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Perhaps engineers' actual value is far in excess of their salaries? It seems like if it wasn't, there'd be no reason to collude. Does anyone collude to preven

Perhaps engineers' actual value is far in excess of their salaries? It seems like if it wasn't, there'd be no reason to collude. Does anyone collude to prevent bakers from switching bakeries?

chaz 13y ago
All companies expect to get more value from the employee than what they are paying the employee. Knowledge workers tend to have high -- sometimes very high -- switching costs. I have no bakery experience, but I bet I can hire a replacement baker with less disruption than a replacement tech worker.
JacobJans 13y ago
Do you know anything about the bakery industry? Have you ever worked at a local artisan bakery?
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  If you're going to ask a rhetorical question with that tone, at least provide some information. I don't know, is the "local artisan bakery" market hot enough to actually collude to prevent bakers from switching? I know nothing about bakeries, but I thought smaller ones usually were run by the owners. From what I do know about food creation, there is a huge surplus of candidates and people with jobs are happy to not be washing dishes. (My sister was considering a $60K degree in baking and that was the summary that graduates gave her.) So the GP comment seems to be making a valid point. If you have some insight into the "local artisan bakery" world, share it with us instead of providing an slightly insulting, information free, apparently offended comment.
- 001sky 13y ago
  Artisan bakery with 30,000 employees is a complete strawman. If you knew anything about the industry of baking, this would be obvious. Or are you a believer in the industrial production of "artisan" goods?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
dangero 13y ago
Of course the value exceeds the salaries. If you look at a company like Apple right now, they basically have unlimited money to pay salaries based off of proceeds from products that are built by their engineering team. Any budget that a department has at Apple is made up by some executive based on some crazy formula of expected returns. It has nothing to do with what they can afford. That means they could literally double every engineer's salary tomorrow and it wouldn't really change much for their bottom line. In an environment like that where money is not scarce but engineering skills are, how can the salaries not climb and how can small companies even DREAM of competing? Or course the big players don't want to get into a bidding war because they know both sides can afford to pay a lot more. One of my recent jobs was VP of Tech for a small startup. They offered me what they could afford plus equity. The product they were working on was not going to be Facebook size. I think realistically they could have had a 100 million dollar buyout in 5ish years if everything went well. OR they could have gone broke. They gave me 1% of the company in my package which is huge, but that means I'm gambling on the success of this startup for a hopeful payout of 1 million dollars in 5 or so years. At the same time this was happening a few of my friends took jobs at Apple and guess what? They were offered packages that basically meant they would make as much as I did in 5 years if I were to get the million. So, where was my upside? I'm taking on all this risk just to break even with what I could make working at Apple best case. The job market is crazy right now and it stands to get a lot crazier.

Perhaps engineers' actual value is far in excess of their salaries? It seems like if it wasn't, there'd be no reason to collude. Does anyone collude to prevent bakers from switching bakeries?

chaz 13y ago

All companies expect to get more value from the employee than what they are paying the employee. Knowledge workers tend to have high -- sometimes very high -- switching costs. I have no bakery experience, but I bet I can hire a replacement baker with less disruption than a replacement tech worker.

JacobJans 13y ago

Do you know anything about the bakery industry? Have you ever worked at a local artisan bakery?

MichaelGG 13y ago
If you're going to ask a rhetorical question with that tone, at least provide some information. I don't know, is the "local artisan bakery" market hot enough to actually collude to prevent bakers from switching? I know nothing about bakeries, but I thought smaller ones usually were run by the owners. From what I do know about food creation, there is a huge surplus of candidates and people with jobs are happy to not be washing dishes. (My sister was considering a $60K degree in baking and that was the summary that graduates gave her.) So the GP comment seems to be making a valid point. If you have some insight into the "local artisan bakery" world, share it with us instead of providing an slightly insulting, information free, apparently offended comment.
001sky 13y ago
Artisan bakery with 30,000 employees is a complete strawman. If you knew anything about the industry of baking, this would be obvious. Or are you a believer in the industrial production of "artisan" goods?
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

dangero 13y ago

Of course the value exceeds the salaries. If you look at a company like Apple right now, they basically have unlimited money to pay salaries based off of proceeds from products that are built by their engineering team. Any budget that a department has at Apple is made up by some executive based on some crazy formula of expected returns. It has nothing to do with what they can afford. That means they could literally double every engineer's salary tomorrow and it wouldn't really change much for their bottom line. In an environment like that where money is not scarce but engineering skills are, how can the salaries not climb and how can small companies even DREAM of competing? Or course the big players don't want to get into a bidding war because they know both sides can afford to pay a lot more. One of my recent jobs was VP of Tech for a small startup. They offered me what they could afford plus equity. The product they were working on was not going to be Facebook size. I think realistically they could have had a 100 million dollar buyout in 5ish years if everything went well. OR they could have gone broke. They gave me 1% of the company in my package which is huge, but that means I'm gambling on the success of this startup for a hopeful payout of 1 million dollars in 5 or so years. At the same time this was happening a few of my friends took jobs at Apple and guess what? They were offered packages that basically meant they would make as much as I did in 5 years if I were to get the million. So, where was my upside? I'm taking on all this risk just to break even with what I could make working at Apple best case. The job market is crazy right now and it stands to get a lot crazier.