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This article is terrible: > Tech companies are spending a large portion of their capital toward paying a limited number of research and development staff to de

This article is terrible: > Tech companies are spending a large portion of their capital toward paying a limited number of research and development staff to design new products and software, but not toward maintenance and service staff like factory and maintenance workers The entire article and everyone it quotes then proceed to argue that this wealth should be redistributed downwards. This is not just unfair - it will also never work. Because some roles (like "low-skilled maintenance and factory work") have far more candidates than openings, while other roles (like high-skilled engineering) have the opposite supply/demand curve. Now, suppose every single company starts artificially inflating the wages of low-skilled roles, and suppressing the wages for high-skilled roles, to keep everyone "equal" just like this article suggests. What will happen? Nobody will invest the huge amount of time and effort required to become engineers, since that investment won't pay off. Why waste 4 expensive years in college, if I can get the same pay as a janitor, straight out of highschool and without the student debt? All tech companies will become desperately starved for high-skilled talent. Eventually, one of these companies will realize it can fill its many vacancies by decreasing the wages for the low-skilled work (with huge surplus of candidates, it will still have plenty to choose from) and increasing the wages for high-skilled work, where candidates are scarce. This company will fill all its openings, poach the best engineers, increase its profits, and destroy its competition. At that point, all other companies will have to increase high-skilled pay to match... And we'll be back where we are right now. In fact, that's how we got here in the first place.

alcio 8y ago
Not only is it terrible, but misleading too. Google has 88k employees and had a $32B revenue last quarter. Let's assume 25% of employees are R&D, each paid $250k/y: Google would spend $5.5B a year on R&D, or 4.2% of revenues ; not quite a "large portion of their capital".
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  > Let's assume 25% of employees are R&D 25% of people are researchers at Google? Are you saying that's what you think it is at the moment or hypothetically? Research is a tiny tiny proportion of Google's work.
  - alcio 8y ago
    I cast a super wide net to show how ridiculous the original statement was.
  - dunpeal 8y ago
    "R&D" is what SWEs do. If you're developing anything new, such as a new software system, then you are doing R&D by definition. "Production" is something like building the same factory that was built thousands of times before, to fabricate the same widgets that were fully designed by an R&D team. The actual top researchers at a place like Google would be making way more than $250k.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- dunpeal 8y ago
  It's arguably Machiavellian: "Hey you, minimum-wage security guard, you know all these engineers you greet at the gate? Each one of them is making x5 your salary! Capitalistic pigs, eh?" (But let's not talk about the executives you never see, coming in through private entrances straight from their private landing strips and making x1,000 your salary.)
- thedufer 8y ago
  Comparing to revenue doesn't make much sense. If you look at profit margins they could easily be spending more than all of their profit on R&D. Also, that's a rather low estimate for average compensation for devs at Google. If, as you mentioned elsewhere, the 25% number is a purposeful overestimate, then combining it with an underestimate of compensation means that your total number is murky; it could easily be a drastic over- or under-estimate. That said, 25% is also an underestimate - in 2016 Google reported that ~38% of full-time employees were in R&D. So it sounds like you think you're overestimating how much they spend on R&D, but in fact you're way underestimating it.
  - barrkel 8y ago
    Comparing costs with revenues is right. Profit already accounts for costs, and can be razor thin in very large companies with lots of costs - a comparison of costs with profit in such a company would be highly misleading.
    - thedufer 8y ago
      I think you're right that comparing to profit isn't right, but I still contend that comparing to revenue isn't either. What I meant is looking at per-unit profit margins (i.e. excluding things like R&D) - if just producing whatever they're selling costs 99% of revenue generated from it, then 5% of revenue on R&D looks pretty high - they're drawing on capital to do so. If, on the other hand, those costs are only 5%, then they're stashing away an enormous portion of revenue despite R&D and thus they're R&D spend looks pretty low.
qznc 8y ago
That logic should also work in reverse: If high-skill talent is rare their wages should rise. I do not see that happening. Well, at least not here in Germany. Industry is crying about a skill shortage but the corresponding wages are stagnant. My theory is that wages are not that much about demand and supply of skill or labor. More evidence is that wages differ so much regionally. A Silicon Valley software engineer is paid more than a Montana software engineer even if skills are equal. The companies are willing to pay the premium so their engineers are close to the headquarter. The startups need to be close to the venture capital, but I still wonder why the big companies stay there. Why don't Google and Apple move away?
- nathanvanfleet 8y ago
  So in the bay area they found out that the largest employers actually conspired to not hire each other's senior employees. Which serves to decrease mobility for people and makes it so their wages become lower. When I worked in Canada it seemed like companies were very desperate for talent but weren't really willing to pay beyond a certain amount. It's hard to say if there is just a natural ceiling for pay or if it's actually some sort of setup to keep the compensation at that level.
  - radiantswirl 8y ago
    This is a fascinating question. My guess is that all industries have different levels of collusion/wage-fixing. If something as big as THE TECH INDUSTRY can get away with colluding to keep a ceiling on wages, then surely every single other smaller industry can as well.
    - dunpeal 8y ago
      There are many ways to suppress wages besides wage-fixing collusion. About 25% of American workers have non-compete clauses in their work agreements, for instance.
      - pmiller2 8y ago
roymurdock 8y ago
> To improve workers’ wages across the board, the report calls for local and state government to support workers’ rights to organize, adopt better labor standards for subcontracted workers, increase taxes on corporate headquarters and provide affordable housing. Nobody claims the solution is CEO-mandated "artificial" wage inflation, the report emphasizes the need for strong workers unions that can demand more equitable pay. The problem is that the unionizing workforce needs to have some basic level of skill or expertise with machinery or the business process that isn't easily replaceable. That and they need to be legal citizens, which isn't always a given in agriculture/food services/landscaping jobs. And provide something that a team in India/Ukraine can't. We are "here" (large and growing inequality) because our educational system is failing to emphasize and produce the necessary amount of high skilled workers that can replenish the middle class through the value of their skilled labor. But more fundamentally we are here because the pace of innovation in technology is slowing to a crawl, there are hardly any new machines being invented in silicon valley that take new skills to operate and generate real returns to raise the average American's standard of living. Most of what I observe from startups is either garbage powered by the ad economy, solutions looking for a problem, or get-rich blockchain/AI/ML get-rich-quick schemes looking for an easy VC buck.
- dunpeal 8y ago
  > Nobody claims the solution is CEO-mandated "artificial" wage inflation, the report emphasizes the need for strong workers unions that can demand more equitable pay. The report suggested multiple policies to attain "wage equality", including increased taxation and forcing companies to increase pay for subcontractors. The result of such policies would be downwards redistribution: less pay for high-skilled workers, more pay for low-skilled workers. I'm sure you don't think that "wage equality" means that janitors in SV start making $250+ like senior engineers. That is not sustainable. Any realistic solution would bring engineers way down, while lifting the bottom a little bit higher. I'm not sure when "equitable pay" became a goal. In a healthy free market, people are rewarded for their effort in developing rare and valuable skills. As far as I know, a market in which the government actively intervenes to keep all wages equal is called communism. If the government wants to take action, perhaps they should work to make SV more affordable for everyone, for example, by lifting ridiculous NIMBY restrictions that keep housing expensive. All those "high paid engineers" still can't afford a home anywhere near SF. Somehow I doubt the solution is to cut further into their pay.
mattmanser 8y ago
The world simply doesn't work the way of naive economic theories. One solution, that was common until neoliberalism became the defacto in the western world, was high taxes for the rich. Neoliberalism has been an obvious bust, growth is anemic, wealth distribution is becoming civil-war causing bad, political corruption rampant, but because no-one else has a meaningful alternative we're all still stuck in this 'the rich getting richer means we all will' fallacy. You have a nice story, but it's simply not true.
- jpdus 8y ago
  I don't understand the uncommented downvotes here. OP is provocant to make his point which is a valid one. It IS pretty obvious that the raw, uncontrolled market is not increasing the quality of life for a majority of the population and arguably your luck (your family bought some hectars of land in SV in the 80s? Or even simpler: you were able to go to a good college?) is way more important for your economic situation than your own hard work. This is not healthy for society in the long term and if you are not closing your eyes you see more than enough alarming signs for wrong developments. Better to share some wealth with everyone than being constrained to gated communities and let everyone else fight for meager rest in my opinion.
_ppnw 8y ago
Amazon's biggest R&D team of AI / facial recognition engineers is based in Ukraine. They make less than minimum wage in San Francisco. The point is capitalism focuses on keeping costs down over paying people what they are worth, regardless of their country or zip code.
- joejerryronnie 8y ago
  Capitalism is just taking advantage of Globalization here. So if you're in favor of free trade and open borders, you're also gonna get low paid Ukrainian engineers.
- seankimdesign 8y ago
  Who should determine the metric of "what they're worth" if not the market? The engineers in Ukraine agreeing to work for the wages that Amazon promises them seems to me like a mutually beneficial relationship to me.
  - anonymous5133 8y ago
    Yup, exactly. If the person in Ukraine didn't like their wage then they could always go back to the market and get a better wage.
    - _ppnw 8y ago
      Ukraine is a war zone - like Syria in 2011. there are 1.5 million refugees in Ukraine with no place to go - EU will not take them in and Russia is attacking them. Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe - their economy was shattered after the revolution. Why is it so crippling? Cyber attacks - low wages on the tech sector. How do you expect them to negotiate higher wages if they can't even leave the country safely?
      - mamon 8y ago
        >> there are 1.5 million refugees in Ukraine with no place to go - EU will not take them Fortunately, Poland is issuing 200k job permits for Ukrainians per year, which helps a little. Not to mention that there're twice as many Ukrainians coming to Poland illegaly.
nathanvanfleet 8y ago
It could happen if those people unionized. I don't think the company would do it because its heart is so big.
Synaesthesia 8y ago
This assumes that salary is all that motivates people. In fact people like to work on challenging and prestigious tasks, and not only for money. Salary aside, given the choice, would you rather be an engineer or a janitor?
- dunpeal 8y ago
  > This assumes that salary is all that motivates people. First of all, much of my argument is about the effects of one company paying more for the same work than its competitors. The company in my example pays its engineers better. So there's no assumption that these engineers would rather become janitors if it paid the same. There's a much more reasonable assumption that given equivalent work, they'd rather be paid more for it. As for people flocking to professions with the best pay prospects: that is not only logical, but has been proven many times over, including in our specific profession. I can link you some curves if you haven't seen them already. Of course, there will always be exceptions. But even then, it's not a reliable way to recruit thousands of hard-working employees. If engineering paid exactly the same as being a janitor, some of the most brilliant candidates will take a part-time job as a night guards, and spend all their time reading calculus books or playing chess. P.S. even brilliant people won't willingly go into $200k in debt to attend an elite school for engineering just to be saddled with that debt for the rest of their lives. They'll become night guards and spend their time reading physics textbook for fun. P.P.S. anecdotal evidence: some of the most brilliant people I know studied physics or pure math in top schools, then switched to tech because it pays.
  - smrtinsert 8y ago
    Being a corporate lawyer pays more. Watch now through amazing exodus of developers suddenly going into law...
- xg15 8y ago
  Ah yes, that old argument. Even Walt Disney was apparently shocked to hear that people were actually working for him to make a living and not just out of reverence for his projects.
sulam 8y ago
Here's the concrete suggestions they make: >To improve workers’ wages across the board, the report calls for local and state government to support workers’ rights to organize, adopt better labor standards for subcontracted workers, increase taxes on corporate headquarters and provide affordable housing. All of this seems reasonable and structural to me, ie it maintains a level playing field for businesses.
- pteredactyl 8y ago
  More taxes. That's the answer. How has the government spent our taxes so far?
  - taberiand 8y ago
    Less taxes. That's the answer. How have the corporations spent their windfalls so far?
    - mbrumlow 8y ago
      It's their windfall ... They can spend it any damn well they want.
      - gleenn 8y ago
        I believe that's exactly what's under contention, some people think corporations should not have as large windfalls in the name of spreading that wealth more generally.
        mbrumlow 8y ago
        Then people should simply stop buying their products.
        scaramanga 8y ago
        Or they could just have their charters revoked and their assets seized. Corporations have no rights, not even the right to exist.
xg15 8y ago
To be honest, I haven't seen any article about wages on HN, where the highest-rated comment wasn't some variation of "this article is terrible".
pteredactyl 8y ago
Fundamental economics are missing from our education system. Supply and demand is a foreign concept to many.
PopeDotNinja 8y ago
> Why waste 4 expensive years in college, if I can get the same pay as a janitor, straight out of highschool and without the student debt? I partially agree with the sentiment. However, I'd rather be intellectually challenged in a low paying role than bored out of my mind in a high paying role. Money isn't the only factor that goes through my mind as I look for a job.
smrtinsert 8y ago
Thanks I hadn't laughed hard enough today.
barrkel 8y ago
Labour supply is not elastic like your naive market argument assumes. The lag is too long and people are simply not responsive enough to the incentives to change how they think to make themselves good engineers, which requires a particular mindset not easily taught, far more often discovered.
- dunpeal 8y ago
  Nonsense. Look at the trends for enrollment in CS and engineering programs. They clearly follow monetary incentives.
ohyes 8y ago
> Why waste 4 expensive years in college, if I can get the same pay as a janitor, straight out of highschool and without the student debt? Because I’m smart and would be bored cleaning toilets.
- mc32 8y ago
  From what people relate to me, many smart, intelligent people in the USSR would become something like the quintessential DMV worker. Yeah, they become scientists and mathematicians but the also learned to slack off massively.
khuknows 8y ago
If low skilled jobs paid the same as engineering jobs, I’d still prefer to invest my time into learning to become an engineer as the work is more interesting. I assume this would be the case with enough others too. With that being said, the gap in pay betweeen low and high skilled jobs is unlikely to ever be 0, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be reduced in a way that would benefit all of us.
- dunpeal 8y ago
  And who decided that reducing the pay gap "would benefit all of us"? Different people put vastly different levels of effort into their careers. Who decides that they should now benefit equally?

alcio 8y ago

Not only is it terrible, but misleading too. Google has 88k employees and had a $32B revenue last quarter. Let's assume 25% of employees are R&D, each paid $250k/y: Google would spend $5.5B a year on R&D, or 4.2% of revenues ; not quite a "large portion of their capital".

chrisseaton 8y ago
> Let's assume 25% of employees are R&D 25% of people are researchers at Google? Are you saying that's what you think it is at the moment or hypothetically? Research is a tiny tiny proportion of Google's work.
- alcio 8y ago
  I cast a super wide net to show how ridiculous the original statement was.
- dunpeal 8y ago
  "R&D" is what SWEs do. If you're developing anything new, such as a new software system, then you are doing R&D by definition. "Production" is something like building the same factory that was built thousands of times before, to fabricate the same widgets that were fully designed by an R&D team. The actual top researchers at a place like Google would be making way more than $250k.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
dunpeal 8y ago
It's arguably Machiavellian: "Hey you, minimum-wage security guard, you know all these engineers you greet at the gate? Each one of them is making x5 your salary! Capitalistic pigs, eh?" (But let's not talk about the executives you never see, coming in through private entrances straight from their private landing strips and making x1,000 your salary.)
thedufer 8y ago
Comparing to revenue doesn't make much sense. If you look at profit margins they could easily be spending more than all of their profit on R&D. Also, that's a rather low estimate for average compensation for devs at Google. If, as you mentioned elsewhere, the 25% number is a purposeful overestimate, then combining it with an underestimate of compensation means that your total number is murky; it could easily be a drastic over- or under-estimate. That said, 25% is also an underestimate - in 2016 Google reported that ~38% of full-time employees were in R&D. So it sounds like you think you're overestimating how much they spend on R&D, but in fact you're way underestimating it.
- barrkel 8y ago
  Comparing costs with revenues is right. Profit already accounts for costs, and can be razor thin in very large companies with lots of costs - a comparison of costs with profit in such a company would be highly misleading.
  - thedufer 8y ago
    I think you're right that comparing to profit isn't right, but I still contend that comparing to revenue isn't either. What I meant is looking at per-unit profit margins (i.e. excluding things like R&D) - if just producing whatever they're selling costs 99% of revenue generated from it, then 5% of revenue on R&D looks pretty high - they're drawing on capital to do so. If, on the other hand, those costs are only 5%, then they're stashing away an enormous portion of revenue despite R&D and thus they're R&D spend looks pretty low.

qznc 8y ago

That logic should also work in reverse: If high-skill talent is rare their wages should rise. I do not see that happening. Well, at least not here in Germany. Industry is crying about a skill shortage but the corresponding wages are stagnant. My theory is that wages are not that much about demand and supply of skill or labor. More evidence is that wages differ so much regionally. A Silicon Valley software engineer is paid more than a Montana software engineer even if skills are equal. The companies are willing to pay the premium so their engineers are close to the headquarter. The startups need to be close to the venture capital, but I still wonder why the big companies stay there. Why don't Google and Apple move away?

nathanvanfleet 8y ago
So in the bay area they found out that the largest employers actually conspired to not hire each other's senior employees. Which serves to decrease mobility for people and makes it so their wages become lower. When I worked in Canada it seemed like companies were very desperate for talent but weren't really willing to pay beyond a certain amount. It's hard to say if there is just a natural ceiling for pay or if it's actually some sort of setup to keep the compensation at that level.
- radiantswirl 8y ago
  This is a fascinating question. My guess is that all industries have different levels of collusion/wage-fixing. If something as big as THE TECH INDUSTRY can get away with colluding to keep a ceiling on wages, then surely every single other smaller industry can as well.
  - dunpeal 8y ago
    There are many ways to suppress wages besides wage-fixing collusion. About 25% of American workers have non-compete clauses in their work agreements, for instance.
    - pmiller2 8y ago

roymurdock 8y ago

> To improve workers’ wages across the board, the report calls for local and state government to support workers’ rights to organize, adopt better labor standards for subcontracted workers, increase taxes on corporate headquarters and provide affordable housing. Nobody claims the solution is CEO-mandated "artificial" wage inflation, the report emphasizes the need for strong workers unions that can demand more equitable pay. The problem is that the unionizing workforce needs to have some basic level of skill or expertise with machinery or the business process that isn't easily replaceable. That and they need to be legal citizens, which isn't always a given in agriculture/food services/landscaping jobs. And provide something that a team in India/Ukraine can't. We are "here" (large and growing inequality) because our educational system is failing to emphasize and produce the necessary amount of high skilled workers that can replenish the middle class through the value of their skilled labor. But more fundamentally we are here because the pace of innovation in technology is slowing to a crawl, there are hardly any new machines being invented in silicon valley that take new skills to operate and generate real returns to raise the average American's standard of living. Most of what I observe from startups is either garbage powered by the ad economy, solutions looking for a problem, or get-rich blockchain/AI/ML get-rich-quick schemes looking for an easy VC buck.

dunpeal 8y ago
> Nobody claims the solution is CEO-mandated "artificial" wage inflation, the report emphasizes the need for strong workers unions that can demand more equitable pay. The report suggested multiple policies to attain "wage equality", including increased taxation and forcing companies to increase pay for subcontractors. The result of such policies would be downwards redistribution: less pay for high-skilled workers, more pay for low-skilled workers. I'm sure you don't think that "wage equality" means that janitors in SV start making $250+ like senior engineers. That is not sustainable. Any realistic solution would bring engineers way down, while lifting the bottom a little bit higher. I'm not sure when "equitable pay" became a goal. In a healthy free market, people are rewarded for their effort in developing rare and valuable skills. As far as I know, a market in which the government actively intervenes to keep all wages equal is called communism. If the government wants to take action, perhaps they should work to make SV more affordable for everyone, for example, by lifting ridiculous NIMBY restrictions that keep housing expensive. All those "high paid engineers" still can't afford a home anywhere near SF. Somehow I doubt the solution is to cut further into their pay.

mattmanser 8y ago

The world simply doesn't work the way of naive economic theories. One solution, that was common until neoliberalism became the defacto in the western world, was high taxes for the rich. Neoliberalism has been an obvious bust, growth is anemic, wealth distribution is becoming civil-war causing bad, political corruption rampant, but because no-one else has a meaningful alternative we're all still stuck in this 'the rich getting richer means we all will' fallacy. You have a nice story, but it's simply not true.

jpdus 8y ago
I don't understand the uncommented downvotes here. OP is provocant to make his point which is a valid one. It IS pretty obvious that the raw, uncontrolled market is not increasing the quality of life for a majority of the population and arguably your luck (your family bought some hectars of land in SV in the 80s? Or even simpler: you were able to go to a good college?) is way more important for your economic situation than your own hard work. This is not healthy for society in the long term and if you are not closing your eyes you see more than enough alarming signs for wrong developments. Better to share some wealth with everyone than being constrained to gated communities and let everyone else fight for meager rest in my opinion.

_ppnw 8y ago

Amazon's biggest R&D team of AI / facial recognition engineers is based in Ukraine. They make less than minimum wage in San Francisco. The point is capitalism focuses on keeping costs down over paying people what they are worth, regardless of their country or zip code.

joejerryronnie 8y ago
Capitalism is just taking advantage of Globalization here. So if you're in favor of free trade and open borders, you're also gonna get low paid Ukrainian engineers.
seankimdesign 8y ago
Who should determine the metric of "what they're worth" if not the market? The engineers in Ukraine agreeing to work for the wages that Amazon promises them seems to me like a mutually beneficial relationship to me.
- anonymous5133 8y ago
  Yup, exactly. If the person in Ukraine didn't like their wage then they could always go back to the market and get a better wage.
  - _ppnw 8y ago
    Ukraine is a war zone - like Syria in 2011. there are 1.5 million refugees in Ukraine with no place to go - EU will not take them in and Russia is attacking them. Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe - their economy was shattered after the revolution. Why is it so crippling? Cyber attacks - low wages on the tech sector. How do you expect them to negotiate higher wages if they can't even leave the country safely?
    - mamon 8y ago
      >> there are 1.5 million refugees in Ukraine with no place to go - EU will not take them Fortunately, Poland is issuing 200k job permits for Ukrainians per year, which helps a little. Not to mention that there're twice as many Ukrainians coming to Poland illegaly.

nathanvanfleet 8y ago

It could happen if those people unionized. I don't think the company would do it because its heart is so big.

Synaesthesia 8y ago

This assumes that salary is all that motivates people. In fact people like to work on challenging and prestigious tasks, and not only for money. Salary aside, given the choice, would you rather be an engineer or a janitor?

dunpeal 8y ago
> This assumes that salary is all that motivates people. First of all, much of my argument is about the effects of one company paying more for the same work than its competitors. The company in my example pays its engineers better. So there's no assumption that these engineers would rather become janitors if it paid the same. There's a much more reasonable assumption that given equivalent work, they'd rather be paid more for it. As for people flocking to professions with the best pay prospects: that is not only logical, but has been proven many times over, including in our specific profession. I can link you some curves if you haven't seen them already. Of course, there will always be exceptions. But even then, it's not a reliable way to recruit thousands of hard-working employees. If engineering paid exactly the same as being a janitor, some of the most brilliant candidates will take a part-time job as a night guards, and spend all their time reading calculus books or playing chess. P.S. even brilliant people won't willingly go into $200k in debt to attend an elite school for engineering just to be saddled with that debt for the rest of their lives. They'll become night guards and spend their time reading physics textbook for fun. P.P.S. anecdotal evidence: some of the most brilliant people I know studied physics or pure math in top schools, then switched to tech because it pays.
- smrtinsert 8y ago
  Being a corporate lawyer pays more. Watch now through amazing exodus of developers suddenly going into law...
xg15 8y ago
Ah yes, that old argument. Even Walt Disney was apparently shocked to hear that people were actually working for him to make a living and not just out of reverence for his projects.

sulam 8y ago

Here's the concrete suggestions they make: >To improve workers’ wages across the board, the report calls for local and state government to support workers’ rights to organize, adopt better labor standards for subcontracted workers, increase taxes on corporate headquarters and provide affordable housing. All of this seems reasonable and structural to me, ie it maintains a level playing field for businesses.

pteredactyl 8y ago
More taxes. That's the answer. How has the government spent our taxes so far?
- taberiand 8y ago
  Less taxes. That's the answer. How have the corporations spent their windfalls so far?
  - mbrumlow 8y ago
    It's their windfall ... They can spend it any damn well they want.
    - gleenn 8y ago
      I believe that's exactly what's under contention, some people think corporations should not have as large windfalls in the name of spreading that wealth more generally.
      - mbrumlow 8y ago
        Then people should simply stop buying their products.
        scaramanga 8y ago
        Or they could just have their charters revoked and their assets seized. Corporations have no rights, not even the right to exist.

xg15 8y ago

To be honest, I haven't seen any article about wages on HN, where the highest-rated comment wasn't some variation of "this article is terrible".

pteredactyl 8y ago

Fundamental economics are missing from our education system. Supply and demand is a foreign concept to many.

PopeDotNinja 8y ago

> Why waste 4 expensive years in college, if I can get the same pay as a janitor, straight out of highschool and without the student debt? I partially agree with the sentiment. However, I'd rather be intellectually challenged in a low paying role than bored out of my mind in a high paying role. Money isn't the only factor that goes through my mind as I look for a job.

smrtinsert 8y ago

Thanks I hadn't laughed hard enough today.

barrkel 8y ago

Labour supply is not elastic like your naive market argument assumes. The lag is too long and people are simply not responsive enough to the incentives to change how they think to make themselves good engineers, which requires a particular mindset not easily taught, far more often discovered.

dunpeal 8y ago
Nonsense. Look at the trends for enrollment in CS and engineering programs. They clearly follow monetary incentives.

ohyes 8y ago

> Why waste 4 expensive years in college, if I can get the same pay as a janitor, straight out of highschool and without the student debt? Because I’m smart and would be bored cleaning toilets.

mc32 8y ago
From what people relate to me, many smart, intelligent people in the USSR would become something like the quintessential DMV worker. Yeah, they become scientists and mathematicians but the also learned to slack off massively.

khuknows 8y ago

If low skilled jobs paid the same as engineering jobs, I’d still prefer to invest my time into learning to become an engineer as the work is more interesting. I assume this would be the case with enough others too. With that being said, the gap in pay betweeen low and high skilled jobs is unlikely to ever be 0, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be reduced in a way that would benefit all of us.

dunpeal 8y ago
And who decided that reducing the pay gap "would benefit all of us"? Different people put vastly different levels of effort into their careers. Who decides that they should now benefit equally?