That is the perception people have on SV developers, for right or wrong.
Meanwhile, I'm from Sweden so I'm perhaps just an outside observer to this spectacle.. but at least from my perspective, SV developers are generally speaking overpaid. Well, at least compared to Swedish/European developers. :)
If you're reading it, it's for you.
>Well, at the moment I'm (possibly temporarily) retired, doing hobby projects. I have never felt the urge to cross any picket lines.
Not mentioning that you're former management is extremely dishonest. Derailing pro-worker discussions like this with condescension and dishonesty is extraordinarily unethical.
Even if the person you're responding to on some internet forum is the president of the Foundation For Keeping Software Developers from Being Overpaid, it's not unethical for them to jump into a discussion on the merits without disclosing that fact.
Why are you so afraid of having a frank discussion about this, with anyone? Slinging around terms like "extraordinarily unethical" when they're not even remotely warranted just makes it seem like you have little faith that your position makes any rational sense.
For the record - they wanted me to be president, but I declined. I am merely the secretary of said foundation.
Saying that you're retired and working on hobby projects is technically true, but in context heavily implies that you did not have a management background. It's not technically lying, but you can mislead people extremely well by saying particular true things in a particular way. That's why I called it "dishonesty" instead of "lying".
And "jump into a discussion on the merits" isn't how I'd characterize their behavior so far. Most of what they've done is snark and implications that play stupid bullshit status games.
Saying that you're retired and working on hobby projects is technically true, but in context heavily implies that you did not have a management background.
How on earth is this true? In what universe does someone who is retired except for some hobby projects mean that they were never in management? I literally don't know how to parse that.
And even if it is, how does someone who was "former management" now have no credibility to talk about work/life balance or whether developers are overpaid or underpaid? They don't have a particular dog in the fight anymore, right? Unless, as I suspect, you think that they're "different" somehow, not part of the same class of people as you, and they'll "stick with their own kind."
Every comment you've made seems to me to be bigotry with a thin veneer. I don't know, maybe I'm just privileged in that I've never been in a struggle of labor vs. management. Just don't see the world in those terms. I'm sure you think that means that of course I'm engaged in that struggle, and I'm either lying (because I'm in management), or getting screwed (because I'm labor and management is always screwing labor whether they know it or not). Shrug. I'm happy. Not sure what else to tell you.
The only one here who I see playing status games and pumping up the us vs. them mentality is you.
As far as the ad hominem goes - that's the appropriate response to the social status implications of the "easy hipster" comment.