
One in three tech workers is underpaid - pramodbiligiri
http://www.wsj.com/articles/one-in-three-tech-workers-is-underpaid-1484060402
======
pricechild
In other news, "half of children are achieving below average at school".
Unacceptable.

[https://www.theguardian.com/politics/reality-check-with-
poll...](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/reality-check-with-polly-
curtis/2012/mar/15/ofsted-chief-maths-wrong)

[https://leftfootforward.org/2013/10/michael-gove-doesnt-
unde...](https://leftfootforward.org/2013/10/michael-gove-doesnt-understand-
averages/)

~~~
Noseshine
Thanks for the links, just a minor nitpick:

From the article (first link), he said _" condemned the fact that one in five
pupils are leaving primary school without reaching the "national average" in
English"_.

You made that into "half", possibly confusing median and average, something
that that person did not do, judging by the quote.

~~~
pricechild
Sure, original quotes:

> one in five children in primary schools at the age of 11 are leaving primary
> school without the national average

> "good" requires pupil performance to exceed the national average, and all
> schools must be good

I'm sure there was a certain minister who stood up in parliament declaring it
to be an outrage that 50% of our children scored below average but I'm
struggling to find a reference, partly because politicians keep making this
same gaffe.

My point with the original "quote" ('"quote"' is not a quote either) was to
illustrate the absurdity of these types of headlines. They're made all the
time and they're always ridiculous.

~~~
kutkloon7
I have seen that quote attributed to Bush, but it sounds like it could've been
a made-up anecdote to make him look bad.

------
greenspot
The salary seems to be the most important thing for many people, i.e. this
post got upvoted to place number one within minutes.

I think the salary is just one tiny part of the entire equation. As long as
you can pay your rent, eat and save a bit you are fine.

Much more important than money is how you will increase your personal market
value in the current job _as fast as possible_. That's the most important
part. Then, stuff like your coworkers' smartness and likeliness, your boss (is
he a psycho?), location and the actual industry and business model your
company is in matters _much_ more than money.

An extreme and unrealistic example, just to illustrate the point: Imagine you
make $250K/yr working as a <to not offend anybody, put here some easy job
profession which doesn't require too many skills> . You can surf the entire
day, be on HN and Reddit. But after three years you are degenerated, you have
no story to tell. No achievements at all. Your market value went to zero. And
imagine the company is in a small village, there aren't any people who might
push your limits and make you smarter. The company's industry is declining. I
know, as said, this example is extreme but everyone who is making tons of
money now faces some drawbacks, so stop thinking you are underpaid.

A job is a package, the salary is just one part of this package. It's in
balance with the other parts and a high salary might compensate for a general
weaker package.

~~~
dovdovdov
"As long as you can pay your rent, eat and save a bit you are fine."

Yep, just make sure to never have a family and/or your own home! You'll be
just fine...

Heh, people are such greedy delusionals.

------
ericdykstra
This reads like an advertisement for Paysa. They compare resumes and find that
1/3 of tech workers are underpaid. This assumes that:

\- All information about an employee is in a resume

\- There is no difference between employers besides salary

\- Working for less than maximum achievable salary means one is "underpaid"

edit: Big surprise, I went to the Paysa website and their main sales messaging
is _Get Paid What You Deserve - Paysa market data shows that 36% of
professionals are underpaid relative to market_. So this article is basically
"Paysa publishes report saying that you should use their service to get more
money." Flagged for spam.

------
SonOfLilit
There is a "web" link for paywalled articles.

But here: [https://www.google.co.il/amp/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/one-
in...](https://www.google.co.il/amp/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/one-in-three-
tech-workers-is-underpaid-1484060402)

~~~
pw
That trick doesn't seem to work for me anymore.

~~~
bananicorn
Did you try it in incognito mode? Edit: actually nevermind, doesn't work for
me their either...

------
nikhilvraj
As one of the founders of Paysa, wanted to jump in and clarify. There is no
notion of average here. What we have found is that everyone has a "worth" (or
a "market rate" for their skills, experience etc.) and they also have an
actual. SO, each person has their own range of salary possibilities and their
own average, conditioned on their profile. Comparing each person's actual to
their conditional average shows that a 36% are paid 10% less than what they
deserve. This is not comparing each person to some broad market
averages/ranges etc. It is all about each and every individual's potential for
getting paid.

------
vostok
This seems to be an advertisement [0] for Paysa. Too bad that it's paywalled.

> More than one-third of tech professionals are earning at least 10% less than
> they could command if they looked for a new job today

I agree that many technology workers (myself included) are underpaid, but this
does not seem to be evidence of that. I think most people could make 11% more
money if they went on the job market. That's what the new company has to pay
you to overcome inertia.

[0]
[http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

------
bolster
Not paid enough to pay for a WSJ sub either...

------
devoply
100% of tech workers are underpaid if we had any sort of legitimate market for
labor rather than a collusion by managers to drive the price of labor by
justifying it against living costs. The value generated by services by IT
workers at times is order of magnitude greater than they are paid. And there
is always a shortage of them if accounts from industry are believed, which
would lead market forces to push up the price to hire them significantly
greater than living cost value making them all wealthy. Not so in the
managerial economy, where shareholders capture that value because they have
money. And this sort of collusion goes back to the very early days of Silicon
Valley.

~~~
oli5679
You need to think in terms of marginal rather than average effects. Diamonds
are more expensive than water because the latter is so abundant (at least for
now) that it can profitably be provided for low value use like watering golf
courses. It doesn't matter that the first units each household purchases are
completely indespensible.

There is no neccisary exploitation story with good being sold/labour being
provided at a price below the average value to the purchaser. However, it
could be that buyers collude to pay less than their marginal value for the
procuct.

~~~
devoply
Diamonds are extremely abundant. So I don't think your example is good, there
is collusion to keep their prices sky high. There is artificial control on the
quantity of diamonds to create scarcity to drive up costs.

~~~
oli5679
Ok thanks, I didn't know that. Could substitute for something else like caviar
and the principal applies.

------
erelde
As the article is paywalled I want to say:

maybe one in three is overpaid, and one in three is in the mean. But that
wouldn't fit a gauss distribution. Just rambling the thoughts those 8 lines
triggered.

~~~
pw
Yeah, because of the paywall, I have to assume most of the upvotes have not
read the article :-(

------
pw
Judging by the upvotes, a lot of people in tech apparently _feel_ like they're
underpaid.

------
thingummywut
Do 1/3 of engineers produce more value for their company than than their pay?

That seems high from the minority of engineers that produce the majority of
the value at large companies. I'd argue a small minority is vastly underpaid,
and most engineers are overpaid.

------
collyw
That probably applies to anyone working in Spain.

------
kutkloon7
Why would you post or upvote an article behind a paywall?

------
rasz_pl
so 1 in 3 is overpaid, 1 in 3 paid adequately, and the last one overpaid,
logic 101

------
DeveloperPanda
I feel underpaid too.

------
jlebrech
or, paid just enough not to leave.

