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Music, nursing, game development, animation, art, school teaching are all highly-skilled professions. They aren't particularly highly-paid. We should maybe tal

Music, nursing, game development, animation, art, school teaching are all highly-skilled professions. They aren't particularly highly-paid. We should maybe talk about high-supply and low-supply skills instead.

Jensson 4y ago
Those jobs are paid way higher than low skill jobs though, and nobody calls them low skill, so I don't see the problem.
- triceratops 4y ago
  Because the common rejoinder to the low pay of "low skill" jobs is to tell those people to become "high skill". When in fact, "high" and "low" skill is only one factor, and not even the major one, in whether you're going to be well paid. Another reply said nurses are "highly paid" because they make an average of $70-100k. That is laughable. I made more than that at my first job, at a no-name tech company, when all I knew was jQuery and 4 HTTP verbs. Or compare the valuation of any medical tech, or biochem, or materials sciences company compared to the latest photo sharing phenomenon slapped together by some hungover Stanford grads. How much do experienced chemical, or mechanical, or civil engineers make compared to new grad software devs? Who's more "skilled"? Supply and demand is where it's at. It's pretty easy to increase the supply of janitors or line cooks, so their pay sucks, even though demand is always strong and the work isn't particularly easy or pleasant. There are countless musicians and actors in the world, far more than there could ever be demand for. So their pay, on average, also sucks.
  - Amezarak 4y ago
    In flyover country, 70-100k is a fantastic wage for a software developer. Source: after 10 years of being a star performer and job hopping I have nearly tripled my salary…to a little more than 100k. New hires are making less than half that at my current company.
    - triceratops 4y ago
      70-100k is a fantastic wage in Eastern Europe or Asia too. Not sure why that's germane to this discussion. And no that's still quite low for a software developer in flyover country. It might be a good wage compared to median wages for everyone, but only because everyone else has lower wages too (to be fair, offset by lower cost of housing too).
      - Amezarak 4y ago
        > And no that's still quite low for a software developer in flyover country. If you know at what company I can do better without relocating, I'd be delighted to hear it. > It might be a good wage compared to median wages for everyone It's not even really that, it's a normal middle class professional wage, though the high end is good. We've had juniors leave to pursue other careers...one (who'd actually done fairly well, closer to 100k than 50k) left to be a nurse, because he'd make more money. Software isn't really that great a field unless you plan to move somewhere like California. "Supply and demand" is highly regionally dependent.
        triceratops 4y ago
        Lots of California and East Coast companies are hiring remote these days. You could easily break $150k without moving if you interview well. $200k+ is attainable once you have more of a track record of working for such companies. My resume is all Silicon Valley/Bay Area tech, so my inbox has more of these opportunities. It might be harder at the beginning but you only need one of those jobs to establish that "pedigree" (it's dumb, I know).
umeshunni 4y ago
Music / Art - highly paid at the extremes. Probably because music and art are currently infinitely reproducible and so a small number of highly paid, high "talent" content creators can create content for billions of people. Nursing - highly paid (https://nursinglicensemap.com/resources/nurse-salary/ https://nursinglicensemap.com/resources/nurse-salary/). Game development - highly paid (https://builtin.com/salaries/dev-engineer/game-developer https://builtin.com/salaries/dev-engineer/game-developer) School teaching - low/medium pay - mostly for political reasons (i.e most are state employees).
- triceratops 4y ago
  Yeah no nursing and game development are not "highly paid". They pay a middle-class wage. Music and art paid like shit even when it wasn't infinitely reproducible.

Jensson 4y ago

Those jobs are paid way higher than low skill jobs though, and nobody calls them low skill, so I don't see the problem.

triceratops 4y ago
Because the common rejoinder to the low pay of "low skill" jobs is to tell those people to become "high skill". When in fact, "high" and "low" skill is only one factor, and not even the major one, in whether you're going to be well paid. Another reply said nurses are "highly paid" because they make an average of $70-100k. That is laughable. I made more than that at my first job, at a no-name tech company, when all I knew was jQuery and 4 HTTP verbs. Or compare the valuation of any medical tech, or biochem, or materials sciences company compared to the latest photo sharing phenomenon slapped together by some hungover Stanford grads. How much do experienced chemical, or mechanical, or civil engineers make compared to new grad software devs? Who's more "skilled"? Supply and demand is where it's at. It's pretty easy to increase the supply of janitors or line cooks, so their pay sucks, even though demand is always strong and the work isn't particularly easy or pleasant. There are countless musicians and actors in the world, far more than there could ever be demand for. So their pay, on average, also sucks.
- Amezarak 4y ago
  In flyover country, 70-100k is a fantastic wage for a software developer. Source: after 10 years of being a star performer and job hopping I have nearly tripled my salary…to a little more than 100k. New hires are making less than half that at my current company.
  - triceratops 4y ago
    70-100k is a fantastic wage in Eastern Europe or Asia too. Not sure why that's germane to this discussion. And no that's still quite low for a software developer in flyover country. It might be a good wage compared to median wages for everyone, but only because everyone else has lower wages too (to be fair, offset by lower cost of housing too).
    - Amezarak 4y ago
      > And no that's still quite low for a software developer in flyover country. If you know at what company I can do better without relocating, I'd be delighted to hear it. > It might be a good wage compared to median wages for everyone It's not even really that, it's a normal middle class professional wage, though the high end is good. We've had juniors leave to pursue other careers...one (who'd actually done fairly well, closer to 100k than 50k) left to be a nurse, because he'd make more money. Software isn't really that great a field unless you plan to move somewhere like California. "Supply and demand" is highly regionally dependent.
      - triceratops 4y ago
        Lots of California and East Coast companies are hiring remote these days. You could easily break $150k without moving if you interview well. $200k+ is attainable once you have more of a track record of working for such companies. My resume is all Silicon Valley/Bay Area tech, so my inbox has more of these opportunities. It might be harder at the beginning but you only need one of those jobs to establish that "pedigree" (it's dumb, I know).

umeshunni 4y ago

Music / Art - highly paid at the extremes. Probably because music and art are currently infinitely reproducible and so a small number of highly paid, high "talent" content creators can create content for billions of people. Nursing - highly paid (https://nursinglicensemap.com/resources/nurse-salary/ https://nursinglicensemap.com/resources/nurse-salary/). Game development - highly paid (https://builtin.com/salaries/dev-engineer/game-developer https://builtin.com/salaries/dev-engineer/game-developer) School teaching - low/medium pay - mostly for political reasons (i.e most are state employees).

triceratops 4y ago
Yeah no nursing and game development are not "highly paid". They pay a middle-class wage. Music and art paid like shit even when it wasn't infinitely reproducible.