I love the US and California, the tech scene is amazing and I was lucky to met such talented and friendly people in about every place I worked... from very large tech cos to "garage" startups. Which is why it pains me to see that so many engineers get stuck with such ridiculous salaries (relative to the value and wealth they provide and create). Problem is that some salaries are seemingly high compared to what the av…
I hardly think underpaid engineers are the main problem with our economy. We could start by looking at, oh I dunno, teachers?
I'm from MA and I think this is a great piece of legislation.
I'd like to take it a step further and some day see a service where people can submit verified wage data to and access this wage data when they are negotiating employment terms.
My employer uses wage data from a survey they buy for several thousands of dollars when it comes negotiation time. The wage data is reported by other employers and includes wage data from companies across the country. I think it would help level the playing field when it comes to negotiations for anyone that is in that position because as it is now, even with this piece of legislation, employers have the upper hand.
Developers are just another means—we're not wizards. We are a commodity, and if you don't recognize that you're in for a hard midlife crisis. Do you really expect to make any money without taking the risk of deciding what to build? How it's constructed is a (admittedly time-consuming and distracting) detail—only a small aspect of the company's value. Risk and comfort are tradeoffs. If you want to live without risk, y…
But a good engineer will have a say in what to build, not only how to build it. Otherwise all dev work could just be outsourced. IMO, the role of a good engineer is to deeply understand the business/domain to provide good insight in regards to what to build.
I think that everyone believes part of their job should include deciding both what they do and how they do it. I think it's pretty rare for non-managers in any field to have the latter, and extremely rare for any non-managers to have the former.
I'm not sure why you believe engineers would be uniquely entitled to make decisions about what they're building. Even in a classical engineering job (building a bridge) they don't get to go "nope, this is a bad idea let's not build it." At best they can say "this is what it'll take to do what you want, is it worth it to you?"
Really, deciding what to do is literally the only job top management even has. It's not often shared with the people doing the work.
There is a lot of salary data available for people through services offered by the credit bureaus. If they want to find out, they will.
Well duh, this law isn't trying to keep companies from knowing what the salary range for an industry is, they're trying to keep companies from taking advantage of (usually young) professionals who don't have the power to negotiate fair compensation.
I mean they know what your individual salaries have been at previous work-places.
Candidates "may" offer this information upfront? I feel like I'm watching Office Space "Am I supposed to tell you my salary before even hearing your initial offer?" "Some employees choose to offer salary information, and we encourage that"
Sometimes telling an employer your current salary is a hammer. If they are way off you can do this to get more money, but I don't tend to disclose either way.
For sure. In my current position it's definitely an advantage to disclose. But I understand the impetus behind the law.
Excellent measure. I remember interviewing at a very large corpo (think one of the main phone carriers), their application process online required applicants to reveal their salaries for the past 10 years. And before making an offer, they were asking for a W2 to make sure you were currently making what you claimed. Needless to say, I laughed at their face and walked. I assume this law won't apply to questions like "h…
There is a lot of salary data available for people through services offered by the credit bureaus. If they want to find out, they will.
There isn't a service offered by a credit bureau that I know, which allows an employer or a lender to find out about a prospect's salary. Salary info is used for credit risk strategies, and only where applicable or allowed.
I love the US and California, the tech scene is amazing and I was lucky to met such talented and friendly people in about every place I worked... from very large tech cos to "garage" startups. Which is why it pains me to see that so many engineers get stuck with such ridiculous salaries (relative to the value and wealth they provide and create). Problem is that some salaries are seemingly high compared to what the av…
There's a common saying "Nobody ever gets rich working for someone else". I am not sure how much that is backed up by any statistics but the Bay Area and employees of unicorns or Google/Apple/Amazon/Microsoft/... may be outliers to this adage. Anyway the point I am trying to make is that as an engineer you either have the choice of working for an employer and living an albeit comfortable life (without any risk) or go…
This adage is used mostly by snake oil salesmen slinging get-rich-quick schemes. Working for somebody else is probably the best way to get rich. Putting a qualification here, rich is not filthy rich, but affluent to comfortably rich.
I love the US and California, the tech scene is amazing and I was lucky to met such talented and friendly people in about every place I worked... from very large tech cos to "garage" startups. Which is why it pains me to see that so many engineers get stuck with such ridiculous salaries (relative to the value and wealth they provide and create). Problem is that some salaries are seemingly high compared to what the av…
I am a developer, so I am all for higher developer salaries, but your posts shows a common misunderstanding about economics. The value someone creates has nothing to do with their salary. Their salary is dictated by how many people need to hire developers and how many developers exist to fill those jobs or in simple terms, supply and demand. I might create millions of dollars in value with my code, but there might be another developer that will accept $5k less that can still create millions of dollars with their code. Similarly, the job that 95% of us do really isn't that unique. Sure, each development job has its own challenges and there certainly are a handful of 10Xers out there, but the truth is that once you get to the point of "competent developer" and the meaty part of the bell curve, we are all pretty much interchangeable. It then becomes a question of who will do the same work for less.
Excellent measure. I remember interviewing at a very large corpo (think one of the main phone carriers), their application process online required applicants to reveal their salaries for the past 10 years. And before making an offer, they were asking for a W2 to make sure you were currently making what you claimed. Needless to say, I laughed at their face and walked. I assume this law won't apply to questions like "h…
There is a lot of salary data available for people through services offered by the credit bureaus. If they want to find out, they will.
"Companies will not be allowed to prohibit their workers from telling others how much they are paid."
Companies are not allowed to do that now. That's Federal labor law, and it's been prohibited since 1935.[1] This only applies to employees, not contractors.