The job I work supplies a tier 1 automotive supplier. I haven't felt anything from the strike yet, which by the sounds of Mr. Fain is somewhat intentional. I worry for my job security and getting...
The job I work supplies a tier 1 automotive supplier. I haven't felt anything from the strike yet, which by the sounds of Mr. Fain is somewhat intentional.
I worry for my job security and getting laid off in the weeks to come, but the UAWs collective bargaining trickles all the way down to me too. Maybe not all the benefits, but at least it forces a competitive salary.
I don't think you're likely to ever see IT and software unionize before actual socialism is established. the wages are too high and the solidarity is too low. A majority of software engineers I've...
I don't think you're likely to ever see IT and software unionize before actual socialism is established. the wages are too high and the solidarity is too low.
A majority of software engineers I've interacted with genuinely believe they're smarter/work harder/are better than everyone else just by virtue of getting paid too much money for their labor.
Really? Most of the people I work with (including myself) know full well that we aren't smarter or harder working than anyone else. To some extent we pride ourselves on not working hard (in theory...
A majority of software engineers I've interacted with genuinely believe they're smarter/work harder/are better than everyone else just by virtue of getting paid too much money for their labor.
Really? Most of the people I work with (including myself) know full well that we aren't smarter or harder working than anyone else. To some extent we pride ourselves on not working hard (in theory by finding efficient solutions to problems, practically by listening to podcasts during work hours).
In most of the groups I hang out in, we acknowledge that we are overpaid and it is really nice that the current market makes it hard to hire us. A lot of us are just kind of hoarding our money and praying that the bubble keeps getting bigger for as long as it can. Outside the US, the pay discrepancy between IT and other jobs is not nearly as crazy, so there is clearly no innate reason that it has to be this way.
Agreed. I'm going to enjoy this while it lasted, but I'm not banking on it lasting until I retire. For now, I'll squirrel away as much money as I can for the darker days that likely lie ahead. But...
Agreed. I'm going to enjoy this while it lasted, but I'm not banking on it lasting until I retire. For now, I'll squirrel away as much money as I can for the darker days that likely lie ahead.
But no, I don't think I'm better or smarter than anyone else. I tell my wife all the time that I'm grossly overpaid for what I do (she works at a hospital but I make 5x what she does).
I feel really guilty about it a lot. I talked to my ex wife about it a lot, she was a bookkeeper who busted her ass working 60+ hours a week. I'm a network engineer, and I got paid 3x as much as...
I feel really guilty about it a lot. I talked to my ex wife about it a lot, she was a bookkeeper who busted her ass working 60+ hours a week. I'm a network engineer, and I got paid 3x as much as she did, and I played video games half the time I was supposed to be working.
It just so happened that I grew up being nerdy and into computers and she didn't. It's not like I slaved away to learn the things I know, I learned them because I happened to enjoy most of it.
I make more than all of my friends despite being a genuinely awful, D student, doing the bare minimum in college, and mostly just coasting by. It feels pretty unfair when I see my friends working constantly and barely scraping by.
I've tried tutoring various friends and acquaintances in basic IT stuff, but I've come to realize that unless it's something you're interested in, you're not really going to stick with it or be any good at it.
This is why it is a valuable skill set. Very few people can actually hack it at anything more technical than helpdesk roles which are mostly scripted. It doesn't matter that you got some Cs or Ds...
I've come to realize that unless it's something you're interested in, you're not really going to stick with it or be any good at it.
This is why it is a valuable skill set. Very few people can actually hack it at anything more technical than helpdesk roles which are mostly scripted.
It doesn't matter that you got some Cs or Ds on a report card, or how many years you've been working. What counts are the skills you have that add value to the company that employs you.
Engineers, IT workers, etc. are not overpaid - we just aren't as underpaid as other careers.
I run the technical part of our "early in career" new-hire and internship program for our department. Having worked with people at varying levels of interest in the field, I totally agree with...
I've tried tutoring various friends and acquaintances in basic IT stuff, but I've come to realize that unless it's something you're interested in, you're not really going to stick with it or be any good at it.
I run the technical part of our "early in career" new-hire and internship program for our department. Having worked with people at varying levels of interest in the field, I totally agree with this. The need to constantly re-tool in this field in order to keep up with ever-changing technology trends requires at least some interest, since you'll have to constantly learn and re-learn your craft. I do think that it requires at least some degree of interest to be successful. I don't believe that necessarily you have to be one of those people who also code/tinker on their off-time (I've had plenty of arguments with managers about this), but this industry can be a grind and you do need some degree of enjoyment or satisfaction in order to counter that.
This has just been in my experience with talking with software engineers. There's a lot of them that are decent people like you and me, but the default state seems to be "fuck you, I got mine"
This has just been in my experience with talking with software engineers. There's a lot of them that are decent people like you and me, but the default state seems to be "fuck you, I got mine"
I want to push back on this; isn't one of the core arguments the labour movement makes that employees are not paid in line with the value that they create and therefore they should be paid more...
A majority of software engineers I've interacted with genuinely believe they're smarter/work harder/are better than everyone else just by virtue of getting paid too much money for their labor.
I want to push back on this; isn't one of the core arguments the labour movement makes that employees are not paid in line with the value that they create and therefore they should be paid more (to capture more of this output)? From a certain perspective for software engineers to be being "paid too much" their output (measured in terms of money they make their company) would have to be lower than their salaries. I suspect that most companies do not hire people on this basis (those that do tend to go bankrupt).
I think the correct takeaway when you see a profession where salaries is high is not "damn, they make too much money, let's campaign for them to make less" but rather "why are we paid less relative to the value we create than software engineers are".
If there's a real case where people are making "too much" money it's wealth and capital returns.
In a vacuum yes, but software companies are overvalued as hell. Software engineers get paid 'too much' because the companies they work at are unsustainable. A lot of these companies are now...
In a vacuum yes, but software companies are overvalued as hell. Software engineers get paid 'too much' because the companies they work at are unsustainable. A lot of these companies are now running around shitting their pants because the ZIRP free money faucet has dried up and now they have to run an actual company and not just burn VC money for a decade and get bought by Oracle.
Solidarity is unlikely to happen widely among software engineers because that would require us to be class traitors. We are literally the 'haves'; I bought a condo at 24 and it's actually feasible for me to own a home in totality before I'm 40. The only way for a more equitable economy to arise is for us to be a little worse off. Personally I'm fine with that because I'd rather everyone be happier and thus more productive and thus I would have better experiences at restaurants and stores and just generally when interacting with other people. But a lot of software engineers are just greedy.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's still worth trying, because if we can show them that a better, happier, more equitable world is possible I think we can convince them. But this is just my experience in industry: most software engineers I have talked to know how bad things are, they just don't care because they're getting paid through the nose.
Just a quibble, but software engineers aren't part of the "ownership class"/bourgeois, so solidarity among them wouldn't be class treachery. Class isn't about how much money you make, it's about...
Just a quibble, but software engineers aren't part of the "ownership class"/bourgeois, so solidarity among them wouldn't be class treachery. Class isn't about how much money you make, it's about what you own, and engineers don't own their means of production (which in software, is largely about IP and brand recognition).
That's true, but while they aren't actually part of the bourgeois they are generally thrown more scraps than the people at the bottom so they start to think of themselves as, to crib a phrase from...
That's true, but while they aren't actually part of the bourgeois they are generally thrown more scraps than the people at the bottom so they start to think of themselves as, to crib a phrase from a more eloquent man, temporarily embarrassed billionaires.
Regardless, my point is mostly summarizable as 'good luck getting the crabs at the top of the bucket to work with the crabs at the bottom.' I still think we have to because I do firmly believe that it's socialism or barbarism, but it's not going to be easy.
There are a lot of douche bag tech bros out there. But I gotta be honest - most software engineers in Silicon Valley do not think of themselves are temporarily embarrassed billionaires. Most of...
There are a lot of douche bag tech bros out there. But I gotta be honest - most software engineers in Silicon Valley do not think of themselves are temporarily embarrassed billionaires. Most of them are just chilling, working short hours and getting paid comfortably. Why would you be a temporarily embarrassed billionaire when you’re legitimately going to be a millionaire in a few years?
Something funny about all this talk of overpaying software engineers - it’s both true and false simultaneously. Why is a fresh college graduate paid $200-250k by Google? That’s definitely overpaid. But also, the company might make a million dollars per year from their output (fix a few bugs for a billion users and the money can add up). So they’re also getting robbed at the same time. Crazy.
I don't really agree that software companies are overvalued (except those mostly owned by PE/VC funds - VC is really just even higher risk PE) , and even if the valuations are too high, I don't...
I don't really agree that software companies are overvalued (except those mostly owned by PE/VC funds - VC is really just even higher risk PE) , and even if the valuations are too high, I don't think that necessarily matters.
Your argument as I understand it is that there are great number of software engineers working for companies whose "valuation is too high" and this is because the company is burning cash and its going concern is leaning towards insolvent. If the "true" value of a company is zero (or negative, but equity financing is so common that few software companies really have a lot of liabilities) because it makes no revenue then, yes that company is going to struggle to pay its employees long term unless it starts to make money.
But this is a pretty extreme case, and most software engineers don't work at such startups. A lot work at big software companies including very big ones such as Apple and Microsoft or smaller but still big ones such as SAP or Oracle. Of course many of these companies are probably overvalued (or their current valuation assumes a lot of future growth which may not occur) but this doesn't mean that they can't pay their employees. Take Apple, for example. Apple made about $400bn in revenue last year and had a profit margin of about 20%. It also spend about 90bn on share buybacks which is great for the small number of very large Apple shareholders. Let's assume that the average Apple employee was paid a salary package of 250k (probably high given a lot of Genius store workers etc). In this case Apple spent a total of 40bn on payroll plus administrative costs (napkin maths assuming 160k employees). You can begin to see here how you can make a convincing case that Apple employees are underpaid, given that Apple could have paid half the amount they did on share buybacks and then paid each worker an extra 250k.
I really think the correct argument is "big tech cos pay their employees more and this makes them more productive so other companies should too".
Yeah, I'm not thinking about FAANG when I say overvalued. The problems with those companies is different and actually would benefit greatly from unionization, I just think it's going to be a hard...
Yeah, I'm not thinking about FAANG when I say overvalued. The problems with those companies is different and actually would benefit greatly from unionization, I just think it's going to be a hard sell when they get paid a quarter of a million dollars to not care about all of the bad things their company is doing. A FAANG union that actually tried to force facebook amazon and google to not be horribly evil would be incredible.
I'm thinking about startups, especially gig economy ones, where they basically only existed because of ZIRP and are never not burning cash. Crypto/web3 and AI startups, guys that don't have a useful product and are just existing off hype.
I really think the correct argument is "big tech cos pay their employees more and this makes them more productive so other companies should too".
You're absolutely right, and I totally agree - I just think you'll have a hard time selling this to software engineers that have been taught their whole careers that their shit don't stink. Again, it's something we'll have to do because the other option is let idiots run our society into the ground, I'm mostly just commenting on the fact that software engineers have a lot to lose by bucking the status quo.
This seems to happen at every level of tech, everyone is conditioned to look down on those under them. I've heard IT project managers refer to our deskside staff as dogs and monkeys. The thing is,...
This seems to happen at every level of tech, everyone is conditioned to look down on those under them. I've heard IT project managers refer to our deskside staff as dogs and monkeys. The thing is, when those same project managers and engineers come up with whatever shiny new re-solution to a problem, it's always the people in the bottom levels patching the holes in that process and stretching themselves so that it even functions.
I think those are the people at the bottom levels who would benefit most from a union, especially now that everyone else is working from home and, if there's some part of their job that needs to be onsite, they're offloading it onto these groups (with no extra compensation, of course). Unfortunately many of the deskside-type staff are usually subcontractors at big companies which means in many states they're not allowed to unionize. A sure sign they're being heavily exploited.
I've had a grab-bag of roles - field support, network/server/data center/DevOps, DB, application support, interfaces, and installation project management. The latest top tier in the hierarchy...
I've had a grab-bag of roles - field support, network/server/data center/DevOps, DB, application support, interfaces, and installation project management. The latest top tier in the hierarchy seems to be cloud engineers... except that a great many of them are badly exploited Indian H1B visa-holding contractors.
There's shit to deal with at every level - "professional" titles and managerial responsibilities aren't any guarantee of equitable treatment, especially in Right-to-Work states.
Things may seem nice in the loosely supervised, tight-knit teams of small companies and startups, but just wait 'til the MBA's, management consultancies, and private equity get involved.
Oh my god this is so true. Even the so-called "imposter syndrome" is just some persecution fetish or some eye-rolling "ugh" thing they do to gain sympathy or generate PR. Behind closed doors, I've...
Oh my god this is so true. Even the so-called "imposter syndrome" is just some persecution fetish or some eye-rolling "ugh" thing they do to gain sympathy or generate PR. Behind closed doors, I've seen the exact same people bully and make fun of others hard. They literally laugh at people and call them idiots. They are also the same people who compare salaries and try to best one another in terms of houses and properties.
That's a particularly uncharitable take. Tech workers may be overpaid, but that doesn't mean that they aren't in over their head. It's a field that continues to change and grow in complexity every...
Even the so-called "imposter syndrome" is just some persecution fetish or some eye-rolling "ugh" thing they do to gain sympathy or generate PR.
That's a particularly uncharitable take. Tech workers may be overpaid, but that doesn't mean that they aren't in over their head. It's a field that continues to change and grow in complexity every single year.
Ten years ago, no developers were having to set up continuous integration, write unit tests, or manage dependencies. They were lucky to be using version control. System admins weren't managing cloud services or containerized servers. Web designers didn't have to plan around 15 different screen dimensions, rotations, and pixel ratios.
Whatever skill you learn today will likely be irrelevant in five years, and forgotten in ten. If you get complacent and stop learning, you'll quickly be outpaced by the churn of hundreds of bootcamps and self-starters who are practicing with the latest tools.
So yes, lots of talented people are joining companies with a different tech stack and feeling completely in over their head. Imposter syndrome is a genuine feeling for many. It isn't some moral sophistry designed to show how much better they are.
Even more than that, the level of things to actually learn is off the charts, and if you don't take the standard career path (something tech is full of) you can wind up being a massive expert in...
Even more than that, the level of things to actually learn is off the charts, and if you don't take the standard career path (something tech is full of) you can wind up being a massive expert in certain areas, but still have blindspots in certain things (raise your hand if you think you're using git to its full power).
I am always really surprised when people say that the hard things in computing are things like programming languages, version control, etc. I agree that they're quite painful, but I think the...
I am always really surprised when people say that the hard things in computing are things like programming languages, version control, etc. I agree that they're quite painful, but I think the actually quite challenging part of the job is more on the taking meaningful performance measurements, ensuring that the program is correct (things like effective probabilistic testing aka "fuzzing") and actually working out how to solve the problems (developing algorithms etc).
I am definitely more on the "academic" side of software and work on software which requires algorithms knowledge (generally performace-sensitive highly concurrent software), so my experience is not necessarily representative of all software engineers.
yes, the actual programming(solving problems, determining what solved means, etc.) is the "hard" part, but the fact that there's a dozen things you have to be proficient in to even properly get to...
yes, the actual programming(solving problems, determining what solved means, etc.) is the "hard" part, but the fact that there's a dozen things you have to be proficient in to even properly get to the hard part is what's being referred to.
in 2010, you just had to know how to pop a server up, and serve on port 80/443, and maybe add in a cert if you had sensitive content. then you can solve the problems. now you are supposed to develop tests, create ci/cd, logging, set up git and organization permissions, and probably a few more things before you even start coding.
I understand what you're saying. But I'm not referring to them. In my comment, I specifically said that I saw these exact same people bullying and name-calling others behind closed doors. It's one...
I understand what you're saying. But I'm not referring to them. In my comment, I specifically said that I saw these exact same people bullying and name-calling others behind closed doors. It's one of those "you'd be telling on yourself" sort of thing.
Every profession has it hard, but none have I ever seen "imposter syndrome" thrown around as hard as in tech, and particularly FANG. I wonder why? But allow me to answer myself: Because a lot of them are actual narcissistic psychosociopaths. Other tech professionals don't even cry persecution and they were the more straightforward bunch.
Did you just completely ignore my first paragraph? I'm referring to a specific subset of people I've seen in the tech industry who cry "imposter syndrome" but crap on others. This isn't a unique...
Did you just completely ignore my first paragraph? I'm referring to a specific subset of people I've seen in the tech industry who cry "imposter syndrome" but crap on others. This isn't a unique experience. I have so many contacts and networks in tech that all report high-functioning, low-EQ sociopaths in tech. They all have this martyr, saint, and persecution complex, with their narcissistic tendencies and ego heightened by their pay.
Your image of an innocent, hard-working IT professional IS NOT what I'm referring to. There is no discussion to be if you just point to an innocent worker and go, "Hey! He's not a sociopath." Like, duh.
The point is that there is an insidious nature that goes on in tech with plenty of egos being thrown around that prevents unionisation. The mere fact that your kind of comments gets 20-30+ votes where mine doesn't only demonstrates this further, even when what I'm talking about, that is huge egos in tech, is as common as daisies during spring.
Your first comment in this chain uses no qualifiers while saying imposter syndrome itself isn’t genuine. Your first reply limits it a little, but still implicates “a lot of them”. Your most recent...
Your first comment in this chain uses no qualifiers while saying imposter syndrome itself isn’t genuine. Your first reply limits it a little, but still implicates “a lot of them”. Your most recent reply shifts a bit at the end to general egos “as common as daisies”.
When you continue painting with such enormous negative brushes, it’s hard to take the small exclusions as anything other than a way to hand-wave away the criticism of your argument.
Fair enough. I wasn't specific enough, although my comment was addressed to another comment about why the tech industry won't ever unionise. I was merely providing a superficial anecdote on their...
Fair enough. I wasn't specific enough, although my comment was addressed to another comment about why the tech industry won't ever unionise. I was merely providing a superficial anecdote on their behalf. I did not mean to refer to or offend any of the unintended recipients.
Pick me! I've had way too many lost vacation days and calls during sick time because of understaffing and no cap (or overtime) for salaried hours. I've had to miss personally paid-for training,...
Pick me! I've had way too many lost vacation days and calls during sick time because of understaffing and no cap (or overtime) for salaried hours.
I've had to miss personally paid-for training, gotten screwed on an employee stock ownership plan (bring back defined benefit pensions!), been discriminated against for wages, had work-related illnesses denied for compensation (don't tell me that IT workers in hospitals aren't vulnerable to infections, and antibiotic-resistant ones are no joke), and been harassed without non-corporate representation... That's not even counting non-competes and NDA's.
If you think that technical/programming work shields you from the workplace abuses of capitalism, think again. I like my current employer, but won't trust them with my well-being. I want wage transparency and a contract with all the details spelled out that binds both parties.
I work in IT but have no interest in joining a union. I'm fortunate to work for a good company that treats and pays us well. I like not having a contract, and being able to make my own career...
I work in IT but have no interest in joining a union. I'm fortunate to work for a good company that treats and pays us well. I like not having a contract, and being able to make my own career decisions. I'm not anti-union in general, I just don't see the need for one in my own situation.
In that case, the reason for a union would be to ensure that in the future, you don't lose things you depend on. You've built a life depending on the pay and benefits that you're currently...
In that case, the reason for a union would be to ensure that in the future, you don't lose things you depend on. You've built a life depending on the pay and benefits that you're currently getting, if they were to change there's very little you can actually do about it as an individual person.
I have also been very fortunate in that the companies I've worked for have treated me fairly well. I've also seen friends and peers get screwed over, and the lesson I've taken away is to always remember that companies are amoral and not human. The individual people in them are usually good people, but companies as an entity do not actually give a shit about you. They will give benefits and good pay for only as long as it makes fiscal sense.
These would all be great reasons to join a larger tech workers union, but it's harder to see where the future is when you work at a tiny company (like many tech workers do). Workers at larger...
These would all be great reasons to join a larger tech workers union, but it's harder to see where the future is when you work at a tiny company (like many tech workers do). Workers at larger companies probably have the numbers to form their own unions, but at a small company like mine it seems silly to have a union for just us, and there's no larger union we could join. I'm agressively pro-union in principle fwiw, I just think I like many workers have no idea what would be a good move practically from here.
Sure there is. If there was some decrease in pay or benefits to the point that I felt I was being compensated unfairly, I'd just change jobs/companies. On the other hand, I don't want to be forced...
if they were to change there's very little you can actually do about it as an individual person.
Sure there is. If there was some decrease in pay or benefits to the point that I felt I was being compensated unfairly, I'd just change jobs/companies. On the other hand, I don't want to be forced out of my job to go on strike if I'm fine with my personal circumstances. I'm talking about my individual circumstance at the place I work now. Maybe I'd feel differently about it if I worked somewhere where I felt that I was being paid or treated unfairly, but that's not the case for me. As far as I know, my colleagues feel similarly. Our company has less than a 5% attrition rate, with some people working here for 20+ years. In general, people like it here and nobody has expressed any kind of interest in introducing a union.
I'm always surprised to hear about calls for unionization in IT. It's a pretty cushy job overall compared to healthcare, auto workers, etc. The examples of worker mistreatment tend to be with specific companies, not with the IT industry as a whole.
That means that the market rate for pay would have change. At that time, I'd evaluate whether I'm still okay making that particular pay for that particular job, or if I'm going to change...
That means that the market rate for pay would have change. At that time, I'd evaluate whether I'm still okay making that particular pay for that particular job, or if I'm going to change industries. Do you think unions are immune to their pay being influenced by market rate? They're absolutely not. Market-specific pay is why I, as a non-union IT worker am making $300k a year while an auto-industry union worker is making $60k. It has nothing to do with unions.
President Joe Biden joined United Auto Workers strikers on a picket line Tuesday as their work stoppage against major carmakers hit day 12, a demonstration of support for organized labor apparently unparalleled in presidential history.
Know more...
“Stick with it,” he told them, exchanging fist bumps with grinning picketers as he walked along the line. “You deserve the significant raise you need,” Biden said through a bullhorn while wearing a union baseball cap after arriving at a General Motors parts distribution warehouse west of Detroit.
He encouraged them to continue fighting for better wages despite concerns that a prolonged strike could slow the economy. He said “yes” when asked if UAW members deserved a 40% raise, one of the demands that the union has made.
He was joined by UAW President Shawn Fain, who rode with him in the presidential limousine to the picket line.
Labor historians say they cannot recall an instance when a sitting president has joined an ongoing strike, even during the tenures of the more ardent pro-union presidents such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman. Theodore Roosevelt invited labor leaders alongside mine operators to the White House amid a historic coal strike in 1902, a decision that was seen at the time as a rare embrace of unions as Roosevelt tried to resolve the dispute.
Biden arrived one day before former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination, goes to Detroit to hold his own event in an attempt to woo auto workers even though union leaders say he’s no ally.
Lawmakers often appear at strikes to show solidarity with unions, But sitting presidents, who have to balance the rights of workers with disruptions to the economy, supply chains and other facets of everyday life, have long wanted to stay out of the strike fray — until Biden.
“If it wasn’t for President Trump, Joe Biden would be giving autoworkers the East Palestine treatment and saying that his schedule was too busy,” said Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller, referring to the small Ohio town that is still grappling with the aftermath of a February train derailment. Biden said he would visit the community but so far has not.
The job I work supplies a tier 1 automotive supplier. I haven't felt anything from the strike yet, which by the sounds of Mr. Fain is somewhat intentional.
I worry for my job security and getting laid off in the weeks to come, but the UAWs collective bargaining trickles all the way down to me too. Maybe not all the benefits, but at least it forces a competitive salary.
Yeah buddy! Now where are my IT people at? You all ready to unionize?
I don't think you're likely to ever see IT and software unionize before actual socialism is established. the wages are too high and the solidarity is too low.
A majority of software engineers I've interacted with genuinely believe they're smarter/work harder/are better than everyone else just by virtue of getting paid too much money for their labor.
Really? Most of the people I work with (including myself) know full well that we aren't smarter or harder working than anyone else. To some extent we pride ourselves on not working hard (in theory by finding efficient solutions to problems, practically by listening to podcasts during work hours).
In most of the groups I hang out in, we acknowledge that we are overpaid and it is really nice that the current market makes it hard to hire us. A lot of us are just kind of hoarding our money and praying that the bubble keeps getting bigger for as long as it can. Outside the US, the pay discrepancy between IT and other jobs is not nearly as crazy, so there is clearly no innate reason that it has to be this way.
Agreed. I'm going to enjoy this while it lasted, but I'm not banking on it lasting until I retire. For now, I'll squirrel away as much money as I can for the darker days that likely lie ahead.
But no, I don't think I'm better or smarter than anyone else. I tell my wife all the time that I'm grossly overpaid for what I do (she works at a hospital but I make 5x what she does).
I feel really guilty about it a lot. I talked to my ex wife about it a lot, she was a bookkeeper who busted her ass working 60+ hours a week. I'm a network engineer, and I got paid 3x as much as she did, and I played video games half the time I was supposed to be working.
It just so happened that I grew up being nerdy and into computers and she didn't. It's not like I slaved away to learn the things I know, I learned them because I happened to enjoy most of it.
I make more than all of my friends despite being a genuinely awful, D student, doing the bare minimum in college, and mostly just coasting by. It feels pretty unfair when I see my friends working constantly and barely scraping by.
I've tried tutoring various friends and acquaintances in basic IT stuff, but I've come to realize that unless it's something you're interested in, you're not really going to stick with it or be any good at it.
This is why it is a valuable skill set. Very few people can actually hack it at anything more technical than helpdesk roles which are mostly scripted.
It doesn't matter that you got some Cs or Ds on a report card, or how many years you've been working. What counts are the skills you have that add value to the company that employs you.
Engineers, IT workers, etc. are not overpaid - we just aren't as underpaid as other careers.
I run the technical part of our "early in career" new-hire and internship program for our department. Having worked with people at varying levels of interest in the field, I totally agree with this. The need to constantly re-tool in this field in order to keep up with ever-changing technology trends requires at least some interest, since you'll have to constantly learn and re-learn your craft. I do think that it requires at least some degree of interest to be successful. I don't believe that necessarily you have to be one of those people who also code/tinker on their off-time (I've had plenty of arguments with managers about this), but this industry can be a grind and you do need some degree of enjoyment or satisfaction in order to counter that.
This has just been in my experience with talking with software engineers. There's a lot of them that are decent people like you and me, but the default state seems to be "fuck you, I got mine"
I want to push back on this; isn't one of the core arguments the labour movement makes that employees are not paid in line with the value that they create and therefore they should be paid more (to capture more of this output)? From a certain perspective for software engineers to be being "paid too much" their output (measured in terms of money they make their company) would have to be lower than their salaries. I suspect that most companies do not hire people on this basis (those that do tend to go bankrupt).
I think the correct takeaway when you see a profession where salaries is high is not "damn, they make too much money, let's campaign for them to make less" but rather "why are we paid less relative to the value we create than software engineers are".
If there's a real case where people are making "too much" money it's wealth and capital returns.
Funny how the people moving money around decided they get to take a percentage of everything.
In a vacuum yes, but software companies are overvalued as hell. Software engineers get paid 'too much' because the companies they work at are unsustainable. A lot of these companies are now running around shitting their pants because the ZIRP free money faucet has dried up and now they have to run an actual company and not just burn VC money for a decade and get bought by Oracle.
Solidarity is unlikely to happen widely among software engineers because that would require us to be class traitors. We are literally the 'haves'; I bought a condo at 24 and it's actually feasible for me to own a home in totality before I'm 40. The only way for a more equitable economy to arise is for us to be a little worse off. Personally I'm fine with that because I'd rather everyone be happier and thus more productive and thus I would have better experiences at restaurants and stores and just generally when interacting with other people. But a lot of software engineers are just greedy.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's still worth trying, because if we can show them that a better, happier, more equitable world is possible I think we can convince them. But this is just my experience in industry: most software engineers I have talked to know how bad things are, they just don't care because they're getting paid through the nose.
Just a quibble, but software engineers aren't part of the "ownership class"/bourgeois, so solidarity among them wouldn't be class treachery. Class isn't about how much money you make, it's about what you own, and engineers don't own their means of production (which in software, is largely about IP and brand recognition).
That's true, but while they aren't actually part of the bourgeois they are generally thrown more scraps than the people at the bottom so they start to think of themselves as, to crib a phrase from a more eloquent man, temporarily embarrassed billionaires.
Regardless, my point is mostly summarizable as 'good luck getting the crabs at the top of the bucket to work with the crabs at the bottom.' I still think we have to because I do firmly believe that it's socialism or barbarism, but it's not going to be easy.
There are a lot of douche bag tech bros out there. But I gotta be honest - most software engineers in Silicon Valley do not think of themselves are temporarily embarrassed billionaires. Most of them are just chilling, working short hours and getting paid comfortably. Why would you be a temporarily embarrassed billionaire when you’re legitimately going to be a millionaire in a few years?
Something funny about all this talk of overpaying software engineers - it’s both true and false simultaneously. Why is a fresh college graduate paid $200-250k by Google? That’s definitely overpaid. But also, the company might make a million dollars per year from their output (fix a few bugs for a billion users and the money can add up). So they’re also getting robbed at the same time. Crazy.
I don't really agree that software companies are overvalued (except those mostly owned by PE/VC funds - VC is really just even higher risk PE) , and even if the valuations are too high, I don't think that necessarily matters.
Your argument as I understand it is that there are great number of software engineers working for companies whose "valuation is too high" and this is because the company is burning cash and its going concern is leaning towards insolvent. If the "true" value of a company is zero (or negative, but equity financing is so common that few software companies really have a lot of liabilities) because it makes no revenue then, yes that company is going to struggle to pay its employees long term unless it starts to make money.
But this is a pretty extreme case, and most software engineers don't work at such startups. A lot work at big software companies including very big ones such as Apple and Microsoft or smaller but still big ones such as SAP or Oracle. Of course many of these companies are probably overvalued (or their current valuation assumes a lot of future growth which may not occur) but this doesn't mean that they can't pay their employees. Take Apple, for example. Apple made about $400bn in revenue last year and had a profit margin of about 20%. It also spend about 90bn on share buybacks which is great for the small number of very large Apple shareholders. Let's assume that the average Apple employee was paid a salary package of 250k (probably high given a lot of Genius store workers etc). In this case Apple spent a total of 40bn on payroll plus administrative costs (napkin maths assuming 160k employees). You can begin to see here how you can make a convincing case that Apple employees are underpaid, given that Apple could have paid half the amount they did on share buybacks and then paid each worker an extra 250k.
I really think the correct argument is "big tech cos pay their employees more and this makes them more productive so other companies should too".
Yeah, I'm not thinking about FAANG when I say overvalued. The problems with those companies is different and actually would benefit greatly from unionization, I just think it's going to be a hard sell when they get paid a quarter of a million dollars to not care about all of the bad things their company is doing. A FAANG union that actually tried to force facebook amazon and google to not be horribly evil would be incredible.
I'm thinking about startups, especially gig economy ones, where they basically only existed because of ZIRP and are never not burning cash. Crypto/web3 and AI startups, guys that don't have a useful product and are just existing off hype.
You're absolutely right, and I totally agree - I just think you'll have a hard time selling this to software engineers that have been taught their whole careers that their shit don't stink. Again, it's something we'll have to do because the other option is let idiots run our society into the ground, I'm mostly just commenting on the fact that software engineers have a lot to lose by bucking the status quo.
This seems to happen at every level of tech, everyone is conditioned to look down on those under them. I've heard IT project managers refer to our deskside staff as dogs and monkeys. The thing is, when those same project managers and engineers come up with whatever shiny new re-solution to a problem, it's always the people in the bottom levels patching the holes in that process and stretching themselves so that it even functions.
I think those are the people at the bottom levels who would benefit most from a union, especially now that everyone else is working from home and, if there's some part of their job that needs to be onsite, they're offloading it onto these groups (with no extra compensation, of course). Unfortunately many of the deskside-type staff are usually subcontractors at big companies which means in many states they're not allowed to unionize. A sure sign they're being heavily exploited.
I'm a hardware field tech, and I can attest that unionization would help immensely for people in my position or similar.
I've had a grab-bag of roles - field support, network/server/data center/DevOps, DB, application support, interfaces, and installation project management. The latest top tier in the hierarchy seems to be cloud engineers... except that a great many of them are badly exploited Indian H1B visa-holding contractors.
There's shit to deal with at every level - "professional" titles and managerial responsibilities aren't any guarantee of equitable treatment, especially in Right-to-Work states.
Things may seem nice in the loosely supervised, tight-knit teams of small companies and startups, but just wait 'til the MBA's, management consultancies, and private equity get involved.
Oh my god this is so true. Even the so-called "imposter syndrome" is just some persecution fetish or some eye-rolling "ugh" thing they do to gain sympathy or generate PR. Behind closed doors, I've seen the exact same people bully and make fun of others hard. They literally laugh at people and call them idiots. They are also the same people who compare salaries and try to best one another in terms of houses and properties.
That's a particularly uncharitable take. Tech workers may be overpaid, but that doesn't mean that they aren't in over their head. It's a field that continues to change and grow in complexity every single year.
Ten years ago, no developers were having to set up continuous integration, write unit tests, or manage dependencies. They were lucky to be using version control. System admins weren't managing cloud services or containerized servers. Web designers didn't have to plan around 15 different screen dimensions, rotations, and pixel ratios.
Whatever skill you learn today will likely be irrelevant in five years, and forgotten in ten. If you get complacent and stop learning, you'll quickly be outpaced by the churn of hundreds of bootcamps and self-starters who are practicing with the latest tools.
So yes, lots of talented people are joining companies with a different tech stack and feeling completely in over their head. Imposter syndrome is a genuine feeling for many. It isn't some moral sophistry designed to show how much better they are.
Even more than that, the level of things to actually learn is off the charts, and if you don't take the standard career path (something tech is full of) you can wind up being a massive expert in certain areas, but still have blindspots in certain things (raise your hand if you think you're using git to its full power).
I am always really surprised when people say that the hard things in computing are things like programming languages, version control, etc. I agree that they're quite painful, but I think the actually quite challenging part of the job is more on the taking meaningful performance measurements, ensuring that the program is correct (things like effective probabilistic testing aka "fuzzing") and actually working out how to solve the problems (developing algorithms etc).
I am definitely more on the "academic" side of software and work on software which requires algorithms knowledge (generally performace-sensitive highly concurrent software), so my experience is not necessarily representative of all software engineers.
yes, the actual programming(solving problems, determining what solved means, etc.) is the "hard" part, but the fact that there's a dozen things you have to be proficient in to even properly get to the hard part is what's being referred to.
in 2010, you just had to know how to pop a server up, and serve on port 80/443, and maybe add in a cert if you had sensitive content. then you can solve the problems. now you are supposed to develop tests, create ci/cd, logging, set up git and organization permissions, and probably a few more things before you even start coding.
I understand what you're saying. But I'm not referring to them. In my comment, I specifically said that I saw these exact same people bullying and name-calling others behind closed doors. It's one of those "you'd be telling on yourself" sort of thing.
Every profession has it hard, but none have I ever seen "imposter syndrome" thrown around as hard as in tech, and particularly FANG. I wonder why? But allow me to answer myself: Because a lot of them are actual narcissistic psychosociopaths. Other tech professionals don't even cry persecution and they were the more straightforward bunch.
Did you just completely ignore my first paragraph? I'm referring to a specific subset of people I've seen in the tech industry who cry "imposter syndrome" but crap on others. This isn't a unique experience. I have so many contacts and networks in tech that all report high-functioning, low-EQ sociopaths in tech. They all have this martyr, saint, and persecution complex, with their narcissistic tendencies and ego heightened by their pay.
Your image of an innocent, hard-working IT professional IS NOT what I'm referring to. There is no discussion to be if you just point to an innocent worker and go, "Hey! He's not a sociopath." Like, duh.
The point is that there is an insidious nature that goes on in tech with plenty of egos being thrown around that prevents unionisation. The mere fact that your kind of comments gets 20-30+ votes where mine doesn't only demonstrates this further, even when what I'm talking about, that is huge egos in tech, is as common as daisies during spring.
Your first comment in this chain uses no qualifiers while saying imposter syndrome itself isn’t genuine. Your first reply limits it a little, but still implicates “a lot of them”. Your most recent reply shifts a bit at the end to general egos “as common as daisies”.
When you continue painting with such enormous negative brushes, it’s hard to take the small exclusions as anything other than a way to hand-wave away the criticism of your argument.
Fair enough. I wasn't specific enough, although my comment was addressed to another comment about why the tech industry won't ever unionise. I was merely providing a superficial anecdote on their behalf. I did not mean to refer to or offend any of the unintended recipients.
Pick me! I've had way too many lost vacation days and calls during sick time because of understaffing and no cap (or overtime) for salaried hours.
I've had to miss personally paid-for training, gotten screwed on an employee stock ownership plan (bring back defined benefit pensions!), been discriminated against for wages, had work-related illnesses denied for compensation (don't tell me that IT workers in hospitals aren't vulnerable to infections, and antibiotic-resistant ones are no joke), and been harassed without non-corporate representation... That's not even counting non-competes and NDA's.
If you think that technical/programming work shields you from the workplace abuses of capitalism, think again. I like my current employer, but won't trust them with my well-being. I want wage transparency and a contract with all the details spelled out that binds both parties.
I work in IT but have no interest in joining a union. I'm fortunate to work for a good company that treats and pays us well. I like not having a contract, and being able to make my own career decisions. I'm not anti-union in general, I just don't see the need for one in my own situation.
In that case, the reason for a union would be to ensure that in the future, you don't lose things you depend on. You've built a life depending on the pay and benefits that you're currently getting, if they were to change there's very little you can actually do about it as an individual person.
I have also been very fortunate in that the companies I've worked for have treated me fairly well. I've also seen friends and peers get screwed over, and the lesson I've taken away is to always remember that companies are amoral and not human. The individual people in them are usually good people, but companies as an entity do not actually give a shit about you. They will give benefits and good pay for only as long as it makes fiscal sense.
These would all be great reasons to join a larger tech workers union, but it's harder to see where the future is when you work at a tiny company (like many tech workers do). Workers at larger companies probably have the numbers to form their own unions, but at a small company like mine it seems silly to have a union for just us, and there's no larger union we could join. I'm agressively pro-union in principle fwiw, I just think I like many workers have no idea what would be a good move practically from here.
Sure there is. If there was some decrease in pay or benefits to the point that I felt I was being compensated unfairly, I'd just change jobs/companies. On the other hand, I don't want to be forced out of my job to go on strike if I'm fine with my personal circumstances. I'm talking about my individual circumstance at the place I work now. Maybe I'd feel differently about it if I worked somewhere where I felt that I was being paid or treated unfairly, but that's not the case for me. As far as I know, my colleagues feel similarly. Our company has less than a 5% attrition rate, with some people working here for 20+ years. In general, people like it here and nobody has expressed any kind of interest in introducing a union.
I'm always surprised to hear about calls for unionization in IT. It's a pretty cushy job overall compared to healthcare, auto workers, etc. The examples of worker mistreatment tend to be with specific companies, not with the IT industry as a whole.
Until all those companies get together and collectively reduce compensation across the board. Then where do you go?
That means that the market rate for pay would have change. At that time, I'd evaluate whether I'm still okay making that particular pay for that particular job, or if I'm going to change industries. Do you think unions are immune to their pay being influenced by market rate? They're absolutely not. Market-specific pay is why I, as a non-union IT worker am making $300k a year while an auto-industry union worker is making $60k. It has nothing to do with unions.
The IT sector is staunch free market. No two words make them see red like unions and regulations.
Unions work, unionize.
Seung Min Kim
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