And yet, CEOs for decades (the 50s-80s) did just fine at a fraction of wealth disparity compared to today [1]. In fact, in just the last three years; the overall disparity has increased 31% despite corporations failing to properly manage the pandemic or their workforces.

1 - https://www.forbes.com/sites/annefield/2022/05/23/ceo-worker...

> And yet, CEOs for decades (the 50s-80s) did just fine at a fraction of wealth disparity compared to today [1].

And yet, SW professionals did just fine for decades when making anywhere from a quarter to a third of today's FAANG salaries (inflation adjusted).

It’s a reasonable point. But I think the distinction is SW wasn’t creating the economic value it does now. Similar to why firmware jobs don’t pay FAANG type salaries, the scale of economic impact isn’t there. (Not to be confused with societal impact).

So the question becomes, are CEOs pay commensurate with their added value? Put differently, is the rise in production mainly attributable to the CEO (as wages were largely stagnant prior to 2020, yet CEO wages increased rather dramatically.) Are they adding more value now than they did before and, if so, can we actually measure it?

SWE (and many professional/“white color”) salaries have been stagnant for a decade and a half. In fact, the overall average has been on the decline.

Try again.

You can make your point (even a bad one, like this) without being snide.

Do you have a source supporting your comment that SWE comp in 2005 was the same as it is today?

Considering I’m the only one that has sourced anything in this thread and that the response I was responding to made an easily disproven claim in such a snide/sarcastic manner, it’s hard not to respond in kind.

But sure, from a super simple query on any search engine:

https://insights.dice.com/2018/02/09/tech-pro-jobs-pay-2018/

Feel free to gate your query to anytime between 2003ish to now, the results are all the same with a few exceptions (MLE and DeFi jobs, for instance): stagnant or decreasing.

SWE’s straight out of school made 90-100k in the late 90’s. Isn’t that what they make now?

> SWE’s straight out of school made 90-100k in the late 90’s.

They absolutely did not with just a BS. Perhaps a few companies paid that high, but 100K would be an easy outlier.

To give you an idea, even in 2010 most non-big names outside of SV and Seattle paid under $100K right out of school. Many companies in my city were offering $70-80K. Even my big name company paid under $100K in those days.

I think the more accurate measure is the median salary. It’s not that high now and probably wasnt back then either.

I’d agree that these salaries are roughly the same if not less, adjusted for inflation, regardless of the actual number.

I was curious so I looked into it a bit.

According to BLS data [1], the median computer scientist salary in 1997 was $82k, adjusted for inflation [2]. The same data has software developers median salary today at $121k. It seems SWE are getting paid much, much better today.

Granted, the occupation titles don't align perfectly. There was no "software developer" role in the 1997 dataset, but most of the computer science positions have a median salary in the low $80k-range in todays dollars. Also note that the timeframe you chose was at the peak of a tech bubble. Probably not the best for comparison, just like you wouldn't want to use 2006 or 2021 for a gauge on housing costs.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm

[2] https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

Corporate profits are up way more than 31% in that time. So the impact to shareholders is larger.

Relevant to this thread, Robinhood numbers are way down yet the CEO still made significant salary by historical comparison. To me, that points more to a change in social norms than in productivity.

But you bring up an interesting point. The CEO may be incentivized to promote wealth disparity. If they are measured by profitability only, without regard to the larger systemic effects, it incentivizes them to take a myopic view. This could mean implementing policies that help hit short term targets without regard to long term health, suppressing wages, etc.

To a certain extent, whichever side we’re on is really just a narrative we tell ourselves since there doesn’t seem to be conclusive data about CEO impact.

The research is a bit mixed on whether a CEO of a large corporation (S&P 500 size) really matters so I’m not sure the risk statement can be said with conviction.