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Comment by tomjen3 | Hacker News Reader

If you can get 130k across the street, 100k _is_ underpaid. It has nothing to do with entitlement issues at all: it is simply market economics.

How much the janitor makes doesn't figure into the salary for a programmer, except as an indirect consequence.

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Also: if you're being paid $100k and, in turn, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars of value for your company, you're undervalued and underpaid.

The software industry is one of the few industries where a single person can create mountains of value all by themselves. Comparing software engineer salaries to janitor salaries makes no sense as janitors aren't creating multiples of their salary in value for their employer.

The only problem with this example is not every software engineer has the ability to be an entrepreneur. Sure, they can create monumental value for their employers, but there are some people that just can't be founders or cofounders or anything more simply because of how they are. I know quite a few people like this. At the end of the day, it takes a variety of personality traits, skills, brains, and a slew of other things to create a well rounded individual who can maximize value. Outside of this, no matter how much value you're adding to your employer, how can you honestly say you're worth more.

I've been thinking about this, and trying to come up with a solution.

The best solution I can come up with is options/stock and salary... That way creating more value DOES help them get more income, subject to the vagaries of the stock market.

Unfortunately, as wonderful as it would be for everyone to receive their exact value in return as a percentage, that's HARD... It's hard to quantify and it's hard to justify.

I agree with you but I'd also agree with redstripe when it comes to the parts of the article that said you "can't live in Silicon Valley" without being part of an IPO, or that you can't pay off student loans, or save for retirement, etc. Those things are definitely well within reach, even in San Francisco, on 100K/year. If you can get 130 instead of 100 and would rather do that job then great, go for it, but don't pretend that your doing out of "necessity" or in order to get by. That's the kind of thinking that gets you into jobs you don't like while being perpetually envious of the lifestyle of your investment banker friends.

Which is why I think California is still in a bubble. When will it actually pop?

>If you can get 130k across the street, 100k _is_ underpaid.

If you're too lazy to cross the street than 100k probably is overpaid for you.

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