[Rant] Most Software Engineers are Grossly Overpaid...
Let's face it. Indian tech ecosystem is living in a bubble. A big overinflated bubble of ridiculous salaries and perks. And it's about time someone popped it.
Here's the cold, hard truth: the vast majority of you are not nearly as valuable or irreplaceable as you think you are. You're not solving world hunger or curing cancer. You're mostly just gluing libraries together and calling yourself an "engineer."
Here's what my friend in the US was telling me:
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Your skills are becoming commoditized. With the rise of no-code/low-code platforms and AI code generation, the bar for entry is getting lower every day. Soon, a trained monkey could do what most of us do.
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You're not special. Sorry to burst your bubble, but knowing how to center a div or implement a binary search doesn't make you a genius. It just means you paid attention in your CS classes or watched Abdul Bari YouTube tutorials.
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The value you create is questionable. How many of you are working on a payment aggregator, food tech or a slightly different shade of AI wrapper? Are you really making the world a better place, or just boosting the pockets of VCs?
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You are probably terrible at estimating your own worth. Just because some FAANG companies are willing to throw insane amount of money at you doesn't mean you're actually worth it. It's a game of musical chairs, and the music's about to stop.
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Your ego is out of control. The "100x developer" mentality has gone to your head. You demand ridiculous perks, flexible hours, and the ability to work in your stupid shorts, all while looking down on other professions.
It's time for a reality check. You need to humble ourselves.
Does it make sense to you? Try not to cry on your mechanical keyboard while typing your response.
Lol, what a inexperienced take.
When you handle Millions of data transactions on daily basis, and a single code bug can corrupt all of that data and $hit gets real. That time you will realise why swes are paid heavy for their skills and focus to AVOID such mess up.
Go hire for 10k per month salary and see how employees will not give a $hit about the job and how company goes down the drain by lossing customers due to pathetic product.
Go work for real software company unlike these GS like banks.
Yes we are not solving world hunger, but as long as each one of us are feeding our family and taking care of them, that's more than enough.
It's pretty insane when these JPMC and GS ninjas talk about no real world problem solving while raising a PR on legacy code that was written back in 2012.
Do not agree at all. You people are horrified looking at indian salaries. Thats all it is.
Yes even I have seen people from US getting their mouth open when they hear about salary range in India. They think they can also come here and get that salary and settle their life.
Getting into FAANG is way easier in US compared to India. Here it’s like IIT-JEE all over again. Those US people coming back to India will face a brutal reality when they try to get into a good company.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but knowing how to center a div or implement a binary search doesn't make you a genius. It just means you paid attention in your CS classes or watched Abdul Bari YouTube tutorials.
If this is your understanding of software engineering, I feel bad for you.
Nice hidden promotion btw. Like it.
Here's the cold, hard truth: Solving world hunger or curing cancer is a very low paying job/equivalent of volunteering.
Real businesses that create real economic value are able to employ and pay people salaries. That's the one and only truth.
I'd really wanna know your (GS employee) take on engineered financial instruments, quants writing models to outperform markets by 0.1% , and setting up infra to get info 1/10000th of a second earlier.
But it'll probably be as shitty as your take on software engineering, so please ignore.
Looks like developing internal tools at GS isn’t satisfying your ego enough, try joining a good startup with an impactful product or a big tech