Comment by cs137
3 years ago
There isn't a shortage of software developers. The pay isn't great--the kids getting $300K packages out of Stanford are an exception; it's a marketing expense. In fact, if you control for the level of intelligence it takes to be any good, SWEs make less (and get far less autonomy--do you think lawyers work on Jira tickets?) than any other professional, and they hit a salary/challenge plateau quick... after which, they increasingly face ageism.
People leave because the job sucks. I don't mean that programming sucks; I quite enjoy it. Computer science is still an engaging field worth studying, and research programming isn't bad at all. Corporate SWE is pretty awful, though; you get paid far too little and treated far too shabbily to justify spending hours dealing with bugs and bad decisions that exist not because you're working on hard problems (after all, I've generated my share of bugs and bad decisions) but because of inadequate processes, mindless cost-cutting, generic incompetence, and an overall lack of care, especially at the top. All of this, to make a barely middle-class salary while people who are already rich and connected make millions off my work? No thanks. 2.25/5, would not do again.
Cry me a river. Software development is some of the easiest, highest paid work in history. The majority of the population is grinding away in tough physical labor or abusive service jobs getting paid pennies while software devs moan about only making low six figures and getting a few boring jira tickets while they sit in their home office reading hacker news for half the day.
On one hand, I agree with you that on the whole we're a bunch of spoiled crybabies. Totally grant you that.
On the other hand, saying that the majority of the population is grinding in tough physical labour is just not true. Most other jobs are generic office jobs that don't need to be done (just like 80%+ of software engineering jobs don't need to be done).
Most of us are just doing things for money. Are most people working hard? Not usually, because it mostly doesn't matter. Spreadsheets idle in inboxes, meetings lead nowhere and achieve nothing, brown-nosers and family members get promoted into jobs they're incompetent at. And the world continues to spin regardless.
Also, have you all tried making a non-swe career work lately? How about for 5+ years?
In the last two years I've worked with hundreds of bootcamp students who have reached the end of their rope with 20th century career paths that no longer make any f-ing sense. From teachers to construction workers to bartenders to graphic designers. Not all of them have a deep love for writing software, but all of them recognize that its one of the only viable paths available if you don't want to have roommates into your 40s.
As my best friend told me in an abandoned bay area parking lot before I switched careers to swe, there just doesn't seem to be any other reliable way for people in our generation to make a living. Maybe it only applies to california, maybe it only applies to millennials, but having been on both sides of that fence now I 100% agree.
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We need data for this. More importantly, we need data for how tough it is to get certain jobs. That means stuff like:
* Time spent on finding a job
* Time spent on studying in order to attain a job
* Actual amount of hours worked (hard to get accurate data on it)
* Actual amount of effort per hour (hard to operationalize)
It's a very tough discussion to have, but I have a gut feeling that you're simplifying too much and are partially wrong. But I can't even give evidence that you might be wrong because I don't have data. So at best I feel we're both blind and we don't have a one-eyed king that can see! ;-)
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> Most other jobs are generic office jobs
I really don't think this is true. Maybe in the US, but worldwide I would charecterize most job environments as closer to sweatshop than office.
I can't get on the "It is a hard-knock life for Software developers" train. We are very-very well compensated, and we are insufferable.
I do understand the issue. Humans are prone to complain about any slight whether real or imagined. Millionaires will complain about not having enough money, A-list celebrities will complain about not having enough visibility, sports stars will complain about every foul play.
Money just does not lead to life satisfaction, only craving. I just have to accept that this is the human condition.
> I can't get on the "It is a hard-knock life for Software developers" train. We are very-very well compensated, and we are insufferable.
The compensation can be high if you work in Silicon Valley (even though the cost of living is high there). The standard corporate programming job is already paid much worse. Also in a lot of countries that are not the USA, software development is not such a well-paying job.
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Compensation does not reduce the type of suffering software developers typically endure (or complain about).
Office politics, skills evaporating, high work pressure, ageism, boredom, physical inactivity, an indoor life, over-consumption of information...all of these factors have their effect on one's mental state as well as body.
Pay does not fix that.
> I can't get on the "It is a hard-knock life for Software developers" train. We are very-very well compensated, and we are insufferable.
This. People don't feel sorry for people who are in the top 20% in terms of salaries, when they complain about not being in the top 5%.
About a decade ago, or a bit more, I noticed that the the crowd over at slashdot started complaining in similar ways, either that some MBA was compensated better, or that H1B holders were suppressing salaries.
Maybe I'm prejudiced, but it seems to me that this kind of thinking is common in mediocre developers who are disappointed that they are stuck in an average-or-below paying programming job from around the age of 35-40 on. Maybe their salary even went down a bit, in real terms, after the latest downturn.
I simply have trouble empathizing with people who have it better than most other poeple, but still complain like that. If they were industrial workers that started out low (at least for the country), but still lost their job to outsourcing to Asia, and were unable to get another, I would empathize a bit more.
I don't think it's the job of governments to protect top 20% earners from competition from abroad, and get fed up when entitled people demand such protectionism.
I stopped following slashdot because the discussions often turned into something I would expect in a labor union forum, instead focusing on fresh perspectives in tech an science.
But if it is a generational sort of thing, I suppose that is why it is becoming more common on HN about now.
The thing that really crystallises how spoilt we are is: https://nohello.club/
We take ourselves so seriously we cannot afford the time for someone to be polite!
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> Software development is some of the easiest, highest paid work in history.
Nope this is an outdated opinion. You can do just as well or better in trades (source: my electrician buddy). If you’re referring to the FAANG salaries (sub 1%) you’re comparing to doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs in terms of opportunity cost. Your average joe programmer isn’t killing it like you seem to think, and they’d do just as well in trades or middle management.
The cynic in me thinks this is an opinion promoted by employers, just like the BS “labour shortage” headline.
Do you actually have data to back that up, or just one anecdote from a friend? Median pay for electricians is about $57k/year [1], and that's after 4 years of apprenticeship and passing the exam. That's compared to a median salary of over $100k for software devs [2]. Sure, you can make a lot of money as an electrician, HVAC person, welder, etc. if you own and run your own business, but your average tradesperson is not in that category, just like your average software developer isn't running their own dev shop.
[1] https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/electrician/salar...
[2] https://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/software-develope...
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Yeah, but in trades you have to climb in hot attics, deal with sewers, work outside, etc. And you have to put in a full days work. How many of us developers actually put in a full 8+ hours? I know that I don’t. I can usually get my assigned work done in about four hours. Can you imagine an electrician or plumber or doctor or lawyer only working 4 hours a day? It’s insane how much I get paid for what I actually do.
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Have you seen the way somebody who has been in the trades for 20 years walks? They have a very particular kind of gait. You can easily tell them apart from the weekend-warriors walking into Home Depot just by their stride. It's the walk of a body that's been absolutely wrecked by physical labor.
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You can do just as well in the trades - if you are a master (whatever the top rank is) working 80 hours a week. Right now the trades are in high enough demand that you can get that overtime, but that will change and then you are back to hoping you can even get 40 hours. In the meantime working for a boring company is a 40 hour a week job with great pay. FAANG is much higher pay, but they are also more hours per week in general (or so I'm told).
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The point is that the trades lile electrician or HVAC get paid well but ut is much harder physical work just had my AC replaced and the guy was sweating through rhe day to put everything together I paid well but it wasn't harder than making a SWE salary.
SWE is easy, can be fun, pays well, can be full remote, safe desk job. Usually other professions lack one or more of these.
This seems to be a perspective that's exclusively silicon valley (perhaps large parts of the US) based. Not at all true in Europe at the least. Not that it's a bad job by any stretch of the imagination, but even low six figures is really rare in the EU for Software Development.
Easiest is also highly subjective, if your job is making wordpress templates/sites then sure. If you're working on complexer systems then this statement is horseshit. I've done physical and service jobs that were both easier than the software development I do, only difference was that the physical job was also physically exhausting.
My company has noticed that good developers in Germany are cheaper than in India. Good is key here, you can get bad developers in India for very cheap (this might be good enough). The highest paid software positions in Germany are non-union jobs and the majority are not willing to leave the union for more money, which means they are refusing to do the work of a senior engineer, and this in turn means we can't use the cheap labor for lack of leaders.
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> Easiest is also highly subjective
Anecdotally, I've observed (over a 30-year career) that less than half of the people who have the qualifications can actually produce halfway decent code (as in code that doesn't crash the first time it's used or introduce new problems).
I’m from a small Australian city. I earn in the top 5% of the country with 8 years experience and no degree. And I see all my friends who picked software in the same situation.
It’s probably the most privileged position possible.
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I suspect this was simply so obvious that OP didn't feel it was worth mentioning. If your goal is making a lot of money in software development, you'd be a fool to stay in Europe. You have to move to the US. That's where the money is.
There's absolutely zero point venting out frustration on fellow working class members when upper management and up are actively trying to reduce costs by cutting headcount and/or wages relative to profits.
This race to the bottom is how software devs will become the new "teacher shortage", and how wealth will continue to funnel to the upper classes with those on the lower end unable to climb up.
Yeah indeed. Coming from someone who had to work with physical labor before I started programming, software developers don't know how good they have it.
"The pay isn't great", "treated far too shabbily", "dealing with bugs and bad decisions", "inadequate processes" and so on, sucks when development is the only thing you've dealt with, but you have no idea how it is to actually have a blue collar job if you're actually complaining about those things.
I think cs137 and others like them should try to have a part-time job at McDonalds (or whatever that is not in front of a screen), because it will make you love your software engineering job again.
My first job was fast food too. Except for the pay, the grease, the unpredictable and strict hours, and the cleaning of bathrooms, I'd love to take a job like that up again.
There's stress, but it ends at the end of the breakfast/lunch/dinner rush, not a constant low-grade stress over the whole day and often lingering into the night from unfinished JIRA tickets.
Then there's mostly chatting and hanging out with interesting people, either kids with dreams or adults with off-the-beaten-path lives (not an endless stream of white collar adults who only have stories about how they went to a bbq or just had another kid) while cleaning or prepping food, helping a customer here and there. Some customers were assholes but they'd be gone a few minutes later and you'd go back to other things. And because it's a public facility sometimes my friends would stop by just to say hi and shoot the shit for a few minutes.
And I was much healthier then too, despite working fast food. Mainly because I spent my day moving instead of being stuck in a chair.
I also worked a retail, a warehouse, and a factory job. The retail job was even better because you didn't have to deal with the grease or cleaning bathrooms, and the customers were somewhat nicer. If it paid remotely near what I make now I'd probably switch to that tomorrow.
Factory job was probably the toughest. More isolating, no A/C in the summer, more constant stress, more physically demanding, mandatory 10 hour days for weeks sometimes, and there was an incident where a drunk forklift driver almost knocked a tower of heavy steel racks on top of me. I quit the next week.
Any white collar job looks better than McDonalds. It’s a ridiculous comparison.
I could say McDonalds workers don’t know how easy they have it. They should try picking fruit as a seasonal immigrant, because it will make them love working at McDonalds.
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> Software development is some of the easiest, highest paid work in history.
I joked with a girl yesterday when she asked me what I did. I told her: "I'm a dude that's paid way to much to sit in his living room and make websites and apps".
Not everyone will make $300k per year, but you'll probably still make way more than most other professions. Teachers make like $70k in good places, often times much less. Here we are sitting in our pajamas at home changing the background color of a button and making twice as much.
So many things I have to disagree with. Not all software engineering is easy, particularly the highly paid variety. The six figure salary is diluted by spending weekends constantly having to learn new technology off the clock. Companies then expect senior engineers to mentor other engineers and give presentations of their technical challenges, debasing the value of the knowledge gained working off the clock. Manual labor jobs don’t typically require the student loans software engineers have to pay off, further offsetting the salary gains by years. Manual labor workers get to go home and be done at the end of the day and aren’t tacitly expected to be available at all hours. It may not be the worst industry but it definitely is not a fun industry to work in at a lot of companies. It has one of the worst interview cultures on earth probably and the more years I work the more I see the obvious flaws to the point where I want to leave.
>The six figure salary is diluted by spending weekends constantly having to learn new technology off the clock
You don't need to do this forever. Usually you can just focus on a stack and related technologies and do well. Once you have experience and a clearly defined need, ad-hoc research is good enough.
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A lot to disagree with here, but off the bat, many of the highest paid software engineers are the ones working the very least or not at all.
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Well, I think the parent is comparing software engineering to other white collar professions like lawyer.
In my opinion comparing SWE to blue collar work like construction is apples to oranges. Ofc the blue collar work is harder and more demanding physically.
It’s better to think about whether software engineers are being compensated fairly relative to other professions like lawyers.
I think they are given that wages seem to be governed with supply and demand. On one hand I don’t make as much as my sister, who is a doctor. On the other hand, I make enough/comfortable money and don’t have to deal with the liability/responsibilities/obligations of being a doctor or lawyer, and I can work from bed naked should I choose to do so.
You also don’t need to spend years in a very expensive education with tall entry barriers and taking on massive debt. But also, you had the info in doctor fakeries available and still chose software.
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> work from bed naked
Can confirm. Just did an onboarding in my underwear. (Although mostly because I forgot time conversion when on business travel was a thing, because COVID)
Or even more so compared to other office workers like managers and such. Or marketing, accounting and so on. All in all it is not too bad.
Hmm what makes you think software developers are not abused? Maybe in your world they are not, but it regular to hear about devs working 12-14 hours a day. With bosses and clients harassing them even at off hours.
You hear about that in "high status" organizations. Most companies cannot get away with that, and treat their developers much better.
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No one talked about service workers. These peoples are exponentially more fcked than any of us can ever be. There is still a too large gap between employee and CEO / founder compensation in our buisiness, despite six figure salaries and yes, it is worth complaining about and fighting for.
I think sales is a much better gig than software engineering, personally.
Any engineer who has enough EQ and people skills to give some demos on Zoom is going to find that Sales Engineering/Solutions Engineering is an easier job with more earning potential, all with no on-call rotation.
On top of that, the company treats you like you're valuable rather than a cost center (especially relevant to people doing infrastructure and IT engineering). Sales teams go on vacation to team-build, engineers are shoved in a conference room with some lukewarm sandwiches.
> Software development is some of the easiest, highest paid work in history
In US for sure. But there are many other places where you get a better balance between learning/working/salary in other jobs.
Not to mention the notoriously higher rate of burnout in the industry, even in the US.
The people in this threads making huge overgeneralizations might be indeed overpaid.
Your comment already has a lot of responses but one thing I didn't see mentioned is about the tough physical labor. It is often neglected that working at the computer is really bad for your body. Sitting for hours is unhealthy and creates all kinds of problems: obesity, disc prolapse, bad circulation, so much more. Also your eyes suffer a lot and become worse much faster than in most other jobs.
I agree that being a SWE is certainly not the worst thing in the world but it has also a lot of bad properties that often are overlooked and the most positions do not have moon salaries, that we see on HN regularly.
Also to do whatever lower income job you don't need to study for 5+ years (master). You need to compare with jobs that have similar requirements to your education.
You do not need a 5+ year degree. I have no formal qualifications and have no issue securing six figure jobs. And I have seen many others do the same.
You also have the ability to get a standing desk and take breaks to walk around.
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lol yes this is a good point. We should all volunteer in a hospital or police department for a few days to get some perspective... And another thought: many jobs descriptions list any technical novelty under the sun even though only some small project in some small team somewhere in the company uses it. Why? To look more appealing to job seekers. It's much cooler to describe the job as PHP + Elixir + Kafka + Big data than simply PHP - which is mostly what the job is about.
I'm not denying the field is changing fast, it is. But there's other reasons why 50 year olds are pushed away besides some imagined inability to keep up.
In comparison to the majoritiy of the population it truly is a nice job, though if you ain't working at FAANG your pay can be lower compared to e.g. a mechanical engineer
Username checks out. I laughed so hard and I recognize myself in the description. Just an awesome comment.
What they expressed is not contrary to what you express. They said the expected salary conditioned on intelligence for SWE is lower to that of other jobs, and I am inclined to agree. If you include game dev jobs in SWE then it goes even lower.
Agreed. Software devs have had it easy for a long time. I hope that doesn't go away but it is true!
Oh yeah, every dev in the world makes $100 000 minimum per year, sure. And it's boring and easy with reasonable deadlines and appropriate vacations and time off work.
Even if you make something like $20000 per year, you have it better than most in the world. People spend their body (the one we only have one of) doing way more intense (and vital for the world) labor than software engineers do, and earn much less.
If you think unreasonable deadlines are a big issue, then you're in for a rough awakening if you spend any time with the rest of the workforce that doesn't sit in front of a computer all day.
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This is... To be charitable: uninformed.
As a civil engineer: I assure you my studies were QUITE rigorous. The job is very demanding, and I assure you the complexity can be very high, the consequences of mistakes are severe and occur over a massive variety of time scales. I had to work for four years apprenticing under licensed engineers after school and pass no fewer than four examinations, and get 4 licensed engineers to personally vouch for my work before getting licensed myself as a civil engineer. I am personally liable, in perpetuity, for loss of life injury or property which occurs as a result of work that I put my stamp on.
As a licensed P.E (who is, dare I say, fairly talented amongst my peers even) with a total of 8 years experience, do you know what I get paid to deal with that complexity and liability? About $80k in medium cost of living area for 45 hours/week. That's not atypical. Does that "control for the intelligence" required of the job?
80k for 8 years of experience with a PE is a bit low. You should be cracking six figures by now if you’re structural and coming close if you’re actual (roadway) civil. Are you in materials testing? If so, obviously you should try to switch over to an inspection gig to get some of that sweet overtime. I was clearing something like 110k salary at similar experience back when I practiced and quite a bit more with my equity/COLA/bonus, but I was in a high risk niche field. Not sure where you’re at but any market of reasonable size should be able to support you getting a raise, especially if you’re actually as good as you think.
I agree with everything you say. Software engineers (most should not even be called engineers, they’re coders or developers and on the same level as a lab technician to me) are prima donnas whose mathematical and scientific backgrounds are (on average) at least one level of education behind any actual licensed engineer/professional making half as much. And their degree of liability is infinitely lower, as you note. I’ll probably get sued or be involved in a lawsuit for my work another half dozen times before 2032 even though I haven’t stamped anything in 3 years.
> most should not even be called engineers, they’re coders or developers and on the same level as a lab technician to me
I'm a programmer and I 100% agree with this statement. I never tell anyone that I'm a software engineer even though that is my job title, I am a programmer. It annoys me to no end that we keep diluting language like this and devaluing the meaning of these terms. An engineer is held to a much higher standard than any web developer ever will be.
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Wow unfair, is it because you work for the public sector that the salary is mediocre? It is not a bad wage but indeed sounds like the salary should be 50% higher.
No, I work in the private sector in land development. This is actually a good deal for me because I'm full remote whereas in my area I'd be looking at a $15-20k pay cut.
Many lawyers have to religiously time track everything. Because hours attributable to a specific client are billed and billable hours are where the revenue comes from.
On the other hand, lawyers knowledge of the law and legal procedures doesn't become stale after a few years.
"Requires 20 years experience in the Affordable Care Act" - Said no law firm ever
On the other hand, tax codes and laws change all the time. If the law changes, and you don't know it as a professional in that area, the outcome isn't good.
Every field has to deal with change. In law, you've got politicians changing the rules, in the corporate area, you've got Office Politicians changing the rules.
It does get stale and changes per jurisdiction. Just look at how GDPR and CCPA changed the privacy landscape. At least programmers don’t have to deal with linked lists having different time complexities in California.
This happens for quite a few software engineering jobs too.
It's not the 6 minutes I heard lawyers do, but I definitely have been asked to track intervals of 15 minutes.
If you were a lawyer and said "I am not willing to track my time" you limit your options significantly more than a programmer
No SWE has been audited for pointing their JIRA ticket too high.
Totally not true. Creating room to sit on your thumbs through the time management system gets noticed by pretty much everyone. Some SWE roles are billed to client accounts hourly, too.
SWE's are not the only ones that think that their pay is low compared to their intelligence level, their education level, how tough, inconvenient or important their work is or what they feel they deserve for some other reason.
For instance, I'm sure there are plenty of HR managers in various companies that are secretly furious about all the young young mostly males, mostly white or asian, still in their 20s, join the company and make more than they do.
I'm sure HR managers know that the majority of jobs they are hiring for are different from the job they're in, with different pay scales and demographics.
Infact I'd say it's their profession.
Also, HR Manager is a low-risk job.
Recruiter is the high-risk equivalent.
So not only do you compete with a lot of people for the job, the pay structure does not depend on performance.
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>SWE's are not the only ones that think that their pay is low compared to their intelligence level, their education level, how tough, inconvenient or important their work is or what they feel they deserve for some other reason.
Sure, but it doesn’t mean some or all of them are not right, especially when the unequal distribution of wealth is well known and documented to evolve for the worst.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth#Global_...
This has to do with ownership and inheritance, not that SWEs are poorly paid laborers. Many software engineers are in the global 1% richest.
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Why would the ethnicity or sex matter when these HR managers would still see the same differences regardless of ethnicity or sex?
Either way, I'd think twice about putting HR managers as victims here when they are the main perpetrators of low raise budgets and high hiring budgets.
When people see that some other group of people, with identity traits different from themselves, are doing better than themselves on some metric, it often induces resentment. That's just a fact.
Whether its justified or not, varies with circumstances and what ethical system people have.
When black people in the 50's felt that way about white people and their privileges, most people today would see those concerns as justified.
When German people in 1922 became angry because most jews had enough money for food, while many Germans went hungry, and started believing in conspiracy theories, like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, most people today would say they were not justified. (though there are still some who secrely believe those things)
And when Hutu's wanted to "cut down the tall trees" in 1994, most people in the west only read the headlines, and didn't care that much.
In the case of HR managers being unhappy that software developer make more than them, some will blame some generic "wage gap", others will explicitly believe in some kind of Patriarchy conspiracy theory. (And a lot of HR managers, of course, are simply fine with things as they are.)
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You're not wrong.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WkKHupWzB-g
Didn't that video make her lose her job?
HR managers are rarely ever intelligent. The work they do doesn’t require it and intelligent people don’t want to do a job where they’ll be surrounded by lower intelligence people.
Maybe some HR managers believe that empathy and "EQ" are more important than IQ?
Maybe they even think that intelligence is a social construct invented by the Patriarchy for the purpose of oppressing people who are not "cis white males"?
Who knows, maybe for some, these ideas may even have been part of their education....
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> do you think lawyers work on Jira tickets?
LOL, a lawyer in my family does. He actually meets with a whole group of lawyers every month or so and they all do a retrospective to figure out how well applying agile/lean/whatever principles to their firms has been working. He actually feels it gives them a real edge.
I've suggested this to my lawyer wife more than once. The problem is that she works for multiple partners with no visibility in to each other's tasks. So each partner thinks they can have 100% of her time whenever they want, and get upset when that turns out not to be true.
>> SWEs make less (and get far less autonomy--do you think lawyers work on Jira tickets?) than any other professional
Nurses are professionals too, and they will never see anything close to $300k/year.
The intelligence floor for becoming a nurse is low, so nurses have extremely large variance in their intelligence, knowledge, and training. Knowing someone is a nurse doesn’t mean you can assume they are pros. Some nurses keep up with the latest medical research papers and are overall similarly knowledgeable to doctors, and some know less about biology than I do and will tell you about vaccine conspiracies and how some homeopathic nonsense will help you. I’ve met people at both ends.
Lawyers work on "discovery". Requesting and sifting through piles of documents. The jira ticket doesn't seem so bad.
In general to me the whole process of getting the degree, the bar and then the actually work and the pay unless you make it seems like rather bad compared to how easy SWE or related work can be.
The school is laughably expensive for something that should in reality be rather cheap. Read books, listen to lecturers? No laboratory work or practical experience and so on, clearly overpriced. And the studying to get approval of cartel? And then end up working for rather poor compensation for quite a long bit in career... As the pay is bi-modal, yes partners rake in money, but they also need to get the clients. But the people doing bulk of the work aren't that well paid.
Exactly. I was into a half dozen top law schools and had a very good LSAT score but what you mentioned nagged at me until I chose a technical masters instead.
Agreed. I made more from owning and living in a house than I can possibly save from SWE job.
It’s housing that’s the anomaly there though, not SWE salaries.
It is both IMO.
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How do you make money from owning and living in a house?
It goes up in value. Also interests rates decreasing means more immediate money in lower living costs.
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* by ensuring that others pay more in property taxes
* by ensuring that others cannot build, increasing value of your investment
* by leveraging the deduction for mortgage interest
The system is working as designed.
Buy a house, live in it, sell it for more than you bought it for
>SWEs make less than any other professional
Except for almost all of them. Aside from a few exceptions (doctors, laywers), everyone else makes significantly less. A structural engineer with a master's degree for exemple will makes less than half (closer to 3 - 4x in my region).
Lawyer pay honestly isn't that great. I know lawyers who went to top schools and routinely work 60-80 hour weeks to make as much as SWE do.
The lawyers who didn't go to top schools became public defenders etc and make about 70k a year and are saddled with a quarter million dollars in law school debt.
>do you think lawyers work on Jira tickets?
Yes, I more or less think they do. Unless they are a headliner or founder of their own firm.
Lets say you are a lawyer at glob corp, and they get sued. Do you really think you can say "Eh, the other guy has a point. I am not going to defend this one."? You either work the case defending glob corp, or you are no longer glob corp's lawyer.
> The pay isn't great--the kids getting $300K packages out of Stanford are an exception; it's a marketing expense.
You don't have to make 300k for the pay to be great. Even if you fall short of that and land at a company that only pays you $120k, you're still making a killing compared to most other professions.
> Corporate SWE is pretty awful
Then get out of Corporate. I work for an SMB, make about as much as I used to in Corporate, but the stress level and workload makes is much easier. Everyone want's one of those SWE jobs for a company that is in the news, but in fact you want the exact opposite. You want a low profile job at a company no one outside your niche has heard of. The pay is about the same, work is 10x less crazy, and if you disagree with a decision, usually you know the person that made it because the company is only about 200 employees.
> SMB
I think the signal:noise ratio isn’t great in this sector. Although corporate is 100% guaranteed misery, I have yet to come up with a reliable way to find SMBs where IT (because that’s how they call it, a SWE is the same as the help desk in their view) isn’t considered as “the geeks working the cost center in the basement”.
Do you have a method or did you rely on blind luck like the rest of us?
I'm optimistic growing remote work means extending the working life of an SWE (counter to ageism).
Most companies with good pay have a decently high median age for senior SWEs.
I'm not sure why anyone 50+ would want to work at the vast majority of startups...
so, de-aging video call filter?
> do you think lawyers work on Jira tickets?
Probably not, but instead they get to bill their working hours in 6 minute increments. And they have to bill a high number of hours a day. Praise yourself lucky if you don't have to do that!
> do you think lawyers work on Jira tickets?
LOL Jira has nothing on billing in 15 minute increments.
> do you think lawyers work on Jira tickets
You want to represent a murderer, rapist or a Bernie Madoff? Lawyers deal with an order of magnitude more BS. You may feel bad when you work on a dead end feature. Imagine if your representation let a rapist walk.
What's the alternative though? What other "career" change can a SWE make that will make them even close to what they used to make?
What about escaping corporate swe and working for oneself?
Average salary for a software developer in the US is over $100k/year. For a 30 year old, that would put them in the 95% income percentile, or 87% for a 40 year old.
The comparison to other lawyers is weak because becoming a lawyer requires a hell of a lot more education. You can become a software developer without even a having a college degree.
You are also ignoring other professions like nursing. Nurses make far less than software developers and work a hell of a lot harder. Same with teachers.
As far as barely making a middle-class salary while rich people get richer off your work? Welcome to capitalism.
You could work two easy software engineering jobs from home in parallel and double your income though.
Good luck if you spend 40-70 % of your working time in meetings and pair programming sessions, like I do.
If you're not getting paid enough, have you tried leaving your job and finding another one?
buddy our goal is to make their professions just a shitty and atomizing as ours. it is the way (the faster the better). the professional class are an impediment to progress idc how mean that sounds.