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> his contributions to ... raising salaries It's fun to be able to retire early or whatever, but driving software engineer salaries out of reach of otherwise p

> his contributions to ... raising salaries It's fun to be able to retire early or whatever, but driving software engineer salaries out of reach of otherwise profitable, sustainable businesses is not a good thing. That just concentrates the industry in fewer hands and makes it more dependent on fickle cash sources (investors, market expansion) often disconnected from the actual software being produced by their teams. Nor is it great for the yet-to-mature craft that high salaries invited a very large pool of primarly-compensation-motivated people who end up diluting the ability for primarily-craft-motivated people to find and coordinate with each other in pursuit of higher quality work and more robust practices.

asadm 2y ago
I am fine with large pool of greedy people trying their hand at programming. Some of them will stick and find meaning in work. Rest will wade out in downturn. Net positive.
eru 2y ago
> It's fun to be able to retire early or whatever, but driving software engineer salaries out of reach of otherwise profitable, sustainable businesses is not a good thing. That argument could apply to anyone who pays anyone well. Driving up market pay for workers via competition for their labour is exactly how we get progress for workers. (And by 'treat well', I mean the whole package. Fortunately, or unfortunately, that has the side effect of eg paying veterinary nurses peanuts, because there's always people willing to do those kinds of 'cute' jobs.) > Nor is it great for the yet-to-mature craft that high salaries invited a very large pool of primarly-compensation-motivated people who end up diluting the ability for primarily-craft-motivated people to find and coordinate with each other in pursuit of higher quality work and more robust practices. Huh, how is that 'dilution' supposed to work? Well, and at least those 'evil' money grubbers are out of someone else's hair. They don't just get created from thin air. So if those rimarly-compensation-motivated people are now writing software, then at least investment banking and management consulting are free again for the primarily-craft-motivated people to enjoy!
- swatcoder 2y ago
  Bubbles are bubbles. They can be enjoyed/exploited (early retirment, savvy caching of excess income, etc) by workers but they don't win anybody progress and aren't a thing to celebrate. Workers (and society) have not won progress when only a handful of companies have books that can actually support their inflated pay, and the remainder are ultimately funded by investors hoping to see those same companies slurp them up before the bubble bursts. Workers don't win progress when they're lured into then converting that income into impractical home loans that bind the workers with golden handcuffs and darkly shadow their future when the bubble bursts. Workers win progress when they can practice their trade with respect and freedom and can and secure a stable, secure future for themselves and their families. Software engineers didn't need these bubble-inflated salaries to acheive that. Like our peers in other engineering disciplines, it's practically our baseline state. What fight we do still need to make is on securing non-monetary worker's rights and professional deference, which is a different thing and gets developed in a different and more stable market environment.
  - maxlamb 2y ago
    Meta has products that are used by billions of people every week and has been extremely profitable for over 15 years, with no sign of obvious downward trend. I don't see how it can be described as a bubble.
  - eru 2y ago
    > They can be enjoyed/exploited (early retirment, savvy caching of excess income, etc) by workers but they don't win anybody progress and aren't a thing to celebrate. Huh, if I get paid lots as a worker, I don't care whether the company goes belly up later. Why should I? (I include equity in the total pay package under judgement here, and by 'lots' I mean that the sum of equity and cash is big. If the cash portion is large enough, I don't care if the stock goes to zero. In any case, I sell any company stock as soon as I can, and invest the money in diversified index funds.) > Workers (and society) have not won progress when only a handful of companies have books that can actually support their inflated pay, and the remainder are ultimately funded by investors hoping to see those same companies slurp them up before the bubble bursts. I'm more than ok with willing investors (potentially) losing capital they put at risk. Just don't put some captive public retirement fund or task payer money into this. Those investors are grown up and rich, they don't need us to know better what is good for them. > Workers don't win progress when they're lured into then converting that income into impractical home loans that bind the workers with golden handcuffs and darkly shadow their future when the bubble bursts. This says more about carefully managing the maximum amount of leverage you want to take on in your life. It's hardy an argument that would convince me that lower pay is better for me. People freak out when thinking about putting leverage in their stock portfolio, but they take on a mortgage on a house without thinking twice. Even though getting out of a well diversified stock portfolio and remove all the leverage takes less than half an hour these days (thanks to online brokers), but selling your single concentrated illiquid house can take months and multiple percentage points of transaction costs (agents, taxes, etc). Just don't buy a house, or at least buy within your means. And make sure you are thinking ahead of time how to get out of that investment, in case things turn sour. > Workers win progress when they can practice their trade with respect and freedom and can and secure a stable, secure future for themselves and their families. Guess who's in a good negotiation position to demand respect and freedom and stability from their (prospective) employer? Someone who has other lucrative offers. Money is one part of compensation, freedom and respect (and even fun!) are others. Your alternative offers don't all have to offer these parts of the package in the same proportions. You can use a rich offer with lots of money from place A, to try and get more freedom (at a lower pay) from place B. Though I find that in practice that the places that are valuing me enough to pay me a lot, also tend to value me enough to give me more respect and freedom. (It's far from a perfect correlation, of course.) > Software engineers didn't need these bubble-inflated salaries to acheive that. Yes, have lived on a pittance before, and survived. I don't strictly 'need' the money. But I still firmly believe that all else being equal that 'more money = more better'. > What fight we do still need to make is on securing non-monetary worker's rights and professional deference, [...]. I'd rather take the money, thank you. If you want to fight, please go ahead, but don't speak for me. And the whole thing smells a lot like you'd (probably?) want to introduce some kind of mandatory licensing and certificates, like they have in other engineering disciplines. No thank you. Programming is one of the few well paid white collar jobs left where you don't need a degree to enter. Let's keep it that way.
orra 2y ago
> Nor is it great for the yet-to-mature craft that high salaries invited a very large pool of primarly-compensation-motivated people who end up diluting the ability for primarily-craft-motivated people to find and coordinate with each other in pursuit of higher quality work and more robust practices. It's great to enjoy programming, and to enjoy your job. But we live under capitalism. We can't fault people for just working a job. Pushing for lower salaries won't help anybody.
- cherioo 2y ago
  Pushing salary lowers help the society at large, or at least that’s the thesis of OP. While it sucks for SWE, I actually kind of agree. The skyrocketing of SWE salary in the US, and the slow progress US is making towards normalizing/reducing it does not help US competitiveness. I would not fault Meta for this though, as much as US society at large. SWE should enjoy it while they can before salary becomes similar to other engineering trades.
  - ahtihn 2y ago
    I don't understand people who think high salaries are bad. Who should get the money instead? Should even more of it go to execs and shareholders? Why is that better?
maxsilver 2y ago
> but driving software engineer salaries out of reach of otherwise profitable, sustainable businesses is not a good thing. I'm not convinced he's actually done that. Pretty much any 'profitable, sustainable business' can afford software developers. Software developers are paid pretty decently, but (grabbing a couple of lists off of Google) it looks like there's 18 careers more lucrative than it (from a wage perspective), and computers-in-general are only 3 of the top 25 highest paying careers - https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/rankings/best-paying-jobs https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/rankings/best-pay... Medical, Legal, Finance, and Sales as careers (roughly in that order) all seem to pay more on average.
- swatcoder 2y ago
  Few viable technology businesses and non-technology busiesses with internal software departments were prepared to see their software engineers suddenly suddenly expect doctor or lawyer pay and can't effectively accomodate the change. They were largely left to rely on loyalty and other kinds of fragile non-monetary factors to preserve their existing talent and institutuonal knowledge and otherwise scavenge for scraps when making new hires. For those companies outside the specific Silicon Valley money circle, it was an extremely disruptive change and recovery basically requires that salaries normalize to some significant degree. In most cases, engineers provide quite a lot of value but not nearly so much value as FAANG and SV speculators could build into their market-shaping offers. It's not a healthy situation for the industry or (if you're wary of centralization/monopolization) society as a whole.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    In general, it's probably not sustainable (with some exceptions like academia that have never paid that well leaving aside the top echelon and that had its own benefits) to expect that engineering generally lags behind SV software engineering. Especially with some level of remote persisting, presumably salaries/benefits equilibrate to at least some degree.
  - ponector 2y ago
    That business can search and find talents globally for fraction of SV salary. If FAANG company can hire an engineer overseas for 60k$ annually why other cannot?
lawlessone 2y ago
>but driving software engineer salaries out of reach of otherwise profitable, sustainable businesses is not a good thing. What if businesses paid their workers more?

asadm 2y ago

I am fine with large pool of greedy people trying their hand at programming. Some of them will stick and find meaning in work. Rest will wade out in downturn. Net positive.

eru 2y ago

> It's fun to be able to retire early or whatever, but driving software engineer salaries out of reach of otherwise profitable, sustainable businesses is not a good thing. That argument could apply to anyone who pays anyone well. Driving up market pay for workers via competition for their labour is exactly how we get progress for workers. (And by 'treat well', I mean the whole package. Fortunately, or unfortunately, that has the side effect of eg paying veterinary nurses peanuts, because there's always people willing to do those kinds of 'cute' jobs.) > Nor is it great for the yet-to-mature craft that high salaries invited a very large pool of primarly-compensation-motivated people who end up diluting the ability for primarily-craft-motivated people to find and coordinate with each other in pursuit of higher quality work and more robust practices. Huh, how is that 'dilution' supposed to work? Well, and at least those 'evil' money grubbers are out of someone else's hair. They don't just get created from thin air. So if those rimarly-compensation-motivated people are now writing software, then at least investment banking and management consulting are free again for the primarily-craft-motivated people to enjoy!

swatcoder 2y ago
Bubbles are bubbles. They can be enjoyed/exploited (early retirment, savvy caching of excess income, etc) by workers but they don't win anybody progress and aren't a thing to celebrate. Workers (and society) have not won progress when only a handful of companies have books that can actually support their inflated pay, and the remainder are ultimately funded by investors hoping to see those same companies slurp them up before the bubble bursts. Workers don't win progress when they're lured into then converting that income into impractical home loans that bind the workers with golden handcuffs and darkly shadow their future when the bubble bursts. Workers win progress when they can practice their trade with respect and freedom and can and secure a stable, secure future for themselves and their families. Software engineers didn't need these bubble-inflated salaries to acheive that. Like our peers in other engineering disciplines, it's practically our baseline state. What fight we do still need to make is on securing non-monetary worker's rights and professional deference, which is a different thing and gets developed in a different and more stable market environment.
- maxlamb 2y ago
  Meta has products that are used by billions of people every week and has been extremely profitable for over 15 years, with no sign of obvious downward trend. I don't see how it can be described as a bubble.
- eru 2y ago
  > They can be enjoyed/exploited (early retirment, savvy caching of excess income, etc) by workers but they don't win anybody progress and aren't a thing to celebrate. Huh, if I get paid lots as a worker, I don't care whether the company goes belly up later. Why should I? (I include equity in the total pay package under judgement here, and by 'lots' I mean that the sum of equity and cash is big. If the cash portion is large enough, I don't care if the stock goes to zero. In any case, I sell any company stock as soon as I can, and invest the money in diversified index funds.) > Workers (and society) have not won progress when only a handful of companies have books that can actually support their inflated pay, and the remainder are ultimately funded by investors hoping to see those same companies slurp them up before the bubble bursts. I'm more than ok with willing investors (potentially) losing capital they put at risk. Just don't put some captive public retirement fund or task payer money into this. Those investors are grown up and rich, they don't need us to know better what is good for them. > Workers don't win progress when they're lured into then converting that income into impractical home loans that bind the workers with golden handcuffs and darkly shadow their future when the bubble bursts. This says more about carefully managing the maximum amount of leverage you want to take on in your life. It's hardy an argument that would convince me that lower pay is better for me. People freak out when thinking about putting leverage in their stock portfolio, but they take on a mortgage on a house without thinking twice. Even though getting out of a well diversified stock portfolio and remove all the leverage takes less than half an hour these days (thanks to online brokers), but selling your single concentrated illiquid house can take months and multiple percentage points of transaction costs (agents, taxes, etc). Just don't buy a house, or at least buy within your means. And make sure you are thinking ahead of time how to get out of that investment, in case things turn sour. > Workers win progress when they can practice their trade with respect and freedom and can and secure a stable, secure future for themselves and their families. Guess who's in a good negotiation position to demand respect and freedom and stability from their (prospective) employer? Someone who has other lucrative offers. Money is one part of compensation, freedom and respect (and even fun!) are others. Your alternative offers don't all have to offer these parts of the package in the same proportions. You can use a rich offer with lots of money from place A, to try and get more freedom (at a lower pay) from place B. Though I find that in practice that the places that are valuing me enough to pay me a lot, also tend to value me enough to give me more respect and freedom. (It's far from a perfect correlation, of course.) > Software engineers didn't need these bubble-inflated salaries to acheive that. Yes, have lived on a pittance before, and survived. I don't strictly 'need' the money. But I still firmly believe that all else being equal that 'more money = more better'. > What fight we do still need to make is on securing non-monetary worker's rights and professional deference, [...]. I'd rather take the money, thank you. If you want to fight, please go ahead, but don't speak for me. And the whole thing smells a lot like you'd (probably?) want to introduce some kind of mandatory licensing and certificates, like they have in other engineering disciplines. No thank you. Programming is one of the few well paid white collar jobs left where you don't need a degree to enter. Let's keep it that way.

orra 2y ago

> Nor is it great for the yet-to-mature craft that high salaries invited a very large pool of primarly-compensation-motivated people who end up diluting the ability for primarily-craft-motivated people to find and coordinate with each other in pursuit of higher quality work and more robust practices. It's great to enjoy programming, and to enjoy your job. But we live under capitalism. We can't fault people for just working a job. Pushing for lower salaries won't help anybody.

cherioo 2y ago
Pushing salary lowers help the society at large, or at least that’s the thesis of OP. While it sucks for SWE, I actually kind of agree. The skyrocketing of SWE salary in the US, and the slow progress US is making towards normalizing/reducing it does not help US competitiveness. I would not fault Meta for this though, as much as US society at large. SWE should enjoy it while they can before salary becomes similar to other engineering trades.
- ahtihn 2y ago
  I don't understand people who think high salaries are bad. Who should get the money instead? Should even more of it go to execs and shareholders? Why is that better?

maxsilver 2y ago

> but driving software engineer salaries out of reach of otherwise profitable, sustainable businesses is not a good thing. I'm not convinced he's actually done that. Pretty much any 'profitable, sustainable business' can afford software developers. Software developers are paid pretty decently, but (grabbing a couple of lists off of Google) it looks like there's 18 careers more lucrative than it (from a wage perspective), and computers-in-general are only 3 of the top 25 highest paying careers - https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/rankings/best-paying-jobs https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/rankings/best-pay... Medical, Legal, Finance, and Sales as careers (roughly in that order) all seem to pay more on average.

swatcoder 2y ago
Few viable technology businesses and non-technology busiesses with internal software departments were prepared to see their software engineers suddenly suddenly expect doctor or lawyer pay and can't effectively accomodate the change. They were largely left to rely on loyalty and other kinds of fragile non-monetary factors to preserve their existing talent and institutuonal knowledge and otherwise scavenge for scraps when making new hires. For those companies outside the specific Silicon Valley money circle, it was an extremely disruptive change and recovery basically requires that salaries normalize to some significant degree. In most cases, engineers provide quite a lot of value but not nearly so much value as FAANG and SV speculators could build into their market-shaping offers. It's not a healthy situation for the industry or (if you're wary of centralization/monopolization) society as a whole.
- ghaff 2y ago
  In general, it's probably not sustainable (with some exceptions like academia that have never paid that well leaving aside the top echelon and that had its own benefits) to expect that engineering generally lags behind SV software engineering. Especially with some level of remote persisting, presumably salaries/benefits equilibrate to at least some degree.
- ponector 2y ago
  That business can search and find talents globally for fraction of SV salary. If FAANG company can hire an engineer overseas for 60k$ annually why other cannot?

lawlessone 2y ago

>but driving software engineer salaries out of reach of otherwise profitable, sustainable businesses is not a good thing. What if businesses paid their workers more?