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>the average tech worker’s salary [will] reach $104,566 in the U.S. — a 6.9% increase since 2020, the report found. But inflation is over 11% since 2020. This

>the average tech worker’s salary [will] reach $104,566 in the U.S. — a 6.9% increase since 2020, the report found. But inflation is over 11% since 2020. This isn't an increase. The average tech worker is making less than they were 2 years ago according to the Dice salary report. Why do tech workers feel underpaid? Many companies posted record growth and profits over the pandemic, but still give out paltry 3-5% raises every year. The cost savings of work from home must have been enormous for these companies, yet none of that savings or record profits trickled down to the people writing code. Meanwhile for those that have the time and willpower to grind leetcode, they know they can command a 20-40% raise every few years. It's not a secret that tech companies underpay their employees and bank on them being too complacent to go through the interview gauntlet yet again. Most devs will admit that they couldn't readily pass the interview at even their own company without many hours of studying and practicing algorithms.

tomc1985 4y ago
The money we make pales in comparison with the size of our contributions to the company. Especially so if you are in a value-adding position and not something like internal tooling. Management and executives are DEFINITELY underpaying us relative to what we bring to the table for them. Maybe that is one of the reason headcounts have ballooned and complexity has increased so much -- an attempt to minimize individual impact. (edit- NOT knocking internal tooling, it's just that it is traditionally considered a cost center)
- jen20 4y ago
  What? Internal developer productivity tooling is one of the most important investments a company can make, especially at the scale phase. B tier companies give that work to juniors. A tier companies give that work to the most senior people they can find to do it.
  - jchanimal 4y ago
    Here here. I’m not a 10x developer but I run in those circles, and the best of the best are working to reduce friction for the rest of the team.
- lumost 4y ago
  This strongly depends on the company. In high growth industries this is absolutely true, in low-growth industries/companies its somewhat debatable. I suspect that this is why software salaries were tightly correlated with tech growth for the last 3 decades. The 90s, and 2010s were great times to be a software engineer - but average salaries were more than cut in half during the oughts.
  - tomc1985 4y ago
    If you're doing tech stuff to replace some kind of human, manual labor then I think this applies regardless of your sector or growth rating. Tech enables companies to do more with less -- at lesat, that's the dream -- and I suspect that if the economics aren't favorable for tech they'd rather have cheap expendable labor. We are the practitioners realizing that dream for our masters.
- dolni 4y ago
  > Especially so if you are in a value-adding position and not something like internal tooling. Why the knock on internal tooling? If internal tooling helps a value-add position go 10% faster, that's worth a lot. And most likely it isn't just one position, it's many.
  - psyc 4y ago
    They didn't say internal doesn't add any value at all. They said it's more obviously justifiable with the product people, and it is. Given that total salaries paid per year is almost always small in proportion to revenue at a successful company, tooling cannot add anywhere near as much to the bottom line, even at the extreme where it reduced time to market to 5 seconds.
    - everforward 4y ago
      > even at the extreme where it reduced time to market to 5 seconds. If this is your impression of internal tooling, then your internal tooling team is terrible. The places I've worked with good internal tooling teams provided a dramatic decrease in time to delivery. Automated failovers? Don't have to write it, it's in internal tooling. Automatically rebalancing traffic across datacenters? Already in the framework. Service discovery? You already know. I could go down the list, but with a good internal tooling team, the only thing I've ever had to worry about was my app's business purpose. I don't have to muck with configuring monitoring, or load balancers, or getting authentication to talk to another app, or how to get a database, or etc. The difference in time to delivery is dramatic. Places I've worked without internal tooling take like 2 weeks just to get infra for a static HTML site. The places I've worked with bad internal tooling take 3 weeks to do the same thing, because you'll spend a week arguing about whether the tooling works. The places I've worked with good internal tooling take like 15 minutes to do it. I spend longer reviewing an MR than I do deploying infra. Tooling is a huge part of the reason companies throw fistfuls of money at clouds. They could get compute on-demand cheaper from Leaseweb or OVH or hundreds of other companies, but they don't. They pay the premium for AWS or Azure or GCP, and it's because of the tooling.
  - Spooky23 4y ago
- doliveira 4y ago
  Do you think internal tooling is just a cost center?
- chasd00 4y ago
  well we all like to think we're the sole reason "the company" makes any money but there's a lot more to the equation than just the person typing out the code. Without the code there would be no value but the code is meaningless without all the other expertise required to turn it into bank deposits. The technical part is maybe 10% (if not lower) of the overall effort to get a paycheck in your hands.
  - tomc1985 4y ago
    Nowhere does my post indicate that I think I'm the "sole reason" the company makes any money. We are all just cogs in the machine. But, as with anyone who makes the product, we are a huge part of the reason the company is in business and it would be nice if management would stop looking down at us. Maybe they should be looking up to us instead. (And if you disagree, read into the tone of the article.... "techies"??? Ideas for paying us less?) Not to discount other departments like marketing or operations -- they are important too. But they don't make the product, they are more numerous, and more interchangeable.
    - bosie 4y ago
      > But they don't make the product Not sure how important that is, though. Often the product gets sold despite of the product, thanks to marketing, operations, logistics, sales, support, legal and management (product/project). Genuinely curious but do you consider product/project management to also 'be making the product'?
      - tomc1985 4y ago
        If their project is said product, then yes; because they are, in a way, architecting the final deliverable. And that recognition goes up the chain, in an increasingly diluted form, until it reaches the top.
- mrfusion 4y ago
  > The money we make pales in comparison with the size of our contributions to the company. That’s a tautology though. They wouldn’t hire someone to break even and they wouldn’t hire someone to make a little more money since there’s work and risk in hiring.
  - TimPC 4y ago
    It's really not. Start-ups routinely fail to generate value and engineers get hired by such companies all the time. All that is needed is the belief it's possible the value will be higher. The reality doesn't need to match the belief.
    - ubercow13 4y ago
      But then the engineers at the successful company can't capture a significant amount of the value that company makes, because the rest of it has to go back to investors to make up for all the other companies they funded that 'overpaid' engineers and failed.
- Ozzie_osman 4y ago
  > The money we make pales in comparison with the size of our contributions to the company. That's unfortunately not how markets work. If you create 10M of value every year, and are only paid 250K for doing it, it's because there is someone else out there who is willing to do it for the same. (Yes, there are asymmetries in information and power, but broadly, tech salaries are market-driven)
  - bosie 4y ago
    Problem is more that the contributions of an engineere are hard to quantify, so that 10M never gets compared to the 250k
    - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
      Hah, no. The problem is whenever someone talks about pushing back, you can find at least one guy saying "ok then I'll do the job" and 3 people saying "I don't care, my 250k is super comfy". Like others point out, it's incredible the US hasn't mass outsourced their work to Europe yet.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    That's why people unionize. Hasn't happened to tech yet, don't know if it will, but it isn't a forgone conclusion this is how markets have to work.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      And when costs get to high, what’s stopping tech companies from just expanding their overseas presence?
      - toomuchtodo 4y ago
        The same thing that is causing reshoring: rising developing world wages, culture, language barriers, etc. If you have the necessary support in government, labor law. The defeatists will always argue against improvement of the status quo; they are not to be indulged, as their goal is not improvement. Only 30% of an org's workers need to vote for the NLRB to hold an election [1], and then you only need a simple majority to unionize. Are we arguing against the attempt when a quick glance at the financials for FAANG and Co shows ample profit margins available for worker compensation? [1] https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/employees/your-right-to-form-a-union https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/em...
- formerkrogemp 4y ago
  > Management and executives are DEFINITELY underpaying us relative to what we bring to the table for them. This is true of every industry going on decades of increasing productivity and stagnating pay. What's new here besides greater awareness and labor churn? Will there be an actual change going forward? Of course the demographics favor workers now, but the laws and politics often don't. Immigration and outsourcing and automation can change that power dynamic very quickly. What're you going to do? Form a union? Start a company? Vote? Quit and work elsewhere? Interesting times we live in. > Maybe that is one of the reason headcounts have ballooned and complexity has increased so much -- an attempt to minimize individual impact. All of my friends and aquaintinces in nursing, tax, retail, and trucking have a few people who are trying to break into programming because of the benefits and pay. Outsourcing, scope creep, and automation exist and are expanding in my industry as well. How long until this drags down programmers as well?
  - tomc1985 4y ago
    > What're you going to do? Form a union? Start a company? Vote? Quit and work elsewhere? Quit and work for myself. Personally I'm sick of the capped upside with working in tech (among myriad other issues) and the kinda shit you have to pull to raise it.
    - formerkrogemp 4y ago
      Good on you. I hope you do well.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  I have a colleague who left and is essentially doing the same work as I do, but is making about 5x more due to getting a cut of the revenue, but has a low base compensation. Due to the nature of my employment and some benefits, it doesn't make sense to leave right now. But you can bet that I will be out the door the minute the clock ticks to the appropriate date.
  - mavelikara 4y ago
    > Due to the nature of my employment and some benefits, it doesn't make sense to leave right now. Do the monetary value of these cover for the missing 4x on your base?
    - Firmwarrior 4y ago
      I can't speak for the parent commenter, but I can say that in my case, I just found out that my blood pressure is through the roof because of bad exercise/snacking habits during the lockdown. If I die while I'm working for BigCo, my wife and kid will get something like $2.5M from life insurance and immediately-vested RSUs I'm very confident that I could buy a nice house in a low cost of living area, throw together a SaaS that pulls in a few grand a month, and then work on a more ambitious business while living comfortably. BUT if that ticking time bomb in my chest goes off while I'm doing that, my family will be relatively fucked. (~$250k life insurance payout plus our ~$500k net worth, so the wife will suddenly have to become a working mother with out of date skills in a relatively crappy locale..) So in my case, it's worth sticking around at BigCo for another year or two and getting in shape while I'm still under the benevolent gaze of Master Faang EDIT: Dang, I've been a fool.. looks like it's only about $100 a month for $1M in life insurance actually, haha. Maybe I should sneak out of here sooner rather than later
      - austinsharp 4y ago
        My tip on life insurance: don't buy it from your existing auto/home insurance company. In my recent experience it's far cheaper from a dedicated life insurance company. I also got a discount going through Costco.
- 7speter 4y ago
  > The money we make pales in comparison with the size of our contributions to the company. Especially so if you are in a value-adding position and not something like internal tooling. Management and executives are DEFINITELY underpaying us relative to what we bring to the table for them I mean, I’ve seen people working in retail make this same point. And I’m not saying either of you are invalid in your claim, thats just how work is, it seems
  - googlr29783 4y ago
    That's how capitalism works, specifically delivering to capitalists the difference between the product's value and the worker's wage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploitation_of_labour#Surplus_labour_and_labour_theory_of_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploitation_of_labour#Surplus... It can be difficult to remember that the system wasn't always like this.
    - 7speter 4y ago
      I didn’t say it wasn’t how it works? Nor was I complaining, just pointing out that the sentiment is universal.
- scarface74 4y ago
  I work as a billable consultant. Therefore I know to the dollar the revenue I bring in in a given year. However, that revenue goes to support accountants, lawyers, marketing, internal tools, HR, healthcare, employer side taxes travel that’s not related to a customer, infrastructure costs, etc. I am not saying in a perfect world I shouldn’t be making more and honestly, I probably could. But, I like having a large corporation to take care of all of the stuff I mentioned above.
- sam0x17 4y ago
  Depending on the industry, this can be so true that at a certain point you start to wonder why VCs are even tolerant of companies with zero technical founders in 2022 given the obvious risks of this situation.
- jcims 4y ago
  How far down the stack does this mentality go? My brother does fiber construction and repair for a major telco. I bet there's been a trillion dollars of economic activity conducted over glass he's put into place, but he just gets paid an hourly wage plus overtime.
- pyuser583 4y ago
  This is what makes me feel underpaid. I see how much value I’m adding. I get a tiny, tiny fraction. I didn’t become a Marxist until I hit six figures, but dang it I want the wealth produced by my labor!
lumost 4y ago
you know, I'd be very curious what kinds of radical interview approaches teams have considered to break out of the LC mold. A little LC is useful in an interview situation, if an engineer can't do a simple 20-30 line coding problem or reason over the constraints/design space - then there is a good chance that they will need help with core coding in the day to day (which may not be a deal breaker in every employer). A lot of LC tends to hit on "specialist in LC". We overweight this type of candidate in our interview processes, mainly as "specialist in LC" no longer translates to "highly interested in Comp Sci fundamentals" or "Algorithm expert" - many grind LC just to get a job and promptly forget the fundamentals. A few interviews that I've seen gaining prominence. - Code Review interviews. Give a sample code review, and have the candidate provide feedback. I'd love to see this extended with just having the candidate write code review comments in whatever code review tool the company uses - you could then discuss the code review afterwards. Clarify ahead of time the tool that will be used for code review. - Debugging broken code. Let the candidate show off how they approach dealing with broken/buggy code, clarify ahead of time the language/environment for debugging. - Build a service/program to a spec via take home. Does the candidate build the system properly? do they exceed expectations? skip requirements? test the code? work double time? - Given a problem, build a working solution in your IDE of choice. I'm not even convinced that 5 45 minute to 1 hour interview block is the right size. Why not do a 3 hour time block where the candidate has to build something, then review with them at the end? This is common in interviews with for MBA-type positions.
- PheonixPharts 4y ago
  > if an engineer can't do a simple 20-30 line coding problem or reason over the constraints/design space - then there is a good chance that they will need help with core coding in the day to day. This isn't my experience, I've found that the number one reason for not doing well on leetcode problems is simply because the candidate hasn't practiced doing leetcode problems. I've known plenty good engineers who, when interviewing with LC style interviews for the first time, fail utterly. Then they realize they just need to practice and did better. I've been in the industry for around 15 years now, my anecdotal observation is that the average quality of engineers is negatively correlated with the rise of leetcode. 10 years ago the strongest signal was a solid github profile with lots of relevant projects. That's not to say leetcode is the cause of this decline. The cause is the flood of SWE being rushed into the career as fast as possible (this is why github is no longer a good signal, bootcamps started training their students to create meaningless GH projects just to attempt to create signal). However I've also seen no indication that leetcode type challenges have any relationship to being a good engineer. I've worked at plenty of places that required pretty tricky leetcode style problems filled with very, very mediocre engineers. Leetcode has become a game that has little to nothing to do with real world programming, in the same way that speed-cubing (solving Rubik's cubes in record time) has absolutely nothing to do with the player's underlying understanding of group theory and combinatorics. The old fashioned walk through and reason about non-trivial code someone has written is still an excellent method to see how a programmer thinks and if they can code.
gorbachev 4y ago
The overall economy inflation numbers are completely meaningless when cost of education, housing and healthcare has been skyrocketing for more than a decade, maybe even longer. The average worker, especially those with families, have seen their costs inflate much, much higher than 11% per year for quite some time.
- chrchang523 4y ago
  Much higher than the previous official inflation rate of 2% per year, yes. But not (previously, anyway) higher than 11%.
- IMTDb 4y ago
  11% of growth every year for 10 years is 2.83, almost 3. Things haven't gotten 3 times more expensive in the last decade - far from it.
  - glouwbug 4y ago
    Unless you’re from Vancouver or Toronto where detached homes went from $300k to $1.6m from 2005
- erwincoumans 4y ago
  In Foster City, CA, bay area, a salary of $146k is considered low income, and can get access to affordable housing [1]. A 3/4 bedroom townhouse in Foster City, CA bay area used to be 800k usd 10 years ago, today it goes for 2M usd, with offers 200k to 400k above asking price. [2] [3] [4] [1] https://www.fostercity.org/faqs?keys=&field_microsite_tid=All&field_tags_tid=731 https://www.fostercity.org/faqs?keys=&field_microsite_tid=Al... [2] https://deniseliew.realscout.com/homesearch/listings/p-812-magellan-ln-foster-city-94404-mlslistings-853 https://deniseliew.realscout.com/homesearch/listings/p-812-m... [3] https://deniseliew.realscout.com/homesearch/listings/p-893-erickson-ln-foster-city-94404-mlslistings-0 https://deniseliew.realscout.com/homesearch/listings/p-893-e... [4] https://deniseliew.realscout.com/homesearch/listings/p-1112-forrestal-ln-foster-city-94404-mlslistings-115 https://deniseliew.realscout.com/homesearch/listings/p-1112-...
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
And to think, people working in IT actually get raises, and can earn more money by changing jobs; they are already quite privileged compared to those earning closer to minimum wage (like 30K a year?), given that said minimum wage hasn't been increased from $7.25 in 13 years now, while cost of living and inflation HAS gone up. One issue is that while costs of products, housing, etc is adjusted pretty much instantly with supply, demand and inflation, wages aren't. When inflation numbers are introduced, companies jump to announce they're raising prices, citing cost of resources or... whatever. But they don't increase wages. How often have wages gone up at a rate higher than inflation? I can't remember it. So basically people are expected to continue living on a currency that is decreasing in value constantly. Or they're expected to switch jobs or grow in their career, not to have a better life, but just to be able to maintain their current lifestyle. Remember these tropes from the 80's and 90's and before where people bought a sizeable house, one or two cars, and put money away to put their kids (they could afford kids too) through college, all on a single income? Yyyyeeeaahhh. actually I don't know if that was the case for most people, it's what sitcoms depicted.
- mywittyname 4y ago
  > I don't know if that was the case for most people, it's what sitcoms depicted. It wasn't. Bill, from the Cosby Show, was a physician, Tony, from Who's the Boss was a former baseball player, the dad from Full House was a TV broadcaster, etc. It's probably the reason "blue collar" sitcoms were popular in the 90s (Rosanne, Grace Under Fire).
- citizenpaul 4y ago
  >ready quite privileged compared to those earning closer to minimum wage I really don't like this self loathing mentality on HN. I work really hard to keep up to date in IT, even after I'm off work. Sorry to burst your bubble but most people just go home from work and get high or drunk then watch 5hrs of TV. Thats the reason they can't work tech jobs. I didn't go to school for CS but I still make lots of money in tech because I want to and I keep myself up to date. Its not all poor single moms without any time or some other tragic story.
- duped 4y ago
commandlinefan 4y ago
> The cost savings of work from home must have been enormous for these companies It would have been if they had shut down the offices, but they've paying rent and heating/cooling costs on completely empty buildings for years now because they hold out hope they can drag people back.
spywaregorilla 4y ago
That's not strictly true. If the average is dropped down by an increasingly large share of new joiners at entry level, you might see the average raise exceed 11% while the average comp level is raised only to 6.9% Raises are often somewhat small, but job changes can be pretty hefty. And it's better than most positions by fair margin.
rainboOow9 4y ago
What baffles me though is that its not like this crazy interview gauntlet is being maintained purely by HR. Engineers in those big tech companies are very protective towards those processes as well, and loudly protest if one would try to change them (complaining about lowering the bar, not hiring top tier talent anymore, etc.). And tbh, I would be afraid of what they would replace those LC interviews with. At least, I can prepare and grind a LC test. I do not want to have to explain in details what a inode is when interviewing for a back-end position, while I have never had a need for that kind of knowledge in 10 YoE.
- fnimick 4y ago
  Amusingly, I have gotten exactly that question - or rather, "what's in an inode." I answered "data about a file object, but none of the actual contents of the file, which are stored elsewhere" and failed because I didn't mention the magic words "metadata" and "permissions". Fair, I guess, but this wasn't for a systems development position at all, so I can't imagine it would have been critical to the job! Another favorite of mine, for a web development position, was "what happens at the network level when you load a webpage" where I got marked as getting it wrong for skipping explicit description of SYN/ACK step of the TCP connection. Again, fair, but probably not relevant.
  - chasd00 4y ago
    > where I got marked as getting it wrong for skipping explicit description of SYN/ACK step of the TCP connection that's pretty crazy because if you're going to talk about that then you're going to have to talk about congestion control, windowing, every other protocol besides IP that TCP can run on top of and how they work, and all the other things that come into play based on the current state of the various networks between you and the server hosting the website. Answering that one question could take an hour itself. It reminds me of that saying that goes like "How to make an Apple Pie. Step 1, create the universe..." I'm very fortunate because my last three interviews have been basically calling up an old colleague and asking what they've been up to and if they want some help.
    - 4y ago
daniel-cussen 4y ago
Grind leetcode that's it?? All I have to do is ace every leetcode problem and I get a 20% raise every year?!
- glouwbug 4y ago
  Buddy of mine solved 1400 leetcodes and still failed several rounds
  - indecisive_user 4y ago
    Did they fail because they couldn't solve an algorithm? Or was it due to something else - e.g. soft skills, solving without explaining your thought process, system design, behavioral questions. Algorithms are only one part of an interview. I wouldn't hire someone who was rude or condescending, regardless of how fast they can write an O(n) solution.
    - glouwbug 4y ago
      It’s just the raw scope of what can be asked. The interviewer doesn’t care if you’re an expert in standard structures like red black trees, doubly linked lists, min max heaps - or even hash tables - when they’ve got a obsession with scanning Wikipedia for articles on Tries and Topological sort because their self proclaimed 10x engineer spirits believe their Log(n) spellcheckers are gonna replace elastic search
    - daniel-cussen 4y ago
      Yeah that's what I want to know. If I ace 100% of the algorithmic questions, in real time during the interview, like flawless and pure, actual perfection in real life,[1] can I fuck up at the parts I've been conditioned under torture to fuck up on and still get the job? Nail it and nail it and nail it, do they help me out? Like Michael O'Church talked about a company hiring a software engineer and another hiring a manager, and he and the engineer A/B testing trying to get hired as an engineer or as a manager. And in the interview, they wanted him to come up with the golden algorithm that took them months and was their hot shit with which they would win big, they wanted that in an hour. Actually less, you couldn't solve it in minute 59 without coming up with incremental steps to "show progress" as if that weren't counterproductive. So like 4 minutes, Michael O'Church lied through his teeth in favor of these guy's patience. 4 minutes of silence and it's over. And because he couldn't do it that's when they started discounting points, like you start at 100 and then get knocked points for not having gone to Stanford (or Berkeley as he puts it, but you still get discounted for Berkeley in reality), then more demerits for every flaw, negging over and over. Always communicating it's the engineer's fault he's treated like shit. Whereas for applying to manager (which in many ways was more honest, it was arguable, he just hadn't been formally promoted with actual employees with a wage, he just pretended he had and had the knowledge to back it up), with applying to manager, he started at like 80 points and everything he did well added points to his value, they saw him as an ally. Against the software engineer, against his own alternate self, whom they treated as the subordinate, like enemy slash slave. So that story I don't know how to judge, I don't have enough visibility on Michael O'Church and I have very negative opinions about a lot of his thoughts. But that's not the question. The question is, if I do crack the golden algorithm that took them months right then and there, in the heat of the moment under time pressure, in the interview, under adversarial circumstances, all of that, in the four minutes they actually give you without acting impatient, if I DO not if I don't IF I DO will that get me human dignity and a wage? Or will they still reject me because I'm not submissive, which I can never again be after standing up to torture? [1] So what this means is, suppose a chess player is at a crossroads, and thinks for a minute. And from that point on, plays perfectly until checkmate. Every move correct. Saying I don't do it perfectly would be like saying the chess player didn't play perfectly because he didn't lay the pieces in the exact geometric center of the square when he moved them. I get every algorithm interviewer to say "what the fuck", "did you hear it before?" "that was fast" But it's never enough. Best job I had was $20 an hour, dream job, as a handyman, construction. Dream job. I got promoted into software, and was quickly fired. Managers are primates first, mathematicians a distant second. They talk about being mathematicians a lot, like a lot, they pretend it's all about the bottom line, but no. It's about dominance, being alpha, a guy who stood up to torture is an alpha challenger, no hire, no matter what he can bring to the company. Mathematics is a distant distant second.
ar_lan 4y ago
> Most devs will admit that they couldn't readily pass the interview at even their own company without many hours of studying and practicing algorithms. I don't think, if asked to interview for it today, that I could land my current job. I'm also fairly certain I'm one of the top engineers on my team, and I do think we have a really good team of developers overall. It makes me feel better that I'm not alone, in this regard, but it often just makes me question the interview process even further.
- blagie 4y ago
  It's a random process. If you set the bar 2 std. div. above what you need, you are hiring qualified people with a p value of 5%. You're rejecting /most/ qualified people too. Most people underestimate how random the process is. There are a few ways in: - Be 2 std. div above the qualifications - Apply to many places and pick the one where you're lucky - Give another, less noisy source of signal than resume + interview (e.g. networking into a company, consulting, references, major open source contributions, etc.) I wouldn't get my current job if I randomly applied right now. I happened to do well on an interview process which wasn't well-aligned to my background. That was a fluke. I was probably the most-qualified candidate, but if I didn't have a lucky day, I don't think an interview would have shown that. Last hiring cycle, I was also rejected several places where I am pretty sure I was better than the candidate who was hired too. If you make this about you, you'll feel horrible. If you understand the huge random factor, you'll do much better. (Disclaimer: I have specialized skills, so my interview process isn't a typical SWE interview process).
  - NDizzle 4y ago
    > If you make this about you, you'll feel horrible. If you understand the huge random factor, you'll do much better. Thanks, this is helpful as I go through various interview processes right now.
    - blagie 4y ago
      I hated job-hunting before I did hiring and managed people. I felt rejected each time I didn't get an offer. Once I sat on the other side of the table, and saw how a /majority/ of qualified candidates were turned down, I didn't feel so bad when I was rejected. The key thing you *really, really, really* want to avoid is a bad hire. I've seen candidates rejected for the oddest reasons. It was definitely the right choice to do so. In the kinds of companies I've worked for, if you're at all not sure about a candidate, the decision should be a no-hire. I don't feel rejected any more. A good mental model is: If you're qualified, you role a die. If the die comes up a 6, you're hired. If you role 1-5, you're not hired. (The number of sides on the day varies by industry; I think 6-sided is about right for my industry in the current job market)
mgkimsal 4y ago
> The cost savings of work from home must have been enormous for these companies, yet none of that savings or record profits trickled down to the people writing code Lots of companies had long term leases or obligations anyway. Eventually the 'cost savings' were probably there, but I don't know too many companies that were just able to jettison their initial lease payments in the first few months of the pandemic. I know I couldn't quickly get out of my office lease.
v_nh 4y ago
Factoring in the rise in home prices as well as the dramatic collapse of everyones stock portfolios, 11% inflation only scratches the surface of our problems...
ryandrake 4y ago
> Meanwhile for those that have the time and willpower to grind leetcode, they know they can command a 20-40% raise every few years. One thing a lot of people forget about this 20-40% number is: It's only true early in your career. It might be hard for younger folks to believe, but you will all hit a ceiling and plateau. My first job hop was for +50%! The next one was about 40%, the next one 15%, and so on. Now, with 20+ years of experience, my last job hop was for maybe 0.25%. If I could get +40% every time I switched jobs, I'd only have to have switched jobs 9 times in my life in order to be making $1M/yr.
- websap 4y ago
  If you've been in tech for 20 years and aren't making 1 MM per year, you're doing something wrong. Talk to people around you.
  - hnfong 4y ago
    > you're doing something wrong Like, not being born with a US citizenship?
  - hiram112 4y ago
    I honestly can't tell if this a joke or not.
- buscoquadnary 4y ago
  This is something I don't think gets discussed enough. In my first 10 years of career I basically doubled my salary, by moving every 2-3 years, but I also now know I am pretty much hitting a plateau, anytime I talk with recruiters and talk about the salary I'd like to move which is about 10-20% (which is pretty reasonable given the benefits I got now) then people express reservations. Some people will end up making 200+ but I for an IC type position it seems to top out around 150 is the max, generally. If you want more you need to be an "Enterprise Architect" or "Director" which that becomes a whole different bag of worms. On the other hand love my job, I have enough money to provide for myself and my family, and am working on getting financially secure and paying off debt so I also don't have a strong drive to make more.
citizenpaul 4y ago
>. The cost savings of work from home must have been enormous for these companies First I agree overall, however I think you overestimate how much any companies saved on the WFH shift. 1. They still own the buildings or leases/mortgages. I doubt many were able to get out of leases which in commercial are usually 3-5year min. Mortgage only goes away if they sold the building. 2. They still have to pay the cost of maintaining the building and facilities while unused in the above cases. 3. Pretty much all companies are using their commercial locations to bloat their balance sheets and secure debt. This is actually a HUGE factor as to why so many companies what WFH to end. They simply cannot get rid of their offices or they would be insolvent based on their finances. You can't throw out 2bil in real estate that is securing 20bil in debt or it would be called in. 4. Many companies were unprepared so they had to pay out the nose the get things setup rapidly for remote workers because they resisted it for so long. Why do you think Zoom blew up so fast?
- skrbjc 4y ago
  I think the big savings in real estate came from not having to keep getting more and more space to house all of your new employees. When I worked at a large tech company in SF, they were running up against their limits and just didn't have enough space to house the people they were hiring, so they had to slow hiring. The smaller startup I worked at also had to get a second office a couple blocks away from the original office. In the current remote-forward world, while these companies have to keep their existing real estate, they get the benefit of not having grow their real estate portfolio relative to their employee size. I was also told it cost that large tech company 20-30k a year per physical seat in the office. So I'm pretty sure the savings have been decent, even if they didn't dump their office spaces.
zie 4y ago
It's not a secret that tech companies underpay their employees and bank on them being too complacent to go through the interview gauntlet yet again. Remove the word tech, and you basically have it right. Why would companies whose goal is to maximize profit pay more than they have to? There is little incentive for companies to pay more than required to meet their needs.
dehrmann 4y ago
> Many companies posted record growth and profits over the pandemic, but still give out paltry 3-5% raises every year. A few disconnected points: As we're seeing, some of that growth was temporary. Between inflation and growth, record profits is expected from any company not in decline. Allocating profits from growth to more growth is a reasonable choice. There's no reason for wages to track profits. Wages are driven by the labor market; profits just act as a wage ceiling.
matheusmoreira 4y ago
> those that have the time and willpower to grind leetcode, they know they can command a 20-40% raise every few years Is this really all it takes?
weaksauce 4y ago
> yet none of that savings or record profits trickled down to the people writing code. yeah trickle down economics was just a rebranding of horse and sparrow economics. as in you feed the horse all the oats and then the sparrows get to pluck the undigested bits from the feces. Never was going to work.
hurxnid 4y ago
The FAANG companies also worked together to drive tech worker salaries down by agreeing to avoid hiring each other’s employees.
overtonwhy 4y ago
Inflation is targeted to be around 2% per year on average and that 11% number you threw out without any source or reference is wildly inaccurate. Here's the real inflation: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FPCPITOTLZGUSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FPCPITOTLZGUSA
jjav 4y ago
> Why do tech workers feel underpaid? I'll throw in a different angle. If I'm truly happy at a job, pay isn't a big concern as long as I can pay the bills. The more miserable the job becomes, the more the money becomes the only way to tolerate it so it better keep getting higher. Pay in software roles might be at an all-time high today, but respect and independence is at an all-time low. In the 90s I had a private office with a door and a window. Today we're packed like sardines into an open office (although thanks to the pandemic this part improved). In the 90s I worked on deep hardcode tech, today nearly every company just wants to glue libraries to frameworks and connect AWS bits together. Work is no longer intellectually satisfying. In the 90s tech companies produced tech, that was the product, so it was exciting and hip. Today so-called "tech companies" produce advertising, shopping, social spyware, movies. It's not tech anymore. Boring. In the 90s, senior engineers drove engineering decisions. Today we have non-technical product managers forcing their way into technical decisions. In the 90s we were trusted to get things done and allowed the time to get deep in the zone. Today it's forced daily status reports, "agile". In the 90s we could plan ahead and go deep, research and build well-architected solutions. Today the task better take no more than 1-2 days so the story gets closed, "agile". I could go on and on but will stop. If software engineering today had the working conditions and respect it had in the 90s, I'd happily do it for 25% of my current salary and be so happy.
lsj0627 4y ago
That's salary. Total compensation is significantly higher.
silisili 4y ago
I don't feel underpaid, but I definitely feel like I've lost tons of ground in the last 2 years. The floor has risen big time. Entry level jobs are paying up to 60k these days, whereas they were closer to 30k a few years back. Good for them, seriously. But watching the floor rise closer to you is never a great feeling.
- heromal 4y ago
  Entry level jobs in NC start at 75k...you're way out of the loop. They haven't been 30k anywhere in far longer than "a few years back".
- welder 4y ago
  You should look into a remote job with a California tech company where entry level is 120k. [1] [1] Filter by "Location independent pay" https://himalayas.app/companies https://himalayas.app/companies
  - silisili 4y ago
    To be clear, I do quite a bit better than that... I'm not complaining. But using 120k as an example...a person went from making 4x the typical full time salary to 2x the typical full time salary in a very short period.
    - Melting_Harps 4y ago
      > To be clear, I do quite a bit better than that... I'm not complaining. But using 120k as an example...a person went from making 4x the typical full time salary to 2x the typical full time salary in a very short period. This is what I will never understand about most established tech people, they see all the widespread misery and poverty in SV and they still have the capacity to feel sorry for themselves for not making X times more than 'that other guy.' It's always about what they don't have rather than see that they live in an insulated bubble existence that they could never really navigate if it weren't for that wealth disparity because they have such a narrow limited set of skills. aWant an experiment turn off the wifi, see how quickly these people lose their minds. I'm not mad at you for it, for all I know you are self-taught guy that beat out a bunch Stanford grads by grinding since HS and making it on your own, but it's this never-ending need to beat that guy. Its like that scene in American Psycho with those business cards, where for some odd reason people seem to have a need to over-embellish their existence's value with triviality that re-enforces the 'yeah, but I have more than that guy' narrative which is completely lost on me. I hate to tell you but you will never have more than a Bezos or a Musk, either. Not to mention the Nation-state level despots of the World who don't have their net-worth listed on the Forbes 500. Just enjoy what you have, while you have it, because I can assure those very same tech companies are pouring tons of money to render you obsolete as soon as possible.
missedthecue 4y ago
Annual raises doesn't have anything to do with being over or underpaid, strictly speaking. To clearly illustrate my point here, if fortune 500 CEO pay is up less than 11% on avg since 2020, I don't think that's an argument they're underpaid.
- harry8 4y ago
  > if fortune 500 CEO pay is up less than 11% on avg since 2020 It's up a /lot/ more than that! And what do you know, they're also not underpaid. The former will predict the latter pretty damn well, I think you'll find. So yes, strictly speaking, annual raises and having the market power to command meaningful ones do actually have everything to do with being over/under paid.
  - missedthecue 4y ago
    I'm not making a statement of fact about CEO pay since 2020. I'm saying that whether or not it's up by more or less than inflation since then has nothing to do with them being fundamentally overpaid. Apply this to dev pay as well. Just because you're a few % off since 2020 after inflation does not mean $300k salaries are overpaid or that they're appropriate. They're two unconnected data points.
    - harry8 4y ago
      They are totally connected. If you don't have the market power to have garnered a good pay increase over the past 2 years of record profits you're almost certainly underpaid, like teachers, nurses etc. If you got massive pay increases you're almost certainly overpaid, like CEOs. The connection is right there. Maybe these two things could somehow become disjointed but they really don't appear to be such in any meaningful way in the current economy.
      - eru 4y ago
        What do you mean by underpaid and overpaid? Plenty of people want to become teachers and nurses and doctors (or veterinaries or musicians or artists etc), knowing full well how low the pay is.
rocketbop 4y ago
> ...a 6.9% increase since 2020, the report found. But inflation is over 11% since 2020. This isn't an increase. The I have heard this point made a couple of times recently. Is there any reason why these two values should be the same? It is a point of concern for those on very low incomes who spent all their income and are not able to save anythiny, but if you are on a six figure income and only a portion of that income is spent on groceries and housing then I assume you can still end up wealthier than the previous year.
- giantg2 4y ago
  "Is there any reason why these two values should be the same?" Are you producing the same value for the company as you did last year? If inflation is higher, then you are receiving less value via your pay from producing the same or more value for the company.
  - eutropia 4y ago
    Is your work in tech supposed to hold a sacred scalar linear multiple of the average labor cost ( read: salary of people who produce food and goods) of life’s necessities? So many entitled people arguing for an economic caste system… Arguing that your wage should always match or beat inflation is arguing for defacto permanent income inequality. You’re literally saying your work is always the same amount more valuable than the average labor cost increase incorporated into inflation numbers.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      "So many entitled people arguing for an economic caste system…" I don't see that anywhere in my argument. "Arguing that your wage should always match or beat inflation is arguing for defacto permanent income inequality." Do you have an alternative approach? I have not heard any mainstream argument for setting all salaries/wages to be equal. You have to define income inequality and then determine what level of inequality is acceptable. Should a CEO make more than a worker? In my opinion, probably. Should they make 100x more? I don't think so. If I could make the same money flipping burgers as I can working as a dev (let's say around the median salary of $40k), I'd quit today and most other devs would too. Why should I go to college? Why should I endure the longer hours/on-call? Why deal with the frustration and office BS? Different jobs make different money because the work carries different value. We should protect those at the bottom and try to make it fair. But fair doesn't mean literal income equality with everyone making $20/hr regardless of job, performance, etc (ie equal and equitable are different). The fact that workers are seeing real wages decline since the 70s is the problem. If you adjusted them for inflation, then income inequality is not as much of an issue. (You'd still have to adjust capital gains taxes and the real increase in things like executive pay, but at least indexing wages to inflation would have benefited things on the worker side.) "You’re literally saying your work is always the same amount more valuable than the average labor cost increase incorporated into inflation numbers" Not if everyone gets the inflation adjustment as they do in that other country - Denmark maybe? The discrepancy can be adjusted by increasing the floor, as that impact will raise the lower end more than the rest of the market (eg the people that need the raise most get the biggest impact while those not at the bottom see minimal effect upto a certain level). You're literally arguing against yourself. You're saying that workers should not get inflation adjustments. Where do you think that money goes? It goes into the pockets of the executives and the investors (capital instead of labor). On top of all this, you wrongly assume I'm some high earning person. I make less than $100k and live in a moderately high cost of living area.
refurb 4y ago
I hope people realize that when monthly inflation numbers are released those are annualized. So the 8.5% inflation rate in March is actually 1.085^(1/12) = 0.7% for March, and 8.5% assuming that same rate lasted for 12 consecutive months. In 2021, the CPI-U was 4.7% for all of 2021. https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/inflation-calculator/consumer-price-index-1913- https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/infl...
- indecisive_user 4y ago
  Ok, but the cumulative inflation rate since January 2020 is still around 11% $1 in January 2020 is worth $1.11 today https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1&year1=202001&year2=202203 https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1&year1=202001...
  - refurb 4y ago
    It is, but that's also over 2 years and 4 months, so an annualized inflation rate of ~4.6%, which my salary didn't keep up with, but only barely. I don't disagree that inflation is overtaking wage increases, just that the magnitude isn't that large....yet.
kilroy123 4y ago
I got ZERO raise this past year and boy let me tell you, it really pissed me off. I didn't feel I wasn't making enough until that happened.
- eru 4y ago
  Genuine question: would you have felt better with a 1% raise? In 2010 I was working in the UK and we had about 5% inflation that year (or so). I got a 2% raise, and found that more insulting than if they had given no raise; even though objectively any positive raise is better than no raise.
  - kilroy123 4y ago
    I've been living in London and the inflation is just as bad there as back in the US. I'm American working for a US company that just raised a huge Series B. They have the money, so I expected at least 3%. I didn't expect a 10%+, but at _least_ something.
- giantg2 4y ago
  I got a 1.5% raise. It's a 4.5% paycut after inflation.
- __app_dev__ 4y ago
  I haven't gotten a raise in probably 10 years. But realistically I make a lot more than most developers where I live (Los Angeles) and there would be no reason for my company to give me a raise when I'm probably the highest paid non-sales person where I work (and often have been). So I'm ok with it. Just got an extra side gig for 20-25% hours per weeks so it's like getting a 50% raise and feels great. Although seeing how many $500k jobs exist in Silicon Valley makes me think I should spend more time grinding leetcode.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
astrange 4y ago
> But inflation is over 11% since 2020. This isn't an increase. The average tech worker is making less than they were 2 years ago according to the Dice salary report. Are you buying the average number of used cars and housing? I'm not. My expenses haven't gone up 10% in nominal dollars. (Related anecdote: people tend to say the economy is bad if they heard it was bad on TV, even if they just got a new job and a raise.)
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  Assuming your goal is to have a car, your budget should always be accounting for the time when you will need to buy a new car since cars do not last forever. Same with land. If your goal is to purchase lands, then your budget needs account for increases in the prices of land (specifically the land you want). And healthcare. And education. Also, my food purchases have definitely increased at least 10% nominally in the past couple years.
  - astrange 4y ago
    The inflation number is specifically high because used cars got expensive due to the chip production supply crunch, it’s not those other things. (Except insofar as those other people want to buy used cars, which some of them do.) You’re reading as if it applied to the entire economy just because you’ve been given a single number. My rent hasn’t gone up either. Which is kind of weird since I don’t think we have rent control here.
    - trgn 4y ago
      You make the best point on this thread I think. Inflation numbers don't really correspond easily to quality of life or day2day expenses, especially if you're making well above what's required to afford the necessities. Getting a 4% raise on 150k salary in an uneven 8% inflation environment is a genuine meaningful increase, and will have you "keep up" fine in the short/mid term.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      My point is that people feel the way they do because they see their goals become less achievable (even if maybe they were not very achievable in the first place).

tomc1985 4y ago

The money we make pales in comparison with the size of our contributions to the company. Especially so if you are in a value-adding position and not something like internal tooling. Management and executives are DEFINITELY underpaying us relative to what we bring to the table for them. Maybe that is one of the reason headcounts have ballooned and complexity has increased so much -- an attempt to minimize individual impact. (edit- NOT knocking internal tooling, it's just that it is traditionally considered a cost center)

jen20 4y ago
What? Internal developer productivity tooling is one of the most important investments a company can make, especially at the scale phase. B tier companies give that work to juniors. A tier companies give that work to the most senior people they can find to do it.
- jchanimal 4y ago
  Here here. I’m not a 10x developer but I run in those circles, and the best of the best are working to reduce friction for the rest of the team.
lumost 4y ago
This strongly depends on the company. In high growth industries this is absolutely true, in low-growth industries/companies its somewhat debatable. I suspect that this is why software salaries were tightly correlated with tech growth for the last 3 decades. The 90s, and 2010s were great times to be a software engineer - but average salaries were more than cut in half during the oughts.
- tomc1985 4y ago
  If you're doing tech stuff to replace some kind of human, manual labor then I think this applies regardless of your sector or growth rating. Tech enables companies to do more with less -- at lesat, that's the dream -- and I suspect that if the economics aren't favorable for tech they'd rather have cheap expendable labor. We are the practitioners realizing that dream for our masters.
dolni 4y ago
> Especially so if you are in a value-adding position and not something like internal tooling. Why the knock on internal tooling? If internal tooling helps a value-add position go 10% faster, that's worth a lot. And most likely it isn't just one position, it's many.
- psyc 4y ago
  They didn't say internal doesn't add any value at all. They said it's more obviously justifiable with the product people, and it is. Given that total salaries paid per year is almost always small in proportion to revenue at a successful company, tooling cannot add anywhere near as much to the bottom line, even at the extreme where it reduced time to market to 5 seconds.
  - everforward 4y ago
    > even at the extreme where it reduced time to market to 5 seconds. If this is your impression of internal tooling, then your internal tooling team is terrible. The places I've worked with good internal tooling teams provided a dramatic decrease in time to delivery. Automated failovers? Don't have to write it, it's in internal tooling. Automatically rebalancing traffic across datacenters? Already in the framework. Service discovery? You already know. I could go down the list, but with a good internal tooling team, the only thing I've ever had to worry about was my app's business purpose. I don't have to muck with configuring monitoring, or load balancers, or getting authentication to talk to another app, or how to get a database, or etc. The difference in time to delivery is dramatic. Places I've worked without internal tooling take like 2 weeks just to get infra for a static HTML site. The places I've worked with bad internal tooling take 3 weeks to do the same thing, because you'll spend a week arguing about whether the tooling works. The places I've worked with good internal tooling take like 15 minutes to do it. I spend longer reviewing an MR than I do deploying infra. Tooling is a huge part of the reason companies throw fistfuls of money at clouds. They could get compute on-demand cheaper from Leaseweb or OVH or hundreds of other companies, but they don't. They pay the premium for AWS or Azure or GCP, and it's because of the tooling.
- Spooky23 4y ago
doliveira 4y ago
Do you think internal tooling is just a cost center?
chasd00 4y ago
well we all like to think we're the sole reason "the company" makes any money but there's a lot more to the equation than just the person typing out the code. Without the code there would be no value but the code is meaningless without all the other expertise required to turn it into bank deposits. The technical part is maybe 10% (if not lower) of the overall effort to get a paycheck in your hands.
- tomc1985 4y ago
  Nowhere does my post indicate that I think I'm the "sole reason" the company makes any money. We are all just cogs in the machine. But, as with anyone who makes the product, we are a huge part of the reason the company is in business and it would be nice if management would stop looking down at us. Maybe they should be looking up to us instead. (And if you disagree, read into the tone of the article.... "techies"??? Ideas for paying us less?) Not to discount other departments like marketing or operations -- they are important too. But they don't make the product, they are more numerous, and more interchangeable.
  - bosie 4y ago
    > But they don't make the product Not sure how important that is, though. Often the product gets sold despite of the product, thanks to marketing, operations, logistics, sales, support, legal and management (product/project). Genuinely curious but do you consider product/project management to also 'be making the product'?
    - tomc1985 4y ago
      If their project is said product, then yes; because they are, in a way, architecting the final deliverable. And that recognition goes up the chain, in an increasingly diluted form, until it reaches the top.
mrfusion 4y ago
> The money we make pales in comparison with the size of our contributions to the company. That’s a tautology though. They wouldn’t hire someone to break even and they wouldn’t hire someone to make a little more money since there’s work and risk in hiring.
- TimPC 4y ago
  It's really not. Start-ups routinely fail to generate value and engineers get hired by such companies all the time. All that is needed is the belief it's possible the value will be higher. The reality doesn't need to match the belief.
  - ubercow13 4y ago
    But then the engineers at the successful company can't capture a significant amount of the value that company makes, because the rest of it has to go back to investors to make up for all the other companies they funded that 'overpaid' engineers and failed.
Ozzie_osman 4y ago
> The money we make pales in comparison with the size of our contributions to the company. That's unfortunately not how markets work. If you create 10M of value every year, and are only paid 250K for doing it, it's because there is someone else out there who is willing to do it for the same. (Yes, there are asymmetries in information and power, but broadly, tech salaries are market-driven)
- bosie 4y ago
  Problem is more that the contributions of an engineere are hard to quantify, so that 10M never gets compared to the 250k
  - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
    Hah, no. The problem is whenever someone talks about pushing back, you can find at least one guy saying "ok then I'll do the job" and 3 people saying "I don't care, my 250k is super comfy". Like others point out, it's incredible the US hasn't mass outsourced their work to Europe yet.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  That's why people unionize. Hasn't happened to tech yet, don't know if it will, but it isn't a forgone conclusion this is how markets have to work.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    And when costs get to high, what’s stopping tech companies from just expanding their overseas presence?
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      The same thing that is causing reshoring: rising developing world wages, culture, language barriers, etc. If you have the necessary support in government, labor law. The defeatists will always argue against improvement of the status quo; they are not to be indulged, as their goal is not improvement. Only 30% of an org's workers need to vote for the NLRB to hold an election [1], and then you only need a simple majority to unionize. Are we arguing against the attempt when a quick glance at the financials for FAANG and Co shows ample profit margins available for worker compensation? [1] https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/employees/your-right-to-form-a-union https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/em...
formerkrogemp 4y ago
> Management and executives are DEFINITELY underpaying us relative to what we bring to the table for them. This is true of every industry going on decades of increasing productivity and stagnating pay. What's new here besides greater awareness and labor churn? Will there be an actual change going forward? Of course the demographics favor workers now, but the laws and politics often don't. Immigration and outsourcing and automation can change that power dynamic very quickly. What're you going to do? Form a union? Start a company? Vote? Quit and work elsewhere? Interesting times we live in. > Maybe that is one of the reason headcounts have ballooned and complexity has increased so much -- an attempt to minimize individual impact. All of my friends and aquaintinces in nursing, tax, retail, and trucking have a few people who are trying to break into programming because of the benefits and pay. Outsourcing, scope creep, and automation exist and are expanding in my industry as well. How long until this drags down programmers as well?
- tomc1985 4y ago
  > What're you going to do? Form a union? Start a company? Vote? Quit and work elsewhere? Quit and work for myself. Personally I'm sick of the capped upside with working in tech (among myriad other issues) and the kinda shit you have to pull to raise it.
  - formerkrogemp 4y ago
    Good on you. I hope you do well.
Spooky23 4y ago
I have a colleague who left and is essentially doing the same work as I do, but is making about 5x more due to getting a cut of the revenue, but has a low base compensation. Due to the nature of my employment and some benefits, it doesn't make sense to leave right now. But you can bet that I will be out the door the minute the clock ticks to the appropriate date.
- mavelikara 4y ago
  > Due to the nature of my employment and some benefits, it doesn't make sense to leave right now. Do the monetary value of these cover for the missing 4x on your base?
  - Firmwarrior 4y ago
    I can't speak for the parent commenter, but I can say that in my case, I just found out that my blood pressure is through the roof because of bad exercise/snacking habits during the lockdown. If I die while I'm working for BigCo, my wife and kid will get something like $2.5M from life insurance and immediately-vested RSUs I'm very confident that I could buy a nice house in a low cost of living area, throw together a SaaS that pulls in a few grand a month, and then work on a more ambitious business while living comfortably. BUT if that ticking time bomb in my chest goes off while I'm doing that, my family will be relatively fucked. (~$250k life insurance payout plus our ~$500k net worth, so the wife will suddenly have to become a working mother with out of date skills in a relatively crappy locale..) So in my case, it's worth sticking around at BigCo for another year or two and getting in shape while I'm still under the benevolent gaze of Master Faang EDIT: Dang, I've been a fool.. looks like it's only about $100 a month for $1M in life insurance actually, haha. Maybe I should sneak out of here sooner rather than later
    - austinsharp 4y ago
      My tip on life insurance: don't buy it from your existing auto/home insurance company. In my recent experience it's far cheaper from a dedicated life insurance company. I also got a discount going through Costco.
7speter 4y ago
> The money we make pales in comparison with the size of our contributions to the company. Especially so if you are in a value-adding position and not something like internal tooling. Management and executives are DEFINITELY underpaying us relative to what we bring to the table for them I mean, I’ve seen people working in retail make this same point. And I’m not saying either of you are invalid in your claim, thats just how work is, it seems
- googlr29783 4y ago
  That's how capitalism works, specifically delivering to capitalists the difference between the product's value and the worker's wage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploitation_of_labour#Surplus_labour_and_labour_theory_of_value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploitation_of_labour#Surplus... It can be difficult to remember that the system wasn't always like this.
  - 7speter 4y ago
    I didn’t say it wasn’t how it works? Nor was I complaining, just pointing out that the sentiment is universal.
scarface74 4y ago
I work as a billable consultant. Therefore I know to the dollar the revenue I bring in in a given year. However, that revenue goes to support accountants, lawyers, marketing, internal tools, HR, healthcare, employer side taxes travel that’s not related to a customer, infrastructure costs, etc. I am not saying in a perfect world I shouldn’t be making more and honestly, I probably could. But, I like having a large corporation to take care of all of the stuff I mentioned above.
sam0x17 4y ago
Depending on the industry, this can be so true that at a certain point you start to wonder why VCs are even tolerant of companies with zero technical founders in 2022 given the obvious risks of this situation.
jcims 4y ago
How far down the stack does this mentality go? My brother does fiber construction and repair for a major telco. I bet there's been a trillion dollars of economic activity conducted over glass he's put into place, but he just gets paid an hourly wage plus overtime.
pyuser583 4y ago
This is what makes me feel underpaid. I see how much value I’m adding. I get a tiny, tiny fraction. I didn’t become a Marxist until I hit six figures, but dang it I want the wealth produced by my labor!

lumost 4y ago

you know, I'd be very curious what kinds of radical interview approaches teams have considered to break out of the LC mold. A little LC is useful in an interview situation, if an engineer can't do a simple 20-30 line coding problem or reason over the constraints/design space - then there is a good chance that they will need help with core coding in the day to day (which may not be a deal breaker in every employer). A lot of LC tends to hit on "specialist in LC". We overweight this type of candidate in our interview processes, mainly as "specialist in LC" no longer translates to "highly interested in Comp Sci fundamentals" or "Algorithm expert" - many grind LC just to get a job and promptly forget the fundamentals. A few interviews that I've seen gaining prominence. - Code Review interviews. Give a sample code review, and have the candidate provide feedback. I'd love to see this extended with just having the candidate write code review comments in whatever code review tool the company uses - you could then discuss the code review afterwards. Clarify ahead of time the tool that will be used for code review. - Debugging broken code. Let the candidate show off how they approach dealing with broken/buggy code, clarify ahead of time the language/environment for debugging. - Build a service/program to a spec via take home. Does the candidate build the system properly? do they exceed expectations? skip requirements? test the code? work double time? - Given a problem, build a working solution in your IDE of choice. I'm not even convinced that 5 45 minute to 1 hour interview block is the right size. Why not do a 3 hour time block where the candidate has to build something, then review with them at the end? This is common in interviews with for MBA-type positions.

PheonixPharts 4y ago
> if an engineer can't do a simple 20-30 line coding problem or reason over the constraints/design space - then there is a good chance that they will need help with core coding in the day to day. This isn't my experience, I've found that the number one reason for not doing well on leetcode problems is simply because the candidate hasn't practiced doing leetcode problems. I've known plenty good engineers who, when interviewing with LC style interviews for the first time, fail utterly. Then they realize they just need to practice and did better. I've been in the industry for around 15 years now, my anecdotal observation is that the average quality of engineers is negatively correlated with the rise of leetcode. 10 years ago the strongest signal was a solid github profile with lots of relevant projects. That's not to say leetcode is the cause of this decline. The cause is the flood of SWE being rushed into the career as fast as possible (this is why github is no longer a good signal, bootcamps started training their students to create meaningless GH projects just to attempt to create signal). However I've also seen no indication that leetcode type challenges have any relationship to being a good engineer. I've worked at plenty of places that required pretty tricky leetcode style problems filled with very, very mediocre engineers. Leetcode has become a game that has little to nothing to do with real world programming, in the same way that speed-cubing (solving Rubik's cubes in record time) has absolutely nothing to do with the player's underlying understanding of group theory and combinatorics. The old fashioned walk through and reason about non-trivial code someone has written is still an excellent method to see how a programmer thinks and if they can code.

gorbachev 4y ago

The overall economy inflation numbers are completely meaningless when cost of education, housing and healthcare has been skyrocketing for more than a decade, maybe even longer. The average worker, especially those with families, have seen their costs inflate much, much higher than 11% per year for quite some time.

chrchang523 4y ago
Much higher than the previous official inflation rate of 2% per year, yes. But not (previously, anyway) higher than 11%.
IMTDb 4y ago
11% of growth every year for 10 years is 2.83, almost 3. Things haven't gotten 3 times more expensive in the last decade - far from it.
- glouwbug 4y ago
  Unless you’re from Vancouver or Toronto where detached homes went from $300k to $1.6m from 2005
erwincoumans 4y ago
In Foster City, CA, bay area, a salary of $146k is considered low income, and can get access to affordable housing [1]. A 3/4 bedroom townhouse in Foster City, CA bay area used to be 800k usd 10 years ago, today it goes for 2M usd, with offers 200k to 400k above asking price. [2] [3] [4] [1] https://www.fostercity.org/faqs?keys=&field_microsite_tid=All&field_tags_tid=731 https://www.fostercity.org/faqs?keys=&field_microsite_tid=Al... [2] https://deniseliew.realscout.com/homesearch/listings/p-812-magellan-ln-foster-city-94404-mlslistings-853 https://deniseliew.realscout.com/homesearch/listings/p-812-m... [3] https://deniseliew.realscout.com/homesearch/listings/p-893-erickson-ln-foster-city-94404-mlslistings-0 https://deniseliew.realscout.com/homesearch/listings/p-893-e... [4] https://deniseliew.realscout.com/homesearch/listings/p-1112-forrestal-ln-foster-city-94404-mlslistings-115 https://deniseliew.realscout.com/homesearch/listings/p-1112-...

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

And to think, people working in IT actually get raises, and can earn more money by changing jobs; they are already quite privileged compared to those earning closer to minimum wage (like 30K a year?), given that said minimum wage hasn't been increased from $7.25 in 13 years now, while cost of living and inflation HAS gone up. One issue is that while costs of products, housing, etc is adjusted pretty much instantly with supply, demand and inflation, wages aren't. When inflation numbers are introduced, companies jump to announce they're raising prices, citing cost of resources or... whatever. But they don't increase wages. How often have wages gone up at a rate higher than inflation? I can't remember it. So basically people are expected to continue living on a currency that is decreasing in value constantly. Or they're expected to switch jobs or grow in their career, not to have a better life, but just to be able to maintain their current lifestyle. Remember these tropes from the 80's and 90's and before where people bought a sizeable house, one or two cars, and put money away to put their kids (they could afford kids too) through college, all on a single income? Yyyyeeeaahhh. actually I don't know if that was the case for most people, it's what sitcoms depicted.

mywittyname 4y ago
> I don't know if that was the case for most people, it's what sitcoms depicted. It wasn't. Bill, from the Cosby Show, was a physician, Tony, from Who's the Boss was a former baseball player, the dad from Full House was a TV broadcaster, etc. It's probably the reason "blue collar" sitcoms were popular in the 90s (Rosanne, Grace Under Fire).
citizenpaul 4y ago
>ready quite privileged compared to those earning closer to minimum wage I really don't like this self loathing mentality on HN. I work really hard to keep up to date in IT, even after I'm off work. Sorry to burst your bubble but most people just go home from work and get high or drunk then watch 5hrs of TV. Thats the reason they can't work tech jobs. I didn't go to school for CS but I still make lots of money in tech because I want to and I keep myself up to date. Its not all poor single moms without any time or some other tragic story.
duped 4y ago

commandlinefan 4y ago

> The cost savings of work from home must have been enormous for these companies It would have been if they had shut down the offices, but they've paying rent and heating/cooling costs on completely empty buildings for years now because they hold out hope they can drag people back.

spywaregorilla 4y ago

That's not strictly true. If the average is dropped down by an increasingly large share of new joiners at entry level, you might see the average raise exceed 11% while the average comp level is raised only to 6.9% Raises are often somewhat small, but job changes can be pretty hefty. And it's better than most positions by fair margin.

rainboOow9 4y ago

What baffles me though is that its not like this crazy interview gauntlet is being maintained purely by HR. Engineers in those big tech companies are very protective towards those processes as well, and loudly protest if one would try to change them (complaining about lowering the bar, not hiring top tier talent anymore, etc.). And tbh, I would be afraid of what they would replace those LC interviews with. At least, I can prepare and grind a LC test. I do not want to have to explain in details what a inode is when interviewing for a back-end position, while I have never had a need for that kind of knowledge in 10 YoE.

fnimick 4y ago
Amusingly, I have gotten exactly that question - or rather, "what's in an inode." I answered "data about a file object, but none of the actual contents of the file, which are stored elsewhere" and failed because I didn't mention the magic words "metadata" and "permissions". Fair, I guess, but this wasn't for a systems development position at all, so I can't imagine it would have been critical to the job! Another favorite of mine, for a web development position, was "what happens at the network level when you load a webpage" where I got marked as getting it wrong for skipping explicit description of SYN/ACK step of the TCP connection. Again, fair, but probably not relevant.
- chasd00 4y ago
  > where I got marked as getting it wrong for skipping explicit description of SYN/ACK step of the TCP connection that's pretty crazy because if you're going to talk about that then you're going to have to talk about congestion control, windowing, every other protocol besides IP that TCP can run on top of and how they work, and all the other things that come into play based on the current state of the various networks between you and the server hosting the website. Answering that one question could take an hour itself. It reminds me of that saying that goes like "How to make an Apple Pie. Step 1, create the universe..." I'm very fortunate because my last three interviews have been basically calling up an old colleague and asking what they've been up to and if they want some help.
  - 4y ago

daniel-cussen 4y ago

Grind leetcode that's it?? All I have to do is ace every leetcode problem and I get a 20% raise every year?!

glouwbug 4y ago
Buddy of mine solved 1400 leetcodes and still failed several rounds
- indecisive_user 4y ago
  Did they fail because they couldn't solve an algorithm? Or was it due to something else - e.g. soft skills, solving without explaining your thought process, system design, behavioral questions. Algorithms are only one part of an interview. I wouldn't hire someone who was rude or condescending, regardless of how fast they can write an O(n) solution.
  - glouwbug 4y ago
    It’s just the raw scope of what can be asked. The interviewer doesn’t care if you’re an expert in standard structures like red black trees, doubly linked lists, min max heaps - or even hash tables - when they’ve got a obsession with scanning Wikipedia for articles on Tries and Topological sort because their self proclaimed 10x engineer spirits believe their Log(n) spellcheckers are gonna replace elastic search
  - daniel-cussen 4y ago
    Yeah that's what I want to know. If I ace 100% of the algorithmic questions, in real time during the interview, like flawless and pure, actual perfection in real life,[1] can I fuck up at the parts I've been conditioned under torture to fuck up on and still get the job? Nail it and nail it and nail it, do they help me out? Like Michael O'Church talked about a company hiring a software engineer and another hiring a manager, and he and the engineer A/B testing trying to get hired as an engineer or as a manager. And in the interview, they wanted him to come up with the golden algorithm that took them months and was their hot shit with which they would win big, they wanted that in an hour. Actually less, you couldn't solve it in minute 59 without coming up with incremental steps to "show progress" as if that weren't counterproductive. So like 4 minutes, Michael O'Church lied through his teeth in favor of these guy's patience. 4 minutes of silence and it's over. And because he couldn't do it that's when they started discounting points, like you start at 100 and then get knocked points for not having gone to Stanford (or Berkeley as he puts it, but you still get discounted for Berkeley in reality), then more demerits for every flaw, negging over and over. Always communicating it's the engineer's fault he's treated like shit. Whereas for applying to manager (which in many ways was more honest, it was arguable, he just hadn't been formally promoted with actual employees with a wage, he just pretended he had and had the knowledge to back it up), with applying to manager, he started at like 80 points and everything he did well added points to his value, they saw him as an ally. Against the software engineer, against his own alternate self, whom they treated as the subordinate, like enemy slash slave. So that story I don't know how to judge, I don't have enough visibility on Michael O'Church and I have very negative opinions about a lot of his thoughts. But that's not the question. The question is, if I do crack the golden algorithm that took them months right then and there, in the heat of the moment under time pressure, in the interview, under adversarial circumstances, all of that, in the four minutes they actually give you without acting impatient, if I DO not if I don't IF I DO will that get me human dignity and a wage? Or will they still reject me because I'm not submissive, which I can never again be after standing up to torture? [1] So what this means is, suppose a chess player is at a crossroads, and thinks for a minute. And from that point on, plays perfectly until checkmate. Every move correct. Saying I don't do it perfectly would be like saying the chess player didn't play perfectly because he didn't lay the pieces in the exact geometric center of the square when he moved them. I get every algorithm interviewer to say "what the fuck", "did you hear it before?" "that was fast" But it's never enough. Best job I had was $20 an hour, dream job, as a handyman, construction. Dream job. I got promoted into software, and was quickly fired. Managers are primates first, mathematicians a distant second. They talk about being mathematicians a lot, like a lot, they pretend it's all about the bottom line, but no. It's about dominance, being alpha, a guy who stood up to torture is an alpha challenger, no hire, no matter what he can bring to the company. Mathematics is a distant distant second.

ar_lan 4y ago

> Most devs will admit that they couldn't readily pass the interview at even their own company without many hours of studying and practicing algorithms. I don't think, if asked to interview for it today, that I could land my current job. I'm also fairly certain I'm one of the top engineers on my team, and I do think we have a really good team of developers overall. It makes me feel better that I'm not alone, in this regard, but it often just makes me question the interview process even further.

blagie 4y ago
It's a random process. If you set the bar 2 std. div. above what you need, you are hiring qualified people with a p value of 5%. You're rejecting /most/ qualified people too. Most people underestimate how random the process is. There are a few ways in: - Be 2 std. div above the qualifications - Apply to many places and pick the one where you're lucky - Give another, less noisy source of signal than resume + interview (e.g. networking into a company, consulting, references, major open source contributions, etc.) I wouldn't get my current job if I randomly applied right now. I happened to do well on an interview process which wasn't well-aligned to my background. That was a fluke. I was probably the most-qualified candidate, but if I didn't have a lucky day, I don't think an interview would have shown that. Last hiring cycle, I was also rejected several places where I am pretty sure I was better than the candidate who was hired too. If you make this about you, you'll feel horrible. If you understand the huge random factor, you'll do much better. (Disclaimer: I have specialized skills, so my interview process isn't a typical SWE interview process).
- NDizzle 4y ago
  > If you make this about you, you'll feel horrible. If you understand the huge random factor, you'll do much better. Thanks, this is helpful as I go through various interview processes right now.
  - blagie 4y ago
    I hated job-hunting before I did hiring and managed people. I felt rejected each time I didn't get an offer. Once I sat on the other side of the table, and saw how a /majority/ of qualified candidates were turned down, I didn't feel so bad when I was rejected. The key thing you *really, really, really* want to avoid is a bad hire. I've seen candidates rejected for the oddest reasons. It was definitely the right choice to do so. In the kinds of companies I've worked for, if you're at all not sure about a candidate, the decision should be a no-hire. I don't feel rejected any more. A good mental model is: If you're qualified, you role a die. If the die comes up a 6, you're hired. If you role 1-5, you're not hired. (The number of sides on the day varies by industry; I think 6-sided is about right for my industry in the current job market)

mgkimsal 4y ago

> The cost savings of work from home must have been enormous for these companies, yet none of that savings or record profits trickled down to the people writing code Lots of companies had long term leases or obligations anyway. Eventually the 'cost savings' were probably there, but I don't know too many companies that were just able to jettison their initial lease payments in the first few months of the pandemic. I know I couldn't quickly get out of my office lease.

v_nh 4y ago

Factoring in the rise in home prices as well as the dramatic collapse of everyones stock portfolios, 11% inflation only scratches the surface of our problems...

ryandrake 4y ago

> Meanwhile for those that have the time and willpower to grind leetcode, they know they can command a 20-40% raise every few years. One thing a lot of people forget about this 20-40% number is: It's only true early in your career. It might be hard for younger folks to believe, but you will all hit a ceiling and plateau. My first job hop was for +50%! The next one was about 40%, the next one 15%, and so on. Now, with 20+ years of experience, my last job hop was for maybe 0.25%. If I could get +40% every time I switched jobs, I'd only have to have switched jobs 9 times in my life in order to be making $1M/yr.

websap 4y ago
If you've been in tech for 20 years and aren't making 1 MM per year, you're doing something wrong. Talk to people around you.
- hnfong 4y ago
  > you're doing something wrong Like, not being born with a US citizenship?
- hiram112 4y ago
  I honestly can't tell if this a joke or not.
buscoquadnary 4y ago
This is something I don't think gets discussed enough. In my first 10 years of career I basically doubled my salary, by moving every 2-3 years, but I also now know I am pretty much hitting a plateau, anytime I talk with recruiters and talk about the salary I'd like to move which is about 10-20% (which is pretty reasonable given the benefits I got now) then people express reservations. Some people will end up making 200+ but I for an IC type position it seems to top out around 150 is the max, generally. If you want more you need to be an "Enterprise Architect" or "Director" which that becomes a whole different bag of worms. On the other hand love my job, I have enough money to provide for myself and my family, and am working on getting financially secure and paying off debt so I also don't have a strong drive to make more.

citizenpaul 4y ago

>. The cost savings of work from home must have been enormous for these companies First I agree overall, however I think you overestimate how much any companies saved on the WFH shift. 1. They still own the buildings or leases/mortgages. I doubt many were able to get out of leases which in commercial are usually 3-5year min. Mortgage only goes away if they sold the building. 2. They still have to pay the cost of maintaining the building and facilities while unused in the above cases. 3. Pretty much all companies are using their commercial locations to bloat their balance sheets and secure debt. This is actually a HUGE factor as to why so many companies what WFH to end. They simply cannot get rid of their offices or they would be insolvent based on their finances. You can't throw out 2bil in real estate that is securing 20bil in debt or it would be called in. 4. Many companies were unprepared so they had to pay out the nose the get things setup rapidly for remote workers because they resisted it for so long. Why do you think Zoom blew up so fast?

skrbjc 4y ago
I think the big savings in real estate came from not having to keep getting more and more space to house all of your new employees. When I worked at a large tech company in SF, they were running up against their limits and just didn't have enough space to house the people they were hiring, so they had to slow hiring. The smaller startup I worked at also had to get a second office a couple blocks away from the original office. In the current remote-forward world, while these companies have to keep their existing real estate, they get the benefit of not having grow their real estate portfolio relative to their employee size. I was also told it cost that large tech company 20-30k a year per physical seat in the office. So I'm pretty sure the savings have been decent, even if they didn't dump their office spaces.

zie 4y ago

It's not a secret that tech companies underpay their employees and bank on them being too complacent to go through the interview gauntlet yet again. Remove the word tech, and you basically have it right. Why would companies whose goal is to maximize profit pay more than they have to? There is little incentive for companies to pay more than required to meet their needs.

dehrmann 4y ago

> Many companies posted record growth and profits over the pandemic, but still give out paltry 3-5% raises every year. A few disconnected points: As we're seeing, some of that growth was temporary. Between inflation and growth, record profits is expected from any company not in decline. Allocating profits from growth to more growth is a reasonable choice. There's no reason for wages to track profits. Wages are driven by the labor market; profits just act as a wage ceiling.

matheusmoreira 4y ago

> those that have the time and willpower to grind leetcode, they know they can command a 20-40% raise every few years Is this really all it takes?

weaksauce 4y ago

> yet none of that savings or record profits trickled down to the people writing code. yeah trickle down economics was just a rebranding of horse and sparrow economics. as in you feed the horse all the oats and then the sparrows get to pluck the undigested bits from the feces. Never was going to work.

hurxnid 4y ago

The FAANG companies also worked together to drive tech worker salaries down by agreeing to avoid hiring each other’s employees.

overtonwhy 4y ago

Inflation is targeted to be around 2% per year on average and that 11% number you threw out without any source or reference is wildly inaccurate. Here's the real inflation: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FPCPITOTLZGUSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FPCPITOTLZGUSA

jjav 4y ago

> Why do tech workers feel underpaid? I'll throw in a different angle. If I'm truly happy at a job, pay isn't a big concern as long as I can pay the bills. The more miserable the job becomes, the more the money becomes the only way to tolerate it so it better keep getting higher. Pay in software roles might be at an all-time high today, but respect and independence is at an all-time low. In the 90s I had a private office with a door and a window. Today we're packed like sardines into an open office (although thanks to the pandemic this part improved). In the 90s I worked on deep hardcode tech, today nearly every company just wants to glue libraries to frameworks and connect AWS bits together. Work is no longer intellectually satisfying. In the 90s tech companies produced tech, that was the product, so it was exciting and hip. Today so-called "tech companies" produce advertising, shopping, social spyware, movies. It's not tech anymore. Boring. In the 90s, senior engineers drove engineering decisions. Today we have non-technical product managers forcing their way into technical decisions. In the 90s we were trusted to get things done and allowed the time to get deep in the zone. Today it's forced daily status reports, "agile". In the 90s we could plan ahead and go deep, research and build well-architected solutions. Today the task better take no more than 1-2 days so the story gets closed, "agile". I could go on and on but will stop. If software engineering today had the working conditions and respect it had in the 90s, I'd happily do it for 25% of my current salary and be so happy.

lsj0627 4y ago

That's salary. Total compensation is significantly higher.

silisili 4y ago

I don't feel underpaid, but I definitely feel like I've lost tons of ground in the last 2 years. The floor has risen big time. Entry level jobs are paying up to 60k these days, whereas they were closer to 30k a few years back. Good for them, seriously. But watching the floor rise closer to you is never a great feeling.

heromal 4y ago
Entry level jobs in NC start at 75k...you're way out of the loop. They haven't been 30k anywhere in far longer than "a few years back".
welder 4y ago
You should look into a remote job with a California tech company where entry level is 120k. [1] [1] Filter by "Location independent pay" https://himalayas.app/companies https://himalayas.app/companies
- silisili 4y ago
  To be clear, I do quite a bit better than that... I'm not complaining. But using 120k as an example...a person went from making 4x the typical full time salary to 2x the typical full time salary in a very short period.
  - Melting_Harps 4y ago
    > To be clear, I do quite a bit better than that... I'm not complaining. But using 120k as an example...a person went from making 4x the typical full time salary to 2x the typical full time salary in a very short period. This is what I will never understand about most established tech people, they see all the widespread misery and poverty in SV and they still have the capacity to feel sorry for themselves for not making X times more than 'that other guy.' It's always about what they don't have rather than see that they live in an insulated bubble existence that they could never really navigate if it weren't for that wealth disparity because they have such a narrow limited set of skills. aWant an experiment turn off the wifi, see how quickly these people lose their minds. I'm not mad at you for it, for all I know you are self-taught guy that beat out a bunch Stanford grads by grinding since HS and making it on your own, but it's this never-ending need to beat that guy. Its like that scene in American Psycho with those business cards, where for some odd reason people seem to have a need to over-embellish their existence's value with triviality that re-enforces the 'yeah, but I have more than that guy' narrative which is completely lost on me. I hate to tell you but you will never have more than a Bezos or a Musk, either. Not to mention the Nation-state level despots of the World who don't have their net-worth listed on the Forbes 500. Just enjoy what you have, while you have it, because I can assure those very same tech companies are pouring tons of money to render you obsolete as soon as possible.

missedthecue 4y ago

Annual raises doesn't have anything to do with being over or underpaid, strictly speaking. To clearly illustrate my point here, if fortune 500 CEO pay is up less than 11% on avg since 2020, I don't think that's an argument they're underpaid.

harry8 4y ago
> if fortune 500 CEO pay is up less than 11% on avg since 2020 It's up a /lot/ more than that! And what do you know, they're also not underpaid. The former will predict the latter pretty damn well, I think you'll find. So yes, strictly speaking, annual raises and having the market power to command meaningful ones do actually have everything to do with being over/under paid.
- missedthecue 4y ago
  I'm not making a statement of fact about CEO pay since 2020. I'm saying that whether or not it's up by more or less than inflation since then has nothing to do with them being fundamentally overpaid. Apply this to dev pay as well. Just because you're a few % off since 2020 after inflation does not mean $300k salaries are overpaid or that they're appropriate. They're two unconnected data points.
  - harry8 4y ago
    They are totally connected. If you don't have the market power to have garnered a good pay increase over the past 2 years of record profits you're almost certainly underpaid, like teachers, nurses etc. If you got massive pay increases you're almost certainly overpaid, like CEOs. The connection is right there. Maybe these two things could somehow become disjointed but they really don't appear to be such in any meaningful way in the current economy.
    - eru 4y ago
      What do you mean by underpaid and overpaid? Plenty of people want to become teachers and nurses and doctors (or veterinaries or musicians or artists etc), knowing full well how low the pay is.

rocketbop 4y ago

> ...a 6.9% increase since 2020, the report found. But inflation is over 11% since 2020. This isn't an increase. The I have heard this point made a couple of times recently. Is there any reason why these two values should be the same? It is a point of concern for those on very low incomes who spent all their income and are not able to save anythiny, but if you are on a six figure income and only a portion of that income is spent on groceries and housing then I assume you can still end up wealthier than the previous year.

giantg2 4y ago
"Is there any reason why these two values should be the same?" Are you producing the same value for the company as you did last year? If inflation is higher, then you are receiving less value via your pay from producing the same or more value for the company.
- eutropia 4y ago
  Is your work in tech supposed to hold a sacred scalar linear multiple of the average labor cost ( read: salary of people who produce food and goods) of life’s necessities? So many entitled people arguing for an economic caste system… Arguing that your wage should always match or beat inflation is arguing for defacto permanent income inequality. You’re literally saying your work is always the same amount more valuable than the average labor cost increase incorporated into inflation numbers.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    "So many entitled people arguing for an economic caste system…" I don't see that anywhere in my argument. "Arguing that your wage should always match or beat inflation is arguing for defacto permanent income inequality." Do you have an alternative approach? I have not heard any mainstream argument for setting all salaries/wages to be equal. You have to define income inequality and then determine what level of inequality is acceptable. Should a CEO make more than a worker? In my opinion, probably. Should they make 100x more? I don't think so. If I could make the same money flipping burgers as I can working as a dev (let's say around the median salary of $40k), I'd quit today and most other devs would too. Why should I go to college? Why should I endure the longer hours/on-call? Why deal with the frustration and office BS? Different jobs make different money because the work carries different value. We should protect those at the bottom and try to make it fair. But fair doesn't mean literal income equality with everyone making $20/hr regardless of job, performance, etc (ie equal and equitable are different). The fact that workers are seeing real wages decline since the 70s is the problem. If you adjusted them for inflation, then income inequality is not as much of an issue. (You'd still have to adjust capital gains taxes and the real increase in things like executive pay, but at least indexing wages to inflation would have benefited things on the worker side.) "You’re literally saying your work is always the same amount more valuable than the average labor cost increase incorporated into inflation numbers" Not if everyone gets the inflation adjustment as they do in that other country - Denmark maybe? The discrepancy can be adjusted by increasing the floor, as that impact will raise the lower end more than the rest of the market (eg the people that need the raise most get the biggest impact while those not at the bottom see minimal effect upto a certain level). You're literally arguing against yourself. You're saying that workers should not get inflation adjustments. Where do you think that money goes? It goes into the pockets of the executives and the investors (capital instead of labor). On top of all this, you wrongly assume I'm some high earning person. I make less than $100k and live in a moderately high cost of living area.

refurb 4y ago

I hope people realize that when monthly inflation numbers are released those are annualized. So the 8.5% inflation rate in March is actually 1.085^(1/12) = 0.7% for March, and 8.5% assuming that same rate lasted for 12 consecutive months. In 2021, the CPI-U was 4.7% for all of 2021. https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/inflation-calculator/consumer-price-index-1913- https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/infl...

indecisive_user 4y ago
Ok, but the cumulative inflation rate since January 2020 is still around 11% $1 in January 2020 is worth $1.11 today https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1&year1=202001&year2=202203 https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1&year1=202001...
- refurb 4y ago
  It is, but that's also over 2 years and 4 months, so an annualized inflation rate of ~4.6%, which my salary didn't keep up with, but only barely. I don't disagree that inflation is overtaking wage increases, just that the magnitude isn't that large....yet.

kilroy123 4y ago

I got ZERO raise this past year and boy let me tell you, it really pissed me off. I didn't feel I wasn't making enough until that happened.

eru 4y ago
Genuine question: would you have felt better with a 1% raise? In 2010 I was working in the UK and we had about 5% inflation that year (or so). I got a 2% raise, and found that more insulting than if they had given no raise; even though objectively any positive raise is better than no raise.
- kilroy123 4y ago
  I've been living in London and the inflation is just as bad there as back in the US. I'm American working for a US company that just raised a huge Series B. They have the money, so I expected at least 3%. I didn't expect a 10%+, but at _least_ something.
giantg2 4y ago
I got a 1.5% raise. It's a 4.5% paycut after inflation.
__app_dev__ 4y ago
I haven't gotten a raise in probably 10 years. But realistically I make a lot more than most developers where I live (Los Angeles) and there would be no reason for my company to give me a raise when I'm probably the highest paid non-sales person where I work (and often have been). So I'm ok with it. Just got an extra side gig for 20-25% hours per weeks so it's like getting a 50% raise and feels great. Although seeing how many $500k jobs exist in Silicon Valley makes me think I should spend more time grinding leetcode.
deleted 4y ago
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astrange 4y ago

> But inflation is over 11% since 2020. This isn't an increase. The average tech worker is making less than they were 2 years ago according to the Dice salary report. Are you buying the average number of used cars and housing? I'm not. My expenses haven't gone up 10% in nominal dollars. (Related anecdote: people tend to say the economy is bad if they heard it was bad on TV, even if they just got a new job and a raise.)

lotsofpulp 4y ago
Assuming your goal is to have a car, your budget should always be accounting for the time when you will need to buy a new car since cars do not last forever. Same with land. If your goal is to purchase lands, then your budget needs account for increases in the prices of land (specifically the land you want). And healthcare. And education. Also, my food purchases have definitely increased at least 10% nominally in the past couple years.
- astrange 4y ago
  The inflation number is specifically high because used cars got expensive due to the chip production supply crunch, it’s not those other things. (Except insofar as those other people want to buy used cars, which some of them do.) You’re reading as if it applied to the entire economy just because you’ve been given a single number. My rent hasn’t gone up either. Which is kind of weird since I don’t think we have rent control here.
  - trgn 4y ago
    You make the best point on this thread I think. Inflation numbers don't really correspond easily to quality of life or day2day expenses, especially if you're making well above what's required to afford the necessities. Getting a 4% raise on 150k salary in an uneven 8% inflation environment is a genuine meaningful increase, and will have you "keep up" fine in the short/mid term.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    My point is that people feel the way they do because they see their goals become less achievable (even if maybe they were not very achievable in the first place).