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22 and 23 year olds making $200k+ a year? For doing what, exactly? Contributing 0.001% of the codebase to an app that sells advertisements? It may not have bee

22 and 23 year olds making $200k+ a year? For doing what, exactly? Contributing 0.001% of the codebase to an app that sells advertisements? It may not have been your intent, but your comment has (at least on my read) an accusatory tone. You ask a number of rhetorical questions which indicate that you have low-regard for the work of the engineers in question. You appear to be doubling down on this with your recent comment. Why so defensive Calling someone defensive because they disagree with you is uncivil and a great way to start an argument. In the most literal sense of the word, my comment offers some justification for these salaries because yours appears to discredit them.

tidepod12 7y ago
>It may not have been your intent, but your comment has (at least on my read) an accusatory tone. You ask a number of rhetorical questions which indicate that you have low-regard for the work of the engineers in question. I do have low regard for the engineers in question (low regard in terms of their ability and worthiness of salary, obviously not low regard in terms of their person). The majority of engineers in SV are working on products that primarily exist to serve advertisements to customers. They don't deserve $200k+ for that, and it makes me sad that society has decided these are the people that are paid this much while teachers and nurses are actually starving. You say that self-driving car engineers deserve it? Really? Show me the 22 year olds that have contributed meaningfully to self-driving technology. But you can't. Because the people making the meaningful contributions (read: worthy of being paid $200k+) are much more experienced, have been working in the field much longer, and are much older. They are not 22 year old new grads. >Calling someone defensive because they disagree with you is uncivil and a great way to start an argument. In the most literal sense of the word, my comment offers some justification for these salaries because yours appears to discredit them. And claiming that someone is accusing blame (when they haven't) is also uncivil and a great way to start an argument.
- pb7 7y ago
  >teachers and nurses are actually starving Citation needed.
  - tidepod12 7y ago
    Do you really need a citation for the common knowledge fact that teachers are one of the most low paid professions in America? Do you not know that many of them have to take up second jobs in order to pay their bills? You can read about that here, or by doing a Google search: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/06/01/new-polls-find-most-americans-agree-teachers-are-underpaid-and-many-would-pay-higher-taxes-to-fix-it/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/06/... https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2014/07/23/94168/mid-and-late-career-teachers-struggle-with-paltry-incomes/ https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/repor... https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/02/21/why-oakland-teachers-are-striking-quite-simply-you-cant-feed-minds-our-students-by-starving-their-schools/?noredirect=on https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/02/21/why-oakl... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/04/03/teachers-have-had-it-why-theyre-revolting-against-low-pay-and-inadequate-school-funding/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/04/... Did you miss the entire #ClearTheList campaign last month for when teachers started up school again? If so, the tl;dr is that teachers were having to ask their friends and family to buy school supplies for their classrooms because the teachers could not afford to do so themselves. Amazon, ironically, created an entire section of their site for such lists. Does it not seem even a little bit of a problem to you that Amazon, one of the richest companies in the world, with some of the richest employees in the world, rather than using some of that wealth to help the teachers, actually created a service where Amazon actually profited off of the fact that these teachers needed assistance buying school supplies?
    - pb7 7y ago
      None of those links support your claim that teachers and nurses are starving. Having a relatively low income (according to polls!) does not mean you are dying on the streets due to malnutrition. Taking a second job does not mean the alternative is peril. I could take a second job to afford a better Ferrari but that does not mean I can't afford a car. Try again.
      - tidepod12 7y ago
        The third link literally has 'starving' in the title, referring to the schools and teachers that work there. It is common parlance to use the term 'starving' to refer to more than just 'dying on the streets due to malnutrition'. You know this, but you chose to nitpick the word instead of interpreting my comment the way you knew I meant it. Please do not do that, it is against the HN guidelines. >Taking a second job does not mean the alternative is peril. I could take a second job to afford a better Ferrari but that does not mean I can't afford a car. Try again. We aren't talking about teachers taking a second job so that they can afford niceties or a new car. We're talking about teachers taking a second job just so they can afford rent. Many of them are on federal subsidy programs just so they can afford food.
- asciident 7y ago
  Just curious, did you have the same feeling towards the many decades when law and finance new grads were making $200K-300K (and many still do)? Is writing reports about financial statements of a company or proofreading legal text a more worthy endeavor than making apps/websites that attract users? Are those new grads making meaningful contributions to society?
  - tidepod12 7y ago
    >Just curious, did you have the same feeling towards the many decades when law and finance new grads were making $200K-300K (and many still do)? Yes. The difference (aside from the fact that this particular post is specifically about SV, not about law and finance) is that I have never seen lawyers, doctors, or even investment bankers (although yes I have seen Wolf of Wall Street) be so casual about the fact that their salaries are so high. In another comment in this thread, someone suggested that having an extra $5,000 disposable per month was not a lot of money. That is absurd to me, and I have never experienced any of my doctor or lawyer friends have that same attitude.
    - balfirevic 7y ago
      Do you think having extra $50 disposable per month is a lot of money? There was a time when it would be hugely important for me, and now it is not. What "lot of money" means is entirely relative to how much money you have because for most people it means "would it translate to large difference in lifestyle". Also, if we are talking about the comment by refurb, it said "rolling in cash" which does not carry the same connotations as "lot of money".
      - tidepod12 7y ago
        >What "lot of money" means is entirely relative to how much money you have because for most people it means "would it translate to large difference in lifestyle". Yes, and my entire point (or at least, the one started by the original top level comment) is that SV has strayed really far from the typical level of "relative" that most of the rest of the country operates on.
- InterimNew 7y ago
  I see. I saw somewhere else in the thread that you yourself are a new grad, so I'll chalk this up to lack of experience but on sufficiently large products it is trivial to make incremental changes that will produce more value then your salary. In my own career I saved a big tech company 250k in reoccurring costs with a 9 month project I completed as a junior. Yes, that number is a rounding error for a large company but the value is clear. Additionally, perhaps you have never built a team before, but the value of a potential employee extends beyond their year-to-year output. If, for example, I have great confidence that a currently junior hire will output ~$1M of value over a four year period than I am willing to overpay that first year as they grow and develop. This isn't going anywhere interesting and I am uninterested in continuing the conversation further. Have a nice day :) (There is a certain irony to me about this back and forth. A large portion of my personal time is spent volunteering in an organization that agitates for unions and other forms of direct action aimed at tackling the gross inequity of this society head-on. You're clearly keyed in to a real and present problem, but rather than suggest any solutions you've decided to whinge ineffectively about... developer salaries?)
  - tidepod12 7y ago
    I'm not a new grad (I was one of those 'new grads' getting a high salary, but that was years ago), but thanks for being so dismissive based on my perceived age (which isn't even correct). Nice age-ism. If it's dicks you want to measure: in my career, I have personally been responsible for over $2 million in sales of contracts and helped another company implement a $1.5 million software implementation in half the planned time. I still don't think it was at all a meaningful contribution to society. If you don't want to continue the discussion, that's fine by me.
    - InterimNew 7y ago
      edit: and for the record, I'm one of those "new grads" making a self-admittedly absurd amount of money for what honestly amounts to a relatively meaningless contribution to society. Yea, I take the salary (and try to donate a good bit of it), but it still makes me feel uneasy that I'm being paid this much in the first place. I'm sorry, how was I supposed to read that? If someone tells you that they lack experience, it is entirely within the pale to comment on or draw conclusions from their lack of experience. And no, I do not want to measure your genitalia. That doesn't have any place on Hacker News.
- billhathaway 7y ago
  For the companies in question, the senior engineers making bigger contributions are earning $400k+.
  - cbm-vic-20 7y ago
    Some day, the money people will figure out that there are lots of experienced talent outside the SV bubble.

tidepod12 7y ago

>It may not have been your intent, but your comment has (at least on my read) an accusatory tone. You ask a number of rhetorical questions which indicate that you have low-regard for the work of the engineers in question. I do have low regard for the engineers in question (low regard in terms of their ability and worthiness of salary, obviously not low regard in terms of their person). The majority of engineers in SV are working on products that primarily exist to serve advertisements to customers. They don't deserve $200k+ for that, and it makes me sad that society has decided these are the people that are paid this much while teachers and nurses are actually starving. You say that self-driving car engineers deserve it? Really? Show me the 22 year olds that have contributed meaningfully to self-driving technology. But you can't. Because the people making the meaningful contributions (read: worthy of being paid $200k+) are much more experienced, have been working in the field much longer, and are much older. They are not 22 year old new grads. >Calling someone defensive because they disagree with you is uncivil and a great way to start an argument. In the most literal sense of the word, my comment offers some justification for these salaries because yours appears to discredit them. And claiming that someone is accusing blame (when they haven't) is also uncivil and a great way to start an argument.

pb7 7y ago
>teachers and nurses are actually starving Citation needed.
- tidepod12 7y ago
  Do you really need a citation for the common knowledge fact that teachers are one of the most low paid professions in America? Do you not know that many of them have to take up second jobs in order to pay their bills? You can read about that here, or by doing a Google search: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/06/01/new-polls-find-most-americans-agree-teachers-are-underpaid-and-many-would-pay-higher-taxes-to-fix-it/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/06/... https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2014/07/23/94168/mid-and-late-career-teachers-struggle-with-paltry-incomes/ https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/repor... https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/02/21/why-oakland-teachers-are-striking-quite-simply-you-cant-feed-minds-our-students-by-starving-their-schools/?noredirect=on https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2019/02/21/why-oakl... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/04/03/teachers-have-had-it-why-theyre-revolting-against-low-pay-and-inadequate-school-funding/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/04/... Did you miss the entire #ClearTheList campaign last month for when teachers started up school again? If so, the tl;dr is that teachers were having to ask their friends and family to buy school supplies for their classrooms because the teachers could not afford to do so themselves. Amazon, ironically, created an entire section of their site for such lists. Does it not seem even a little bit of a problem to you that Amazon, one of the richest companies in the world, with some of the richest employees in the world, rather than using some of that wealth to help the teachers, actually created a service where Amazon actually profited off of the fact that these teachers needed assistance buying school supplies?
  - pb7 7y ago
    None of those links support your claim that teachers and nurses are starving. Having a relatively low income (according to polls!) does not mean you are dying on the streets due to malnutrition. Taking a second job does not mean the alternative is peril. I could take a second job to afford a better Ferrari but that does not mean I can't afford a car. Try again.
    - tidepod12 7y ago
      The third link literally has 'starving' in the title, referring to the schools and teachers that work there. It is common parlance to use the term 'starving' to refer to more than just 'dying on the streets due to malnutrition'. You know this, but you chose to nitpick the word instead of interpreting my comment the way you knew I meant it. Please do not do that, it is against the HN guidelines. >Taking a second job does not mean the alternative is peril. I could take a second job to afford a better Ferrari but that does not mean I can't afford a car. Try again. We aren't talking about teachers taking a second job so that they can afford niceties or a new car. We're talking about teachers taking a second job just so they can afford rent. Many of them are on federal subsidy programs just so they can afford food.
asciident 7y ago
Just curious, did you have the same feeling towards the many decades when law and finance new grads were making $200K-300K (and many still do)? Is writing reports about financial statements of a company or proofreading legal text a more worthy endeavor than making apps/websites that attract users? Are those new grads making meaningful contributions to society?
- tidepod12 7y ago
  >Just curious, did you have the same feeling towards the many decades when law and finance new grads were making $200K-300K (and many still do)? Yes. The difference (aside from the fact that this particular post is specifically about SV, not about law and finance) is that I have never seen lawyers, doctors, or even investment bankers (although yes I have seen Wolf of Wall Street) be so casual about the fact that their salaries are so high. In another comment in this thread, someone suggested that having an extra $5,000 disposable per month was not a lot of money. That is absurd to me, and I have never experienced any of my doctor or lawyer friends have that same attitude.
  - balfirevic 7y ago
    Do you think having extra $50 disposable per month is a lot of money? There was a time when it would be hugely important for me, and now it is not. What "lot of money" means is entirely relative to how much money you have because for most people it means "would it translate to large difference in lifestyle". Also, if we are talking about the comment by refurb, it said "rolling in cash" which does not carry the same connotations as "lot of money".
    - tidepod12 7y ago
      >What "lot of money" means is entirely relative to how much money you have because for most people it means "would it translate to large difference in lifestyle". Yes, and my entire point (or at least, the one started by the original top level comment) is that SV has strayed really far from the typical level of "relative" that most of the rest of the country operates on.
InterimNew 7y ago
I see. I saw somewhere else in the thread that you yourself are a new grad, so I'll chalk this up to lack of experience but on sufficiently large products it is trivial to make incremental changes that will produce more value then your salary. In my own career I saved a big tech company 250k in reoccurring costs with a 9 month project I completed as a junior. Yes, that number is a rounding error for a large company but the value is clear. Additionally, perhaps you have never built a team before, but the value of a potential employee extends beyond their year-to-year output. If, for example, I have great confidence that a currently junior hire will output ~$1M of value over a four year period than I am willing to overpay that first year as they grow and develop. This isn't going anywhere interesting and I am uninterested in continuing the conversation further. Have a nice day :) (There is a certain irony to me about this back and forth. A large portion of my personal time is spent volunteering in an organization that agitates for unions and other forms of direct action aimed at tackling the gross inequity of this society head-on. You're clearly keyed in to a real and present problem, but rather than suggest any solutions you've decided to whinge ineffectively about... developer salaries?)
- tidepod12 7y ago
  I'm not a new grad (I was one of those 'new grads' getting a high salary, but that was years ago), but thanks for being so dismissive based on my perceived age (which isn't even correct). Nice age-ism. If it's dicks you want to measure: in my career, I have personally been responsible for over $2 million in sales of contracts and helped another company implement a $1.5 million software implementation in half the planned time. I still don't think it was at all a meaningful contribution to society. If you don't want to continue the discussion, that's fine by me.
  - InterimNew 7y ago
    edit: and for the record, I'm one of those "new grads" making a self-admittedly absurd amount of money for what honestly amounts to a relatively meaningless contribution to society. Yea, I take the salary (and try to donate a good bit of it), but it still makes me feel uneasy that I'm being paid this much in the first place. I'm sorry, how was I supposed to read that? If someone tells you that they lack experience, it is entirely within the pale to comment on or draw conclusions from their lack of experience. And no, I do not want to measure your genitalia. That doesn't have any place on Hacker News.
billhathaway 7y ago
For the companies in question, the senior engineers making bigger contributions are earning $400k+.
- cbm-vic-20 7y ago
  Some day, the money people will figure out that there are lots of experienced talent outside the SV bubble.