“They pay me because I know how computers work and computers make them $100K times N somehow, and someone else can make $500K per SWE, so that company established the SWE comp at $300K, but I don’t want to work at that company because they turned evil and have a hiring system that would take me unpaid time on my own to crack, so I’m willing to work at this other company I believe in more for only $150K, and since they make $100K times N from software, they’re willing hire N/2 of us and barely scrape by. Then, when my company profits take a hit from soaring input costs and we pull back on advertisements as a result and the $500K company sees a drop in as revenues and they cut back on their employees as a result, making that $300K reference now up for debate, and these other places pop up on the radar where people just as good as me are eager to work for half of what I cost, that possibility is appealing to businesses who are struggling with uncertain demand from their customers who are stretched from their own soaring life costs for energy, food, and housing. Hmm, maybe as a tech worker, I should try to understand whether this is another temporary tech recession and, if it is, how I should react to position myself and protect myself, my family, and my friends.”

This tech recession won’t last forever; we’re not going the way of ice harvesters or buggy whip makers, but I think we’re going to see a large scale re-alignment and even if tech salaries merely fall back to 2015 levels, it’s going to feel catastrophic to many.

2020 and 2021 were outlier years. Expect more non-outlier years than outlier years and expect a reversion back to needing to connect value to costs and if you don’t know how your company makes money by employing you, try to figure that out, try to increase it, and try to be sure that they know how they make money from you. We all do better when we create $X of value and take a high but fair fraction of that home for ourselves, leaving everyone in a nice, durably desirable trade of our skills for their needs.