[joshuamorton]

Google's revenue per employee is 1.3 million annually. Netflix's is 2.3 million. Facebook's 1.5. Profit per employee runs even lower, Google's is 300K, Facebook's 400K, netflix's 250K.

That's after tricksy things that inflate those numbers, such as using a large number of contractors to decrease the employee count. I don't disagree that these companies could afford to pay more, but not like a ton more. Like, if they decided to put all profit toward workers, it would probably result in like...doubled salaries, which is a lot, but calling it a pittance is a reach.

There's all kinds of valid stuff to discuss in terms of companies paying people in weird ways: the abuse of non-engineers and especially vendors. The weird rules about locale-based pay. This one is weird mostly because the data doesn't bear you out as much as you seem to think it does. Especially when things like improving the conditions of TVCs and making them FTEs will further reduce that profit per employee margin (I believe it would put the profit per employee below 200K for all the companies I mentioned).

So like presuming that these companies start to treat the second-class people better, you're looking at a 20-30% raise for the swes. That's nice, don't get me wrong, but its not anything like the abuse you're making it out to be.