3 ms·

> "decades of overinflated engineering salaries" 'Overinflated' relative to what? You make some good points but I don't accept this as a premise.

schmidtleonard 7mo ago
Overinflated relative to the wet dreams of the ownership class.
- gruez 7mo ago
  It's not exactly stuff of "wet dreams of the ownership class" to say that of the possible white collar careers, software engineering is pretty hard to beat in terms of salary vs work you need to put in.
  - schmidtleonard 7mo ago
    This is a story of other careers having salaries pushed down relative to inflating essentials and the resulting economic surplus being squeezed into asset portfolios. It's a story of rich people getting paid for being rich in proportion to how rich they are and soaking up more than 100% of economic growth for the last 50 years. Not a story of software engineers working for a living and getting what would have been a blue-collar salary for it.
  - financltravsty 7mo ago
    Compensation is usually more tightly coupled with leverage, rather than "work."
  - mono442 7mo ago
    Average salaries for software engineering seem higher compared to other professions because the jobs are mostly in the most expensive to live cities. There's no swe jobs in smaller towns but they're jobs for e.g. accountants.
fcarraldo 7mo ago
Well, not GP, but I do. Let’s look at the numbers: Median senior SWE salaries in SF: https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/levels/senior/locations/san-francisco-bay-area https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/levels/senior/loc... Median income in metro areas: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/11/the-median-salary-for-the-25-biggest-us-citiessee-how-you-compare.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/11/the-median-salary-for-the-25... Engineering salaries are significantly higher than nearly every other industry on average and on median. Much of this is driven by VC funding rather than sound, profitable, bootstrapped businesses with sustainable profit margins. Engineering salaries have also been driven upwards significantly the past ~10 years (since the post-2008 crash recovery), while wage growth in the US is mostly stagnant. I don’t have a source handy for that, but there are plentiful studies. Outside of the US this may be less true, but I took GP’s “most of us on HN” to mean people who work in US tech companies which are primarily concentrated in high COI areas.
- rileymichael 7mo ago
  > Engineering salaries are significantly higher than nearly every other industry on average and on median now compare the profit per employee at tech (software engineering) companies and those industries..
  - fcarraldo 7mo ago
    At the top end (say, top 100 tech companies) it’s pretty high indeed. Public companies, for sure, as otherwise their stock price would tank. It’s not uncommon in this industry to have margins above 70-80%. But there are thousands if not tens of thousands where the profit per employee is minimal or negative. I can’t find a source for all tech (the data wouldn’t exist for private firms anyway) but I think it’s telling to look at this list, scroll down to about the middle and look around at salaries you or your colleagues are pulling. Software revenues are certainly high but the industry is afloat because of these high margin businesses creating returns so that low margin businesses can exist. Without the massive infusion in upfront capital, very uncommon in other industries, it’s simply not sustainable. Typically a market that’s buoyed by its top performers but has significant amounts of capital tied up in under performers is called “a bubble”. https://www.trueup.io/revenue-per-employee https://www.trueup.io/revenue-per-employee

schmidtleonard 7mo ago

Overinflated relative to the wet dreams of the ownership class.

gruez 7mo ago
It's not exactly stuff of "wet dreams of the ownership class" to say that of the possible white collar careers, software engineering is pretty hard to beat in terms of salary vs work you need to put in.
- schmidtleonard 7mo ago
  This is a story of other careers having salaries pushed down relative to inflating essentials and the resulting economic surplus being squeezed into asset portfolios. It's a story of rich people getting paid for being rich in proportion to how rich they are and soaking up more than 100% of economic growth for the last 50 years. Not a story of software engineers working for a living and getting what would have been a blue-collar salary for it.
- financltravsty 7mo ago
  Compensation is usually more tightly coupled with leverage, rather than "work."
- mono442 7mo ago
  Average salaries for software engineering seem higher compared to other professions because the jobs are mostly in the most expensive to live cities. There's no swe jobs in smaller towns but they're jobs for e.g. accountants.

fcarraldo 7mo ago

Well, not GP, but I do. Let’s look at the numbers: Median senior SWE salaries in SF: https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/levels/senior/locations/san-francisco-bay-area https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/levels/senior/loc... Median income in metro areas: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/11/the-median-salary-for-the-25-biggest-us-citiessee-how-you-compare.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/11/the-median-salary-for-the-25... Engineering salaries are significantly higher than nearly every other industry on average and on median. Much of this is driven by VC funding rather than sound, profitable, bootstrapped businesses with sustainable profit margins. Engineering salaries have also been driven upwards significantly the past ~10 years (since the post-2008 crash recovery), while wage growth in the US is mostly stagnant. I don’t have a source handy for that, but there are plentiful studies. Outside of the US this may be less true, but I took GP’s “most of us on HN” to mean people who work in US tech companies which are primarily concentrated in high COI areas.

rileymichael 7mo ago
> Engineering salaries are significantly higher than nearly every other industry on average and on median now compare the profit per employee at tech (software engineering) companies and those industries..
- fcarraldo 7mo ago
  At the top end (say, top 100 tech companies) it’s pretty high indeed. Public companies, for sure, as otherwise their stock price would tank. It’s not uncommon in this industry to have margins above 70-80%. But there are thousands if not tens of thousands where the profit per employee is minimal or negative. I can’t find a source for all tech (the data wouldn’t exist for private firms anyway) but I think it’s telling to look at this list, scroll down to about the middle and look around at salaries you or your colleagues are pulling. Software revenues are certainly high but the industry is afloat because of these high margin businesses creating returns so that low margin businesses can exist. Without the massive infusion in upfront capital, very uncommon in other industries, it’s simply not sustainable. Typically a market that’s buoyed by its top performers but has significant amounts of capital tied up in under performers is called “a bubble”. https://www.trueup.io/revenue-per-employee https://www.trueup.io/revenue-per-employee