I don't think that way of defining the working class is very sound.
Everyone expect ~50 people would be working class, probably including Taylor Swift and Donald Trump.
Also "working class" has a historical, social component, by which programmers are certainly not included.
Normalize it to a logarithmic scale, and the SWE is still quite obviously a wagie. But the gross and unconscionable concentration of power in a small handful of unelected oligarchs is not the relevant distinction here.
When ownership of things can keep you and your family fed, clothed, and sheltered in comfort, you're part of the owning class. If it can't, you're a worker. Maybe a skilled worker, maybe a highly paid worker, maybe a worker that owns a lot of expensive 'tools' or credentials, or licenses, or a company truck, or a trillion worthless diluted startup shares that have an EV of ~$50, but you're still a worker.
If you're the owner of a small owner-operated business, and the business will go kaput because you didn't show up to do work, you're also a worker. The line is drawn at the point where most of your contribution to it is your own (or other peoples') capital, not your own two-hands labour.
Now, if you're some middle manager, with no meaningful ownership stake - you are still a worker. You still need to go to work to get your daily bread. It just so happens that your job is imposing the will of the owners on workers underneath you.
If you have somewhere between $5M and $10M in a HCoL American city, you are probably no longer working class insofar as you could quit, get on ACA healthcare, and rent a decent house or buy / mortgage a decent house and live a pretty comfortable life indefinitely. But you're on the very low end of not-working-class and are living a modest life (if you quit and stop drawing a salary).
If you have under that threshold (in a big expensive US city), you are probably still working class.
A lot of software engineers can get to $5M-$10M range in like 10-30 years depending on pay and savings rate. But also a lot of software engineers operate their budgets almost paycheck-to-paycheck, and will never get there.
> A lot of software engineers can get to $5M-$10M range in like 10-30
$5-$10M for 30 years, but only if you save every penny in between? Wow, that's very impressive and totally life-changing! Reminds me of the story how millennials are not able to afford buying a house because of avocado toast!
I don’t see how something like 160-320k income without working is a “modest life”. By any absolute standard you have it better than almost every human that has ever lived.
The caveat is stated above: in a large expensive US city where a lot of these high paying tech jobs are.
Over 50% of that $160k floor is eaten up by just housing and private or ACA insurance.
So your housing costs for like a 1k-2k sqft spot, all in (rent, or if owning then insurance, upkeep, etc) costs you something like $50k+, your health insurance for two people on ACA costs you like $40k yr assuming kids are out of the picture (more if not), and you have a decent chunk leftover to spend on living a decent life, but not like egregiously large amounts. You're not flying first class, probably not taking more than 2 big vacations a year, driving nice but not crazy expensive car, etc.
If you elect to leave the big expensive US city, then of course you can do it with substantially lower amounts (especially so long as you can swing ACA subsidies and are willing to risk your "not-working-class" existence on the whims of the govt continuing that program).
Obviously if you live in some place (read: everywhere except the US?) where the floor for medical costs of two people not working but still having income from capital isn't around $40k/yr, then the amount can go wayyyy down.
> I don't think that way of defining the working class is very sound
Oh, really? Is that why both "white-collar worker" and "blue-collar worker" contain the word "worker"? Working class is everyone who has to work for their money. Can most programmers, on a whim, afford to never work again? An average programmer's salary is 2x the average coal miner's. A CEO is nowadays paid 339 the salary of their average worker https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2023/.
Programmers are just one prolonged sickness or medical debt away from being destitute, the same as every other member of the working class. Lawyers, teachers, doctors, programmers, those are all working class, along with agriculture, mining, utilities and all people who have to get up and work for their daily bread and a roof over their head. Sure, there is a discrepancy in pay, but it's not as glaring as it is between a worker and the oligarchs like Trump and Elon Musk. The biggest con in society is that you are so far distanced from the obscene wealth of the rich, that it's not in your face to see how little you have and how much they do.
Both the guy in an old Dodge and the guy in the new Tesla are stuck in traffic, and you fail to realize realize there are people out there right now flying on a private jet for a cocktail? You think the guy living in an apartment is so much different than a guy living in a house in suburbia? How about the guy whose real-estate company bought the whole development and now is cranking up prices?
You make $200k yearly as a welder? Still working class.
You own a small business with 10 workers working for you? Still working class.
You manage a team of devs in a FAANG and are doing alright for yourself? Still working class.
Your parents donated a wing to Yale and own a hotel chain? Not working class.
Your savings account and stocks generate enough for you that you never have to work again? You are not working class.
This is because wealth wise, you are still closer to how much an unemployed person on benefits than to a CEO of a multinational company, and that's a fact.
The objective level of reproduction of labor force is about $2 per day. Cheaper for warm climates, slightly more expensive for cold ones.
So by that logic there is no working class in the US whatsoever because you don't have to work to survive. At all. Maybe half a year in your entire lifetime.
You just choose to spend all your money on things you don't need to survive, that's the only reason you needed to work. But that doesn't make you a worker class any more than Elon Musk becomes a worker class by buying 10 companies like Twitter.
So, using your logic, "You are making more than 50 cents an hour? You're not working class. You don't have to work most of your life to survive yourself or to provide for your children. You're closer to Elon Musk than to workers forced to work for $2 a day to survive."
> The objective level of reproduction of labor force is about $2 per day. Cheaper for warm climates, slightly more expensive for cold ones.
I also like making random numbers up. Here are other numbers. 420. 1337. 1911.
> So by that logic there is no working class in the US whatsoever because you don't have to work to survive. At all. Maybe half a year in your entire lifetime.
I have no words to express how weak this argument is. The US has MOSTLY working class people because less and less people can survive on their salaries.
> So, using your logic, "You are making more than 50 cents an hour? You're not working class. You don't have to work most of your life to survive yourself or to provide for your children. You're closer to Elon Musk than to workers forced to work for $2 a day to survive."
I am not sure if this sentence is a troll, or comes from genuine misunderstanding. I don't know what to advice. I genuinely chuckled. Here are a three numbers, elementary math:
7.25
53
1 600 000
Which two of these numbers are closer to one another? 7.25 and 53, right (I hope)? Well, let's look what those numbers mean:
Non-founder (i.e. external hire) CEOs and other corporate executives also have to work for their money, therefore they are working class. The definition may be technically correct (the best kind of correct) but it is useless.
("A CEO is nowadays paid 339 the salary of their average worker" you say? If we are nitpicking, that's obviously false; only a tiny, tiny fraction of CEOs are paid that well.)
Aside from that, I'd wager a rather large fraction of HN can easily afford never to work again. This place is crawling with millionaires and they're definitely not embarrassed about it, temporarily or otherwise. Good luck convincing them.
> A CEO is nowadays paid 339 the salary of their average worker" you say? If we are nitpicking, that's obviously false; only a tiny, tiny fraction of CEOs are paid that well.
"In 2022, it was estimated that the CEO-to-worker compensation ratio was 344.3 in the United States. This indicates that, on average, CEOs received more than 344 times the annual average salary of production and nonsupervisory workers in the key industry of their firm."
> Aside from that, I'd wager a rather large fraction of HN can easily afford never to work again. This place is crawling with millionaires and they're definitely not embarrassed about it, temporarily or otherwise. Good luck convincing them.
You can wager whatever you want, but statistically you'd be wrong.
Dude, your own link https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2023/ says "We focus on the average compensation of CEOs at the 350 largest publicly owned U.S. firms (firms that sell stock on the open market) by revenue."
These 350 largest publicly owned US firms employ a major portion of the US population. Just the top 10 companies by revenue employ 6% of the US work-eligible population. Imagine the total 350 companies!
So, while 350 seems to be a small number, these 350 companies employ the largest chunk of the US market, and that's why they are the most representative to do the study with.
And that's my point! If you select a random worker in the US, there is a HUGE chance they are employed by Amazon, Walmert or one of the big-s. And there is a HUGE chance their salary is 339 times less than their CEO's.
"One medical debt away from being destitute" is socialists trying to make common cause between the upper and lower class. We have great insurance and big piles of savings, there's nothing in common with people who can barely afford their deductible and lose their job for missing too much work.
The boundary between working class and not working class is not at the 99th percentile where you would have it. The diminishing marginal utility of money means you get 90% of the security of being wealthy at 0.1% of the net worth of a billionaire.
> We have great insurance and big piles of savings, there's nothing in common with people who can barely afford their deductible and lose their job for missing too much work.
Between 30 and 70% of Americans can't make ends meet. What used to be called "middle class" is disappearing, making way to only 1%-ers and us, the rest. The fact that I drive a Tesla and some guy drives a Dodge, doesn't mean we are not both stuck in traffic while there is some shcmuck flying on their private jet to reach their yacht.
Also "working class" has a historical, social component, by which programmers are certainly not included.