The most insulting things companies do is offer 'vanity' perks while slashing real perks. My last gig had fancy parties, free dinner (no lunch interestingly), got itself ranked as a "best place to work" etc. It could market its employees as entitled, spoiled developers for sure.<p>However, there was no 401k matching. No tuition reimbursement. There were multiple weeks of uncompensated 24/7 on-call rotations throughout the year, many for stressful legacy applications the company refused to invest resources to actually maintain for real. Basically, if you couldn't market the perk to 20-somethings, they slashed it.<p>Meanwhile I'm told that my very existence screws over the poor working class police officers and firefighters, who make 80% of what I make but have job security and lifetime pensions awaiting for them. And they get paid for overtime.<p>While I absolutely feel like I'm privileged in many ways to work in tech, the industry has many incentives to make tech workers look more 'spoiled' than they are, and so they work their PR engines to do exactly that.<p>I am also sick of hearing these 'rumors of one engineer at Google' making millions being cited as if it was a BLS salary report or something.
The biggest card this article palms is by starting out talking about tech companies, and then switching into a survey that's not primarily about tech companies: "A survey last year of 5,000 such workers at both tech and non-tech firms... found that many of them feel alienated, trapped, underappreciated and otherwise discombobulated."<p>Because, sure, if you're the person who does Crystal Reports at Bob's House of Widgets, or the VB person at Gary's Lawncare, or even (to some extent) one of the J2EE horde at MegaBankCorp, you're in a place where you're not core to the business, you're viewed as a cost center, you have a limited career path, and the main people at the company probably have you lumped in with HR and Accounting.<p>But I really, really, really doubt you're going to find that same sense of alienation, underappreciation, etc. at a tech company.
Wow. I'm a little surprised to read such a dim view of the lot of a software developer in the economist. I'm glad to see it in a mainstream publication, though.<p>I don't think that software development is necessarily a bad career, but I do think it has been vastly oversold relative to other paths available to well educated, hardworking people who can choose their own career path in the US. And I think that this overselling is a big part of a PR campaign to convince congress and the public that there is a shortage of software developers.<p>IN short, while this article presents an unusually pessimistic image of software development as a career, and I may not fully agree with it, I do welcome this rebalancing.
The crazy thing is job satisfaction. People do things they dislike because you pay them more. I've been a carpenter and a heavy machinery opperator before my current job in tech. Come March, I'm going to look out the window at the first sunny day and wish I was crushing a house. But in April 15, I'm going to smile as I realize how much money I save this year and look at my investments yoy.<p>I mean, I don't feel as apriciated or have as much fun, but I put money in the bank, I'll have healthcare for my family, retirement for my self and better job security.<p>Everyone is feeling pressure from inflation and stagnating wages, but let's not pretend an SDE with a six figure income is some how part of the working class now. The working class was relieved of health care and security a decade or more ago.
I don't believe the Instagram billion was about acquiring 13 software engineers. It was about controlling an application that was a huge (and growing) competitor for attention on mobile, was it's own social network, and was better (or at least, more flexible and fun) than Facebook at one of Facebook's core functionalities: sharing photos.
Fabulously paid? Yeah right. Salaries are decent compared to the average working stiff. You still top out early in your career with little chance for significant increase.<p>In regards to the perks, having access to all of them mentioned is the exception rather than the rule.<p>It is a sad indictment of work culture that the freedom to make your own hours or rest when tired is seen as an extravagant benefit.
I'm sorry, but software engineering was never glamorous. When I went into college, over a decade ago now, the first year courses were always the most packed, largely filled with hopeful souls. Then by year 2 and 3 they dropped back to only the most dedicated fans. That's right, I said the word fans. I graduated with 20 other computer science majors, out of what was probably thousands at the beginning.<p>I wouldn't want to be doing anything else in my career and the tech press and media did little to influence or change it.<p>Netscape, then Google, then Digg, on to Facebook and Twitter, these were all early companies that got the press raving about how cool, how easy, how glamorous it was to work in startups and in tech. Yet at the end of the day, it's still solving mundane and sometimes really hard problems with you butt glued to the seat and writing a lot of code in a text editor.<p>I should also add that the biggest reward for me every day is solving a problem and finally getting that ah hah moment. It's not the foosball table or free lunch.
A key paragraph in the article kindly submitted here is this paragraph about promised shares of stock in a company: "Moreover, tech startups typically attract talent by offering shares. Employees work like dogs in return for supposedly making a fortune when the firm goes public. However, such firms often use multiple classes of shares that preserve the biggest gains for insiders, leaving the employees with common stock that can easily lose value. In particular, startups have taken to offering later-stage investors guarantees that they will get their money back, if either a subsequent funding round or an eventual initial public offering (IPO) values their shares at a lower price than they are paying. When firms have to pay out on such guarantees, they generally do so by issuing extra shares, which dilute other common shareholders such as their staff." That's what makes the venture-capital-funded tech industry different: it looks like it offers opportunities to make serious money through appreciation of shares in the company, but all too often that doesn't work out.<p>It was interesting to see, in another part of the article, the suggestion that knowing what a company's goals are in relation to one's work can make one's work more satisfying. That makes sense.
Why haven't salaries at tech companies gone up much despite huge increases in demand, profits, and housing costs?<p>Most programmers make about what they've always made, maybe less (adjusted for inflation). $120k/yr in 2001 is $160k/yr in 2015.
Have we arrived at the conclusion that the people who convinced the middle class that unions are evil did not have our best interests in mind yet, or are we gonna keep shooting ourselves in the foot?<p>Keep shooting ourselves in the foot it is then. K. Carry on.
> <i>However, a career as a software developer or engineer comes with no guarantee of job satisfaction.</i><p>No career comes with a guarantee of job satisfaction, and very few come with much security. Less so in the tech industry, because tech itself is evolving quickly.<p>I'm a little disappointed that this reporter feels such a statement is newsworthy. To read this article, I would almost believe that its author doesn't believe in meritocracy or neo-liberalism, which is kind of bad faith, coming from The Economist.
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