Accountants usually don’t have lavish perks or doctor-level paychecks though. The lifestyles of all of the big2+elite startup engineers I know is miles different from the characters in the movie.
I watched the movie much later than most people on this website and was most shocked by the fact that he was neighbors with a construction worker. That sort of class co-mingling seems vanishingly rare in my social circle.
> Accountants usually don’t have lavish perks or doctor-level paychecks though
Accountants absolutely have lavish perks bestowed upon them by the "Big 4" - annual week abroad in foreign destinations for team building.
> doctor-level paychecks though
Neither do devs. In Europe, accountants are paid better than devs. With better hours(except at quarter end) and a straightforward career path..and no-BS job interviews.
Chartered accountants (still talking about company employed- not sole practice) earn even more - like 30% more than a senior dev.
It blows my mind how little developers seemed to be paid in Europe. I guess it's just a matter of supply and demand? With the massive cost differential I am amazed we don't see more remote/out-sourcing from California to the UK. Sure there are disadvantages, the time difference, culture, etc but it's basically half the price, or better?
My friends at Google’s London offices are paid comparably to my friends at Google’s Kirkland (Seattle) office.
All my other UK friends at low-profile companies are paid a fraction of that (certainly less than half, arguably for the same work, even in London).
The only explanation I have for it is entrenched low salary expectations and also knowing you’re competing with India, whereas on the US West Coast (which is where I live now, though I graduated in the UK) employers have already decided to hire local instead of elsewhere so you don’t feel an unstated pressure to compete on-price with others. The fact Amazon and Microsoft are local also helps.
How many accountants or lawyers do you know? There are two accountants in my family and they are extremely well compensated, one a CFO.
Regarding class co mingling, really? Your statement seems like a projection. Where does it come from? I doubt you have spoken to many of your neighbors, much less asked what they do.
Trust me, most of the software engineering world in real life is nothing like Big N and elite startups. Silicon Valley is a weirdness magnet that's not representative of the rest of the country.
Enterprise Java and .NET shops are all over the US, and those are much more like Office Space. In fact, I'm fairly sure Office Space was filmed in Texas, not California.
Exactly. Whenever people here talk about the “typical software developer’s” career or salary or working environment, they point to top outlier employees at top outlier companies and pretend that’s how the average tech worker lives. For every level 7 Facebook or Google engineer diving into a swimming pool full of RSUs, there are probably 100 mid level programmers at HugeConsultancy body shops and medium sized zombie Enterprise Java companies working shoulder to shoulder and sharing apartments. Helps to keep that perspective.
In Europe it's pretty normal for software developers to live next-door to a construction worker. If the construction worker is very experienced or a contractor he may even earn more than you do.
Not everyone is living in the US though. For us EU residents it’s still fairly relatable, even though salaries have risen here as well, it’s nothing like the US.
I think Michael Bolton was the only engineer, at one point he says something like "they better not fire us software guys", the main character was in finance or something, whoever cares about TPS reports and I'm not sure if Samirs was mentioned. Apart from the ability to hack the system they're generic office drones and their job titles aren't really important.
I think with trends like cubical farms, open plan offices and hotdesking software development companies lag behind other industries.
Peter's job self-given job description: "I sit in a cubicle and I update bank software for the 2000 switch. You see, they wrote all this bank software and to save space, they put
98 instead of 1998. So I go through these thousands of lines of code
and uh, it doesn't really matter. I, uh, I don't like my job. I don't
think I'm gonna go anymore."
... and Samir was "one of the best programmers they have" (per Pete). He was the one who wrote the (admittedly buggy) computer virus at the center of the plot.
