I find this complaint hard to square when US developers earn "moon money" compared to both: a) fields requiring similar levels of expertise like EE or Mech-E and b) international developers in similar roles. Plus, equity.

[GIF of Woody Harrelson wiping tears with money]

What’s an average nvidia “tech employee” worth today? How about compared to their base salary vs. Samsung line workers?

You have a point. But on this precise topic it’s pretty hard to make. A tiny handful of companies who are winners beyond anyone’s expectations simply do not matter.

There is exactly zero percent chance this profit sharing contract would have been negotiated by either party as it is if this had been remotely predicted in advance. Same as the retrospectively extremely lucrative RSUs granted to nvidia employees just five years ago.

Tech folks employed by the top tech companies have been fine. I do not cry even a minute for them. The fun part of the Korean memory worker compensation is that blue collar folks finally are getting just a little bit of the taste the laptop class has been part of for so long. And it is likely to be comparatively very fleeting.

The union makes us strong.

-- A proud programming union worker in South Korea since 2018.

It would be ungrateful to complain after earning enough in stock options and RSU's to retire early.

(It sounds like the union got a great deal for these workers, though.)

Tech workers get paid in equity and many in the semiconductor industry are making far far more than this a year with all the equity appreciation.

> Meanwhile tech workers in the US spend all day online defending billionaires

Tech pulled a great trick here: equity.

America as a whole pulled a similar trick: 401k

It’s hard to fight the billionaires when all your money depends on not fighting them.

I mean as someone who works in American AI chip firms , our compensation is larger. You can bitch about America as much as you want but it's pretty much the best in terms of monetary compensation

Of course I'm late to the game. My colleagues who have been here ten years are either extremely wealthy and bored or sailing the Caribbean at this point. Every other week someone is taking a sabbatical

I have a hard time understanding this complaint. A US tech worker earning $340k bonus wouldn't even make news, it happens every year all around the silicon valley.

That is, a US tech worker is taking much more for their own from those billionaire employers, compared to what Samsung's workers managed to do after a lot of haggling.

In all honesty, I’d rather get paid the $500k/yr people make here than have a union negotiate a $350k one time bonus in a time of unprecedented success. Given these two options, I’m not that eager to have their system.