8 ms·

It’s kind of a miracle engineers are treated as well as we are compared to most traditional office jobs. IMO there’s probably a good reason for it, namely some

It’s kind of a miracle engineers are treated as well as we are compared to most traditional office jobs. IMO there’s probably a good reason for it, namely some institutional memory of when engineers would just defect en-masse and literally destroy your company if you pissed then off enough. But it also makes me a little sad that other white collar jobs don’t have the same benefits. There are probably a ton of jobs where people work just as hard as engineers but are treated as little interchangeable boxes by the money people.

l33t7332273 3y ago
One of the realities of capitalism is that people are not paid proportionally to how hard they work.
- beebmam 3y ago
  That's good, in fact. People should be compensated for the value they generate. Why should a fast food worker be compensated equivalently to a doctor or engineer? I do not want to live in a world where that could exist.
  - rwmj 3y ago
    They're not paid for the value they generate either. They're paid proportional to the leverage they have to extract money from the business.
    - candiodari 3y ago
      In other words, can you run the business into the ground? If yes => $$$$$$$$$$$$$$, if no => $. The CEO can tank a company (in fact they frequently do) An engineer certainly has more power than average to sink a company (isn't half the star wars story pretty much this?) Cleaning personnel does not
  - foldr 3y ago
    You are in a world where that can exist if you make international comparisons. There are some fast food workers earning more than some developers.
    - fragmede 3y ago
      Bartending at the right bar is a six figure, semi-untaxed salary which is competitive with a jr swe salary.
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
        Not competitive because you still have to account for quality of life, working on site with no remote option, working evenings, nights, and weekends, general riskiness of being around drunk/high people, etc. Of course you may not have had to study as hard, so your quality of life as a young person might have been better, but bartending is not secure income for life either. Either way, the easiest way to look at it is, do parents tell their kids to aspire to become bartenders?
        eddtests 3y ago
        > Either way, the easiest way to look at it is, do parents tell their kids to aspire to become bartenders? That sounds incredibly elitist and cringey. If I had a child earning six figures as a bartender I’d be very impressed, and even if they weren’t earning six figures but were enjoying life I’d be happy… And taking it from another perspective, I know people who’s parents would be disappointed their children are ‘lowly software engineers’ too. With that sort of attitude you can rarely win.
        lotsofpulp 3y ago
        Using a broad range of parents’ recommendations for what their kids could aim for does not having anything to do with parents being proud or disappointed. It is a rough rubric to gauge an average quality of life for a person who does a certain thing for a living, not that parents or even entire generations of parents are always right about the continued resilience of a given occupations’ quality of life.
  - Grimburger 3y ago
    CEO compensation vs returns: > We find evidence that industry and size adjusted CEO pay is negatively related to future shareholder wealth changes for periods up to five years after sorting on pay. For example, firms that pay their CEOs in the top ten percent of pay earn negative abnormal returns over the next five years of approximately -13%. The effect is stronger for CEOs who receive higher incentive pay relative to their peers. Our results are consistent with high-pay induced CEO overconfidence and investor overreaction towards firms with high paid CEOs. https://www.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/CEOperformance122509.pdf https://www.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/CEOperformanc... Employee compensation vs Output: https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-6/pdf/understanding-the-labor-productivity-and-compensation-gap.pdf https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-6/pdf/understanding-the-...
  - eddtests 3y ago
    A manager at an In-N-Out burger restaurant makes more than most developers outside of Silicon Valley ($160000) - and tbh I don’t complain about that because I’ve seen the speed those guys put out burgers in Mountain View on a busy day!
- pydry 3y ago
  Or in proportion to how much value they create. They're paid in proportion to how much unique value they gatekeep. Hence why Silicon Valley's masters were so keen on everybody learning to code in primary school and getting more women into the profession. They dream of making us more of a commodity, so that as the chief gatekeepers of the tech economic engine, they get to keep a larger slice of the pie we create.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    >Hence why Silicon Valley's masters were so keen on everybody learning to code in primary school and getting more women into the profession. Why is it bad that more people learn to code? I see this as a net benefit to humanity. Why do you want to gate-keep it?
    - Fluorescence 3y ago
      It is so disingenuous to snip out the reason they gave and then pose a sanctimonious question as if it wasn't clear. They said it's to increase supply and lower labour costs. You can argue with that or not but don't pretend you do not understand the capitalist ideal of an excess supply of labour so that salaries and benefits can be driven to legal minimums with desperate people still waiting to be hired no matter the indignity. Creating Labour surpluses to reduce Labour power and enable exploitation is not a "net benefit to humanity", it only benefits capital. In our shitty world, you are only valued if you are in a position of more demand than the supply. You might get that by being lucky but most only get it by gatekeeping whether it's doctors or delivery drivers or companies buying up their competitors. If you stand idly by, the world will punish you.
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        >It is so disingenuous to snip out the reason they gave and then pose a sanctimonious question as if it wasn't clear. They said it's to increase supply and lower labour costs. Oh please, don't act so 'righteous-than-thou'. With this logic, aren't we all here who got into SW development responsible for increasing the labor supply and decreasing wages? What's disingenuous, is people in traffic complaining there's traffic. It's sounds like you got "yours" and then you wanna kick down the ladder behind you. Where does the buck stop? Who gets to decide who's deserving of getting into SW development without also being responsible for diluting wages, and who not?
quickthrower2 3y ago
Not a miracle. Things fuck up extremely quickly when you the systems are not maintained and it takes competence. A lot of businesses value (most perhaps?) goes to zero in a flash sans - IT. There is a developer behind all of that. That combination of needing talent which is in short supply and being essential.
- Bukhmanizer 3y ago
  Even comparing traditional sysadmin work — where operations are even more crucial — to software engineering, it’s easy to see that engineers tend to get paid more, get treated better and have more freedom. Obviously there are reasons for this, but it seems to boil down to broad generalizations in how the C-Suite sees your role, and very little in the particularities of the org or employee.
  - mattbuilds 3y ago
    The reason is growth. A sysadmin will make sure the lights stay on and the place doesn’t burn down, but they aren’t creating a new revenue stream. And when all these companies need to grow forever, they need to be creating new things, which developers do and sysadmins don’t.
    - quickthrower2 3y ago
      And that is why platform/devops is safer than the sysadmin. Not only do they help developers create new things, but make it complicated enough that you can't disband their team ... {tongue in cheek, sort of...}
httpz 3y ago
I'm very thankful to my high school self for choosing computer science. I feel lucky I happened to be interested in computers. If I was born 5 years earlier, I may have made a different choice.
afpx 3y ago
Supply and demand and the fact that their multi-billion dollar business depends on this small handful of people?
Glawen 3y ago
> institutional memory of when engineers would just defect en-masse and literally destroy your company if you pissed then off enough. Got some good examples?
- freddie_mercury 3y ago
  Probably a reference to the "Traitorous Eight". You can Google more about them.
omscs99 3y ago
> It’s kind of a miracle engineers are treated as well as we are compared to most traditional office jobs. Other office jobs are treated better. They don’t get pinged at random times outside of business hours. They don’t have to attend late night meetings because of foreign time zone I know a bunch of AWS people and have heard worse things from them Frankly, I love programming but would rather have a regular office job. This industry is predatory
- tomduncalf 3y ago
  I replied to your other similar post too, but why not look into working for smaller companies or contract/freelance work? Not all tech jobs are big tech type work. You’ll make less money perhaps but it sounds like you might be happier based on what’s important to you.
  - jokethrowaway 3y ago
    Smaller companies are less stressful but they often give you no autonomy or purpose. It can be a good economic / stress tradeoff but it will suck your soul. Left job with a unicorn because of stress, I make more than double that by contracting with smaller businesses and working less - but I'm way more depressed about the job. I think a happy medium might be to run your small product company. I do that on the side as well, but it brings 1/10th of what I can make contracting.
- freddie_mercury 3y ago
  I know tons of office jobs that have to attend late night meetings because of foreign time zones. Just like I know lots of developers that don't. What a weird generalisation to make.
- sverhagen 3y ago
  I think you're glossing over how much people in other office jobs get gaslighted (gaslit?) into showing up at odd times too. To finish a report. To coordinate with an offshore accounting team in a foreign time zone (not unique to Engineering). To be always reading their email. Not for nothing are some states and countries writing rules against being "always on" into their laws, recently. So, sure, a small contingent of Engineering folks might be on-call, but you should be able to make good working agreements about that, put boundaries around it, and keep your sanity. If not, you're maybe being gaslighted like any other old regular office worker.
jokethrowaway 3y ago
It's not a miracle. You're treated well because you have the potential to deliver multiples of what you're making in revenue. Other office jobs rarely can do so. That means that sensible places will happily pay you a lot and make money on you, and that will prop the entire market up, which means even crap places will have to pay more just to get some developers.
tomp 3y ago
Name another white collar job that’s simultaneously as complex and as creative as being a programmer. Architects build houses. Software engineers build whole cities, and they exist only in their minds! (i.e they can’t even see them, they’re just abstract concepts of enormous complexity)

l33t7332273 3y ago

One of the realities of capitalism is that people are not paid proportionally to how hard they work.

beebmam 3y ago
That's good, in fact. People should be compensated for the value they generate. Why should a fast food worker be compensated equivalently to a doctor or engineer? I do not want to live in a world where that could exist.
- rwmj 3y ago
  They're not paid for the value they generate either. They're paid proportional to the leverage they have to extract money from the business.
  - candiodari 3y ago
    In other words, can you run the business into the ground? If yes => $$$$$$$$$$$$$$, if no => $. The CEO can tank a company (in fact they frequently do) An engineer certainly has more power than average to sink a company (isn't half the star wars story pretty much this?) Cleaning personnel does not
- foldr 3y ago
  You are in a world where that can exist if you make international comparisons. There are some fast food workers earning more than some developers.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    Bartending at the right bar is a six figure, semi-untaxed salary which is competitive with a jr swe salary.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      Not competitive because you still have to account for quality of life, working on site with no remote option, working evenings, nights, and weekends, general riskiness of being around drunk/high people, etc. Of course you may not have had to study as hard, so your quality of life as a young person might have been better, but bartending is not secure income for life either. Either way, the easiest way to look at it is, do parents tell their kids to aspire to become bartenders?
      - eddtests 3y ago
        > Either way, the easiest way to look at it is, do parents tell their kids to aspire to become bartenders? That sounds incredibly elitist and cringey. If I had a child earning six figures as a bartender I’d be very impressed, and even if they weren’t earning six figures but were enjoying life I’d be happy… And taking it from another perspective, I know people who’s parents would be disappointed their children are ‘lowly software engineers’ too. With that sort of attitude you can rarely win.
        lotsofpulp 3y ago
        Using a broad range of parents’ recommendations for what their kids could aim for does not having anything to do with parents being proud or disappointed. It is a rough rubric to gauge an average quality of life for a person who does a certain thing for a living, not that parents or even entire generations of parents are always right about the continued resilience of a given occupations’ quality of life.
- Grimburger 3y ago
  CEO compensation vs returns: > We find evidence that industry and size adjusted CEO pay is negatively related to future shareholder wealth changes for periods up to five years after sorting on pay. For example, firms that pay their CEOs in the top ten percent of pay earn negative abnormal returns over the next five years of approximately -13%. The effect is stronger for CEOs who receive higher incentive pay relative to their peers. Our results are consistent with high-pay induced CEO overconfidence and investor overreaction towards firms with high paid CEOs. https://www.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/CEOperformance122509.pdf https://www.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/CEOperformanc... Employee compensation vs Output: https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-6/pdf/understanding-the-labor-productivity-and-compensation-gap.pdf https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-6/pdf/understanding-the-...
- eddtests 3y ago
  A manager at an In-N-Out burger restaurant makes more than most developers outside of Silicon Valley ($160000) - and tbh I don’t complain about that because I’ve seen the speed those guys put out burgers in Mountain View on a busy day!
pydry 3y ago
Or in proportion to how much value they create. They're paid in proportion to how much unique value they gatekeep. Hence why Silicon Valley's masters were so keen on everybody learning to code in primary school and getting more women into the profession. They dream of making us more of a commodity, so that as the chief gatekeepers of the tech economic engine, they get to keep a larger slice of the pie we create.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >Hence why Silicon Valley's masters were so keen on everybody learning to code in primary school and getting more women into the profession. Why is it bad that more people learn to code? I see this as a net benefit to humanity. Why do you want to gate-keep it?
  - Fluorescence 3y ago
    It is so disingenuous to snip out the reason they gave and then pose a sanctimonious question as if it wasn't clear. They said it's to increase supply and lower labour costs. You can argue with that or not but don't pretend you do not understand the capitalist ideal of an excess supply of labour so that salaries and benefits can be driven to legal minimums with desperate people still waiting to be hired no matter the indignity. Creating Labour surpluses to reduce Labour power and enable exploitation is not a "net benefit to humanity", it only benefits capital. In our shitty world, you are only valued if you are in a position of more demand than the supply. You might get that by being lucky but most only get it by gatekeeping whether it's doctors or delivery drivers or companies buying up their competitors. If you stand idly by, the world will punish you.
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      >It is so disingenuous to snip out the reason they gave and then pose a sanctimonious question as if it wasn't clear. They said it's to increase supply and lower labour costs. Oh please, don't act so 'righteous-than-thou'. With this logic, aren't we all here who got into SW development responsible for increasing the labor supply and decreasing wages? What's disingenuous, is people in traffic complaining there's traffic. It's sounds like you got "yours" and then you wanna kick down the ladder behind you. Where does the buck stop? Who gets to decide who's deserving of getting into SW development without also being responsible for diluting wages, and who not?

quickthrower2 3y ago

Not a miracle. Things fuck up extremely quickly when you the systems are not maintained and it takes competence. A lot of businesses value (most perhaps?) goes to zero in a flash sans - IT. There is a developer behind all of that. That combination of needing talent which is in short supply and being essential.

Bukhmanizer 3y ago
Even comparing traditional sysadmin work — where operations are even more crucial — to software engineering, it’s easy to see that engineers tend to get paid more, get treated better and have more freedom. Obviously there are reasons for this, but it seems to boil down to broad generalizations in how the C-Suite sees your role, and very little in the particularities of the org or employee.
- mattbuilds 3y ago
  The reason is growth. A sysadmin will make sure the lights stay on and the place doesn’t burn down, but they aren’t creating a new revenue stream. And when all these companies need to grow forever, they need to be creating new things, which developers do and sysadmins don’t.
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    And that is why platform/devops is safer than the sysadmin. Not only do they help developers create new things, but make it complicated enough that you can't disband their team ... {tongue in cheek, sort of...}

httpz 3y ago

I'm very thankful to my high school self for choosing computer science. I feel lucky I happened to be interested in computers. If I was born 5 years earlier, I may have made a different choice.

afpx 3y ago

Supply and demand and the fact that their multi-billion dollar business depends on this small handful of people?

Glawen 3y ago

> institutional memory of when engineers would just defect en-masse and literally destroy your company if you pissed then off enough. Got some good examples?

freddie_mercury 3y ago
Probably a reference to the "Traitorous Eight". You can Google more about them.

omscs99 3y ago

> It’s kind of a miracle engineers are treated as well as we are compared to most traditional office jobs. Other office jobs are treated better. They don’t get pinged at random times outside of business hours. They don’t have to attend late night meetings because of foreign time zone I know a bunch of AWS people and have heard worse things from them Frankly, I love programming but would rather have a regular office job. This industry is predatory

tomduncalf 3y ago
I replied to your other similar post too, but why not look into working for smaller companies or contract/freelance work? Not all tech jobs are big tech type work. You’ll make less money perhaps but it sounds like you might be happier based on what’s important to you.
- jokethrowaway 3y ago
  Smaller companies are less stressful but they often give you no autonomy or purpose. It can be a good economic / stress tradeoff but it will suck your soul. Left job with a unicorn because of stress, I make more than double that by contracting with smaller businesses and working less - but I'm way more depressed about the job. I think a happy medium might be to run your small product company. I do that on the side as well, but it brings 1/10th of what I can make contracting.
freddie_mercury 3y ago
I know tons of office jobs that have to attend late night meetings because of foreign time zones. Just like I know lots of developers that don't. What a weird generalisation to make.
sverhagen 3y ago
I think you're glossing over how much people in other office jobs get gaslighted (gaslit?) into showing up at odd times too. To finish a report. To coordinate with an offshore accounting team in a foreign time zone (not unique to Engineering). To be always reading their email. Not for nothing are some states and countries writing rules against being "always on" into their laws, recently. So, sure, a small contingent of Engineering folks might be on-call, but you should be able to make good working agreements about that, put boundaries around it, and keep your sanity. If not, you're maybe being gaslighted like any other old regular office worker.

jokethrowaway 3y ago

It's not a miracle. You're treated well because you have the potential to deliver multiples of what you're making in revenue. Other office jobs rarely can do so. That means that sensible places will happily pay you a lot and make money on you, and that will prop the entire market up, which means even crap places will have to pay more just to get some developers.

tomp 3y ago

Name another white collar job that’s simultaneously as complex and as creative as being a programmer. Architects build houses. Software engineers build whole cities, and they exist only in their minds! (i.e they can’t even see them, they’re just abstract concepts of enormous complexity)