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Nine Out of Every 10 Silicon Valley Jobs Pays Less Than In 1997, Report Finds (mercurynews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Mercury News: Nine out of every 10 Silicon Valley jobs pays less now than when Netflix first launched in 1997, despite one of the nation's strongest economic booms and a historically low unemployment rate that outpaces the national average. While tech workers have thrived, employees in the middle of Silicon Valley's income ladder have been hit hardest as their inflation-adjusted wages declined between 12 and 14 percent over the past 20 years, according to a study from UC Santa Cruz's Everett Program for Technology and Social Change and the labor think tank Working Partnership USA, which examined the economic impact of technology companies.
Technology workers saw a median wage increase of 32 percent over the past 20 years, the study found. But Silicon Valley workers in virtually all other areas lost ground during that time. Across all jobs, wages for even the highest-paid 10 percent increased just under 1 percent, the study found. Meanwhile, the region's economy has been booming. Since 2001, the amount of money generated per Silicon Valley resident -- the area's per person GDP -- has grown 74 percent, the study found. That's more than five times faster than the equivalent national growth. Also, a smaller percentage of wealth is going to workers. "In 2001, about 64 percent of the money generated in Silicon Valley went to workers," reports Mercury News. "By 2016, that was down to 60 percent. The drop translated to $9.6 billion -- about $8,480 in potential pay and benefits per worker -- that instead went to investors and owners, according to the study."
Technology workers saw a median wage increase of 32 percent over the past 20 years, the study found. But Silicon Valley workers in virtually all other areas lost ground during that time. Across all jobs, wages for even the highest-paid 10 percent increased just under 1 percent, the study found. Meanwhile, the region's economy has been booming. Since 2001, the amount of money generated per Silicon Valley resident -- the area's per person GDP -- has grown 74 percent, the study found. That's more than five times faster than the equivalent national growth. Also, a smaller percentage of wealth is going to workers. "In 2001, about 64 percent of the money generated in Silicon Valley went to workers," reports Mercury News. "By 2016, that was down to 60 percent. The drop translated to $9.6 billion -- about $8,480 in potential pay and benefits per worker -- that instead went to investors and owners, according to the study."
Businesses were throwing wheel-barrels of money at Y2K conversions at that point.
Modern corporations continue to fester this flawed mentality that every employee is just a cog in the machine; if one breaks, replace it with another. But humans aren't machinery.
Not just modern companies. In a graduate software engineering class I took (mumble mumble) years ago we had a rather vigorous discussion about people versus process. That is, if you have a sufficiently sophisticated and well implemented process, do the people matter that much? And the reverse, if you have sufficiently excellent people, does the process matter that much?
Big companies seem to tilt heavily toward the process side, while small companies and especially start ups seem to tilt heavily toward the people side. Interestingly, start up that get big enough eventually succumb to the sirens of process over people.
Sadly, none of this is new, nor does it show any real signs of changing.
The big companies seem to be more like 80% (talking about developers, not employees). Not going to give my job history on slashdot, but one small company I worked at had, before I was hired, no native-born tech people of any kind, excepting the VP of development. At the time they got bought they had 30 US employees and about 100 in India (devs etc, not talking about support), and 2 of us were born in the US (plus one technical non-dev). The acquiring company forced out everyone senior who wasn't Indian in the most blatant racism I've yet seen. Even the Nepalese guy got pressured out.
In the large company I worked at before that the numebrs were about the same: 30/100 US/India split, with 2 US-born devs (plus 2 managers).
When I worked at Amazon (which was Seattle, not Silly Valley) our group of 50 or so needed 3 people who could get top secret clearance. Problem was, we only had 3 devs who were born in the US, and I wasn't interested. Amazingly, the "we're trying to recruit US citizens, we just can't find qualified people" hiring process suddenly found another 3 qualified US devs over the next 6 months. Amazing coincidence, really.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.