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Actually, basic economics says that wages tend to be sticky.
by weeksie 11y ago
Actually, basic economics says that wages tend to be sticky.
- dilemma 11y agoAnd as a result, unemployment higher.
- codesushi42 11y ago/Average wages/. On a macro scale. That's not the same situation. Of course you're going to see the $150-200k premium for engineers fall once startups, funding, and jobs disappear. It's already happening in the form of cutting RSUs and bonus packages. And it has happened before. Why is it so hard to understand this?
- toomuchtodo 11y agoBecause most people here weren't around for 1999-2001.
- codesushi42 11y agoAgreed. But I'm still a little surprised by this. I would expect anyone at least 30 yro to have /some/ recollection of what happened, if not a good understanding. Or to have the curiosity to find out what did. I'm 31 myself, but knew what was happening with the bubble during highschool (thanks pud and F'd company). Maybe the typical age on HN is 21? :)
- weeksie 11y agoOh, I was around. Regardless, I was stating that your dismissal of "basic economics" was wrong. It's not basic economics, there's a lot that goes into the equation. Wages might go down. Wages might not go down by a ton. They might drop like a rock. It all depends on a number of factors, but blithely dismissing people with some nonesense about econ 101 is not being intellectually honest.
- codesushi42 11y agoYou're still talking macro 101. I'm not talking about nationwide unemployment figures here. The key is that wages for /engineers/ will fall if funding and jobs disappear in the tech sector. Today's wages for engineers are high and will be unsustainable when things go bust. How much they will fall is anyone's guess. But the reasoning behind why they will fall is very straightforward.
- ownagefool 11y agoWages probably will fall but it's probably also more complex than that. Your extremely talented engineers who build things at scale and understand the fundementals, who are basically a safe per of hands, are still going to be in deep demand. Profitiable companies that work at scale are still going to have real problems and are unlikely to turn around and tell their engineers that they're going to be getting significantly less money, as those engineers are already in their own market and these companies will still want to compete for them. The startups filled with architecture astronauts who spend most of their time overdesigning, learning new tools, and basically doing anything that isn't meeting user needs, delivering the product or tackling some tough engineering problem, then you're likely going to see a drop because they're not really worth it in the first place.
- RhodesianHunter 11y agoMost management can't tell the difference between the two.
- 11y ago