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An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

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Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#161

Post by jojobas »

dvt wrote: post #17

I mean, apart from the highfalutin class warfare nonsense and generally bad advice, this is a pretty decent post. I completely agree that over the past 30-40 years, companies have been pushing down engineering salaries. It's not really as incendiary as the author might have you believe, though. Programming, as a profession, has simply become more commoditized. It used to be kind of like being a brain surgeon, and it'…

They would want it to be like a plumber but it turned out 95% of people just cant hold a wrench and no amount of boot camps can change that.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#162

Post by RajT88 »

Supermancho wrote: post #151
RajT88 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burning those bridges carries a cost to your career. If you think about your retirement prospects as amassing wealth by optimizing the "Area under the graph", it's really important to build a professional network so if one job opportunity ends, you can quickly work your network to find another similarly paying job. Failing that, you take a big pay cut, and impact your salary history. I can't imagine an employer makin…

> Burning those bridges carries a cost to your career. I don't think this is borne out in practice. I've done very well and very poorly over the decades. It would have to be a very specific situation (lot of events unluckily coinciding) where coworkers/previous position could influence an interview process today.

Not necessarily influence an interview process, but connect you with jobs of your caliber, ones you may not be able to find (or which would not find you) otherwise.

I know people (the aforementioned ex-govvies) who have no need of LinkedIn, because this is how they navigate their careers. As you get more and more established in your career, the jobs for someone of your level are less and harder to find.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#163

Post by neilv »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #134
neilv wrote: post #39

> Engineering culture encourages workers to collectively improve the company’s effectiveness. It encourages them to share knowledge with one another. To train each other. To build tools for one another. To bring new workers up to speed, and review each other’s work. To speed the company up. To seek out weaknesses in the company and fix them. / Engineers do this while they’re doing their actual job, the one the compan…

> No, I think most of these are usually part of the job of a software engineer, and it's part of developing solutions that work, rather than just gaming individual metrics. If you speak to people who work in trading or finance, they do none of those things. They view each other as conpetitors and don't help each other. They aim to outgame and outdo each-other. The culture in software is very different to most other i…

Engineering teams are necessarily about collaboration towards a shared goal.

I don't know in what aspects of trading or finance that collaboration is necessary (rather than applied game theory towards each other).

Trading and finance are interesting examples, because those are two places where a lot of money-driven students would go, before tech jobs because easy money (rather than something nerds did for the love of it).

Rather than "Greed is Good" Wall Street thinking taking over, we should say "Fine, we admit it, tech pays good money right now, but we do our best work by working as a team, and that's how we're going to do it."

Then we follow through by making the messaging consistent in offers, raises, bonuses, performance evaluations, promotions, project management, metrics, etc.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#164

Post by Supermancho »

etothepii wrote: post #146
dvt wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of evidence[1]; but more importantly, when putting stagnating salaries in the context of housing prices, CPI, and inflation, it becomes even more jarring. Today, as an engineer making 125-175k in LA, for example, you will literally never be able to purchase a home near to where you work. [1] https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/it-jobs-are-no-longer-exceptional

I thought this might be the trick that would get pulled. House price inflation is a completely inappropriate measure. House prices are not kept stupidly high by the 1% or capital class but by the 50.1% that vote against allowing any kind of building anywhere near an existing house, not near an existing house or that, heav'n forfend, might endanger the habitat of the lesser spotted newt.

> House prices are not kept stupidly high by the 1% or capital class but by the 50.1% that vote against allowing any kind of building anywhere near an existing house,

The discussion is not about a specific area or your specific area. There are large parts of the US where there is no such NIMBY voting allowed, much less enacted to prohibit construction. Prices have more or less ballooned everywhere in the US.

Random home in Southern CA: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1414-N-Center-St-Orange-C...

Random home in Boulder CO: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/175-Gold-Run-Rd-Boulder-C...

Random home in Edmond OK: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/7105-Robey-Dr-Edmond-OK-7...

There were 0 votes on housing in Fargo, ND over the last few years and new homes are consistently over 400k because the land is cheap. The issue is not some uniform voting block artificially inflating housing prices. Random home in Jacksonville FL: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1414-N-Center-St-Orange-C...

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#165

Post by jojobas »

pdonis wrote: post #31
etothepii wrote: post #21

The problem with this article is that one does not need capital to start a tech company. This very website, sneered at in the article, is littered with examples of people who have built something at the side. I'm not sure knowledge workers can make the same complaints about class struggle that mechanical labourers can. We tend to get more valuable with age and experience.

> The problem with this article is that one does not need capital to start a tech company Yes, one does. One needs tech skills. Those are capital. (You agree with this since you say tech workers get more valuable with age and experience.) They're just not capital in the form of a large pot of cash that can be used to throw money at problems.

If that's the way to look at it, there is no proletariat in software engineering, just different scale bourgeoisie dealing with each other, and it sort of checks out.

There is still bargaining and possible bargaining power disbalance, but software engineering supply and demand are such that rates only went up for many years.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#166

Post by RangerScience »

nickff wrote: post #108
RangerScience wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds to me like it’s just accounting spin. If I sell something with a 2-for-1 deal, what are the ways that’s different from selling two for 50% off? If I am paid to work 40 hours a week, and I work 80, are the second 40 free, or are all 80 %50 my expected wage? > free to leave Ah! I see we agree on the need for such a robust social safety net that employment isn’t any degree of necessary!

If your employer knowingly and willfully doubles your pay without changing the contract, are you stealing from them? I think not, and it's just the other side of the coin.

Hold up. Your prior comment didn’t use the word “steal”, so I didn’t think you were talking about theft. Your prior comment used the word “free”, so I thought you were talking about “free”.

I was talking about “free” and I was not talking about “stealing”. That’s why I used the word “free” and did not use the word “stealing”.

Regarding your hypothetical, I’d say they’d be giving you approximately free money in much the same was as in the prior hypothetical you’d be giving them approximately free labor.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#167

Post by thwayunion »

benreesman wrote: post #150

I'll pass on all the class warfare melodrama, but it does seem a bit strange to be blasting tens of thousands of employees you paid through the nose to identify, recruit, and retain during a period of time when the biggest actors in tech are facing a level of competitive pressure that they haven't in a long time. Maybe some cuts were needed to reassure the Street and support the stock price, and maybe that's easier t…

There are multiple classes of tech workers. Historically all of FAANG has been more or less part of the upper-middle and upper class. I think there will be a bifurcation along those lines within FAANG, and the big tech companies will look more like the big banks than like high finance going forward. You even see this in the layoffs, which hit folks outside of engineering harder than folks inside of engineering and within engineering really took a knife to the folks below "senior".

I think you could see a bifurcation in Eng tracks at FAANGs.

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#168

Post by carlosjobim »

jltsiren wrote: post #90
dvt wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of evidence[1]; but more importantly, when putting stagnating salaries in the context of housing prices, CPI, and inflation, it becomes even more jarring. Today, as an engineer making 125-175k in LA, for example, you will literally never be able to purchase a home near to where you work. [1] https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/it-jobs-are-no-longer-exceptional

There are plenty of nice cities in the developed world where people making a third of that have no trouble buying homes. California is expensive, because people oppose building new housing in sufficient quantities. They may support it in principle, but they oppose what it means in practice. Los Angeles also has other issues due to the way it has developed. The city is too large for everyone to commute by car and too…

Where? Can they buy homes without entering into lifelong debt?

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#169

Post by steele »

swamp40 wrote: post #121

Well, in case you were wondering what a communist was, here is a perfect example. As an engineer, I'm not falling for his sad attempt to drive a wedge between tech workers, engineers and management. I have more in common with tech company lofty goals than I do with his. > Google, Amazon, IBM, Spotify, PayPal, Salesforce, 3M, Coinbase, and more are all conducting mass layoffs at the same time. Yes, it's a conspiracy j…

Marxism*

Re: An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer

#170

Post by shrimpx »

foobarian wrote: post #128
shrimpx wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> treat other people as someone I'm in competition with Your coworkers are not your adversaries, your employer is. When the going's good, each side is generous. When your employer withdraws their generosity, it pays to think twice whether your continued generosity works in your interest, and more broadly in the interest of the industry, and society. The limit being a grueling, subpar environment where underpaid and o…

I mean... at the end of the day there is no union, and the rest is up to supply and demand. If there is too much supply then it doesn't matter how much knowledge we withdraw or how little we work.

It's hard to argue with that. I guess this article is a call to arms of sorts. There's no formal union but there can be a viral thought movement.
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