatever-you-want every month. If this doesn't make you happy, I guess it's time to work harder, or something. Most people would consider this a very comfortable life, perhaps even "the American dream". But taxes, the government, and society in general is probably not keeping you down, as your post seems to imply.

dnsworks 17y ago
Clearly you've never been to the bay area. Especially if you're working in San Francisco, then you're looking at living in the outer richmond or sunset if you want $2k to stretch out to enough space for a 5-person family. Expect to pay more like $3k on rent, or $5k on a mortgage. Anybody spending more than 25% of their net-income on housing is living beyond their means. Add in $700/month in food, $300/month in insurance premiums, $1,000/month for a car (between car payments, gas, insurance, average of 10 parking tickets per year and $200/month for a garage parking spot). All of a sudden you're living paycheck to paycheck. My point is, executives in that article are complaining that they are unable to coerce engineers into giving their companies an extra 50% of their time for free. I'm not saying it's poverty, but I fully understand how the life of a corporate wage-slave is stressful enough to induce unhappiness and an unwillingness to go the extra mile. The past decade has been a loss for the economy. IPOs are gone in exchange for M&As which only benefit the founders and investors in any signifiant way. Yet startups still dangle football of IPO-induced wealth to hoodwink engineers into working themselves into an early grave in order for the founders to become marginally wealthy. And the big companies who would like us to work ourselves to death would gladly outsource our jobs if they could overcome the lack of talent and communications issues of workers abroad. And in the end they're still renting, and not able build wealth of their own.
- patio11 17y ago
  Clearly you've never been to the bay area. Apparently dating sucks, IT careers suck, housing sucks, transportation sucks, (... list continues ...) if you've been to the Bay Area. I have an alternative explanation which is quite a bit shorter...
  - bsaunder 17y ago
    The weather is nice...
    - rwhitman 17y ago
      Its COLD in July.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]