The entitlement culture in the tech industry is mind boggling. One day we may look back and wonder how we ever had it so good. Perhaps we'll even envy the person paid $1 per day to suck the gold off our old circuit boards.
Entitlement is when you're a welfare recipient smoking dope and watching TV all day and demanding everybody else cover your existence.
Demanding market rates is a rational response to a job offer, and I do not understand why otherwise rational engineers romanticize working for less than they are worth simply because "engineers make a lot of money."
How is this entitlement? He's rationally comparing total compensation packages and choosing the one that benefits him the best. This is something that even high schoolers working crappy unskilled jobs do. They look at the market and pick the job they feels the best suited for them.
Yes, this particular individual gets well compensated compared to many. So what?
It's his tone which comes off as entitled to me. Very, very entitled. He sounds like one cocky dude to me.
Let's all take a moment to reflect on a few things. For instance, we are pretty lucky to be passionate about something which just happens to be pretty good at producing a lot of monetary value for companies, and consequently it's not too hard for us to convince companies to pay us a lot and give us great benefits.
My dad works harder than me, is over twice my age, and gets paid less than me. I'd have to be extraordinarily entitled to say that I somehow deserve more than he gets. And yet somehow I do get more. Such is the world.
I think the fact that you knew you had to put entitled in quotes in your post shows that you're not really talking about the same thing as me. I agree with you, of course, that people should be paid the market rate for what they do or bring to the table.
This is one of those cases where a word has multiple definitions. And, as it happens, for one of the definitions of "entitled," the one I'm interested in, well, "deserve's got everythin' to do with it." From Merriam-Webster: "belief that one is deserving of certain privileges."
The market is what the market is. While it may not be "socially equitable", senior developers are currently the perfect combination of high-demand and low-supply.
It is not "entitled" to demand to be paid the maximum value the market will bear for your skills. It is stupid to do otherwise.
You basically (literally) said exactly that. "Entitlement" is not a personality trait, "acting entitled" is, and even then it's only a negative if you aren't entitled to whatever you're "acting entitled" about.
"Entitlement" is literally nothing more than having the "right to something." And as a human, you are absolutely entitled to being paid exactly what you are worth.
> you are absolutely entitled to being paid exactly what you are worth.
Sure, whatever. But what you're not entitled to is being worth something in the first place.
If you can't recognize your own fortune in enjoying and being passionate about something which, as a side effect, makes you valuable to companies, I don't really see this discussion going anywhere from here.
To me, being underpaid relative to my peers in what I do indicates in the most rawest, most basic, most blunt terms that I am valued less than they are.
Well then. If a company values me less than another company, I think I feel quite entitled to go to the company that values me more.
All my finance friends make about 10x what my engineer friends make and work equally hard. If you compare engineers to lawyers, doctors, and executives we are very much underpaid.
I don't see the point. There's always going to be someone making far, far more money than you make. It doesn't matter if you're an engineer, a lawyer, a doctor, an executive, or the president of a country.
That doesn't mean that you should feel so inherently entitled to the compensation that you do get. While some executive may be making 10x your salary, you're probably making 10x the salary of someone else who works just as hard as you do.
Your income is not determine by how hard you work. It's determined by how much value you create and how strong your negotiating position is for capturing that value.
Unfair may not be the right word. I just think I'm fortunate to enjoy something which, as a side effect, makes me valuable to companies.
If I were to say there is unfairness in the matter, it would be because not all activities are valued the same. There are obvious reasons for that which I don't contest, but the distribution of interests across different people is more or less random and pays no attention to whether those interests will lead to high-value skills or not.
I view myself as lucky to have an innate interest in something which makes me financially valuable to at least some companies. Some of my friends or family members don't have interests which tend to lead to high-value skills. As a result, for them to get a similarly paying job, they'd have to choose a career in something they don't enjoy.
I don't believe anyone is acting overly entitled for wanting to get the best compensation they can convince a company to pay them. Maybe I misread the original article, but I got the sense from the author's tone that he feels entitled to much more than simply being paid his worth, though. He just doesn't appear to be even remotely grateful for any of the fortunes he has to even have the option of turning down companies all over high-paying jobs which he enjoys greatly.
I suppose this is a case where words speak louder than actions. His actions--maximizing his expected compensation--are perfectly fine in my book. But his words betray a deeper level of entitlement which I don't think is justified. Just my two cents.
I've noticed a tendency of people outside of finance to exaggerate the salaries inside of finance.
You're right: $1m/year is very rare overall even for the world of finance. And I assure you someone with that salary on Wall Street is working 80 hours a week at minimum and has been for quite some time.
The truth is that startups can ask for a disproportionate amount of opportunity risk (compared to market rates) from early employees compared to the potential reward. The more experience you have, the more aware you are of this gap.
You have to decide how much marginal value an engineer can provide. If it cannot pay for an experienced Silicon Valley engineer, there are other options. Personally, I took a steep discount for years for the privilege of working where I chose. (And when my current contract is closer to ending, I may entertain that again.)
However, don't mistake experience for entitlement.
___
As for your other part, is is possible that we will look back and wonder how we ever had it so good. However, that day will have to wait until we're no longer capable of individually generating hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue for our respective companies.
People in tech don't realize just how lucky they are. I'm 20 with no wife or kids, and I'm making more per year than certainly almost all of my friends will be making after they choose to actually finish college and get a salaried job. However, I'm told by people that myself and my colleagues are getting underpaid (we work at a startup). Ridiculous.
> However, I'm told by people that myself and my colleagues are getting underpaid (we work at a startup).
That's how “market rate“ works. A profession's salary has nothing to do with what you deserve and everything to do with how your specific combination of skills are valued by the free market.
I agree. I didn't phrase my comment correctly. I suppose what I'm really amazed by is the fact that those people don't seem to understand why I'm not angry about my situation. I don't know. Maybe it's because I've been lucky enough to have parents who have exposed me to extreme poverty at a young age (several trips to India). There are just too many wrongs in the world for someone like me to be complaining about not being able to save up for shiny new product X, Y days earlier because my employer isn't paying me 10s of thousands of dollars more on top of the 10s of thousands of dollars I'm already making.
> There are just too many wrongs in the world for someone like me to be complaining about not being able to save up for shiny new product X, Y days earlier
I don't complain when a startup can't afford me, it's just business.
It is ridiculous that people judge whether you should or should not be angry/happy/sad etc. with your situation. It is impossible to judge correctly, all people need different things to be happy. Assuming that money is the universal measure of happiness is usually wrong. That is probably why you sound happier than the guy in the OP.
Two different definitions of "underpaid" are in operation here.
The one you're using has to do with how much you deserve as a person. You see yourself as no different from your friends. You pursued something that interested you and it led you to a job. They are probably doing the same thing. Yet here you are making more than all of them. What have you done to deserve that? Most likely, nothing at all. You were lucky to enjoy something which led you to this end. You never sought out money; you just ended up getting what seems like more than your fair share of it.
The other definition, the one that almost everybody here on HN will use, is one devoid of human connections. It's just about what the market rate is in comparison to how much value, dollar-wise, you produce for the corporation you work for.
There's a difference between the type of tech job as well (cushy 9-5'er with few responsibilities or YC 100+ hour job). I don't think he's being very unreasonable for the work hours and dedication involved with getting a startup off the ground actually!
Those of us with an ounce of humility or perspective (I suspect that includes you) seem less likely to have that kind of problem... though honestly, I don't think this "entitlement culture" is an industry-wide problem. It seems, from what I'm seeing, largely concentrated on the coasts, particularly the one mentioned in this post. Attitudes and perspectives are vastly different in other places, even more than you would normally expect outside of tech.
The "entitlement culture" known as "management" in most organizations has been mind-boggling for decades. One day we may look back and wonder how we resisted the temptation to blow our brains out amid the nonsensical executive meddling. Perhaps we'll even pity the person paid $100 per day to babysit children, previously a high-ranking executive deploying that same skill set.
There's a problem with "entitlement" in business. It's on the other side of the desk.
