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Comment by _qwfv | Hacker News Reader

> should NOT be treated as an indicator for what "reasonable" pay looks like across the entire industry.

Hard disagree. The comparatively low salaries in other sectors are just that, below what workers should be earning. Things are fuzzier in the indie space, but companies like Blizzard, Activision, EA, Epic, Ubisoft, Rockstar, CDPR, etc. all pay low and absolutely rake in profits.

We should call worker exploitation what it is rather than calling fair compensation at FAANG companies "ridiculous".

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When we talk about FAANG companies in this context, we do so with the subtext that there are so few companies that pay this way that they'd fit into a short acronym. The idea that the top of the market rate is the moral floor for compensation is hard to take seriously.

Besides, people trade compensation for all sorts of things: working at a nonprofit, working in their rural hometown. Why shouldn't problem domain be one of them?

FAANG companies also underpay their workers. It can simultaneously be the case that they pay their workers best in class wages AND those wages are less than the workers deserve. Apple has immense cash reserves built from the labor of their employees. That is essentially the difference between what value those employees generated for Apple and what they were paid. More of it should go out to the employees, and we should push to make the wages of workers at any company be higher percentage of the value they generate for that company.

What does it mean that they underpay their workers, except that they pay them a smaller percentage of the economic value produced by their labor than you think they should? Is that just a deontological claim? Because I imagine "my moral system says software engineers should be paid more, no, don't worry how much more, I'll tell you when to stop" is not very convincing as an argument.

I'm of the opinion that workers should retain 100% of the value they produce. Not for deontological reasons, but because I hold the belief that the outcomes of paying the "leaf nodes" in an organization maximally results in a healthier economy, a healthier population, and more democratic workplaces.

This is not limited to software engineers. I believe the same is true for any worker, from fast food to manufacturing to engineers.

How do you imagine this working, in practice? Do you want to force companies to have 0 cash holdings at all time? That seems like it might lead to some, ah, undesirable fragility.

> What does it mean that they underpay their workers, except that they pay them a smaller percentage of the economic value produced by their labor than you think they should?

That's easy to measure. These companies have a per-employee revenue which is easily a 5-10x multiple of average total compensation paid per employee, and in some cases it's also much less than the per-employee profit.

So they could pay a ton more while also making a healthy profit. Apple is the worst example of this.

How much workers deserve is based on profitability of the company they work at? Do workers who are equally talented and hardworking but work for a failing company deserve less?

That's a complicated question. My answer is probably they will get paid less. They are producing something for which there is less demand.

However, in today's economy the situation you describe would have the workers being paid less and the owner trying to keep as much of the surplus value from their labor as possible.

So, even in a failing company, I'd expect the wages to increase for workers if they received 100% of their value.

I guess if all the profits go to the workers, who provides the investment necessary to start the company in the first place? You could say it's the employees, but then we get in the weird situation of people having to pay to get a job.

>My answer is probably they will get paid less. They are producing something for which there is less demand.

and this is how gentrification works. Not because a company starts to pay less, but because other companies pay more and make just the act of existing close to those companies (even if you were in fact there first) more expensive.

Your solution is great for tech workers, but ultimately means a large swath of society would suffer.

It’s unworkable at a market level, but ideally, yes. Working for failing companies means you’re just wasting your time and not contributing to the society.

"moral floor for compensation" sorry there is no old man on a white cloud that's sets "moral" rates.

And you might not know this but "charities" & "ngos" are notorious for bad pay and working conditions

What you're saying really boils down to whether or not you think capitalism makes sense, which is a much bigger argument, but ignoring that --

Who defines "should be earning"? You?

Currently, we let the market determine it. It's fine to say you don't like that system, but that's the argument you should make, not "Big game companies are unfair". They're just playing the game the way we set it up.

Alternatively, you could maybe argue "I believe it is possible to make AAA games, pay high salaries, and actually make profits all at the same time", which would be an interesting take, and you could maybe explain how.

But saying "this is worker exploitation" is an uninspired, unproductive argument, IMO.

I'd argue that hiding behind "we let the market determine it" is much more uninspired and unproductive. Economic research now a days is constantly showing that markets are extremely flawed. One example of that is society pressuring employees to not share their wages, which is exactly what this whole article is about.

I think this sets some dangerous thinking because it gives this idea that "you are underpaid" if you happen to fail to make it into those 5 specific companies out of college.

I don't think the situation in tech is as black and white as "FAANG or QA tester". I have friends working at non-FAANG, non-gaming tech companies that seem fine with their salaries. Ticketmaster isn't as pristine a name but they seem to pay well.

Also, pedantic point: CDPR isn't American. I'd rather not get into the details on international salary because that's a whole other topic.

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