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How working for Big Tech lost 'dream job' status
(www.cnbc.com)
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this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2024
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I think Big Tech is still pretty much a dream job for most people. High pay. Perks. Work/life flexibility. It's certainly not as dreamy as it was 5 years ago perhaps, but realistically I'd take it over pretty much anything else.
Not anymore. Middling pay, constant threat of fire, constant degradation, most perks went away a loooong time ago, zero work/life balance. You can get that same bullshit working for Company X.
Eh. I work in tech. I have friends who work or worked at almost every big tech company you'd recognize. These are still jobs, dealing with layoffs, annoying bosses, etc. has always been a fact of life. But from what I can see the average techie still has it very good compared to most other jobs. My friend who is a nurse would certainly like to earn a tech salary, not have to deal with hospital politics, and not work night shifts all the damn time, and take time off whenever they want to not whenever there's availability...
I work these same companies. It's not about bad bosses, it's the C-Level people in your news feed degrading their entire workforce via the press. It's hearing your job is going to be "phased out" if you don't start reporting to an office hours away after being hired for remote work. It's having your pay slashed and being told to "deal with it, or find a new job" via email on Monday, then hearing about it all over the news on Tuesday to really hammer it home that you have to fear for your job, and they'll absolutely replace your ass if you say anything about it.
This was all done by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft in the past year at various different times as if it work from a guidebook on demoralizing your workforce.
Yeah. Tech has gotten worse. But you really think it's better in any other sector? I'm sure there are a few highly-compensated lap-dance-inspectors out there but the vast majority of workers deal with the same shit techies are dealing with, for significantly less pay and respect, if you can believe that.
Probably not a guidebook, but I wouldn't be surprised if the hired consultants specializing in exactly that.
Consultant on jailhouse rules?
Lol shouda unionized
The biggest obstacle to unionizing in tech, none of the unions know how to represent technology work. I have been in a couple unions as a tech worker, but those unions were historically representing different classes of workers.
That’ll happen.
I mean just represent programming for starters and go from there? It's the stuff that's most engineering like, or do I misunderstand the issue?
The senior staff at most unions are people who have thought about physical labor and the skilled workers who do production work. Programming as a profession is still relatively new career path.
My first union tech job was in the medical industry and we had to jump in with the nurses to find representation. It was good enough but our jobs were dramatically different. And our pay and benefits were much better than the nursing staff. The union had a hard time being able to deal with both of our different problems.
So it sounds like we just need to start a union from the ground up built for tech workers?
I think that Hollywood provides an example: cast, crew, writers, and directors are all unionized, and there are so many different types of jobs at such different rates of pay within those unions.
That's a good example if you're in California
Middling pay? At FAANG-tier companies?
These are some extraordinary claims in need of some extraordinary proof.
Not a claim, just a fact. Everyone walking around thinking we're making an easy $300k, and taking vacations all the time, and have the best of everything. Absolutely nothing resembling that type of compensation exists anymore. Easy to Google, but just read this headline from today:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1784450545509658867.html
Well according to Glassdoor the median total salary for a software engineer at google is 249k.
I work in medium tech. Since they have to compete for talent. We get the high pay and work life flexibility. It’s much better than large tech. I would never go work for a Microsoft , Amazon or Google. Not worth it.
Lots of opportunity in SMB, especially the M.
Agreed. M is definitely the sweet spot for tech right now.
I would too, but it really depends on the company. If I can do it, I'm WFH for the rest of my career for companies < 1000 people.
FAANG (or whatever it is these days) are awful fucking people to work for. One of the developers I respect most in my career walked out on .5M in bonuses on Amazon because of their ranking system for his employees. I was shocked.
But depending on the employer it's still a very good gig. But if you're at the wrong place, it's like the upper circles of hell.
This also shows what an incredibly privileged position techies have in the job market. I totally understand quitting Amazon. Really, I wouldn't want to work there either. But ask one of their warehouse workers if they'd ever quit and forfeit a 0.5M bonus...
Companies like Amazon can pull this off because of stock grants. (And I don't think they give out stock grants to warehouse workers, but I could be wrong.)
When they hire a developer, especially one who already has the relevant experience they for, they will say "On top of the salary and bonus, we will also give you $200k worth of stock". But that stock can't be sold right away; it goes into an account where it vests over some number of years, every 6 months. Your only condition for vesting the stock is being employed. If you leave for any reason, or even get laid off, you give up the rest.
Sometimes you also get smaller awards with your yearly review, subject to the same terms. They do this so that if you are a key developer, leaving would mean you forfeit this large account you have accumulated on paper. But in the back of your mind, you know that if your project gets canceled and you don't find a new one in the company, that money goes poof also. So it's play money until it vests, anyway. And there is always another vesting event coming sometime in the next few months.
Yeah. That's my point. And still people take these jobs and work very hard indeed. Try explaining "limited bathroom break time" to your average tech worker.
People don't seem to understand the average worker would kill to make $80/hour and $200k in RSUs. Not a dream job, right.
My point is that while it seems insane to leave half a million in RSUs to leave a company, if the person thinks their job is in a precarious position, it's extremely unlikely they would ever have vested them all anyway. So the money was never really theirs to begin with.
Now, is that DevOps engineer worth that much more than the warehouse guy who picks the item to send to you? I doubt it. But it seems like that's the going rate for a competent DevOps engineer with the relevant experience. While the qualifications to be in the warehouse are not quite so stringent.
If they could pay less for a dev ops, they would.
So yes, the dev ops guy has higher market value than warehouse guy. It's basic stats.
Practically anyone can be warehouse guy. I can't be dev ops guy, even with 35 years years in IT.
The big difference between IT and Devops is that IT fixes a problem, Devops solves it. In IT roles, I'm usually stuck pissing on the same fires over and over. In Devops roles, I'm given the time to go get a hose and put the fire out.
I'm not sure if it's intentionally being left out here, but if you have half a million in unvested stock, any competing offer from another FAANG company is likely giving you a stock match, or at least somewhere close to match.
The golden handcuffs aren't as tight as people make them seem.
That's no guarantee, though, it would have to be negotiated. And let's face it, most devs aren't the best at negotiating....
I would argue that devs getting 500k in stocks are at least decent at negotiating and other soft skills.
You don't get that kind of compensation for just having tech chops.
Sure you do, the Bay Area is full of below average devs with RSUs.
They're below average devs because they compensate with better than average negotiation skills.
No, if they had negotiation skills they would be below average managers.
They eventually will be.
This is going to make me sound like a prick, but yeah the DevOps guy is worth more than the warehouse guy, maybe not 500k more but still alot more.
It all comes down to how many package deliveries 1 warehouse guy can facilitate vs 1 DevOps guy. Speaking as someone who worked at a warehouse (package distribution fedex) for a short period of time, moving boxes is nowhere near as valuable.
Not to say it's not crucial, but the ratio of engineers:package handlers needed is really high
Each year this trend will accelerate. My dream job will not inevitably lay me off in 3 years...