First it was “decades of experience” now it’s “maybe 11 years” those are big differences.

Yeah, so I don’t think I need to explain to you how time works but maybe I should clarify. We’re talking about a few different people and we’re talking about multiple points in time. All while I’m trying to anonymize the story so that I don’t get doxxed.

I was hired at a local web dev company around the year 2000. At this time, I had just graduated high school. I was working as a “web developer” which in modern day parlance means I’m doing the role of a full stack web developer. Keep in mind at this time javascript was pretty new and so there wasn’t a need to split between front and backend. That’s me though, I didn’t have the experience back then.

However, during that time, (the year 2000) at that same company was a person who had been working in the graphic design industry for most of her life. She was older than me, I think a grandmother at that time.

Now, the web itself was invented by CERN in 1989, so absolutely zero web designers existed (as a job title) prior to 1989. The people who became web designers were already working with some form of graphic design on digital media / computer-based graphic design. At a certain point (I’m not this person and I’m not an actual historian so I don’t know the date) in the past, prior to 1989, there were no such thing as computer based graphic artists, since no software existed to create computer graphics. The people who became graphic designers working with computer-based graphic design were artists, illustrators and designers working with physical media. Etc…

This is why I say someone (in the year 2000) was doing the work of building user experiences with decades of experience in their industry. In a meritocracy, this person would’ve been one of the more skilled web designers around and indeed they were and the firm was lucky to have hired them. The computer doesn’t make the UX happen, the people who have been studying and practicing design for years make it happen. That relevant graphic design experience doesn’t go away just because new technology comes out.

I never mentioned silicon valley or VC bubbles, no one can predict the future. But if someone with decades of experience as you put it was making nearly minimum wage, they should have at least tried commuting or moving to their nearest Metropolitan area. “We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas!”

You may have been confused or I may have mistyped. I don’t know this person’s salary, but I know mine. I was paid minimum wage, and only ever got a $0.50 / hour raise. This company would also have their paychecks bounce and eventually went out of business. It’s entirely possible the senior web designer made a lot of money but from the sounds of it this was not the case.

My entire point here is you seem to be mistaken on the following:

1. Moving to a major metro area does not mean more take home money. It might mean better wages, but it also means a higher cost of living. When evened out, you have people making six figures and living in slum apartments. A friend of mine experienced this when moving to work for Google as a technical writer.
2. Moving to a major metro area does not mean getting hired. It means more competition for the same amount of jobs.
3. The thing about the web is, you don’t physically need to be located in one place in order to build it. “Silicon valley” shouldn’t have ever been a thing - it’s not like the natural resources in that region helped create the web. I use silicon valley as an example since that’s “THE” metro area that any web developer “should” move to maximise their take-home pay, or at least at one point around the year 2000, it was. All that to say that a rag-tag group of designers and developers in hoedunk, AL or wheverever in theory could have also made the next “killer app” and everyone gets their own aeron chair. Why would a new web developer not want to try working for their local web dev company while going to college? Why would a grandma with a family estabilished in the region want to move?
4. What makes you think that people didn’t move on from this situation? I was let go because I spoke truth to power, and the company folded about a year later. When I had the resources to move to a major metro area I did and experienced point 1 and then point 2 on this list.

My issue for a lot of my life was earnestly thinking that my loyalty to a company meant anything. I know better now. The larger part is that though I’m now making closer to what I probably should have been years ago (since I’ve been working as a full stack dev since 2000), but it’s still going to take me a bit to build up a buffer so I can feel confident losing my job for a few months while i find a new one. It seems to take about 3-6 months to find a new tech job, and that’s just how these things work these days. And now that tech firms are salivating at AI and we’re seeing more layoffs, I’m not entirely sure what the future holds.

One thing is for sure though, we aren’t living in a meritocracy. If we were, this conversation wouldn’t be happening because everyone at that company back in 2000 would have been paid what they were worth, and that company would have succeeded. In fact the one thing I learned from businesses is the best way to have a business succeed is to hire someone who has strong connections to people with deep pockets.