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Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

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Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#111

Post by zivkovicp »

Melting_Harps wrote: post #81
silisili wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, I do quite a bit better than that... I'm not complaining. But using 120k as an example...a person went from making 4x the typical full time salary to 2x the typical full time salary in a very short period.

> To be clear, I do quite a bit better than that... I'm not complaining. But using 120k as an example...a person went from making 4x the typical full time salary to 2x the typical full time salary in a very short period. This is what I will never understand about most established tech people, they see all the widespread misery and poverty in SV and they still have the capacity to feel sorry for themselves for not mak…

> because they have such a narrow limited set of skills

If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#112

Post by eru »

harry8 wrote: post #75
missedthecue wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not making a statement of fact about CEO pay since 2020. I'm saying that whether or not it's up by more or less than inflation since then has nothing to do with them being fundamentally overpaid. Apply this to dev pay as well. Just because you're a few % off since 2020 after inflation does not mean $300k salaries are overpaid or that they're appropriate. They're two unconnected data points.

They are totally connected. If you don't have the market power to have garnered a good pay increase over the past 2 years of record profits you're almost certainly underpaid, like teachers, nurses etc. If you got massive pay increases you're almost certainly overpaid, like CEOs. The connection is right there. Maybe these two things could somehow become disjointed but they really don't appear to be such in any meaning…

What do you mean by underpaid and overpaid?

Plenty of people want to become teachers and nurses and doctors (or veterinaries or musicians or artists etc), knowing full well how low the pay is.

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#113

Post by kilroy123 »

uejfiweun wrote: post #23

Working in tech is not exactly easy, even if you love computers. You have to move to some awfully expensive part of the country and interact with some extremely thin skinned people all day, and spend hours upon hours examining minute details of systems supporting systems supporting systems that you never even knew existed.

Plus it's very competitive. You can't just sit around and rest on one's laurels. You have to constantly be learning and god help you when you need to interview and land a new job.

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#115

Post by kilroy123 »

eru wrote: post #100
kilroy123 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got ZERO raise this past year and boy let me tell you, it really pissed me off. I didn't feel I wasn't making enough until that happened.

Genuine question: would you have felt better with a 1% raise? In 2010 I was working in the UK and we had about 5% inflation that year (or so). I got a 2% raise, and found that more insulting than if they had given no raise; even though objectively any positive raise is better than no raise.

I've been living in London and the inflation is just as bad there as back in the US. I'm American working for a US company that just raised a huge Series B. They have the money, so I expected at least 3%. I didn't expect a 10%+, but at _least_ something.

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#116

Post by indecisive_user »

refurb wrote: post #93
indecisive_user wrote: post #5

>the average tech worker’s salary [will] reach $104,566 in the U.S. — a 6.9% increase since 2020, the report found. But inflation is over 11% since 2020. This isn't an increase. The average tech worker is making less than they were 2 years ago according to the Dice salary report. Why do tech workers feel underpaid? Many companies posted record growth and profits over the pandemic, but still give out paltry 3-5% raise…

I hope people realize that when monthly inflation numbers are released those are annualized . So the 8.5% inflation rate in March is actually 1.085^(1/12) = 0.7% for March, and 8.5% assuming that same rate lasted for 12 consecutive months. In 2021, the CPI-U was 4.7% for all of 2021 . https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/infl...

Ok, but the cumulative inflation rate since January 2020 is still around 11%

$1 in January 2020 is worth $1.11 today

https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1&year1=202001...

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#117

Post by eru »

danachow wrote: post #41
silisili wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no way in hell it's close to 8x. Just crunched the numbers, and an 8x mortgage would exceed my monthly take home. I felt pretty uncomfortable at 2.5x. I feel a lot of people are probably extending out to 4 or even 5, but 8 would be irresponsible and I doubt you could even find a lender for that.

Maybe you miscrunched? A 5x mortgage over gross pay should be just over 30% of monthly gross take home. Maybe too much for some, but not absolutely irresponsible - especially if you choose to stay in a stable housing market. 2.5x is completely ridiculous to expect - that’s going to be far below rental payments in most places that anybody would want to live. Its definitely not the norm. It’s obtainable in some areas o…

> 2.5x is completely ridiculous to expect - that’s going to be far below rental payments in most places that anybody would want to live. Its definitely not the norm. It’s obtainable in some areas of the northeast like Pittsburgh and the Midwest. But usually the catch is property taxes are outrageous.

The funny thing is: you just explained why property taxes are basically 'free'. (They are basically the best tax. Tweaking them to include only the value of the land, and not the house makes them even better.)

Basically, supply and demand in the housing market determine the sum of property taxes plus mortgage payments. If property taxes fall, real estate prices increase until the sum is the same as before.

If property taxes increase, real estate prices decrease accordingly.

Of course, existing property owners will feel the changes in price. But for someone young or from outside the area, who doesn't already own property, areas with high and low property taxes cost the same amount to live in.

The area with high property taxes can either spend more on public infrastructure or lower other taxes.

In the long run, all of society is made up of people who don't live yet today.

In the short run, votes are mostly cast by people alive now, many of them owning property.

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#118

Post by eru »

missedthecue wrote: post #29
xcambar wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a rule of thumb that your total debt should not exceed 1/3 of your income. It has no economic foundations whatsoever. Yet, banking institutions use(d?) this rule to reject whatever application they were not comfortable with.

I've never heard total debt should be 1/3 of income. Having a mortgage completely blows that up. Nevermind student loans, a car, or getting a credit card. I've heard that monthly housing shouldn't be more than 1/3 monthly take home. Is that what you're thinking?

> I've never heard total debt should be 1/3 of income. Having a mortgage completely blows that up. Nevermind student loans, a car, or getting a credit card.

Or investing on margin.

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#119

Post by Melting_Harps »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #95
Melting_Harps wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be clear, I do quite a bit better than that... I'm not complaining. But using 120k as an example...a person went from making 4x the typical full time salary to 2x the typical full time salary in a very short period. This is what I will never understand about most established tech people, they see all the widespread misery and poverty in SV and they still have the capacity to feel sorry for themselves for not mak…

The cost of everything else raised as well, so wealthy tech workers also lost purchasing power (especially after the last stock crash).

> I don't understand this opinion.

Ok, let me spell it out: you're not special. Nothing about your profession makes you special, you are not somehow better than anyone because you can sit at a computer and write code.

It's a skill, a very highly compensated one for now but an incredibly narrow one that happens to be useful a select few corps, sure, but so was were many other things.

And if one thing that COVID has taught us is how incredibly unnecessary you are to maintaining civilization--unless you are some supply chain developer in which case you were doomed either way. No one was calling for the return for programmers like they were for even barbers or cooks, in fact people lauded the fact that FB went down.

In short, you like being told you're special, it makes you feel good. But you are not. Wide spread misery isn't about equality, I can assure this isn't what I'm advocating here, it's about a self-awareness issue.

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#120

Post by eru »

linspace wrote: post #68
tjansen wrote: post #10

It also makes us Europeans feel underpaid :) I have 20 years of experience and don't even make six figures. $350000 base pay sounds like a different world.

As an underpaid European I welcome insanely high salaries in USA. It sets a precedent and it has also influence in the global wage market.

Especially since the pandemic showed that remote work mostly works.
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