5 ms·

US median family income was $60,336 in 2017, and $71,805 in California[1]. Junior developers in Silicon Valley have starting salaries around $110000, and I've h

US median family income was $60,336 in 2017, and $71,805 in California[1]. Junior developers in Silicon Valley have starting salaries around $110000, and I've heard for new college graduates getting up to $150K. I.e. twice median family income. You cannot have these high salaries without someone else getting shafted. There simply isn't enough money for everyone to be earning like this. Whether you consider inequality a problem is down to your politics, but in general the UK is a more equal society (slightly less social mobility but less inequality) than the US and hence salaries are lower. [1]: https://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/california/ https://www.deptofnumbers.com/income/california/

scarejunba 7y ago
> You cannot have these high salaries without someone else getting shafted. There simply isn't enough money for everyone to be earning like this. Please substantiate your claim to this being zero sum. It does not seem self-evident.
- noelwelsh 7y ago
  I made no such claim. You're reading that into my words. If I have a data set from which I pick a value higher than the median there must be a value lower than the median ... otherwise the median would be higher. It's not a statement about economics but about math. I'm not saying there cannot be economic growth (though, generally, wage inequality is rising so most people aren't seeing the benefits of this).
  - wallacoloo 7y ago
    It sounds like you’re saying that if GP fights for higher salary, that comes from the loss of someone already making less than him. Whereas many of us have the impression that higher salaries come at the loss of investors or shareholders, who are usually better off than yourself. Otherwise, who exactly are you shafting by asking for a higher salary?
    - noelwelsh 7y ago
      I'm not talking about individuals asking for higher salary. I'm talking about societal inequality. You cannot have a large group of people earning a lot more than the median income without having a large group earning a lot less. European salaries are lower in part because Europe has less inequality than the US. It's a feature not a bug. That's the main point. On an individual level I'm all for people negotiating, and for transparency in salaries so the workforce knows what is fair.
      - christiansakai 7y ago
        So it is zero sum? I don’t understand. Seems you are contradicting your own claims.
        noelwelsh 7y ago
        Zero sum means there is a fixed amount that is distributed between all participants. Inequality means that the distribution over available resources is uneven. Inequality can occur in the presence of growth if the gains from growth are not distributed equitably. I.e. inequality does not imply zero sum. To the extent that economics agree on anything they seem to agree that wage growth has stagnated since, roughly, the 1970s, inequality is rising, and gains from growth are disproportionately going to the richest. Finally, the census measurements capture data at an instant in time. At any one instant there is a fixed amount of $s in the economy and it's a mathematical fact that comes from the definition of median that you cannot have samples (i.e. income) higher than the median without having samples lower than the median.
      - kragen 7y ago
        > You cannot have a large group of people earning a lot more than the median income without having a large group earning a lot less. Actually you can; you can have a large group of people learning a lot more than the median income, arbitrarily more, counterbalanced by an equally large group of people earning barely less than the median income. This does in fact happen in practice and is precisely the reason the median income is so much lower than the per-capita GDP.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    I apologise for misunderstanding. Please clarify how someone gets shafted when I earn more money.
paxys 7y ago
California is a big state. San Francisco median income is over $100,000, and you are still not going to be able to get your own apartment in that much. I'd argue that software developers are underpaid, considering large tech companies had been illegally colluding for years to restrict competition and keep wages low.
- noelwelsh 7y ago
  I agree, but I'd extend that to saying most people are underpaid. Increasing inequality shows this (unless you believe an unequal society is desirable). Software developers are underpaid less than most, though.
- gowld 7y ago
  >median income is over $100,000, and you are still not going to be able to get your own apartment in that much. Here's 100 apartments for under $2000/mo https://www.apartments.com/san-francisco-ca/under-2000/ https://www.apartments.com/san-francisco-ca/under-2000/
  - nrki 7y ago
    Most of those are a bedroom in a shared situation, or student accommodation.
adventured 7y ago
> US median family income was $60,336 in 2017 You're comparing full-time software development income versus the literal median income (which also includes people working few hours). That's your first mistake in the comparison. The median full-time individual income in the US is close to $50,000 now. Junior developers in SV are getting $110k? The BLS numbers are such that the US median for all 1.4 million software developers is going to be close to that figure for 2020. > You cannot have these high salaries without someone else getting shafted. Yes you can. Wealth, incomes, productivity are not static/fixed, you can expand them rather than merely redistribute a fixed pot. As a recent example, if that wasn't true, modern China (specifically its incredible gains over the last 20-30 years) would have been impossible. Their $50-$60 trillion in new household wealth would have had to come entirely from the rest of the world's pockets (which didn't actually occur). Instead, it mostly derived from epic productivity gains. Productivity is why US software developers can earn so much. Not because they're so much more productive in lines of code versus the rest of the world. Rather, because software developers at US tech companies produce very large economic outcomes on average. That is due to the way you can scale into the huge US economy ($22 trillion), and then push out globally; it adds up to extraordinary productivity of economic output per developer (Netflix is a good example of that in action: relatively tiny workforce, massive platform and sales, global projection; and that's why they can pay their engineers so much). Further, the US has a very progressive income taxation system. People earning ~$110,000+ per year are carrying the tax load for the majority of the population. The US middle class has an extremely low tax burden compared to most other developed nations. High income persons paying higher taxes are what make that possible, and it produces one of the highest median after-tax income figures of any nation. That tax base pays for free healthcare for the bottom quarter of the population, among many other expensive social safety net systems.
- noelwelsh 7y ago
  I'm not saying economic growth does not exist. I've replied to essentially the same point in other comments in this thread.
- Silhouette 7y ago
  Productivity is why US software developers can earn so much. Not because they're so much more productive in lines of code versus the rest of the world. Rather, because software developers at US tech companies produce very large economic outcomes on average. So do software developers in many other parts of the world. The difference is more that employment is a competitive market and the market rate for a decent software developer in the US tech hubs is recognised as being much higher than most other places so people moving jobs expect higher rates. Sadly, those rates do not necessarily need to be tied to productivity in any meaningful way, and so in much of the world software developers continue to be paid far less than the value they can generate because they don't negotiate well or bargain collectively to push salaries up. However, it's not really a fair comparison. For example, in the UK, a lot of us solve that problem by going independent at some stage. At that point, you are dealing with clients on a business-to-business basis where fees charged can be related to value generated, and if you know what you're doing and get results, you can far exceed the income that almost any salaried software development position will offer. Similarly, there are a lot of small tech firms here that are not SV-style startups with big funding and aiming to be the next unicorn or to fail within a relatively short period. They're just a few people who've got together to take on bigger projects or invest in more infrastructure or otherwise scale up, and they're happy to be doing that indefinitely and again making better money and enjoying better conditions working for their own business than they would likely get working for someone else's.
kragen 7y ago
> There simply isn't enough money for everyone to be earning like this. That's incoherent. Salaries are a flow, not a stock, and M2 is wildly variable anyway. Or do you just mean that if lower-earning people earned more, the median would be higher?

scarejunba 7y ago

> You cannot have these high salaries without someone else getting shafted. There simply isn't enough money for everyone to be earning like this. Please substantiate your claim to this being zero sum. It does not seem self-evident.

noelwelsh 7y ago
I made no such claim. You're reading that into my words. If I have a data set from which I pick a value higher than the median there must be a value lower than the median ... otherwise the median would be higher. It's not a statement about economics but about math. I'm not saying there cannot be economic growth (though, generally, wage inequality is rising so most people aren't seeing the benefits of this).
- wallacoloo 7y ago
  It sounds like you’re saying that if GP fights for higher salary, that comes from the loss of someone already making less than him. Whereas many of us have the impression that higher salaries come at the loss of investors or shareholders, who are usually better off than yourself. Otherwise, who exactly are you shafting by asking for a higher salary?
  - noelwelsh 7y ago
    I'm not talking about individuals asking for higher salary. I'm talking about societal inequality. You cannot have a large group of people earning a lot more than the median income without having a large group earning a lot less. European salaries are lower in part because Europe has less inequality than the US. It's a feature not a bug. That's the main point. On an individual level I'm all for people negotiating, and for transparency in salaries so the workforce knows what is fair.
    - christiansakai 7y ago
      So it is zero sum? I don’t understand. Seems you are contradicting your own claims.
      - noelwelsh 7y ago
        Zero sum means there is a fixed amount that is distributed between all participants. Inequality means that the distribution over available resources is uneven. Inequality can occur in the presence of growth if the gains from growth are not distributed equitably. I.e. inequality does not imply zero sum. To the extent that economics agree on anything they seem to agree that wage growth has stagnated since, roughly, the 1970s, inequality is rising, and gains from growth are disproportionately going to the richest. Finally, the census measurements capture data at an instant in time. At any one instant there is a fixed amount of $s in the economy and it's a mathematical fact that comes from the definition of median that you cannot have samples (i.e. income) higher than the median without having samples lower than the median.
    - kragen 7y ago
      > You cannot have a large group of people earning a lot more than the median income without having a large group earning a lot less. Actually you can; you can have a large group of people learning a lot more than the median income, arbitrarily more, counterbalanced by an equally large group of people earning barely less than the median income. This does in fact happen in practice and is precisely the reason the median income is so much lower than the per-capita GDP.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- scarejunba 7y ago
  I apologise for misunderstanding. Please clarify how someone gets shafted when I earn more money.

paxys 7y ago

California is a big state. San Francisco median income is over $100,000, and you are still not going to be able to get your own apartment in that much. I'd argue that software developers are underpaid, considering large tech companies had been illegally colluding for years to restrict competition and keep wages low.

noelwelsh 7y ago
I agree, but I'd extend that to saying most people are underpaid. Increasing inequality shows this (unless you believe an unequal society is desirable). Software developers are underpaid less than most, though.
gowld 7y ago
>median income is over $100,000, and you are still not going to be able to get your own apartment in that much. Here's 100 apartments for under $2000/mo https://www.apartments.com/san-francisco-ca/under-2000/ https://www.apartments.com/san-francisco-ca/under-2000/
- nrki 7y ago
  Most of those are a bedroom in a shared situation, or student accommodation.

adventured 7y ago

> US median family income was $60,336 in 2017 You're comparing full-time software development income versus the literal median income (which also includes people working few hours). That's your first mistake in the comparison. The median full-time individual income in the US is close to $50,000 now. Junior developers in SV are getting $110k? The BLS numbers are such that the US median for all 1.4 million software developers is going to be close to that figure for 2020. > You cannot have these high salaries without someone else getting shafted. Yes you can. Wealth, incomes, productivity are not static/fixed, you can expand them rather than merely redistribute a fixed pot. As a recent example, if that wasn't true, modern China (specifically its incredible gains over the last 20-30 years) would have been impossible. Their $50-$60 trillion in new household wealth would have had to come entirely from the rest of the world's pockets (which didn't actually occur). Instead, it mostly derived from epic productivity gains. Productivity is why US software developers can earn so much. Not because they're so much more productive in lines of code versus the rest of the world. Rather, because software developers at US tech companies produce very large economic outcomes on average. That is due to the way you can scale into the huge US economy ($22 trillion), and then push out globally; it adds up to extraordinary productivity of economic output per developer (Netflix is a good example of that in action: relatively tiny workforce, massive platform and sales, global projection; and that's why they can pay their engineers so much). Further, the US has a very progressive income taxation system. People earning ~$110,000+ per year are carrying the tax load for the majority of the population. The US middle class has an extremely low tax burden compared to most other developed nations. High income persons paying higher taxes are what make that possible, and it produces one of the highest median after-tax income figures of any nation. That tax base pays for free healthcare for the bottom quarter of the population, among many other expensive social safety net systems.

noelwelsh 7y ago
I'm not saying economic growth does not exist. I've replied to essentially the same point in other comments in this thread.
Silhouette 7y ago
Productivity is why US software developers can earn so much. Not because they're so much more productive in lines of code versus the rest of the world. Rather, because software developers at US tech companies produce very large economic outcomes on average. So do software developers in many other parts of the world. The difference is more that employment is a competitive market and the market rate for a decent software developer in the US tech hubs is recognised as being much higher than most other places so people moving jobs expect higher rates. Sadly, those rates do not necessarily need to be tied to productivity in any meaningful way, and so in much of the world software developers continue to be paid far less than the value they can generate because they don't negotiate well or bargain collectively to push salaries up. However, it's not really a fair comparison. For example, in the UK, a lot of us solve that problem by going independent at some stage. At that point, you are dealing with clients on a business-to-business basis where fees charged can be related to value generated, and if you know what you're doing and get results, you can far exceed the income that almost any salaried software development position will offer. Similarly, there are a lot of small tech firms here that are not SV-style startups with big funding and aiming to be the next unicorn or to fail within a relatively short period. They're just a few people who've got together to take on bigger projects or invest in more infrastructure or otherwise scale up, and they're happy to be doing that indefinitely and again making better money and enjoying better conditions working for their own business than they would likely get working for someone else's.

kragen 7y ago

> There simply isn't enough money for everyone to be earning like this. That's incoherent. Salaries are a flow, not a stock, and M2 is wildly variable anyway. Or do you just mean that if lower-earning people earned more, the median would be higher?