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The problem with this assessment is that it will never be enough. There is always more to make. For you. For your partner. For your kids. Many of us here are i

The problem with this assessment is that it will never be enough. There is always more to make. For you. For your partner. For your kids. Many of us here are in software development and make more than $174K a year. That's great. However, even if we were paid $225K, but found an easy way to make $3 million a year, many of us would be tempted to go for the millions.

jonnycomputer 5y ago
Many state governments don't pay much or anything at all to their state legislators. Which is a great way to make sure that only rich well connected people can afford to serve.
- mohanmcgeek 5y ago
  Is being a legislator a full time job in the US? As in, you are legally not allowed to also have another job? (It isn't in my country. You can be a pilot, an actor or an engineer and still be a legislator)
  - MarkSweep 5y ago
    To give an example, that may not representative: the Texas legislature meets for 140 days, every 2 years. The governor can call special sessions that are up to 30 days in length. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Legislature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Legislature So at least in Texas it does not have to be a full time job.
    - jonnycomputer 5y ago
      But neither is it a job that most people could afford not working for that long a time.
      - mohanmcgeek 5y ago
        For the jobs I mentioned above, it would be very easily possible: Actors, sportsmen and pilots
Tenoke 5y ago
That's not how markets typically work. There are million dollar jobs in software, we are just not good enough to get them but some people are. If congress' salaries were higher more of those people who currently have better paid opportunities would compete with them rather than having the same quality people but just better paid.
- Nursie 5y ago
  > There are million dollar jobs in software, we are just not good enough to ... Or we didn't hear about them, or the candidate was chosen via networking rather than advertising. There are a million reasons that this is not a perfect market. My experience in fintech has taught me that people working for more money are not necessarily any better at their jobs, in fact a lot of them are worse, they just happen to know the right people.
  - fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
    I’m sure some million dollar software jobs get given out to connected idiots, but I don’t think it’s most of them. When I’ve worked with those kinds of people (high level engineers at top companies), they tend to be very skilled.
  - Tenoke 5y ago
    It's not a perfect correlation but it's certainly easier to find better candidates if you can offer them more than they'd get elsewhere.
    - Nursie 5y ago
      > It's not a perfect correlation but it's certainly easier to find better candidates if you can offer them more Ah, but that wasn't the claim - the claim was that people who get the $200k jobs are not good enough to get the $1m jobs. My counter-claim is that the people who are actually in the higher paying jobs are not always better. You may be able to attract better people by offering more, but that's not necessarily relevant to the hiring processes that result in the people who have those $1m jobs getting to where they are. I've seen flat-out useless sycophants holding on to high paid roles because of basically office politics and industry connections.
R0b0t1 5y ago
Many of us is an overstatement. The jobs threads are always full of people making way less, have you not seen?
ryandrake 5y ago
I've seen Senior Engineers who probably make $300K+ steal and bring home whole pizza pies from "Pizza Night For Late Workers". It doesn't matter how much you make, if they are fundamentally dishonest and see $100 sitting on the floor they're going to take it. EDIT: Correction--engineers, didn't actually see managers do it.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  This is bizarre. I’ve had managers that used to bring donuts on their own dime for the whole team. Are you sure they’re stealing or just taking home a left over pizza?
  - belter 5y ago
    No they are just dishonest: "...This is what Steve Jobs did about the fact of how he tricked his best friend into working all night long for several days and then cheating him out of his paycheck. This proved to be only the first offense in a long litany of his penchant for pettiness and pointless cruelty. The friend that I am talking about is Steve Wozniak, him and Jobs were working at Atari, one of the first video game consoles which revolutionized the video game market. The owner of Atari at the time was its actual founder by the name of Nolan Bushnell. The first game that came out was “Pong,” a classic which many people remember. Due to its high success, Bushnell thought of making a sequel that would be only a single-player and call it “Breakout” in 1975. ...For this project, Bushnell was thinking of tasking Steve Jobs to be in charge and take care of the project. Jobs was considered (at the time) a low-level Atari technician with huge potential. As this game was expected to be much better than its predecessor, Jobs recruited Steve Wozniak, who was known on the market as the better engineer. .. Jobs and Wozniak had been friends for quite some time at that point. They both were working towards the Apple 1 which would follow to become the most iconic computer around the world for four long years so they got to spend a lot of time together. The way that Atari worked was by offering a monetary bonus for every chip fewer than fifty that was used when building a game. Wozniak was ecstatic when Jobs asked him to help with this big project. This is when Jobs started to lie to Wozniak in order to use him for his expertise. He told Wozniak that the deadline was four days and that he had to use as few chips as possible. The truth is that Jobs was given a whole month for this project, not four days. Jobs never told Wozniak about the bonus for using fewer chips and the four-day deadline was self-imposed by Jobs, as he needed to get back to his commune farm to help bring in the apple harvest. It is imperative to mention (for those who are not aware) that Steve Jobs came from a very poor background. Wozniak was working for Hewlett-Packard at the time as well, so he had to balance his main job as well as this project. So he would end up going to his job in the day time and spending most of the night working on “Breakout”. The only thing that Steve did was implementing the required chips, making sure that there were less than fifty chips. Their herculean efforts succeeded, as they finished the game in four days and only using forty-five chips. When payday came, Steve Jobs only gave Wozniak half the pay, he kept the rest of his pay as well as the bonus for himself. Wozniak only found out about this ten years later..." https://historyofyesterday.com/steve-jobss-dark-past-55a98044f3b4 https://historyofyesterday.com/steve-jobss-dark-past-55a9804...

jonnycomputer 5y ago

Many state governments don't pay much or anything at all to their state legislators. Which is a great way to make sure that only rich well connected people can afford to serve.

mohanmcgeek 5y ago
Is being a legislator a full time job in the US? As in, you are legally not allowed to also have another job? (It isn't in my country. You can be a pilot, an actor or an engineer and still be a legislator)
- MarkSweep 5y ago
  To give an example, that may not representative: the Texas legislature meets for 140 days, every 2 years. The governor can call special sessions that are up to 30 days in length. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Legislature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Legislature So at least in Texas it does not have to be a full time job.
  - jonnycomputer 5y ago
    But neither is it a job that most people could afford not working for that long a time.
    - mohanmcgeek 5y ago
      For the jobs I mentioned above, it would be very easily possible: Actors, sportsmen and pilots

Tenoke 5y ago

That's not how markets typically work. There are million dollar jobs in software, we are just not good enough to get them but some people are. If congress' salaries were higher more of those people who currently have better paid opportunities would compete with them rather than having the same quality people but just better paid.

Nursie 5y ago
> There are million dollar jobs in software, we are just not good enough to ... Or we didn't hear about them, or the candidate was chosen via networking rather than advertising. There are a million reasons that this is not a perfect market. My experience in fintech has taught me that people working for more money are not necessarily any better at their jobs, in fact a lot of them are worse, they just happen to know the right people.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
  I’m sure some million dollar software jobs get given out to connected idiots, but I don’t think it’s most of them. When I’ve worked with those kinds of people (high level engineers at top companies), they tend to be very skilled.
- Tenoke 5y ago
  It's not a perfect correlation but it's certainly easier to find better candidates if you can offer them more than they'd get elsewhere.
  - Nursie 5y ago
    > It's not a perfect correlation but it's certainly easier to find better candidates if you can offer them more Ah, but that wasn't the claim - the claim was that people who get the $200k jobs are not good enough to get the $1m jobs. My counter-claim is that the people who are actually in the higher paying jobs are not always better. You may be able to attract better people by offering more, but that's not necessarily relevant to the hiring processes that result in the people who have those $1m jobs getting to where they are. I've seen flat-out useless sycophants holding on to high paid roles because of basically office politics and industry connections.

R0b0t1 5y ago

Many of us is an overstatement. The jobs threads are always full of people making way less, have you not seen?

ryandrake 5y ago

I've seen Senior Engineers who probably make $300K+ steal and bring home whole pizza pies from "Pizza Night For Late Workers". It doesn't matter how much you make, if they are fundamentally dishonest and see $100 sitting on the floor they're going to take it. EDIT: Correction--engineers, didn't actually see managers do it.

systemvoltage 5y ago
This is bizarre. I’ve had managers that used to bring donuts on their own dime for the whole team. Are you sure they’re stealing or just taking home a left over pizza?
- belter 5y ago
  No they are just dishonest: "...This is what Steve Jobs did about the fact of how he tricked his best friend into working all night long for several days and then cheating him out of his paycheck. This proved to be only the first offense in a long litany of his penchant for pettiness and pointless cruelty. The friend that I am talking about is Steve Wozniak, him and Jobs were working at Atari, one of the first video game consoles which revolutionized the video game market. The owner of Atari at the time was its actual founder by the name of Nolan Bushnell. The first game that came out was “Pong,” a classic which many people remember. Due to its high success, Bushnell thought of making a sequel that would be only a single-player and call it “Breakout” in 1975. ...For this project, Bushnell was thinking of tasking Steve Jobs to be in charge and take care of the project. Jobs was considered (at the time) a low-level Atari technician with huge potential. As this game was expected to be much better than its predecessor, Jobs recruited Steve Wozniak, who was known on the market as the better engineer. .. Jobs and Wozniak had been friends for quite some time at that point. They both were working towards the Apple 1 which would follow to become the most iconic computer around the world for four long years so they got to spend a lot of time together. The way that Atari worked was by offering a monetary bonus for every chip fewer than fifty that was used when building a game. Wozniak was ecstatic when Jobs asked him to help with this big project. This is when Jobs started to lie to Wozniak in order to use him for his expertise. He told Wozniak that the deadline was four days and that he had to use as few chips as possible. The truth is that Jobs was given a whole month for this project, not four days. Jobs never told Wozniak about the bonus for using fewer chips and the four-day deadline was self-imposed by Jobs, as he needed to get back to his commune farm to help bring in the apple harvest. It is imperative to mention (for those who are not aware) that Steve Jobs came from a very poor background. Wozniak was working for Hewlett-Packard at the time as well, so he had to balance his main job as well as this project. So he would end up going to his job in the day time and spending most of the night working on “Breakout”. The only thing that Steve did was implementing the required chips, making sure that there were less than fifty chips. Their herculean efforts succeeded, as they finished the game in four days and only using forty-five chips. When payday came, Steve Jobs only gave Wozniak half the pay, he kept the rest of his pay as well as the bonus for himself. Wozniak only found out about this ten years later..." https://historyofyesterday.com/steve-jobss-dark-past-55a98044f3b4 https://historyofyesterday.com/steve-jobss-dark-past-55a9804...