The individual value of an IC outside of Meta is most certainly lower than what they get paid there. The company provides so much value that it raises the ICs value inside Meta. It's win-win.

Very true. But we have to also consider the intrinsic value of working for Meta. The employees getting paid that excess compensation also have to live with the fact that they took more money to work for Meta. And other people now view them as a person who took more money to work for Meta. So for some people it’s a win win, I’m sure, especially if you don’t really care about how you’re perceived in the world

I think the risk is more feeling trapped. e.g. buying into a housing market you probably couldn't afford if you were taking more risk or bootstrapping. It catches up to you fast, especially if you're in the midlife crisis age band.

Getting "paid more than you'd be worth anywhere else" has its price.

Yeah I'm leaving a Big Tech feeling this pain now and it's exactly this. I stayed careful over the years to stay clearly within my means and have the freedom to walk away but still hold onto previous saved earnings. But I have coworkers who bought huge houses in high COL neighborhoods and nice luxury cars who feel too trapped to leave Big Tech.

For you, does ‘leaving Big Tech’ also mean moving yourself/your family to a lower cost of living area?

No because I've lived very frugally over the years and my partner also works in tech. For years we had no car and only recently bought one for the family. We stay well within our means and save most of what we earn. We have a small mortgage on a cozy townhome. Nothing we can't comfortably pay off on a non Big Tech TC.

Nice. Good stuff.

This is extremely accurate.

I worked at a big tech company and saw a good portion of my team buying houses at the same time, a lot of which were a lot more junior than me. I know what they bought, where and roughly how much it cost. A lot of the time, they're only making it work by having (2) two big tech salaries or 1 big tech salary and a second senior-level tech salary. My thought at the time is that it was very high risk.

Not sure if it qualifies as a scam. The grocery store does the same when I'm looking for fruit, exploiting the margins (and hoping I don't know the real value)

I think more important than you not knowing the “real” value is that they’re relying on you not being able to access that value. You can’t talk to the producers directly, and even if you can, you can’t purchase in sufficient bulk to see the same price they do.

The margins don’t simply exist because of hidden information, but because the grocery store is actually adding something to the equation (else if capitalism does its thing, someone else would start drinking their milkshakes).

In the same fashion, you might be able to add X value to Meta by adding some feature to Facebook, and they’re relying on X to exceed your pay, but that doesn’t mean you can produce X value without Meta/Facebook and capture it for yourself — if you could, then you’d be an idiot not to. And I don’t think Meta is relying on their high value ICs being smart enough to provide value, but so dumb that they wouldn’t take money just lying in front of them.

The real value is what they managed to pay for the product plus the cost of their own work. You could know it down to the cent and still not benefit from cutting out the middleman.

Cooperatives exists.

I wish cooperatives were bigger and more popular in the world in general

I think you might be interested in Mondragon.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

If it can work in Spain, it can work here.

Did you try to get involved in creating one or work for one ?

If this is fundamentally a model you think if more fair and should be more popular, the logical step would be to get involved in this. Either it will be successful for you and you will be (slightly) closer to demonstrating that it's a viable alternative to the corporate/capitalistic model that dominates the economy; if you end up being able to quit your day to job to replace it with a coop job instead and reach/maintain a lifestyle that you are comfortable with.

Or it won't be successful for you and you will learn why it's not gaining in popularity despite this being a well known model.

Scams don’t usually put food in your belly and a roof over your head and keep you warm at night.

Said the enslaver to the enslaved.

Or the mobster to the shopkeeper.

Or the kidnapper to the kidnapped.

This system is definitely rigged. Just because you get some compensation does not mean it is a fair compensation.

What’s “fair” is generally what is accepted by the parties involved. Even if you complain about the compensation, if you’re working at a particular rate, you have implicitly agreed to that rate rather than seeking a higher compensating position.

Slaves don’t get a choice in the matter. Mobsters and kidnappers are criminals.

Living is a choice, and in order to do so it is expected that you gather your own food and find your own shelter and we’ve structured society in a way that makes that easy. You can even form a relationship with someone where you merge your resources and time to make it easier and raise other people to eventually replace you.

But if you would prefer to hunt and gather and compete with other humans through a more violent means, that option is probably available to you somewhere and you can go seek that out on your own but it’ll probably be a shorter life.

I won’t tell you how to live, but however you do it, it won’t be without cost to you as it isn’t for any of us even if the cost is much more marginal for some than for others.

Your argument depends entirely on scarcity of life-sustaining resource. We’ve objectively not had that situation for quite a while. What we have had, and still have, is a situation where scarcity of resources is artificially generated or maintained.

Whilst we are being pushed to accept artificial stratification on economic and class levels, there are only two political / economic classes. The ultra rich hoarders of resources, and everyone else. The “everyone else” group represents 99% of the global population, making the hoarders a statistical anomaly. Those folk, however, have amassed $26 _trillion_ dollars of resources, just during the pandemic.

The asinine suggestion of “you are free to go out and hunt” only has meaning when you remain oblivious to the fact we are _all_ enslaved and we only get the illusion of choice about which set of bastards get to pretend to represent our interests.

There is enough to cover the basic needs of everyone on this planet. We just need to get rid of a few powerstructures before we can get to it.

We are being conned.

> Your argument depends entirely on scarcity of life-sustaining resource. We’ve objectively not had that situation for quite a while. What we have had, and still have, is a situation where scarcity of resources is artificially generated or maintained.

If you’ve solved the free-rider problem and have solved logistics, then you have a point, but I’m doubtful to both of those things.

Just so we’re not losing context here, what I originally replied to was this:

> Isn’t the entire concept of employment meant to scam you out of more value for your labor than what you put in?

If employment is a scam, who is doing the work of maintaining farms and fields and transporting food to well, I guess not to market, but to people? And who is doling it out?

What’s the reward for growing more food than you need?

> The asinine suggestion of “you are free to go out and hunt”

The real reason it’s asinine is that it isn’t scalable. We can sustain some of the people hunting some of the time, but we can’t sustain all of the people hunting all of the time. This is an actual lifestyle that people still practice and the primary source of their food is hunting and gathering. It’s not a lot of people, but it’s some, and the issue is if everyone did it, yes we would have literal violent disputes over hunting grounds and lose most of the world’s population to starvation and war, not to mention all the quality of life improvements we would be giving up.

So we specialize, and in order to specialize we need trade, we need an economy, and we need incentives to do the things we do. Feeding my neighbors is honestly not an incentive for me to work, as crass as that may seem to actually say. Giving them shelter means someone has to construct it, and they probably need land (that’s probably parceled to someone else) and materials (that places like Home Depot sell) and laborers who want something in return, usually this is money because it’s fungible and can represent anything. Then you need the guy to organize it all and pay people and provide the equipment. Usually this guy is the capitalist, quite literally the provider and owner of capital for the business whatever the business may be (building shelter in this example) and since he’s not working for free either, he’s probably looking to sell the shelter to you for a sum denominated in the local currency or retain ownership and rent it out to you. In either scenario, the shelter isn’t entitled to you for free, so yeah, you work for it. Or one of your ancestors did and left you enough money to pay for it. Or left you their own shelter when they died (and y’know, it still needs to be maintained, so maybe you work to do that and keep the fridge stocked and operational).

That’s what living means in this world, and dealing with that low level stuff on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs kind of comes first. So you do it basically because nobody will do it for you, and to be honest, doesn’t really want to do it for you except maybe your parents. Humanity isn’t some big family, or part of a single organizational structure with a chain of command, or all marching to the same drum beat in the same direction forward.

Slaves have a choice. Slavery or death.

Do you think that's an important or useful distinction in this context?

I think that depends on their circumstances. Slavery is already illegal, and there isn’t really a market for slaves to go around negotiating the terms under which they are being kept alive at the pleasure of someone else so they may not be able to physically execute a suicide even if they can mentally get past the fact that they don’t actually want to die.

Also being kept alive in bondage isn’t actually compensation. I mean there are many reasons slavery is an abominable practice, this is one of them, definitely one of the big ones.

>What’s “fair” is generally what is accepted by the parties involved. Even if you complain about the compensation, if you’re working at a particular rate, you have implicitly agreed to that rate rather than seeking a higher compensating position.

Both implicit and explicit agreement can be problematic, depending on the conditions under which you give them.

Well you’re not wrong.

Slavery, extortion and kidnapping are not scams though. And you'll notice that in all these cases the victims would have been better off if their tormentor simply did not exist. Would employees be better off if their employer didn't exist?

> This system is definitely rigged.

How would a hypothetical non-rigged system look like?

> Would employees be better off if their employer didn't exist?

well, we're talking about Meta here

> well, we're talking about Meta here

And? Why would Meta employees be better off if Meta didn't exist?

It's hard to see into alternative worlds. I can tell you what my belief is, but I can't really prove it: if Meta did not exist (and no other similar company filled the same niche), the world would be better by most measurements. People would, on average, be happier.

People in general are better off living in a better world.

And most Meta Employees would have found other jobs. I mean, sure, in this alternate world some specific people would be worse off. I would wager they would be the minority by far.

Let me know if you get a timeline-scope and we can verify.

> Meta did not exist (and no other similar company filled the same niche), the world would be better by most measurements.

Why would a company filling a similar niche be better for the world? I'm not asking for proof, just for reasoning beyond wishful thinking.

I think you misread my comment. What I meant is that I'm not only assuming Meta does not exist, but also assuming that no other company that fills the same niche exists. If there's another company which is essentially the same, just with another name and minor differences, it doesn't change much.

The scam is that we are hoodwinked into thinking we are not slaves. That we are not held at gunpoint.

That is the real scam.

Let’s first agree upon the problem before we start brainstorming about the solution.

> The scam is that we are hoodwinked into thinking we are not slaves. That we are not held at gunpoint.

No, I'm pretty sure I'm not a slave and that I'm not being held at gunpoint.

If you feel that way, maybe you should talk to the police. Or perhaps a mental health professional.

It’s interesting to refer someone to mental care because you’ve completely missed the metaphor. What was described were totally normal feelings about having a job at all, and you’re gaslighting them into thinking they’re nuts.

>Would employees be better off if their employer didn't exist?

Absolutely.

Yeah, it's so much better to not have a job. /s

The fact your employer wouldn't exist in an alternate reality doesn't mean you wouldn't have a job in that same alternate reality.

The comment I responded to claimed all employment was a scam. The hypothetical being considered was not of an alternative employer.

Yes, because a FAANG dev would end up jobless and homeless if their employer went under /s

The comment I responded to claimed all employment was a scam.

Our whole industry is obscenely overpaid. Managers and ICs alike.

Don't believe me? Ask the lady behind the Walmart counter for her total compensation. Time to re-evaluate your bubble.

Or: are we all underpaid? Manager, ic and counterlady?

Are we all workers quibbling amongst one another while the trillions are funnelled away at the expense of a liveable planet?

We are being conned.

Right, let's just 10x all incomes. Which will also 10x all costs. This will totally make society just and save the planet.

No need to look in the mirror and realize our privilege.

Are you saying the lady behind the Walmart counter receives fair compensation?

Alternate view: the lady behind the counter is obscenely underpaid, and the ICs are merely underpaid.

This meme that tech workers are obscenely overpaid is just an example of how the propaganda of the truly wealthy elite works. Instead of standing in solidarity with the counter lady and doing things to lift her up, you’d rather tear the IC down. It’s sad.

How many of us have stories about saving the company a million dollars, and not even getting a pizza party?

I'm sure your salary, stocks and bonuses compensate you royaly for your heroic effort from your armchair in an office with nice AC, unlimited snacks and coffee and no requirement to show up before 10am.

Those millions that were wasted and later "saved" were likely because somebody misunderstood AWS billing and hacked away without bothering. Likely also being compensated royaly.

This bubble and the consequence of feeling entitled left and right is pretty disturbing.

Actually, since you made so many terrible assumptions about me, the millions I saved the company were directly measurable in CC fees from less fraud, up to and including having numbers other people in the industry were extremely jealous of. This was done with about three people, compared to our competitors many tens of people, using kinda antiquated techniques.

I also get zero stocks, and zero bonuses. After 6 years working for the same company including many roles where I was basically team lead and engineering lead as a "Base level software developer", including being the sole holder of important legacy knowledge. I make $70k before taxes in a high cost of living area. Maybe we could build a system that rewards doing good work instead of rewarding job hopping and bullshitting. I once had a manager that did zero work for an entire month before he was asked to leave. He was made my manager because he sucked at doing basic coding. He made more than me from day one. This is very common for the normies like me who don't live in SV and basically do all the work that makes things happen not on google.com or facebook.com

I am also currently required to be working at 9am, AND attend meetings at midnight in my timezone because we have a big office in India and most of my team are there. I am also perpetually "oncall", though only for "serious" issues, neither of which I receive compensation for because tech workers are exempt and my employment contract was a single paragraph saying "You will do what we need you to do" and when I signed that I was fresh out of college with one year experience, $300 to my name and $1200 rent due in two weeks. I could leave but I am permanantly on medication just to live a normal life so here in the States I get to be shackled to my job unless I spend valuable personal time planning out a way to keep my medication going after I lose insurance.

So how about realize there are plenty of us not working in FAANG. Meanwhile, when a google engineer builds a system to improve ad targeting, how much of that money goes to the engineer, vs how much goes to the VP who made the vague suggestion of "lets make ad targeting better", as if vague, completely obvious ideas like that have value.

If you are so brilliant and terribly productive but sill work in such a toxic environment for such low pay, then either you need to switch to a more reasonable employer or you are not really honest with us here.

> This meme that tech workers are obscenely overpaid is just an example of how the propaganda of the truly wealthy elite works.

Or it's a realistic view from outside your bubble.

Check out the income distribution of the U.S. public and realize that the typical software engineer is within the top 1% when considering total compensation. And put that in relation to what the typical programmer contributes to society which is rarely within the top 1%.

> Instead of standing in solidarity with the counter lady and doing things to lift her up, you’d rather tear the IC down. It’s sad.

I stand in full solidarity with the Walmart lady. Lifting her up doesn't mean gettinf her into programming bootcamp though. Her rent is so sky high because all the insane tech worker compensation around her inflated housing costs.

The comments in this thread makes all this entitlement pretty obvious.

> Or it's a realistic view from outside your bubble.

This doesn't negate my point about propaganda. There is a long and deep history of the wealthy classes pitting the lower classes against each other in this very way, primarily by directing anger at the middle tiers from the lower, and a fomenting a sense of fear of the lower tiers in the middle.

I have checked out the income distribution in the US: you're way off. The typical software engineer has a total compensation less than $150k (pick any source: salary.com, indeed.com, etc.). The top 1% of salary is more than $350k in the lowest income states (https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/financial-advisor/a...).

> I stand in full solidarity with the Walmart lady. Lifting her up doesn't mean gettinf her into programming bootcamp though. Her rent is so sky high because all the insane tech worker compensation around her inflated housing costs.

You stand in solidarity with the top 5%, because you're contributing to their propaganda efforts. Housing costs are inflated primarily because collectively housing is in shortage--a condition the wealthy love to see because they're relatively insensitive to it (they don't live where we do) and it also serves their propaganda interests (see above), which you seem to have taken up with glee.

> There is a long and deep history of the wealthy classes pitting the lower classes against each other in this very way,

Considering yourself part of low class if you are a software engineer is the root issue here.

> primarily by directing anger at the middle tiers from the lower, and a fomenting a sense of fear of the lower tiers in the middle.

I'm not arguing that the effect you are describing doesn't exist. The point is that you are applying to the wrong part of society.

> I have checked out the income distribution in the US: you're way off.

"Way off" is not accurate. The income distribution is extremely steep at the top end. If 1% is at 350k the 150k is not far away. 2%? 3%? The page you linked doesn't load from where I am located. It's surely within the top 5% which you still ascribe to be the elite that's manipulating everybody. I'm doing the exact opposite of expressing support.

They do. Otherwise so many wouldn't do them. They might not last long time, but looking back past decade the environment was perfect on them.

Not that Meta didn't actually manage to scam add money out of companies.

Not when you’re the one getting scammed, and it was stated in the comment I replied to that employment is a scam, specifically:

> Isn’t the entire concept of employment meant to scam you out of more value for your labor than what you put in?

But yeah sure, if you’re the one scamming people then maybe you eat just fine. Not really the context though.

This whole meme needs to die. I'm so sick of reading "Piotr the factory worker spends an hour making a chair. Piotr is paid 5 roubles, but chair sells for 10! Piotr has been robbed of 5 roubles!" No, Piotr supplied one hour's labour, but not the training, raw materials, design, packaging, tools, workshop, electricity, financing, liability, insurance, accounting, management, marketing, shipping, or after-sales support. If the company is being run competently then the total cost will be less than the sale price, and the company will make a profit, but that doesn't mean the workers could produce the same value independent of the company. If they could, they wouldn't be working there.

The same argument goes for the shareholders whose capital value is increased by labor. Getting an unfair share is still being ripped off.

Marxists are insane. GDP per capita in my country is $71,000. Wages are $59,500 which means all other capital gains make up $11,500. A good chunk of that is non-business capital gains (like housing) which means capital is taking under 10%. But Marxists always act like you could double your wage if not for the greedy capitalists. That’s not true, do the math.

Ultimately it always comes down to a position of "private property is theft, except for mine of which I deserve more."

It's less about the self-serving approach which I've seen on rare occasion. It's more the complete inability to estimate magnitude effects. If you found a way to replace capital entirely but keep all the efficiency of price mechanisms you could maybe give people a 10% raise (but I bet whatever mechanism replaces price loses the entirety of that 10% due to inefficiency) but the average marxist will confidently tell people they could double their paycheque if the greedy capitalists weren't taking half.

GDP doesn’t include capital gains. Actually income and GDP should be equal if they are calculated correctly, so the 10% gap is probably just an accounting error.

As the other comment mentioned GDP per capita includes non-wage things like imputed rents and business profits so wages are not supposed to be equal to GDP per capita. You absolutely can use the difference between them to measure how much money goes to capital instead of labour.

Correct that it doesn't include capital gains, but it does include business profits... and in the long term those average out to be the same.

Similar to how it doesn't include housing appreciation, but does include imputed rent... in the long term rents and the cost of a house will track each other as well, just sometimes for even maybe a decade one surges ahead of the other.

The shareholder risks their capital