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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

#171

Post by emteycz »

Melting_Harps wrote: post #167
emteycz wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume this is a reply to my comment. What you're saying here is right, but I have no idea why you're saying it as I really don't care about being special, at all. Never crossed my mind until now, and nobody ever told me so (except for the other meaning of "special", and that has a lot of truth to it). And then, even if I thought I was special (I don't), I would still be fully capable of feeling concerned for other…

> (except for the other meaning of "special", and that has a lot of truth to it). Haha, I appreciate the candor, and earnest response! > Anyways, the demand for software engineers increased extremely significantly (multiples of open positions, rates doubled) when Covid started and all remaining companies hopped on the digital transformation trend; and that continues to today. I agree, it's why I came back to tech act…

I don't see it as greed, I see it as rejection of corporate greed at their expense.

Why should a corporation make more money from your work when others like you are not giving them as much?

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

#173

Post by chii »

eru wrote: post #112
harry8 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> underpaid and overpaid?

there's two "meaning" to being underpaid; 1) the work being done is captured by another party, and thus underpaid to the worker doing the work. An extreme example is slavery - they are underpaid.

2) the second meaning of underpaid is the perception from other people that the profession is producing value for society, but the payer of that work (usually tax payers) is not compensating for the value dispersed throughout society. Examples might be teachers.

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

#174

Post by jason0597 »

boc wrote: post #70
baal80spam wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly my thought when I read the title. I know the cost of living is higher in US but I'm always baffled by how much tech workers make on the other side of the pond. To me it sounds like a dream.

You're welcome to join us anytime friend!

Umm.... what about the visa? :)

There's a reason you get nice salaries, it's because your labour market is extremely extremely protectionist

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

#175

Post by jason0597 »

gambiting wrote: post #127
DogLover_ wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We pay taxes in the EU as well. Often the rate is much higher than the US but it depends on the country.

Sure, but things like health insurance can easily cost $1000+ a month if you want full coverage and/or have some bad health conditions(and you still need to have a big pot of savings in case you need to use it, because your out of pocket excess might be 10k or more). In most european countries the monthly cost is nowhere near that, it scales with your salary(down to zero if you don't earn anything) and still covers y…

> but things like health insurance can easily cost $1000+ a month if you want full coverage

Yeah but if you multiple that by 12, you get something like $12k, or $15k for argument's sake. That $15k does not explain the disparity between a €55k/yr salary and a $150k/yr salary, so clearly there is another force that is at play here.

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

#176

Post by jason0597 »

mathverse wrote: post #129

We europeans are underpaid and taxed to death. The US could easily fill its worker shortage by offering easy visas for EU engineers. Many of us would like to move but it's a real PITA to apply to companies that are even willing to consider visa sponsorship. I actually have no idea why this is not the case already. It's basically 1st world to 1st world transition and the one losing would be EU.

> Many of us would like to move

I for one wouldn't. I would never ever ever trade my walkable cities for the monstrosities that are car-centric North American cities.

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

#177

Post by emteycz »

jason0597 wrote: post #170
emteycz wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume this is a reply to my comment. What you're saying here is right, but I have no idea why you're saying it as I really don't care about being special, at all. Never crossed my mind until now, and nobody ever told me so (except for the other meaning of "special", and that has a lot of truth to it). And then, even if I thought I was special (I don't), I would still be fully capable of feeling concerned for other…

Excuse my reply, but he told you: >"you're not special" and you replied with >"they literally begged me to work for them" >"they just try to make their company look like the best place while apologizing profusely for their limited budget" Do you not see how your 2 comments here give off the impression that you feel special? Maybe you don't feel special (like you explicitly say), but those two comments especially give…

I don't feel special because the same thing applies to every programmer I know. How could I in any way feel special when I'm just the same as others? I said it because I wanted you to feel how the market is, not because it makes me special.

And I don't think that a job makes a person special, why would it? It's just a job. I work on a hot market, someone else does not - that doesn't make any of us special people. To me, a special person is distinguished by much more than just working on a hot market.

I don't even know how much money the people who I think are special have or make, and don't care about it at all. Few of the best programmers I know make nearly zero money (of course, by choice). They're special by themselves, not because of their money.

Should I lie about the market so you don't think I feel special even if I repeat like 10 times it doesn't make me special, or what?

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

#178

Post by jason0597 »

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.

> 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.

Sounds a lot like engineering to be honest. Lots of travelling to facilities in the middle of nowhere, people that never click together, examining systems with no documentation that you never knew existed in the first place, etc.

Which means that this is not a good explanation for the salary disparity between engineering and tech, as both fields deal with similar problems, yet one is paid substantially more.

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

#179

Post by nradov »

Melting_Harps wrote: post #166
weatherlite wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 making X times more than 'that other guy.' As opposed to who exactly? The system is based on greed and maximizing profits/salaries/status/whatever. Are doctors/lawyers/financial people not behaving this way? Some doctors e…

> Some doctors earn around one million USD a year in the U.S, that's money that makes insurance more expensive and unaffordable for everyone. You're seriously not comparing yourself to physicians in level of importance in Society, are you?! As I said, after COVID we got a real wake up call of who mattered, and Nurses and Physicians deserve every penny that they get, its the system that is broken: see Stanford nurse s…

No one deserves anything beyond basic human rights. I have great respect for the work done by doctors, but other countries pay doctors far less and still achieve better health outcomes. As a society, are we getting a good value for our money?
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