4 ms·

Yes, anyone who deliberately increases the supply of something does so in an effort to diminish the price of something.

AmericanChopper 2y ago
> After all, that's why the opposite situation: Collusion – where actors try to deliberately limit the supply of something, thereby causing price to rise – is illegal. Unless they’re a union.
muglug 2y ago
The creation of computer science degree courses did not push down the price of software engineers.
- flyingfences 2y ago
  The popularization of computer science degrees absolutely did push down the price of software engineers on average. The Big Names in SV are outliers; the rest of the industry employs us at wages far closer to other professions than they could a generation ago.
  - busterarm 2y ago
    This. People really do forget what it was like just before the peak of the dotcom bubble. There were companies that offered perks like a fully paid lease on a brand new Porsche 911. This wasn't just for the software engineers either. If you could breathe on a keyboard, you could land a high-paying job. Demand was that high. That era of tech minted way, way, way more millionaires on average.
    - netdevnet 2y ago
      Surely, we can all agree that this is not sustainable. Companies basically throwing money at people that might not have the skills you need is a massive waste of money from the companies point of view.
      - busterarm 2y ago
        Nobody was talking about whether or not it was sustainable, we're just comparing salary potential now to a generation ago. To the managerial class, tech people used to be literal wizards conjuring the impossible and now we're regular commoditized office labor like any other.
        netdevnet 2y ago
        Not sure if comparing salary potentials coming from two different socio-economic periods is useful or likely to mislead. Tech and people versed in it were not common (to people outside tech) and so the high salaries would reflect that. Now is not the case. It was always going to be temporary. As people become acquainted with tech people, the magic vanishes, you see the code behind the pixels. At the same time, tech people themselves did cause this by making tech easier to understand and manipulate. It's like a magician, the first few times, it is enticing and mysterious but after a while it becomes ordinary. Tech wizards are just like that.
        busterarm 2y ago
        People with wizard-like skills are out there but typically can't command the salaries they used to. Todays SWEs tend to know far less about how computers operate and how protocols work than in the old days.
        netdevnet 2y ago
        The reality is that thanks to those tech wizards, most companies don't need tech wizards to build tech products and most tech workers don't need to know anywhere near as much as you would need to back in the days. The same kind of "I just love to code" tech wizard that builds an amazing service/library/product, overworks itself while letting big companies extract max value out of it and contribute nothing or extremely little to the open source world. Every day I think of the Homebrew creator who got rejected by the company that uses his software daily. This should be in the mind of every dev imo. Tech wizards wrote their fate on code, compiled it and served it to the market. This is the result
- silveraxe93 2y ago
  You're on a boat with a hole in the bottom. The water is rushing in. You grab a bucket and keep scooping water out, but not as fast as it rushes in. Throwing water out of boats do not make it more buoyant.
AnimalMuppet 2y ago
Nonsense. Almost everyone who deliberately increases the supply of something does so in an effort to get paid for creating more of that something. Diminishing the price is at best an unintended second-order effect.
- randomdata 2y ago
  [flagged]
simplicio 2y ago
I mean, that's the effect of increasing the supply, but I doubt its the motivation for most people.
- randomdata 2y ago
  It is the motivation when the buyer tries to stimulate expansion of the supply, per the topic at hand, though.

> After all, that's why the opposite situation: Collusion – where actors try to deliberately limit the supply of something, thereby causing price to rise – is illegal. Unless they’re a union.

muglug 2y ago

The creation of computer science degree courses did not push down the price of software engineers.

flyingfences 2y ago
The popularization of computer science degrees absolutely did push down the price of software engineers on average. The Big Names in SV are outliers; the rest of the industry employs us at wages far closer to other professions than they could a generation ago.
- busterarm 2y ago
  This. People really do forget what it was like just before the peak of the dotcom bubble. There were companies that offered perks like a fully paid lease on a brand new Porsche 911. This wasn't just for the software engineers either. If you could breathe on a keyboard, you could land a high-paying job. Demand was that high. That era of tech minted way, way, way more millionaires on average.
  - netdevnet 2y ago
    Surely, we can all agree that this is not sustainable. Companies basically throwing money at people that might not have the skills you need is a massive waste of money from the companies point of view.
    - busterarm 2y ago
      Nobody was talking about whether or not it was sustainable, we're just comparing salary potential now to a generation ago. To the managerial class, tech people used to be literal wizards conjuring the impossible and now we're regular commoditized office labor like any other.
      - netdevnet 2y ago
        Not sure if comparing salary potentials coming from two different socio-economic periods is useful or likely to mislead. Tech and people versed in it were not common (to people outside tech) and so the high salaries would reflect that. Now is not the case. It was always going to be temporary. As people become acquainted with tech people, the magic vanishes, you see the code behind the pixels. At the same time, tech people themselves did cause this by making tech easier to understand and manipulate. It's like a magician, the first few times, it is enticing and mysterious but after a while it becomes ordinary. Tech wizards are just like that.
        busterarm 2y ago
        People with wizard-like skills are out there but typically can't command the salaries they used to. Todays SWEs tend to know far less about how computers operate and how protocols work than in the old days.
        netdevnet 2y ago
        The reality is that thanks to those tech wizards, most companies don't need tech wizards to build tech products and most tech workers don't need to know anywhere near as much as you would need to back in the days. The same kind of "I just love to code" tech wizard that builds an amazing service/library/product, overworks itself while letting big companies extract max value out of it and contribute nothing or extremely little to the open source world. Every day I think of the Homebrew creator who got rejected by the company that uses his software daily. This should be in the mind of every dev imo. Tech wizards wrote their fate on code, compiled it and served it to the market. This is the result
silveraxe93 2y ago
You're on a boat with a hole in the bottom. The water is rushing in. You grab a bucket and keep scooping water out, but not as fast as it rushes in. Throwing water out of boats do not make it more buoyant.

AnimalMuppet 2y ago

Nonsense. Almost everyone who deliberately increases the supply of something does so in an effort to get paid for creating more of that something. Diminishing the price is at best an unintended second-order effect.

randomdata 2y ago
[flagged]

simplicio 2y ago

I mean, that's the effect of increasing the supply, but I doubt its the motivation for most people.

randomdata 2y ago
It is the motivation when the buyer tries to stimulate expansion of the supply, per the topic at hand, though.