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Comment by abxytg | Hacker News Reader

What a disingenuous PoS. Honestly, fuck this clown and the horse he rode in on. Anyone telling you that giving you a smaller slice of the pie is for your own benefit is getting one over on you.

The best hot take I have heard on this subject is that engineers are not paid too much. Everyone, including eng, is underpaid WRT rising revenues and exec comp. Of course the pushback comes from CEOs because they are hoarding revenue. I hire. I know it sucks and is hard and you have to pay an arm and a leg to do it. But do you know how much a fucking house goes for these days? Do you know how long it takes to save for a downpayment on $150k? Get the fuck out of here "helping the younger generation" by stagnating salaries.

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Please don't fulminate or call names on HN. You may not owe a tech CEO better, but you owe this community better if you're participating here.

Please review the site guidelines and stick to them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

I'm sorry, I will do better to follow these guidelines and I apologize for violating them.

I do have to say -- I have to question why this comment deserves a personal censure from staff. I read a lot questionable stuff in these comment sections and this is the first time I can recall seeing a personal response like this. I mean I'm talking railing against feminism as a concept and proposing eugenicist solutions to "crime in SF". I guess I must be seeing the comments before the mod team steps in and of course I will make sure to flag them in the future. I appreciate the work you do and of course am not questioning your personal integrity.

The answer is randomness. We don't come close to reading or even seeing all the posts here—there are far too many. Basically, it's the same boring reason as why cops don't pull over every speeder. Of course it always feels like you're the one being singled out when you do get cited (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...) - but this is an illusion, and so is the feeling that the mods are against you.

So when you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. And yes, you can definitely help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

I appreciate that. Thanks! Will do.

The company is the cliche of the evil mega Corp.

“When NBC News first approached AnyVision for an interview, CEO Eylon Etshtein denied any knowledge of "Google Ayosh," threatened to sue NBC News and said that AnyVision was the “most ethical company known to man.” He disputed that the West Bank was “occupied” and questioned the motivation of the NBC News inquiry, suggesting the reporter must have been funded by a Palestinian activist group.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/why-did-microsoft-fund-isra...

You know he is full of it because tech jobs salary is wide spectrum, if he wants to pay low price and his work is simple enough he can pick a outsourcing company which will give him the lowest price for that work.

What this clown is complaining is he wants complex work done at low price while wanting his company to get to PE 15-30x so they can get out of it as millionaires/billionaires.

I'm personally pissed I went Mechanical Engineering at this point. Original plan was to go Mechanical Engineering bachelor's and Electrical Engineering masters.

In the end, the pay for both of those careers is kinda complete shit for what you do to get the degree, unless you manage to happily completely bullshit yourself through everything and don't let it weigh on your conscience.

SWE is... arguably easier than both Mech E and Elec E in my mind, and the option for remote work has always been much, much higher. And the starting pay is... about 2.5x more, at a minimum, to begin with - and if you want to be a dick, and know how to interview FAANG and the like, you can hop company to company, do basically nothing and make that pay for 4-6 months before you're found out. And not to mention the benefits...

I can't understand why there's not more of an outrage. It's insane. I simply can't tell any high schooler that an engineering degree outside of SWE, and maybe a highly focused aerospace degree, is worth it for the foreseeable future.

While it seems easy to us, that's survivor bias. Turns out not everybody can learn to program well enough to do it for money.

I'd venture that 90% of folks who are able to get a physical engineering degree and get a job doing engineering work would be able to learn programming well enough to get paid for it.

I went SWE and I'm p**ed that Mechanical Engineering pays 2.5 less. It destroys the know-how basis of this country, if not the world. Might as well call it the Tech Disease, modeling upon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease.

You can be pissed off, but make sure you're pissed off at your employer for not paying you more rather than fellow engineers for earning more.

Yes, this is the case.

You're assuming that value is measured only in dollars. But surely, someone who is more interested in solving mechanical engineering problems than programming would be happier with a mechanical engineering job than a programming job, even if the salary is lower.

You're assuming that the degree has anything to do with the work. The vast majority of things I've been paid to do in the course of my life have had little to do with the subjects of my degrees. That said, because I have a bachelor's in English and master's in Math Education and Fiction Writing (two separate degrees, not one weird interdisciplinary one), there are fields that I cannot hope to break into. No one will hire me to be their chemist or auto mechanic with my credentials. Programming is probably the easiest field for someone with no paper credentials to get into out of all the highly paid careers.

>But surely, someone who is more interested in solving mechanical engineering problems than programming

And this is why I went the way that I did. Unfortunately, I'm from what's practically extreme poverty in the U.S., I'm sure a large amount of Mech and Elec EE's (or engineers in general) aren't exactly from upper class wealth...

And, guess what. I'm young, the planet is on fire and only getting worse, and it's beyond obvious that nothing is going to change that within my lifetime. That's a singular of many issues. The only way to insulate yourself from a lifetime of suffering from this is by money, and lots of it. Definitely not with what even senior ME's or EE's make.

To imagine a young student would choose to go one route because it's fun or their passion instead of a route that will somewhat secure their future at this point is asinine, and it's going to completely fuck industry over (as if it's not already) when there's a lack of capable engineers in other disciplines than SWE

If you're young enough a good Mech eng is much better preparation for the nasty world you reasonably can fear is around the corner 30 to 40 years from now.

And the way things are going with everything becoming subscription including the recent push to normalize the idea of everyone becoming permanent renters, the actual cost of a middle-class living is outpacing wages for pretty much everyone that makes below SWE-equivalent salaries. The squeezing of the middle class is just slowly ratcheting up a few percent every year.

100%. My wife works in a lab with masters level ME's that make less than half of what I do as a self taught engineer with a liberal arts BA. It's insanity. SpaceX salary data is awesome for this -- on average the SWEs are the highest compensated when the other engineers are doing actual rocket science.

Controversial, so I'm expecting downvotes.

SWE is one of the most difficult professions at the highest levels. If it's so simple, then the ready supply of SWE should depress wages but that is clearly not happening.

Sure, I can agree with this.

The issue is that 99% of senior other engineering professions top out at like, $160-$175k at most.

You can be fresh out of college, go to an absolutely entry level junior SWE job, and make $250k.

There lies the issue.

I would also argue EE is more difficult at the highest than SWE. There's some deeply rooted knowledge, logic, and physics required, whereas in SWE... at the highest levels, you can almost pave your own damn path however you choose to and make things work.

While I’m sure there’s a fresh college grad SWE making $250K first-year somewhere, I’d be shocked if the median were over $150K and surprised if the median was $100K or more in the US.

This is true but a SWE doesn’t need to have a high level to make a lot more money than other types of engineers.

While SWE may be a very difficult and brain intensive profession at the highest level, so are so many other technical/STEM fields. Yet curiously it's SWE that gets the big bucks, not the other fields.

Some of the best sw developers I've known have been mechanical, civil and chemical engineers by degree.

...

Go work for one of the CAD or FEA companies and start learning to write software. It will take a few years of effort to make the transition, but then you should be able to move.

> SWE is... arguably easier than both Mech E and Elec E in my > mind

I won't touch on any of the other points, but I'd repeat something I've said to many junior engineers over the years.

I'd agree that the barrier to entry to SWE is probably lower. There's a ton of work where you just need anyone with two hands and a brain to smash their fingers into the keys until someone's idea is realized, but to get to the upper echelon of the field, it's at a minimum on par with any of the other engineering fields out there.

Because programming is meta-applicable (programmers write software that writes software and this recurses indefinitely, whereas good luck building a new type of bridge that can build bridges, let alone recursively) you'd naively expect this to top out really quickly.

But instead you can get a good job doing things the machine could certainly do, and do better, but doesn't yet because nobody yet taught a machine how. It's unclear how long that will last, but it may well be enough that everybody reading HN has retired before it's over. At the beginning of my career printf("This %p is %d a %s bad %n idea\n") didn't produce a compile error. In 2020 the C++ Standard Library specification still didn't say that the equivalent mistake was a compile error (but in 2021 they retrospectively fixed the 2020 standard to say it is), and I'd say this is now the middle of my career.

Progress has been slow is what I'm suggesting.

I agree, I studied mechanical and then aerospace engineering. While these are still the kind of problems that interest me the most, on one side I regret not having gone to software. The salary difference is just too large to ignore, as well as the possibilities of full remote working.

> SWE is... arguably easier than both Mech E and Elec E in my mind

The studies for ME or EE are hard, but are those jobs harder? SWEs handle ungodly amounts of complexity, trying to build and keep running a system based on poorly documented libraries, shitty third-party services, code that was written a long time ago and no one understands it, backcompat requirements, availability and scalability requiremets etc. etc. There's a ton of stuff to juggle in your mind, whereas an EE or ME can just work on button for a car cockpit or something.

I think you could be a lot more charitable to EEs and MEs.

The EE/ME equivalent of what you're talking about for SWEs is not "work on button for a car cockpit or something" -- it's hardware/software/enclosures for things like space-hardened applications and payloads, industrial and commercial applications, or medical devices. Some of these are hellishly complex systems, others are just hellishly out of date, over-budget, poorly documented, and "shitty third-party [i.e. lowest-bidding contractor] services".

If you want to tell an EE or ME to just go work on buttons for a car cockpit, you might as well go tell an SWE that they can just go write AJAX calls to update HTML elements on a page, or update Wordpress plugins for businesses.

The electrical and mechanical engineering fields have far advanced past "button for a car cockpit" into much more complex domains, just like SWE has advanced far past writing vanilla JS to update HTML elements into things like JS frameworks, containers, (P/I/S)aaS.

I've read about an ME who has spent 6 years designing air ventilation for seats 40-80 in some Boeing plane... Are such jobs rare? They seem much more constrained and with much less moving parts than modern server-side software.

This is the equivalent of saying "I know some SWE whos entire job it is to make bright and shiny buttons on web pages to entice old people to click on them for ad revenue, it's all he does and he makes bank for it"

You don't particularly seem to have the best grasp on the breadth of a career in ME/EE

Furthermore... if you're going to give an example, please don't make it one of the most beauracratic red taped government jobs program. Yes, we all know what happens at Boeing is not exactly contributing much to society nor giving fulfilling jobs at this point. Entry level Google doesn't particularly do so either, but you can start $200k w/great benefits & all you have to do is have enough accreditation to get thru initial resume screening (which is not much) and then have grinded leetcode for a few months.

It's all about timing. Electrical engineers were some of the highest paid and most in-demand engineers from the late 80s to around 2007 or so, due to the explosive growth of quantitative finance and synthetic investment vehicles, and the fact that only physics and EE educations were providing the type of skillset in stochastic process modeling you need to do that kind of thing. Then the bubble burst when global credit markets crashed and it turned out a lot of it was castles being built on sand.

Software engineering is in a similar bubble right now thanks to gigantic influxes of VC cash trying to will future monopolies into existence, or at least convince the public markets at some point they've got a decent shot so they can cash out on exit, by undercutting service prices and overpaying developers to keep them from working anywhere else.

Whether it lasts or also comes crashing down we'll see, but historically, every bubble has tended to burst eventually. It's kind of hard to know in advance what the next one will be, especially as a teenager when you're still in a position to tailor your life's educational and career plans to trying to be inside of it when it happens.

Hey, don't think you're alone. I'm currently studying chemical engineering and I share the same feelings with you about low salaries. The thing that keeps me going is maybe I can break into management one day. Also my engineering degree is very fungible.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

>Do you know how long it takes to save for a downpayment on $150k?

Tell me you live in the Bay Area without telling me you live in the Bay Area. Snark aside, unless you have massive debt, live in an expensive metro area (SF, LA, NYC), or a combination of both, if you can't save up a sizeable down payment while earning $150k then that issue is on you.

I live in NJ. I can't afford a house with a $200k+ salary because every house that's even half-way decent is either outside my price range or is bought up in cash above asking price.

Must be nice to be so cushioned from reality.

In that case you need to look harder, our outside your current area. I'm from Jersey, $200k salary should give you lots of options especially in central or south Jersey.

Thanks, I'm cured.

Ever consider people have families? Have families they're planning on having?

Yeah, moving to central or South Jersey wouldn't work. That's why I live where I do now ...

Keep preaching from that ivory tower of yours

Grew up in central Jersey, I would have no issue raising my kid there whatsoever.

Cool. My family lives on LI and my other half of the family doesn't live in Central Jersey.

I swear, everyone posting with "BUT I CAN AFFORD IT" is absolutely tone deaf to the US housing crisis we're in.

I think the point is that there are plenty of generally desirable places to live where you can reasonably make a down payment on $150k/yr. You personally have chosen to rule out those places, for reasons that are good ones for you. That's your choice to make, of course, but you've decided you'll only consider the most expensive places in NJ to live, and many people will not do that.

(But man, have things changed. I grew up in central Jersey in the 80s, and back then no one of any means wanted to live across the Hudson from Manhattan. Nuts to see that now many people are priced out of that area.)

I find it hilarious when people who make twice as much as me talk about how I'm "preaching from that ivory tower". Have you looked at condos? Townhouses? The idea that you are constrained by your salary is ridiculous. You are constrained by supply, nothing else.

Sorry this is BS. 500k will buy you a 3 bed house in most NYC commuter towns. I've never made $200k and I can easily afford it.

OK I'm getting downvoted. If you downvote me find me a town outside of Alpine/Rumsford that you can't buy a house <$500k.

Wow I didn't realize how many real estate agents were on HN, amazing.

Can you also show me towns that have good schools? How about ones where cash offers above asking price aren't immediately considered?

Sorry, but what you wrote is complete BS.

Jesus nearly all suburbs you can get a 400k house. Livingston, Cranford and Oradell have top school systems.

Cranford: https://www.trulia.com/p/nj/cranford/10-elizabeth-ave-cranfo... Caldwell: https://www.trulia.com/p/nj/west-caldwell/49-lane-ave-west-c... Oradell: https://www.trulia.com/p/nj/oradell/53-beverly-rd-oradell-nj... Teaneck: https://www.trulia.com/p/nj/teaneck/37-elmer-pl-teaneck-nj-0... Livingston: https://www.trulia.com/p/nj/livingston/1-stoney-hill-pl-livi...

Even Summit is $499k https://www.trulia.com/p/nj/summit/32-glenside-ave-summit-nj...

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. You ready?

Everyone's needs are different.

Interesting right?

If OP is cushioned from reality, you are traveling through a wormhole in another plane of existence entirely. 90+% of people buying homes in NJ are going to have a lower household income than your personal income. Somehow, they make it work.

I live in Vancouver, and houses here cost $2 million if you want something approaching decent. The median income here is under $100k. Are you going to tell me this is fine?

> live in an expensive metro area (SF, LA, NYC)

+ Seattle, Vancouver, Toronto, Miami, Austin, Tokyo, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam...

Pick any large city worldwide, and they are "expensive metro areas" with a high cost of living where if you want a 2 bedroom condo you're looking at 750K, and a house is 1M.

Turns out software multi-nationals paying $150k+ are in the same cities.

So, you do the math, how long does it take to save up for a down payment while paying through the roof on rent?

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