Maybe they oughta unionize. Lol.
this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2025
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Guess maybe coders needed a fucking union after all, who would have guessed that the "rockstar" programmer gravy train wouldn't last forever.
My union got me a raise. And I have a pension of all things. Crazy. In 2025!
Unions are great.
In software?
Yep!
Can you share the firm or the union representing? I'm curious if it's a viable place for me. 😄
Being pro union is being willing to take the risk in your own workplace.
Prospect in the UK
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Hey so just to be clear: a 200k comp package nowadays is the equivalent of about 81k in 1990.
Put another way: I am doing a good bit worse than my dad was at my age, despite being a pretty solid and experienced software engineer, with an EECS degree, and a lot of devops and system design experience.
This is the collapse of the American social contract. Even people like me who are ostensibly in “great” jobs are treated like code monkeys, and adjusted for inflation, it’s flat or worse than 30-35 years ago. We are doing worse than the generation before us. The American Dream is a nightmare.
Were people getting paid $81k in 1990? This site shows that 95th percentile in 1990 was $58k, and doesn't have more granular data than that above the 95th percentile. So someone making $81k was definitely a 5 percenter, maybe even a 2 percenter.
That site is talking about averages, assembly across the board. The person you’re talking to is explicitly talking about CS jobs, like software developer or system engineer.
You can’t really compare the two.
No, but it is a starting point for passing some kind of sanity check. Someone who was making $81k in 1990 was making an exceedingly high salary in the general population, and computer-related professions weren't exactly known for high salaries until maybe the 2000's.
[This report] (https://www.bls.gov/ocs/publications/pdf/white-collar-pay-private-goods-producing-industries-march-1990.pdf) has government statistics showing that in March 1990, entry level programmers were making on average about $27k. Senior programmers were making about $34k. Systems analysts (which I understand to have primarily been mainframe programmers in 1990) were making low 30s at the entry level and high 60s at the most senior level. Going up the management track, only the fourth and highest level was making above $80k, and it seems to me that those are going to be high level executives.
So yeah, $81k is a very senior level in the 1990s tech industry, probably significantly less common than today's $200k tech jobs.
This data to me didn’t show much in the way of by-field statistics. If we’re comparing software development pay at the naîssance of the field to today, it should be complicated to do so. I’d expect to look at top 5% at the very least because of how new and niche computing and coding in general was in the 90s.
You have to expect that OP, who is well established in his field, to compare accordingly, not with average pay of 1990.
You have to expect that OP, who is well established in his field, to compare accordingly, not with average pay of 1990.
I'm talking about a number that is 1.4x the 95th percentile generally. It'd be weird to assume that programmers were getting paid that much more than doctors and lawyers and bankers.
According to this survey series, median IEEE members were making about $58k (which was also the average for 35-year-olds in the survey. Electrical engineering is a closely related discipline to programming.
So yeah, an $81k salary was really, really high in 1990. I suspect the original comment was thinking of the 90's in general, and chose a salary from later in the decade while running the inflation numbers back to 1990, using the wrong conversion factor for inflation.
Edited to add: this Bureau of Labor Statistics publication summarizes salaries by several professions and experience levels as of March 1990. The most senior programmers were making around $34k, the most senior systems analysts were making about $69k, and the most senior managers, who could fairly be described as executives, were making about $88k.
I think it's the same in all developed nations; constantly needing more skills to achieve the same standard of living. I think a lot of it is from nearly all resources getting more expensive to extract (oil, wood, iron, etc) due to us having already extracted all the low-hanging-fruit, and needing to move on to more resource-intensive methods like offshore-drilling, fracking, importing lumber long distances from harsher climates. The other drivers are the attacks on labor and executives/shareholders taking more profits for themselves instead of paying their workers more.
Your last point is where I'm putting most of the blame. We're all doing worse because a few people at the top always, ALWAYS have to do better than last year.
Eternal growth is physically impossible. At some point, shit will have to stagnate, and if shit starts to stagnate, but the top still insists on eternal growth, they'll have to take some from the bottom. That's what's happening right now. The top can no longer keep making more money off of an industry in development, so instead they'll cut costs, costs being you, the worker, and hope they die before it all collapses under them.
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There never was a social contract, there never was anyone bound to look after your interest. That is why unions are the answer.
Unions are part of the social contract, its very simple. Those that have aren't too harsh on those who have less, or we drag them into the street and tear them limb from limb like wild animals. We're simply working through the various stages between complaints and dismemberment.
$165,000 tech jobs are still out there. Usually they require at least 10 years experience, or a masters in mathematics or data science.
Fresh out of school? Try a $48-64k job and get some experience.
Try a $48-64k job and get some experience.
Try renting an apartment in Silicon Valley with a $48k/year paycheck in your pocket.
The starting salaries justified the crazy cost-of-living in a city that wanted $5000/mo for 800 sqft. Now the question becomes how you afford to get the experience in a job that pays below the regional pricetag.
800 is fucking huge tho. Big city folk can easily fitinto 300 if living alone.
It's a modest bedroom, small living room, and a kitchen.
You can fit in a smaller space. I wouldn't say you can live in it. 300ft is barely a hotel room.
Most tech jobs are outside Silicon Valley. But I see your point, they need to pay cost of living. Its still technical work
I mean, its hardly unique to SV or to the Tech Sector broadly speaking. One of the biggest challenges I've seen down in Texas is teachers earning enough money to live in their (comparatively much cheaper than California) school districts.
But I gotta say, I was earning $48k back in 2006 way out in the Houston 'burbs and it was a tight squeeze. Nothing has improved. "Just earn less" doesn't work when you're bumping up against a bunch of landlords and lenders saying "Fuck you, pay me more".
I dont disagree. Yuck. Same salaries, different decade.
I actually made quite a bit more about 4 years ago, but took a downgrade in pay for less work. Worked out well for me. But I see a lot of people floundering right now. I know one person that's been out of a tech job for over a year and had to go back to manual labor after doing a ton of work in tech. At least he got paid unlike the poor saps that get unpaid internships.
Counter offer: Rent an apartment in Bumfuck, Flyover and work for a tech company.
It’s the only way I’ve been able to afford a house.
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Try a $48-64k job and get some experience.
Boomer out of touch take.
Damn. That'd be crazy if anyone was actually hiring anybody with no experience.
I know multiple group chats of people who graduated fresh from college, not even 20% of them have jobs a year after grad. And this is spread across comp sci, cybersecurity, and mech eng.
The entry level job is dead. Every company thinks they can replace the menial shit that entry level workers do to learn with AI slop.
counterpoint: I work in tech for a Fortune 500 and we still have interns and still hire intern classes and kids right out of college.
We just had an intern project showcase, some neat stuff.
We are working with AI but we aren’t stupid, we still need people.
Not in Silicon Valley.
Exact same thing here.
If you ignore any company related to “cloud” or “AI”, especially if you focus on tech jobs at companies outside the software industry, there’s still plenty of hiring fresh coders going on.
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What sucks is that was the starting wage when I got into the tech industry back in the early ‘00s
Yup. Entry level wages have stagnated while food and housing prices have skyrocketed.
It's weird that so many replies are attacking you when you are factually right. The industry has always been this way. And some kid with a GED and 3 years of CompSci from their community college is not going to land them a 165k dream job right after graduation.
I think some people have been living in a fantasy world or believed every headline they saw.
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Wait what? Who is making $165k out of college?
I don't even make $165k after working for... I don't know let's say 12 or 15 I can't keep track what counts anymore
Who is making $165k out of college?
Computer science and engineering grads at the top of their class at top schools who choose not to go to grad school. This thread claims to cite Department of Education data to show median salaries 3 years after graduation, and some of them are higher than $165k. Sure, that's 3 years out, but it's also median, so one would expect 75th or 90th percentile number to be higher.
Anecdotally, I know people from Stanford/MIT who did get their first jobs in the Bay Area for more than $150k more than 10 years ago, so it was definitely possible.
But this NYT article has stories about graduates from Purdue, Oregon State, and Georgetown which are good schools but also generally weren't the schools producing many graduates landing in those $150k jobs as that very top tier. I would assume the kids graduating from Cal Tech, MIT, Stanford, and UC Berkeley are still doing well. But the middle is getting left behind.
Big tech in HCOL areas (Seattle, all of Cali, etc.) pay new grads about 100k to 150k base, with a hefty sign on bonus (anywhere from 20k to 50k). RSUs usually only vest about 5 to 10% of their total stock in the first year, but thats about 5k to 10k
Of course HCOL means this money is relatively less than it seems, but still a lot for new grads.
I never came even close with 25 years under my belt.
My mother won't answer me what her salary was when she retired. Easily in the industry for 30-40 years, but I know it was under $200k. Granted she was an electrical engineer before getting her masters in computer science, but I also suspect it has to do with the fact that she and I didn't work for the big tech giants.
And I have no interest in doing so.
I mean I did not work for a tech giant but not like I would not have taken one but yeah I was not looking for work in new york or san fran.
Some big tech companies pay that, theoretically, in total compensation for entry level. These companies make about $1 million per employee.
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My brother in law got fucked by this. Smart kid and beloved by his boss, company folded and now works at a fucking dominos.
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The industry went to shit after non-nerdy people found out there could be a lot of money in tech. Used to be full of other people like me and I really liked it. Now it’s full of people who are equally as enthused about it as they would be to become lawyers or doctors.
Those offers for new grads were always insane and never going to last. That was entirely a sign of the zero interest rate bubble during covid.
I remember this same article decades ago during the late 90's and early 2000's.
So, life of a humanities major like my wife. Actually, most majors that weren't STEM.
If it helps anyone in this situation, you can try to bank on other skills. My wife is doing great now but got her start because of her bilingualism, and even that was only 35k a year. My sister did a little better with her music degree by pivoting to community manager, although in her case she had experience modding for a well known streamer. That was pretty good money right out the gate.
Point is, programming isn't your everything, even if you're leveraging something from your personal life.
How about $165k guillotine operators?
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