> Most employees in the tech union receive pay of more than $100,000, and average compensation, including bonus and restricted stock units, is $190,000, according to a Times spokeswoman. That figure is an average of $40,000 more than members of the Times’s journalist union, she said.
> Times leaders have also bristled at the nature of some of the guild’s requests. The union previously sought a requirement that the company use unscented cleaning supplies and offer a pet bereavement policy that included a leave of up to seven days, though it has since backed down from those demands.
When I see people critique those numbers as being “too high”, or demands for additional compensation “unreasonable”, I can’t help but think those people don’t understand that $100k is very much the new $45k of the 2000s, and has much less purchasing power than the latter did at the time.
Truth be told, for the present cost of living in the Northeast in general, you’re looking at a family income of $300k to be “comfortable”, or a single base income of $200k. That’s if you want to buy a new car (of which the bulk cost more than $50k), a starter home that doesn’t need major repairs ($800k+), and still have some money left over to save for retirement; in cities like NYC and Boston, you’re easily looking at $250k single/$400k couple for a “Middle Class” existence.
The brutal reality is that everyone who has to work to survive is grossly underpaid relative to the current cost of living. To ignore this fact (or worse, try to compartmentalize it or limit its scope to a reduced “other” category) endangers both the economy and the state.
>I can’t help but think those people don’t understand that $100k is very much the new $45k of the 2000s, and has much less purchasing power than the latter did at the time.
False. $45k in 2005 is only $73k today, when adjusted for inflation[1]. Even if you use the most generous interpretation of "2000s" to mean 2000, that's only $82k.
The more I stare at this the more I think that using official inflation numbers / using the official CPI is wrong -- these baskets combine recreation and technology being nearly -50% (TVs can be had today for $300, whereas they used to cost $500 in 1995 dollars), assume you only buy new cars (only up ~25% since 2000, but used cars are now almost as expensive as new whereas they used to be available for half the price or less), and underweight housing (basically doubled since 2000, worse if you need to move to a HCOL major urban center for employment).
If you are a healthy person living frugally then I think the inflation in your personal basket of goods is actually higher than the fed numbers would dictate (esp for rent and housing).
>these baskets combine recreation and technology being nearly -50% (TVs can be had today for $300, whereas they used to cost $500 in 1995 dollars),
The entire "Recreation commodities" category (which includes other stuff like "Sporting goods" and "Pets and pet products") is only weighed at 2%, compared to 13% for food and 37% for shelter. Even if it's down 50% the impact on the overall CPI is negligible.
>assume you only buy new cars (only up ~25% since 2000, but used cars are now almost as expensive as new whereas they used to be available for half the price or less),
???
There's clearly a "Used cars and trucks" category.
>and underweight housing (basically doubled since 2000, worse if you need to move to a HCOL major urban center for employment).
The index is called "Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers", not "Consumer Price Index for Young Urban Professionals". Not everyone is a recent graduate who recently moved into a high COL city and paying for a market rate apartment. For every person fitting that criteria, there's probably also a retiree who owns their house and/or lives in a rent controlled apartment.
> The index is called "Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers", not "Consumer Price Index for Young Urban Professionals". Not everyone is a recent graduate who recently moved into a high COL city and paying for a market rate apartment.
The discussion here is about the cost of living difference for tech workers who I assume are clustered around NYC.
$45K in NYC in 2005 is not equivalent to $73K today for most such people. It is likely closer to $100K today, as the above poster said.
that's a pretty localized in time issue re: used cars. There's still covid supply issues being felt in the downstream used market as a result of underproduction for 2+ years.
This doesn't account for the fact that cost of living doesn't rise at the same rate everywhere. You can't just use national statistics for this. It's entirely possible that in NYC the cost of living went up more than 2x since the 2000s.
The same is also true if you use 2005 or 2009 as your start date. I agree there is variance in theory, but in practice it has been about the same as the national.
>and making everything in the “basket of goods” worse.
Given that food, energy, and shelter makes up the bulk of the CPI, I'm not sure how this can be done. The most plausible thing I can think of is "food is less nutritious than before", but I doubt that's an actual factor. "Food is getting less nutritious so I'm forced to shop at whole foods" isn't exactly a popular sentiment.
The first is you're using the Nationwide averages as opposed to the regional numbers for New York where a lot of these increases are much greater than on the nation.
The second thing is the way it includes housing is by using a thing called the owners imputed rent. And what that does is it tries to back out the rental from a housing unit. The problem is in New York City rent has been rising way faster than that.
30 is the cpi's consistently underestimated a number of its own provisions because of the way it does hedonics and substitution. It basically says that while meat might have risen 50% people switch to fish now and it uses in lower value for inflation.
The CPI over the last 30 years have been so massively game it's almost useless anymore
>The first is you're using the Nationwide averages as opposed to the regional numbers for New York where a lot of these increases are much greater than on the nation.
Another commenter has pointed out new york house prices actually rose slower compared to the rest of the country.
>The second thing is the way it includes housing is by using a thing called the owners imputed rent. And what that does is it tries to back out the rental from a housing unit. The problem is in New York City rent has been rising way faster than that.
Most Americans own their home. OER might not be perfect, but pretending that they pay market rent doesn't make much sense either. Even for people who don't own their home, new york has rent control, which provides similar inflation protections compared to owning a home.
>30 is the cpi's consistently underestimated a number of its own provisions because of the way it does hedonics and substitution. It basically says that while meat might have risen 50% people switch to fish now and it uses in lower value for inflation.
The part about hedonic adjustment is misleading. While it's true that such adjustments are used. It's only used for small minority of categories (basically clothes and technology), and doesn't include stuff like food (like in your example).
Meanwhile the part about substitution is straight up false:
Read that link. The BLS says "yes we try to adjust for the substitution, but really we are trying to calculate a basic level of satisfaction:
> In January 1999, the BLS began using a geometric mean formula in the CPI that reflects the fact that consumers shift their purchases toward products that have fallen in relative price. [It continues by saying it allows substitution withing categories and not between categories.]
This is exactly what I was saying. It has become a cost of living index, not a measure of inflation anymore. The hedonic adjustments can be laughably hand-wavy (it is a very difficult problem on how you measure inflation when using CPUs -- the real answer is you shouldn't and CPI's basked is a bad bad way to do it). That FAQ is always pretty funny and defensive (a lot of "give us a break -- it doesn't really affect anything much").
> Even for people who don't own their home, new york has rent control, which provides similar inflation protections compared to owning a home.
This is one of the huge issues. (1) Not sure if you live near NYC, but ask any new yorker about how much rent control has helped -- the answer is usually pretty low. don't have a heart attack looking at this rental rise in the last 5 years https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/spotlight-new-york-citys...
However that isn't the important part - rent control shouldn't effect measures of inflation -- this is precisely why CPI is bad. You can't legislate away inflation, you mere push the money around and prices rise asymmetrically but you still have the fundamental issue that CPI no longer even tries to measure -- too many dollas chasing too few goods. So you stop some of using those dollars on housing -- they just bid of something else instead.
CPI is a terrible horrible very bad measure of inflation. Its been that way since the 70s at least when the concept was turned on its head.
These are NYC tech workers. "Food" isn't broccoli beef stir fry at home for $8. It's dinner at Del Frisco's for $300.
You need to understand that when people bitch about the "cost of living", they're not speaking in broad terms. They're speaking in specific terms, inclusive of their insane budgetary choices that they believe are mandatory to be seen as high-status.
Yes, you can live just fine on the median income. But in order to have your ego stroked as the super important high class person that you obviously are, you have to spend some money. Choosing to live in NYC in the first place is certainly part of that, the rest is just gravy.
Can we stick to stats over caricatures? If we’re going to go by “gut feel,” the stereotype is that the status climbers primarily go into finance, consulting, medicine, and law - not engineering.
My work at FAANG and FAANG-adjacent companies would suggest that it’s far more probable that a random e.g. finance professional is driven primarily by perceived status than a software engineer.
The media and general public still openly poke fun at tech titans like Mark Zuckerberg and even Jeff Bezos in a way that they would never do to e.g. Jamie Dimon. The perceived statuses are still incomparable, and I think any competent Gen Zer knows it.
How about medical appointments with nurses instead of doctors?
I wonder if there is a similar measure for time kids spend in school. My kid comes home early every Wednesday, and there’s are ~15 other early dismissal days during the school year too.
I would bet almost everything that relies heavily on labor has been increasing in price faster than official figures for the basket of all goods and services.
"Food" listed in there is not food at all. Thats some cheap filler that isn't really affected by inflation that much because of its just cheap garbage subsided by govt.
Look at the junk in this section for exampe
> Cereals and bakery products
And ofcourse all the items in fruits and vegetables had the highest inflation.
>And ofcourse all the items in fruits and vegetables had the highest inflation.
A simple check shows this is false. The "Cereals and bakery products" category went up by 28.6% since January 2020, compared to 17.9% for "Fruits and Vegetables". You get similar conclusions if you use compare against January 2005.
I had a feeling someone would dredge up a basic calculator and make this argument.
The problem with your retort is it ignores the very context I outlined above. The present rate of inflation appears more manageable, but because most of it is driven by absurd inflation in shelter and transport costs (homes and cars), those two areas are starkly higher than inflation overall - as much as 50% or more, in some metros.
So while your napkin math makes for a good soundbite, the reality is that it just hides the complex truth of inflation. So yes, while $45k might be inflation-equivalent to $73k today, that purchasing power is significantly different. $43k in the 2000s could buy you a starter home in most states, albeit not in most metros; nowadays, $73k can’t even cover basic necessities in many states and all metros, not without significant sacrifices.
The thing you always need to keep in mind about CPI is that it’s a weighted average for the ENTIRE COUNTRY. Like, retirees in Florida who own their own homes have a very different relationship with prices than young renters in NYC. It really only makes sense to use CPI and other inflation figures when you’re talking about the whole country.
No one cares that they can buy a 4k TV for $400. We want healthy food that we can regularly afford. That costs $400 a week for a family. These government indexes are incredibly warped.
If you assume a family of four with both children aged 9-11 and the parents a male and a female aged 19-50, the USDA says [0] it costs only $250.10 with a low-cost plan, $314.90 with a moderate-cost plan and $380 with a liberal plan. All three of these plans each support "a healthy diet through nutritious meals and snacks at home" [1] and would cover everything -- no restaurant budget required.
As in "people feel as though they want to be paid more"? You may find the idea interesting and resonant, but how does that affect anything? It's still true that they're on more than journalists, regardless of how they feel.
Yes, of course. Within their choices, everyone does what they want. But that's not something worth bringing into a discussion, unless we bring it into every discussion as a point to note every time before continuing with the actual discussion.
But, isn't that the discussion? That is, why would someone earning 100k feel that it's not enough, when all economic comparisons, with peers or peer-adjacents, insist that it's a load of money? Maybe it is, and maybe it's not; but if you go on strike you're probably not convinced by what the Fed, the DOL, and HN say.
Do you think people should be compensated more because they feel poorer, regardless of the actual costs of living...? As an avid Scanlon reader I personally think you're misrepresenting her position
Nope, I don't have a particular view on what would be adequate compensation, although I'm reflexively with labor. But it might get to the heart of why people do what they do. Why go on strike when the math says you're being payed above average on a nationwide basis? People are funny that way. Very few are calculators, they're just people.
I reckon people want to be paid as much as they can bargain for, regardless of their relative income level. Besides, it's not just about pay, it's often about working conditions.
Yes, and double yes. How these people view (feel about) their working conditions is more important to them than any explanation of why they ought to, or ought not to, feel that way based on some measure of comparative economics or conditions. If they want, for whatever reason (either allergy or solidarity), a scent-free cleaning product and they're willing to strike for it; well, why not? It's a political negotiation, a bargaining. That's sensible to me. Everything is people and politics. It might be justified by math, but it's not driven by it.
Of course, but I think people do (and should) bargain for as much as they can get. I don't think it should be motivated by and only when workers "feel bad" about the economy necessarily.
measures of core inflation that sites like this use leave out many things that massively impact purchasing power - namely food, fuel, and interest rates. When factoring these in, the gp comment is quite reasonable, as those costs have soared in the last 20 years for the typical household.
And median wage in NYC is $74k (according to Google). Sure, Manhattan is different, tech salaries are different, etc. I'm not claiming that these specific workers should/shouldn't be paid more, just that it's really tone-deaf to claim that you can't live on <$100k, when more than half of New Yorkers do.
I'm curious about what portion of those that are living on $74k or less are doing so solo, and how many are only able to do so by racking up debt / getting support from family / etc.
I live in an area less expensive than NYC and, at least anecdotally in my circles, if you don't have a partner (or other assistance like roommates, parents, or something along those lines) it seems pretty damn rough to get by on ~70k.
I have a good job in the Bay Area, and I spend 4K a month. Of course if I were a family, there is no way I could support a wife in 4K a month but that is rare anyway. If she were working too, I could surely support a child in 6k a month. At this cost my life includes:
1. A Tesla Model 3, on which I spend 1k a month with insurance
2. 1.5k rent for a studio in a good safe location with utilities
3. Rest on groceries, eating out movies etc.
If I decided to get a cheap car, I could easily have 600$ or more to spend on housing etc.
So it would be tight but as a single 20s male, I would make it with 50k a year after taxes. Everything else just goes into savings. I think people have lavish tastes, or no control over their spending if they can’t make do with 70k a year after taxes.
>if they can’t make do with 70k a year after taxes
I don't think the median income is after taxes, is it? That would be more reasonable, for sure. My comment was made in reference to friends who make $70k/yr before taxes.
// 2. 1.5k rent for a studio in a good safe location with utilities
I actually can't think of an EU Capital where that's achievable anymore, bar possibly the socialist outlier of Vienna. In Dublin a good studio is at least 2k, and you'll pay 52% tax on earnings over €70k as well...
It's all about rent. If you've lived somewhere a while and have rent control, or you have roommates, or an unorthodox living situation (e.g. no kitchen), or can find a below-market unit, or some combination of those, you can survive on FAR less than someone who is moving to the city today and signing a new lease on a market-rate 1-bedroom apartment.
Sometimes it's like a half fridge and a two burner electric stove. Maybe you have an air fryer. Maybe you just microwave a lot of stuff. Or do like I do, eat a lot of simple uncooked meals, like fresh fruits and veggies, nuts, smoked fish, cheese, etc. I'm constantly amazed at how so many people assume everyone must eat exactly like they do.
I'm amazed when someone assumes others must eat out every meal if they don't have the ability to broil a roast in their home. Though I shouldn't be amazed - the inability of people to understand lives that work differently then their own seems widespread.
Nah this is just false. I'm a founder and pay myself less than our employees, 70k does just fine. I define just fine as 'enough so you don't have to be distracted by coupon clipping for daily necessities, and can still travel on trips and buy splurge purchases like a fancy rice cooker or designer couch or fancy cocktails.'
I live alone in a 2br. I don't have assistance from family or a partner.
Now, I do not live in a luxury building, and I am not building up a nest egg from my salary. And I rent. But when people think about the costs of NYC, a lot of people forget that you don't need a car, car insurance, or gas.
Where you get into trouble is if you're paying a stupid large amount for rent. It is very possible to pay 1-2k / month in rent. Most people who move to the city at that budget live with roommates initially, but most find a really good deal, sometimes rent controlled, organically through networks after a year or two of living here. Deals are hard to find as they should be, but certainly exist, and most longterm locals have a great deal.
[on a salary of 70k] “I am not building up a nest egg from my salary”
You are robbing from your future to live in the present.
This might be ok for you specifically as you are making a gamble on your ownership of the startup paying off. Perhaps you have a family safety net. Or Perhaps you are ok with taking the risk that you don’t have enough money in your older years.
It’s not really ok for standard employees to live that way. The USA social contract is that each person must self-fund their own retirement. Deferring that savings to “later” has truly staggering costs in compound-interest-years lost.
I didn't make any claims other than saying that in my circles I see some of my friends and colleagues have trouble making it by on $70k. I'm not sure how you would be able to tell me that I'm wrong about that. I'm happy that you are able to make it on $70k, though.
>I didn't make any claims other than saying that in my circles I see some of my friends and colleagues have trouble making it by on $70k. I'm not sure how you would be able to tell me that I'm wrong about that.
Okay, then let's make this rigorous.
Falsifiable Claim: People live a life of struggle on 70k a year in new york, where struggle is defined by constant worries of physiological needs, safety, and security, as categorized in Manslow's hierarchy of needs. https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html
Falsified by counterexample.
QED.
For a lot of people, they may mean 'struggle' in the sense of living below where they want to be, which is relative. Maslow's hierarchy is helpful to categorize.
I personally could live off less than €1k/month for everything, before buying a house that reduced my costs by around €400/month.
Just because it's possible, doesn't mean most are willing to take the set of preferences in my head that allows me to be so cheap and rewire their own brains like that.
"Official" inflation numbers are fraudulent and have always been. Real life situations is what matters, because we're dealing with real people.
The Soviet Union "officially" had the highest production of food per capita in the world, yet they had to import food. Because you cannot eat government statistics.
Does that account for increased housing prices? It probably doesn't, because housing prices (cash price, per the fed) more than doubled since 2005: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYSTHPI
If you did a 30 second search, you'd see it's factored into the CPI, with "Shelter" (which further breaks down into rent and owners' equivalent rent) making up 36% of the CPI basket.
One possible issue is that the largest component (27% out of 26%) is `OER`, which can be detached from reality.
Unless owners are completely in the loop in terms of the rental market (which they likely are not, they don't rent), they may not come up with good estimates for what an equivalent rent would be.
Yes, it's in there. But also, IMO, oer is a dreadful metric. It's very laggy, and more opinionated that it ought to be. Rent is rent, but oer seems neither fish nor fowl. It's a wild survey guess that's off by 6 months.
I meant the original source, the inflation calculator site. Anyway, thanks for the figures. House prices more than doubled but I guess other things must have become cheaper to compensate.
House prices aren't part of the CPI, but housing (ie. rent and owners' equivalent rent) is. The former is an investment but the latter is the thing you actually consume.
Purchasing power is part of the equation. Part of the dispute is about mandating that workers come into the office at least part time, which basically means living in a high-cost area.
However, journalism in general is a struggling business, which will probably push wages down on average across the profession.
Double however, the NYT has been doing really well at adapting to the modern media landscape and currently has record subscribers and profits [0], so I can see why the union thought it would be a good time to play hardball.
Triple however, I'd quibble a bit with your numbers, even if I think the overall point is well taken. It might be hard to live on the UES on 100K. It's not so hard to live by the Cortelyou stop in Brooklyn or in Sunset Park, both lovely areas.
Funny enough that it’s always “too high” for non executives but executive pay is never policed and any attempts to do so are met with fierce resistance.
Which reminds me of another thing. A good friend of mine is currently getting their MBA from a fairly well regarded school. One thing they recently learned about is structuring compensation. The general adage is that whatever you pay an employee must be in reflection of the multiple you get back from that employee. For example a ratio of 5:1 would be for every 1 dollar you pay you get 5 back.
When you start thinking about it like that, you realize just how underpaid people are. So many companies - in fact the vast majority - it’s much higher, in tech for example it’s usually around 10:1 and often as high as 25:1 or more.
This makes it much more straightforward in understanding things and the power imbalance when thinking about it like this
It is interesting that the person you're replying to used the compensation numbers for other guild employees rather than executives. I wonder why they made that decision
Seems like obfuscation. I doubt the NYT guild is striking to take money away from the lesser group, but instead to negotiate better working conditions and potentially a bigger slice of the profits pie for their workers, as would be their right.
Well executives are few and non-executives are many. So total outgoing money is more as per accounting department. Nothing funny or conspiratorial here.
> A good friend of mine is currently getting their MBA from a fairly well regarded school...
Let that good friend of yours get actual job in some non-superlative companies like Wall street banks or FAANG. They will learn how their fantastical ratios of 5:1, 10:1, or 25:1 work in real life.
> ... you realize just how underpaid people are...
If that were true those 100s of thousands companies be making enormous unheard of profits. But that doesn't seem to be happening.
>Well executives are few and non-executives are many. So total outgoing money is more as per accounting department. Nothing funny or conspiratorial here.
This means nothing. Its a red herring. The fact is executives are paid outsized to the rest of a company typically, certainly when you look at companies of size like Google, Microsoft or even Intel or Nvidia (and so it goes down the chain really), and I really question the value of most executives, as they tend not to like being scrutinized by outside parties, especially within their own organizations, but the reverse is untrue. They really seem to hate accountability but sure love getting the board to rubber stamp golden parachutes and big bonuses for themselves
If a corporation can find 350 million dollars to pay out in executive bonuses salaries etc. I'm certain than is an allocation problem not a money problem.
>If that were true those 100s of thousands companies be making enormous unheard of profits. But that doesn't seem to be happening.
>Let that good friend of yours get actual job in some non-superlative companies like Wall street banks or FAANG. They will learn how their fantastical ratios of 5:1, 10:1, or 25:1 work in real life.
They have one, I'm declining to use identifying information. The largest bonuses and salaries funnel upward, its no secret, with huge executive (and to be clear, I'm bundling VPs and SVPs in this) getting hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in bonuses that those below them see a fraction of.
Like profits being at record highs last year?[0] and thats just 5 seconds of running a search.
Not mention we are talking ratios here. So just because some SMBs aren’t taking in millions doesn’t mean the ratio is any less true
The value an employee creates is a function not only of their labor but also the *lever they are given by the company* It's amazing how often I see this asinine argument that assumes an employee is generating value in a vacuum.
Labor compensation is determined primarily by substitutability. A $200K engineer creating "$1M worth of value" is not automatically deserving of a higher wage unless there is no one else willing to do that engineer's job for $200K.
The business doesn’t really function without someone actually producing the work. Please tell me why executives are so much more entitled to profits than the people down the chain?
I’m not saying don’t people pay well but the executives - non executive power balance is huge and I don’t see how a person can deny this.
Materially executives are also rarely helped accountable for their terrible decisions or layoffs would actually be laid at their feet.
Labor market imbalances of power are well documented and easily discoverable. It’s really plain at this point that material productivity gains have almost entirely been funneled to the top, with workers benefitting very little. Wages have not kept pace with productivity gains since the 1970s, even if you include the recent blip of wage increases they aren’t meaningful in the grand scheme of things.
I don’t know why we just accept these as truths or whatever cause they don’t have to be
None of what you said is relevant to the core point that labor compensation is determined primarily by substitutability. As for why we "accept" that, it's because it makes rational sense. Why would anyone offer more to someone to do what someone else will do for less?
In your fictional utopia, you would need practically every single company in the world to agree to pay labor in excess of the rate dictated by market forces. Any company that deviates from that would have a considerable competitive advantage and quickly usurp its market. This is so categorically obvious that I hesitate to call it economics. It's not even just human nature. This is so self-evident that it may very well be a bedrock principle of sentience.
So what, if it costs you 300k to be comfortable then you are being suckered. When people are struggling to make it by on $30 and $40k and see these privileged propagandists complain about making six figures, no one has sympathy.
Sorry, I don't see a valid point in any of these salary arguments. In fact, they're down right insulting and ignorant.
I did strenuous manual labor for next to nothing once upon a time. After about 8 years of that, on top of regular 60 hour work weeks, I spent almost every waking moment of 4-5 years to learn and better myself with about every sacrifice you could imagine short of divorce. I'm now making significantly more and working much less with an extremely happy family.
I'm not some trust fund kid. I have a high school education. My father worked 3-5 jobs to provide for my family growing up. So if you haven't picked it up, I know what the other side looks like.
I work in tech now, I wouldn't even reply to a recruiter presenting a 190k job offer if it meant living in New York. I can get more working remote. It's not because I'm spoiled, it's not because I make bad financial decisions, it's because I know my value and won't compromise and I sure won't reduce my family's quality of life because some multi million dollar company wants to short change me.
I get paid fairly for my experience and what I bring to the table, I make sure of that. If my employer isn't matching what I know I can get on the market, I will first negotiate (which is right where the NYT Tech workers are at), then leave for greener pastures if that falls through. I can do that because I worked hard to bring more value to myself in an in demand field.
I'm sorry if you're making a lower salary, but that doesn't mean everyone should just take what they're given. That's how people are exploited.
These arguments aren't just wrong. They are backwards and self limiting.
There are many commenters that talk past each other given the emotionally charged topics of unions, pay, negotiations, etc. I think this is one of them.
What I read from parent is that lifestyle inflation must be high in some of these demographics when the rhetoric used is about survival, despite evidence of many more people 'surviving' on far less income.
What I read from you is that you fiercely maintain negotiating power because you can and feel it's only right given your high value. Why WOULD anyone leave money on the table, after all?
I called out my high value solely because I fall into the "privileged propagandist" rhetoric the comment I responded to and some other siblings are pushing.
Yes, the notion you need 300k to be comfortable anywhere is absurd, but just because someone makes more doesn't mean their desire to achieve a better quality of life is any less valid than anyone else. Do people with higher salaries need more? No. But why assume that just because an individual or group of people want a better quality of life they're "privileged?"
FTR, 100k as a average base salary is pretty low for tech in NYC. When the other 90k is bonus and RSUs that probably vest over 4 years, the stock has fluctuated 50%, and this being the journalism space, I wouldn't expect to see the full value. They have every right to try to negotiate better quality of life improvements out of NYT, especially for something as low impact on revenue as pet bereavement, as ridiculous as that is. I feel a lot of these comments don't understand tech compensation, where sometimes companies can't meet market value in cash so resort to all kinds of quirky benefits to attract/retain skilled workers. That is exactly where I see such a crazy request coming from when a company pushes back against giving more than a 2% annual raise.
You're "value" is entirely subjective and based on imaginary nonsense. Machine learning engineers making $500k are certainly not worth $500k just because its a hot trend right now. Gucci, Louis Vouton, etc, high fashion items are most certain not worth their price tags, much like diamonds. Eggs at Erawan aren't any different than likewise organic eggs elsewhere and are only $30 because someone decided they could rip off rich people and rich morons happily swallow it hook line and sinker. Value is entirely subjective and only quantifiable in the most abstract, opinionated manner and the richer people are the more often they are terrible at discerning any actual or reasonable value out of something.
If you think it's reasonable to pay exorbitant rent, food, gas, utilities, simply because you live in some concrete jungle then you are blind. It doesn't justify you actually deserving to make that much other than someone choosing to pay you that much.
Just because you can't be comfortable in a used car with a fixer upper home doesn't mean other people can't be. You're talking about your preferences like they're a bare minimum and they're not. Plenty of people live perfectly comfortable lives without those luxuries.
Careful with those assumptions. I drive a 16-year old used Honda and have already set aside cash for necessary home repairs when I finally buy a place. However, I do refuse to spend half a million dollars on an uncared-for shithole that hasn’t been renovated or repaired since the 60s; I have standards, and one of them involves not paying inflated rates for someone else’s crap, especially when doing so also eradicates my budget for repairs and maintenance.
You’re right that personal standards, subjective as they are, can make an argument highly misleading. However, you’d be careful not to make the mistaken assumption that your personal standards are the norm, either.
I’m seeing a lot of “you’re wrong, no sympathy for anyone over $100k” responses to my argument here, all of them making the same assumptions: that anyone making that much dosh must obviously be whinging about paying more for their Maserati or unable to afford rent on that high-rise condo anymore. Everyone is extrapolating some false narrative despite overwhelming evidence that even the most highly-paid among us are getting squeezed out of the housing market or struggling to make ends meet, and that’s exactly what the powers that be (people who don’t have to work to live, because they have all the money) want us to devolve into.
At the end of the day, there’s exactly two groups: those who must work to survive, and those who don’t need to due to immense wealth. Statistically speaking, you’re never going to be the latter, so you should be just as concerned about “highly paid” workers struggling to make ends meet as you are “low-skilled” workers, because we’re all workers.
Interesting that you didn't address the demands over pet bereavement and the scents of cleaning supplies. It makes sense that you chose to, of course. It's these types of demands that give away the underlying absurdity of these unions and their demands.
> grossly underpaid relative to the current cost of living
This is just very, very out of touch. The vast majority of the world lives just fine on far, far less than what the median worker at NYT currently makes.
And yet, remote work alone is not the solution to this issue. For those of us unable to drive, we must live in expensive cities with comprehensive mass transit systems if we want a decent quality of life and opportunities. For those of us who are LGBTQ+, we might not have the safety or support structures to thrive in different states. For those with chronic health issues, living in states with better patient protection laws or healthcare subsidies may be a necessity, driving up our costs on housing or transport to ensure our survival.
This is a global problem, and it requires solutions at all levels. Remote work is amazing, and I 100% support it (and exist on hybrid despite being in a major metro), but we need more on a local, state, and federal level as well. Heck, it’s so bad that we can’t even blame a singular or group of enployers anymore: the system is broken, and desperately needs updating so it can work again.
It is an immediately available solution for most if not almost all white collar workers. COVID was proof that it worked. However, the incentives and goals are not aligned with both employers and local governments.
And it's the uneven propagation of price information through the popular consciousness that makes inflation so insidious. You're absolutely right: a lot of people are calibrated on 2010 prices for income despite 2024 prices for expenses.
I will unashamedly admit I was one of those people until recently. When I got into the housing market, I thought $650k for a turnkey property fit for four adults would be sufficient, with another $70k set aside for repairs and projects (HVAC, oil tank removal, etc).
Turns out I was wrong, and my failure to adapt my standards has likely cost me an opportunity to own a home sans a significant pay rise.
Once I accepted that new data, however, I was able to see the immense gap between reality and expectation, as well as understand that it’s not necessarily my fault for missing that opportunity. I went with the widely-propagated programming for new homeowners at the time, and missed the pitfalls despite my ample additional research. Housing is complicated, and it’s the biggest hindrance to a more stable, equitable, and productive society in my personal opinion.
I'd love it if we could tie down salaries in terms of what they can pay for:
- Minimum is 1.0 Living Wage ™ (after taxes, rent, insurance, utilities, savings... you get to eat 3 meals and 2 snacks per person per home).
Having the mental stress of trying to determine when would be the right moment to approach the moody boss to make a case for your livelihood shouldn't be a thing.
I'd like the freedom of not having to pay the time tax of determining if I'll make rent or not...
At the end of the day, we’re all on the same side. I make ~5x the rest of my household combined, but spend a plurality of my time and energy advocating for their enrichment and support because I know that if they’re taken care of, I will be too, when I really need it.
If you have to work to live, then we’re on the same side, and we all deserve more money to help us offset this cost of living crisis.
Pretty sure other countries with similar CoL but much lower salaries are handling a middle class existence fine. 100k is literally better than 99% of other countries, if that isn't good enough what is?
I don't give a shit whether the workers are asking for "too much", whether they've got a cushy desk job, whether they want to eat avocado toast and drive a nice car. Everyone's entitled to whatever they can bargain for. Applying some kind of value judgement to it is doing ownership's work for free.
> I can’t help but think those people don’t understand that $100k is very much the new $45k of the 2000s
Yeah but if they're remote they can live in cheaper parts of the country so the 100K+ range of inner expensive cities is less justified and they're competing on a country wide market.
Cost of living has gotten really insane today compared to a couple decades ago.
Its pretty easy to go to college on loans and rack up $150k in debt for an average 4-year degree. Its easy to spend $35k-$50k on a new car, even 10 year old cars in good shape are $10k-$15k. Housing costs vary a lot more by area, but I think most would agree its extremely expensive these days.
The idea that a young family could have $5,000/mo just in debt payments between school, vehicles, and housing is insane to me. That doesn't even account for day to day expenses, children, vacations, etc.
> Its pretty easy to go to college on loans and rack up $150k in debt for an average 4-year degree.
It isn't easy for a 4-year degree. To get to that level generally requires law school or medical school debt or an unfunded graduate degree.
For 4-year degrees around 80% of students graduate with less than $30k in debt.
For public schools only 7% of graduates have debt above $50k. For private nonprofit schools 12% have debt above $50k. For private for-profit schools it is 32%.
The University of Alabama has estimates cost for in-state attendance of roughly $34k per year [1]. That is their general tuition unrelated to what school/department or degree you are there for.
That does include estimates for housing, food, books, etc so there's wiggle room especially if you have family near by and live at home.
For anyone going to school entirely on loans though, you wouldn't make it a year with only $30k in debt.
Sure, but most students at the University of Alabama don't go through entirely on loans. Only 42% of them take out loans. Median federal loan debt at graduation for them is $23k. 8% also take out private loans. The people with private loans have a median debt of $59k.
That wasn't actually my point though. My original comment was specifically calling out the cost to go to college entirely on loans, not what the average student ends up borrowing.
To me its less interesting to look at what the average person who is able to afford college today borrows to pay for it. That's a self-selected population and doesn't show what the impact would be on anyone who gets into college but doesn't have family money, scholarships, or grants to help pay for it.
I don't know about the NYT, but in my country newspapers are fighting for their lives, financially. Newspapers closing down and others laying off staff is a regular occurance.
Print newspapers are essentially dead. Online news? Barely anyone pays for that. Online with ads? Reddit/twitter/facebook/youtube pay zero dollars for the content they put ads on.
If you're in tech and you want to maximise your salary - a company's gotta have money before they can give it to you. And newspapers don't have money.
> The company’s adjusted operating profit for the quarter, which ran from July through September, rose 16.1 percent to $104.2 million, from $89.8 million a year before. Overall revenue increased 7 percent to $640.2 million, compared with the same period in 2023.
> The company’s adjusted operating profit for the quarter, from April through June, rose to $104.7 million from $92.2 million a year before. Overall revenue increased 5.8 percent, to $625.1 million, compared with the same period in 2023.
Ah, I must have misunderstood the rose to $104.7 million from $92.2 million a year
Even quadrupling the $18k per employee, you're still trying to get a $40k raise from an organisation with a profit of $72k per employee. That's going to be tough.
Far tougher than moving to a different job at a company with more money.
Sure, but the workers don't have to take a shave to prop up a failing business model. Sure, they COULD just go somewhere else, but it's reasonable to first negotiate with the employer, because, ideally, the employer doesn't want a whole section of their workforce to just leave.
When I was much younger, a few years out of high school, I ended up being the last developer on a sinking ship, and had asked for a pay raise to get me up to where the highest paid of the employees who had left were, IIRC that was around $5/hr, and was denied. I should have used that as an RGE, but instead just hung on until around a year later when a job fell into my lap. But the employer would have been hurting if I left, and was definitely more expensive for them to lose me than it would have to keep me. But in the end, the parent company folded a couple years later because of a very, very bad bet they made.
It's the same in the US, but the NY Times is probably the most financially successful newspaper in the world at this point. They are not only the #1 news source by reputation, they made a huge push into digital very early and sell subscriptions to news, gaming (they have the #1 crossword and wordle), cooking, product reviews and sports. They supposedly make as much money on games as news which is why the message from the union has been to boycott wordle today.
I’d make the argument that the NYT is well positioned in the AI age to be an authority more so than before. The internet will be inundated with AI generated news, and the only way to keep your sanity is to check anything with a legitimate logo on the top of the site.
People will laugh at it, but pet bereavement should absolutely be a thing. The saddest I've ever been in my life was when my dog died. Perhaps seven days is a bit much, but when you go to the bargaining table you don't start with what you want, you start past that point then negotiate down.
Same. My boy pug dying in 2019 was so distressful that I was coughing up blood the following morning. My father had a massive heart attack a couple months later and I was still numb to the point where I couldn't process it emotionally.
For some, esp. those who choose to be childless, a relationship like that is probably the closest we'll come.
I was happy the startup I worked at during that time allowed me to take a week off as sick pay... sent flowers with a handwritten note from our HR leader the following morning, but I opted to come back after a couple days as I needed to take my mind off things.
Absolutely, pet bereavement should be taken seriously. Losing a pet can be one of the most devastating experiences, often comparable to losing a close family member. Pets are part of our daily lives, routines, and emotional support systems
The saddest I've ever been in my life was when my dog died.
I take it you've never lost a child? Because I've lost both and sad as it was, losing a dog doesn't even come close. Losing the dog was sad, but I got over it and eventually adopted another pup. Losing the child was so unimaginably awful that I struggle to find the words...
Police knocking on my door at 2am to tell me.
Calling my wife at 2:30am to tell her (she was away on business).
Waiting for her to find a flight home.
The funeral.
Dealing with the estate.
Waking up every few weeks feeling like it was all a nightmare, only to realize it was not.
Anything you don’t like is woke. No sexist jokes in office? Woke. Bro culture is frowned upon? Woke. Can’t make jokes about gay and black people? Woke, woke, woke.
Because of allergies basically. It's a big problem for some people. My mother's church asks people wearing perfumes or other scents to sit on one side every service.
Unscented cleaning products in a communal workplace setting makes complete sense to me, tbh. It minimizes the exposure to any sensitivities or allergies that could expose a company to legal liability. e.g. it only takes one poorly-paid cleaner to forget that someone's bathroom has an accessibility policy because they're deeply allergic to the lemon scent in the cleaning product or something.
Um, what? If anything, the bit about unscented cleaning products would be one of the more reasonable asks, since it's relatively cheap to provide, and makes a huge difference to quality of the workplace for those who care about it and are annoyed by the scents.
> I won't laugh at the pet bereavement leave request, but I most certainly will laugh at the ask for unscented cleaning products. What's the point then?
The point of cleaning products is to clean, which can be done perfectly well with no scent. If they're just covering up uncleanliness with a pretty scent, then they're not cleaning.
Some people have serious allergies to common scents, and some people just find them unpleasant and slightly nauseating.
To reductio ad absurdum, without the advertisers there'd be no journalists.
The problem remains that with the advertisers, there cannot be journalism.
Little distinguishes much of american mass-media 'journalism' from a ChatGPT precis of a Press Release or Reuters/AP wire. What does is generally in the form of an Op-Ed, and is generally at the behest or bias of a billionaire or their lobbying proxy.
In 2024 this has gotten to the point where America's Largest Newspaper chain will not endorse a presidential candidate out of fear. That's 200+ separate publications.
Both the advertisers and the journalists rely on the Tech Employees as their core dependency for distribution and scaling factor, and are weighted in compensation accordingly. Much as it ever was - the people selling adspace and doing the logistics of distribution always made more than the people writing copy or typesetting.
> Some background: The Tech Guild represents hundreds of software engineers, product designers, data analysts and others who make and run our website, apps, games and publishing systems. It’s a sister to my union, the NYT Guild, which reps the newsroom (and advertising, security & more!).
> The NYT Guild contract contains a no-strike clause. That means we in the newsroom are legally forbidden to go on strike with Tech. So we will be supporting them in other ways, some of which you can also do.
The only thing the times has to worry about is whether or not they can get other tech workers in the door to undercut the union.
When the union was formed in 2021, tech workers were insanely in demand and carried basically all the chips. But now that that has cooled significantly, and many tech workers are having trouble finding work, the union is in a precarious position of being founded on ideals of 2021, but having to negotiate with the reality of 2024.
> The guild said it was asking readers to honor its digital picket line by not playing Times Games products, such as Wordle, and not using the Cooking app.
I’m not familiar with digital picket lines, why not ask that people not read via the site? Tying the picket line to Wordle and the cooking app seems to trivialize the importance of the team – Wordle was an acquisition!
My understanding is that, if you judge by traffic, The New York Times is actually a cooking blog and online gaming platform that dabbles a bit in journalism on the side.
Hilarious but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s true. Upon some reflection, Marcella Hazan’s Tomato Sauce recipe is probably the most that i’ve actively sought the nyt’s content.
I mean, newspapers used to make all their money on classified ads which is why Craigslist has killed so much local news and Craig Newmark is now donating money to save journalism.
Considering the common pay for software devs thats not as high as I expect.
The unscented cleaning supplies is a weird request, but it does kinda make sense and the cost should be pretty low - don't know why they removed that requirement.
It's great the union was pushing for unscented cleaning supplies.
I have a friend who is very sensitive to scents. She may not be able to work in a typical office again because of it. I'm very sensitive to harsh fluorescent lighting and noisy office environments and get migraines. You can push through for a while but eventually you burn out.
We've also realized we're both "mildly" autistic [1] over the last few years, along with quite a few other software engineer friends. The sensory sensitivities fall under that umbrella.
Tech has traditionally been more accepting of neurodiversity than other careers, so it's great to see a tech union raising issue like this that don't cost much but make a big difference for anyone affected.
You've been mislead on the "common pay" for software developers by the overemphasis of total compensation from FAANG (partially due to HN bias). Outside of FAANG, most developers earn less than you think in the US, and outside the US, it's even drastically less.
I am very allergic to many common fragrances and it makes my life really uncomfortable very frequently. Some of them are worse than others but commercial grade cleaning products are some of the worst. And it’s not just problematic for me to be in the bathroom where they’re used, but sometimes entire sections of the building that are close to the bathrooms. I get immediate physically uncomfortable symptoms and prolonged exposure can actually cause ETD and a resulting debilitating vertigo where I can’t even sit up for five hours and vomit the entire time. It’s not just fragrances that contribute to this but it’s a large part of it
The idea that they “bristled” at a union supporting people like me is total shit
As a person whose very sensitive to scents there's an entire world of folks who are debilitated by them!
I can often tell if someone was wearing anything but the mere hint of perfume minutes after they've left an area, and anything stronger gives me headaches or worse.
Journalist salaries, especially at prestigious piblications, are quite famously set such that only people who can rely on external support to the tune of 5-6 figures a year can become journalists. It makes sense that the journalists union would prioritize things other than salary in bargaining - their W2 job isn't where their money comes from.
It'll be curious to see what the ramifications are of sending a kid to daycare basically straight away, vs rearing him at home until he's ~5.
The costs in cities like NY and SF are so high that many kids end up in care as soon as parental leave expires. One of the big recent public policies in NYC is "3K," public schooling for kids starting at 3 years old.
A small sample size, but all of my kids which go to a pretty high-end daycare seem to have a bit leg up on peers who have stayed home in terms of social skills, language, reasoning, and reading. That's not just me acting like my kids are the best (of course they are), that's those other parents mentioning it to me.
It's practically a college tuition per kid at age 0 though.
It does when the biggest expenditure category is for a positional good (ie. rent). There's only so much land in new york and so many apartment units. Being in a wealthy country means your peers are also wealthy, which means a household with double income can easily outbid a household with a single income.
100% out of touch, yes, but not wrong. Before kids I had the same exact sentiment, and now, with kids, I still do.
Raising a family is a choice, and that choice should be made deliberately, considering all aspects, including financial impact.
It is no more the responsibility of the employer to consider the family of the employee anymore than for them to consider if the employee is a gambling addict, or spends frivolously on OnlyFans subs or funko pop collecting.
Should people with families get paid more in order to support them? Why would a single person need to get paid as much as a person supporting another adult without a job and two children?
The auto workers unions got established when auto work was high paid, high tech work. People deserve to have unions - which is to say, a voice in the terms of their employment - regardless of the size of their paycheck.
Ehhh, this is the counter-argument from the employer. That $190K seems highly dubious. I, an at-will employee earn ~60% more via benefits... and let me tell you that's definitely not the same as cash.
And the pet bereavement et al sounds like bargaining chips (no better proof than them being dropped in the negotiation process.)
> Most employees in the tech union receive pay of more than $100,000, and average compensation, including bonus and restricted stock units, is $190,000, according to a Times spokeswoman. That figure is an average of $40,000 more than members of the Times’s journalist union, she said.
> Times leaders have also bristled at the nature of some of the guild’s requests. The union previously sought a requirement that the company use unscented cleaning supplies and offer a pet bereavement policy that included a leave of up to seven days, though it has since backed down from those demands.