It might be the narrative but it's not incorrect. It's just another front in the continual war between labor and management
I always suspected tech people live in an extremely privileged bubble but holy cow did this last year really open my eyes to how detached they are.
However, the lifestyle of the $400k/yr worker is probably closer in most important aspects to that of the VC than the janitor. Both drive expensive cars, live in expensive houses, and can set up their kids for success. They don't worry about the cost of food (even organic/local/etc.) or worry much about health care.
Put another way, there are probably some $40k/yr janitors who would give their left arms to be making $400k/yr. But I doubt there are any $400k/yr tech workers who would give their left arm to be making $4m/yr.
I'm a software dev, I don't make 6 figures. I'd probably give my left arm to make $4m/year, I could afford a robot arm with that I'm sure.
$4m/year means I could retire before I'm 40 and live the rest of my life with the lifestyle I have now with comfort. Even missing an arm that sounds way better than toiling in software for another 25-30 years.
I would be able to retire after 1 year, $4M is enough to just stick in an index fund and live the rest of your life on 4% a year, unless you live in a very high COL area.
Sounds like it's time to switch company or location!
Don't be silly. Well earning tech workers in SV make it into the top 15% (at the lower end its difficult to purchase a home where they work). Top 1% would be >$500k/a for a household, which is exceptionally rare for a techie. Not everyone is a rock-star developer working for Uber.
Now, for the world, you´ve got to make $58,000 USD yearly to be in the 1%
https://howrichami.givingwhatwecan.org/how-rich-am-i?income=...
If the upper crust high income tech dudes are priced out of housing in their own city... imagine what it must be like to not be a SV tech worker living in those cities?
You're comparing individuals to households. You're right that not many tech workers make $500k/yr, but you're comparing that individual salary against the top 1% of household incomes.
Plenty of tech workers make $250k/yr and are married to people who make similar wages in tech/law/medicine/etc. That's not to say that most tech workers live super comfortable lives, especially in costly areas like SF/SV. But it's not appropriate to look at the salary of single workers and compare it to household income statistics.
Would like to see the actual numbers of that. It certainly feels right, that high earners would self-select for high earning partners, but wondering what the reality is. It also feels like there are more single tech workers than married couples.
If I'm giving up my one non-fungible resource, my time, it had better come with protections beyond the smile of the manager who insists they've got my back when they're really looking for the right place to stick the knife; if you haven't been burned by that one, that too is a kind of, as you put it, extreme privilege.
While there might be a "war" between people that want to continue WFH and people wanting to return for an office, portraying it as "management vs labor" is unfair to many, many people who are part of the conversation.
Further, there is no point delving into that entire argument when you have just made up this strawman and inserted it into a conversation about workplace attendance requirements. You assume that broader context applies directly to this problem. It does not. The person who wants you back in office, in many cases, is your immediate manager. Is he also "management" when he has is only one degree closer to the CEO on a (generally) 6-7 step ladder? Or did you just transpose workplace hierarchy from the days of factory work and just make a go with it because you cannot be bothered to tax your brain to see how it is entirely different? I'd wager it's the latter.