I wish I had read this article before.
It’s 3 years old, but it’s still very relevant.

This gives me some extra insight.
/0 https://twitter.com/r_vijay_k/status/834662955308482560

There is a reason we use the pejorative term “code coolie”. No, it’s not about getting paid peanuts for doing all the heavy lifting.
It’s got more to do with the skills, or the level of skills.

Let me add a bit of Bloom’s taxonomy here. I will use the revised 4 domain model.

/1

Just a quick intro. There are 4 domains:
Cognitive—thinking
Affective—passion
Psychomotor—getting your hands dirty
Knowledge—well, knowledge.
Each domain has 5 levels.
Level 1 is lowest.
/2

Blue collar workers are the least paid. There is a simple reason for it. Most people associate it with low skilled or manual labour. There are a lot of people willing to do the blue collar job. It takes lesser of the higher levels in the blooms taxonomy.Hence the availability

/3

The market dynamics says that if supply is higher than demand, the advantage is to the person catering to demand, or here, the job employer.
If one worker is demanding too much, the employer can fire him and recruit another person.
/4

We have seen role reversal in this even in manual labour. Example: agricultural worker in Kerala. There was a time when labour was available for two times food and a small money. Now, it’s tough to get people for all perks and ₹500.
The reversal is due to fall in supply.

/5

In the scale of levels, the lowest is basic awareness. The next involves ability to learn a basic skill and repeat it any number of times. The third involves application of skills. The next is ability to carry the skills across similar domains. The final is mastery.

/6

An inexperienced person who can put cement on top of brick will come very cheap. You look for a mason, the price increases. You want someone to bring a very good finishing, the price increases even further.

This increase is because there are lesser people for higher skills.

/7

8. Now, let’s come to the software industry.
The freshers that get trained to do basic work are at the lowest ladder of skills.
The vast majority of people recruited are at this level.
They can easily be paid ₹10,000-₹15,000 to get the job done.

9. These are very low skills. The supply is higher. Hence the companies can maintain the salary at such low levels for a longer duration. Remember that CTC of a fresher is about the same for the last two decades, while inflation has been rising fast(rise is wages=@ 1/2 inflation)

10. This is what @r_vijay_k mentioned when he said single skill labourer.
These young blood are low-skilled, they have no bargaining power. Most of them are doing mostly fast deployment. Essentially, cut-copy-paste. And do minor adjustments. Or, go through a checklist and it

11. There is not much value added. Hence, it’s impossible to demand higher pay.

Now, most people may not really understand what’s happening. They may think that coding is a special skill that requires years of training. All big companies provide this basic training in 3 months.

12. A 6 month skill-based course is enough to deploy a person in the lower level jobs.

13. Even for a complex job profile like System administration, the level of knowledge/psychomotor skill required is pretty low. Anyone can learn this in a matter of 2-3 months. The lower paid sys admins just do a bunch of well defined activities over and over again.

14. This is also the reason why many people are able to get a job with the basic skill certificates. Remember the MSCE, RHCE, CCNA, etc.
These are just pushing the people towards second level. They only teach to do the most common activities that are needed on the ground.

15. The real money is in the higher order skills. All the higher order skills can be achieved only if you have the lower order skills. In fact, when you stack up multiple lower order skills together, you reach the higher order skill.

16. This is the multiple skills model that @r_vijay_k gets to. The only difference is that while I am looking from a pedagogical perspective, he is looking from a business perspective.

17. Increasingly, the companies have started expecting their employees to be multi-skilled. Agile is picking up from that angle.
To illustrate, let’s say 5 skills are needed for a task and you paid 5 people @ ₹10k. It’s cheaper to employ one person to do all 5 by paying ₹30-40k

18. This combines with the automation thread of progress happening in the industry.Increasingly, most of the work done by the ₹10k worker is getting automated. This includes most basic systems tests. But troubleshooting is still done by a man as it requires higher order skills.

19. Startups have a huge advantage here. The nature of the organisation forces all the people to pick up multiple skills. From learning to do wiring in the office to talking to customers when others are busy. The stakes are high as well.

20. This is also why most startups get bought by bigger companies. The buyer gets extra features they can integrate. They also get the multi-skilled worker along with the company.

This also explains why industry bodies are supporting startups.

21. The trick is to get more skills in the early stages, and to pick up higher order skills as early as you can.

This is why students must stop thinking the university marks as sufficient requirement to get a job. The goalposts have now shifted. Extra skills are the key.

@threadreaderapp thread unroll please