This is long overdue. It is well past time for tech workers to organize and demand a larger share of the billions in wealth we’ve generated for the VCs and CEOs.
> demand a larger share of the billions in wealth we’ve generated for the VCs and CEOs
Yeah, well, thoughts like that only come from a context in which there is zero understanding of the realities of business and what it takes to profitably run one. I always find this interesting. Not sure if people just say this kind of thing to just be one of the bro's or because they really believe it. I hope it isn't the latter.
A while back one of my kids had a college-level business class in high school. Their final project was to put together a full presentation, financials and a pitch to get a loan for a mid size bakery ($5MM/year gross revenue).
He was absolutely astounded to learn just how difficult it was to make money in that business. When his team started on the project they pretty much assumed that with $5MM/yr the owner was just raking it in. It was nothing less than hilarious when he came into my office one day to tell me he could not believe what it took to be in business and make money. He had a revelation few people have. He had it at 15 years of age. Most adults don't have a clue about this their entire lives.
VC's? They risk millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions. And, guess what? Most of their bets might lose money or barely make any. People only see success, they never stop to consider and internalize what it took to get there.
CEO's? Try running a non-trivial company and see how it goes. Heck, even a medium company can put you in the hospital! My prior startup did that to me twice in ten years.
Our country would derive great benefit from delivering real financial education before we launch young adults into the world. Ignorance has consequences. Generational consequences.
VCs aren't risking their own money. But yes, on the whole active investors must make less than passive ones if fees are included.
CEOs are hardly the only ones with health issues from their jobs. Hell Amazon specifically is so insanely bad about this that Bernie has basically been taking just about them in regards to an exploitive employer that leaves people disabled.
Maybe we shouldn't be normalizing unsustainable work that creates health problems for people, whether at the CEO or the regular worker level.
First, that isn't universally true. Also, the term "VC" is often used to mean "investors". I think I can say that the history of most businesses does not start with VC's that manage hundreds of millions of dollars not belonging to them.
Business is hard, very hard. There are very few dorm-to-unicorn stories like Facebook. Even then, the Facebook story isn't about pink unicorns and lollypops for everyone from day one.
That's the major fallacy in these ideologies that vilify business. They don't come from a framework that really understands what is entailed in running and funding a non-trivial organization and making it successful in a globally competitive market.
> Maybe we shouldn't be normalizing unsustainable work that creates health problems for people, whether at the CEO or the regular worker level.
Suggestion: Go work at a farm for a summer.
I don't know of any competitive job of any kind that does not bring with it stress. Let's be careful not to manufacture fantasies. It's the "grass is greener on the other side of the fence" idea. I know someone who is theoretically worth nearly $800MM who has problems the average office worker would not want to ever have to face on a daily basis. The grass isn't always greener. It seldom is.
To add to that from a personal anecdote. I started a business back in 2000. It was a hardware/software business. I was locked in my garage 18 hours a day, 7 days a week for 18 months before I could ship our first product. Six month after shipping, and with some sales in the bank, I decided to get a new car. My old car had 200K miles and I could not even consider upgrading it before.
I was talking to a neighbor a couple of weeks after that.
He said something like "Wow! You must have hit the jackpot. Did you get a new job?". You see, from the outside, nobody sees the 18 hour days, 7 days a week, 18 month effort, struggle, pain, suffering, sleepless nights, crying, self-doubt, family problems, financial risk, etc. All they see is Martin driving a new car he did not have for the last five years. That's all they process. They have no clue, at all, none, of what it took to get there --and to stay there.
as for working on a farm, I'd actually say that's making my point. we should be trying to automate this work away so that folks don't have to grind it out like it's the 1200s. probably not too stressful tho
> 18 hours a day is likely a pretty big exaggeration
Nope, not at all. Some days it was 20 (rarely). When you have to do the job of 5 engineers the only path is to be extremely well organized, driven and be willing to put in the time.
> I'd actually say that's making my point
> probably not too stressful tho
I guess I didn't make it clear enough. I used farm work as one of the simplest and oldest types of work in history. It is hard work. I would not dare say it isn't stressful.
My greater point is that what you are asking for simply does not exist. You are not going to be able to remove stress from work, no matter where people are working, at the field, a factory, warehouse or the office.
A couple of decades ago I got what I thought was my "dream job". I was miserable for six months, when I left. I could not wait to find something else. I thought my prior work was stressful and the new job would be wonderful. It sure taught me a different perspective on my assumptions.
Martin, I really enjoy your posts & feel compelled to respond. I think the pushback is primarily on process, not results. Like, you do these 18 hour stints & get the millions & then land up, like you say, in the hospital. Or you could, you know, not put in 18 hours & not have millions & stay out of the hospital. There is that option too. In the midwest where I live, me & my neighbors aren't exactly phoning it in. We log into slack promptly at 9:30 and pick up the assigned jira tickets & git checkin & review the PRs & so forth. But come 5:30 its time for the family. Play outside with the kids, then an hour of TV, then some dinner & off to bed. It works. I don't see the need to complicate life in the fashion you advocate. To what end ? I'd rather spend more time with my wife & kids than hack on pytorch. I think what you are seeing in the millennials is the same sort of dialing back on ambition, not some passionate embrace of marxism. People are just tired. Cut them some slack.
> I think what you are seeing in the millennials is the same sort of dialing back on ambition, not some passionate embrace of marxism. People are just tired. Cut them some slack.
I felt I had to reply to this separately. First of all, I appreciate the pushback and criticism of my approach. No problem at all. I prefer to engage in conversation with people who can teach me something or check my position. That's the only way to learn. All too often, online, people prefer to immediately move to tossing fecal matter instead of attempting to understand.
Here's the way I look at it. Keep in mind that this isn't necessarily complete.
China. I don't hate them. I hate some of the things they do. Yet, am in awe of the fact that they have worked hard for the last 50 years or so --one foot in front of the other-- to elevate their people and nation from an agrarian society to the world's second largest economy, a technological leader and the factory for the world.
They work hard. Very hard. I have done business in China. The entrepreneurial culture and desire to get work done is beyond description.
I'll give you a simple example. Last year, just before Chinese new year, I needed to have some custom aluminum extrusions made for a mid-size project. I contacted nearly 90 aluminum extruders across the US. Out of those, only about ten responded. From there only half sent a quote. All quotes were insane. The quotes took WEEKS to get.
Every single one of them put me through an interrogation process trying to understand if we were worth their while. Anyone in manufacturing knows exactly what I am talking about. The first question you get is something like "How many are going to make per year?". On top of that, people were quoting 35 to 50+ week lead times and some even asked that I change the design because they didn't have a machine that could handle it.
Enter China. I sent for quotes from about half a dozen companies. I had quotes from more companies than I contacted the very next day and a few more a couple of days later. When they didn't have a machine to handle our requirements, they simply referred the project to a competitor as a courtesy.
After a couple of emails back and forth, I wanted a factory tour before making a decision. This young lady and her coworkers gave me a full factory tour over zoom the day Chinese new year started. The place was empty. Imagine five buildings the size of a typical Home Depot. They insisted on showing me everything.
That day, I gave them the job. It wasn't a large contract. No promises of future work at all. Nobody asked me how many more or how many per year we would make. Nope. They just wanted to get the job done. And they did a great job, on time and on budget.
Getting back to the subject of millennials dialing back ambition, or not wanting to work hard. Well, that's OK. Sure. Yet, they have to understand the world isn't going to wait for them while they take a vacation. Like it or not, business is war. And to win that war people are going to have to go up against those who are willing to work smarter and harder than others.
And so, I see what our universities and educational system is doing, elevating Marxism and all the surrounding horseshit (and it is 100% horseshit proven to destroy societies) and it pains me greatly. You cannot build a future on that crap. You just cannot. We have somehow produced millions of people who really don't have a straight view of history and an even worse view of what is going on past their little world, much less thousands of miles away. They need to toughen-up and put some weight on their shoulders or the consequences will be dire.
One could very well argue we are past a point of no return. I don't know. What I do know is that this is not a formula for success. Our politicians are fighting wars for power by dividing people on a scale between dumb and dumber. They don't care, they are all isolated from reality. That's the case for the political species anywhere in the world. We should have transformed this society into one of the most rabid entrepreneurial environments in the world. Instead, we are focusing on which bathroom we should go to, how many millions of unemployed people to let walk through the border, when it is OK to kill a baby and how brilliant Karl Marx must have been --given that he built such prosperity for so many.
This is a "hold my beer" moment where serious work needs to be done. Either people toughen-up or they will after the pain and suffering that is sure to come.
Final thought. AI.
Yeah, well. Need I go there? Millennials will have to content with what's coming on that front one way or the other. Once again, reality has a nasty way to cut through the crap very quickly. What is interesting is that it is actually millennials who are going to be inflicting AI onto less-prepared millennials. That will be something to watch.
Oddly enough, the 18 hour days didn't send me to the hospital. I did have weird thoughts during that time, like "This is like being in prison".
I did what I had to do. Part of it is about ethics and responsibility. In this case, to my family.
My wife had just graduated as a doctor. We had enough money to set-up her practice free and clear and enough backup left over for her to take 6 to 10 months to get up to speed.
I also had this idea to start a technology company. This would burn through the cash we had --all of it-- and likely require more.
So, one nice Sunday morning, over coffee, we had a relaxed discussion about the options ahead. A third option was to buy a bunch of homes (this was over twenty years ago), rent them out and make money on appreciation, etc.
Well, my wife said she wanted to go work for various clinics and get experience before setting up her own practice (twenty years later, she is happy where she landed). She also thought I would not be happy being a landlord. I'm just not built that way. I have a drive to create and learn, not fix plumbing. She was right. So, she said, just go ahead and do the startup.
I stressed that a hardware startup would absolutely burn through 100% of our savings an likely require more. To her credit, she has always trusted me and my hairbrained ideas. So, off we went head-first into that adventure.
That was a "Failure is not an option" scenario. I could not fail her and my kids. We didn't have enough money to hire mechanical and software guys to take some of the load. So, I had to be everything. Electronics, embedded, FPGA, firmware, layout, mechanical, manufacturing, desktop software and more. Hence the 18 hour days.
That is not a way to live. I have only done that once in my life. Probably never again. Yet --and this is also something a lot of people do not understand-- the motivation was NEVER money or getting rich. Not even close. I can't remember ever thinking about that. Sure, I wanted to make money. It would be dumb not to. Yet, money can't motivate someone to work like that. No, there has to be passion to achieve something difficult and a sense of responsibility to others. That could be investors or your own family. In my case it was the latter.
I did what I had to do in order to ensure success.
The hospital visits came much later. Around 2008, when the economy collapsed, and the business I worked so hard to build to a nice company of twenty employees collapsed right in front of my eyes because the music stopped and there were no chairs to sit on. We had millions of dollars in orders cancelled. We had an acquisition offer in the multiple tens of millions of dollars on the table (from a company most would recognize) for technology I developed. And all of it, 100% came to a grinding halt when the economy took a shit. That's what put me in the hospital the first time. Just stress and dehydration after I decided to take a brake and go rowing.
That was a very dark period. The only think that kept me together was coming home to my kids and wife. I could have panic attacks driving back home and they would evaporate instantly when I opened the door.
Black swan event? Yeah, I'd say so. I guess. Don't know.
Two years later I ended-up in the hospital again after exhibiting at our last tradeshow before I had to shutdown the company. The hope of closing a nice deal at the show (one that would keep us alive) evaporated. I went to dinner with a friend. At the end of that I didn't feel good at all. I asked him to just drive me to the hospital. Again, it was just stress and dehydration.
As all of that unfolded, again, due to a sense of responsibility and not wanting to give-up, we took out a substantial second mortgage on our home to be able to pay our employees (people were losing their jobs right and left back then) and have a shot at keeping the company going. We had to live with that decision for years to come. These are some of the reasons for which, when I read some of the comments people post about business, I just don't react well. They are ignorant comments that come from a complete lack of understanding. Business and entrepreneurship are hard. Few can understand this without a front row seat and a thousand pounds of responsibility on their shoulders.
As tragic as that was, after taking a year to get my head back on straight I wrote a few educational apps for kids for iOS and dabbled in some consulting. Oddly enough, some of the technology I had developed for that business landed me a really nice contract in aerospace. I launched a product development/technology consulting business from there. A few years later, just before the pandemic, I decided to launch yet another startup to help develop innovative technologies for indoor farming.
I guess I just can't help myself. That said, yes, the perspective is very different. And yes, I am and have always been a family guy. Always first. No matter how busy I might be. In fact, they tell me they learn more from me than from school (well, it's California...you know).
I am still doing difficult work, both for my own efforts and consulting clients, which is what drives me, yet, there are self-imposed limits borne from experience. The 18 hour days are not even remotely part of my reality. That said, I know I have the mental toughness to be able to endure such a thing, should it ever be necessary for whatever reason.
I've always suspected that the primary education system purposefully avoids financial education because of fears that too many people attempting to join the ownership class would cause civil unrest.
I don't know what the motivation might be. What I do know, with absolute certainty, is that having a population that is ignorant about money, business and entrepreneurship isn't good for the nation.
If I had to extrapolate a motivating factor, it would go something like this:
For some unimaginable reason, US educators are in love with Marxism and Socialism. Unimaginable because anyone who has ever lived in those realities could not run from that shit fast enough to get elsewhere. A population knowledgeable about money, business and entrepreneurship would quickly reject these failed and broken ideologies (a historical fact).
As a strategy, it isn't a good idea to teach something that could lead people rejecting indoctrination efforts in a different direction.
On the right there's the effort to teach creationism and downplay evolution by natural selection. Same concept. Except, in that case, as far as I know, they are not being allowed to do that at our schools. This is the right way to handle such things.
Want to teach Creationism or Marxism. No problem, knowledge is good. Do not turn it into indoctrination. Students must be well versed in everything they need to know in order to understand these historical ideas that hold absolutely no water today. Teaching history is important. Pretending failed ideas are real viable ideas today is indoctrination.
Imagine if 90% of our schools jumped on the flat earth ideology and pushed it hard from K-12 and college and avoided teaching what we know to be true because it would reveal their ideology for what it is. Well, that's the situation I believe we have with respect to graduating financially savvy adults who understand business and entrepreneurship right out of the gate and can help elevate society to great new levels because of it. Instead, we are graduating business haters who will never build anything and will certainly not elevate any segment of society. The only way Marxists can have an audience is if they keep everyone poor, miserable and ignorant. A successful, accomplished and educated society isn't a good target market for shit ideas.
Can people on this site please stop acting like everyone in tech (or “everyone in tech who matters”) is working for FAANG and getting a FAANG salary? Believe it or not there exist software developers who make less than $100k.
Which are the companies that have generated billions for VCs that don't pay higher end salaries? I agree many startups pay less, but I wouldn't say those have 'made it'.
No it’s not. That salary is relatively high for the US but that is only because every other industry has been eviscerated for decades. Every other industry told themselves “it’s fine, I’m being paid well so I won’t worry about it” and then their job got shipped to Shenzhen.
EVERY time someone talks about ANYTHING related to benefits, someone tries to use the salary as a counterargument, as if a $250k salary means you are supposed to give up your whole life and NEVER ever complain about anything. Seriously?
Better to think in terms of percentages. Wages vs GDP has decreased while profits vs GDP has increased. Maybe tech is an outlier compared to the broader economy. Would be interesting to see the numbers.
It would be lovely if some of the folks downvoting this could explain precisely why it is that I should accept my FAANG salary as "enough" while tech billionaires apparently shouldn't, rather than just trying to make this post disappear. It's a perfectly reasonable question -- the ownership class has never considered (and will never consider) any amount of money to be "enough," so why on earth should any of the rest of us?
It is not a reasonable question. Employee wages and founder equity are not comparable things.
What if Bezos said "y'know what, I'd good with AMZN at $10MM market cap, I'm all set"? There'd be no jobs at Amazon. And no one to complain about the jobs at Amazon.
I would venture to guess that none of your Axis of Excess is particularly motivated by money. They do what they do because they enjoy the game. The game of global corporate titan. Money is an abstract metric that lets them keep playing.
If US tech workers could be replaced for a tenth of the compensation they would’ve been. Maybe that will change in the future but until then the fact that there is some scarcity means unionization is possible.
With return to office it's nowhere near enough on the west coast. Unless you hold a top position at a large corporation on the west coast you don't even have enough money to buy a house. Considering you're helping generate billions in revenue yeah, I'd say you should be being paid more.
This isn’t true at all and paints a dangerously dystopian view of things. You could easily buy a home in Seattle or the neighboring area after 5 years of senior level employment at most publicly traded companies. It’s not going to be an amazing home and there certainly will be some sticker shock when comparing that price tag to most other cities, but it’s totally feasible. The idea that you need to have a “top position” is ludicrous
5 years at senior level means 8 plus years in industry and you actually have to be promoted to seniority and it has to be at a company that actually pays well. It is far beyond reasonable considering the value that developers provide.
If all Amazon engineers made a salary in their first year which enabled them to afford a Seattle home purchase, then home prices would rise even higher... Until you need to work for 8 years to afford one again.
Apologies, this wasn't a jab directly at what you wrote. More of a general observation that there is a false understanding somewhere in this industry, that somebody who worked 3 years, realistically qualifies as a "Senior" Dev.
You're honestly out of touch with the software market. I earn around $110k a year after seven years of working and I'm nowhere near being able to afford a house. The fact that you think everyone is a FAANG engineer is part of the problem; the majority of us are not earning those top end salaries and the fact that you think we can buy a home after 5 years in Seattle is a massive joke.
I think houses are for the duel FAANG income, no kids crowd. Even on a senior FAANG salary, there's no knob I can turn on the calculator that ends up making sense for me to buy at these interest rates (in a part of town that doesn't leave me with a >1hr commute).
I remain a renter. Dump it all into stocks and hope for the best!
That's basically me; I keep a decent chunk in savings in case of emergency / downturn and then the rest in stocks / retirement etc. I hate having to invest in the stock market because most of it is gambling and speculation, but at least I can dump it in an index fund and it'll be fairly safe.
There's a reason why a significant number of millennials and below are cheering on for a housing bust and it's because it's possibly the only way we can afford a home.
My parents just sold their fairly nice large house for something like $170k. Of course it's not in a cool city. Living in a high cost of living area with expensive houses is voluntary consumption. If that's what you voluntarily want to spend your money on then fine, but you get just as much sympathy as the people complaining about how expensive brand new BMWs are.
How exactly is it voluntary between the high CoL cities having the major career opportunities and companies continuing to force people back in office? It's funny that you would even say like that in a thread where people are protesting having to return to the office for that reason.
I lived in Texas for four years. A house in the ass end of nowhere costs $150k-200k. It also comes with a two hour commute to get to my then-office, has literally nothing nearby and I would've been on my own during the next major freeze event.
I know probably a dozen devs that I regularly talk to from school and the only ones with their own homes have been seniors or higher positions for half a decade or longer.
I've been in the Seattle area since graduating and hung out with people in both the tech industry and in aerospace (Boeing, etc.). Everyone who wanted a house had one within 5 years of starting work. They were smaller, older houses in trendy neighborhoods or nicer houses in further out suburbs, depending on the person's preferences. Seemed a reasonable result for young adults in their late 20s.
I bought a million dollar home in Seattle after less than 5 years of employment out of college at a publicly traded non-FAANG company in the area. It’s doable, you just need to compromise on location or luxury
A million dollar home only requires around 200-250k of income which isn’t that much for these areas. And if your partner is employed as well it’s even easier.
I even know people that make sub 100k in the Bay Area that bought their own homes after 10-15 years of saving.
The time to negotiate your salary is during the hiring process. Employees are not owed anything above the agreed upon amount, no matter how successful the company is.
In a right to work state, every single day is an implicit negotiation with your employer. The only reason you go to work that day is because you’re satisfied with your compensation.
The world would be a better place if employees were owed something above their agreed upon compensation when their company has extraordinary success, so I choose to believe that they are.
RSUs, stock options - those provide incentive that scales with the company’s success. Just because you’re at Company X that makes billions of dollars and makes one more billion next year does not automatically entitle you to part of that 1b as it’s likely due to work done by employees before you.
Turning it around - would you also take a paycut, or even clawing back bonuses or past income if the company starts losing money?
