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How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

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Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#161

Post by ams6110 »

kareemm wrote: post #62
a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lawyers and doctors who get paid a whole lot are partners in a firm. It's not much different than founding a tech company.

Not really. A competent freelance developer in the valley will make $150-200/h. A competent lawyer (not a partner) in the valley will make $350+/h.

An individual freelancer might make that. A consultant with an established firm will be billed at close to lawyer rates, if not more. The consultant isn't being paid that however, as the firm will keep a fair cut for overhead.

Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#162

Post by peterb »

debt wrote: post #95
aspensmonster wrote: post #14

Jobs' comments: >OK, I’ll tell our recruiters they are free to approach any Adobe employee who is not a Sr. Director or VP. Am I understanding your position correctly? >if you [Brin] hire a single one of these people that means war. Chizen's comment: >if I tell Steve [Jobs] it’s open season (other than senior managers), he will deliberately poach Adobe just to prove a point. Knowing Steve, he will go after some of ou…

If you are a student, I would still recommend moving to SV. It's probably the best place in the world right now to be a software developer. This wage-theft stuff is for very experienced echelons of engineers.

The wage-theft stuff lowers the curve for everyone, not just the top tier. It lowers the entire wage curve.

Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#163

Post by sounds »

leoc wrote: post #105
sounds wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you're aware of who raganwald is, the person you're replying to? Not technically Silicon Valley, but close enough. I've deliberately kept my account "low-profile" for exactly this reason. I'm in SV and frequently rub shoulders with these people. Trust me, they're not ignorant. They've picked a side already. But it's so much easier to play hardball with a new hire who doesn't know anything; thus this kind of…

Yes, I know a fair bit about who raganwald is; I was thinking of the guys who are even more prominent and more SV-centred than him. All due respect to raganwald's willingness to stick his head above the parapet on sensitive topics like this, though. > But it's so much easier to play hardball with a new hire who doesn't know anything; thus this kind of thing is "ignored." I don't know about that though: if I was, say…

It looks like pg chimed in after all.

Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#164

Post by yapcguy »

a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #69
firstOrder wrote: post #50

The typical response I hear to the idea of more widespread labor unions or AMA-like professional associations for programmers and network/systems/storage/database administrators is that if someone is really talented, they can negotiate a good salary, and that labor organizing together would just protect the lazy and the slackers. You hear this same thing when someone is lowballed a salary number, or has to put up wit…

Tech engineers get pushed around by upper management and have failed to professionalize like doctors because too many of them lack social and political savvy. It's a clear personality trait in the profession. Look at the way so many programmers choose to dress and groom. Can you imagine a top lawyer looking like that? The importance of projecting a serious professional image to the broader society doesn't seem to eve…

Exactly, but it's worse.

There are programmers who love calling themselves "geeks", "nerds", "code monkeys" and promote boot camp style schools as well as myths such as "anybody can code" such that people think any homeless person off the street is a coder.

You don't get doctors and lawyers talking down their own skills or saying it's easy.

Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#165

Post by mnglkhn2 »

GVIrish wrote: post #119
rohunati wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you actually complaining about 240k? If that isn't myopia, idk what is. Most people would kill for that salary.

That's the rub though, 240k may be a lot to you, but what if that data scientist is delivering 100 times that value to the company? Who's to say that person shouldn't be paid $500k or $1 million a year. The Yahoo COO who just got let go was paid $109 million in two years. He got a $29 million severance package. Would it be too crazy to suggest that maybe a brilliant engineer who was a major contributor to the success…

It can be tricky and getting murkier quick: what if Google comes back with an argument that that data scientist would not have been able to produce those $2-3 mil without the resources and the infrastructure made available by Google? Would that employee be as productive anywhere else? If the answer is yes, then that employee deserves a larger share of the pie. If the answer is unclear or no, then the employee will receive whatever the market will bear.

This is why traders and IT devs on Wall Street get better compensated: it is way easier to see the exact impact and it is very likely that those guys would be able to easily replicate it in any other firm.

Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#167

Post by vasilipupkin »

pg wrote: post #148

It seems like we should be able to measure whatever effect there was. There must be sources of data about salaries in the Bay Area. Has anyone tried looking to see if there is a depression in tech workers' salaries, relative to people in other fields, during the time this agreement was in force?

Look at a typical software developer salary in SF vs a typical software developer salary in Chicago, adjust for cost of living, the difference between SF salary and adjusted Chicago salary is the depression

For example, demand in SF is much higher than Chicago so SF salary should be >> Chicago * cost of living adjustment. My guess is it's lower

Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#168

Post by scrabble »

Google’s “People Ops” department kept overall compensation essentially equitable by making sure that lower-paid employees who performed well got higher salary increases than higher-paid employees who also performed well.

Serious question, is this generally considered a bad thing? Every company I've worked for has had salary bands that work like this. They don't make it a secret. Generally you know which band you're in and the range of that band. I've recently been told in a company meeting at my current workplace that they are mainly working to bring people to the middle of their bands. So if you're above the middle, expect a low raise.

On the other side, I can't help but feel underpaid since I've been told by people who know that the work I've done personally has allowed us to bring in more than 100 times my salary in recurring revenue.

Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#169

Post by natrius »

pg wrote: post #148

It seems like we should be able to measure whatever effect there was. There must be sources of data about salaries in the Bay Area. Has anyone tried looking to see if there is a depression in tech workers' salaries, relative to people in other fields, during the time this agreement was in force?

I don't think that comparison would be illustrative. I suspect that trends in tech wages in the Bay Area are divorced from those in other fields in the same way that finance wages in New York are.

The productivity of a single programmer has famously increased as the rise of multimillion-dollar companies with less than ten employees shows. You still need the same number of nurses and teachers, though.

Re: How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

#170

Post by josho »

morgante wrote: post #154
josho wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several reasons why software engineers are underpaid compared to their performance. Keep in mind these are generalizations and therefore you will find exceptions to what I outline below. -Software developers typically aren't comfortable negotiating, nor are we well versed at it. Therefore, we accept job offers for less than we know we are worth and accept raises offered rather than negotiate raises based on…

That's also the beauty of software development—I don't need to have a fancy degree or work ridiculous hours as an associate/intern to get a job in it.

Or given the startup context of this site, I'd phrase it as software development has no Barriers to Entry, which as startups (and yourself) have learned is great for getting into the market, but can be really bad once you establish a foothold and gain experience and realize that competition from new entries into the market severely undercut you on price.

So, for those in the industry we need to find ways to add barriers to entry so that our salaries are protected.

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