Inflation Bites U.S. Engineering Salaries | Hacker News Reader

Inflation Bites U.S. Engineering Salaries

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90 pointssizzle234 comments

I've been meaning to write a blog post on "what if developers were paid the same way as writers and other creatives", namely residuals. I think it becoming the norm for signing away your IP rights for employment is wrong, and other creatives would never do that without ongoing compensation. There's also the guild/union aspect as well, all of which I think would help balance out the feast/famine cycle of our industry.

> what if developers were paid the same way as writers and other creatives

The 10% of Facebook/Google/Bytedance engineers who work on ads would be stupidly rich. The remaining 90% of engineers who work on cost centers would get paid minimum wage. If you want these residuals to be remotely equal, the metrics that determine them would be so convoluted that you might as well just pay people in stock options or RSUs.

Ads is shooting low. You want your code to be in the network driver in the kernel for every packet received or sent.

So the change request is to change the variable name so we can stop paying the engineer who negotiated higher residuals.

Also what is a code contribution. If I write the "if" statement or the functional unit?

Hopefully that network driver doesn’t rely on my ‘isOdd’ code which happens to rely completely on my other ‘isEven’ project.

pfft. I want residuals when the instruction pointer is incremented.

I much prefer getting a 90th percentile salary up front and not perpetually arguing over exactly how many times my code was downloaded or executed.

Genuine question, it will not be possible for every single engineers get paid 90th percentile, someone has to get less than that for the statistic to work?

I think they meant 90% across all industries. As in, software developers are well-compensated compared to non-software jobs with similar education, etc.

I don't know the full extent of how true that is, but I think that's what they were saying (:

As long as less than 10% of the labor force is engineers, it is.

I think they mean across all job categories.

This is a solved problem for the music industry, why could it not be adapted for code?

And the music industry solution is absolutely horrible. Every single venue that might have someone play copyrighted music is required to pay large annual sums to the RIAA, or get sued. There are armies of RIAA lawyers who go around to basically every business with a lobby and threaten to sue if they don't pay into the pool. There are entire companies who exist just to install licensed players in offices that are known to comply.

Just imagining how awful this would turn out if applied to the world of software makes my skin crawl.

If coders were payed the way musicians are paid a few coders would make a lot more money than they do now and most would make a lot less.

A few musicians become big stars and can make a lot of money for themselves and for musicians who work with/for them. It falls off rapidly from there.

It would probably actually be worse for coders than it is for musicians, because the big money making projects in coding usually involve a lot more people and a lot more up front investment. A few people who led the project or wrote the truly innovative parts would get most of the royalties. The people who do the more routine parts (which is most of almost all projects) that any decent programmer could have done will get only a small amount.

For anyone curious what it is like for a musician, here's an interesting video from a well-known YouTube guitarist who is managing to make a living as a guitarist, going over a variety of ways that a guitarist might make money [1]. He looks at local gigs, touring with a mid level act, touring with a top level act, busking, cruise ships, studio work, teaching private lessons, university instructor, endorsement deals, and content creator.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch7t9KGcOPk

It’s not solved for the music industry at all! Publishers are perpetually looking for ways to give artists crappy deals on residuals, and artists make almost all their money on touring and merch. And that’s for the successful ones, most musicians are not successful enough to even think about making money from publication.

Except it’s not really, the traditional ASCAP/BMI royalty structure and reporting gives extremely heavy favor to the most popular music and everyone else gets basically nothing, while their royalty schedules for streaming amount to basically nothing.

If anything, musicians need to follow WGA and SAG-AFTRA and DGA’s lead and get proper streaming royalty schedules, anti-AI-training clauses, etc. into their standard contract structures.

Not looking forward to the day when I have to wait tables, while hoping that my software hits the big time.

I don’t want it. I’m fine with how my compensation currently works.

Because a song is "done" and software is constantly updated.

That's ignoring masters and remixes, but I think my point still stands

Stock options are probably a better deal. There's accounting BS with options, but FAR less than you would see with residuals.

For public companies, sure.

But for a private company, where are the options are essentially a lottery ticket, I think a decent number of folks would choose residuals.

What makes you think the residuals would fare better than the options? The risk is about the same, yes?

My intuition is that residuals have a higher chance of a low payout, whereas options have a lower chance of being worth anything, but probably a higher value if they do pay off.

Residuals for a company which is bankrupt would be zero - same as their stock price.

Also, they could just rewrite the sections of code that are expensive and nuke their costs and your residuals at any point. Unlike a brand or whatever, it’s trivial to redo as it’s not user facing.

No because with options you may have to wait for your liquidity event forever.

If you think any sane founder is going to pay out on ‘residuals’ of any significant amount without a similar liquidity event, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

I’d agree, especially if they’re relying on VC funding to power through growth.

Some private companies pay dividends on their shares, so they have value to employees even if there is no market for them.

Yeah, that's a fair point. I've never had any of those shares, but I'm sure they exist. I'd probably take that over residuals.

I give you a work laptop, training budget, third-party technical budget, lawyers, accountants, marketing... and I don't get the IP rights?

No deal.

That aside, you're describing already available comp models with equity participation.

While I know the comment above appears to be suggesting keeping all IP — and I agree that's not workable — there are a number of employers that would also like to own the IP to any love notes I write my sweetheart, photographs I take of my nephew, etc.

Also I've seen some that want moral rights, which I don't think one should be required to give up, ever.

Reform is needed here. I have no qualm about signing over IP developed specifically for the company, on the company's dime. But some IP agreements get absurd about it.

> there are a number of employers that would also like to own the IP to any love notes I write my sweetheart, photographs I take of my nephew, etc.

What’s a good example of an employer who wants that from someone because that person is an employee?

If you read the letter of many employment agreements, they try to claim anything you create while under their employ is theirs. Do they want your love letters? Not unless you become famous and they think they can make a book out of them. Do they want the code to that side project you’ve been playing around with? Quite possibly.

Can you afford to fight them if they do try to claim it? Maybe if your side project has already taken off.

> they try to claim anything you create while under their employ

If written that broadly, that's just sloppy. [0] It benefits both sides to be more clear. There are also nuances to "claim" and what rights the employer may have (e.g. They get a license, but not full copyright.)

IANAL, but I have recently read an IP waiver for a mega firm with heavy R&D and while they get their hooks in most job-related creations, they have exclusions for things orthogonal to your job.

[0] https://pro.bloomberglaw.com/common-misunderstandings-about-...

It is extremely common among research universities where they try to own all your ideas. I remember a professor had a side business cleaning pools which had nothing to do with his research area. The university found out and wanted their cut. He gave it to them because it was better than being fired and sued.

These types of contracts are illegal in CA, but legal in many other states.

There has to be more nuance here, e.g. using university email/resources.

I'm curious for examples, too.

Otherwise, this is hyperbole or exceptional in the least.

moreover, is there any case law that suggests such things are an enforceable part of an employment contract?

I'm not clear why it's a no deal, when in a different industry with the same details but a different IP output, it's a deal?

George Clooney isn't bringing his own cameras and lighting systems to appear in a movie, but he'll still get residuals

Why does paying for one thing entitle you to own another?

You didn’t give me a laptop. You are giving me a tool contingent upon employment. If I leave the company, you take it back. What am I supposed to be grateful for? Should a janitor thank their employer for a rolling trash can and mop?

Training? My teachers and mentors have literally no rights to anything I’ve filmed and edited. That would be ridiculous.

Lawyers and accountants are for you and your company. That is not a gift to me. I cannot just call them for my own personal use at will. They only exist for the company and company purposes. Chances are I will literally never talk to them no matter how long I work for your company.

Marketing benefits you. Why does marketing benefit me at all? They aren’t doing anything for me. They aren’t building my brand and creating an image for me. They’re doing it for you and your company. They’re driving revenue for you.

Your first paragraph calls into question universal contract law/rights...?

I don't know how you reconcile that with signing everyday contracts as I'm sure you do.

As for your other premises, I don't know how you can make such general claims, given endless exceptions.

> Your first paragraph calls into question universal contract law/rights...?

I was a freelancer/production house owner for over a decade, I am very confused what you mean by this - I have no idea what you are referring to. A contract is only what is mutually agreed upon by all parties involved.

Either way, I have never signed a contract with anyone that entitled them to my work outside of the scope as dictated by the contract. What you get from me is clear in our contract or it isn’t yous. No one is entitled to anything I shoot or edit unless they explicitly paid for it. Likewise, my shooters only ever gave me what was negotiated explicitly. If that is not explicitly stated, there is no assumption they get the rights to anything I shoot or vice versa.

Go call a wedding photographer and ask for all the raws from their shoot after the fact. They’ll laugh until you hang up.

> I am very confused what you mean by this - I have no idea what you are referring to.

You asked how does paying for one thing entitle you to another thing.

You're referencing my comment about supplying resources in exchange for any IP you create, contractually.

I described common contractual terms and you reacted surprised.

It appears you lost the context.

I'd be very curious how you structured employment agreements for your employees (if any) -- not independent contractors.

There isn’t a production studio on the planet that owns the rights to what you shoot when you aren’t explicitly shooting for them. Independent contractors or not. Their teaching you and providing employment is immaterial. Hell even if they use company hardware as long as they get permission.

If i go joyride behind the company’s back sure, there’s a discussion potentially because i violated the rules and jacked company property. But even then…hardly legally enforceable to claim they own the rights and not super applicable since it depends on someone effectively stealing gear to shoot.

The root parent here said signing away your IP to your employer is "wrong."

I said that's too general.

Now, you're agreeing with me in saying using gear without permission or using company gear away from intended use is wrong.

As for your blanket statement re: copyright ownership and transfer of rights, it's simply not true to say independent contractors or employees don't sign over all of their creative products in instances. I note how you're also conflating freelance and full/part-time employees.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

> You have no idea what you're talking about.

If this is how we’re going to discuss this then I’ll just head out now. I have no idea what I’m talking about apparently so it’s not like you’re going to give my points or experience the time of day.

Have a good one.

I'm not worried about convincing you.

See this legal take (scenario B), rejecting your over-general claims on freelancer's rights over "raw" work product. [0]

In your interest, I strongly recommend reviewing your form engagement contracts with an attorney.

[0] https://www.owe.com/resources/legalities/legalities-33-do-yo...

That laptop is a loaner from your IT dept. You didn’t train me. You hired me for my knowledge; remember those four days of whiteboard gymnastics? And you want to make money too, so you need to bring the lawyers and sales staff.

So if im bringing my own laptop, staging environments, training budget then i should get some IP rights?

Not what I said or implied, assuming your intent is to be snarky.

However, I've executed deals where developers contribute assets and get royalties/earnout. You can always try to negotiate.

I was actually thinking about it the other way around.

Why do residuals exist? I am paid to do X. I did X. My code is no more special than the shingles put on my roof. I hope the roofers don’t return for residuals again.

What I prefer is the “get the same relative raises as the CEO” that the auto union is going for.

But I’m also not a gambler. I want to know exactly what my compensation is for the hours of my life I’m giving away.

Two writers make an episode of TV. One sucks and is aired once, the other is amazing and gets replayed constantly for years.

Should their work be valued the same?

Their pay should be what the contract agreed it to be, regardless of how popular it was.

Imagine someone makes a popular show. They are hired by another company in hopes of a repeat, but it flops. The company doesn't get to hold back the money because it wasn't "replayed constantly for years" or a more measurable contribution to their companies worth, unless that was written in the contract that the performer would assume the risk. But usually companies accept the risk, which is why the risk holder, such as a CEO or lenders, make more money (or lose it all if the risk fruitioned ill)

In markets like freelancing, authorship, etc; where the risk is assumed by the creator specifically, their performace can directly influence their pay. Most people would prefer a steady, risk-free paycheck though, which is why your contribution is most likely less influential to your pay, except in the case of when you go out of your way to get a new contract via promotion or job hunting.

I don't understand, isn't residuals in the contract?

Depends on if the result is due to skill or luck?

You can get this quite easily if you have the chops to match. Build software and license it to other people. You'll need to be good at the marketing and sales aspect in addition to product development, but if you don't want to you can just give away that to others and take a flat salary.

Software is about the one place where you can select where on the curve you want to be for this. Either all self-owned and licensed (easier than elsewhere because VCs will fund you in software more likely than other businesses), as a solo shop, as an enterprise, or you can be salaried, or receive lots of equity, or a contractor.

No one in software need complain. Almost the entire full spectrum of options exists.

Very interesting idea. How would this work? Would your name on any software give you residuals? How would your % be calculated - based on LOC? (ridiculous) but if not that then how? Would be granular down to the feature? sprint?

Probably better to go the route of pensions.

Just own an index fund, it has better risk-adjusted returns than any of these options.

Feast/famine? Where? This article identifies the first 2 year dip in real salaries since 2000. And its a 4% drop. With the absolute figure being “only” $169,000 which is almost 400% of the median US salary.

It’s not just inflation it’s interest rates that has a massive impact on anyone who does not already own a house.

A $1M house with a $800k mortgage at 2.5% rates was $3161 a month

At 7.5% rates today it’s $5594

> It’s not just inflation it’s interest rates that has a massive impact on anyone who does not already own a house.

It has a massive impact on anyone who does have a house with an ARM, and some effect if you own a house and were counting on refinancing or entering getting cash out via a new mortgage/HELOC, but if you don’t own a house, the only effect is via a potential impact on inflation specific to rental housing, not an effect additional to inflation.

I mean, it affects whether now is an ideal time from going to owning to not owning, but that's hardly a massive impact generally (massive on that decision, perhaps.)

Plus ~3% property taxes in states like Texas. For a 1m house, thats 2500/month.

Plus repairs and maintenance, there is always something breaking down and labor has become very expensive, materials too.

All of this makes housing unaffordable for anyone who doesn't have rich parents.

Is the complaint that many people can’t afford a $1 million house?

Software engineers tend to live in higher cost areas where $1M would be below average.

If you live in a median cost of living area $1M would get you a decent, but not amazing, house in a good school district, which is another thing a software engineer parent would probably care about.

Which is like 35% of one person’s salary. Seems more than reasonable to me for a million dollar home.

not sure what you’re saying is reasonable.

a $1M house with a $800k mortgage would mean something like $8k monthly housing cost with property taxes and insurance included.

If you made $200k gross and contributed to a retirement account you’d net $10k a month or so. Spending 80% of that on your mortgage and property taxes is definitely not sustainable.

Your property taxes and insurance are over $30k a year?

We are also talking about a single salary. We’re not even talking about a dual income household, which is generally the kind of family that would be buying a million dollar home in my experience.

Depends on which state. Texas, Illinois, NJ have 2%+ property taxes so yes that would be $20k a year plus insurance and any HOA.

Dual income is an entirely separate discussion from the financial impact of surging interest rates.

Texas and Illinois are both 1.6%, didn’t bother checking New Jersey.

The average insurance rate is $1700/yr in Illinois based on a cursory google search.

I live in a state that is 2% and is going through a coverage crisis, and it would cost me ~$10-12k for coverage on a 1mill home if I adjusted the value of my home and current insurance, which I had to acquire during this crisis.

Edit: it won’t let me reply. I’m literally making the same argument you are but I found different numbers. I did not say the state set it.

Not sure what this argument is for but there’s no such thing as a state property tax rate. Every county has their own rate.

I was thinking of Chicago or Cook County which is 2.19% https://smartasset.com/taxes/cook-county-illinois-property-t...

In Austin aka Travis County it is 1.95% https://smartasset.com/taxes/texas-property-tax-calculator

There are differences depending on the county and school district

You are the one who introduced rates by state, which I assume you are averaging/approximating, yet when I respond with the same variable you’re surprised and lecturing? I am following your lead man.

This is very perplexing and frankly I just think this is veering into the unproductive.

Have a good one man.

I had a similar, surreal exchange with the same user on a different topic, yesterday.

Back to re-weighting "check users comment history" when deciding to keep commenting.

1) we talked about something completely different.

2) please don’t be that guy. This is such obnoxious online behavior.

To #1, yes. My point remains.

Dude just piss off please. This site needs a block feature.

Irrelevant - that does not substantiate a feast/famine cycle in the engineering profession.

Inflation is 25-30% over the past few years, that applies to base pay and stock grants, so those 169k are worth as much as 125k - typical salary 10 years ago. And with the 7.5% interest rate, those 125k buy as much house as 65k in 2013. I don't envy them. Those with median income live in median cities, with median rent and median mortgage.

Read the article. Engineering salaries increased in absolute terms but decreased by about 7.2k adjusted for inflation.

I don't need an article to do these basic calculations.

The entire point of the article is that it does these basic calculations for you... for every single year since 1994...

Tech companies and movie studios have very different business models. Tech is built on the illusion of infinite growth. If you write a piece of software and it does well, the company cannot return the money back to you because they need it to hire 10x the number of new developers and create new features and growth hack more customers, and so on with each successive version. The moment they stop doing that, investors see slowing growth and the whole thing collapses. Instead these companies hand out stock options so developers themselves now become part of this game.

The multiple of ongoing productivity gain is built into your salary.

The reason we make six figures is a combination of our skills and the fact that the work that we do will be useful beyond ourselves.

It's difficult to imagine how that would be calculated and verified for internal systems, which are far more common than public facing, revenue generating systems.

There's a thing called Hollywood accounting for a reason

Isn’t that kinda what stock options are?

stock options (outside of bigcorps) are monopoly money 99% of the time

Public companies usually give RSUs, which are fine and have much better tax treatment.

I'd say it's more akin to pensions.

Most developers are a 2023 equivalent of 1973 assembly line workers. Very few do creative work.

Or engineers. Do engineers own the rights to the electrical housing designs they make?

So most developers would have to wait tables to make ends meet while they try to make it big?

That's what equity is, albeit more capital friendly to R&D heavy endeavors

Equity is generally a scam - your "five thousand shares" are going to get you maybe a few hundred dollars during a liquidity event.

Stop asking for equity - ask for a higher salary. Put that extra money into an index fund and it will go FAR more than any "equity".

Equity in public companies is worth a lot more than equity in private companies. You seem to be talking only about the latter.

Some might say the same about residuals

Is that not what equity in a startup is? Or stock grants?

What would be the systematic advantage of attaching a new system to track IP residuals be?

There are many ways to do this, and most lead to some dark incentive nightmares.

-If a dev get a percent of total company revenue, then you really don't want to hire many!

-If you have a basket of revenue for developers, and then they split it based on whether they worked there for the last X years, then it's the devs that don't want other people hired: The pie shrinks

- If it's by code getting executed and how much revenue that brought, then the difference in value of which team to work in becomes amazing. It's also a great idea to rewrite other people's code: This inner loop of the main revenue generating code is a goldmine. GDPR compliance? worth little

- If instead of by execution or LOC we go by system contribution, we instead get yearly rewrites or very long tenures, as people protect the systems they worked in.

Either way you slice it, the good of the company is only of tangential value, as barring a growing startup, optimizing your slice of the pie becomes far more relevant than helping the company's goal, any more than just remaining employed, and therefore capable of protecting your contribution level. It would need massive changes to the way we work to avoid massive profiteering dysfunction. The culture of software would be so different as to be borderline unrecognizable. Not unlike what would happen to plumbing if they could charge per gallon that flows through the pipe, or times a toilet is flushed.

They already are. Engineer gets paid $200k so the company can make $20M. Sound fair right?

It does sound fair, the engineer also gets paid $200k if the product ends up going nowhere, so he doesn't bear the risk. The company also provides lots of things to enable that "20M" to be generated that the engineer doesn't provide, such as sales, distribution, etc etc etc etc.

Book publishers also don’t make much if the book doesn’t sell.

Most technology companies wouldn’t exist without developers.

// Most technology companies wouldn’t exist without developers.

Hence they pay to hire them, as evidenced by the $200K dev in the prior post. I don't get your point.

Yes, and writers tend to be paid advances much less than a dev salary.

Writers never have to pay back that advance, however. They just don't get paid from sales until the sales cover the advance. If the book doesn't sell, they still keep the advance.

Lots of things are "necessary but not sufficient" for the company to make the $20M.

For example they wouldn't have made any money without electricity, should the power company get paid more just because of what someone did with their electricity?

Rarely does a company make 20M off the work of one engineer. Every 4-5 engineers is another 1M expense, nevermind the other employee salaries. I get kind of annoyed when people look at large aggregate numbers and complain about how different they are from the individual employee pay. Even CEO pay - if they took the entire bonus given to the General Motors CEO and divided it among every employee in the company, it would come out to something smaller than their Christmas bonus. I do think CEOs are generally overpaid and under-liable, but it's not like the CEO salary is directly responsible for workers missing out on the highlife.

On the other hand, sometimes the engineer gets paid $200k while the company makes -$20M.

I'd like to understand how asian and pacific islanders are mixed up in one "group'". Is the person grouping ethnicities together judging by squinty eyes, or what? All these "ethnicities" stats are worthless, give us place of birth or nothing, it's 2023.

Pretty sure these are just the US Census categories, which is the most consistently used grouping of people in the United States.

There are meaningful ethnic disparities between say, Black and White Americans; and those are the categories because national origin is a lot harder to measure, particularly for the descendants of people enslaved before any of the countries of modern Africa existed.

Fun fact: Nearly all formerly-Ottoman ethnicities are classified as "white" in the US. The average American considers "Muslim" a race, but the average Muslim is considered "white" under the United States' official designations.

Yeah this is actually ridiculous. I am an immigrant to the US, olive skinned but from Eastern Europe where I also stood out as an obvious ethnic minority, yet on US demographic measurement, I am as white / universe as Bob Smith whose ancestors came on the mayflower.

My dad is Persian, I grew up in Turkey, and my only citizenship is USA. I very much feel this struggle. At the same time, there’s no way they could make a box that feels like it “fits” me

Les Earnest on the subject:

https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm

There was a time when people from Finnland were discriminated against in US as they were not considered “white” because of their language being of Uralic origins and not Indo-European.

That’s how ridiculous it was/is.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_whiteness_in_...

edit: typo

Ethnicities/races have very nebulous definitions, and the tribal groupings vary greatly with the political winds.

At best, they try to whittle down someone’s perceived socioeconomic status, strength of family, and “cultural” values into a group with others where you share (very roughly) the same quantities of the aforementioned qualities.

Even place of birth is probably not very informative in 2023. You could be the child of poor immigrants who came to the US via chain immigration, or the child of factory owners who could afford to pay $60k per year for you to go to grad school in the US and obtain an H1-B, or even have enough to invest and get an EB-5.

Someone posted the hourly wages and salaries offered for working at what I believe is a large truck stop chain. They post this information freely to attract applicants.

I look at it a lot and try to up my confidence in asking for more compensation.

225k/yr working for Buc-ee’s?

https://d2u3dcdbebyaiu.cloudfront.net/uploads/atch_img/788/6...

With 250 employees[0] and $20MM yearly revenue[1] a Buc-ee's can pull numbers a many startups would envy. I'd imagine managing all of that is not trivial.

[0]: https://financebuzz.com/secrets-about-buc-ees-from-employees

[1]: https://d3.harvard.edu/platform-rctom/submission/porcelain-g... (from 2015, so probably more in 2023)

To put things into perspective, the highest level employee in an organization that earns $20MM yearly revenue makes less than a SWE2 at Amazon.

And arguably works 5X as hard.

We had similar findings via our 2023 Mid-Year report on Levels.fyi: https://www.levels.fyi/blog/2023-mid-year-report.html

In particular, the median for software engineer compensation stayed the same (which is a slight decrease when adjusted for inflation), while roles such as software engineering management saw a 5% increase in overall pay. Specific areas such as Augmented Reality saw larger hikes in compensation. AI engineers have also seen elevated compensation compared to their other engineer counterparts, which we analyze on our post here: https://www.levels.fyi/blog/ai-engineer-compensation.html

Tangential to the article, but I think there is an error in this report. At Staff Engineer title you have Broadcom listed at second place with total compensation $786,000. The level listed is ICB 6. ICB 6 is actually 2 levels above Staff Engineer in Broadcom's leveling, titled as Master.

Staff Engineer, ICB 4, average pay at Broadcom comes up as $321k in it's leveling table.

That's actually intentional, and one of the reasons why our site exists. Every company has different nomenclature for their leveling that doesn't necessarily align with other companies. So we developed a standard as a normalization for all the leveling which you can view here: https://levels.fyi/standard

As a part of this standard, ICB 6 falls under the 'Staff Engineer' standard level (you'll also notice it maps closer to Google and Facebook's Staff levels as well: https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer?compare=Broadcom%...)

Inflation isn't really a single thing - it's a trend of prices of many things, some of which are going in opposite direction of each other driven by supply and demand. When more people want to buy houses than are for sale, price goes up. When nobody wants to buy your NFT, price goes down.

Engineering salaries are subject to the same force. When companies are laying off engineers - there's more "supply" of that labor available so companies are able to hire without a bidding war. A few years ago, demand out-stripped supply so salaries were through the roof.

And then obviously not all "engineers" are the same. Top AI implementers I bet are seeing compensation growth far in excess of inflation, while the sort of generic mid-level dev commands less bargaining power in the current moment.

For the software engineers out there: TFA mentions a category called "Non-Internet software development", i.e. it doesn't seem like typical web development salaries are included.

Yet Biden is trying to run on how good the economy is. (No, I don't support Trump and I don't vote republican, not that in my state this would matter, but that doesn't mean any side is beyond criticism).

Salaries are falling. My academic salary has not kept up with inflation at all; we're all way behind. Childcare is obscenely expensive. Mortgage rates are through the roof and owning a house is beyond hope for many young people now.

Things are rough out there. I fear that people will give up democracy by voting for Trump just because the economy is so bad for many people.

I don't think you're wrong about perceptions, but by virtually every fact-based metric the economy is doing fucking great. The inflation spike has been a setback, but it's a minor blip compared to the 70's (and overdue considering how low inflation was for 20 years). The long-term trend of housing costs sucks, but it pre-dates the last few administrations and most of the blame should fall on local governments.

It's not just a perception.

I can tell you that every family that I know in my department, unless they're independently wealthy, is seriously hurting compared to any time in the past decade. That includes faculty and students.

Metrics don't include many things. For example, the fact that your ability to buy a house has fallen dramatically. Or the fact that rents in my city have gone up 25%+ in the past 3 years and now graduate students have to share 1 bedroom homes (they use curtains to separate out the living room). Or that the cost of childcare has skyrocketed to the point where it's far higher than a mortgage.

Home ownership is looking normal if you include places outside large cities, but those cities are where the grad students and media are.

https://www.redfin.com/news/gen-z-millennial-homeownership-r...

By https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/largest-cities-by-populat...

Somewhere over half of Americans live in cities. Not just grad students and media

I didn't say otherwise.

We had essentially been exporting inflation to places like China for about 30 years until 2018 or so. As soon as our free trade policies changed under the previous admin it was clear that we were in for some inflation. Throw in covid and this is the result - the choice was either let the economy fall into another great depression or send checks out to people. We kind of did the latter. I think the inflation we're experiencing now is better than the alternative.

That's a false dichotomy. We could have done nothing and the economy would have been. Sending people checks was only excused because of an inexcusable shutdown.

people don't vote on data but on perceptions and real feelings.

if the gvt report say unemployment is down. but you're having a hard time finding a job who are you to believe ?

if the gvt says grocery prices are down. but then you go into the shop with $20 and only buy two things who are you to believe.

I don't know man, I paid $9 and change for a coffee and croissant today. Things feel expensive.

Old people are doing great, while young people are getting squeezed.

Some old people are doing great ... meanwhile:

The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37641471

Looks like 2020 data? Social security COL increase was 8.7% this year. That’s pretty great compared to engineering salaries in the linked article.

Great? 2020?

* I'm pretty sure that the bulk of those that became homeless are still homeless and that more ederly are still becoming homeless at high rates.

* How many of those do you think are getting the kind of Social Security that is sufficient to meet needs?

* You'd rather a social security pension with an 8.7% increase over a median engineering salary of US $169,000?

This makes no sense. Inflation should hit old people the worst. They aren't exactly getting promotions and parking their nest eggs in high risk investments...

And yet you had no qualms about making that completely discretionary purchase. You’re doing fine.

By McNamara's fact-based metrics, we were winning the Vietnam War. These aggregate measurements might be good at the high level, but say nothing about an individual's perception of reality. People know their personal economic situation is bad right now, they don't really care about the macroeconomics, that's not what "The Economy" is to the average American.

Inflation this time is in a big part due to corporate profits - unions and regulations are needed to give workers a fighting chance at bargaining power

will give up democracy by voting

Some strong cognitive dissonance going on in your comment, friend.

My plan is to just leave the US for somewhere with a real social safety net at some point. I don't believe the US can turn things around at this point, there's just too much "tech debt" so to speak.

Where would you go? Isn't inflation much worse in most of Western Europe? Money is probably pouring into the US dollar because of lost confidence in other currencies. If those countries don't turn things around eventually, then will the safety net even survive your lifetime? Does SE Asia have any safety net?

I think the general strategy is to build wealth in the US on a US salary and then move to a cheaper COL location elsewhere.

Was in Europe this summer. Even if inflation is comparable or worse everything was still far cheaper than the US.

Tons of people did that before the pandemic and moved to cheap places like Portugal, Spain, and Italy. Now those places are expensive, they are still broke (so the safety net might still go away in your lifetime), but also now the locals are hopping mad that all these 'expats' are coming and driving up real estate prices.

It's more expensive but eating out is nothing like the US. Got 2 euro coffees and croissant combos in Spain all summer. Especially since tipping 20% is not expected.

When I mean by "they are still broke" I meant governments that have to provide the safety nets. And what I meant by "expensive" was more things like real estate prices. Sorry for the confusion.

No, Asian countries have less of a safety net than the US even. They do have cheaper healthcare and housing. (But after you've bought the housing then you want it to become less cheap, of course.)

> My plan is to just leave the US for somewhere with a real social safety net at some point

This is a lot easier said than done. Sure you could move to Canada (for example) but better do it before you get over a certain age and you have to demonstrate that you have a certain net worth. If a lot of Americans decide to start leaving that's only going to make it harder to emigrate to other places.

Can confirm, I did not find my dream of keeping a high-paying-by-Canadian-standards US remote job and moving my family to Canada so we could pay taxes there, spend our money there, and my kids (they actually give you a boost on immigration score!) could grow up to contribute to the Canadian economy, to be achievable. I’d have had to find a Canadian employer first to have a chance, which would mean a 40-60% pay cut (and I ain’t making FAANG money) and probably giving up remote, on top of it.

Getting in’s not easy, not sure how all the obviously-first-gen immigrants working as e.g. taxi drivers in Canada got in. All refugees, maybe? Spouse had a points-granting technical degree and landed a Canadian job in that field before immigrating? They’re secretly famous artists or brain surgeons (special immigration categories) and just moonlighting for fun? Unclear.

I wonder if the Canadian government is secretly planning for a mass influx of American refugees hopping the border at some point in the future. That would be kind of ironic.

Leaving the US is funny, its like a ex that won't stop calling and harassing you. The US wants its taxes first before any other country collects. If you try to permanently sever ties, its a long expensive process.

Tax liability only matters for people who make tons of money. Further, chances are you are not going to Burma, and rather going to another western country, and in those cases you are going to a country that has a tax treatises/agreements with the US in some form.

FEIE as an example is a deduction that currently goes for around the first ~$120k you earn, you also have your standard deduction. This only applies if you have spent at least 11 months in another country. Then there's housing, foreign tax credit, and so on.

In reality, most expats who earn any sort of income pay $0 to US. The only requirement is that you file every year, like all citizens to the US. Double dipping, like you're alluding to pretty much does not happen much.

Relinquishing citizenship has a fee of $2350 minimum attached to it, which is hefty, but if you're giving up your citizenship, chances are that the bill is paltry compared to your supposed other benefits.

You’re right to some extent but are omitting the potentially hefty exit tax depending on your net worth/income, see https://www.greenbacktaxservices.com/knowledge-center/exit-t...

Grass is always greener I suppose. I look at the real tax rate and earning potential of Americans vs Canadians, and it's tough to make a case for coming to Canada. I guess if you like maple syrup and curling.

> Mortgage rates are through the roof

relative to where they were 3 or 4 years ago they've gone up a lot. But historically, the average mortage rate has always been around 7 to 7.5% - right around where we are now. Mortgage rates seem to be reverting to mean - they'll probably overshoot a bit before they start moving back down.

> owning a house is beyond hope for many young people now.

Yes, prices are still way too high. This is largely due to the dearth of home building during the 2008-2014 period (great recession and aftermath). We need a lot more units built and quickly. Neither party is addressing the supply problem. Also, it's not an exclusively US problem - it's a problem in most of the developed economies of the world.

> relative to where they were 3 or 4 years ago they've gone up a lot. But historically

People keep saying this. (I'm sorry, my negative reaction is definitely not your fault, I've just heard this a lot) It's getting really annoying :)

If I could buy a house for what it cost in 2005 in my city I would gladly buy one at 7%. But housing is now 2.5x the cost. A 500k house at its peak in 2005 is now around 1.5M.

> Yes, prices are still way too high. This is largely due to the dearth of home building during the 2008-2014 period (great recession and aftermath). We need a lot more units built and quickly. Neither party is addressing the supply problem. Also, it's not an exclusively US problem - it's a problem in most of the developed economies of the world.

I don't agree that this is the cause. We haven't been building enough housing for a long time.

The problem is that the US has a crazy system. Mortgages are not assumable. Nor are they portable. And they're locked in for 30 years. I don't know of any other country that has this combination of factors. That just leaves people feeling trapped and unable to move whenever rates go up.

This is a policy decision that Congress and the President actively make to not free up mortgages and make them all assumable and portable. That would relax the housing market. If we're going to wait for building to catch up to fix the situation, well, it won't.

> Mortgages are not assumable. Nor are they portable. And they're locked in for 30 years. I don't know of any other country that has this combination of factors. That just leaves people feeling trapped and unable to move whenever rates go up.

It's true that people with a 3% mortgage do not want to move now if they don't absolutely have to and this is impacting supply. however...

> This is a policy decision that Congress and the President actively make to not free up mortgages and make them all assumable and portable.

I don't think they have the power to do this (and I'm not sure I want them to have that kind of power). You want the President and/or congress to tear up all existing mortgage agreements? That's a massive amount of power you want to hand over to the government.Maybe they could mandate that mortgages going forward be assumable with some legislation, but it would take a while for that to have an effect.

> I don't know of any other country that has this combination of factors.

As I understand it, in a lot of other countries (like the UK) mortgages are essentially ARMs - the rates adjust with prevailing interest rates.

The agencies can just offer refinancing. I agree meddling with the demand side is not great, but that’s what we’ve been doing for decades.

This is a western-wide situation, or at least we have the same problems in Europe, point by point.

The rates are meant to curb inflation but obviously both hurt in their own way. In your mind, what policy is Biden not pursuing that he should be?

Red/Blue politics aside, I'm fairly certain the inflationary issues you're seeing today can be root caused to loose fiscal policy from the Trump era. Biden inherited those issues and can be held accountable to fixing them, but not causing them.

"Red/Blue politics aside, I'm fairly certain it's actually completely red team's fault"

I think what they mean is "let's do this like a blameless postmortem" not "let's pretend that no one has ever done anything wrong."

If we can't be like, "hey the current state of affairs can be traced back to X, Y, Z" without the implication that whoever did X, Y, Z is literally Satan then it's no wonder we never get anywhere.

A blameless post mortem that blames someone and doesn’t identify what actually went wrong?

Look, it's a two sentence comment, you're reading the blame into it. Saying that Mark pushed the change that caused the outage isn't blaming Mark.

Saying that Trump (the original author, doing his best) thought that looser fiscal policy was a good idea and that Biden (the current maintainer) has to be the one to course correct due to unforeseen consequences isn't blame unless you take it as such.

It's caused by there being a pandemic and a war.

It’s silly to ignore Covid. This was going to happen regardless due to an unstoppable pandemic.

Which policies?

It's important to remember that the pandemic and supply chain mess affected all countries fairly badly, and the US is handling it better than a majority of them. So, even though things are not good, it shows a fair amount of skill in returning the US economy to a healthy place.

The other thing unfair to Biden is that Trump got credit for the unsustainable surge in stock prices after the giant republican tax cut, so it looks bad for everyone's savings as the stock settles back to a normal level.

//I fear that people will give up democracy by voting for Trump

I am struggling to parse that sentence. Isn't people voting for whom they want the definition of democracy. Separate from how you feel about the choice that's made.

I believe they’re expecting the reader to make the connection between voting for someone who’s tried to subvert the democratic process and is likely to again, and giving up on democracy.

It’s very common for the person who ends a democracy to be elected to the position that lets them do it, and to be in-fact very popular when they do it.

I understand GP as describing disillusioned people making a knowing, democratic, choice to elect someone who they believe will smash the system.

Exactly.

It's really hard to swallow being told that everything is great, when your lived experience is that it is obviously not great; seriously declining really.

People will eventually vote for anyone who is willing to bring chaos.

All of that was happening before Biden took office. Inflation for the last 10 years has been nuts, but we were slowly boiling frogs until the more recent supply crunch.

There wasn't any significant inflation even at zero interest rates until 2019. It was sometimes negative.

That isn’t true at all. The fed was playing funky games with how they were measuring inflation, sure, but all of us living in the real world definitely could tell prices were rising.

What's funny about the crank websites like Shadowstats that claim to give the real inflation rate is, they never raise their prices.

If it was true that the stats were fake, you could get rich in the bond market with TIPS arbitrage, so why not try it?

Bond rates had been less than inflation for a long time before interest rates rose. But yes, a lot of people made money getting cheap loans with interest rates below or close to inflation. It’s one of the main reasons we are in our current mess.

How is others voting for someone you happen to dislike giving up on democracy?

Because the guy tried to overturn the election and stage a coup when he lost. That's not very democratic.

I need this based on city tiers. I live in SF which is no where near these averages and medians

So much for central banking and non-free software, what a mix.

Sadly $200k/yr does not go very far anymore, even in the midwest.

What? Is this for someone living in downtown Chicago and supporting a family? $200k a year even for a single earner should go pretty far, especially if you have a house (which is very attainable in the Midwest on a $200k salary).

Uhhh, excuse me, what? What on earth are you spending your money on? 200k/year goes quite far pretty much anywhere in the US. Yes, areas like SF or Seattle are so expensive that children are a luxury item and no house sells below 1M/year. But in nearly every other part of the country that's simply not true.

He is saying what many of us are thinking. $100,000-$200,000 are now middle class, not upper middle, thanks to inflation. For a family with kids you are looking at rent in excess of $3,000/mo or houses over $400,000. We make a quarter million a year, and while we definitely don’t have trouble getting by, we also aren’t maxing out our 401k. Childcare alone takes up a substantial chunk of our income.

Exactly. This is not controversial or very hard to understand. By the time you pay the taxes on your income, health insurance, maybe fund your 401k, pay an average mortgage, pay for insurance, power, other utilities, etc. I won't even touch the subject of cars, vacations, or other frivilous expenses. If you have relatively average expenses there really is not a lot of meat left on the bone. I am sympathetic to these most likely younger or early career people that think it is a "lot of money" but when you move out of your apartment and have a family to support 200k is a decent middle class living. Which is a little bit depressing after you have been on the grind for 15-20 years in a demanding career.

$200k is around 88th percentile household income in the US. I'm finding it hard to believe one needs to be 88th percentile to have a decent middle class lifestyle.

Even in California it is above 80th percentile.

This is a better way to phrase it. $200k in the Midwest means a pretty good house in the best area public school district, two cars, some decent but not extravagant vacations, and you might be able to retire comfortably by your mid-sixties assuming nobody gets too sick in the meantime.

It doesn’t mean living in the nicest parts of the city, which have bad schools because everyone in the nice houses there sends their kids to a good private school, and the public schools are attended only by kids from the slums. It doesn’t mean a lake house (maybe a small lake fishing cabin, on a kinda-bad lake, but not a lake house. Maybe a tacky pontoon boat and a slip rental). It doesn’t mean annual long ski vacations and summering. It’s not upper middle class, in other words.

Accurate except you can easily shave 10 years off retirement.

Earning that much from like your mid-20s, yeah, probably.

[edit] or, hitting that level more like in your mid-30s but not having kids, yes.

Exactly.

This was not our situation even 3 years ago. 3 years ago we felt financially very secure, like the future was rosy, we could save money, and look forward to children. Even now, like you, we don't have trouble getting by, but, we aren't maxing anything out. We watch what we're spending and we feel like we're just about sliding by with how crazy childcare is.

Things aren't going well at all.

I think you should look at how much over the median household income you are and then go find out what those people are doing.

The evidence would suggest that people making a median income are up to their eyeballs in debt, particularly credit card debt, and have very little hope of their situation improving in the future.

I don't believe it does show that in 2023. Do you have a source that's better than a Bankrate survey? (FRED charts are the most reliable.)

Things like this are "okay":

https://www.stlouisfed.org/institute-for-economic-equity/the...

And of course, the poorest people in the country are non-workers (the elderly and children) who are probably not in debt, but have other problems. Should bring back the CTC and fix child poverty again.

And the definition of middle class is looking more like "owning a condo" than owning a single-family home in a high cost of living area, the type of area where it's easier to get a $200k income.

I read this as more a reflection on the reality that children require dual incomes, not that software jobs all of a sudden got less valuable. Children have been luxury items - to some extent, depending on region - for a long time in the US. The only people I knew growing up who weren't dual income had rich families that actually fronted the bill for children. Single family homes have been unattainable for most since at least 2008. And so on.

if you don’t own a house yet and now staring at a mortgage at 7.5% instead of 2.5% you’re going to spend thousands more a month in interest as part of your mortgage payment, not accounting for home price appreciation since the low rates of 2021.

so it doesn’t matter if you make $200k-$300k a year in a high paid profession a mortgage these days will require a much higher % of your take home pay than someone who bought the same house at 2.5%

Yes, as was the case throughout most of US history. Housing has never been, and likely never will be, a financial guarantee aside for the rich. I certainly hope people didn't get into software thinking it was a magical get-rich-quick scheme, because it's never been that. It certainly is a high-paying profession that allows you to live a comfortable life with amenities.

you won’t be able to comfortably afford a $1M house, which would be well below average in a coastal area where SWE jobs are mostly located, at today’s rates if you make $200k. Would be tight even on $300k.

Childcare is so expensive that a single taxable income and someone staying home watching the kids of quite viable.

I'm able to get by as a sole income earner with a family of 5 on a ~$200k salary, in California of all places.

We aren't flying to Hawaii every weekend but it's enough for a lifestyle similar to what I had growing up here, which I would describe as middle-to-upper-middle class. I still have to think about what I'm spending, but money isn't really a problem.

California is a big state. Are we talking a major coastal city or inland somewhere?

It's a suburb of LA.

It’s like 2-3x median household income in most midwestern cities (let alone out in the sticks).

Could you clarify what it means to "go very far?" I make about that much and live very well in one of Chicago's most expensive neighborhoods.

I would consider $150k/yr in a MCOL area comfortably middle class - what single-income households used to have much more regularly. You can afford kids, a house, a car, a couple low-cost family vacations each year, and maybe put some money aside for savings.

That is now pretty much the median salary for a bunch of high earners.

During the automakers book in Detroit, UAW negotiated a $191.60 weekly salary (for 40 hours work) in 1972. https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/100/victory-auto-worke...

Adjusted for inflation, that is $1407 today, or about $73.1k per year.

HN moment.

This statement is ridiculous. $200k/yr goes very far, especially in the Midwest.

No it doesn’t, especially if you want to buy a house.

It isn’t just inflation that is the issue, it’s interest rates.

If you make $200k gross and put money into a 401k, you’ll net about $120k or $10k a month depending on state income taxes.

at 7.5% mortgage rates, a $1M house somewhere like Chicago would be $8k a month assuming 20% down. Obviously you cannot afford that on your own.

Why in the world would you buy a $1M house in Chicago? $500k would get you a decent house in a decent neighborhood that would be more than big enough for even a four-person family.

A $1mm house is an absolute luxury house almost everywhere in the US.

No it doesn’t. Feel free to look at new listings for detached houses in central Chicago right now with 3+ bedrooms and tell me there’s more $500k listings than >$1M ones

> central Chicago

Well sure, limit yourself to a tiny area filled with high-priced housing and nobody should be surprised that you find mostly high-priced housing. That doesn't mean that there's not tons of reasonably-priced housing in the area.

No family moves into a detached house in "central Chicago".

I find it amusing that people talked about low interest rates making housing more expensive and now people say high interest rates make housing more expensive.

The thing is, I don't think there is a "money" problem when it comes to housing. More or less money won't change a thing. The problem is on the physical side. One house can only house one family. If there are too few houses and too many families, houses will be expensive no matter the interest rate. The interest rate is just an additional expense on top that determines the bankers' share in the deal.

Low interest rates helped drive prices higher, but high interest rates help drive monthly costs higher even without higher nominal prices. You’re right that it’s ultimately a supply and demand problem.

More people live alone now than ever, which has actually drastically reduced supply.

Any interesting consequence of all the boomer divorces is the square footage required for their lives almost doubled.

You ought to tell that to all the homeowners in Jefferson Park, whose average household income is half that.

500k gets you a very nice house in Chicago. If you were to rent instead, 5k/month would get you a luxury 2 bed room apartment close to the Magnificent mile.

The average Chicago house price is like, a quarter or a third of that. And, uh, $2-6k a month for non-mortgage expenses goes a long way?

3+ bedroom, detached houses are not $300k-$400k in a good area of Chicago no

Sure they are. Pop open Redfin in Portage Park. Hell, you can get a detached 3bdr in Lincoln Square for under $400k. (Don't; buy one in Portage or Jefferson Park).

This weird argument seems to come up every 3 months or so on HN; I've only started noticing recently because we spent this year buying a new house, so incongruity of the argument ("you can't get a 3bdr for $400k") leaps out at me.

I’m not familiar with Chicago, but the only 3br showing up for me in Lincoln Square is $835k.

I get 3, one of them on the corner of Lincoln and Foster.

(For the record: $400k isn't the budget I'd go into Lincoln Square with, and if I was buying in Lincoln Square I probably wouldn't be thinking about a detached house in the first place. But it seems you can definitely do it.)

terrible headline. it implies an incorrect assumption of how inflation works.

to say that it "bites" subtly implies that inflation may be targeted at this or that specific profession. but inflation works across the board, all of money is affected.

at least with money as it works now, when there is still cash, it's not possible to target professions; but I have no doubt that some future techno-currency scheme could be made that could serve as currency AND change its value depending on who is holding it.

> I have no doubt that some future techno-currency scheme could be made that could serve as currency AND change its value depending on who is holding it.

Then it's not a currency, is it? The whole point of currency is that it's abstract and fungible. It's not abstract or fungible if one person's holding of a currency is worth more than another. A seller can charge a single, fixed amount for some good or service. But if some standardized currency is worth different amounts depending on who holds it, you can no longer exchange a fixed-value good for a fixed amount of the currency: you need to charge more or less depending on how much each person's money is worth. You can't flip this around and say that the seller should just deny selling to people whose currency is worth less, because that implies that you can accept a dollar from one customer and a dollar from another customer and their values are different, which means it's fundamentally _not_ who's holding the currency that matters, which makes the whole scheme moot.

What you're describing is social credit, which is becoming increasingly common outside of the US. It's not that your money is worth less, it's that you're deemed less trustworthy or less valuable as a customer (perhaps you write in to customer support too much, or you have returned too many items). If a business knows this, they can compensate by requesting a different amount of money. But that's not something that's affected by whether the currency is cash or digital or anything else; the adjustment of price happens before any exchange of value.

> What you're describing is social credit,

I know, which means I'm actually trying to imply that cash being gone means social credit has been implemented in the USA

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