We Are in the Same Boat

We Are in the Same Boat

I became a father at the age of 20. At the time, I was fueled by the conviction that I could accomplish absolutely anything if I was just given the chance, and for a while, I actually did. Eventually, I found myself employed at an average small-to-medium enterprise (SME). With zero background knowledge and no impressive specs to speak of, my only leverage was my willingness to say, "I can do anything," and I genuinely worked with that mindset. Driven by a desperate need to grow, I took on every grueling task, working until dawn without receiving a single dime of overtime pay.

As the years passed, the effort paid off. My knowledge expanded, my scope of work broadened, and I became someone who could handle almost all the operational workflows. The work itself was no longer difficult; in fact, it had become entirely too easy. But as I reached that state of competence, a nagging thought began to surface: Why are we forced to work overtime without even a slight bump in pay? Do the executives genuinely believe this is how things should naturally be? Or do they just view our team as disposable parts to be replaced at any time? What exactly is going on in their heads?

Around this time, the colleagues who had suffered through the trenches with me began to resign one by one, and I, too, was growing exhausted. While our salaries weren't completely frozen, the meager raises fell embarrassingly short of inflation. The executives lived comfortably, yet the employees grinding away until dawn received no proper treatment or recognition. The management operated under the stubborn assumption that it was perfectly natural for subordinates to work unpaid overtime.

It was only after I finally handed in my resignation that the fog lifted, and all the reasons became crystal clear. It wasn't because the company was completely out of money. It wasn't about executive ego, nor was it the fear that raising one person's salary would force them to raise everyone else's. The truth is much deeper and more structural, and it plagues countless companies, not just my former employer: Their business model itself simply does not require exceptional talent.

To put it bluntly, the company doesn't actually need highly competent engineers. It’s nice to have them, of course, but losing them doesn't negatively impact their revenue or cause any real damage. The primary competitive edge for most SMEs is not groundbreaking technology; it is price. When your entire survival hinges on government contracts or acting as a subcontractor for massive conglomerates, minimizing labor costs is the only viable way to increase profit margins.

If a company's survival depended directly on the technological superiority of its proprietary product, it would naturally value and highly compensate top-tier engineers. But a subcontracting SME lacks its own growth engine. The government and large corporations simply choose the vendor that offers the lowest bid and the fastest delivery. Without these massive entities, these SMEs cannot survive on their own. They have neither the drive to pivot to new business ventures nor the resources to innovate.

Because their survival depends entirely on maintaining the lowest possible bid rather than pushing technological boundaries, the required technical bar is quite low. High-level, expensive talent is entirely unnecessary. Therefore, the most logical strategy for their survival is to pay the absolute minimum while extracting the maximum amount of labor over the longest period.

This structural flaw creates a bizarre, hourglass-shaped demographic in these companies: There are only the very young and the old. The middle management layer is completely hollowed out. Young, entry-level developers usually join with the illusion that hard work will be rewarded with better treatment. However, as time passes, they get worn down and inevitably realize that the company has no intention of evolving. The older employees, on the other hand, often have nowhere else to go, so they simply focus on maintaining the status quo.

The inevitable result is a vicious cycle of chronic low wages and extreme labor, leading to sky-high turnover rates. You see it on the news all the time: companies complaining about a "labor shortage." Young people refuse to work at these SMEs, and the older management is desperately searching for naive youth willing to work nights for pennies. In South Korea, where the System Integration (SI) sector dominates the software industry, this dynamic is incredibly common. The truly talented individuals exit the industry entirely, leaving behind a pool of low-wage, low-skill labor.

This is the fundamental difference between these companies and global Big Tech firms like Google, Apple, or Amazon. Big Tech doesn't pay astronomical salaries simply because they have deep pockets. They pay well because their business model is their software. The quality of the product dictates their revenue, so they need the absolute best engineers to build the best products. But in a manufacturing-centric environment or a low-margin SI firm, an exceptional engineer does not directly translate to higher revenue.

Looking back, I realize the executives at my old company weren't acting out of pure malice. They weren't necessarily bad people; there was simply no logical business reason to pay us more. I spent years failing to understand this, looking for simple excuses like a lack of funds or plain greed. But once I stepped outside the company and organized my thoughts alone, the entire board became clear.

"We are in the same boat," or "We are family." Most office workers have probably heard these exact phrases, or something very similar, at least once. But we must always remember the reality: the company and I are simply bound by an employment contract. I am someone who provides value in exchange for money, and I shouldn't think of it as anything more than that. Provide value, get paid. That is exactly where the line must be drawn. Working unpaid overtime in the past was my mistake. Ironically, though, it forced me to build the skills I needed to move on to a better company. But one thing is for certain: I will never make that mistake again.