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Comment by rpadovani | Hacker News Reader

> (work for almost 2 decades as an engineer just so you can afford the average one family home - what a joke!)

I really don't understand this take. Why so many engineers feel entitled to have more than the average working Joe? If you are employed, our work is not risky, doesn't consume all your energy or your time, and so on.

I fully understand the _economics_ behind our salaries, but I am more than happy to give 45% of it to the society as a whole, so also who cannot afford the economy of scale (e.g., nurses, teachers), can still have a decent life.

I really cannot grasp the individualism about "I know how to write code, I deserve a better life than 95% of the population".

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> I really cannot grasp the individualism about "I know how to write code, I deserve a better life than 95% of the population".

You're missing something here. You can omit the first sentence. People already believe they deserve a better life than 95% of the population, even without being able to code specifically.

That's... illuminating. Really. It's a sad take, but could completely be true.

It's not "I am a engineer, thus I deserve to have more", it's "I deserve more, what part of my life can I use to say this?".

But I don't think it's sad. The desire to have more for ourselves and our children (why else would they be talking about buying a family home?) is a large part of the reason why living standards keep rising.

If everyone desires to be above average and strives to produce more, earn more, then over time the average will rise. This is good.

> I really cannot grasp the individualism about "I know how to write code, I deserve a better life than 95% of the population".

What if we worded this in a different way: "I have a skill which is more in demand than the skills of 95% of the population"

And this is why I say that I understand the economics behind it.

Still, it doesn't mean I _deserve_ a high salary: I totally get why I get it, but I don't work harder, or studied harder, or really did anything more special than 95% of the population.

So, while I am able to earn more, I am happy to share part of it with the society as a whole, and this is why I am happy about my level of taxes, compared to the services provided.

There are wastes? Of course there are! So many! But the solution to "governments waste money" is not "less money to the governments", is "more accountability".

This is of course my view of the world, but I still haven't found anybody that explains why my job deserves to be in the top 5% earner in my country, apart from being just a consequence of the fact that my job scales to billions of users due its very nature (that is completely inconsequential from the choices I have made), while other jobs have physical limits and they don't scale.

On a practical level you probably did work/study harder, do something more special, had more resources, been luckier than the vast majority of the population; that's why you're in the position you occupy.

On a more ideological level it feels like you're looking for some sort of moral or "greater truth" behind the economics, but I'm not sure it's there. You've shared your personal beliefs and motivations, and seem to have lots of conviction to guide yourself, so why ask someone else to convince you there's a deeper cause? Just use your results to act how YOU want to impact the outcomes of others.

>Still, it doesn't mean I _deserve_ a high salary: I totally get why I get it, but I don't work harder, or studied harder, or really did anything more special than 95% of the population.

I don't think any other (widely popular) work occupies so much of a one's mind as software engineering.

Because we are the gateway to exponential free work. Program once, run on x machines, supply all 8 billions with a service, for defacto nothing. From these hands flows cornucopia..

Just because the nano machinery is invisible, doesent mean it cant spin great things from nothing. Half the giants you see today, were nothing one generation ago.

Not OP but I think if you're gonna earn an average salary then tech is a pretty bad choice due to the constant shifting base of knowledge, lack of security (dot com type bubbles) and ageism prevalent in the industry. Being something like a government worker or teacher makes much more sense then. And unsurprisingly, in Europe a huge part of GDP is created by the government. Software developer roles in Europe are dominated by immigrants for much of the same reason - locals don't see these jobs as such a lucrative career path.

> Why so many engineers feel entitled to have more than the average working Joe ?

Above average investments (time , effort & money) have a natural feeling of entitlement for above average returns.

Cost of getting an engineering degree of value is nowhere near any "average" degree.

Recent years have driven the median cost up and the median returns down. Hence the laments about "college is not worth it"

The average Joe in American can earn many times more than an engineer in the EU

The average Joe in the US earns $60-70k, same as an average software engineer in the EU.

The difference is not that US workers earn more on average, but that being an engineer doesn’t make you automatically rich in Europe like it does in tbe USA.

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