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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

#241

Post by judk »

patio11 wrote: post #205
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?

Remember when Facebook started aggressively poaching Google employees and Google responded publicly by giving every engineer a substantial raise and privately in ways substantially more expensive than that? And Facebook pretty much just laughed and matched offers? And every engineer in the Valley figured out simultaneously that $100k was a floor not a ceiling? That strikes me as persuasive anecdotal evidence of what…

They didn't give substantial raises, they moved comp from variable bonus to base salary (instead $X being the minimum bonus, $Y < $X was the minimum bonus and base was raised.

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

#242

Post by morgante »

josho wrote: post #170
morgante wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 barri…

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

This argument for professionalization is fundamentally flawed because salaries are not suppressed by an excess of supply. Just look at all the companies who constantly have open headcount. If wage suppression in our industry were caused by an excess of supply, you'd expect there to be lots of unemployed software engineers—but there are barely any. You'd never see firms trying so hard to poach from competitors and agreements like this would be totally unnecessary (nobody bothers to recruit passive candidates if people are queueing up to get hired).

So, this argument for professionalization is completely flawed. Professionalization imposes a price floor but we're dealing with a price ceiling (firms unwilling to pay the higher market rate). In such a scenario, a price floor is completely useless.

Personally, the day somebody demands that I get a certification to be a software developer is the day I quit developing and go put my econ education to use on Wall St. At least in finance there's a pot of gold waiting after all the hoops.

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

#243

Post by judk »

nostrademons wrote: post #204
a8da6b0c91d wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> programmers only interact with other programmers or managers This is the problem half the time. Nerds in childish t-shirts want to sit around pecking out code in isolation instead of taking full responsibility for their work by putting on a jacket and working the organization. This is why IT projects are consistently such disasters and why executives have the idea to get cheap grunts to do this stuff under a layer…

I think you have a certain narrative about how the world works that you'd like the facts to fit into, but the facts - at least in Silicon Valley - don't actually fit into them. I doubt I'll be able to change your mind, but for bystanders' benefit: The reason that programmers don't dress to impress is that their work product - the value that they add to other people - has nothing to do with their appearance. A program…

In particular, coders do dress to impress-- they dress up the software to make it look fancier, bigger, more important, more substantial.

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

#244

Post by dinkumthinkum »

rohunati wrote: post #82
msoad wrote: post #26

Engineers should make more money than what they are making now. The largest number I heard lately is $240k for a data scientist from Apple. That's too low! That person can make Siri better and make millions for Apple. Why aren't we getting paid like lawyers? If they win $20M they will get paid at least $2M. But if we make a product that generates $20M profit, at best we get $20K bonus. This has to change!

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

Consider the cost of living in the Bay Area.

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

#245

Post by [deleted] »

judk wrote: post #241
patio11 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when Facebook started aggressively poaching Google employees and Google responded publicly by giving every engineer a substantial raise and privately in ways substantially more expensive than that? And Facebook pretty much just laughed and matched offers? And every engineer in the Valley figured out simultaneously that $100k was a floor not a ceiling? That strikes me as persuasive anecdotal evidence of what…

They didn't give substantial raises, they moved comp from variable bonus to base salary (instead $X being the minimum bonus, $Y < $X was the minimum bonus and base was raised.

[deleted]

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

#246

Post by crassus »

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…

Maybe if there were a tech workers union, we could finally organize politically for some pro-tech policy. Is there a better paid group of people who can't get anything done politically?

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

#247

Post by umeshunni »

judk wrote: post #241
patio11 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when Facebook started aggressively poaching Google employees and Google responded publicly by giving every engineer a substantial raise and privately in ways substantially more expensive than that? And Facebook pretty much just laughed and matched offers? And every engineer in the Valley figured out simultaneously that $100k was a floor not a ceiling? That strikes me as persuasive anecdotal evidence of what…

They didn't give substantial raises, they moved comp from variable bonus to base salary (instead $X being the minimum bonus, $Y < $X was the minimum bonus and base was raised.

There was also an across-the-board base pay increase in addition to that.

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

#248

Post by Natsu »

kirubakaran wrote: post #58
zaidf wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where he crosses the asshole line over to scumbag and crook territory. I say this as someone who respects Jobs deeply for his product vision.

He has always been there. "Jobs told him that Atari gave them only $700 (instead of the offered $5,000), and that Wozniak's share was thus $350. Wozniak did not learn about the actual bonus until ten years later, but said that if Jobs had told him about it and had said he needed the money, Wozniak would have given it to him." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Wozniak

No matter what I hear about him, it seems like I always end up respecting Steve Wozniak more.

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

#250

Post by turar »

rgovind wrote: post #237
dredmorbius wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The H1B issue is absolutely about providing cheap, endentured labour: visa holders are tied to their sponsoring employer and must appeal to be allowed to seek other employment. Norm Matloff of UC Davis has literally been trying to expose this for decades, with little luck: http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/h1b.html http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/h1b10min.html Moreover: this is entirely consistent with behavior o…

>The H1B issue is absolutely about providing cheap, endentured labour: visa holders are tied to their sponsoring employer and must appeal to be allowed to seek other employment This is plain wrong. You can very easily shift and people do shift. You just interview with a different company, just like a citizen would.

+1. H-1B transfer process is much easier than an initial H-1B application process, so moving to a new employer is almost just as easy as if you were a citizen.
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