3 ms·

When the CS pay is double EE pay, if not more, it's a non-starter.

bumby 4y ago
If your primary goal is to make money as fast as possible. As said elsewhere, EE salary is roughly the 85th percentile in the US. If that is enough, there may be other social/psychological issues going on that skew the calculus. Surely, there’s jobs that pay double SWE. And ones that pay double that. But I think most people would agree, there’s a certain point where it becomes absurd to focus solely on that. It’s understandable when a physicist goes to work for a hedge fund, but when it becomes the prevailing track for degreed physicists, it might say something about our collective value system
- atlgator 4y ago
  I think the pseudo-moralist argument you are making is really cringe, as it's often the type of language the professional managerial class uses to shame employees into accepting less than they are worth. "You're not here for the money. You're here to make a difference." People work to live, not live to work, and so long as people trade their precious time for money, they will go where their skills are highly valued. Or if they want to make a difference they will remain in academia or work at a nonprofit. There really isn't an excuse for Intel not to pay their EEs a competitive wage when they made $42B in profit last year. Same goes for the rest.
  - bumby 4y ago
    I am not an advocate for that in the least. If it’s what you want to do, there’s no reason that means you shouldn’t be paid market rate. But that’s entirely different than distilling everything down to a single monetary dimension, which was my original point. What’s “cringe” to me is when all work is reduced to transactional measure of time and salary, implying the only measure of work is economic. That makes you nothing more than a wage slave in every sense of the word. There are certainly cases where that’s warranted like when it’s necessary to survive but if we’re talking about the difference between a SWE and EE that’s just not the case. That singly-focused economic mindset also seems to correlate with misery. My position is actually the opposite of the exploitative one you’re framing it as. When you are working solely for the paycheck, it’s easy to exploit yourself, foregoing a fulfilling career chasing dollars. Again, my point is people only talked about money. Not that SW providing them with a lower stress life, or the ability to work from home so they can spend more time with family, or any other reasonable goals. Even money is worthwhile if you frame it as a means to a good end, but I didn’t that. It was treated as an end unto itself. We already know this isn’t intuitively rational. Why aren’t you spending all your free time taking side jobs? Presumably because you realize there’s an opportunity cost that is not merely economic. I’m saying the same thing, only people often somehow have been duped into thinking their 9-5 is somehow different.

If your primary goal is to make money as fast as possible. As said elsewhere, EE salary is roughly the 85th percentile in the US. If that is enough, there may be other social/psychological issues going on that skew the calculus. Surely, there’s jobs that pay double SWE. And ones that pay double that. But I think most people would agree, there’s a certain point where it becomes absurd to focus solely on that. It’s understandable when a physicist goes to work for a hedge fund, but when it becomes the prevailing track for degreed physicists, it might say something about our collective value system

atlgator 4y ago
I think the pseudo-moralist argument you are making is really cringe, as it's often the type of language the professional managerial class uses to shame employees into accepting less than they are worth. "You're not here for the money. You're here to make a difference." People work to live, not live to work, and so long as people trade their precious time for money, they will go where their skills are highly valued. Or if they want to make a difference they will remain in academia or work at a nonprofit. There really isn't an excuse for Intel not to pay their EEs a competitive wage when they made $42B in profit last year. Same goes for the rest.
- bumby 4y ago
  I am not an advocate for that in the least. If it’s what you want to do, there’s no reason that means you shouldn’t be paid market rate. But that’s entirely different than distilling everything down to a single monetary dimension, which was my original point. What’s “cringe” to me is when all work is reduced to transactional measure of time and salary, implying the only measure of work is economic. That makes you nothing more than a wage slave in every sense of the word. There are certainly cases where that’s warranted like when it’s necessary to survive but if we’re talking about the difference between a SWE and EE that’s just not the case. That singly-focused economic mindset also seems to correlate with misery. My position is actually the opposite of the exploitative one you’re framing it as. When you are working solely for the paycheck, it’s easy to exploit yourself, foregoing a fulfilling career chasing dollars. Again, my point is people only talked about money. Not that SW providing them with a lower stress life, or the ability to work from home so they can spend more time with family, or any other reasonable goals. Even money is worthwhile if you frame it as a means to a good end, but I didn’t that. It was treated as an end unto itself. We already know this isn’t intuitively rational. Why aren’t you spending all your free time taking side jobs? Presumably because you realize there’s an opportunity cost that is not merely economic. I’m saying the same thing, only people often somehow have been duped into thinking their 9-5 is somehow different.