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I have a certain level of sympathy for unemployed Americans who the government could be retraining as technology workers. There are some H-1B workers who legiti

I have a certain level of sympathy for unemployed Americans who the government could be retraining as technology workers. There are some H-1B workers who legitimately have skills that are highly valuable and uncommon within the U.S., but the majority seem to employed by large contracting firms who specialize in bringing in folks to perform relatively simple labor. I have much less sympathy for folks already in the tech industry who are complaining about this. Tech is basically the most overpaid career there is. And not because it's especially hard or valuable, but because as soon as some CEO starts getting the idea that they could be the next Mark Zuckerberg then all rational thought goes out the window. Hiring developers is basically rich people's version of blowing all their money on lottery tickets. The entire industry is completely unregulated despite putting the nation's critical infrastructure and economy in grave danger, which artificially drives up wages by externalizing the risk onto everyone else. And H-1B workers are placing basically zero downward pressure on wages as far as I can tell.

raquo 10y ago
> The entire industry is completely unregulated despite putting the nation's critical infrastructure and economy in grave danger, which artificially drives up wages by externalizing the risk onto everyone else. I don't see how adding regulations to ensure safety of critical infrastructure could possibly reduce developer wages. If anything, they'd be increased because now you need more of them and they need more skills.
- DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
  I work in WA and there is no state-required professional certification for software engineers, so no one needs to sign-off on anything safety-critical (where no-other class of professional engineer would either, like a HIPAA/PCI compliant system as opposed to avionics engineering), and that does concern me - because I would like the opportunity to both have the skills for safety-critical work and to be recognised for it. I feel it's important now with IOT vulns and data/privacy security, and as a side-effect those jobs are often legally unexportable.
chaostheory 10y ago
> Tech is basically the most overpaid career there is. It isn't because if you don't maintain your skill set by constantly keeping up with the latest frameworks, data stores, or even languages then you become obsolete. Not all of this can be done during work hours. Consequently it's a career that's prone to ageism.
- codedokode 10y ago
  But the characters of the article are system administrators, not software developers.
  - chaostheory 10y ago
    I was responding to the comment and not the article. Still what I've written also applies to sys admins. You can see it in the evolution of the position from sys admin to dev ops. Sys admins / dev ops now need to know how to program, use something like chef, ansible, salt or puppet. You also have to learn kubernetes, docker or some other container now. You still need to be constantly learning as a sys admin unless you want to become obsolete.
IndianAstronaut 10y ago
>Tech is basically the most overpaid career there is. I think we get paid what a middle class wage should be. There was a huge downward spiral in wages due to rapid economic changes that cause a large fraction of the workforce to make very substandard wages.
- lostboys67 10y ago
  As opposed to medicine or the law in think not?
  - azemetre 10y ago
    A ~$30K salary in 1980 would be equivalent to ~$90K today. Seems like an apt comparison to me.
codedokode 10y ago
The tech worker salaries are completely unreasonable compared to other jobs. The characters from the article could just agree to work for $60 000/year (which still is a lot) and wouldn't lose their jobs.
- codedokode 10y ago
  Of course it is easy to pay high salaries with investors' money. I doubt a business owner would like to pay $120 000/year from his own income.
- briandear 10y ago
  No. When the value of the input exceeds its cost, then no, it's not "unreasonable." What's unreasonable is paying someone $15 per hour for unskilled labor you could teach a teenager to do in 15 minutes. The cost of the work exceeds its value.
  - codedokode 10y ago
    That unskilled labour is probably more hard and tiring than sitting in a comfortable chair before a computer. If only there were more tech workers the market would set adequate price.
- lostboys67 10y ago
  I don't understand why there are self hating developers on HN or those who don't seem to grock the free market system - there is no god given "fair " rate for the job.
  - geebee 10y ago
    Yeah, it is a little strange. People make statements about a "shortage" of workers without mentioning pay and working conditions. Or, if they do, they'll discuss a shortage at the "market rate", without considering that the "market rate" itself is insufficient to attract talented people with freedom into the field.
- geebee 10y ago
Clubber 10y ago
I believe it's underpaid. I earn my company at least 20x my salary every year. If all the software developers and maintainers left, the company would cease to function competitively and probably collapse within a year. You have to understand how reliant companies are to their software systems today.
- softawre 10y ago
  20x has to be pretty rare, right?
  - Clubber 10y ago
    I don't know how rare it is, but it depends on your perspective. If the IT departments ceases to exist all of a sudden, many companies would have to halt operations. What's the cost of that? What's the value of building a system that will scale when the business needs it, verses one that doesn't? What's the value of a flexible system that allows the business to perform multiple M&As without a hitch and pivot to market needs? Companies use software systems for a reason: they are very valuable. The more companies use software for competitive advantage, the more their competitors need them to compete. We're at the point where a company can't survive without a good system. I think many developers don't know their value.
- refurb 10y ago
  I believe it's underpaid. I earn my company at least 20x my salary every year. Salaries are not based on the value the employee brings. If that were the case, then Ferrari assembly workers would be getting a huge salary. It's based off of supply and demand.
  - Clubber 10y ago
    The majority of the value of a Ferrari are in the materials and engineering, not assembly. The value software and it in general bring to a company are way more than the sum of salaries. A multitude higher. If it were actually based on supply and demand you'd think salaries would increase.
ohstopitu 10y ago
I feel we are not getting paid enough! FYI if you think devs are overpaid, it's generally in SV (and even there, they make average considering the cost of living - a good idea is to look at the end of month savings instead of earnings). With that said, we are getting paid a lot less than the value we add - seriously - the entire world around you works on software and if it were to stop for even an hour, we'd have a lot of issues - so with that in mind - we should be getting paid more. Now i know you'll say a CRUD developer adds no value, but I could argue that neither do most lawyers or traders - but they get paid a lot more no?
- Alex3917 10y ago
  > we are getting paid a lot less than the value we add Keep in mind that hiring developers is a lemon market. Imagine if any other industry worked like tech. E.g. if when you took your car in for an oil change, there was a 50/50 chance of the mechanics taking it for a joy ride, totaling it, and then charging you tens of thousands of dollars. Or if you went to the doctor the only treatment they were familiar with was sawing off your leg, so that's what you're getting regardless of what the problem is. If this sounds absurd, it's probably because you're in the tech industry. The average small business owner's experience working with developers is handing over a good portion of their life savings and then either having the dev team just take the money and run, getting back something completely broken and unusable, getting back something half done and a year late, etc. I literally became a developer myself because it was the only way to reliably avoid these sorts of issues. The only other industry this broken is maybe the medical system, but at least they're taking (small) steps in the right direction.
  - ohstopitu 10y ago
    I totally understand. And we have quite a lot of bad lemons (if I may), who basically have 0 clue of what they are doing. They join teams or take on projects, blow away loads of $ and have nothing to show for it. But imagine if every doctor or lawyer was paid based on such bad lemons for example (considering that we can still had bad lawyers and doctors even after having licensing exams).
ConfuciusSay02 10y ago
Overpaid? We're paying people $30M a year to throw a ball into a hoop, and we're paying other people millions to recite a few lines in a movie. Why shouldn't engineers, part of a class of worker that arguably brings much more benefits to society than actors or athletes, get paid much more? If the natural labor market dynamics were allowed to occur, we would be seeing top engineers being paid $500K to $1M+ per year. In fact, during the SV wage fixing cartel, this is precisely what the executives of these participating companies were complaining about in the emails that were disclosed in court filings. Will you believe tech company executives when they say that it affects wages? How many earnings calls do you have to listen to where executives talk about how labor market dynamics and immigration policy will affect their payroll costs? I'm sorry but if you think immigration doesn't affect wages, I've got a bridge to sell you... Not only is the H1B program putting downward pressure on wages, but all immigration is putting downward pressure on all wages. Any time you hear a tech executive talk about "shortage of workers", what they're really saying is "shortage of workers willing to work for a lower than market value wage".

raquo 10y ago

> The entire industry is completely unregulated despite putting the nation's critical infrastructure and economy in grave danger, which artificially drives up wages by externalizing the risk onto everyone else. I don't see how adding regulations to ensure safety of critical infrastructure could possibly reduce developer wages. If anything, they'd be increased because now you need more of them and they need more skills.

DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
I work in WA and there is no state-required professional certification for software engineers, so no one needs to sign-off on anything safety-critical (where no-other class of professional engineer would either, like a HIPAA/PCI compliant system as opposed to avionics engineering), and that does concern me - because I would like the opportunity to both have the skills for safety-critical work and to be recognised for it. I feel it's important now with IOT vulns and data/privacy security, and as a side-effect those jobs are often legally unexportable.

chaostheory 10y ago

> Tech is basically the most overpaid career there is. It isn't because if you don't maintain your skill set by constantly keeping up with the latest frameworks, data stores, or even languages then you become obsolete. Not all of this can be done during work hours. Consequently it's a career that's prone to ageism.

codedokode 10y ago
But the characters of the article are system administrators, not software developers.
- chaostheory 10y ago
  I was responding to the comment and not the article. Still what I've written also applies to sys admins. You can see it in the evolution of the position from sys admin to dev ops. Sys admins / dev ops now need to know how to program, use something like chef, ansible, salt or puppet. You also have to learn kubernetes, docker or some other container now. You still need to be constantly learning as a sys admin unless you want to become obsolete.

IndianAstronaut 10y ago

>Tech is basically the most overpaid career there is. I think we get paid what a middle class wage should be. There was a huge downward spiral in wages due to rapid economic changes that cause a large fraction of the workforce to make very substandard wages.

lostboys67 10y ago
As opposed to medicine or the law in think not?
- azemetre 10y ago
  A ~$30K salary in 1980 would be equivalent to ~$90K today. Seems like an apt comparison to me.

codedokode 10y ago

The tech worker salaries are completely unreasonable compared to other jobs. The characters from the article could just agree to work for $60 000/year (which still is a lot) and wouldn't lose their jobs.

codedokode 10y ago
Of course it is easy to pay high salaries with investors' money. I doubt a business owner would like to pay $120 000/year from his own income.
briandear 10y ago
No. When the value of the input exceeds its cost, then no, it's not "unreasonable." What's unreasonable is paying someone $15 per hour for unskilled labor you could teach a teenager to do in 15 minutes. The cost of the work exceeds its value.
- codedokode 10y ago
  That unskilled labour is probably more hard and tiring than sitting in a comfortable chair before a computer. If only there were more tech workers the market would set adequate price.
lostboys67 10y ago
I don't understand why there are self hating developers on HN or those who don't seem to grock the free market system - there is no god given "fair " rate for the job.
- geebee 10y ago
  Yeah, it is a little strange. People make statements about a "shortage" of workers without mentioning pay and working conditions. Or, if they do, they'll discuss a shortage at the "market rate", without considering that the "market rate" itself is insufficient to attract talented people with freedom into the field.
geebee 10y ago

Clubber 10y ago

I believe it's underpaid. I earn my company at least 20x my salary every year. If all the software developers and maintainers left, the company would cease to function competitively and probably collapse within a year. You have to understand how reliant companies are to their software systems today.

softawre 10y ago
20x has to be pretty rare, right?
- Clubber 10y ago
  I don't know how rare it is, but it depends on your perspective. If the IT departments ceases to exist all of a sudden, many companies would have to halt operations. What's the cost of that? What's the value of building a system that will scale when the business needs it, verses one that doesn't? What's the value of a flexible system that allows the business to perform multiple M&As without a hitch and pivot to market needs? Companies use software systems for a reason: they are very valuable. The more companies use software for competitive advantage, the more their competitors need them to compete. We're at the point where a company can't survive without a good system. I think many developers don't know their value.
refurb 10y ago
I believe it's underpaid. I earn my company at least 20x my salary every year. Salaries are not based on the value the employee brings. If that were the case, then Ferrari assembly workers would be getting a huge salary. It's based off of supply and demand.
- Clubber 10y ago
  The majority of the value of a Ferrari are in the materials and engineering, not assembly. The value software and it in general bring to a company are way more than the sum of salaries. A multitude higher. If it were actually based on supply and demand you'd think salaries would increase.

ohstopitu 10y ago

I feel we are not getting paid enough! FYI if you think devs are overpaid, it's generally in SV (and even there, they make average considering the cost of living - a good idea is to look at the end of month savings instead of earnings). With that said, we are getting paid a lot less than the value we add - seriously - the entire world around you works on software and if it were to stop for even an hour, we'd have a lot of issues - so with that in mind - we should be getting paid more. Now i know you'll say a CRUD developer adds no value, but I could argue that neither do most lawyers or traders - but they get paid a lot more no?

Alex3917 10y ago
> we are getting paid a lot less than the value we add Keep in mind that hiring developers is a lemon market. Imagine if any other industry worked like tech. E.g. if when you took your car in for an oil change, there was a 50/50 chance of the mechanics taking it for a joy ride, totaling it, and then charging you tens of thousands of dollars. Or if you went to the doctor the only treatment they were familiar with was sawing off your leg, so that's what you're getting regardless of what the problem is. If this sounds absurd, it's probably because you're in the tech industry. The average small business owner's experience working with developers is handing over a good portion of their life savings and then either having the dev team just take the money and run, getting back something completely broken and unusable, getting back something half done and a year late, etc. I literally became a developer myself because it was the only way to reliably avoid these sorts of issues. The only other industry this broken is maybe the medical system, but at least they're taking (small) steps in the right direction.
- ohstopitu 10y ago
  I totally understand. And we have quite a lot of bad lemons (if I may), who basically have 0 clue of what they are doing. They join teams or take on projects, blow away loads of $ and have nothing to show for it. But imagine if every doctor or lawyer was paid based on such bad lemons for example (considering that we can still had bad lawyers and doctors even after having licensing exams).

ConfuciusSay02 10y ago

Overpaid? We're paying people $30M a year to throw a ball into a hoop, and we're paying other people millions to recite a few lines in a movie. Why shouldn't engineers, part of a class of worker that arguably brings much more benefits to society than actors or athletes, get paid much more? If the natural labor market dynamics were allowed to occur, we would be seeing top engineers being paid $500K to $1M+ per year. In fact, during the SV wage fixing cartel, this is precisely what the executives of these participating companies were complaining about in the emails that were disclosed in court filings. Will you believe tech company executives when they say that it affects wages? How many earnings calls do you have to listen to where executives talk about how labor market dynamics and immigration policy will affect their payroll costs? I'm sorry but if you think immigration doesn't affect wages, I've got a bridge to sell you... Not only is the H1B program putting downward pressure on wages, but all immigration is putting downward pressure on all wages. Any time you hear a tech executive talk about "shortage of workers", what they're really saying is "shortage of workers willing to work for a lower than market value wage".