[ActorNightly]

Your entire post is simply countered with one statement:

$175k/year starting salary for new grads, which is INSANE. Keep in mind that for the first year, at Amazon, you also get this in cash.

If you took a young, competent, blue collar worker that makes $65k a year with honest work, and said, hey would you like to do your job at 3 times the salary, but there may be some stressful weeks, and you may have to deal with some managerial bullshit that may get you laid off, he would be head over heels excited. He would take the job, save every extra penny he could get, ride it out for as long as he can, and if shit got too rough, he would just walk away with a nice downpayment for a house and a smile on his face.

But modern software engineers seem to think that they not only MUST make that money, but continue making it, all for being able to write some extremely simple OOP code, pass some leetcode questions that one can memorize, and know the difference between relational and non relational database.

Bottom line is, if you can't manage your money/expenses to the point where you have enough runway to walk away at your job at any time because of stress, or you can't figure out what is going on with your role and manager and be able to navigate around that, then you simply don't deserve these high salaries. Plenty of lower paying jobs around.

[htss2013]

Never talk about the psychological toll any job takes on you, because there are people in worse circumstances somewhere, and everyone should always be able to foresee and "navigate" contrived reasons for deficient performance.

Thank you for the enlightening insight.

[ActorNightly]

What a horrible way to misread my comment.

If you job is taking a toll on you, just quit - if you are making 175k a year, after one year you should have enough runway to do so quite easily.

People who make less and depend on their jobs can't.

[x86x87]

Lol. Are you serious?

First, you conveniently ignore COL which matters a lot. Doesn't matter how much money you make if you spend most of it on rent and food.

Second, I don't think you really appreciate the cognitive toll software engineering takes on you. It's not simple OOP and leetcode that is complicated. It's understanding and enhancing legacy code, it's dealing with unrealistic expectations, it's having to continuously pretend that the emperor has clothes and brag about bullshit things like productivity.

Third, I am going to let you in on a secret: if blue collar workers could do what sw engineers do they would go for it. Who wouldn't want to be paid more? Writing code is hard. Try explaining basic shit to someone who is not a software developer and let me know how it goes.

[ActorNightly]

>First, you conveniently ignore COL which matters a lot. Doesn't matter how much money you make if you spend most of it on rent and food.

In every single place, there are people that live stably at much lower salaries than what SDEs make. Nobody is entitled to a nice high rise 2 bedroom apt for themselves and eating out all the time. My first software job I made 80k a year in Northern Virginia which has a very high COL including state income tax, and still managed to have enough money left over for some recreation as well as a safety net.

>Second, I don't think you really appreciate the cognitive toll software engineering takes on you. It's not simple OOP and leetcode that is complicated. It's understanding and enhancing legacy code, it's dealing with unrealistic expectations, it's having to continuously pretend that the emperor has clothes and brag about bullshit things like productivity.

I absolutely do. My point is that if you are stressed, quit. Simple as that. And again, if you can't quit because you spend too much money or don't want to quit because you don't want to give up that lifestyle, then don't complain. There are people who have more stressfull jobs that make half as much and don't have the luxury to just quit.

>if blue collar workers could do what sw engineers do they would go for it.

Completely missed the point.

For the actual work that majority of CS people do, especially new grads, it is not that hard. There are plenty of lower paying CS jobs compared to FAANG where the bar to get in may be much lower, but you pretty much do the same basic tasks day to day. The reason FAANG pays that much is because they have (or realistically had) the funds to recruit talent en masse in expectation that statistically something profitable would come out of it, whereas other smaller companies that are ran much more conservatively tend to pay closer to market value.

If FAANG jobs came with a explicit disclaimer on which every single new hire had to sign off: "Hey, we are going to pay you way more above market rate, but you accept the risk of being overworked, potentially being piped out due to quota, and layoffs in cases of economic recession", I don't think people would be complaining about mental health in regards to jobs. But people shouldn't need that disclaimer to understand this.

[x86x87]

Look. Nobody is going to pay you more than they have to. I understand that for you, maybe, entry level software development is "not that hard".

For most people out there it's hard as fuck. Overworking people is the norm in the US

[ActorNightly]

You can't just make generalizing statements like solely off your anti-capitalist sentiment. The only argument that you can somewhat make in regards to working conditions in us is poor pay/COL and benefits for those making median or below wages (which software engineers are not a part of).

Software engineers have comparatively VERY cushy lives if you go by any real metric. I understand that some people find the job hard, but again, they are compensated well for it. Asking 175k/year and also your job being easy is entitlement to its core.

[x86x87]

You claim that I cannot make generalizations based solely on "sentiment" and you go ahead and do yoyr own generalizations.

Back on Earth, if there is a reduced set a people that can do a job and the demand for that job greatly outweighs the supply, the wages will grow. It's economics 101. It applies in the US, it applies everywhere (look it up, software engineers are paid better no matter what the geography).

Fundamentally we disagree on the job being easy part. It is not easy. We are paying for the "cushy" living with our mental health.