
Why salaries don’t rise - altern8
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-salaries-dont-rise/2015/03/11/38c08cea-c81d-11e4-b2a1-bed1aaea2816_story.html
======
ap22213
Software development is supposedly a high-demand skill. And, I hear that
companies can't seem to hire anyone qualified. I still get dozens of
recruiters contacting me, each week. Yet, with all of that, my salary has
remained stagnant for the past few years.

My guess is that people have no idea what they're worth, so they don't ask for
anything more. I see way too many developers who are getting paid pennies to
the dollar. I see upper-end developers working for 70-80k.

Look, people. If you have skills, you should be getting paid 150k+ a year.
Please, stop taking menial salaries. You're hurting all of us.

~~~
EC1
Why don't I strap on my job helmet, and squeeze down into a job cannon, and
fire off into job land where $150k salaries are just ripe for the picking.

I'm trying to find a kick ass salary, I'm great at what I do, but the _only_
place I can find such high salaries are contracts in Switzerland. $180k -
$225k.

What kind of frontend/uiux jobs are out there for $150k~?

~~~
kevinnk
High end at Google for UI designer is ~160k according to Glassdoor. That's in
line with what I've heard from friends as well. UI design does have lower
salaries than other types of software development, in some cases much lower,
so I doubt you're going to be getting 150k+ unless you're pretty senior.

~~~
EC1
The thing is I'm not just frontend. I build product from A-Z. I can ideate it,
build a strategy, a business plan, mock it, design it, code it, deploy it,
market it. What role should I be looking for? I'm great at stepping back and
looking at it from the bigger picture instead of hammering out details. Should
I be looking for project management roles? Product designer? Art director? I
have no idea.

------
adventured
Wages are not stagnant, they have begun to rise.

And this is simultaneously at a time when Americans just received one of the
greatest purchasing power increases in modern history, as the USD has
skyrocketed in the last nine months (so far that the USD and Euro are near
parity).

November

"Wages and salaries climbed last quarter by the most since 2008 as a dwindling
number of unemployed per job opening approached a tipping point."

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-11-19/wages-
pois...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-11-19/wages-poised-to-
rise-as-signs-emerge-of-improved-u-s-job-market)

December

"An important measure of household income rose in December by the largest
amount in nearly 8 years, signaling a long-overdue rebound in family earning
power."

[http://finance.yahoo.com/news/families-are-finally-
earning-m...](http://finance.yahoo.com/news/families-are-finally-earning-
more-151120875.html)

January

"Average hourly wages, meanwhile, jumped 12 cents to $24.75, the biggest gain
since September 2008"

[http://www.kansascity.com/news/business/article9388535.html](http://www.kansascity.com/news/business/article9388535.html)

Wages aren't rising as quickly as expected, because the labor force is not
tight enough yet. The U3 is only partially accurate.

The labor force participation rate is sitting near a 40 year low and the U6
unemployment rate is still significantly elevated.

The U6 was about 9% in 2004 (8% by 2006). It's 11.4% as of February.

~~~
wheaties
This, right here. This is what matters. It's not just that U3 and U6 mean
something entirely different but that even the "employed" are people working
20hr jobs, i.e. what anyone else would consider part-time work.

------
tsotha
Yeah... no. The reason salaries aren't going up is in the piece but casually
dismissed as if it doesn't matter. Instead of "following the money" to people
who own companies, why don't we follow the smell of bullshit to the BLS.
Unemployment numbers are laughably phony. Of course workers don't have
bargaining power - there are millions of people who've been out of work for
half a decade desperate for a job and yet not counted as "unemployed".

Also, add in health care cost increases that employers have to pay but that
don't show up in salary surveys.

~~~
Iftheshoefits
That's part of it, sure. The other part of it in America is the successful
suppression of any sort of labor movement and the success of efforts by the
very rich to drive a wedge between the merely affluent and the middle and
lower classes.

America has a real strong strain of the "I'm not poor, I'm merely a
temporarily embarrassed millionaire" sentiment.

~~~
jgmmo
Organized labor getting everything they wanted is what led to basically all US
auto companies going bankrupt.

~~~
Frondo
You ought to read this:

[http://mediamatters.org/research/2014/03/05/myths-and-
facts-...](http://mediamatters.org/research/2014/03/05/myths-and-facts-unions-
and-organized-labor/198343)

~~~
tsotha
Mediamatters? Seriously? Well, okay. Let me find an equally credible source:

[http://www.aei.org/publication/maybe-patriarchal-labor-
union...](http://www.aei.org/publication/maybe-patriarchal-labor-unions-are-
to-blame-for-rising-inequality/)

~~~
Frondo
If you can find factual errors in the source I linked, or errors in
interpretation of those facts, I would be keen to hear them.

~~~
tsotha
Oh, I'll accept your link uncritically if you do the same for mine.

~~~
Frondo
Of course I didn't tell you to accept it uncritically.

------
patmcguire
My own theory:

For most employers, there's something almost inconceivable about rising
salaries. It's been routine for so long to have layoffs, to tighten belts, to
pull together in these tough times and sacrifice, that market power over labor
has been internalized into the entire way they do business.

If you read any HR industry literature you'll see a lot about the costs of a
bad hire and missing out on candidates because they were out of a company's
budget. You will not see concern about the opportunity cost of leaving a
position vacant. If a company spends six months hobbling along understaffed,
waiting for the sure thing to walk in the door for $5k less, that will
seriously harm their business. It isn't considered.

There are a lot of things like that, aspects of employment that the employer
won't change because it simply isn't done. This sort of creates an informal
price ceiling, which has exactly the effects you'd expect: lower supply
(discouraged workers, low labor force participation), "shortages", and more or
less frozen wages.

------
pXMzR2A
I love that a nation and an industry that is bent over backwards against
unions (both in policy and in stereotypes) gets surprised when wages don't go
up.

What do you think pushes companies to increase wages, rainbow ponies?
Benevolent investors? Gee.

Organized labor.

~~~
prostoalex
Unionizing works for micro-optimization but rarely works at macro level, when
entire division, company or industry can be outsourced.

To quote from [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-
and...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-
squeezed-middle-class.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all)

"Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only
option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese
factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on
shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing
an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near
midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories,
according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of
tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift
fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was
producing over 10,000 iPhones a day."

------
everyone
Cant we just fire all these finance guys out of a cannon into space?

~~~
mikeash
Yeah, right; where are you going to get the money to finance the cannon?

~~~
kazinator
Out of next year's budget, just as we learned by watching the finance guys. Or
maybe by selling some debt to another corporation to be used as a valuable tax
reduction device.

~~~
cheepin
...and just like that, we have become the finance guys.

~~~
kazinator
But cool finance guys who know how to code and correctly recognize Tom Baker
as the best Dr. Who.

------
ghshephard
It's important to see what the average _age_ of these newly employees are, age
of those unemployed, and also who is exiting the job market.

If the newly employed are young (and therefore making lower wages), and those
unemployed (or leaving the job market, or just not looking) - are older, and
therefore commanding higher salaries - that alone could account for why
salaries not increasing on average.

It would be useful to get a breakout of salaries biased by tenure, so as to
accommodate for the confounding impact of average age of
employed/unemployed/left-the-job-market.

------
fma
Maybe the article refers more towards the assembly line worker, but GM IT
receives an annual merit increase (a.k.a. raise) across the board.

YMMV based on performance, but if you worked the year you get something.

But I do agree that 'returning value back to investors' is sucky. I'm of the
opinion rewarding your employees, and hence retaining your employees and their
knowledge brings value to the company, and in the end, the investor.

------
Zenst
Big difference from the IT industry and other Industry is IT is still evolving
and defining itself. This not only means that those in the feild have to learn
far more than other trades to do the same job as it changes. But also this
lack of stabilisation has not allowed standard certification and
qualifications that stand the test of time. Compare that with accountants and
lawyers. Yes they have new thinsg to learn, but controlled and lesser in
volume. They also have qualifications that are as current today as the day
they got them.

There is no standard body that has recognition globaly or the history and in a
market in which things change so much, it is hard without seperate area's.

Other industries have governing bodies and they in part act like Unions and
protect workers and standards for the fiarness for all. Actors guild and book
and music rights another area of contrast to software.

Lets face it software has developed a culture of free and open which is great,
imagine if music and books were more towards that model.

So I can see why many feel the industry is and the people working in it are
overly taken advantage of. Let us not ignore all that learning and long hours
has a burn factor and people burn out quicker than some other profesions.
Those prefessions factor in pay to compensate or have standard pension deals.

But IT is and will be a while until itself has a good standard and until then
it is down to individual companies and it is not since the Googles and the
like came about that a level of appreciation for what is involved has come
into play.

But IT is if you compare to the book industry, still defining the format and
types of size teh book should be and ink colour and paper thickness and other
details. There is a lot of abstraction from creative aspects and the
implementing of those.

Also the trade has been easy picking for TAX and with that UK introduced a
rule IR35 just some may say to hit IT contractors. Yet in contrast the
building industry, they can get a CIS that in effect means you pay less
National Insurance than normaly would. Like say in other not so old industries
like IT.

So IT is still as a trade young and with that has less protection and measure
of worth than other trades.

Also let us not forget the move from companies to focus more onto share
dividends than not and experdited trading that makes it mroe trigger happy. If
they can get away with paying 50k a year and say the job is only worth that
and use that to class people as over qualified, when the job is actualy
underpaid perhaps. Well easy to cry for more fodder into the labour market and
one persons poor wage is another persons gold. Just makes it more a case that
not skill level and what they are paid are not the greatest of metrics .

Still, startups allow you to cut out the wage aspects and many other ways get
you into tapping directly instead of more often, feeding into the companies
pocket from your own quality of life.

Still there are many things in life that have not resolved, I can purchase
fair trade chocolate and know the farmer got paid fairly and yet read about
local dairy farmers being underpaid for milk at a loss and no fairtrade logo
on milk ever.

So many unfair things propagate in life. Way to view it, if dairy farming as a
industry gets treated badly and is more established than IT then, we take what
we can get.

Least for a while yet and things are more standard. C today is not C when
invented and things change more often than fashion wardrobes at times. At the
very least enjoy the ride.

