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It's frankly crazy that software people make only 100K. Yes, I know the industry is huge, and has many different areas and levels of difficulty, and required s

It's frankly crazy that software people make only 100K. Yes, I know the industry is huge, and has many different areas and levels of difficulty, and required skill. But it's nuts that people don't bat an eye paying even a mediocre lawyer $200 or $300/hr (my dumb-ass condo lawyer charges $365/hr) and somehow software engineers, who have to do crazy feats of applied math, manage absurd levels of complexity, deal with ridiculous deadlines, and work on increasingly critical pieces of the global economy, work for the equivalent of $50-60/hr. This can't go on, it seems only natural that pay is going to keep going up, especially when people realize how hard and complicated this stuff is, and how much demand for it there is, in terms of how much power and competitiveness it gives businesses, and how relatively few people can really do it at even a passable level. My property manager quoted me $90/hr to change a lightbulb. My jaw almost hit the floor.

madengr 7y ago
Your answer is in your question: “global economy”. That lawyer is licensed in his state. Software can be written in a 3rd world country. Why is it that these high $ software jobs in CA have not been outsourced to India?
axaxs 7y ago
It's in waves. These dime a dozen boot camps are turning out some really awful programmers, and I have the displeasure of working with a lot of them. If there is a real wave of 'we want people who understand what they're doing', salaries will be through the roof. But in today's climate, those boot camp folks do fine.
wutbrodo 7y ago
> t's nuts that people don't bat an eye paying even a mediocre lawyer $200 or $300/hr (my dumb-ass condo lawyer charges $365/hr) and somehow software engineers, who have to do crazy feats of applied math, manage absurd levels of complexity, deal with ridiculous deadlines, and work on increasingly critical pieces of the global economy, work for the equivalent of $50-60/hr. This isn't mysterious: the legal profession is controlled by a corrupt guild engaged in regulatory capture, while engineering is more or less an entirely free labor market.
- eldavido 7y ago
  Completely agree. Just not sure what the endgame is. Attorneys and many other professionals are REALLY entrenched. They're kind of in the sweet spot of, enough money to be influential (unlike most traditional trade unions), enough members to have national lobbying clout, but not big enough to be considered "big and bad". It's the same deal with realtors, doctors, attorneys, architects, CPAs, and other jobs considered "upper middle class". I just can't help but think something has to give with these kinds of work over the next 20 or so years. If companies like Uber can figure out a way to break another massively corrupt guild (taxis and medallions), there have to be ways to route around many of these professions decidedly customer-hostile behaviors.
  - logicchains 7y ago
    >Just not sure what the endgame is Automation? Presumably most of the non-ambiguous parts of the legal system could eventually be translated into computer programs. If smart contracts ever really took off this might happen.
- brailsafe 7y ago
  True engineering is a regulated profession in at least Canada. Legally, I cannot call myself an engineer of any type. Ironically, my current and potential salary seems to be much higher than an engineer below P.Eng certification.
- whyhow 7y ago
  You are comparing average salary for software engineers to the revenue number for a lawyer. That revenue number isn't his salary because it is unlikely that he is able to bill 40 hours a week. A better comparison would be the average salary of lawyers vs the average salary of software engineers. Or the average billable rate of a software engineer consultant vs the billable rate of a lawyer. Have you looked at what lawyers get paid? The law field has a very strange bi-modal salary distribution. https://abovethelaw.com/2018/06/the-most-important-chart-in-the-legal-industry-and-it-has-nothing-to-do-with-the-law/ https://abovethelaw.com/2018/06/the-most-important-chart-in-...
- deleted 7y ago
onion2k 7y ago
... software engineers, who have to do crazy feats of applied math, manage absurd levels of complexity, deal with ridiculous deadlines, and work on increasingly critical pieces of the global economy Individual engineers tend not to do anything like that though. They work on tiny cogs that build up to a huge economic machine. No tiny cog is unimportant, but none of them have any real power either. Tiny cogs are replaceable. An analogy would be suggesting people who design truck windshield wipers should earn millions because trucking is the basis of the retail and industrial economy, and without trucks everything who stop and we'd all starve. It might be true if you do a bit of mental gymnastics, but it's never going to change anything.
- eldavido 7y ago
  All I'm saying is that, if you look at the number of people qualified to do this kind of work (high-end software engineering) throughout the economy, it's vanishingly small. Personal anecdote: I'm in the process of appealing my property taxes in Cook Country, IL. The attorneys who do this regularly work on commission and charge 10-20% of what they save you. This nets them in some cases 3-5K for a day, or even half a day's, work. I'm not suggesting there's some terrible moralistic injustice being done here. Only that, if you look at the sheer mental capability required to program computers, right away, this is a task that, if I'm being charitable, maybe 10% of the entire human population can do, AT ALL. Keep in mind, huge numbers of people graduate college in the US and can barely write a coherent paragraph, let alone manipulate symbolic logic or apply the kind of structured, rigorous thinking required to write bug-free code. And then consider how much overall demand there is for it, all the things computers can be made to do, the reach, and the scale, and it's not hard to imagine a future where software devs are compensated as least as well as, if not better than, attorneys.
  - speedplane 7y ago
    > it's not hard to imagine a future where software devs are compensated as least as well as, if not better than, attorneys. That future is already here. Starting salaries for attorneys at top-tier firms are higher than starting salaries for engineers at top tier tech companies, but not by much, around 10%. Once you factor in the 3 extra years it takes to get a law degree and tuition costs, it's fair to say that attorneys are paid less than engineers. While attorney compensation at top firms grows pretty quickly every year (5 years out of school, you can hit 300k with bonus), very few attorneys last this long (average attrition is 3 years), and again, this is only the very top tier. Also, generally attorneys work far longer hours than engineers and have a much more stressful work environment.
goatinaboat 7y ago
This can't go on, it seems only natural that pay is going to keep going up, especially when people realize how hard and complicated this stuff is Well your lawyer isn’t running around telling everyone that what he does is easy and anyone can do it, he isn’t slagging off every other lawyer and telling you the contract needs to be totally rewritten in a very slightly different style every 6 months, he isn’t crowing about a lawyer shortage and calling for open borders to get foreign lawyers to make up the numbers... Plumbers and electricians don’t do this either. In fact no one else is so eager to devalue their own work. The general disempowerment of tech workers relative to lawyers, accountants, doctors, MBA’s and so on is 100% of tech’s own making.
- listenallyall 7y ago
  ...in addition, only techies proudly acknowledge giving away their best, most innovative and most valuable work product, completely for free.
  - goatinaboat 7y ago
    When someone says “I love programming so much I’d even do it for free” their manager has a good laugh, out on the golf course with their MBA buddies
- non-entity 7y ago
  Tbf you also cant go straight from HS->Lawyer even if you tried
ajdlinux 7y ago
> My property manager quoted me $90/hr to change a lightbulb. My jaw almost hit the floor. Bear in mind that the tradie who does the job is most likely not getting paid $90/hr. There's overheads and profit margins involved.
- eldavido 7y ago
  I used to run a software contracting company so I'm well aware of the economics :) Just pointing out that tons of skilled trades regularly bill out well over $100/hr, hell, the damn Otis elevator techs charge, I kid you not, $550/hr to fix the elevators in my condo building. Deliberately chosen for extreme/shock value, but still, they aren't breaking their brains refactoring absurd legacy code, either.
  - cullenking 7y ago
    My dad is an elevator mechanic, and you'd be pretty surprised at what the job actually entails. He has to maintain legacy elevators with logic implemented by relay (1), up to brand new computer controlled systems. Over the course of his caree he has taught himself what would have been called an electrical engineering education 20 years ago. He had to become proficient in the basics of mechanical engineering, in order to run retrofits in older buildings. He had to become proficient in CAD, because half the work to fit new elevators in old buildings is custom fitment. On top of this, he has to be a project manager. Now, add in liability insurance and other normal business overhead, custom tools, and niche market effects, and $500 an hour isn't out of the question. (1): https://youtu.be/_xjXdjj2m5Q?t=152 https://youtu.be/_xjXdjj2m5Q?t=152
idclip 7y ago
Its very expected if you think about the personality profile. What do you expect from a distribution that leans towards nerd? It makes sense too, some of us get to be super rich, and very few of us really poor. Most are in the middle, and ad “computers”, we earn better than nurses, actually, which isnt bad. We do get bullied by management often, but many others do too. In the end, pain, especially financial, teaches; and its what helps people push themselves forward and up.
Gatsky 7y ago
Many people in academia do all this and more for much less pay and job security. Some of them invent the math you get paid 3 times as much (at least) to apply. I guess they fall into the dumb-ass category of your binary classification of everyone as either software engineers or dumb-asses.
Vadoff 7y ago
Supply and demand. It typically takes 4 years of undergrad + 3 years of law school + passing the bar exam to be a lawyer. If software engineers had to overcome similar hurdles to legally work in the industry, there would be significantly less of them.
2rsf 7y ago
You are comparing apples to oranges, your lawyer is self employed and those 365/hr pays for his office rent, secretary, pension, professional insurance, ongoing professional education an so on.
- stingraycharles 7y ago
  Also a large portion of a lawyer’s time spent is not billable. The 365/hr also needs to cover for that.
oefrha 7y ago
> somehow software engineers, who have to do crazy feats of applied math, manage absurd levels of complexity, deal with ridiculous deadlines... You should do some research on how much mathematicians and theoretical physicists who actually do crazy feats of applied and/or pure math (as opposed to using some standard library sorting routine and calling that crazy feats of applied math) and put insane hours into incomprehensibly difficult problems get paid. (Granted, there’s seldom immediate effects on economy.) Then you’ll probably feel lucky.
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  The university won’t go bankrupt because someone’s research didn’t pan out. The lack of any commercial pressure means these jobs are not comparable.
  - oefrha 7y ago
    Gp was arguing about merit vs pay. If you’re going by market forces then lawyers should be paid more, because market has thus far decided that they are.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
thrwaway69 7y ago
This thread should have a sticky note - grass is always greener on the other side.
pc86 7y ago
This example is so wrong it's borderline lying. The median attorney salary in the US is $115k. Some make $500k but most don't, just like some software developers make $500k but most don't.
topkai22 7y ago
The median wage for attorneys in the US is $120k. For software engineers it is $103k. The difference isn’t that large overall, and given the additional education requirements to become an attorney it doesn’t appear to be a huge market failure. remember, the software engineer that is getting paid $50-60/hr probably gets a $120-150/hr external bill rate.

madengr 7y ago

Your answer is in your question: “global economy”. That lawyer is licensed in his state. Software can be written in a 3rd world country. Why is it that these high $ software jobs in CA have not been outsourced to India?

axaxs 7y ago

It's in waves. These dime a dozen boot camps are turning out some really awful programmers, and I have the displeasure of working with a lot of them. If there is a real wave of 'we want people who understand what they're doing', salaries will be through the roof. But in today's climate, those boot camp folks do fine.

wutbrodo 7y ago

> t's nuts that people don't bat an eye paying even a mediocre lawyer $200 or $300/hr (my dumb-ass condo lawyer charges $365/hr) and somehow software engineers, who have to do crazy feats of applied math, manage absurd levels of complexity, deal with ridiculous deadlines, and work on increasingly critical pieces of the global economy, work for the equivalent of $50-60/hr. This isn't mysterious: the legal profession is controlled by a corrupt guild engaged in regulatory capture, while engineering is more or less an entirely free labor market.

eldavido 7y ago
Completely agree. Just not sure what the endgame is. Attorneys and many other professionals are REALLY entrenched. They're kind of in the sweet spot of, enough money to be influential (unlike most traditional trade unions), enough members to have national lobbying clout, but not big enough to be considered "big and bad". It's the same deal with realtors, doctors, attorneys, architects, CPAs, and other jobs considered "upper middle class". I just can't help but think something has to give with these kinds of work over the next 20 or so years. If companies like Uber can figure out a way to break another massively corrupt guild (taxis and medallions), there have to be ways to route around many of these professions decidedly customer-hostile behaviors.
- logicchains 7y ago
  >Just not sure what the endgame is Automation? Presumably most of the non-ambiguous parts of the legal system could eventually be translated into computer programs. If smart contracts ever really took off this might happen.
brailsafe 7y ago
True engineering is a regulated profession in at least Canada. Legally, I cannot call myself an engineer of any type. Ironically, my current and potential salary seems to be much higher than an engineer below P.Eng certification.
whyhow 7y ago
You are comparing average salary for software engineers to the revenue number for a lawyer. That revenue number isn't his salary because it is unlikely that he is able to bill 40 hours a week. A better comparison would be the average salary of lawyers vs the average salary of software engineers. Or the average billable rate of a software engineer consultant vs the billable rate of a lawyer. Have you looked at what lawyers get paid? The law field has a very strange bi-modal salary distribution. https://abovethelaw.com/2018/06/the-most-important-chart-in-the-legal-industry-and-it-has-nothing-to-do-with-the-law/ https://abovethelaw.com/2018/06/the-most-important-chart-in-...
deleted 7y ago

onion2k 7y ago

... software engineers, who have to do crazy feats of applied math, manage absurd levels of complexity, deal with ridiculous deadlines, and work on increasingly critical pieces of the global economy Individual engineers tend not to do anything like that though. They work on tiny cogs that build up to a huge economic machine. No tiny cog is unimportant, but none of them have any real power either. Tiny cogs are replaceable. An analogy would be suggesting people who design truck windshield wipers should earn millions because trucking is the basis of the retail and industrial economy, and without trucks everything who stop and we'd all starve. It might be true if you do a bit of mental gymnastics, but it's never going to change anything.

eldavido 7y ago
All I'm saying is that, if you look at the number of people qualified to do this kind of work (high-end software engineering) throughout the economy, it's vanishingly small. Personal anecdote: I'm in the process of appealing my property taxes in Cook Country, IL. The attorneys who do this regularly work on commission and charge 10-20% of what they save you. This nets them in some cases 3-5K for a day, or even half a day's, work. I'm not suggesting there's some terrible moralistic injustice being done here. Only that, if you look at the sheer mental capability required to program computers, right away, this is a task that, if I'm being charitable, maybe 10% of the entire human population can do, AT ALL. Keep in mind, huge numbers of people graduate college in the US and can barely write a coherent paragraph, let alone manipulate symbolic logic or apply the kind of structured, rigorous thinking required to write bug-free code. And then consider how much overall demand there is for it, all the things computers can be made to do, the reach, and the scale, and it's not hard to imagine a future where software devs are compensated as least as well as, if not better than, attorneys.
- speedplane 7y ago
  > it's not hard to imagine a future where software devs are compensated as least as well as, if not better than, attorneys. That future is already here. Starting salaries for attorneys at top-tier firms are higher than starting salaries for engineers at top tier tech companies, but not by much, around 10%. Once you factor in the 3 extra years it takes to get a law degree and tuition costs, it's fair to say that attorneys are paid less than engineers. While attorney compensation at top firms grows pretty quickly every year (5 years out of school, you can hit 300k with bonus), very few attorneys last this long (average attrition is 3 years), and again, this is only the very top tier. Also, generally attorneys work far longer hours than engineers and have a much more stressful work environment.

goatinaboat 7y ago

This can't go on, it seems only natural that pay is going to keep going up, especially when people realize how hard and complicated this stuff is Well your lawyer isn’t running around telling everyone that what he does is easy and anyone can do it, he isn’t slagging off every other lawyer and telling you the contract needs to be totally rewritten in a very slightly different style every 6 months, he isn’t crowing about a lawyer shortage and calling for open borders to get foreign lawyers to make up the numbers... Plumbers and electricians don’t do this either. In fact no one else is so eager to devalue their own work. The general disempowerment of tech workers relative to lawyers, accountants, doctors, MBA’s and so on is 100% of tech’s own making.

listenallyall 7y ago
...in addition, only techies proudly acknowledge giving away their best, most innovative and most valuable work product, completely for free.
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  When someone says “I love programming so much I’d even do it for free” their manager has a good laugh, out on the golf course with their MBA buddies
non-entity 7y ago
Tbf you also cant go straight from HS->Lawyer even if you tried

ajdlinux 7y ago

> My property manager quoted me $90/hr to change a lightbulb. My jaw almost hit the floor. Bear in mind that the tradie who does the job is most likely not getting paid $90/hr. There's overheads and profit margins involved.

eldavido 7y ago
I used to run a software contracting company so I'm well aware of the economics :) Just pointing out that tons of skilled trades regularly bill out well over $100/hr, hell, the damn Otis elevator techs charge, I kid you not, $550/hr to fix the elevators in my condo building. Deliberately chosen for extreme/shock value, but still, they aren't breaking their brains refactoring absurd legacy code, either.
- cullenking 7y ago
  My dad is an elevator mechanic, and you'd be pretty surprised at what the job actually entails. He has to maintain legacy elevators with logic implemented by relay (1), up to brand new computer controlled systems. Over the course of his caree he has taught himself what would have been called an electrical engineering education 20 years ago. He had to become proficient in the basics of mechanical engineering, in order to run retrofits in older buildings. He had to become proficient in CAD, because half the work to fit new elevators in old buildings is custom fitment. On top of this, he has to be a project manager. Now, add in liability insurance and other normal business overhead, custom tools, and niche market effects, and $500 an hour isn't out of the question. (1): https://youtu.be/_xjXdjj2m5Q?t=152 https://youtu.be/_xjXdjj2m5Q?t=152

idclip 7y ago

Its very expected if you think about the personality profile. What do you expect from a distribution that leans towards nerd? It makes sense too, some of us get to be super rich, and very few of us really poor. Most are in the middle, and ad “computers”, we earn better than nurses, actually, which isnt bad. We do get bullied by management often, but many others do too. In the end, pain, especially financial, teaches; and its what helps people push themselves forward and up.

Gatsky 7y ago

Many people in academia do all this and more for much less pay and job security. Some of them invent the math you get paid 3 times as much (at least) to apply. I guess they fall into the dumb-ass category of your binary classification of everyone as either software engineers or dumb-asses.

Vadoff 7y ago

Supply and demand. It typically takes 4 years of undergrad + 3 years of law school + passing the bar exam to be a lawyer. If software engineers had to overcome similar hurdles to legally work in the industry, there would be significantly less of them.

2rsf 7y ago

You are comparing apples to oranges, your lawyer is self employed and those 365/hr pays for his office rent, secretary, pension, professional insurance, ongoing professional education an so on.

stingraycharles 7y ago
Also a large portion of a lawyer’s time spent is not billable. The 365/hr also needs to cover for that.

oefrha 7y ago

> somehow software engineers, who have to do crazy feats of applied math, manage absurd levels of complexity, deal with ridiculous deadlines... You should do some research on how much mathematicians and theoretical physicists who actually do crazy feats of applied and/or pure math (as opposed to using some standard library sorting routine and calling that crazy feats of applied math) and put insane hours into incomprehensibly difficult problems get paid. (Granted, there’s seldom immediate effects on economy.) Then you’ll probably feel lucky.

goatinaboat 7y ago
The university won’t go bankrupt because someone’s research didn’t pan out. The lack of any commercial pressure means these jobs are not comparable.
- oefrha 7y ago
  Gp was arguing about merit vs pay. If you’re going by market forces then lawyers should be paid more, because market has thus far decided that they are.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

thrwaway69 7y ago

This thread should have a sticky note - grass is always greener on the other side.

pc86 7y ago

This example is so wrong it's borderline lying. The median attorney salary in the US is $115k. Some make $500k but most don't, just like some software developers make $500k but most don't.

topkai22 7y ago

The median wage for attorneys in the US is $120k. For software engineers it is $103k. The difference isn’t that large overall, and given the additional education requirements to become an attorney it doesn’t appear to be a huge market failure. remember, the software engineer that is getting paid $50-60/hr probably gets a $120-150/hr external bill rate.