Dear Steve and Frank,
Since you two seem to have a mutual admiration club going, and nobody else, in public or the multitude of private email I got, fundamentally disagreed with me, I address the two of you together.
Steven seems to have a need to project a giant guilt-trip onto someone else here. Since I have never seen him resort to the name calling and slurs he has published this time, I presume this is indeed a hot button issue for him. That means has feels he has been accused, at least indirectly, before.
Now, I did not start out addressing Steven personally, so of course I was surprised by the range and nature of the ad hominem attack he launched at me.
Well, I guess I need to be the adult here.
#1 - You seem to think I am having a hard time personally, can't get a job, etc. 'Chuckie', 'Charlie', etc etc - the slothful American worker of your dreams. Well actually I'm employed as a contractor, and while not being too particular, Michelle and others are spot on about what some of us make. Some of us. Of course, for people like Steven the worst thing they can say about those who disagree with them is that they must be 'whining' losers. So they say it, having little in the way of self control, apparently.
#2 - I make this amount because I take several weeks off each year for classes and seminars, take classes constantly and self-train at night, on equipment and software and with conference expenses that costs me around 10-15 thousand a year. And I have always been in the top 1% of whatever I took on. Due mostly to a lucky birth. There are people who work harder.
I *choose* to spend time with my wife and be a human being and a citizen. If I wanted to do all this, and spend this much on my continuing education as one of Stevens lucky employees, and also have children who see their mother sometimes, and live in a 600K (average ranch house in Redwood Shores right now), I would be completely SOL. How many thousands per employee in training do you pay Steve? Or do you just wring them dry of current skills and then discard them?
#3 - You guys should break your arms patting yourselves on the back. If you were forced to make what your 80K programmer makes and live anywhere near SF or the Valley, you would be screaming about the injustice of it.
#4 - We do have a fairly free market in programmer wages now. Not so long ago, the (then) Big 8 consulting firms, together with the unions, the IRS, and one Senator Moynihan got IRS rule 1706 passed, which basically made it illegal to be a computer contractor (or consulting geologist.) After a few years, the IRS loosened up the rules so that contractor body shops and consultants with their own corporation could safely practice again, though the rule has never been rescinded. Currently, the employers and the contracting shops decide between them what nearly all 'contractors' make (90% of them, I bet), and that is a great deal less than you would think from the discussion here. Probably it averages 90K a year, on W2. I have my own company, which helps, but not when a consulting company can hire programmers from overseas at 20K a year, put them up two to a room in residence hotels, and charge the client 40 bucks an hour each. (Yes, I know specific examples. And if they quit they were shipped home.)
#5 - You guys seem to have lost the ability to do math. Senior COBOL programmers in 1965 could make in the 25-40K region. How much is that in today's money?
Typical valley family in 1966 - The man works, the wife doesn't. They have three kids, which the wife stays home for. They have a three or four bedroom house with nice neighbors, which they can easily afford the mortgage on. They have saving accounts for all their children's educations, and the children have good schools. The parents have adequate savings for retirement. The man's pension isn't the joke issued by tech companies today (or did you pay one at all, Steven.)
#6 - Most of the people I know have worked at multiple tech companies and have never struck it rich on options - either the company goes under or they get screwed by the owners or the venture capitalists during the need for some additional funding.
#7 - I shouldn't have to say this, but here goes: My wife is from overseas, most of my friends are from overseas, and many of them came over here to work in high tech. Once here, however, they have the same problems as any American with further dilution of their paychecks. That is why the *majority* of them support sensible immigration and job controls. Something the countries of their origin already have. Certainly many their countries would like some of the people they have educated to stay home and pay for their educations by doing a little work there first. The ones that aren't busy exporting their poverty.
#8 - My loyalties are to those people, and any other current United States resident who wants a better life. Frank and Steve are apparently loyal to their self-aggrandizing business class, which is international (as long as there are 8 year old Thai girls to assemble electronics and Nikes, eh, fellas?)
#9 - Exhorting people that make way less than you to save their pennies is a joke - but I guess you are too busy and frugal to buy a hard cover copy of Dickens, or you would know this? Reference Oliver Twist or any of the others sometime, boys. He's talking straight to you. ;-)
Im on the American public's side because I live here. If I lived in France I'd defend the French sovereignty and citizenry. If you are not loyal to your own neighbors, who are you loyal to? My neighbors, living in a mixed San Francisco neighborhood as I do, are mostly first generation imports. I'm loyal to them too, which is more than you can say, apparently. At least you have a lot that is bad to say or infer about American employees.
Please remember these are the people who actually invent or in some way create the products you profit from. You may manipulate them into generating a profit for you, but you are not the source of the good. They are.
Aside to Syborg - you're right, it's crazy to buy a house in The Valley right now - you can feel the tension in the bubble. But how many can really afford it? Only those households with no kids, no serious plans for kids, and two tech job incomes. Because the monthly nut is the entire take home pay of one of Steven's lucky employees. However, moving away from a place where you were born because the needs of folks like Steven demand that it be that way is no answer.
Cheers,
Chaz
"Working 60-plus hours a week in San Francisco, a truly wonderful city if you can afford it"
P.S. to Steve - I hope this provides a better model for polite debate that you can now emulate. I didn't know that millionaires became so thin-skinned and emotional!! Must be the stress of managing your money. |
