Re:Ask HN: How was life for a regular dev during the dot com...
by throwaway87378 on Tuesday October 22, 2019 @11:41PM
(#21330847)
> Take into considering that while the wages for software engineers were high, they weren't as high as they are now.
That is a common misconception when people do not take inflation and housing cost increases into account. $1USD today is worth only 65 cents in 1999 according to the consumer price index:
Tech worker salaries only seem high relative to salaries for other workers, because the tech worker salaries have not been falling in inflation/housing cost adjusted terms for the past 30 years. IMO computer programmers are, as a whole, grossly underpaid today, just not as underpaid as much as people in other lines of work.
That is a common misconception when people do not take inflation and housing cost increases into account. $1USD today is worth only 65 cents in 1999 according to the consumer price index:
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1USD+in+1999
CPI inflation is only 56%, but house prices in the Bay Area have risen 280%:
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=median+house+price+san...
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/06/22/median-price-tag-for-...
Tech worker salaries only seem high relative to salaries for other workers, because the tech worker salaries have not been falling in inflation/housing cost adjusted terms for the past 30 years. IMO computer programmers are, as a whole, grossly underpaid today, just not as underpaid as much as people in other lines of work.