5 ms·

hmm, Well, I was specifically referencing the top 5 biggest tech companies, and the pay may seem low to the people who have been working there fresh out of col

hmm, Well, I was specifically referencing the top 5 biggest tech companies, and the pay may seem low to the people who have been working there fresh out of college but its still relatively high pay compared to most other industries with people of the same academic and skill level but in a different industry. They interview alot of people and the people don't turn down the jobs because the pay isn't enough, they don't get the jobs because theres not enough qualified people. So I don't know how your statement is relevant but I don't think they don't get hired and rejected from their interviews because they applied and changed their mind that the pay wasnt high enough.... That being said, given that the skill level sought out is hard to find, and the people with those skill levels are in such high demand with many many options at their fingerprints, including but not limited to never having to work in an office if they don't want to, that there is an argument the pay should be higher for the people that do have this skill level, and work long hours, despite the rest of the world protesting at the inequality of tech valley and not seeming to understand how much of a meritocracy it is RELATIVE to other high earning places like wallstreet and politics, where the old boys club is much more relevant than tech valley (all relative here) (and i dont disagree, people with niche skill who earned it and are needed should be evaluated appropriately) but this is not the situation I was talking about. I'm talking about the situation where people get turned down from any of these jobs where they even have the luxury to complain a software engineer salary at a top 5 company is too low, because they don't have the expertise to get the job in the first place.

ptr_void 9y ago
I think jazzyk was hinting that - with enough pay, people will do what they can to make themselves qualified. There's also the option of choosing the best people they get and start training them internally to make them qualified.
- beagle3 9y ago
  The problem is, "make themselves qualified" to be good electrical engineers or even software engineers takes on the order of 10-15 years. If tomorrow every electrical engineer salary went 10 times higher, supply would still take 10 years to improve.
  - usmeteora 9y ago
    Electrical Engineer true. Software Dev though? I just googledo nline 30 seconds ago and theres free courses titled "Free online course to learn Tensorflow" "same for Elastic Search" "intro to VR" "Intro to Python" "App dev" etc...these are all free and accessible to the same people who work at coffee shops and browse twitter and facebook..... So would it take 10 years for these people to learn the skills? I think the market signals are being interpreted as intentionally divisive to people who don't have the skills, instead of a need for the population of people who have the skill to increase, and thus they protest the market signals as a response instead of utilizing free and open resources on top of their already paid for internet utilties provided by these relatively highly paid workers, to make it free and easier and more accessible for other people to learn. Sure learning these skills outside of a part time barista job could take 2-3 years, but even an entry level software position at a just a-okay tech firm who starts them out at say $50k/yr with no benefits, is still higher than working minimum wage, by a large degree. I'm not sure everyone who is experiencing a disadvantage from the pay difference wants to increase their skill level, or learn new skills. There are plenty of people who do and work long hours and cant, but there are also plenty of young people who do not, and choose not to and make other lifestyle decisions, which is fine with me, as long as they don't throw rocks at me because I chose to do my math homework in highschool when they chose to go out and drink every school night. Sometimes peoples life choices do have an impact, and its not always the responisibiltiy of the most successful companinies in the world to calibrate everyone elses life to the minimum starting salary of the most skilled workers on the planet. I don't know what IS a good solution, but I feel this is an unrealistic expectation. Regardless, these companies are making an effort to do this anyways as they are in need of this skills and creating venues to take people from 0 to 1 with never having known anything about software or math.
    - haskellandchill 9y ago
      Hm, I'm a software engineer with nearly 10 years of experience but to get a job not in web development I estimate it would take at least 6 months of nights and weekends on a skill area such as machine learning, data science, distributed systems, data engineering, etc to be qualified in the eyes of employers. It's quite difficult to demonstrate qualifications to employers, I specialize in type theory and devote my nights and weekends to that. I've been doing this for a year but still have been rejected for every single typed programming job in NYC. I admit I am mentally slow, but I am willing to put in the work. My point is you are trivializing the effort. Often we are competing against people with better minds/bodies, better home environments, better support networks, etc. The advantages build on each other. Yeah we fucked up in high school or earlier because we just didn't know. I suppose it is fair that we will pay the price the rest of our lives. Oh well.
- usmeteora 9y ago
  I get what youre saying logicially and in general I don't disagree with you, but I want to pose a new way of thinking about this that may be unique to times previous and see what people think, because its a forming idea in my head, and I'm not sure its somethign I've settled on yet in general With software engineering specifically, given the amount of people who have access to the internet, lets say like unemployed young men in theirs 20s working in the food industry or something, working part time and play video games for 40 hrs a week. If you have access to an xbox, then you have access to free online courses to learn machine learning, intro to programming, the entire internet where you can openly asked the internet questions and try to figure out a skill thats valuable and in software specifically, have multiple free venues of learning it. But theres a lot of people who don't do that and don't take advantage of it, but also protest wages in silicon valley. There are people who work at coffee shops 20 hrs a week by choice, and go hiking by choice and had access to the same resources everyone else did, and came even alot from middle class to upper class homes, but don't want to learn high demand skills, and in fact protest them. in this case, I'd say the pay is not only high enough, but it's so high they dislike the fact that not doing the work to get those high paying jobs is decreasing the quality of their life relative to everyone else around them. obviously outliers exist, but what is it about software development, that, atleast for the population who can afford internet, and video game consoles, makes it so elite people arent motivated to learn. I think some people don't want to learn or put in the effort, but also don't want to experience the reduction in quality of life as a result of other people putting in the effort.I think those same people protest more as the wages are increased, as they misinterpret the market signals for need as abusive to their lifestyle in which they choose to not go learn high demand skills. Could this be valid in some cases?
  - scarface74 9y ago
    I've personally experienced working with a junior dev who changed careers into development, had a desire to learn but just couldn't grasp the logical concept of development. I've also seen self taught developers - mostly "database developers" - who had the aptitude to break problems down logically and get something working but their code was unmaintanable except by them (barely), didn't scale, and required manual intervention for failure cases. On the other hand, I've known plenty of business analysts who spend most of their time documenting processing and working with customers who could easily move into development. They seem to have a natural aptitude when it comes to breaking problems down logically. Some people just can't learn to code. Their mind doesn't operate that way. No one would ever say that why don't people learn how to sing or play sports because those can be high paying careers, because most people understand that not everyone has the natural talent to do so. Why does everyone think that anyone can learn how to be a developer?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Shivetya 9y ago
  Sadly I think you vastly over estimate what the majority of people will do. There is an energized minority of people who will change skill sets as their employment needs warrant or simply because they need a new challenge. there are many who are just willing to grouse about their situation and not, how do you change them?
  - cardiffspaceman 9y ago
    When I hang out in Oregon, I am told there are still fishermen waiting for the fish to come back or forestry workers waiting for the spotted owl to exit the endangered species list so they can go back to clear-cutting. Realistically, these anecdotal situations are so old, these workers may be "retired" in some sense now. Yet it reinforces the idea that maybe workers don't like to change from one skill set to another. And if the situation was, IBM Watson ate all the software engineering jobs but a new labor-intensive wood products industry with lots of outdoor, heavy-lifting work had sprung up in my town, I'm not sure I'd be eager to make the switch.

ptr_void 9y ago

I think jazzyk was hinting that - with enough pay, people will do what they can to make themselves qualified. There's also the option of choosing the best people they get and start training them internally to make them qualified.

beagle3 9y ago
The problem is, "make themselves qualified" to be good electrical engineers or even software engineers takes on the order of 10-15 years. If tomorrow every electrical engineer salary went 10 times higher, supply would still take 10 years to improve.
- usmeteora 9y ago
  Electrical Engineer true. Software Dev though? I just googledo nline 30 seconds ago and theres free courses titled "Free online course to learn Tensorflow" "same for Elastic Search" "intro to VR" "Intro to Python" "App dev" etc...these are all free and accessible to the same people who work at coffee shops and browse twitter and facebook..... So would it take 10 years for these people to learn the skills? I think the market signals are being interpreted as intentionally divisive to people who don't have the skills, instead of a need for the population of people who have the skill to increase, and thus they protest the market signals as a response instead of utilizing free and open resources on top of their already paid for internet utilties provided by these relatively highly paid workers, to make it free and easier and more accessible for other people to learn. Sure learning these skills outside of a part time barista job could take 2-3 years, but even an entry level software position at a just a-okay tech firm who starts them out at say $50k/yr with no benefits, is still higher than working minimum wage, by a large degree. I'm not sure everyone who is experiencing a disadvantage from the pay difference wants to increase their skill level, or learn new skills. There are plenty of people who do and work long hours and cant, but there are also plenty of young people who do not, and choose not to and make other lifestyle decisions, which is fine with me, as long as they don't throw rocks at me because I chose to do my math homework in highschool when they chose to go out and drink every school night. Sometimes peoples life choices do have an impact, and its not always the responisibiltiy of the most successful companinies in the world to calibrate everyone elses life to the minimum starting salary of the most skilled workers on the planet. I don't know what IS a good solution, but I feel this is an unrealistic expectation. Regardless, these companies are making an effort to do this anyways as they are in need of this skills and creating venues to take people from 0 to 1 with never having known anything about software or math.
  - haskellandchill 9y ago
    Hm, I'm a software engineer with nearly 10 years of experience but to get a job not in web development I estimate it would take at least 6 months of nights and weekends on a skill area such as machine learning, data science, distributed systems, data engineering, etc to be qualified in the eyes of employers. It's quite difficult to demonstrate qualifications to employers, I specialize in type theory and devote my nights and weekends to that. I've been doing this for a year but still have been rejected for every single typed programming job in NYC. I admit I am mentally slow, but I am willing to put in the work. My point is you are trivializing the effort. Often we are competing against people with better minds/bodies, better home environments, better support networks, etc. The advantages build on each other. Yeah we fucked up in high school or earlier because we just didn't know. I suppose it is fair that we will pay the price the rest of our lives. Oh well.
usmeteora 9y ago
I get what youre saying logicially and in general I don't disagree with you, but I want to pose a new way of thinking about this that may be unique to times previous and see what people think, because its a forming idea in my head, and I'm not sure its somethign I've settled on yet in general With software engineering specifically, given the amount of people who have access to the internet, lets say like unemployed young men in theirs 20s working in the food industry or something, working part time and play video games for 40 hrs a week. If you have access to an xbox, then you have access to free online courses to learn machine learning, intro to programming, the entire internet where you can openly asked the internet questions and try to figure out a skill thats valuable and in software specifically, have multiple free venues of learning it. But theres a lot of people who don't do that and don't take advantage of it, but also protest wages in silicon valley. There are people who work at coffee shops 20 hrs a week by choice, and go hiking by choice and had access to the same resources everyone else did, and came even alot from middle class to upper class homes, but don't want to learn high demand skills, and in fact protest them. in this case, I'd say the pay is not only high enough, but it's so high they dislike the fact that not doing the work to get those high paying jobs is decreasing the quality of their life relative to everyone else around them. obviously outliers exist, but what is it about software development, that, atleast for the population who can afford internet, and video game consoles, makes it so elite people arent motivated to learn. I think some people don't want to learn or put in the effort, but also don't want to experience the reduction in quality of life as a result of other people putting in the effort.I think those same people protest more as the wages are increased, as they misinterpret the market signals for need as abusive to their lifestyle in which they choose to not go learn high demand skills. Could this be valid in some cases?
- scarface74 9y ago
  I've personally experienced working with a junior dev who changed careers into development, had a desire to learn but just couldn't grasp the logical concept of development. I've also seen self taught developers - mostly "database developers" - who had the aptitude to break problems down logically and get something working but their code was unmaintanable except by them (barely), didn't scale, and required manual intervention for failure cases. On the other hand, I've known plenty of business analysts who spend most of their time documenting processing and working with customers who could easily move into development. They seem to have a natural aptitude when it comes to breaking problems down logically. Some people just can't learn to code. Their mind doesn't operate that way. No one would ever say that why don't people learn how to sing or play sports because those can be high paying careers, because most people understand that not everyone has the natural talent to do so. Why does everyone think that anyone can learn how to be a developer?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Shivetya 9y ago
Sadly I think you vastly over estimate what the majority of people will do. There is an energized minority of people who will change skill sets as their employment needs warrant or simply because they need a new challenge. there are many who are just willing to grouse about their situation and not, how do you change them?
- cardiffspaceman 9y ago
  When I hang out in Oregon, I am told there are still fishermen waiting for the fish to come back or forestry workers waiting for the spotted owl to exit the endangered species list so they can go back to clear-cutting. Realistically, these anecdotal situations are so old, these workers may be "retired" in some sense now. Yet it reinforces the idea that maybe workers don't like to change from one skill set to another. And if the situation was, IBM Watson ate all the software engineering jobs but a new labor-intensive wood products industry with lots of outdoor, heavy-lifting work had sprung up in my town, I'm not sure I'd be eager to make the switch.