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"The workforce is stretched thin as you can make similar money fucking around with your phone on the clock at Walmart"

I don't understand this. "Stretched thin" means there are few of you. If you can make similar money in easier work at Walmart, why wouldn't you do that? Not looking to be oppositional, I just don't understand your point here. I would imagine that what you do is in fact skilled labor that should pay better than Walmart clerking.

(Not the OP) An analogy: would you quit a $140k developer job for a job that pays the same, but has you answering the phone for 8 hours a day in a Google Support call center, helping people reset their gmail password 100 times a day?

I'm guessing most developers would prefer keeping their dev job rather than doing easier work at the same pay in a call center.

Edit: To make the analogy even more direct, I think the majority of engineers would even prefer to keep a $140k engineering job, even if Walmart were paying $140k to be a cashier.

Not equivalent to the OP's situation though. If the question were framed in the same context it would read more like: would you quit a $140k developer job that requires 12 hours a day for a job that pays the same, but has you answering the phone for 8 hours a day in a Google Support call center, helping people reset their gmail password 100 times a day?

In that case yes. I could use that 33% reduction in consumed time to work freelance developer jobs that won't endanger my livelihood if I decide to quit. If anything I would be angry at the factory workers who stay for the same pay since there are better job alternatives that could be used as bargaining chips.

> "Stretched thin" means there are few of you.

I think in context you can assume OP means the people are being overworked because they are perceived as replaceable.

> I just don't understand your point here. I would imagine that what you do is in fact skilled labor.

OP likely does do skilled labor, but the employer has evolved to efficiently exploit it, by which I mean deprive these workers of adequate compensation. Part of that has been classing the labor as "unskilled."

>"Stretched thin" means there are few of you. Yes, there's less participation from young people in manufacturing. The pay doesn't go up, the plants go to Mexico or China. During covid when a bunch of old timers left my factory tore down a few machines and shipped them to Mexico because young people like myself aren't coming into the field fast enough to replace the boomers. As other countries catch up in tech skills you might find yourself in a similar position.

>If you can make similar money in easier work... Nerd sniping. Some people were just born with a wrench in their hand and need to be solving practical problems. I just can't work jobs like that without being bored out of my mind and miserable.

>I would imagine that what you do is in fact skilled labor it should pay more... Buddy I can MIG TIG and stick weld, I'm a mechanic, I've worked as a qualified person on 480V three phase, and low voltage controls, as well as hydraulics and pneumatics. I can drive 10 ton trucks stick, take apart and put a motor back together, and locate the clitoris with only a bubble level, ruler, protractor, line out chalk, twine, pocket calculator, and a stud finder. Imagine what you want. Macroeconomic principles are of little comfort in the real world, where social forces and political forces collide and such simple game theory doesn't hold up.

The company can pay less and ask more, paying less and asking more has become common and nobody wants to rock the boat and lose the immense power gap between labor and management by competing on the basis of wages to attract talent. Besides, a lack of manpower means you can just go somewhere else. The world supply chain, even during covid, is so robust at scale that physical location means little, but relative economic wealth and power means a lot.

I'm not bitching, I eat three meals a day and pay rent. But tech has it good and I see a lot of people not realize how much that can change overnight. I expect a great deal more people will work in tech in the west, and less at my kind of job, so I'd like to see workers realize that they have to entrench the current available quality of life, for the future generations. Because the people in manufacturing through the 50s-70s didn't entrench the quality of life in such a way it could survive financialization and lean strategies of the 80s.

Well, the US is one exception in terms of software engineers salaries being so high. I work in Italy and a software engineer salary is at the same level of any other office job, or just a little higher, in fact most software engineered have a contract of metalworker ("metalmeccanico") probably for the fact that in origin most software engineering jobs were related to industrial machinery such as CNC and similar.

Sometimes a good worker in a factory can make more money, or a plumber, electrician, etc that has his small business will make more money, a truck driver will make (a lot) more money, etc.

It looks like Europe has reached a far more sustainable labor market in general, with lower peaks and higher valleys. As well as much better time off, and benefits like health and pension secured by public institutions instead of employers. I'd be willing to give up my chance at more money through starting a contracting business or pivoting to webdev with some certs to know that workers are more secure in their future. Thanks for a view from somewhere far away.

> Opposite of entry level coder being an engineer

Are entry level mechanical engineers called mechanics? This assumes that software engineering is (only) about code, which is false.

> Someday tech will have it's 80s, vc will stop chasing the next apple or MS, engineers will become coders, sysadmins will become IT techs, wages will stagnate, and if you're all working till 8 it will go from extra to expected.

Wages may stagnate at some point because supply may match demand. However, why would job titles deflate? The skills you refer to are not comparable to unskilled factory work.

I agree, but you are trying to convince an audience made up of a "few" of the types of people who came up with those methods you raise here, or at the very least trying to get to that position. If anything you might even be provding a few of the younger ones with a road map. (joke / sort of). Source: see the reponses :-D

I don't understand, if you are an hourly worker you are getting paid at least as much for each additional hour? A salaried worker is comparing jobs that claim to be 40 hours and is being cheated out of income per hour if they take one that is actually more hours than another position with the same salary.

There are the same kinds of labor cheats done on hourly laborers, but you can measure the crime and get a significant damages pay out (at least in some states) if you contact a labor attorney.

>I don't understand,

If you are a software engineer (or even, a "coder", which I think is an incredibly apt analogy for OP to mention), does your work calendar currently say "code this week for 65 hours or else" ?

Of course not, I would accept a different job. The game is doing these or else's within the week and not compensating for them.

A company that pays 70 hour a week worker is paying for at least 85 hours of time or can be sued and the worker must not have any more appropriate offers that the employer tricked them out of taking.

>Of course not, I would accept a different job.

Tell OP that. Or, maybe you could heed his warning about the future of the software industry.

The problem of the salary job overtime scam is one of an employer misrepresenting a job to be equivalent to other jobs to ultimately get more value for less money, it has nothing to do with different parts of the job market having lower bargaining power. If the software industry fails, the scam is entirely unnecessary.

Yes. I am paid time and a half past 40 hours as mandated by US law. At time and a half, I am still falling short of the salaried spreadsheet operators who are the lower tier of the non-labor workforce. If you take all the overtime, 12 hours every weekday and 8 hours on saturday, for an entire year, you can make 70K before taxes.

My issue is mostly wage stagnation and lesser benefits, as well as the lack of security, and the way the trend isn't showing any signs of reversing leaving me worried if gen Z is even going to bother and an entire way of life won't disappear along with 'Made in the U.S.A', as well as a warning that tech field might be next up for optimization of labor costs if VCs go off to chase the next thing and CRUD stops printing money.