6 ms·

Until recently American engineers made a lot of money at comparatively cushy jobs. A decent engineer in the US could make 5x their equivalent in most European n

by bob001 9mo ago

Until recently American engineers made a lot of money at comparatively cushy jobs. A decent engineer in the US could make 5x their equivalent in most European nations. Staff+ engineers at FAANG could make 5x that. People in a good position tend to not like rocking the boat.

al_borland 9mo ago
Not just that, but the union would likely end up capping their salary much lower so the wealth can be spread around. How hard is the 10x engineer on the team going to work when the compensation is the same regardless? This is where people end up working multiple jobs, if they can keep up with their peers only working one day per week.
- denkmoon 9mo ago
  That's right, no more "10xers" working 80 hr weeks making those who can't or won't look unproductive.
- KittenInABox 9mo ago
  Couldn't unions just follow actors' guilds and the like where there are no salary caps?
  - karaterobot 9mo ago
    When we're looking to the actors guilds for direction, you know the future of our industry might be in trouble.
  - bob001 9mo ago
    It's not your choice. It's the choice of the average union member.
- data-ottawa 9mo ago
  I find it hard to believe workers would vote for a union to lower or cap their wages. That feels like a total straw man. In my experience unions suck when they overemphasize fairness over real world practicalities (see almost anything seniority based). They don't have to be that way.
  - bob001 9mo ago
    There is a large pay disparity. Why wouldn't someone at the 50th percentile vote to have those at the 95th get lower salaries so the 50th percentile goes up a bit?
    - acdha 9mo ago
      That’s not how unions work negotiations work, and the younger worker getting paid less is 100% thinking that they’ll be the senior guy some day.
      - bob001 9mo ago
        "Senior". Looks like you've already made it a tenure and not output based pay system. Which I think proves exactly what people don't like about unions or those who push for them. In an output based system the number of high level people is relatively small and terminal level is far from the top level. It doesn't take much for people to realize that there's little chance of them becoming an L8 so why shouldn't an L8 get paid less? Moreover in my experience people have little insight into the value those at higher levels provide so will consider them dead weight.
        Muromec 9mo ago
        It's both really and that's why the scale is capped. Union shops still have compensation levels. If your pay is defined as 85% of a scale L8 and the collective agreement says it gets increased by 2 and half percentage points each year, you will eventually reach 100% and will just sit there and still make 10k less than L9. The scale itself is adjusted yearly.
        acdha 9mo ago
        You’re welcome to try to get the entire industry to stop referring to junior and senior developers, engineers, etc. but most people know that experience is a distinguishing characteristic. The other huge mistake you’re making is assuming that compensation is based on performance in non-union shops. It certainly can be but almost everyone will collect counter examples as they get more career experience. I would suggest considering who stands to benefit the most from the belief that high-performers don’t need unions, and whether the same companies which have been found guilty of wage-suppression would be above funding amplification for that sentiment. Tech workers gave up a ton of bargaining power for decades and while we certainly aren’t badly paid it’s worth remembering how, say, that settlement with Apple, Google, et al. didn’t fully make up the difference, not to mention the number of former high-fliers who hit things like the ageism wall long before they wanted to retire. In an uneven market with a huge imbalance in data visibility and negotiating power, unilateral disarmament by the weaker side doesn’t seem like the winning strategy.
- array_key_first 9mo ago
  I think the truth is that there really isn't 10xers, and that's more or less a propaganda technique to get people to crab bucket each other. Of course everyone likes to think they're santa's special engineer, so they don't need hurdles like protections and a level playing field. But, simultaneously, the industry has been doing everything in its power to make engineers as fungible as possible. The "wet dream" is to make engineers practically assembly line workers - you can just plop some rando in at any time, and it'll probably be fine. You can see this with the extreme turnover in a lot of the industry. These concepts are in almost perfection contradiction, but they both have the same goal: to convince you and me that the status quo is desirable for each of us personally.
  - Muromec 9mo ago
    There aren't 10x ers, but there are definetly 0.15xers
  - bob001 9mo ago
    There are those who can provide 10x output in certain kinds of problems. Either due to experience or however their minds work. If their output is as a tech lead then even a 2x can provide an overall 10x increase through second order impact via their team. There are also those who provide 0.5x and 0.1x output on a wide range of problems.
    - acdha 9mo ago
      > If their output is as a tech lead then even a 2x can provide an overall 10x increase through second order impact via their team. This is something the 10x mythology tends to leave out: there are a vanishingly few people who are significantly above the 90th percentile in terms of individual productivity but if the discussion shifted to team dynamics, that’s where you can actually see really big gains by helping a larger group be more productive.
      - bob001 9mo ago
        I think its also that few companies have a way to allow a 10x individual productivity engineer to focus on just the things they are 10x as good at. It's almost never everything. Once you add in meetings, politics, proposals, perf ladder requirements, mentoring, code reviews, etc. the result is a regression to the mean.
- theshrike79 9mo ago
  Why the fuck would an union cap anyones salary? Is this an American thing? Over here the purpose of unions is to: Provide a strong enough legal response and guidance to deter companies from trying shady shit, pay better unemployment fees than the government and provide training/networking. They also negotiate collectively with the employers on behalf of everyone for things like paid sick leave, paid vacations etc. I pay a flat fee every month because the union I'm in has always had relatively low unemployment, for others it's usually a percentage of their monthly gross salary (usually around 10-50€). In what scenario would capping people's salary be good for the workers?
  - joe_mamba 9mo ago
    >Why the fuck would an union cap anyones salary? Is this an American thing? No, it's a thing in most of Europe like France or Germany for unionized trades. All trades there have publicly documented salary bands based on education and YoE per job, where the negotiations starting point for a wage for a position must not be below the minimum threshold but also can't exceed a certain upper threshold. In some cases, the company can decide to place you outside the union agreed tariff/band range to give you a higher wage, but then you might be exempt from some strict union rules like 35h/week working hours and such. And they cap the top end of the salary bands because the yearly budget for wage increases is a fixed pie for most companies, and so to have money left to give entry level workers the great wage increases as mandated for by unions, they need to cap the increases to the top wages to prevent bleeding/bankruptcy. Do you think all European companies have unlimited money to give all their workers X% wage increases? This is how it works in Austria.
    - ernst_klim 9mo ago
      Same in Germany. That's why usually Max Mustermann (55) get's a better compensation for doing bare minimum than you for doing more work. But in case of layoffs you will be kicked out first and he would be kicked out the last and with a far better severance package.
    - theshrike79 9mo ago
      In Finland we have salary bands for some jobs, but it's usually just the minimum. Some have a maximum, but there are always "personal bonuses" the employer can give on top of that. But these are usually "old" professions like teachers, nurses, factory workers. For IT jobs I haven't seen an official salary band anywhere and there basically is no union mandated maximum and the minimum is mostly a suggestion. We also get universally negotiated percentage raises every now and then, but it's like 1-2%. Personal raises are on top of that and can be a LOT more. The maximum cap sounds just stupid. When you hit the limit, why would you do anything past the absolute minimum to stay at that level?
- Buttons840 9mo ago
  Reminder that unions don't have to do anything about salary. I'd love a tech union that simply says: Every time an on-call engineer has to work during off-hours, they get compensated 4x that time in PTO, and that PTO must be used during the next 30 days, or it is paid out at 20x their normal hourly rate. This ensures everyone shares in the burden of off-hours work. If off-hours work is happening often, then engineers are going to be spending a lot of time away on PTO, and if the company pressures them to not take the PTO, then the company is going to be paying them a lot. Let's align incentives, I don't want to work on off-hours emergencies, and the company doesn't want me to either. No mention of pay anywhere. Unions can do a lot of good without ever touching pay.
  - Muromec 9mo ago
    >Reminder that unions don't have to do anything about salary. The union is the party that negotiates my annual salary increases that are not performance related. They will however not negotiate it up to FANG level because it's not FANG and I'm not in US. I will also get mostly the same comp as the guys on the left and on the right even if they aren't really bright (I'm not either). >Every time an on-call engineer has to work during off-hours, they get compensated 4x that time in PTO, and that PTO must be used during the next 30 days, or it is paid out at 20x their normal hourly rate. why not 100x? why work off hours anyway?
  - bob001 9mo ago
    Unions aren't about what you want them to be about but what the average member wants them to be about. More or less.
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
- DarkNova6 9mo ago
  What you are saying is that companies would want to pay theor employees more money, but they can’t because of unions. Sorry, hard sell.
  - pif 9mo ago
    > companies would want to pay theor employees more money, but they can’t because of unions Well, inkind-of sort-of makes sense. It happens that companies would like to spread the salary increase budget as they please, while unions tend to request that the lowest salaries get a larger share.
- fastasucan 9mo ago
  >Not just that, but the union would likely end up capping their salary much lower so the wealth can be spread around My union have never done that, why would it?
Herring 9mo ago
Again see Steve. Something can look like a good position and still rapidly deteriorate. This one wasn’t that rapid either, you had plenty of warning. I remember discussing inequality with friends in 2014, and probably knew about it since Occupy Wall Street (2011). Or earlier.
- bob001 9mo ago
  Engineers were the privileged class. They were part of the group occupy wall street wanted to bring down. Not hard to guess why they didn't want that.
  - mothballed 9mo ago
    I would say more precisely, engineers are closer to the managerial or capital wielding class; usually the adversary of the union.
    - OhMeadhbh 9mo ago
      i disagree. i also disagree that most people developing tech solutions for startups are engineers or are applying an engineering discipline. but i would agree that the majority of people in valley tech firms are closer to the rentier class than they are to working engineers.
    - nebula8804 9mo ago
      They are closer but they are not part of the class so does it really matter how close they are? Engineer still has to trade their time for wealth in the form of work. Capital class has assets that work for them.
      - bob001 9mo ago
        To me the only question is if there's a hypothetical revolution who will end up swinging in the wind by their neck and I have no doubt many engineers working for big tech would have been in that group. There's always nice rhetoric and focused rhetoric to not make too many enemies but the people on the ground differentiate a lot less and have in every revolution.
nonethewiser 9mo ago
Still do
mji 9mo ago
Until recently? Now it's 20x at the AI labs instead of 5x at FAANG.
Muromec 9mo ago
>A decent engineer in the US could make 5x their equivalent in most European nations. Staff+ engineers at FAANG could make 5x that. People in a good position tend to not like rocking the boat. So... 500k is the normal pay and 2.5mil is the staff+ pay, right? How many people you know actually make that?
- TuxSH 9mo ago
  SWE rarely earn $100k gross/yr TC in Western European nations. It's closer to $50k~$80k in many cases.
  - KptMarchewa 9mo ago
    It's higher in Poland lol.
    - zipy124 9mo ago
      Source? Levels.fyi puts it at $67k median. Glassdoor puts it at closer to $40k. Neither of these are above the levels given above.
  - Muromec 9mo ago
    I rounded up a bit for nicer numbers, but it's more like 75-95 than 50-80 this year.
    - TuxSH 9mo ago
      For good companies; there are _quite_ a few companies that underpay and not as many interesting job opportunities. Let's just say "at least 2x~2.5" and move on. Also, even if you did not mention it, UK is a bit of a special case (English-speaking countries that has thus been attracting quite a lot of international talent (and companies) at least until recently), I wouldn't put it in the same bucket as EU countries.
      - Muromec 9mo ago
ta-asdo989 9mo ago
I had a job in twenty-nine When everything was going fine I knew the pace was pretty fast But thought that it would always last When organizers came to town I'd always sneer and turn them down I thought the boss was my best friend He'd stick by me to the end Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay! Ain't got a word to say He chiseled down my pay Then took my job away "Boom" went the boom one day It made a noise that way I wish I had been wise Next time I'll organize

by bob001 9mo ago

al_borland 9mo ago

Not just that, but the union would likely end up capping their salary much lower so the wealth can be spread around. How hard is the 10x engineer on the team going to work when the compensation is the same regardless? This is where people end up working multiple jobs, if they can keep up with their peers only working one day per week.

denkmoon 9mo ago
That's right, no more "10xers" working 80 hr weeks making those who can't or won't look unproductive.
KittenInABox 9mo ago
Couldn't unions just follow actors' guilds and the like where there are no salary caps?
- karaterobot 9mo ago
  When we're looking to the actors guilds for direction, you know the future of our industry might be in trouble.
- bob001 9mo ago
  It's not your choice. It's the choice of the average union member.
data-ottawa 9mo ago
I find it hard to believe workers would vote for a union to lower or cap their wages. That feels like a total straw man. In my experience unions suck when they overemphasize fairness over real world practicalities (see almost anything seniority based). They don't have to be that way.
- bob001 9mo ago
  There is a large pay disparity. Why wouldn't someone at the 50th percentile vote to have those at the 95th get lower salaries so the 50th percentile goes up a bit?
  - acdha 9mo ago
    That’s not how unions work negotiations work, and the younger worker getting paid less is 100% thinking that they’ll be the senior guy some day.
    - bob001 9mo ago
      "Senior". Looks like you've already made it a tenure and not output based pay system. Which I think proves exactly what people don't like about unions or those who push for them. In an output based system the number of high level people is relatively small and terminal level is far from the top level. It doesn't take much for people to realize that there's little chance of them becoming an L8 so why shouldn't an L8 get paid less? Moreover in my experience people have little insight into the value those at higher levels provide so will consider them dead weight.
      - Muromec 9mo ago
        It's both really and that's why the scale is capped. Union shops still have compensation levels. If your pay is defined as 85% of a scale L8 and the collective agreement says it gets increased by 2 and half percentage points each year, you will eventually reach 100% and will just sit there and still make 10k less than L9. The scale itself is adjusted yearly.
      - acdha 9mo ago
        You’re welcome to try to get the entire industry to stop referring to junior and senior developers, engineers, etc. but most people know that experience is a distinguishing characteristic. The other huge mistake you’re making is assuming that compensation is based on performance in non-union shops. It certainly can be but almost everyone will collect counter examples as they get more career experience. I would suggest considering who stands to benefit the most from the belief that high-performers don’t need unions, and whether the same companies which have been found guilty of wage-suppression would be above funding amplification for that sentiment. Tech workers gave up a ton of bargaining power for decades and while we certainly aren’t badly paid it’s worth remembering how, say, that settlement with Apple, Google, et al. didn’t fully make up the difference, not to mention the number of former high-fliers who hit things like the ageism wall long before they wanted to retire. In an uneven market with a huge imbalance in data visibility and negotiating power, unilateral disarmament by the weaker side doesn’t seem like the winning strategy.
array_key_first 9mo ago
I think the truth is that there really isn't 10xers, and that's more or less a propaganda technique to get people to crab bucket each other. Of course everyone likes to think they're santa's special engineer, so they don't need hurdles like protections and a level playing field. But, simultaneously, the industry has been doing everything in its power to make engineers as fungible as possible. The "wet dream" is to make engineers practically assembly line workers - you can just plop some rando in at any time, and it'll probably be fine. You can see this with the extreme turnover in a lot of the industry. These concepts are in almost perfection contradiction, but they both have the same goal: to convince you and me that the status quo is desirable for each of us personally.
- Muromec 9mo ago
  There aren't 10x ers, but there are definetly 0.15xers
- bob001 9mo ago
  There are those who can provide 10x output in certain kinds of problems. Either due to experience or however their minds work. If their output is as a tech lead then even a 2x can provide an overall 10x increase through second order impact via their team. There are also those who provide 0.5x and 0.1x output on a wide range of problems.
  - acdha 9mo ago
    > If their output is as a tech lead then even a 2x can provide an overall 10x increase through second order impact via their team. This is something the 10x mythology tends to leave out: there are a vanishingly few people who are significantly above the 90th percentile in terms of individual productivity but if the discussion shifted to team dynamics, that’s where you can actually see really big gains by helping a larger group be more productive.
    - bob001 9mo ago
      I think its also that few companies have a way to allow a 10x individual productivity engineer to focus on just the things they are 10x as good at. It's almost never everything. Once you add in meetings, politics, proposals, perf ladder requirements, mentoring, code reviews, etc. the result is a regression to the mean.
theshrike79 9mo ago
Why the fuck would an union cap anyones salary? Is this an American thing? Over here the purpose of unions is to: Provide a strong enough legal response and guidance to deter companies from trying shady shit, pay better unemployment fees than the government and provide training/networking. They also negotiate collectively with the employers on behalf of everyone for things like paid sick leave, paid vacations etc. I pay a flat fee every month because the union I'm in has always had relatively low unemployment, for others it's usually a percentage of their monthly gross salary (usually around 10-50€). In what scenario would capping people's salary be good for the workers?
- joe_mamba 9mo ago
  >Why the fuck would an union cap anyones salary? Is this an American thing? No, it's a thing in most of Europe like France or Germany for unionized trades. All trades there have publicly documented salary bands based on education and YoE per job, where the negotiations starting point for a wage for a position must not be below the minimum threshold but also can't exceed a certain upper threshold. In some cases, the company can decide to place you outside the union agreed tariff/band range to give you a higher wage, but then you might be exempt from some strict union rules like 35h/week working hours and such. And they cap the top end of the salary bands because the yearly budget for wage increases is a fixed pie for most companies, and so to have money left to give entry level workers the great wage increases as mandated for by unions, they need to cap the increases to the top wages to prevent bleeding/bankruptcy. Do you think all European companies have unlimited money to give all their workers X% wage increases? This is how it works in Austria.
  - ernst_klim 9mo ago
    Same in Germany. That's why usually Max Mustermann (55) get's a better compensation for doing bare minimum than you for doing more work. But in case of layoffs you will be kicked out first and he would be kicked out the last and with a far better severance package.
  - theshrike79 9mo ago
    In Finland we have salary bands for some jobs, but it's usually just the minimum. Some have a maximum, but there are always "personal bonuses" the employer can give on top of that. But these are usually "old" professions like teachers, nurses, factory workers. For IT jobs I haven't seen an official salary band anywhere and there basically is no union mandated maximum and the minimum is mostly a suggestion. We also get universally negotiated percentage raises every now and then, but it's like 1-2%. Personal raises are on top of that and can be a LOT more. The maximum cap sounds just stupid. When you hit the limit, why would you do anything past the absolute minimum to stay at that level?
Buttons840 9mo ago
Reminder that unions don't have to do anything about salary. I'd love a tech union that simply says: Every time an on-call engineer has to work during off-hours, they get compensated 4x that time in PTO, and that PTO must be used during the next 30 days, or it is paid out at 20x their normal hourly rate. This ensures everyone shares in the burden of off-hours work. If off-hours work is happening often, then engineers are going to be spending a lot of time away on PTO, and if the company pressures them to not take the PTO, then the company is going to be paying them a lot. Let's align incentives, I don't want to work on off-hours emergencies, and the company doesn't want me to either. No mention of pay anywhere. Unions can do a lot of good without ever touching pay.
- Muromec 9mo ago
  >Reminder that unions don't have to do anything about salary. The union is the party that negotiates my annual salary increases that are not performance related. They will however not negotiate it up to FANG level because it's not FANG and I'm not in US. I will also get mostly the same comp as the guys on the left and on the right even if they aren't really bright (I'm not either). >Every time an on-call engineer has to work during off-hours, they get compensated 4x that time in PTO, and that PTO must be used during the next 30 days, or it is paid out at 20x their normal hourly rate. why not 100x? why work off hours anyway?
- bob001 9mo ago
  Unions aren't about what you want them to be about but what the average member wants them to be about. More or less.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
DarkNova6 9mo ago
What you are saying is that companies would want to pay theor employees more money, but they can’t because of unions. Sorry, hard sell.
- pif 9mo ago
  > companies would want to pay theor employees more money, but they can’t because of unions Well, inkind-of sort-of makes sense. It happens that companies would like to spread the salary increase budget as they please, while unions tend to request that the lowest salaries get a larger share.
fastasucan 9mo ago
>Not just that, but the union would likely end up capping their salary much lower so the wealth can be spread around My union have never done that, why would it?

Herring 9mo ago

Again see Steve. Something can look like a good position and still rapidly deteriorate. This one wasn’t that rapid either, you had plenty of warning. I remember discussing inequality with friends in 2014, and probably knew about it since Occupy Wall Street (2011). Or earlier.

bob001 9mo ago
Engineers were the privileged class. They were part of the group occupy wall street wanted to bring down. Not hard to guess why they didn't want that.
- mothballed 9mo ago
  I would say more precisely, engineers are closer to the managerial or capital wielding class; usually the adversary of the union.
  - OhMeadhbh 9mo ago
    i disagree. i also disagree that most people developing tech solutions for startups are engineers or are applying an engineering discipline. but i would agree that the majority of people in valley tech firms are closer to the rentier class than they are to working engineers.
  - nebula8804 9mo ago
    They are closer but they are not part of the class so does it really matter how close they are? Engineer still has to trade their time for wealth in the form of work. Capital class has assets that work for them.
    - bob001 9mo ago
      To me the only question is if there's a hypothetical revolution who will end up swinging in the wind by their neck and I have no doubt many engineers working for big tech would have been in that group. There's always nice rhetoric and focused rhetoric to not make too many enemies but the people on the ground differentiate a lot less and have in every revolution.

nonethewiser 9mo ago

Still do

mji 9mo ago

Until recently? Now it's 20x at the AI labs instead of 5x at FAANG.

Muromec 9mo ago

>A decent engineer in the US could make 5x their equivalent in most European nations. Staff+ engineers at FAANG could make 5x that. People in a good position tend to not like rocking the boat. So... 500k is the normal pay and 2.5mil is the staff+ pay, right? How many people you know actually make that?

TuxSH 9mo ago
SWE rarely earn $100k gross/yr TC in Western European nations. It's closer to $50k~$80k in many cases.
- KptMarchewa 9mo ago
  It's higher in Poland lol.
  - zipy124 9mo ago
    Source? Levels.fyi puts it at $67k median. Glassdoor puts it at closer to $40k. Neither of these are above the levels given above.
- Muromec 9mo ago
  I rounded up a bit for nicer numbers, but it's more like 75-95 than 50-80 this year.
  - TuxSH 9mo ago
    For good companies; there are _quite_ a few companies that underpay and not as many interesting job opportunities. Let's just say "at least 2x~2.5" and move on. Also, even if you did not mention it, UK is a bit of a special case (English-speaking countries that has thus been attracting quite a lot of international talent (and companies) at least until recently), I wouldn't put it in the same bucket as EU countries.
    - Muromec 9mo ago

ta-asdo989 9mo ago

I had a job in twenty-nine When everything was going fine I knew the pace was pretty fast But thought that it would always last When organizers came to town I'd always sneer and turn them down I thought the boss was my best friend He'd stick by me to the end Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay! Ain't got a word to say He chiseled down my pay Then took my job away "Boom" went the boom one day It made a noise that way I wish I had been wise Next time I'll organize