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Comment by opportune | Hacker News Reader

I always read these ridiculously high salaries and laugh. Your average HVAC worker is not making $400k. I do know people in construction/HVAC/plumbers/electricians and it's the bosses making that money, not the grunt workers. The people on the front lines still make good money, for some easily approaching $100k/year, so there's not really a need for embellishment. That isn't to say that it's unattainable, but it's akin to saying that software developers make $400k/year when it's usually 10-20+ year tenured engineering managers at a few specific companies actually making that much.

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$400k is what senior executives of major multinational companies get paid. It's also what top surgeons get paid.

I highly doubt that blue collar workers get anywhere near that much. If they did, everyone would try to work in that industry because the barrier to entry is comparatively very low.

Senior executives get paid much more than that in stock (which is how these top-paid software people get most of their money too), also $400k is just a slightly above average surgeon, not a top surgeon.

If you read my comment, I'm not really talking about blue collar workers, but more people who used to be bluecollar workers but eventually became small business owners of companies employ blue collar labor. My cousins who used to be electricians can easily make $250k/year by employing a team of <10 electricians to do the manual work. $400k/year doesn't seem out of reach at all, and they might get that just by moving business to a higher CoL area than the suburban South

So you're talking about businessmen, not workers. Businessmen are doing well across the board. It doesn't much matter what they did before they were businessmen.

"If they did, everyone would try to work in that industry because the barrier to entry is comparatively very low."

That's an old joke:

Surgeon to plumber: "You are charging higher prices than I get for performing surgery!"

Plumber: "Yeah, I make more money now than when I was a surgeon, too."

Well, in NYC, senior execs at major multinational companies and top surgeons aren't the only ones making $400K.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2013/10/04/why-shoul...

Yes, these are blue collar workers.

They absolutely do, but not at entry level. They're the ones who have been doing it for ages, break off to start their own business doing it, and hire people to work for them, and the cycle begins anew. Nobody's doing it because the last 20 years kids have been told that college is the One True Path to being successful and that the trades are for people who can't hack it there. It's hard work and long hours before you really start to get crazy high earnings, but you get there.

To affirm: who knows more, earns more is probably the most harmful lie you can say to your children. Supply and demand!

   It's also what top surgeons get paid.

Your point is valid, but that is nowhere near the top of surgical salaries - closer to the average.

Top surgeons? My girlfriend’s cousin is a new doctor in Texas and makes a decent amount >$400k as a brand new doctor at a hospital.

“”” The salary figures fall short of numbers reported by other survey groups: a Medical Group Management Association report using 2010 data, found that the average compensation for radiologists was $471,253 and for pediatricians it was $192,148, Kaiser Health News reports. “””

http://time.com/4408807/surgeon-salary-how-much-doctors-make...

No wonder you spend enormous amounts of money on health care in the states. In Norway most doctors makes just above $100,000. I guess this is more or less comparable to the rest of Europe.

Doctor pay has almost nothing to do with the absurd medical costs. With 1.1m doctors in the US, and median pay at 180k, that's $200B. US healthcare spending is 3.2 trillion. Beyond that, I think they deserve that much when factoring in the cost of education, liability of the job, and decrease in years of employment.

Here's some math:

- median age of retirement: 63.

- median UPS salary over lifetime: $70k.

- UPS driver lifetime earnings = 70k * (63-18) = $3.15m

- Median doctor salary: They usually earn around 150k total during their residency, and the median is around 180k beyond that (typically age 30+)

- MD lifetime earnings = 150k + 180k*33 = 6.09m.

- MD education debt is typically around 500k, adjusting earnings to 5.59m. Accounting for hours worked, MD equivalent lifetime earnings are 3.72m.

I mean no disrespect to the work ethic of any blue collar job, but do you really believe the guy who cured you of cancer isn't worth the extra 600k over their lifetime compared to the guy who dropped off your replacement phone charger?

Some other data which tells a different story; I wonder how it all reconciles:

In the United States, the richest 1 percent have seen their share of national income roughly double since 1980, to 20 percent in 2014 from 11 percent. ...

No other nation in the 35-member Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is as unequal among those with comparable tax data, and none have experienced such a sharp rise in inequality.

...

Almost all of the growth in top American earners has come from just three economic sectors: professional services, finance and insurance, and health care, groups that tend to benefit from regulatory barriers that shelter them from competition.

The groups that have contributed the most people to the 1 percent since 1980 are: physicians ...

The United States also stands out in terms of how much money its elite professionals earn relative to the median worker. Workers at the 90th percentile of the income distribution for professionals make 3.5 times the earnings of the typical (median) worker in all occupations in the United States. Only Mexico and Israel, which have very high inequality, compensate professionals so disproportionately.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/17/upshot/income-inequality-...

Income is not the same as wealth, and income is irrelevant if it doesn't turn into wealth.

My father is a doctor and he finished paying off his education at 48. I make half what he made and finished paying mine off at 28. I'm drastically more wealthy now, and will be wealthier when I retire. This seems strange given the significant difference in income.

1980 is a very peculiar data point to mention. That year is pretty much exactly when minimum wage and tuition suddenly diverged. Between 1965 and 1980, A full time summer job at minimum wage could consistently pay for ~45% of your tuition. In the next 15 years, it dropped to around 20-25%. Running the numbers for 2017-2018, in-state tuition is 20%, out of state is 11%, and private is 8.6%.

The groups that have contributed the most people to the 1 percent since 1980 are: physicians ...

With all that in mind, this statement doesn't seem unreasonable to me. If education prices have skyrocketed, shouldn't the career that spends the most in education (both time and cost) be compensated accordingly?

Point being, income is only half of the equation to wealth. That article doesn't bother mentioning debt at all.

Relevant assumptions/data:

Summer job: 14 weeks @ 40hrs per week

Tuition costs 2017: https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tabl...

Older tuition costs: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=76

Minimum wage: https://www.dol.gov/whd/minwage/chart.htm

> isn't worth the extra 600k

Do you really think you should pay twice as much in the US compared to other countries with equal quality?

If what you're quoting is what you are actually responding to, you've missed the point. That quote is a comparison between a UPS driver and a Doctor, not a Doctor in the US and one in Norway. If you're trying to compare countries, you're not paying twice as much once you account for what goes into achieving that income.

Maybe I didn't get my point across, but what I was getting at: salaries really have to do with the extreme healthcare costs in the US.

https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/10/25/doctors-sal...

(Also on HN today)

I've commented on that one as well. Feel free to read those.

Strict control over the number of training positions and medical school spots appears to keep salaries high.

Huzzah!!! Nailed it.

@Thlom well they have these exorbitant medical school loans to pay off, you see...

>400k is what senior executives of major multinational companies get paid. It's also what top surgeons get paid.

400k is seen quite often e.g. here: http://www.gaswork.com/search/Anesthesiologist/Job/All

So it would seem one just needs to choose the right niche, and doesn't even need to be the top.

>If they did, everyone would try to work in that industry because the barrier to entry is comparatively very low.

To get in, yes there is no barrier to entry, just find a trade school or union to accept you for training.

However, the program and training is no joke. You have to have the aptitude and dexterity to do the job and complete the training.

Tower crane operators in NYC can apparently make up to $500k including benefits.

The barrier to entry is not low though, it's incredibly hard to become a crane operator due to the unions.

When I search for salary data for tower crane operators online, it says the salary is around $30k per year.

It sounds like you have to network hard and get very lucky to get that 500k per year salary and it probably doesn't last forever.

I've heard several stories from older people who said that they were earning ridiculous amounts at some point in their lives but it only lasted a couple of years and then their salaries dropped back to average ranges once their contract ran out and started working for normal companies again.

Salaries don't necessarily keep going up based on experience.

"tenured engineering managers"?

http://thestartupconference.com/2017/03/25/the-350k-google-s...

That's an even more specific case, because again, most software developers aren't working at Google/FB/Airbnb/Uber/Snap. And those are figures for experienced workers to boot, and "Staff Engineer" is typically a managerial role IMO, if not directly by delegation/HR-type stuff, then in a technical sense.

The total comp is in practice also generally a bit lower because most of those companies backload the vesting

“Staff Engineer” is about halfway up the technical career ladder in many places, with a few possible (but increasingly rare) levels above, and a few levels below. Someone promoted to staff engineer likely has at least 5 years of work experience (probably more) and is self-motivated, good at their job, gets along well with their coworkers, and has some technical vision.

Many of these people might have some quasi-managerial duties (interacting with other parts of the organization, helping with recruiting, ...), get roped into more meetings than they would like, or make high-level technical decisions and delegate work to a handful of more junior engineers, but most of them are sitting at their desks writing code a significant part of the day (or perhaps rewriting the schlocky code that the junior engineers just handed in).

I've worked for 2 well known software companies and what you are describing is a Senior Engineer in both (5-10 years experience).

The place I am now starts fresh grads as Engineer I, then Engineer II, Senior Engineer, Principal Engineer, Architect and then Staff Engineer. Each promotion takes about 4-5 years so you aren't reaching Staff until about 20 years. A Staff Engineer is basically fully autonomous and is an IC that reports directly to the executives. They work on what they want and with who they want.

I understand this is different at Google and I guess Staff is the equivalent to a Google Fellow.

My experience aligns with yours

Yeah, the version the earlier poster was talking about in his link is somewhere between your levels of Senior and Principal.

I think it depends on the company. I was extrapolating from my own experience but I realize it may not be the same elsewhere. In my experience Staff Engineers were almost always at least 10 years-experienced. I might be wrong about those companies I mentioned, though, because I've never worked at any of them

Also keep in mind I said "usually" in my original comment. Blue collar labor and software engineering are not directly analogous because yes, there are software developers at the high end that are making a lot of money compared to some of the best blue collar workers. But it's still only a small percentage of them making that much, and I wouldn't mention those figures to someone looking to go into software for that reason

"That's an even more specific case, because again, most software developers aren't working at Google/FB/Airbnb/Uber/Snap."

That's why you said:

"when it's usually 10-20+ year tenured engineering managers at a few specific companies"

right?

Yeah I was speaking in broad terms across the industry, not accounting for edge cases

It’s not all that unusual for the grunt workers to put in their time and become the boss. Out where I live, there are lots of really big houses near the water with vans and dirty pickup trucks out front.

I think there’s a lot more software developers at the big tech companies making $400k or more in total comp than you think.

I'll never see 400K, not even if I do tons of overtime through my own S-Corp. If you can do that, I'd like to know how. 200K is hard enough and not easy to maintain.

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