/biz/ - Business & Finance

The scaling argument makes more sense than you think. At my last job (TC $280k) one new feature we created over the course of a few months was going to save the (FAANG) company an estimated $15m. Small changes have huge value at that scale. The other reason they pay so well is because they want you to be dedicated to your job and to be able to abuse you however they want. It's their way of convincing you to drive the company forward rather than let it stagnate.

>>56527214
codetranny labor is being and will continue to be tamed by market forces, the same as any other non-unionized/non-regulated labor that has ever existed.
>M-MUH LEETCODE
you don't need to be a genius to understand college sophomore level DS&A -- which is largely irrelevant to re-inventing the CRUD back end and hamburger menu front end wheel for the 2382383946th time. better development tools (trannyscript.js frameworks, chatgpt hand holding, etc.) will lower the barrier to entry and retard turd world labor will fill the gap.

If you want to apply the logic tech workers do for why they have big incomes you could also apply the logic to a supermarket who makes $50 billion a year income. The check-out people should be on 150k - 300k because they contribute to getting the $50 billion worth of product out of the door by ensuring its all paid for

But they always paid those people peanuts, and now replace most of them, so theres barely any of them left at the store.

Meanwhile they were helping a company making way more than 99% of tech companies do.

But perhaps Tech workers will face the same end game as people who worked check out registers, you will soon be paid peanuts, then you will be replaced.

>>56527242
Nah the only thing that makes sense is that tech companies want to show off and try to hire the best of the best but offering bigger incomes to try out bid their potential competition, once they faded out and the free money ended and specific companies ended up dominating, shit is changing

>>56527242
>The scaling argument makes more sense than you think.
mr. shekelberg has factory workers assembling widgets by hand. mr. shekelberg installs automation technology that augments worker productivity but doesn't replace headcount. does it make sense that mr. shekelberg would pay workers more because of "muh scaling"?

>>56527214
what doesn't make sense is working tech at all. the real pay is more like 80k tops, after 8 yrs experience and 2 degrees, versus youd have made double if you landed a manager retail gig, even minimum wage and tech starting salaries are within $8. it literally doesn't make sense not to just join a potentially successful mom and pop like a liquor store or a franchise like a walmart

>>56527252
>they contribute to getting the $50 billion worth of product out of the door
An individual checkout worker won't sell $1m worth of stock in a year's time. And even then the margin on that $1m is much less than hundreds of thousands. Nice cope though.

The other reason that salaries were high before (but probably won't be in the future) is labor demand. When I chose a CS degree many years ago, it was because I knew there was a large demand and a short supply. And since then we've only seen demand increase faster than supply. In the future though obviously everyone will want to code instead of becoming a mechanical engineer for example, so that'll change.

>>56527262
You ignored the other parts of my responses but that's alright. The point you're missing here is that Mr Shekelberg doesn't need to pay for a better workforce because literally anyone can do this widget assembly.

>>56527270
>the real pay is more like 80k tops, after 8 yrs experience and 2 degrees
I'm assuming you're not from US?

Median household income in 1970 was 235oz of gold, SWE aren't paid a lot, you're just paid shit

>>56527332
I am from the US. i was in biotech. but tech salaries will also fall as more and more indians fill the demand for less salary just like in biotech, and finally the companies will all start to lose their bottom lines and end up going under, thus perpetuating the cycle of not being able to pay a decent salary for that level of difficult work where you're problem solving 24/7. versus just working for a successful liquor store that pays you $27/hr starting and gets to 200k for managers.

They are more maintainers than creators. It's highly important to have tenured, knowledgeable people spending years getting intimate with your code base and tech stack so that things can be efficiently fixed and tweaked as necessary.

>>56527214
It's as simple as this
>I own a business. I want to make a machine that picks apples.
>I hire 2 engineers, 2 technicians, and spend 2 years building a machine that picks apples
>This machine requires constant upkeep and if new technology allows apples to be picked faster, I have to spend a considerable amount of time to reengineer, redeploy, and recalibrate then new apple picking machine
>I make $1 million USD a year
Vs
>I want to build an apple picking machine
>I do the same thing
>But when new tech comes out, I push a button and it easily gets adopted and integrated to the new machine
>No longer need to spend considerable time between proof of concept to viable revenue generating product
>Because of this, I make $10m revenue per year
>I pay the engineers more because I make more
That's it. They don't get paid more for their work is more complicated or requires more "work", they just get paid more because the work they do provides more money to the owners.

>>56527389

Indian mania is nothing new in tech my friend. In the 2000's that was the sentiment, that they'd take over entirely as they're much cheaper. Businesses hit a wall as they realized just how worse educated and poorly communicative offshore teams are. And H1Bs are restricted and coupled to American incomes.

The synthesis I see now is that offshore teams are contracted more for non-critical, front end and one off projects, while American SWEs are kept on as mid/senior levels who maintain the entire code base and work on more critical back end stuff.

>>56527450
you'll see. only reason it hit biotech harder than tech was biotech had a worse product and as an industry made far less money except 1 or 2 mega companies. the financial prospect of biotech is difficult given they need so much more money upfront for a small shot at approval, tech has no approval process. but trust me as crypto begins to replace tech, and your industry's massive income slows or even halts you'll see exactly what I went through. its literally better in every way just to go work at walmart.

>>56527491

>you'll see

I've been in this industry for 10 years and am just as surrounded by jeets as I was back then. This is an objective take, I have no clue what you're even on here. They literally, physically, cannot hire bottom of the barrel offshore teams, they will destroy their product and company. That will change when India magically improves their educational standards and English proficiency, and they aren't handing a "CS degree" to every moron who walks into the sweatshop and pays a few rupees for a 1 week course.

>>56527214
this is not business & finance

>>56527491
>you'll see.
>... i-i-in two more weeks!!

>>56527524
he thinks they care about their product still lmao your major ceos within the last 10 years have become the jeets such as google and 50 others. we all see them bragging about it nonstop. but stay in denial that jeets won't hire nepotically. even as a user of tech ive seen the massive decline in product and corner cutting, even Google search has gone to shit

>>56527252
Profound mental retardation

>>56527529
Wages are the cost of labor, the most important cost in business. Its nothing but business.

>>56527537
youre still a male sorry sweaty

>>56527545

Their business will not exist without the product. Of course they care about the product you fucking retard. You're basing your "prediction" off of everyone being just as willingly retarded and economically suicidal as you are. Good bet dude!

>>56527568
>as I am
as the biotech companies I've worked for were. yes they hired nepotically. yes they drove themselves into the ground with PC and administrative bloat of HR roasties, etc. and so has your industry we all see the linkedins, we all see who's ceo of tech, etc. dont get defensive bud the point is the only thing that kept tech afloat while biotech other than pfixer and monsanto went to shit is the their profits were still achievable. lets see how long that lasts is all im saying because you for sure have a ton of bloat as an industry

>>56527603

Your entire world is virtualized. Tech has effectively made 50% of prior corporate roles redundant. You simply don't understand the scale of tech in 2023 or how much more it's going to attack paper pusher work.

>>56527557
>youre still a male sorry sweaty

>>56527628
if youre including crypto in tech sure I guess you're basically saying well if I just relearn how to code in a whole new language solidity and switch to web3 and still consider that the same tech industry as today then tech will continue to boom, I agree but also only with the caveats

>>56527431
In the first example you need actual engineers who have a lot of knowledge and skill, thus they are scarce to come by and you need to offer candidates more pay so that they dont go elsewhere..

in the 2nd example you are now using the products of another company to reduce the amount of expertise your engineers need (after initial investment).. you initially hired a team of skilled engineers but then let them all go bar one who now uses the software involved and has the mechanical knowledge to repair the machine.. those same engineers who you were employing now have to find new work except the market is being flooded because of this new software allowing companies to get more done with less expertise and then the laid off engineers have to compete for jobs and get lower salaries as a result.

Companies pay based on getting the fewest and best workers possible to get the job done at the lowest price and best outcome, budget is their constraint. Profits are not shared with workers unless there is an express profit sharing agreement. Wages only rise in relation to competition between companies for employees, if there are more workers available than work to do then salaries go down.

>>56527262
>Mr sheckleberg buys widget maker and doesn't replace headcount despite improvements to productivity
>Mr Noseburg sees this and buys his own widget maker and poaches Mr Sheckleberg widget makers devs and repairman
>Mr Sheckleberg hires H1B workers to replace the poached employees
>Mr Sheckleberg sees his widget factory constantly falling over and breaking despite the sirs doing the sneedful
>he poaches some of his employees back by doubling the already doubled pay and brings some back
>Mr Noseburg replaces his poached employees with h1bs...
Repeat ad infinitum. Neither Sheckleberg nor Noseburg know how kubernetes so they're at the whims of the market.