51–60 of 102 posts
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When someone says “non-qualified”, why do you immediately associate that with minorities in your mind? Sounds like you have some racist biases to work through.
IMO it’s the reality of technology being a business, not a value-set, settling in. 1999-2020 was 20+ years. That’s about the length of a long-term industry cycle. It’s also 20 yrs of selling a narrative about tech that recruited ambitious, value-driven people who also wanted to make money. Don’t want 18 hr days at Goldman or 10 years of medical school, but want the pay? Come work 8 at and make the same pay without th…
I don't think the pay angle got serious until after like Google went IPO - somewhere around like 2005-2010. Before that, tech workers were paid well, but not so much beyond like a financial analyst. Now there's a mass market of FAANG-M jobs, perhaps like 500k jobs in total. They all pay way more compared to the average job, in multiplier terms. There has been a quantitative shift in tech worker pay at the top end in…
We're really only talking about the top employees at the top tech companies in the top most expensive COL areas. It's not like every tech employee in the world is making $500K and driving a Ferrari, despite what HN commenters might sometimes say.
> There has been a quantitative shift in tech worker pay at the top end in the past twenty years.
Bingo--we're comparing only the top end of tech pay.
Over-hiring in the zero interest years. It resulted in the hiring of non-qualified personnel and of qualified personnel with no concrete plans on how to utilize them. Either is a buzz kill, especially when the chickens came home to roost with respect to results (revenues) vs ballooned valuations.
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Btw - I've been developing since 1999 as well, so there are plenty of people cleaning up the debt I left.
I'm young, so a lot of my experience is mainly from being a kid/teen that was enamored by the tech industry, to joining in on the tail end (early 2010's). In the 90's/2000's, the tech industry was seen as the place for visionaries and the hard workers who were there to change the world, to make it a better place. Google had the motto "Don't be evil", and wanted to make all of the world's information easily accessible…
The problem is all those companies realized their goals beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. But then kept going. Facebook really did connect everyone on Earth. Google really did make all the world’s information available to everyone. Apple really did put a device in everyone’s pocket to access all that information. But that’s also what gave us superhuman algorithms designed to suck all of your attention away from a…
To me, this seems like a good sign that maybe the US norm of workaholism is finally on the decline and workers are starting to set boundaries. Work is a financial exchange of labor for money. "Super engagement" is not necessarily part of that exchange. IMO save your super-engagement for your family, your hobbies, your church, service to your community, and so on. Lifetimes are limited, how much of your soul-hours sho…
I've been doing this for over 20 years and if you counted the number of days I worked on a weekend or more than 8 hours, it would probably add up to less than a month.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think the pay angle got serious until after like Google went IPO - somewhere around like 2005-2010. Before that, tech workers were paid well, but not so much beyond like a financial analyst. Now there's a mass market of FAANG-M jobs, perhaps like 500k jobs in total. They all pay way more compared to the average job, in multiplier terms. There has been a quantitative shift in tech worker pay at the top end in…
> Before that, tech workers were paid well, but not so much beyond like a financial analyst. Now there's a mass market of FAANG-M jobs, perhaps like 500k jobs in total. They all pay way more compared to the average job, in multiplier terms. We're really only talking about the top employees at the top tech companies in the top most expensive COL areas. It's not like every tech employee in the world is making $500K and…
Cutting corners on details here - Jane, making $120-150k as an engineer at non-FAANG, but fully (or at least maximized risk controlled) on the right side of every gnarly automation unemployment theme we all know is coming simply because Jane knows how to code, link systems, and is ahead of the curve such that she can learn how to use AI in time, is in a much different and much more beneficial position than Sarah, at a bank, making $300k, knowledge stops at excel wizardry, and a LLM is about to unemploy her at 40 bc it gets better than a CFA 3.
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You will spend a substantial chunk of your life working. Likely a plurality of your time alive as an adult. Wanting it to be socially rewarding is reasonable.
With WFH, you get social reward from people who aren’t forced to be there with you, from the sources parent comment mentioned. Conversely, many don’t find that forced socialization you advocate for remotely rewarding and have to suffer through it for the minority that do like it. Again - a majorly depressing blind spot for the RTO crowd, or the RTO crowd devalues/dislikes their families and communities I guess? Edit…