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>What are the benefits of a fortune 500? Who are the beneficiaries? The main ones would be investors and management, including a subset of employees. Workers a

>What are the benefits of a fortune 500? Who are the beneficiaries? The main ones would be investors and management, including a subset of employees. Workers are also a pretty big beneficiary: look how well workers at recent Fortune 500 entries like FAANG are paid. Even after accounting for subsidised health and education benefits the average European developer is still lucky to earn even half of what the average US developer does. Sure it's noble for Europeans to want more equality but I don't think policies that reduce salaries are a good way to do that; better to lift the worse-off up than pull the better-off down.

myspy 6y ago
European developers don't need to live in areas though, where they have to pay 2 million dollars for a house and they have social security and health care. This lessens your argument.
- jonfw 6y ago
  US developers don't have to live in those areas either, to still earn significantly more than EU developers earn.
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  Social security and healthcare is definitely awesome, but have you checked house prices near big German cities like Munich? They're much closer to Bay Area prices while salaries are very far away. Europeans who keep tooting that "we don't need US salaries" tend to be the more privileged ones who will also inherit a house from their boomer parents and take it for granted, so they don't feel the stress of the rat race with skyrocketing house prices and income inequality. So no, we DO want better paying jobs and lower taxes otherwise we'll go back to a feudalistic society where a select few own the housing and means of production through inheritance and everyone else and their offspring will forever be stuck working for the upper class so they can consume their products and pay them rent. In most of the US, learning leet-code offers one a meritocratic lift up to the upper class while in most of Europe(except the East) it does not.
  - rusk 6y ago
    > have you checked house prices near big German cities like Munich? People generally don’t buy but rent and the rental market is set in such a way as not to gouge people. Still expensive but salaries are relatively high and in all other respects costs of living is very reasonable
  - balfirevic 6y ago
    > while in most of Europe(except the East) it does not. Wait, something doesn't add up here. I see many programmers migrating from eastern to western Europe, but not the other way around. It is true that programming as a profession will offer comparatively higher standard of living in eastern Europe (when compared to other professions), but that's because the overall standard of living is lower than it is in the west.
    - betaby 6y ago
      A lot of people move from Eastern Europe to Western because the political (Russia, Belarus, Ukraine) and LGBT (Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland) reasons, not money.
      - balfirevic 6y ago
        I'm aware, but that's not related to my comment, unless you're actually claiming that programmers have lower standard of living in the western Europe compared to eastern Europe (which I believe to be false).
        betaby 6y ago
        Belarus, Ukraine, Russia have low taxation for the salaries in IT (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarus_High_Technologies_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarus_High_Technologies_Park) To have your own 2-3 room flat in Minsk (Capital) by the age of 35 is pretty common for Belarusian programmers and basically unheard in the West. So yes, I can argue that programmers can have higher standards of life at home than your typical "tech hub" like London, Munchen or Dublin.
- majidazimi 6y ago
  I live and work in Munich and I have to pay half a million euros for a 25m^2 box. EU is cheaper than US is a fallacy.
  - balfirevic 6y ago
    Wow, really? 20000 EUR per square meter, for small apartment in Munich? That's... more than I expected.
    - majidazimi 6y ago
      Even if it's half cheaper, a family house of 80-100m^2 costs beyond 600K which is way beyond affordability range of a couple both working as software engineers let alone people with non-tech jobs.
      - mrep 6y ago
        Why is that? Like, on the US west coast, ballooning home prices makes sense because their cities are in valleys with a fixed amount of land, but munich looks like it has a bunch of farmland around it that could be converted into housing increasing supply and thus decreasing prices. This coming from someone in chicagoland which has 9.5 million people but housing isn't crazy because the metro area sprawls 30-40 miles out into what used to farmland.
        thehashrocket 6y ago
        If we keep plowing over farmland to build suburbs where will the farming get done?
        majidazimi 6y ago
        Build taller. Skyscraper has been invented long time ago.
        elindbe2 6y ago
        In areas not close to Munich?
- briandear 6y ago
  A developer in low-cost Houston, Texas still makes double or triple of what a developer in Paris, France makes.
- CalRobert 6y ago
  The causality is backwards. European developers are unable to bid 2 million dollars for a house, which is why they're still cheap (compared to the bay). Give it time though! The Dublin NIMBYs scream and shout anytime anyone tries to build anything, and then wonder why only tech workers can afford to live in the city centre.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- wil421 6y ago
  The US Bureau of Labor and Stats says the total number of Software Developers in the US is 1.4 million. Only about 475k (1/3) live in high COL states, California, Virginia, New York, and Washington.[1] The median salary is about $106k a year which isn’t too far from €100k a year. I am not sure if these wages include non-salary comp. [1] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151256.htm#st https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151256.htm#st
fladrif 6y ago
> better to lift the worse-off up than pull the better-off down. Given a fixed amount of resources, this isn't a choice but a matter of fact. You cannot do one without causing the other. This then becomes deciding what the lowest level you're comfortable having your fellow countryperson living at with the requisite cost to those with the means.
- logicchains 6y ago
  >Given a fixed amount of resources People don't consume resources, they consume goods and services. The IPhone is valued at a much higher price than the sum of raw resource components it contains. Economic growth is what allows us to increase the amount of goods and services people can consume from a given set of resources. Economic growth is why a single farmer with modern equipment can produce more food than a hundred subsistence farmers could a few centuries ago. Economic growth is why we can have real-time high-definition video conversation with somebody anywhere in the world. The more obstacles we put in the way of growth, the slower we improve our productivity, the slower we grow the amount of value we can extract from the resources we have.
  - fladrif 6y ago
    Using resources as a blanket term to describe goods and services as fungible with a market that can trade them, it's probably a better descriptor of available goods and services that can be consumed instead of the fluctuating cost of said goods and services. True we could produce more goods than we have before with a lower cost, but it isn't true that this enables us to provide more to those without means as this would impact markets and thus profitability of the producers. This is a reason why farmers dump milk and eggs into fallow fields. If they wouldn't do that and instead provide them to those without, it would break the market. I would counter that it isn't economic growth that enables the technology of today, but technical innovation that drives economic growth that enables either larger populations or a more wealthy population. Given unequal societies, economic growth is only beneficial for those who are already benefiting from the system and serve to increase inequality, but given an equal society benefits all. Therefore instead of worrying about economic growth, I propose that we invest in technical innovation that will drive economic growth as a byproduct and legislate for a more equal society to benefit the most amount of people.
axlee 6y ago
> Workers are also a pretty big beneficiary FANNGS, by definition, are 1% of the Fortune 500. In term of headcount, it's even lower. They should not even be part of this argument. You can't base taxation policies around the personal experience of hyper-specialized, in-demand trained professionals. Fortune 500 no1: Walmart. no2? Amazon. Are you arguing that those kinds of companies have a upward pressure on salaries? Because at least in the case of Walmart and Amazon (excluding AWS), it's proven that it doesn't. And in terms of workforce, the low-pay employees that those companies hire overwhelm "well-paid" engineers from FAANGS a 1000-1. And that's not even accouting for all "red badge" contractors not lucky enough to get a cosy position at those FAANGS, who don't appear in the company's salary statistics, and are not in such a good financial situation themselves.
- MR4D 6y ago
  If I use the S&P 500 instead (easier calculation given available data for me), the the FANG is a huge portion. (Yes, 5 companies out of 500 are by definition 1/100.) No argument about headcount, though. Take a look at the second chart (bottom of "Page 1", the third actual page considering the title page and contents page). [0] Revenue may be small, but profits are huge, and market capitalization (aka "wealth") is absolutely massive. And that market cap is what feeds retirement plans & pensions. So while Europe is taxing people, the US is growing profits and wealth. The World Economic Forum had this to say about Europe's tech giants in 2017: "In total more than a third of European tech founders are based in the UK." [1] That doesn't bode well for the future, when your economy is stuck in old industries, and the leader is leaving the party. BTW, hats off to the Finns - not sure what they are doing with gaming, but they punch well above their weight. When it comes to creating wealth, taxation doesn't do anything but redistribute it. In order to actually generate wealth, you need capital, and people who use that capital more efficiently & effectively will become richer. It is a virtuous spiral. And what's important is that every one of those high paying tech jobs is one less low-paying job. Most of the low paying jobs have existed for decades in various industries (esp retail), but most of those tech jobs didn't exist 20 years ago. I can only imagine how many high paying tech jobs there will be in the US in 20 more years, even though I expect low-paying jobs to still outnumber them. [0] - https://www.yardeni.com/pub/yardenifangoverview.pdf https://www.yardeni.com/pub/yardenifangoverview.pdf [1] - https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/10/meet-europe-top-tech-titans/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/10/meet-europe-top-tech-...
thehashrocket 6y ago
They pay more in the Bay area. Once you get out of the Bay area the pay goes down. Facebook even said if you telecommute they'll take into consideration where you live and pay you based on that. And if you look at the class disparity we have in the United States, the middle class is almost completely gone now.
- holoduke 6y ago
  last year I drove from Nashville to Miami. passed by many small villages. middle class is still there. maybe you should get outside of the city to see it yourself.
6AA4FD 6y ago
>Workers are also a pretty big beneficiary You mean all of the workers at foxconn benefiting from their innovative suicide nets?

myspy 6y ago

European developers don't need to live in areas though, where they have to pay 2 million dollars for a house and they have social security and health care. This lessens your argument.

jonfw 6y ago
US developers don't have to live in those areas either, to still earn significantly more than EU developers earn.
ChuckNorris89 6y ago
Social security and healthcare is definitely awesome, but have you checked house prices near big German cities like Munich? They're much closer to Bay Area prices while salaries are very far away. Europeans who keep tooting that "we don't need US salaries" tend to be the more privileged ones who will also inherit a house from their boomer parents and take it for granted, so they don't feel the stress of the rat race with skyrocketing house prices and income inequality. So no, we DO want better paying jobs and lower taxes otherwise we'll go back to a feudalistic society where a select few own the housing and means of production through inheritance and everyone else and their offspring will forever be stuck working for the upper class so they can consume their products and pay them rent. In most of the US, learning leet-code offers one a meritocratic lift up to the upper class while in most of Europe(except the East) it does not.
- rusk 6y ago
  > have you checked house prices near big German cities like Munich? People generally don’t buy but rent and the rental market is set in such a way as not to gouge people. Still expensive but salaries are relatively high and in all other respects costs of living is very reasonable
- balfirevic 6y ago
  > while in most of Europe(except the East) it does not. Wait, something doesn't add up here. I see many programmers migrating from eastern to western Europe, but not the other way around. It is true that programming as a profession will offer comparatively higher standard of living in eastern Europe (when compared to other professions), but that's because the overall standard of living is lower than it is in the west.
  - betaby 6y ago
    A lot of people move from Eastern Europe to Western because the political (Russia, Belarus, Ukraine) and LGBT (Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland) reasons, not money.
    - balfirevic 6y ago
      I'm aware, but that's not related to my comment, unless you're actually claiming that programmers have lower standard of living in the western Europe compared to eastern Europe (which I believe to be false).
      - betaby 6y ago
        Belarus, Ukraine, Russia have low taxation for the salaries in IT (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarus_High_Technologies_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarus_High_Technologies_Park) To have your own 2-3 room flat in Minsk (Capital) by the age of 35 is pretty common for Belarusian programmers and basically unheard in the West. So yes, I can argue that programmers can have higher standards of life at home than your typical "tech hub" like London, Munchen or Dublin.
majidazimi 6y ago
I live and work in Munich and I have to pay half a million euros for a 25m^2 box. EU is cheaper than US is a fallacy.
- balfirevic 6y ago
  Wow, really? 20000 EUR per square meter, for small apartment in Munich? That's... more than I expected.
  - majidazimi 6y ago
    Even if it's half cheaper, a family house of 80-100m^2 costs beyond 600K which is way beyond affordability range of a couple both working as software engineers let alone people with non-tech jobs.
    - mrep 6y ago
      Why is that? Like, on the US west coast, ballooning home prices makes sense because their cities are in valleys with a fixed amount of land, but munich looks like it has a bunch of farmland around it that could be converted into housing increasing supply and thus decreasing prices. This coming from someone in chicagoland which has 9.5 million people but housing isn't crazy because the metro area sprawls 30-40 miles out into what used to farmland.
      - thehashrocket 6y ago
        If we keep plowing over farmland to build suburbs where will the farming get done?
        majidazimi 6y ago
        Build taller. Skyscraper has been invented long time ago.
        elindbe2 6y ago
        In areas not close to Munich?
briandear 6y ago
A developer in low-cost Houston, Texas still makes double or triple of what a developer in Paris, France makes.
CalRobert 6y ago
The causality is backwards. European developers are unable to bid 2 million dollars for a house, which is why they're still cheap (compared to the bay). Give it time though! The Dublin NIMBYs scream and shout anytime anyone tries to build anything, and then wonder why only tech workers can afford to live in the city centre.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
wil421 6y ago
The US Bureau of Labor and Stats says the total number of Software Developers in the US is 1.4 million. Only about 475k (1/3) live in high COL states, California, Virginia, New York, and Washington.[1] The median salary is about $106k a year which isn’t too far from €100k a year. I am not sure if these wages include non-salary comp. [1] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151256.htm#st https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151256.htm#st

fladrif 6y ago

> better to lift the worse-off up than pull the better-off down. Given a fixed amount of resources, this isn't a choice but a matter of fact. You cannot do one without causing the other. This then becomes deciding what the lowest level you're comfortable having your fellow countryperson living at with the requisite cost to those with the means.

logicchains 6y ago
>Given a fixed amount of resources People don't consume resources, they consume goods and services. The IPhone is valued at a much higher price than the sum of raw resource components it contains. Economic growth is what allows us to increase the amount of goods and services people can consume from a given set of resources. Economic growth is why a single farmer with modern equipment can produce more food than a hundred subsistence farmers could a few centuries ago. Economic growth is why we can have real-time high-definition video conversation with somebody anywhere in the world. The more obstacles we put in the way of growth, the slower we improve our productivity, the slower we grow the amount of value we can extract from the resources we have.
- fladrif 6y ago
  Using resources as a blanket term to describe goods and services as fungible with a market that can trade them, it's probably a better descriptor of available goods and services that can be consumed instead of the fluctuating cost of said goods and services. True we could produce more goods than we have before with a lower cost, but it isn't true that this enables us to provide more to those without means as this would impact markets and thus profitability of the producers. This is a reason why farmers dump milk and eggs into fallow fields. If they wouldn't do that and instead provide them to those without, it would break the market. I would counter that it isn't economic growth that enables the technology of today, but technical innovation that drives economic growth that enables either larger populations or a more wealthy population. Given unequal societies, economic growth is only beneficial for those who are already benefiting from the system and serve to increase inequality, but given an equal society benefits all. Therefore instead of worrying about economic growth, I propose that we invest in technical innovation that will drive economic growth as a byproduct and legislate for a more equal society to benefit the most amount of people.

axlee 6y ago

> Workers are also a pretty big beneficiary FANNGS, by definition, are 1% of the Fortune 500. In term of headcount, it's even lower. They should not even be part of this argument. You can't base taxation policies around the personal experience of hyper-specialized, in-demand trained professionals. Fortune 500 no1: Walmart. no2? Amazon. Are you arguing that those kinds of companies have a upward pressure on salaries? Because at least in the case of Walmart and Amazon (excluding AWS), it's proven that it doesn't. And in terms of workforce, the low-pay employees that those companies hire overwhelm "well-paid" engineers from FAANGS a 1000-1. And that's not even accouting for all "red badge" contractors not lucky enough to get a cosy position at those FAANGS, who don't appear in the company's salary statistics, and are not in such a good financial situation themselves.

MR4D 6y ago
If I use the S&P 500 instead (easier calculation given available data for me), the the FANG is a huge portion. (Yes, 5 companies out of 500 are by definition 1/100.) No argument about headcount, though. Take a look at the second chart (bottom of "Page 1", the third actual page considering the title page and contents page). [0] Revenue may be small, but profits are huge, and market capitalization (aka "wealth") is absolutely massive. And that market cap is what feeds retirement plans & pensions. So while Europe is taxing people, the US is growing profits and wealth. The World Economic Forum had this to say about Europe's tech giants in 2017: "In total more than a third of European tech founders are based in the UK." [1] That doesn't bode well for the future, when your economy is stuck in old industries, and the leader is leaving the party. BTW, hats off to the Finns - not sure what they are doing with gaming, but they punch well above their weight. When it comes to creating wealth, taxation doesn't do anything but redistribute it. In order to actually generate wealth, you need capital, and people who use that capital more efficiently & effectively will become richer. It is a virtuous spiral. And what's important is that every one of those high paying tech jobs is one less low-paying job. Most of the low paying jobs have existed for decades in various industries (esp retail), but most of those tech jobs didn't exist 20 years ago. I can only imagine how many high paying tech jobs there will be in the US in 20 more years, even though I expect low-paying jobs to still outnumber them. [0] - https://www.yardeni.com/pub/yardenifangoverview.pdf https://www.yardeni.com/pub/yardenifangoverview.pdf [1] - https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/10/meet-europe-top-tech-titans/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/10/meet-europe-top-tech-...

thehashrocket 6y ago

They pay more in the Bay area. Once you get out of the Bay area the pay goes down. Facebook even said if you telecommute they'll take into consideration where you live and pay you based on that. And if you look at the class disparity we have in the United States, the middle class is almost completely gone now.

holoduke 6y ago
last year I drove from Nashville to Miami. passed by many small villages. middle class is still there. maybe you should get outside of the city to see it yourself.

6AA4FD 6y ago

>Workers are also a pretty big beneficiary You mean all of the workers at foxconn benefiting from their innovative suicide nets?