Bay Area tech's 'layoff surge' has slashed salaries, report says
sfgate.com
sfgate.com
In other words, the salary slash was more of a correction from the 2020-2022 bubble that we all knew was temporary.
[0] https://app.hubspot.com/documents/21821778/view/776264836?ac...
[1] https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=146000&year1=2...
If we were in a deep recession or something, I'd understand. Can somebody give me another reason why they did this--"coincidentally" all at the same time--other than to deliberatly lower our salaries?
What recourse do we have? Are we really powerless to do anything about this? If so, what's to prevent them doing the same thing next year?
If there are large numbers of software developers being paid much less than they are worth, start a software development company, hire them for more than they are being paid now but less than they are worth, and get rich while helping to solve the problem.
The "worth of a programmer" is not a property of that programmer, its relatively to the programmer's environment.
For example, a programmer can be many times more valuable at Microsoft--which has network/lockin effects--than they will be at a company which faces more competition. And certainly more than a company which doesn't even have a product yet, like a startup.
If you think a just wage is "whatever salary you can get", then I guess you won't find that very persuasive. But if you think a just wage is "one which is commensurate with the value the company adds to the company," you'll agree.
And I say this as someone who usually leans right :-)
Market actors respond to market forces. Information cascades are real. Etc.
There are plenty of reasons we see lots of people doing the same thing at the same time that does not actually require any sort of direct coordination or conspiracy.
What, exactly was the "market force" they are reacting to here? Is it even a market responding to market forces, or a market's efficiency being compromised by market manipulation?
With a glut of people on the market companies naturally needed to pay less to hire them, leading to a general depressed wage level for new hires.
With the benefit of hindsight, we can see 2023 as a return to growth, but it's hard to tell those early signs as different to noise without seeing the rest of the chart going into late 2023/2024.
Big tech companies have recovered now, but hiring is still restrained since they found they had a lot of work that could be cut, and nobody is excited to do layoffs again in general. Layoffs were very bad for morale.
Lowering the salaries at all during a time of record profits is a violation of the social contract, and should not be acceptable. But somehow, it's become the new normal.