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Comment by hayward2 | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why tech workers in the Bay Area feel guilty about receiving 'high' salaries of $100 - $200k/year. This is not a lot of money... People on Wall street laugh at these amounts. So do specialized doctors, corporate lawyers, investment bankers, etc.

Software engineering is unfortunately a very middle class occupation at this point. I'd love to see it get up into the ranks of the upper class (at least for very experienced engineers!), but it has a long way to go...

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Software engineering is not a very middle class occupation, as you can easily earn amounts more than the average middle class family as a single worker, even in areas that are not tech hubs.

> I don't understand why tech workers in the Bay Area feel guilty about receiving 'high' salaries of $100 - $200k/year. This is not a lot of money... People on Wall street laugh at these amounts.

100-200k a year is a lot of money. That amount easily puts you in the upper quartile of income earners in the US. Comparing yourself as an economic class to the people on Wall Street, who are consistently some of the highest earners in the US, is silly and doesn't make any sense since the vast majority of people do not have income like that.

I'd agree with you if I was referencing some mysterious elite who lucked into their positions or had ivy league connections. I'm talking about my friends from college who had average grades at a top 30 small private school on the East Coast. Several of the ones who went into finance make more than I do, and some a LOT more. I have friends who frequently clear $300k with bonuses in very average wall street jobs. They are in their late 20s... how many enginers can make that much? They are also still early in their careers. Some I imagine will go on to make 7 figure incomes at their peak, whereas we can agree that engineers will top out at 250-300k with bonuses working at the best companies in the world.

Now, I'm not saying I'm struggling to buy food or anything on my healthy engineering salary, I'm just saying that I don't feel guilty AT ALL about how much I make, nor do I feel that I am overpaid in anyway. I do tend to think my contribution to society is at least as much as my finance friends, so perhaps either I am underpaid or they are overpaid.

I think of finance people as financial engineers. They just deal in the stuff, like I play with data structures, and my friends diodes and resistors and such. I think of how easy it is for me to manage my own software, my friend, his electro-static speakers, and to the finance engineer, his giant piles of money. It's just natural.

The sour grapes response for me is to consider that selling drugs earns more than the finance guys.

As someone who went to a small northeastern private school as well... I find it strange that it isn't abundantly clear to you that even our educations were a privilege that the vast majority of the country can't afford.

Feeling guilty or being critical of your own income isn't something that comes from a relative comparison to those who make more than you do. After all, even the average person in finance doesn't make as much money as people working in certain roles or at certain firms. Rather, it is about how that wealth is acquired and how certain jobs, including programmers, occupy a position of class privilege.

> Now, I'm not saying I'm struggling to buy food or anything on my healthy engineering salary, I'm just saying that I don't feel guilty AT ALL about how much I make, nor do I feel that I am overpaid in anyway.

That is totally fine, nobody really is asking that you or any other worker feel guilty. I do think that most people want there to be awareness and perspective about what it means to have the role you have and how that fits into capitalism and the society you live in. That kind of perspective isn't about guilt tripping.

> I do tend to think my contribution to society is at least as much as my finance friends, so perhaps either I am underpaid or they are overpaid.

It is likely that they are overpaid. When you think about it, people that perform low wage labor are just as valuable to society as programmers or those in finance. Those that do not work or cannot work are also just as valuable to society. Of course, work and capitalism don't recognize that inherent value and that is why people like BART workers have to strike and unionize to try and claw out what they desire to live.

> 100-200k a year is a lot of money. That amount easily puts you in the upper quartile of income earners in the US.

It's more stark than that. In 2011, $100,000 would put you in the top 20%, and $186,000 would put you in the top 5%. Of household income.

In 2010, only 6.61% of American individuals had six-figure (or greater) incomes. At 100k, you're already pulling down more than 93% of Americans.

Cites:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032011/perinc/new01...

It's because our society simply doesn't value the profession, and those engineers who feel guilty have internalized it. There is a strong undercurrent of social programming in western culture which says that working in computers and other technology fields is a nerdy / oddball profession and that those who choose to do it should be ostracized. People are actually surprisingly open about it, too. See for example the essay from earlier this year by Rebecca Solnit[1] which engages in much hand-wringing about "nerds" (yes, the article actually contains that word) moving into the Bay Area and how "people are ground underfoot" as a result. Such name-calling in the mainstream press is more or less exclusive to tech.

[1] http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n03/rebecca-solnit/diary

If someone notices programmers that are doing well in life, or having high-paying jobs, they write articles called "Revenge of the Nerds" with images of pencil thin acne-ridden teenagers ;). Honestly, are there any articles that discuss programmers or some similar group without calling them nerds or geeks at least ones? It's getting pretty old...

Yes, it is a lot of money. Those professions make a lot of money too.

I feel a little guilty because I have friends who are doing things which are way better for society (teachers, for instance) and are damn good at what they do, but making only a fraction of what I make. I feel good about what my company does, but I don't think we (or especially other companies that are adding so little value to people who actually need it, rather than essentially just the tech elite in SF/NYC/etc) are adding so much more that it justifies the huge disparity in salary.

If you feel guilty you could always go do those other things that benefit society more or even do some volunteer work so you feel less guilty about making a decent living.

That's my point: I feel like software salaries are so much more than decent living wages. I don't feel bad about what I do personally, but I feel bad about our industry as a whole.

It's not that teaching is better for society than whatever you do (is it? how would we really know?) - it's that you get immediate "helping someone out" feedback all the time. It must be gratifying on that level (aside from the fact that it's hard to actually reach anyone who feels compelled to "do time" in your classroom). If you feel like you're missing that "good person" feeling, I'm sure you can figure out ways to get it.

That's a very unique view of "Middle Class" considering the median income is $44,389. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

If you earn $100,000 per year that puts you in the top 20% (for a household, if it's just you it's even higher).

The median in SF is much higher than that, and in the peninsula even higher. Also, middle class is all but the 1%. The top 1% is the capitalist class of very good jobs (high finance, specialized doctors, exectives, some lawyers, etc) or people who own a lot of assets instead of working, owning 40% of the wealth in the country and 34% of the income. So yes, programming is a middle class job, though I suppose 'upper-middle class' would suffice as well.

I think it's because more tech workers in the Bay Area enjoy their jobs than investment bankers in New York do. When you enjoy your work, you don't feel guilty, but perhaps a little sheepish when you realize how much you're being paid to do it.

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