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Comment by eulji | Hacker News Reader

95% of us are doing shitty low IT as well so please do not pretend we are better than drivers or cooks. We are not.

5% of population is working on really groundbreaking stuff. We are just lucky we are in demand but our time will come as well and then those Senior Software Engineers that brag about how they are rich and successful will be useless once again.

95% of software is pure s...t so please show some respect.

The more I work in IT and meet more people the more I appreciate "normal workers" that take care of our stomachs,clothing,trash and so on.

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> 95% of us are doing shitty low IT as well so please do not pretend we are better than drivers or cooks.

I don't think anyone is saying we're better people. Programming - even basic programming - is harder than driving a car.

That does not mean it's more useful than being able to drive a car properly.

It's pure capitalism I get it. I like capitalism okay ? I live in a socialist corrupt hellhole.

Even if it's harder that does not mean it's more useful than to drive car properly.

That's why the rich countries are outsourcing to cheaper countries so much.

How do you justify 150k salary in US vs 25k salary in India ? Different costs of living ? Yes and no. In many poor countries some stuff is just more expensive than in the richer ones.

I'm actually surprised people are asked to justify why harder jobs should be paid more.

Someone considering that they deserve the same as someone else for doing and easier job is a kind of entitlement. I'd like to see someone justify that.

>Someone considering that they deserve the same as someone else for doing and easier job is a kind of entitlement. I'd like to see someone justify that.

I'd like to see someone provide a reason why anyone would pick the "harder" jobs if they were paid the same.

If I could choose between a job digging and filling holes all day or a job where all I do is play video games - I'm not sure many holes would be dug. Extend this to hundreds of "easy" jobs and hundreds of "hard" jobs and it makes one wonder how many jobs requiring physical or repetitive labor wouldn't exist.

"Even if it's harder that does not mean it's more useful than to drive car properly."

It's more useful TO THE BUYER. That's why the buyer TRADES MORE MONEY for it.

No one cares what third parties think about "value" or "difficulty" or "justification".

>How do you justify 150k salary in US vs 25k salary in India ? Different costs of living ? Yes and no. In many poor countries some stuff is just more expensive than in the richer ones.

What people are willing to work for.

If nobody in India was willing to do the job for $25k annual salary - they would need to be offered more to do the job. Flat out, that simple. It turns out that there are many people willing to do the job for the lower pay - because it beats other options available to them.

On the other side of the coin - fewer people would take the job in the U.S if it wasn't $150k/yr salary. They'd walk to another offer that they feel is worth their time because the offer doesn't beat other options available to them.

Are you saying that programming in basic is easy or just that people do trivial things with it?

No, it really isn't. The worst thing that can happen in programming is my application throwing an error (assuming PHP/Python or similar). That's really nothing compared to when I'm driving a heap of metal at high speeds around the streets together with other people doing the same.

> The worst thing that can happen in programming is my application throwing an error (assuming PHP/Python or similar).

This is not remotely true at all.

Goddamit, I downvoted you when I meant to upvote. Sorry.

Discounting the fact that some programs execute within the "heaps of metal" you speak of. There are also programs and solutions out there that affect millions of individuals, and could absolutely have far-reaching consequences in a "worst case" scenario. E.g. The recent citizen information leaks.

He mentioned "even basic programming", that's what I ran with.

It's funny, because based on hiring IT/CS interviews you'd think everyone's there fixing cancer.

This. Everybody is working on the next big thing that can make few guys super rich, few more guys rich and the rest will have to survive on minimum wages.

You're absolutely right.

It would be interesting to make a list of white and blue collar jobs where you pair professions with the same pay level.

mopping the floor -- office secretary

plummber -- wordpress

etc

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