I dunno, for a group of people who seem to believe you're worth a ridiculous amount of money per hour, think of what your time is worth. You folks that make a living programming off exceedingly decent wages.
You don't break your bodies every day, you're not forced to spend all day moving wood and metal, filling bags full of garbage, hauling shit that weighs 50+ lbs all day every day.
You just gotta sit and think and come up with solutions to problems.
Having done both, I'd fucking far rather receive large amounts of money to sit in front of a computer all day than break myself for $20-$30 an hour.
If there's one thing I have to say about computer programmers and their entitlement.
Suck it up, take a pay cut and take your free time, you're already overpaid for shit that's not going to kill you and now you get the option to sit at home and work for slightly less money, still more than someone who kills themself every day for a pay cheque.
I apologize for my comment. I posted thoughtlessly while in a bad mood after a rough day. I wasn't trying to start a flame war. I really didn't mean to start such a huge thing. I felt fairly ashamed seeing all the responses it generated. It wasn't productive and isn't accurate and doesn't even really reflect my beliefs.
If anyone who was offended by my attitude and comment reads this I apologize. Anyone who works hard for someone else should be valued, whether you work with your mind or body.
Ah yes, The trades are underpaid and undervalued and as such everyone else that gets paid more is entitled and not deserving of a living wage and should just "suck it up". This sort of thinking just drags everyone down, and improves nothing for anyone. It's how we got to where we are, instead of "the good ol' days" where a single income near a minimum wage exceeded the skilled trades wages relative purchasing power of today.
How about instead of complaining about the color of the grass in others yards, we advocate for a living for all, and dare I suggest it, a thriving wage for the skilled, risky, or difficult jobs; irregarddles of whether they're performed at a desk or with a sweat. Alternatively/additionally, we should address the corruption and cost overruns present in many industries today (looking at you health insurance racket) that also reduce the relative purchasing power of any given wage.
I’ve done both, too. Both the treatment and the pay is better in office jobs. When I worked labor, though, I could think about whatever I wanted to during the day. White collar employers own our thoughts for 8 hours a day and often beyond. The wages are exceedingly decent, but that doesn’t preclude us from demanding more from our employers, who are making even more than that off our thoughts and creative output.
I’m not making any particular argument here, just adding color to your fair points. My dad worked labor his whole working life until it broke his body at about 50 (now on disability). Now I’m working in part to send him money every month, but also building toward my own early semi-retirement. I’m happy I got into programming, but I’ll be happier to have my thoughts back.
I would say over and underpaid both do exist in scenarios where one party has undue/extortive power over the other. They don't exist in a well-functioning labor market.
On the employers side it could be something like monopsony where the employee can only chose to work at any wage or starve because no other jobs are available.
On the employees side it could be something like a politicians relatives getting high paying job because otherwise the politician will cause problems for the company.
Edit: I don't know if I misread your comment or you edited it, but it I think these coercions are covered by it.
I agree, but none of that is even close to happening here… the market is mostly free and fairly efficient.
If anything, price information is not 100% transparent and that tends to benefit employers, but that exerts downward pressure on the wage rather than the opposite.
I think the average coder in the USA only has about as much purchasing power as a regular old skilled tradesman did 60 years ago.. My grandfather was a dockworker, and with his dockworker pay he could comfortably afford a full-time stay-at-home wife, 4 kids, a heavy drinking habit, AND a mistress
I won't debate the fairness/difficulty point but instead focus on the premise that you don't break your bodies while working as a programmer.
That's exactly what you're doing while sitting.
i.e. https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/ex...
Yes, there are workarounds on how to mitigate some effects but in general, the human body was designed (by environment for millions of years) to move all day long, often with a weight.
"On his first day in Japan, Cook met with the 84-year-old Masako Wakamiya, the world's oldest app developer who released her first iPhone app in 2017, and 13-year-old Jun Takano, who's believed to be the youngest in her profession."
You cannot equate being a tradesman to a software engineer:
Being a software engineer requires highly intense focus for hours on end, unpacking and repacking equations in different languages, which you must continuously teach yourself while using them to build things.
Also, here's no reason you cannot become one.
Unless of course, you're not willing to do what it takes. And guess what amigo: It takes time, effort, and the ability to simply sit and focus at a desk for 4-8 hours per day and teach yourself several related languages, and client (browser) & server (such as 100% free, open source, Linux) configuration methodologies.
Can you do that?
So don't blame anyone but yourself for your choice not to go to google right now and search for "Roadmap to becoming Full Stack Web App Developer" or "Roadmap to becoming a Mobile App Developer".
The company i work for makes absurd profits and has hundreds of millions of dollars of just cash on hand, even after reinvestment. I helped create that value (and frankly a large amount of it actually). Why shouldn't i get compensated accordingly? I also think the laborer should be paid better, btw
Also done both, and agree that being a software dev is considerably easier, more pleasant and better paid than the kind of factory / admin work I did in my 20s.
I suppose whether I'm worth the money and whether I deserve the money are separate questions. Hopefully the answer to the former is yes, but I don't think I'm any more deserving of money than I was in my 20s, when I got paid a small fraction of what I make now.
In my experience, this is mostly the attitude of people who criticizes a world they're not part of. Not being aggressive about self-benefit only hurts you and helps everybody else. The fact that somebody gets paid 1/100 what I do for 100x the effort I exert isn't my problem, my problem is whether I can get an even better cost/benefit ratio than I have today
People sometimes complain about how much elite sport athletes make and I usually answer that it's great and a model to follow because workers capture a good part of the value of their work. We should not regulate to make their salaries go down (apart from taxing appropriately).
You don't break your bodies every day, you're not forced to spend all day moving wood and metal, filling bags full of garbage, hauling shit that weighs 50+ lbs all day every day.
You just gotta sit and think and come up with solutions to problems.
Having done both, I'd fucking far rather receive large amounts of money to sit in front of a computer all day than break myself for $20-$30 an hour.
If there's one thing I have to say about computer programmers and their entitlement.
Suck it up, take a pay cut and take your free time, you're already overpaid for shit that's not going to kill you and now you get the option to sit at home and work for slightly less money, still more than someone who kills themself every day for a pay cheque.