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Tech does NOT pay like pro sports* and will not until workers get organized enough to form a collective bargaining agreement or something similar. Could softwa
by choppaface 7y ago
Tech does NOT pay like pro sports* and will not until workers get organized enough to form a collective bargaining agreement or something similar. Could software engineers do that? Lawyers and accountants have successfully guilded. And Partners get paid a lot more than Staff engineers. But tech companies strongly prefer having engineers as employees versus farming out work to firms. Software engineers have also been walled off from competitive salary information for many years (before Glassdoor or levels.fyi). This blog article should be seen as a potential aspiration versus a present day achievement (which isn’t true anyways).
* In addition to other counterarguments noted here: not everybody makes Staff engineer (many consider Senior terminal) but every rookie in sports gets a similar deal; athletes get cold hard cash but in tech a large part of total comp is tied to stock; athletes can get endorsement deals; athletes don’t “work” 12 months a year; athletes usually retire long before age 65.
- rusticpenn 7y agoWe have a collective bargaining agreement and a huge Union where I work (Germany). The pay is still much less than USA for the same type of jobs.
- perceptronas 7y agoA bit offtopic, but interested to know: having such a union/agreement - does it mean you cannot bargain to get higher salary just for yourself?
- rusticpenn 7y agoYou can have a talk with your manager to move to the next level on the Tarifftable, but these are extremely well defined. Another option is to move out of the agreement and get a free lease on a car, but it is not a very good idea.
- choppaface 7y agoThe collective bargaining agreement works for pro sports because players get a big chunk of overall revenue. In the NBA, players get half of all revenue. The CBA also stopped team owners colluding on no-poaches that were very similar to the Apple-Google-etc no-poach of yore. Union or not, software engineers would probably garner a larger portion of revenue and/or equity through some sort of group arbitration. Opening up salary info and other financials is at least a good first step. Moreover, the top pro athlete earners are pulling in more on endorsements than salary. If the CBA prohibited that, it might look more like a typical union / employment contract.
- lacker 7y agoTech pays even better than pro sports. But if you want to be paid like LeBron James, you need to start a tech company, not just to go work for Google.