Once they get an actual MSFT offer with comparably peanuts in $$$ they'll no longer think the same :)

Not to mention imagining having to write design docs in web based Microsoft Word.

I personally think the entire dev industry earns strangely well. I’d expect wages to be like the rest of humanity: 2x to 4x minimum wage, up to 5x or 6x when you manage a department of hundreds of people after a career on coffee and antidepressants, chaining all-nighters at work and risking a stroke by 45.

Maybe Microsoft is the un-inflated wage expectancy.

We are paid so well because our work can scale to millions of people, that's all there is to it.

I've progressively through my career felt more ashamed of earning so much money for the comparable little societal benefit I generate. Surely, I work on products that hundreds of millions of people use daily, they even enjoy it, but I don't think the beneficial impact of my work to society is anywhere close to what teachers, nurses, doctors, and so on provide. At some points the impact of my work on society was probably a net negative, I just generated cash for the company in detriment of society's needs.

I just can create millions and millions of US$ for a company through my labour. And for that we are well paid. I know, I've just described capitalism but some folks probably need to be more aware of it.

This is a perplexing attitude that’s common in our field. Somehow the field at large is creating the best teacher, doctor, entertainer, communication tools, and makes it available to everyone for low cost and some think they are less important than the inferior things they replace en masse. In contrast, doctors, for instance, create artificial monopolies and ensure supply is limited and consistently pat themselves on their back.

Perhaps it is because the value created is done by large teams of specialized people who cannot individually attribute the revolution to their work directly. Perhaps it is that the value created is power law distributed and only certain individuals in our field produce the majority of value created thus the rest legitimately believe what you described.

Perhaps the "value added" is DRM and advertisements in your personal computer's interface, and the "net negative" is honest and true.

No defending of DRM but to claim advertisement is net negative for a society is quite a stretch. Ask a small business who gets economic opportunity.

> We are paid so well because our work can scale to millions of people, that's all there is to it.

That is the case with chip designers and mechanical engineers as well but software engineers are paid significantly more than those other professions.

This. I don't understand how Microsoft is able to get away with paying so much less than faang and co.

Perception of stability.

Which until recently, was relatively unshaken.

As an employer, MS also has tended to be much more understanding of personal circumstances and the likes - I know people there who took long career breaks, or had mental issues/breakdowns (sometimes quite public) that would elsewhere have been a resume generating event.

Locally Apple are also regarded as an extremely stable employer, especially at the lower levels (support, etc).

I've friends working fucking customer support jobs at apple because its stable and comfortable, when they could be making twice as much elsewhere given their skills.

I considered taking such a job a couple of years ago, after becoming thoroughly burned out of consulting/contracting and wanting some stability.

Funny thing about Apple though is the IP clauses in their contracts.

Even the guys working phone support for customers have to go through a whole paperwork process if they want to publish code they wrote in their own time online, just to ensure there's no Apple IP in it.

MSFT values business deals, security with finance attached, market branding with finance attached; institutional contracts and Defense spending; basically all the business parts with coders doing the work. For people who train to work skillfully, it is a rude awakening to interact with people who train to take control of business and get the programming done like any other commodity -- extracting the profit and control of future profit immediately with security, contracts and worker surveillance.

It's not the worst of the web based doc editing tools at least.

And good things are sure to follow when it becomes the hottest new status symbol/ego magnet...