Technology

Hey so just to be clear: a 200k comp package nowadays is the equivalent of about 81k in 1990.

Put another way: I am doing a good bit worse than my dad was at my age, despite being a pretty solid and experienced software engineer, with an EECS degree, and a lot of devops and system design experience.

This is the collapse of the American social contract. Even people like me who are ostensibly in “great” jobs are treated like code monkeys, and adjusted for inflation, it’s flat or worse than 30-35 years ago. We are doing worse than the generation before us. The American Dream is a nightmare.

Wait what? Who is making $165k out of college?

I don't even make $165k after working for... I don't know let's say 12 or 15 I can't keep track what counts anymore

My brother in law got fucked by this. Smart kid and beloved by his boss, company folded and now works at a fucking dominos.

Guess maybe coders needed a fucking union after all, who would have guessed that the "rockstar" programmer gravy train wouldn't last forever.

So, life of a humanities major like my wife. Actually, most majors that weren't STEM.

If it helps anyone in this situation, you can try to bank on other skills. My wife is doing great now but got her start because of her bilingualism, and even that was only 35k a year. My sister did a little better with her music degree by pivoting to community manager, although in her case she had experience modding for a well known streamer. That was pretty good money right out the gate.

Point is, programming isn't your everything, even if you're leveraging something from your personal life.

$165,000 tech jobs are still out there. Usually they require at least 10 years experience, or a masters in mathematics or data science.

Fresh out of school? Try a $48-64k job and get some experience.

I remember this same article decades ago during the late 90's and early 2000's.

Those offers for new grads were always insane and never going to last. That was entirely a sign of the zero interest rate bubble during covid.

How about $165k guillotine operators?

The industry went to shit after non-nerdy people found out there could be a lot of money in tech. Used to be full of other people like me and I really liked it. Now it’s full of people who are equally as enthused about it as they would be to become lawyers or doctors.

Technically a good burrito though.

I'm glad I'm retired out of that intense craziness (tax coding in COBOL for DOS version and for some reason Delphi for Windows). Crunch times get old after a while.