[InterimNew]

These salaries don't come from thin air, they're constrained by the market rate at which engineers can be hired and retained. It's unfairly reductive to say that the engineers aren't contributing value since they work in ads. We work in all sorts of fields from the frivolous, like consumer electronics, to the decidedly less so like self-driving.

If the discrepancy between engineering salaries and research/teaching/nursing salaries is bothersome then perhaps the blame should be placed on the economic environment that has produced this result, not the twenty-somethings that are accepting great compensation.

[mAEStro-paNDa]

It doesn't appear to me that the parent implied that these salaries come from thin air. It seems much more obvious that this person is pointing out just how disproportionate it is compared to other very crucial professions, with no obvious labor differences for why this is.

Chalking it up to it being the "market rate" sort of ignores how the market has failed for these other professions. They have to deal with the cost of living just like people in tech. The issue with the new grads, as the parent pointed out, is the attitude. Most could care less about this. That deserves critique.

I should also add that this dynamic does play out in other parts of the country. In other states in the US with much lower costs of living, nurses and teachers for example still have an average salary that is much lower than that of those in the tech industry, especially software development.

[Pyxl101]

> with no obvious labor differences for why this is

One difference that stands out to me is that the supply of people who can perform the job is constrained.

Other professions may be crucial - indeed, the truck drivers who deliver supplies to all stores from which we purchase daily goods are crucial - but that job in particular can be performed by almost anyone with minimal training.

Words like "crucial" don't have much meaning as far as determining job compensation: it's a supply/demand interaction. If the supply of people who can perform the job is not constrained, because the job is relatively easy to get into, then that will suppress the compensation.

It's difficult to obtain a computer science degree and perform at the level required to solicit job offers from the kind of companies that pay new graduates $200k. Imagine for the sake of argument that these jobs require an IQ of 125 or higher: then only about 5% of the population will be capable of performing at that level. (This is just an example. I'm not saying that I think programming has a particular IQ requirement.)

[1shooner]

This is also reductive. If market value was the sole driver for selection of profession, we would suffer a critical lack of specialists in a variety of fields.

[throwawayjava]

...as we do... E.g., K12 and University CS professors.

[abledon]

tbf, I think far more people can do jobs where they talk to people and teach (teachers) and take care of people and nurture (nurses), than jobs where you look at a screen all day, do abstract symbol manipulation and spend most of your focus inside your head building structures of code and programs.

I showed my relatives how you 'follow the line of execution' in a program running down all the instructions. They sat back in shock, thinking how alien that job would be and how so few people are probably able to do that, and that i should be lucky (?) to have the skills to think that way.

[alew1]

As someone who has done both professionally, I think you're severely underestimating how hard teaching is. I think it's much harder to teach well than to code well.

Don't forget, too, that good teachers are experts in the subjects they teach. Teaching computer science or math well requires the same facility with "abstract symbol manipulation" that working as a software engineer does.

[lkschubert8]

But it isn't really required that teachers teach well. If I were to try and give an honest assessment of the teachers (specifically primary school both public and private) I've had I would say maybe 5% were good teachers, 5% were genuinely bad and the rest just kind of coasted by having students do rote memorization.

[abledon]

I didn’t mean to single out teachers specifically — as parent was using them as example — but I meant that in general , professions where you have more human interaction is more desired by the majority of the human population .

[tsycho]

If you have done both professionally, then by definition, you can code. I think your parent poster's point is that too few people can. They are not saying that teaching is easy.

[p1esk]

Not only that, here we are talking about software engineers who are the best of the best, probably less than 1% of all applicants.

[literallycancer]

It's almost as if it didn't matter how crucial the work you do is, and instead what you make is determined by how much leverage you have and perhaps in part by how close to the money you are.

[tidepod12]

Thank you for elegantly saying what I was trying to say. You were able to put a much finer perspective on it that appears to be more digestable than my comment.

[tidepod12]

I don't believe you'll find anywhere in my post above that I placed the blame on anyone. Why so defensive?

[InterimNew]

22 and 23 year olds making $200k+ a year? For doing what, exactly? Contributing 0.001% of the codebase to an app that sells advertisements?

It may not have been your intent, but your comment has (at least on my read) an accusatory tone. You ask a number of rhetorical questions which indicate that you have low-regard for the work of the engineers in question.

You appear to be doubling down on this with your recent comment.

Why so defensive

Calling someone defensive because they disagree with you is uncivil and a great way to start an argument. In the most literal sense of the word, my comment offers some justification for these salaries because yours appears to discredit them.

[tidepod12]

>It may not have been your intent, but your comment has (at least on my read) an accusatory tone. You ask a number of rhetorical questions which indicate that you have low-regard for the work of the engineers in question.

I do have low regard for the engineers in question (low regard in terms of their ability and worthiness of salary, obviously not low regard in terms of their person). The majority of engineers in SV are working on products that primarily exist to serve advertisements to customers. They don't deserve $200k+ for that, and it makes me sad that society has decided these are the people that are paid this much while teachers and nurses are actually starving.

You say that self-driving car engineers deserve it? Really? Show me the 22 year olds that have contributed meaningfully to self-driving technology. But you can't. Because the people making the meaningful contributions (read: worthy of being paid $200k+) are much more experienced, have been working in the field much longer, and are much older. They are not 22 year old new grads.

>Calling someone defensive because they disagree with you is uncivil and a great way to start an argument. In the most literal sense of the word, my comment offers some justification for these salaries because yours appears to discredit them.

And claiming that someone is accusing blame (when they haven't) is also uncivil and a great way to start an argument.

[asciident]

Just curious, did you have the same feeling towards the many decades when law and finance new grads were making $200K-300K (and many still do)? Is writing reports about financial statements of a company or proofreading legal text a more worthy endeavor than making apps/websites that attract users? Are those new grads making meaningful contributions to society?

[tidepod12]

>Just curious, did you have the same feeling towards the many decades when law and finance new grads were making $200K-300K (and many still do)?

Yes. The difference (aside from the fact that this particular post is specifically about SV, not about law and finance) is that I have never seen lawyers, doctors, or even investment bankers (although yes I have seen Wolf of Wall Street) be so casual about the fact that their salaries are so high. In another comment in this thread, someone suggested that having an extra $5,000 disposable per month was not a lot of money. That is absurd to me, and I have never experienced any of my doctor or lawyer friends have that same attitude.

[literallycancer]

Maybe doctors and lawyers just know better than to talk finances with outsiders.

[balfirevic]

Do you think having extra $50 disposable per month is a lot of money? There was a time when it would be hugely important for me, and now it is not.

What "lot of money" means is entirely relative to how much money you have because for most people it means "would it translate to large difference in lifestyle".

Also, if we are talking about the comment by refurb, it said "rolling in cash" which does not carry the same connotations as "lot of money".

[InterimNew]

I see.

I saw somewhere else in the thread that you yourself are a new grad, so I'll chalk this up to lack of experience but on sufficiently large products it is trivial to make incremental changes that will produce more value then your salary. In my own career I saved a big tech company 250k in reoccurring costs with a 9 month project I completed as a junior. Yes, that number is a rounding error for a large company but the value is clear.

Additionally, perhaps you have never built a team before, but the value of a potential employee extends beyond their year-to-year output. If, for example, I have great confidence that a currently junior hire will output ~$1M of value over a four year period than I am willing to overpay that first year as they grow and develop.

This isn't going anywhere interesting and I am uninterested in continuing the conversation further. Have a nice day :)

(There is a certain irony to me about this back and forth. A large portion of my personal time is spent volunteering in an organization that agitates for unions and other forms of direct action aimed at tackling the gross inequity of this society head-on. You're clearly keyed in to a real and present problem, but rather than suggest any solutions you've decided to whinge ineffectively about... developer salaries?)

[billhathaway]

For the companies in question, the senior engineers making bigger contributions are earning $400k+.

[cbm-vic-20]

Some day, the money people will figure out that there are lots of experienced talent outside the SV bubble.

[pb7]

>teachers and nurses are actually starving

Citation needed.

[tidepod12]

[flagged]

[pb7]

None of those links support your claim that teachers and nurses are starving. Having a relatively low income (according to polls!) does not mean you are dying on the streets due to malnutrition. Taking a second job does not mean the alternative is peril. I could take a second job to afford a better Ferrari but that does not mean I can't afford a car. Try again.

[pb7]

Are you sure? Because it sure sounds like you disagree that these people deserve to be making large sums of money and then also not be appreciative of it. I would call that placing blame.