Woah woah woah.
If we want to claim that any tech salary is hard working and struggling, then I suggest you spend a summer digging ditches for the DOT, coal mining, or working in a factory.
In the US, programmers make about 2.5x the median salary (2019) [0]. The entire US median in 2019 was $35,000.
So remember to look down for perspective too, not just up.
[0] https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/central.html https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/computer-programm...
Maybe you’ve been lucky enough to only have jobs with high pay, low stress, and good work life balance, but I’m sure you’ve seen enough tech burnout stories to know that tech jobs are not always easy. The factory worker and the engineer have vastly more in common with each other than they do with Elizabeth Holmes or Adam Neumann.
As for the struggling part, if you control for cost of living the picture is going to look a lot different.
Fishing? 3.0 Bituminous coal underground mining? 3.0
Framing contractors? 4.5 Soft drink manufacturing? 4.8
Leather and hide tanning and finishing? 7.1
Computer systems design and related services? 0.1
Fatal injury rates fall along the same lines [1], and programmers commit suicide at less than 1/2 the rate of high risk occupations [2].
There's a difference between going home mentally exhausted, and being unable to go into work because your body is that injured.
Or to put it another way: if you were offered your equivalent salary, would you go fish Alaskan king crab or join a logging crew tomorrow?
[0] https://www.bls.gov/web/osh/summ1_00.htm (Table 1) https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/osh/case/cd_r4_2019.htm (Table R4)
[1] https://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/cftb0332.htm (Table A-5, Fatal incident counts by occupation) https://www.bls.gov/charts/census-of-fatal-occupational-inju... (Occupations with the highest rates)
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6903a1-H.pdf (Suicide Rates by Industry and Occupation, 2016)
Having said that, would you settle for "diligent"?
Which isn't to say that we aren't putting in work, or doing our best, or burning the candle, or creating amazing things.
You can do all of those things, and still not have as difficult a job as someone else. Because all work isn't the same.
And so I take a chunk of umbrage at whinging about the unfairness that we make so little while doing so much. "... struggle through and at best maybe make a decent living..." is a pretty damned entitled way to see the world.
We'd also have to exclude all the workers that aren't in abusive conditions, like self owned artisan shops, plumbers etc. And exclude gig economy workers who don't literally work themselves to death and only work "a lot" for little pay.
You might be right, but the slice left is so small I am not sure it's a useful distinction in most conversations. Perhaps qualifying ditch digging and coal mining as "extreme working" and "hardcore struggling" would be a better fit.
People with it easy: 2.5x median and working in an office, which includes programmers
People with it hard: making little and doing backbreaking labor
People with it medium: everyone else
So we shouldn't say people in the easy category are struggling, and for perspective we should think about people in the hard category. But we can't say one way or the other about people in the medium category.
I wouldn't say programmers have exceptionally high mental discomfort; we certainly don't have high physical discomfort. And we're well compensated, relatively speaking.
In contrast, we have oil field workers(?): uncomfortable physical and mental work, but well compensated. Or meat processors: uncomfortable physical and mental work, poorly compensated.
By that metric, it seems like we're doing pretty well.
In short:
- i earn 1.5x the average salary/wage in my country
- that figure is approximately 1500 euros per month
To afford a house in my region of the country [1], i'd need to save up around 100'000 euros, which is the equivalent of 67 months' wages, or ~134 months with the ability to save 50% of what i make. It'd take me over 11 years to afford my own house, something for which i really don't have an answer - most people just rent apartments instead (also we're talking about countryside properties here, not the ones in cities).
Of course, it's not all bad, but how much money people in various careers make and how much PPP holds true in a globalized economy varies greatly, as expressed in that blog post of mine. Some countries are just poor and the people in them aren't well paid. Some companies are profitable but aren't incentivized to pay developers anything above what they can get away with - which is also why many of the WITCH companies have regional offices in my country, as we're one destination for outsourcing. As for how hard these careers are, it depends: some people are miserable working in software, but at the same time at least it isn't back breaking work.
Links:
[0] https://www.volkswagen.lv/lv/models/golf-8.html
[1] https://www.ss.lv/lv/real-estate/homes-summer-residences/lim...
And it's not just high profile entrepreneurs. Everyone knows people like this, they're all around us, climbing the corporate ladder. Mediocre performers, but boy can they "look the part", flash a big gorgeous smile, and talk in ways that sound pleasing to leadership but are ultimately empty words.
Coincidentally, this also characterizes Ozy's content, which is unbelievably vapid and safe, but delivered with an unearned tone of gravitas. At least TED(x) talks were sometimes good because of the sheer number of them. Ozy content is never good.
Does putting up a great face necessarily mean the content must be garbage and the whole package cannot be just as great?
I predict a no federal jail, or a few months, like a Martha Stewart. She will write her bio.
She will be on the talk circuit the minute the trial is over, and talk about being a victim.
I don't think she will wear the black turtleneck ever.
My wish is they start to fining white collar criminals much more, especially the wealthy ones. Federal prison time for wealthy criminals seems like a vacation. Get them where they worship---their money. Every time I hear the fine, I cringe. Is that all? I would like to see all societal fees/fines tied to assets. She shouldn't feel able to capitalize on the crime either.
Then again I have never understood the logic of making a poor man pay the same fine, as the poor man.
I wouldn't be so sure. That whole "woke" thing is turning on white women and gay men rather quickly. Granted it's mostly middle-aged white women up to now, but Elizabeth Holmes has become a symbol of some excesses that are unpopular all over.
This is an incredibly vile thing to wish upon anyone.
I hope you take some time to reflect what a long prison sentence actually implies in the US and consider whether or not that’s actually an appropriate punishment for what only amounts to a financial crime.