[jfk13]

> This is all on top of the fact that engineers are woefully underpaid. I have finance friends that make literal millions in yearly bonuses. This is virtually unheard of in software, even though we provide orders of magnitude more value.

That doesn't necessarily mean engineers are woefully underpaid. It may just be that your finance friends are obscenely overpaid.

Though whether all/most engineers provide "orders of magnitude more value" may be questionable. Some of the highest-paid engineers, AIUI, devote their considerable expertise to optimising ad click rates. "Provide value"? Hmmm. To whom? Not humanity in general, I think.

[dvt]

> Some of the highest-paid engineers, AIUI, devote their considerable expertise to optimising ad click rates.

I worked on an ad product with a team of 10 or so data scientists + engineers. I'd wager most of us made between 100k-175k + some tiny bonuses here and there. The product we built was making the company $2.5 million a month.

But hey we all got some cool jackets and a pat on the back. Give me a break. Money talks. I don't know why engineers are so shy when it comes to wanting more.

[maximente]

i would guess that a hypothetical survey of the software engineering profession would rank "solving intellectually challenging and interesting problems" as one of the top values if not the top.

if you buy that, it's no surprise that many software engineers (albeit not necessary ultra professional ones) are willing to give away their labor for free to the world, on the internet, in their (spare?) time. to them, it's just a fulfilling use of time, and that it may be valuable on its own or on behalf of capital, isn't really a big deal.

it should also be no surprise, then, that despite potentially automating away entire industries (e.g. transportation) whose proceeds will ostensibly go to those deploying the labor of the engineers, they're perfectly willing to settle in for a "good salary", "cool perks", "comfortable lifestyle", and, most importantly, being fed very difficult problems to hack on. as long as the SWE isn't too bored or too uncomfortable, i think they'd continue to plow ahead, even if their employers stand to gain $Billions from whatever they're doing.

[yibg]

every time engineering salary discussions come up something like this gets posted. We made the company $xx millions and we only get a tiny fraction of it in pay. As if the company should pay engineers whatever they make. What about:

1) All the other things that goes into making that money. Like sales, marketing, HR, etc.

2) Supply and demand. Doesn't matter if you made the company $xx millions, what's your market value?

3) Risk. If you and your team doesn't make the company money, should you not get paid?

[dvt]

> As if the company should pay engineers whatever they make.

You're attacking a strawman, no one in this thread is arguing that the company should pay engineers whatever they make.

[yibg]

Is it? The post I responded to was saying the company makes 2.5 million a month and they got a pat on the back. Sure, no one is asking for exactly what the company makes, but the implication is always they should get paid proportionally to the company's additional revenue due to their work. I'm just saying that's not how it works.

[dvt]

> the implication is always they should get paid proportionally to the company's additional revenue due to their work

Being proportionally paid with the value you bring isn't even remotely comparable to being paid everything you make. In fact, proportionality of pay is quite common in plenty of industries, e.g., real estate, law, etc.

[yibg]

Real estate also gets very little (nothing?) if no sales are made. Is that what you're proposing? That software developers work on commission and don't get paid if the stuff they build doesn't make the company money? Or should it be like sales folks with a target? Seems like some folks want the best of both worlds. A bit fat salary that's guaranteed regardless, but also a big fat bonus if what they work on makes money.

[kickout]

Double your teams salary to get the cost to the company including benefits like health insurance (which are very real).

[palebluedot]

From their numbers, it doesn't matter much. Even if we take the highest number from their range ($175k) and double it, that is $3.5M/year for the 10-person team. That is still an order of magnitude less than $30M/year.

[wins32767]

Depends on where you are. Cost of benefits doesn't really scale with geographical increases. In Boston, my last several startups have used 1.35x salary as the fully loaded cost for engineers.

[JMTQp8lwXL]

It typically costs an employer double what your pay is, once including benefits, matching social security contributions, etc. So your employer had 10 people it was spending 200k-350k a month on, so 2000k-3500k in expenses, for a product that made 2500k a month.

[hansvm]

That's less true as salaries increase. Some of the increased costs like matching social security contributions or 401k matching are proportional to salary (to the tune of ~8-25% in aggregate depending on a ton of factors), and many of the other large benefits like health care are fixed and consequently take a much lower percentage of a large salary (10% would be a large overestimate for total employer health care costs for the salaries listed).

"Double" is a much better (but still probably a bit high unless you're also factoring in HR and other similar overhead) estimate for low-paid white-collar workers. Lots of fields in vast swathes of the country start out around $30k/yr but still have full benefits. A $3k-$15k/yr healthcare benefit on top of the other variable costs can push you close to double.

[mperham]

200k per year * 10 people is $2m/yr.

It was making $2.5m/mo.

[misiti3780]

I dont think its double, its more like 1.6

[ClumsyPilot]

Well, we have this myth of meritocracy, but some proffessions are systemically underpaid like teachers - millions of future earnings depend on them, but noone ambitious wants to become a teacher, so our schooling kida sucks

[vorpalhex]

It's a supply and demand problem. There are a lot of folks who are willing and able to be teachers for a low amount of pay, but it turns out you can't live off discount engineers or finance people.

I assure you, if SV could get away paying $12 an hour to engineers or finance, they would.

[ClumsyPilot]

There are a lot of folks who are willing and able to be president for a low amount of pay. Might even do a better job than Trump.

The idea was that if teaching was a prestigious profession, we would see large returns on that investment. We have an entire underclass of population that is poorly educated, so maybe we shouldn't be living off 'discount teachers' as we are doing now.

[shuckles]

Really great teachers could probably find a way to make huge incomes. I tutored competition math on the side to rich families’ kids for nearly $500/hr.

[ClumsyPilot]

The whole point of my post was that we need the best teachers in the classrooms, not tutoring a few select rich kids.

[shuckles]

Your original claim was that the teaching profession is systematically underpaid but in fact you’re talking about a very specific set of public sector employees whose compensation is more complex than just annual salary.

[ClumsyPilot]

This 'very spesific set' is like 90% of all teachers.

The argument was -you cannot get away underpaying developers, you get crap develipers and crap code. But compare teaching outcomes, and you will see that countries with better paid teachera have better outcomes in primary education, so we are suffering the consequences in both cases. Its just that we've chosen different tradeoffs

[shuckles]

I haven’t made any arguments. You may be confusing me with someone else on the thread? In any case, the outrageously paid developers are probably less than 10% of all software engineers, especially if you consider that foreign engineers are part of the labor pool in a way foreign teachers are not.

[Grimm1]

"Provide value"? Hmmm. To whom? Not humanity in general, I think."

The organization they're employed at. Which is obvious because we're talking about jobs here; that's what salaries are, in part, based on.

[madsbuch]

In that case, finance people with said bonuses indeed make that kind of value.

Though I am not quite sure the average finance person makes more than the average software engineer.

[Grimm1]

I didn't claim to agree with the original comment. I didn't even give an opinion. I just clarified where value is being measured.