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This is long overdue. It is well past time for tech workers to organize and demand a larger share of the billions in wealth we’ve generated for the VCs and CEOs
by mbgerring 3y ago
This is long overdue. It is well past time for tech workers to organize and demand a larger share of the billions in wealth we’ve generated for the VCs and CEOs.
- coin 3y agoGetting FAANG salary isn’t enough?
- clipsy 3y agoIs a FAANG salary enough for Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, or Elon Musk?
- clipsy 3y agoIt would be lovely if some of the folks downvoting this could explain precisely why it is that I should accept my FAANG salary as "enough" while tech billionaires apparently shouldn't, rather than just trying to make this post disappear. It's a perfectly reasonable question -- the ownership class has never considered (and will never consider) any amount of money to be "enough," so why on earth should any of the rest of us?
- quesera 3y agoIt is not a reasonable question. Employee wages and founder equity are not comparable things. What if Bezos said "y'know what, I'd good with AMZN at $10MM market cap, I'm all set"? There'd be no jobs at Amazon. And no one to complain about the jobs at Amazon. I would venture to guess that none of your Axis of Excess is particularly motivated by money. They do what they do because they enjoy the game. The game of global corporate titan. Money is an abstract metric that lets them keep playing.
- Madmallard 3y agoWith return to office it's nowhere near enough on the west coast. Unless you hold a top position at a large corporation on the west coast you don't even have enough money to buy a house. Considering you're helping generate billions in revenue yeah, I'd say you should be being paid more.
- ghiculescu 3y agoThe only homeowners in CA, OR, and WA are top executives at large corporations?
- Madmallard 3y agoI know probably a dozen devs that I regularly talk to from school and the only ones with their own homes have been seniors or higher positions for half a decade or longer.
- beoberha 3y agoI bought a million dollar home in Seattle after less than 5 years of employment out of college at a publicly traded non-FAANG company in the area. It’s doable, you just need to compromise on location or luxury
- Madmallard 3y agoDefinitely the exception to the rule
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoA million dollar home only requires around 200-250k of income which isn’t that much for these areas. And if your partner is employed as well it’s even easier. I even know people that make sub 100k in the Bay Area that bought their own homes after 10-15 years of saving.
- qwerpy 3y agoI've been in the Seattle area since graduating and hung out with people in both the tech industry and in aerospace (Boeing, etc.). Everyone who wanted a house had one within 5 years of starting work. They were smaller, older houses in trendy neighborhoods or nicer houses in further out suburbs, depending on the person's preferences. Seemed a reasonable result for young adults in their late 20s.
- spicyusername 3y agoNo.
- programmarchy 3y agoBetter to think in terms of percentages. Wages vs GDP has decreased while profits vs GDP has increased. Maybe tech is an outlier compared to the broader economy. Would be interesting to see the numbers.
- Uehreka 3y agoCan people on this site please stop acting like everyone in tech (or “everyone in tech who matters”) is working for FAANG and getting a FAANG salary? Believe it or not there exist software developers who make less than $100k.
- plugin-baby 3y agoSurely tech workers at Amazon Seattle are getting FAANG salaries by definition?
- Uehreka 3y agoYes, but GP was referring to tech workers in general.
- MortimerDukePhD 3y ago[dead]
- coin 3y agoCorrect, not everyone is fortunate to get FAANG-type compensation. But the article in question is about Amazon workers (one of the As in FAANG).
- thebytefairy 3y agoWhich are the companies that have generated billions for VCs that don't pay higher end salaries? I agree many startups pay less, but I wouldn't say those have 'made it'.
- b345 3y agoWhy should it be when you can be laid off even when the corporation is making record breaking profits
- jrflowers 3y agoNot if you’re getting laid off
- ok_dad 3y agoNo, we shouldn’t even have to work for nice scraps, they’re still scraps.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- btheshoe 3y agothe nba player's association has secured nba players a nice share of revenue. seems to me like engineers could do something similar.
- refurb 3y agoIf you're one of a dozen engineers in the world who can do what you do, then sure, you can get a similar piece of the pie as NBA players. But most tech workers aren't like that. They are relatively easily replaceable in comparison.
- janalsncm 3y agoIf US tech workers could be replaced for a tenth of the compensation they would’ve been. Maybe that will change in the future but until then the fact that there is some scarcity means unionization is possible.
- refurb 3y agoWho said anything about a tenth of the wages? There are plenty of US programmers making way less than FAANG wages happy to take those jobs.
- Thermosetty 3y agoIt's all relative isn't it? To some 250k+ is a dream salary. To others it's just a start.
- davesque 3y agoNo, it isn't.
- janalsncm 3y agoNo it’s not. That salary is relatively high for the US but that is only because every other industry has been eviscerated for decades. Every other industry told themselves “it’s fine, I’m being paid well so I won’t worry about it” and then their job got shipped to Shenzhen.
- o1y32 3y agoEVERY time someone talks about ANYTHING related to benefits, someone tries to use the salary as a counterargument, as if a $250k salary means you are supposed to give up your whole life and NEVER ever complain about anything. Seriously?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- merek 3y agoWhy just tech? Can't the same be said for employees of any successful company?
- libraryatnight 3y agoYes but we're a forum for tech workers and this is an article about a tech worker walk out.
- XorNot 3y agoYes it can, but this is a tech industry oriented forum.
- WC3w6pXxgGd 3y ago[dead]
- nichos 3y agoThe time to negotiate your salary is during the hiring process. Employees are not owed anything above the agreed upon amount, no matter how successful the company is.
- wilsonnb3 3y agoThe world would be a better place if employees were owed something above their agreed upon compensation when their company has extraordinary success, so I choose to believe that they are.
- hw 3y agoRSUs, stock options - those provide incentive that scales with the company’s success. Just because you’re at Company X that makes billions of dollars and makes one more billion next year does not automatically entitle you to part of that 1b as it’s likely due to work done by employees before you. Turning it around - would you also take a paycut, or even clawing back bonuses or past income if the company starts losing money?
- svachalek 3y agoYou will take a paycut on average, although usually it's borne by a few taking 100% cuts.
- janalsncm 3y agoIn a right to work state, every single day is an implicit negotiation with your employer. The only reason you go to work that day is because you’re satisfied with your compensation.
- robomartin 3y ago> demand a larger share of the billions in wealth we’ve generated for the VCs and CEOs Yeah, well, thoughts like that only come from a context in which there is zero understanding of the realities of business and what it takes to profitably run one. I always find this interesting. Not sure if people just say this kind of thing to just be one of the bro's or because they really believe it. I hope it isn't the latter. A while back one of my kids had a college-level business class in high school. Their final project was to put together a full presentation, financials and a pitch to get a loan for a mid size bakery ($5MM/year gross revenue). He was absolutely astounded to learn just how difficult it was to make money in that business. When his team started on the project they pretty much assumed that with $5MM/yr the owner was just raking it in. It was nothing less than hilarious when he came into my office one day to tell me he could not believe what it took to be in business and make money. He had a revelation few people have. He had it at 15 years of age. Most adults don't have a clue about this their entire lives. VC's? They risk millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions. And, guess what? Most of their bets might lose money or barely make any. People only see success, they never stop to consider and internalize what it took to get there. CEO's? Try running a non-trivial company and see how it goes. Heck, even a medium company can put you in the hospital! My prior startup did that to me twice in ten years. Our country would derive great benefit from delivering real financial education before we launch young adults into the world. Ignorance has consequences. Generational consequences.
- grensley 3y agoI've always suspected that the primary education system purposefully avoids financial education because of fears that too many people attempting to join the ownership class would cause civil unrest.
- robomartin 3y agoI don't know what the motivation might be. What I do know, with absolute certainty, is that having a population that is ignorant about money, business and entrepreneurship isn't good for the nation. If I had to extrapolate a motivating factor, it would go something like this: For some unimaginable reason, US educators are in love with Marxism and Socialism. Unimaginable because anyone who has ever lived in those realities could not run from that shit fast enough to get elsewhere. A population knowledgeable about money, business and entrepreneurship would quickly reject these failed and broken ideologies (a historical fact). As a strategy, it isn't a good idea to teach something that could lead people rejecting indoctrination efforts in a different direction. On the right there's the effort to teach creationism and downplay evolution by natural selection. Same concept. Except, in that case, as far as I know, they are not being allowed to do that at our schools. This is the right way to handle such things. Want to teach Creationism or Marxism. No problem, knowledge is good. Do not turn it into indoctrination. Students must be well versed in everything they need to know in order to understand these historical ideas that hold absolutely no water today. Teaching history is important. Pretending failed ideas are real viable ideas today is indoctrination. Imagine if 90% of our schools jumped on the flat earth ideology and pushed it hard from K-12 and college and avoided teaching what we know to be true because it would reveal their ideology for what it is. Well, that's the situation I believe we have with respect to graduating financially savvy adults who understand business and entrepreneurship right out of the gate and can help elevate society to great new levels because of it. Instead, we are graduating business haters who will never build anything and will certainly not elevate any segment of society. The only way Marxists can have an audience is if they keep everyone poor, miserable and ignorant. A successful, accomplished and educated society isn't a good target market for shit ideas.