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I think it's a combination of two factors: 1. Programmers have lower status in the UK relative to the US - UK is more status/class conscious in general whereas
by jmeister 10y ago
I think it's a combination of two factors:
1. Programmers have lower status in the UK relative to the US - UK is more status/class conscious in general whereas US is more about money/productivity/impact.
2. Due to a bigger entrepreneurship culture in the US the opportunity cost for programmers is higher and that drives salaries higher across the board.
- MrBuddyCasino 10y agoI'd say that is true for most of Europe. The status system is a big burden, and it makes personal interactions less pleasant.
- scirocco 10y agoHard to go to UK and not hear parents bragging about what school their children go to...
- johan_larson 10y agoThe US is the same way, but it's universities the parents are bragging about, not K-12 schools.
- irrational 10y ago>UK is more status/class conscious Can you give an example of what this means? I'm a programmer and I have friends that are mechanics, lawyers, teachers, doctors, accountants, electricians, radio engineers, server-cpu designers, etc. Some of us live in McMansions while others of us live in 1 bedroom apartments or anything in between. Would our jobs determine what status/class we belong to in the UK? Or is this based more on your family background (aristocracy)? In the UK would we not be as likely to be friends if we belong to different status/classes?
- UK-AL 10y agoYou can be a millionaire in the UK, and still be working class.
- clock_tower 10y agoI would read Paul Fussel's Class to understand the US social-status system, then multiply it significantly for the UK. Class even in the US is based more on birth and culture than you'd think (only the middle class thinks that social class is determined by job, for example); in the UK, everything I've heard is that this is still more pronounced, and more explicit.
- civilian 10y agoYeah, it's the lack of supply that drives salary, benefits and status for American software engineers. I do wonder about the positions that are at or below my salary that have higher status. Like the non-profit public policy lawyer I know, or medical students / doctoral residents, or the business-side people who get to _make decisions_ while I'm kind of just implementing their business decisions. Last winter I dated a writer who has some local celebrity (definitely has some status), and she was getting down on herself about how little she's paid, and how she works a part-time job to make ends meet. I was also kind of depressed that winter, but more for reasons that I never make super impactful decisions where I'm at. I'm not steering the company's decisions much; the best I can do is be involved in architecture and be a faster/better coder. And the code I write is read by, at best, 6 other people. My PRs are usually just read by 1-2 other people. Whereas, what my ex was writing would be read by thousands of people easily. I don't mind the idea of emptying out my own biases to try to absorb the craft as much as possible. But I do feel like, because engineers are in such high demand, it's not efficient for businesses to let engineers think about product/business decisions, even though engineers would have good intuition for those areas. Being at the end of a waterfall kinda sucks.
- UK-AL 10y agoYour ignoring the fact your code can be run infinite times by infinite people.