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A really bold and fair move would be to pay them comparable to their developers and other staff. Of course not going to happen anytime soon.

• johnbabboozle 11y ago
  Why is that fair? They don't have the same education (in general), they aren't doing the same job, they don't contribute the same value, etc etc etc.
  • calibraxis 11y ago
    One dev (who I gave a plum job to) used exactly those arguments. When trying to dissuade me from helping marginalized coworkers with thieving bosses. I shrugged, and decided to stop helping his sociopathic entitled white male self. (And got him to occasionally help people nobler than him, as I had sufficient power to do so.)
    • cbd1984 11y ago
      > his sociopathic entitled white male self You're a bigot. You're a sexist and a racist. Flagged.
  • danbruc 11y ago
    Why should a developer working 40 hours a week earn more than say someone cleaning toilets 40 hours a week? Both are investing 40 hours of their time, both add value worth 40 hours of work. Actually cleaning toilets seems a way less pleasant job and should be paid better. On the other hand the developer spend more time in education not getting paid and has to recapture this investment. They would probably not end up with the exact same wages but I see no justification for enormous differences. The supply and demand situation is of course very different allowing developers to ask for high wages and on the other hand allows forcing the toilet cleaner to work for a low wage but this does by no means make this fair.
    • Lawtonfogle 11y ago
      Because one skill takes vastly more investment to perform and it also is able to be performed by far fewer individuals (meaning competition for those that do exist).
      • danbruc 11y ago
        As I said it is of course totally okay to get back the investment you made with your longer education. But the difference over the lifetime between being a developer and a toilet cleaner is way larger than that. Your second points is just exploiting the supply and demand situation - you can ask for a higher wage if your skill is rare but it does not mean you deserve it.
        • Lawtonfogle 11y ago
          Why do you deserve to get back the investment made on the education? Is 'deserving' an oracle, where you stick in some action and it arbitrarily assigns the conclusion of 'does' or 'doesn't'?
          • danbruc 11y ago
            Let's ignore supply and demand for the moment. What would be a fair wage? I argue it would be fair to get paid as much as you invest, an hour of work is an hour of work, in first approximation no matter what you do. Pretending to work obviously doesn't count, you really have to work as good as you can. If you do a hard job, say risking your health in a mine, you should get paid better because of that. There should also be some gradient to account for skill and experience compared with others doing the same or similar work. And if you spend several years at university to obtain the skills required for the job this is an upfront investment that has to be paid back by the wage or their might be a lack of incentives to go down this road. In essence it really boils down to you invest an hour of your lifetime - working or upfront to get prepared for the job - and you get paid for that hour, what exactly you do does not matter much modulo some adjustments for especially risky or unpleasant jobs.
• calibraxis 11y ago
  That I would love. Not only did my colleagues generally have less pay, but less privilege and empowerment too. (They'd labor under an abusive-ass boss while I could determine how I best work.) Pretty rotten system we've got.