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Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

Seriously? When the entire country has been forced to endure decades of stagnant wages, crippling debt, and the two major presidential candidates are a socialist and a fascist, you are surprised that people want the most babied, prima donna group of workers to ever walk the earth to get their comeuppance? An entire group of engineers who complain about 6 figure salaries and how hard it is to live on them?

I'm one of the group, I'm exactly the person I just described, I'm just not shocked in the slightest.

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Couldn't have said it better for the most part. I think, though this isn't a bubble, the land of fairytales and unicorns (i.e. Silicon Valley) is finally coming to terms with the economic reality that the rest of entrepreneurs in the U.S. live in.

It was inevitable at some point for this to happen - just look at railroad technologies in the 1870's and dozens of other examples since then. The internet, and associated technologies, are beginning to mature, and thus business models must begin to rise to meet a new standard - a profitable and sensible one.

Silicon Valley did a lot of great things for this country, but it gets out of hand when, for instance, relatively simple apps coded over little more than a few weeks start to command hundred-million-dollar valuations (or more) with no revenue and no path to profitability just because of the geographic location of the company headquarters.

trump is an opportunist and a douchebag, but not a fascist. Sanders might be left-wing but far from socialist by any non-us standard. Left wing in the US is at most "center" by EU or some other countries.

Actually with the cost of living and rate of taxation for singles in California it actually is difficult to live off 6 figures. Hollywood talent who actually generate much less wealth than we do get residual income, I live in a studio apartment off 6 figures but my friends who work as hollywood creatives generate far less profit but because of their strong unions are able to buy homes in Los Angeles.

It's the feeling of total entitlement amongst those six-figure engineers that is the issue, not necessarily the salary. Take, for instance, the whole 'tech bro' debacle and others like it.

I have an extremely hard time believing that living on six figures is difficult when I manage easily at <$50k. Yes, in the SF Bay Area.

What people mean is "it's tough to live an upper-middle class life in SF on six figures".

By what metrics are engineers the most babied in the world?

Certainly by metrics of the Silicon Valley PR machine that pays them, would greatly prefer to pay them less, to blame them for the housing crisis, and to use as a debate piece for advocating for infinite H1Bs (but certainly not green cards - those employees have rights).

But not by any real metric. Go walk around an open-office plan filled to the brim with programmers, then walk into a VC office with their mahogany desks and high ceilings and private offices. Check out a law office where you'll see similar things. Look at actual salary data. Lawyers make significantly more than engineers, despite the "shortage" of engineers and "surplus" of lawyers (since this always gets brought up - yes, elite Stanford programmers who work at Google make more than some podunk law grad, but that Stanford law grad still does better, and the average programmer is paid less than the average lawyer). Doctors are 9 out of the 10 highest paid positions in the country. Police, firefighters, and teachers get paid actual overtime with pensions that pay out almost their whole salary after they retire, and have infinitely more job security. On the other hand, tech workers seem to think uncompensated 24/7 on-call is a badge of honor, just like spending all your free time doing even more programming to keep up with the endless tech skill treadmill. So why exactly are tech workers on the top of the list to see fail, other than us taking the blame and devilization for the failure of SF residents to properly plan housing and economic growth for years and trying to preserve the "character of the city" over making practical decisions?

Tech is a great career and compared to many people in this country who have been totally fucked over, we have it great. But this trope that tech workers are so spoiled because they give us a ping-pong table and catered lunch while paying us less than many other white-collar professionals is overdone, so drop it.

And what come-uppance do we deserve? Because we have jobs building products people use and value, that we show up to every day, that makes us deserve some retribution? Because we reasonably point out that six figures in the Bay Area is nowhere near an extravagant lifestyle, which anyone who knows anything about the cost of living would agree with?

The biggest problem I see is too many engineers jump on this self-flaggelation train without thinking critically about it or how it hurts them.

The real reason people keep calling "bubble" is because they're unimaginative. It happened before, so it's easy to just say the same thing will happen without really thinking about it. And yes, they say "this time it's different" in every bubble, except in this "bubble" there is no real indication that there is a bubble, and all these market corrections and beatings tech companies take that are pointed to as the existence of a bubble actually prove the direct opposite, because in real bubbles it goes up really fast based on speculation and comes down really fast in a spectacular crash. Tech has been slowly but consistently growing for years and occasionally takes some corrections and downturns, which is like any other market and nothing like a real bubble.

Amen.

I suppose another factor about programmers is that they're nerds; raising nerd status upsets the natural order.

By what metrics? Job availability, for one. Can you provide an example of another profession where someone with 2-3 years of experience can quit their high-paying job and have recruiters calling the same day to entice them to a new one?

Education requirement, for another. Your examples all require advanced degrees from prestigious schools, multiple years of low wage grunt work, and/or a proven track record before hitting the high salary mark you seem to think is the default. Meanwhile, 22 year olds graduating from college with a CS degree and zero years of experience are getting six figure offers.

Work environment, for a third. Think you can be a doctor and work from home when you feel like it, or have Nerf wars with your coworkers after grabbing a beer from the office-provided kegerator?

SF and SV engineers are spoiled. Spoiled by market conditions that have combined to make right now an unprecedented good time for people who like writing code. Meanwhile, the other 98ish percent of Americans continue to get a poor deal. That's no one's fault, it's just the way economics has gone over the last few years. But it's no surprise that a large number of people want engineers to have to work with the same conditions as everyone else. I mean, can you really say with a straight face that someone writing yet another version of Tinder or whatever is providing more "value", as you put it, than a teacher?

Tech workers have it better than many, worse than some. But hardly the most spoiled ever.

If you're the type of person who values kegerators and nerf wars more than salary, benefits, and professional status, then I can see how you would have your perspective. I can only guess you're much younger than some of us. Personally, I'd rather finish my work and leave the office to go home and buy my own beer with a bigger paycheck than act like I'm in a frat-house.

As for comparing someone writing a dating app to a teacher, I in no way implied that programmers create more value than teachers, or that somehow salary directly reflects the value people contribute to the world. But I think both contribute some value, and neither deserves to get demonized for just doing their job or even advocating for their own interests.

I don't know if there is actual widespread resentment towards coders. I doubt it (outside sf of course) but regardless, the desire take down people who have good jobs and salaries, rather than spread the wealth to all is just the worst of human nature.

Engineers to the brim are the backdrop, the least important component of the stage. Startup ecosystem is one of the holes where roaming capital is sunk. Who benefits? VC, lawyers, bankers (smart ones). Engineers? Who gives a shit about them. They are part of the decoration, dangled in front of investors, like animated gif. It is all a game of collecting money from investors. So don't be too hard on yourself.

Doctors and lawyers, on the other hand are a monopoly, with artificially high entry barrier.

Teachers, firefighters, police... Another monopoly on grand scale. A separate topic...

It all comes down to various monopolies and extraction of funds from public through them.

Having said that, I believe that engineers, albeit being used in startup scam as a bait, still are one of the last few free market forces left, where no credentials matter, where there are no bars or societies, just skills and experience.

Trump is an opportunist and a demagogue, but he's certainly not a fascist.

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