> This is a really concerning perspective: people were paid what they were worth.

Even interpreting what-they-were-worth in the usual sense, I’m not so sure about this. We have seen wage collusion reported by the usual US West Coast-based companies. And some news on here[1] have reported that some engineer with a salary of $100K[2] might be producing $1M of value. And even factoring in the usual “but benefits and overhead” comes out to a solid factor of profit per programmer/engineer.

Despite that the sense I get (only from this site since that is my only reference) is that the so-called overpaid engineers are incredibly content to just have this happen to them. As long as they are paid well compared to other workers, it’s fine. No matter the profit factor. In fact, the discourse is very much focused on how “privileged” they were if the tide ever changes. Instead of realizing how much value they provided, collectively.

Outlets for capturing more of the value they create is entrepreneurship (Hello HN). Never any collective organizing. And entrepenurship is easily bought via aqcuisition.

Collective bargaining would have been relevant in case they ever get automated... by the very software they co-created.

One could imagine that this “privileged” collection of programmers could have served as a vanguard for the collective good of programming professionals as well as collective ownership of software goods, using their privilege to that end. The former never happened, and the latter is partly realized in people’s free time (see the OSS maintainer in Nebraska meme).[3]

[1] All from recollection since this is just news from the Frontier to me

[2] Of course the pay might be much higher now; this might have been a while ago

[3] when it isn’t simply exploited by corporations just using OSS without giving any back; a logical turn of events when no license or law forces them to contribute back