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But the person being interviewed isn't actually "in tech". She graduated with a degree in strategic communication. She just limited her search initially to tech

But the person being interviewed isn't actually "in tech". She graduated with a degree in strategic communication. She just limited her search initially to tech companies which is odd. Clickbait article makes it sound like actual tech graduates are going to Wall Street which I'd be more interested in knowing about.

mywittyname 3y ago
It seems like most news outlets treat "tech workers" as anyone who works at a "tech" company. I wonder if they would call her a "construction worker" if she worked in the same capacity for a construction company.
- azemetre 3y ago
  No but you can say they work in the construction industry, like how the health care industry is more than just nurses, doctors, and surgeons. I think it's fair to say that product owners and UI designers are tech workers too, but maybe the issue is that "tech industry/worker" is way too broad of a term. Especially when a lot of these roles are extremely new to humanity (engineering and doctor/healer have been around for thousands of years whereas a marketer is barely over a 100 years old).
  - ehnto 3y ago
    I agree with the general point but I suspect marketing has been around in some form for longer. Branding at least certainly has been.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      Modern consumer product branding with respect to e.g. food mostly dates to when self-service supermarkets put in an appearance. So mostly 20th Century. Although certainly there were sales adjacent and promotional activities long before that that are pretty much marketing, at least if you squint a bit.
  - sophacles 3y ago
    > whereas a marketer is barely over a 100 years old This suggests you may be off by a few millenia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_marketing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_marketing I lean towards the "people have been people since there were people" side of the debate and assume there has been marketing since at least the invention of agriculture and its resultant ability to allow humans to make a living doing something other than calorie acquisition.
    - azemetre 3y ago
      Interesting, I wonder if it would be pedantic in construing modern marketing being drastically different than marketing pre 1800s? It doesn't seem fair to to me to classify a shopkeep from antiquity shouting they have the best wine in a bazaar to be equivalent to a marketing job in Meta. But the examples in your wiki page show just that, really neat stuff. Thanks for sharing.
      - sophacles 3y ago
        If you make marketing pre-1800s, with people branding their widely distributed amphorae, making ads and so on as drastically different than modern techniques, you'd have to also consider engineering drastically different. Also, the idea of surviving a visit to the doctor is a pretty novel modern concept.
- Aromasin 3y ago
  I posted a comment a while back about this same phenomenon, which I can't for the life of me find now, but it was quoting some data from media posts about job cuts in the tech industry. The overarching theme was that the "tech worker layoffs" almost never featured actual, STEM degree educated, feature making, bug fixing, engineering focused, individual contributors. The layoffs impacted Sales, Marketing, Product, HR, and Manager roles. Despite this, media outlets continued to make it out as if engineers and scientists were the ones being primarily impacted. They were doing it by hiding the actual jobs roles of those being interviewed deep into the article, in a short one-liner. There was never good data to suggest who those being most effected really were. I don't understand the reasoning behind it beyond blatant ignorance, or perhaps that they have a dislike for silicon valley types and get satisfaction out of demeaning the job role in some way by making engineers out to be as "easily dispensable" as everyone else. It's bizarre. I guess, whatever generates the most clicks.
  - staticcaucasian 3y ago
    The "hired to do nothing" Tech Company meme was almost entirely actually just recruiters: https://www.wsj.com/articles/these-tech-workers-say-they-were-hired-to-do-nothing-762ff158 https://www.wsj.com/articles/these-tech-workers-say-they-wer...
  - hotpotamus 3y ago
    It came around. > The latest round of layoffs at Facebook parent company Meta is impacting workers in core technical roles like data scientists and software engineers — positions once thought to be beyond reproach. https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/4/21/23692515/tech-workers-software-engineers-layoffs-meta-coding https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/4/21/23692515/tech-worke...
    - 908B64B197 3y ago
      Meta is different. They are pivoting hard from VR to AI.
      - TremendousJudge 3y ago
- davemp 3y ago
  I think there is an apprehension to use descriptive titles for whatever lame reason (I think it was to avoid status signals originally). What's wrong with administrator, clerk, etc?
- i2cmaster 3y ago
  They do this with actual products as well. Companies like Ycombinator for some time were often thought of as "tech companies" and not investment banks.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  I think tech workers are people who work at tech companies. Including non technical roles.
  - austhrow743 3y ago
    Do you think construction workers are people who work at construction companies in the same way?
    - nonethewiser 3y ago
      Technically yes. Just like healthcare workers are people who work in healthcare and arent necessarily doctors or nurses but could be, for example, administrative or academic.
ghaff 3y ago
They do mention someone else who was a CS major but, yes, not clear how much of this is developers etc. and how much is all the other people who work at a tech or a finance company.
JohnMakin 3y ago
Exactly. Tech unemployment is still extremely low, practically nonexistent. All the tech professionals I know with hard skills that have sought jobs in the last 6 months find them most of the time in less than a month. It's not a struggle for anyone except recruiters and maybe the tech-managerial class that lacks hard skills or a long track record. Gone probably are the days of 400k TC PM's with a degree in communications.
- tristor 3y ago
  > Gone probably are the days of 400k TC PM's with a degree in communications. As a PM, these days never existed. All of the high TC PMs are technical PMs, like myself, who have an engineering background. I was in Eng for more than a decade before I became a PM. MBAs turned PMs never commanded as high of compensation as technical PMs as ICs at any tech company. Technical PMs are in the same salary bands as Eng, non-technical PMs are generally 1 level or half step below in the bands. There's way too many people that get their impression about what PMs do from "Day in the Life" TikTok videos made by non-technical associate PMs who are a couple years out of college and basically doing the easiest pieces of things.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    When I worked for a computer systems company, pretty much all the PMs had technical degrees of one sort or another, many had worked as engineers, and a fair number had MBAs as well. But generally, salaries at tech companies weren't as high then. My salary in the late 80s as a PM with engineering work experience and a couple of masters degrees was the equivalent of about $120K today in a major tech hub.
    - tristor 3y ago
      > When I worked for a computer systems company, pretty much all the PMs had technical degrees of one sort or another, many had worked as engineers, and a fair number had MBAs as well. This is pretty much the same now. I am on a ~40 person Product team and only a small number of people do not have a technical background. The vast majority of IC PMs at higher seniority have a technical background. Most MBAs you meet in tech companies are people who were technical and went back to school, although there are a few PMs that are more focused on business analysis and marketing side (sometimes categorized as PMMs or Outbound PMs in some companies) and these folks tend to be less technical, but also doing less technical work, so that's perfectly okay.
rchaud 3y ago
> Clickbait article makes it sound like actual tech graduates are going to Wall Street Is this not still the case? Investment banks and hedge funds were full of EE majors back when I was there, and most banks have significant software operations.
nonethewiser 3y ago
There isnt really a “tech graduate“ though. Computer Science is as close as you’ll get but there are lots of non technical people in tech.

mywittyname 3y ago

It seems like most news outlets treat "tech workers" as anyone who works at a "tech" company. I wonder if they would call her a "construction worker" if she worked in the same capacity for a construction company.

azemetre 3y ago
No but you can say they work in the construction industry, like how the health care industry is more than just nurses, doctors, and surgeons. I think it's fair to say that product owners and UI designers are tech workers too, but maybe the issue is that "tech industry/worker" is way too broad of a term. Especially when a lot of these roles are extremely new to humanity (engineering and doctor/healer have been around for thousands of years whereas a marketer is barely over a 100 years old).
- ehnto 3y ago
  I agree with the general point but I suspect marketing has been around in some form for longer. Branding at least certainly has been.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Modern consumer product branding with respect to e.g. food mostly dates to when self-service supermarkets put in an appearance. So mostly 20th Century. Although certainly there were sales adjacent and promotional activities long before that that are pretty much marketing, at least if you squint a bit.
- sophacles 3y ago
  > whereas a marketer is barely over a 100 years old This suggests you may be off by a few millenia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_marketing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_marketing I lean towards the "people have been people since there were people" side of the debate and assume there has been marketing since at least the invention of agriculture and its resultant ability to allow humans to make a living doing something other than calorie acquisition.
  - azemetre 3y ago
    Interesting, I wonder if it would be pedantic in construing modern marketing being drastically different than marketing pre 1800s? It doesn't seem fair to to me to classify a shopkeep from antiquity shouting they have the best wine in a bazaar to be equivalent to a marketing job in Meta. But the examples in your wiki page show just that, really neat stuff. Thanks for sharing.
    - sophacles 3y ago
      If you make marketing pre-1800s, with people branding their widely distributed amphorae, making ads and so on as drastically different than modern techniques, you'd have to also consider engineering drastically different. Also, the idea of surviving a visit to the doctor is a pretty novel modern concept.
Aromasin 3y ago
I posted a comment a while back about this same phenomenon, which I can't for the life of me find now, but it was quoting some data from media posts about job cuts in the tech industry. The overarching theme was that the "tech worker layoffs" almost never featured actual, STEM degree educated, feature making, bug fixing, engineering focused, individual contributors. The layoffs impacted Sales, Marketing, Product, HR, and Manager roles. Despite this, media outlets continued to make it out as if engineers and scientists were the ones being primarily impacted. They were doing it by hiding the actual jobs roles of those being interviewed deep into the article, in a short one-liner. There was never good data to suggest who those being most effected really were. I don't understand the reasoning behind it beyond blatant ignorance, or perhaps that they have a dislike for silicon valley types and get satisfaction out of demeaning the job role in some way by making engineers out to be as "easily dispensable" as everyone else. It's bizarre. I guess, whatever generates the most clicks.
- staticcaucasian 3y ago
  The "hired to do nothing" Tech Company meme was almost entirely actually just recruiters: https://www.wsj.com/articles/these-tech-workers-say-they-were-hired-to-do-nothing-762ff158 https://www.wsj.com/articles/these-tech-workers-say-they-wer...
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  It came around. > The latest round of layoffs at Facebook parent company Meta is impacting workers in core technical roles like data scientists and software engineers — positions once thought to be beyond reproach. https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/4/21/23692515/tech-workers-software-engineers-layoffs-meta-coding https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/4/21/23692515/tech-worke...
  - 908B64B197 3y ago
    Meta is different. They are pivoting hard from VR to AI.
    - TremendousJudge 3y ago
davemp 3y ago
I think there is an apprehension to use descriptive titles for whatever lame reason (I think it was to avoid status signals originally). What's wrong with administrator, clerk, etc?
i2cmaster 3y ago
They do this with actual products as well. Companies like Ycombinator for some time were often thought of as "tech companies" and not investment banks.
nonethewiser 3y ago
I think tech workers are people who work at tech companies. Including non technical roles.
- austhrow743 3y ago
  Do you think construction workers are people who work at construction companies in the same way?
  - nonethewiser 3y ago
    Technically yes. Just like healthcare workers are people who work in healthcare and arent necessarily doctors or nurses but could be, for example, administrative or academic.

ghaff 3y ago

They do mention someone else who was a CS major but, yes, not clear how much of this is developers etc. and how much is all the other people who work at a tech or a finance company.

JohnMakin 3y ago

Exactly. Tech unemployment is still extremely low, practically nonexistent. All the tech professionals I know with hard skills that have sought jobs in the last 6 months find them most of the time in less than a month. It's not a struggle for anyone except recruiters and maybe the tech-managerial class that lacks hard skills or a long track record. Gone probably are the days of 400k TC PM's with a degree in communications.

tristor 3y ago
> Gone probably are the days of 400k TC PM's with a degree in communications. As a PM, these days never existed. All of the high TC PMs are technical PMs, like myself, who have an engineering background. I was in Eng for more than a decade before I became a PM. MBAs turned PMs never commanded as high of compensation as technical PMs as ICs at any tech company. Technical PMs are in the same salary bands as Eng, non-technical PMs are generally 1 level or half step below in the bands. There's way too many people that get their impression about what PMs do from "Day in the Life" TikTok videos made by non-technical associate PMs who are a couple years out of college and basically doing the easiest pieces of things.
- ghaff 3y ago
  When I worked for a computer systems company, pretty much all the PMs had technical degrees of one sort or another, many had worked as engineers, and a fair number had MBAs as well. But generally, salaries at tech companies weren't as high then. My salary in the late 80s as a PM with engineering work experience and a couple of masters degrees was the equivalent of about $120K today in a major tech hub.
  - tristor 3y ago
    > When I worked for a computer systems company, pretty much all the PMs had technical degrees of one sort or another, many had worked as engineers, and a fair number had MBAs as well. This is pretty much the same now. I am on a ~40 person Product team and only a small number of people do not have a technical background. The vast majority of IC PMs at higher seniority have a technical background. Most MBAs you meet in tech companies are people who were technical and went back to school, although there are a few PMs that are more focused on business analysis and marketing side (sometimes categorized as PMMs or Outbound PMs in some companies) and these folks tend to be less technical, but also doing less technical work, so that's perfectly okay.

rchaud 3y ago

> Clickbait article makes it sound like actual tech graduates are going to Wall Street Is this not still the case? Investment banks and hedge funds were full of EE majors back when I was there, and most banks have significant software operations.

nonethewiser 3y ago

There isnt really a “tech graduate“ though. Computer Science is as close as you’ll get but there are lots of non technical people in tech.