Do I have a right not to have competition from other people in my industry underbidding me? My employer's rights are not the issue, it's whether I have a right to restrain others from entering the market through means like trying to oppose training and educational opportunities.
Are we're talking about a minimum wage for SWEs now? I mean what, specifically, are you suggesting? Employers can't hire people who bid lower?
Salary in the tech industry is a function of demand. Right now, for example, people with expertise in Machine Learning are in high demand. You can graduate with an MS or Phd in machine learning, form a startup with no product whatsoever, and get acqui-hired just because of the insane bidding war going on right now.
When I moved to SV in the 90s, at the height of the dot-com boom, kids fresh out of college were getting insane signing bonuses worth $10k or more. I knew people who would switch jobs every few months, just to collect freebies.
Perhaps it is different elsewhere, but here, tech workers are very highly privileged. Seeing people complain about a desk job that pays $100k+, weeks vacation, great healthcare and benefits, flexible working hours, compared to the utter suffering that's happening in the working class across this country just looks tone deaf to me.
Before we worry about the poor suffering tech workers, in their gentrified neighborhoods, in swanky cafes, facing stagnating nominal wages, how bout we consider the masses of people who missed out on the tech-utopia for the upper 10%, people who would like to move up the value chain, and have a right to compete for your job.
My mother worked as a cashier at Safeway before she died. Comparing my hourly wage as a SWE to hers is kind of obscene, and for the people I grew up with, seeing tech-bros complain about their current threatened position has got to look like people completely ignorant of how much privilege they have.
