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An Alternative History of Silicon Valley Disruption

wired.com

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Re: An Alternative History of Silicon Valley Disruption

#31

Post by maxxxxx »

01100011 wrote: post #30
maxxxxx wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how I know it from Germany but in the US most contractors seem to make less than employees.

Depends. If you're a talented engineer you stand to make a lot more money as a contractor if you stay busy and set your rates appropriately. The average salary in my area is $140k for a senior software engineer. As a contractor I could make $110-150/hr which could be $170k at the low end once the extra taxes paid by contractors are taken into account. None of those numbers include normal state and federal income taxe…

I was contractor for a while and never saw those $100-150/hr contracts. In my current company the contracting agency gets within that range but the contractors themselves see much less.

Re: An Alternative History of Silicon Valley Disruption

#32

Post by curuinor »

maxxxxx wrote: post #22
C1sc0cat wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh don't self employed contractors make more in terms of $ to cover the extra costs 3x is norm in the UK.

This is how I know it from Germany but in the US most contractors seem to make less than employees.

My contracting rate was double my hourly rate...

Re: An Alternative History of Silicon Valley Disruption

#33

Post by curuinor »

maxxxxx wrote: post #31
01100011 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends. If you're a talented engineer you stand to make a lot more money as a contractor if you stay busy and set your rates appropriately. The average salary in my area is $140k for a senior software engineer. As a contractor I could make $110-150/hr which could be $170k at the low end once the extra taxes paid by contractors are taken into account. None of those numbers include normal state and federal income taxe…

I was contractor for a while and never saw those $100-150/hr contracts. In my current company the contracting agency gets within that range but the contractors themselves see much less.

Did you have any leverage with the counterparty?

Re: An Alternative History of Silicon Valley Disruption

#34

Post by fullshark »

prepend wrote: post #4

I’m not sure what this articles point is. Disruption as called by Christensen, Andreeson, Thiel, etc all talks about displaced jobs and industries. I don’t think this is unknown. It’s just that the benefits outweigh the costs (to some). So this isn’t an alternative history more than it is just a weird anecdote or two without follow-up. I’m not sure what Wired is as a magazine any more. It really needs knowledgeable e…

It's a summary of three books and how they are showcasing a larger story of the tech industry under fire I guess.

Re: An Alternative History of Silicon Valley Disruption

#37

Post by jldugger »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #18
plankers wrote: post #2

Can confirm, was a contractor in Silicon Valley. The "narrative" these executives sell is little more than an opiate for their fleets of highly-paid engineers to feel like they're justified in having a salary several times higher than the contractors they work with on a daily basis.

Huh don't self employed contractors make more in terms of $ to cover the extra costs 3x is norm in the UK.

AFAICT, there's two kinds of contractors. The first kind are experts that companies don't have enough ultraspecialized knowledge work to keep on a salaried basis. These people are like the Wolf (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWmRTjLRMfU), brought in for problems nobody on staff was able to solve and charge accordingly. All the contractors of this type I know are self-represented, no middlemen. 3x is a norm, but often much higher due to their niche experience.

The other kind of contractor is ordered from an agency. The agency might charge a shit ton, but the IC sees a fraction of that. These agencies only profit from the markup, so they position themselves accordingly; they find as much cheap labor as they can. If you look at the top H1-B sponsors, it's typically dominated by these places. Nominally places like Infosys file Labor Condition Assessments at 10x the rate of Google, but in a sense most big tech firms are outsourcing the H1-B process to the body shops. As you can imagine, this puts downward pressure on contractor wages.

Re: An Alternative History of Silicon Valley Disruption

#38

Post by mcguire »

maxxxxx wrote: post #31
01100011 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends. If you're a talented engineer you stand to make a lot more money as a contractor if you stay busy and set your rates appropriately. The average salary in my area is $140k for a senior software engineer. As a contractor I could make $110-150/hr which could be $170k at the low end once the extra taxes paid by contractors are taken into account. None of those numbers include normal state and federal income taxe…

I was contractor for a while and never saw those $100-150/hr contracts. In my current company the contracting agency gets within that range but the contractors themselves see much less.

When I was working for a no-name contractor for IBM, the contractor got 13% of my hourly.

Government contractors seem more like 50%.

Re: An Alternative History of Silicon Valley Disruption

#39

Post by sjg007 »

empath75 wrote: post #6
hndude wrote: post #3

Any additional evidence (either for or against) the claim that government pays for tech advances, while the private sector is who sees a return from that?

Federal spending accounts for 44% of basic research spending. at one point, it was as high as 70%. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/data-check-us-govern... Generally, the pattern has been that government and university funded researchers make the early discoveries, and then corporations do the research towards applying them. Universities benefit from patents, but the federal government doesn't.

Feds get income tax revenue. They/we benefit.

Re: An Alternative History of Silicon Valley Disruption

#40

Post by ThomPete »

JackFr wrote: post #24
ThomPete wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber and airbnb outcompeted them by offering lower prices and disregarded obviously outdated laws. The phone was what actually disrupted the industry not the actual services.

> disregarded obviously outdated laws That's disruption?

Not in its technical sense but if you want to understand what they did its important to take into account as it obviously worked.
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