this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2024
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Not anymore. Middling pay, constant threat of fire, constant degradation, most perks went away a loooong time ago, zero work/life balance. You can get that same bullshit working for Company X.
Middling pay? At FAANG-tier companies?
These are some extraordinary claims in need of some extraordinary proof.
Not a claim, just a fact. Everyone walking around thinking we're making an easy $300k, and taking vacations all the time, and have the best of everything. Absolutely nothing resembling that type of compensation exists anymore. Easy to Google, but just read this headline from today:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1784450545509658867.html
Well according to Glassdoor the median total salary for a software engineer at google is 249k.
Eh. I work in tech. I have friends who work or worked at almost every big tech company you'd recognize. These are still jobs, dealing with layoffs, annoying bosses, etc. has always been a fact of life. But from what I can see the average techie still has it very good compared to most other jobs. My friend who is a nurse would certainly like to earn a tech salary, not have to deal with hospital politics, and not work night shifts all the damn time, and take time off whenever they want to not whenever there's availability...
I work these same companies. It's not about bad bosses, it's the C-Level people in your news feed degrading their entire workforce via the press. It's hearing your job is going to be "phased out" if you don't start reporting to an office hours away after being hired for remote work. It's having your pay slashed and being told to "deal with it, or find a new job" via email on Monday, then hearing about it all over the news on Tuesday to really hammer it home that you have to fear for your job, and they'll absolutely replace your ass if you say anything about it.
This was all done by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft in the past year at various different times as if it work from a guidebook on demoralizing your workforce.
Probably not a guidebook, but I wouldn't be surprised if the hired consultants specializing in exactly that.
Consultant on jailhouse rules?
Yeah. Tech has gotten worse. But you really think it's better in any other sector? I'm sure there are a few highly-compensated lap-dance-inspectors out there but the vast majority of workers deal with the same shit techies are dealing with, for significantly less pay and respect, if you can believe that.
Lol shouda unionized
The biggest obstacle to unionizing in tech, none of the unions know how to represent technology work. I have been in a couple unions as a tech worker, but those unions were historically representing different classes of workers.
I think that Hollywood provides an example: cast, crew, writers, and directors are all unionized, and there are so many different types of jobs at such different rates of pay within those unions.
That's a good example if you're in California
That’ll happen.
I mean just represent programming for starters and go from there? It's the stuff that's most engineering like, or do I misunderstand the issue?
The senior staff at most unions are people who have thought about physical labor and the skilled workers who do production work. Programming as a profession is still relatively new career path.
My first union tech job was in the medical industry and we had to jump in with the nurses to find representation. It was good enough but our jobs were dramatically different. And our pay and benefits were much better than the nursing staff. The union had a hard time being able to deal with both of our different problems.
So it sounds like we just need to start a union from the ground up built for tech workers?