[rachelbythebay]

Speaking only for myself, it comes from a combination of selection bias and general mistreatment at the hands of others.

When you see someone who has three degrees in various flavors of computer science (BS, MS, PhD) who doesn't know about what happens when you use "==" with two floats, it builds.

When your boss tells you that he won't pay you any more because you don't have a degree, it builds. When you find out he's paying the three network engineers 3x what you get and they don't even really understand TCP/IP (so they wind up coming to you for everything), it builds.

When you see someone who is hired as a sysadmin because they are clearly such a great computer scientist and can do anything, and then who can't manage the simplest of Unix maintenance requests, it builds.

Any time someone tries to use their degree as a club instead of a wall covering, it builds.

That's just me. I can't say why other people feel that way.

For the record, I only got my degree two years ago this month. I mostly did it because I really needed to "walk the stage" at last. Everything else was secondary. Now that I have it, does it make me any better than others? No way. If anything, it puts me behind the 8-ball having to pay off these stupid loans for the rest of my life.

[genwin]

> When your boss tells you that he won't pay you any more because you don't have a degree, it builds.

It's just a convenient excuse. If it wasn't a degree it'd be something else. The boss was negotiating, so negotiation skills are what's needed in this situation, rather than a degree.

[rachelbythebay]

You're quite right. I was too young and inexperienced to know it at the time. It took several years to realize just how much they were taking advantage of me.

Still, he said it, and it incremented that internal counter of "reasons to resent", even if it was unfounded.

[Surio]

>> The boss was negotiating, so negotiation skills are what's needed

All right. Now I'm genuinely curious. What would you have said under those similar circumstances? :-)

[genwin]

It's best to ignore any objections and focus on getting paid a market rate (what other companies would pay). So something like "I'm worth $x". I find that the other side quickly stops raising objections and shifts to compromising on a $ figure. Still, jumping ship might be easier than getting a raise that's well beyond the rate of inflation.

[Surio]

Thanks for the reply.

>> Still, jumping ship might be easier

wry smile. Nothing wrong with what you've said. But come to think of it, you've endorsed rachel's POV regarding the building up of resentment with this answer. If jumping ship is the kind of disruption one has to make for what amounts to "convenient excuses" (and the manager goes on to pay 3x more to "worthless" network engineers -- read her reply above), then I say, let the resentments boil over!

EDIT: improved readability

[genwin]

I meant that jumping ship might be easier at any company. Businesses put rigid limits on raises. If you want to make a market rate it's best to get it when hired.

[Surio]

Ahhh. It's clearer when you put it like that. However, not everyone pulls an ace out of a card every time, time after time. ;-)

Net result, arbitrary excuses/comparison tactics like what OP points out, is actually more common than one would like it to be.