It has skewed the labor market to an insane degree. So much talent went into idiotic pursuits, and away from anything that had to do with public service.
He makes less money than me, even though I'm 35 years younger and my "skills" include some basic coding, some marketing, and some understanding of social media. Whereas this man has spent nearly 50 years in the medical field and has treated multiple presidents.
None of the startups I've consulted for are profitable. Most, by all means, will never be profitable.
Meanwhile, my maid, who works harder in a day than I do in a week, makes 1/50th of my annual income.
All that free money has seriously misaligned societies incentives. Enrollment in the medical field is falling drastically because no one wants to work years to make less money than some 24 year old with two years of coding experience.
I'll be okay with a pay cut if it means a more equitable, more fair society.
My maid works in 7 different houses, spending approx. 1-1.5 hours in each. An individual household paying her more can only go so far - EVERYONE will have to start paying her more.
I already pay her substantially more than prevailing rate, but can everyone else afford to do the same?
I mean, I give a sandwich to the one homeless guy I see on my daily commute, which might have a big impact on that one guy - but let's not pretend I'm solving homelessness by doing so.
Russia invaded Ukraine because Putin wants to reconstitute the USSR, with him on top. All the bullshit about NATO is just noise to get people who would otherwise side with the obvious victims to suddenly hem and haw and say, "Well, was Putin provoked? Is this really about the US?"
No; you've been suckered. It's about Ukraine, and the people dying there, who won't be in any better shape if the rest of the Western world just hands them over to a megalomaniac dictator who genuinely believes that any Ukrainian who doesn't identify as Russian is mentally ill or a traitor.
You can't fight the market forces and systemic problems with personal choices.
In my context, maids typically work in multiple households. While my household has seen its net worth go up disproportionately, other households around me haven't been as fortunate.
So even when I pay 3x the prevailing rate, it doesn't make any real difference since the remaining 6 households my maid goes to can't match my rate. And she has no real bargaining power because in India, there's a huge pool of similarly skilled labor willing to fill in.
Which is pretty much my point: that people in tech get paid disproportionately higher. If everyone around me had seen similar wealth increase, my maid's salary would have likely gone up far higher as well.
We need both individual action and political reform.
Or consider two scenarios: 1) someone claims maids should be paid more but pays them market rate and votes for politicians who claim to be changing the world to make maids better off, or 2) someone else pays the maid 3X the going rate (which he appears to be doing, see other thread) and does not vote for politicians who claim to be making maids better off (to be clear, this is hypothetical, I doubt he does this). Person 2 has made the maid actually better off. Person 1's maid is not better off, and any impact on maids (if any) is disconnected, and conveniently does not require any sacrifice on the part of Person 1. Person 2 has made the maid better off at the expense of themselves; this is the opposite of virtue signaling.
Is it? They're more likely to stay in that job and ask for more money on other jobs because now they know it's possible.
Just like we devs know we can make FAANG salaries and our asking price is adjusted accordingly.
I 100% agree that paying the maid more is the right answer in this specific case, but saying that the Democrats are part of the problem, even if it's true, fails to account for the facts that a) the Republicans are much more of the problem, and b) there are no other viable parties to vote for due to our voting system.
"Voting for the Democrats" is a necessary, but insufficient, part of the solution. Another part is "voting for more progressive Democrats in primary elections". Again, necessary but insufficient. I don't have the whole answer...but I know that bitching about not being able to change anything...doesn't change anything. And, in fact, makes it much less likely that positive change happens, because it either makes people feel helpless, or directs them to utterly impotent methods. Which then fail, and leave them (once again) feeling helpless.
Politicians are motivated to keep constituents happy, but only so far. The political systems generally provide a significant buffer for politicians to act on behalf of themselves or their donors and not get replaced.
Good comment overall, but I think the issues in the medical field are less about compensation and much much more about insane working conditions and a lot of disincentives. If you want a glimpse at some of it, maybe occasionally check out https://old.reddit.com/r/medicine/ or blog posts and articles.
Same problems here in Germany, but maybe - hope dies last - some movement? https://www.independent.co.uk/news/ap-berlin-b2239733.html
> An expert panel has unveiled a proposal for a major overhaul of Germany’s system for funding hospitals that it says will promote quality over quantity
EDIT (after responses):
If you have a hammer... The nice thing about always thinking everything is "money" is that everybody can join any discussion. There is no need to look at the details of the specific issue. Sorry for the sarcasm, but I think this fits sooo many discussions. Similar with discussions around education too.
Simultaneously we have plenty of threads right on HN where people realize life satisfaction surprisingly does not hinge on pay - after some threshold, where the basic worries about how to get the basic necessities without worrying.
Sure extreme pay would get quite a few more people into health care, but it would be an extremely unhealthy and inefficient way. Yes you can just not solve the actual major problems and just throw money at an issue, and especially younger people will see it as an opportunity to bite the bullet and endure bad conditions to work in that job for a while, to have a lot of money for middle age.
On the other hand, if a minimum pay is guaranteed, the environment, satisfaction with the job and the environment, and the feeling of doing something really useful for society, become much better places for adjustments than pay. Especially when it's as bad as it is right now, which is kind of extreme. Just looking at 24 hour shifts, really??? Health care is the last place where that should exist, since that's the place where there should be the most knowledge about how bad for long-term health and also for short-term efficiency this is. I would not enter that field for that one thing alone already, because it's just too ridiculous. Once in a while out of necessity, sure, but as regular part of the system?
If being a doctor is the highest paid, highest prestige job, we won't lack doctors.
We seem to be lacking doctors here in the UK.
Salaries by prof. tell that SEs earn around 140k avg meanwhile meds. are around 300 easily
I think youre just looking at tiny group of SEs
Starting salaries for 21-22 year old engineers from top colleges is approximately Rs 120,00-200,000 per month. By the time they hit their 30s, their salaries usually balloon to Rs 350,000-500,000 per month.
Doctors don’t catch up until they’re well into their 40s - an age at which many engineers from top colleges start retiring.
There is no real difference in the difficulty of getting into a top engineering program vs medical school.
It wasn’t always this wonky, but it has become increasingly wonkier every year as tech valuations have gone beyond sanity.
I agree though that it’s skewed because USA is at top of demand chain and could generate debt/demand in low interest rates environment.
The biggest source of wage inflation in the last few years has been domestic startups, all fueled by VC money from low interest rate regimes (Softbank, Tiger, Sequoia being the biggest culprits).
Those tech bodyshop jobs that cater to the US market still pay a small fraction of what a startup that targets the domestic Indian market, such as Cred, pays.
The point stands: digital work arbitrage has been around for three decades and didn't really create a massive income disparity. The bulk of recent income disparity has come through absurd tech startup valuations, all made possible because borrowing money was dirt, dirt cheap.
Sounds like a problem that's sorting itself out. There were far too many people who wanted to be doctors; maybe if the supply drops the medical industry might have to - gasp - do something about their working conditions, or even pay more.
Actually, the problem is not that no-one wants to become a doctor, the issue is that there are too few open places in the medical schools. If it's due to lobbying by doctor's organizations or just bad planning by governments or something else I do not know. In all countries I have some visibility into there is no lack of people wanting to attend medical school and there are qualified applicants in the order of 100 to 1. And there is an accute need of doctors (and nurses) in those countries.
And regarding doctor's pay, I do not necessarily agree that it is too low, but I agree the salaries for software engineers is too high in many regions, particularly in the US, and certainly on the west coast.
And to nuance my comment on doctor's pay, I think it is important to note that a doctor has to study and practice in a hospital for about a total time of 10 years before graduating as an MD and start earning a decent salary. Thus many years of lost salary if comparing that with an engineer, and even more if comparing to someone just taking a couple of years of programming courses.
The problem doesn't seem to be sorting itself out. On the contrary, it's making access to people like him even harder for all but the top 1%.
If doctor salaries were to go even higher, it would mean that people like my maid would never ever get even half-decent medical care.
The solution would be to pay the maid more, but there's an oversupply of unskilled labor and any attempt to increase their wages would be thwarted by a flood of new labor supply.
The… misstep in reasoning here seems to me to consider that « maid » (and many other low-wage ones) is unskilled labor and/or painless, thus « deserves » lower wages.
I can say from witnessing it first-hand that not 1 in 10 of those high-profiles engineers or managers I have met are not at all equipped to work as a maid.
That's interesting. What's unskilled about them? Could they not also learn some coding and marketing. Sounds like a worthwhile investment if they might 50x their salaries.
(In fact, with those numbers, even if it takes them 30 years it would still 10x their life earnings...)
Here is your reality check, more fair society would only possible without monetary policies dictated by banks, top rich and powerful. They and their smart people/companies are only in the society to take more cut from you workers, globally. What you say is just utopia, and IMPOSSIBLE.
Btw I like reading fairy tales as a comments here.
Here it's simplify explained (not serious obv) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sEbe9gveN4
If government actually wants talents it needs to be realistic about what the market is and take some money out of the insane amount it spends on contractors to pay accordingly. It also needs to build a culture that lets it hire well and lets it fire when it makes mistakes.