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Why cleaners get paid more than software developers?

by simonebrunozzi·12y ago·13 comments·view on hn ↗
I've noticed that if you want to hire someone to clean your house, it's usually 30-35$/hour in the Bay Area, which would equate to about 50-55$/hour if you consider that these people seldom pay taxes on their earnings. That's a lot more than a junior or experienced software developer. This is, of course, true for many other jobs. I don't mean this to disrespect cleaners, plumbers, and the like, of course. I am just really curious to understand why their wages are so different than what we should expect.
13 comments
Are you comparing hourly rates to hourly salaries? If so, don't do that. Anyone working on a freelance basis, programmer or cleaner alike, has to charge a hefty premium to pay for self-employment taxes, their own benefits, vacation, non-payment/scheduling/market risk, unbillable time doing rainmaking/business administration, and the like.

If you are doing apples to apples and actually know junior or senior developers with a $50 hourly in the Bay Area, tell them to double their rates today. That still doesn't get them to market but hey baby steps like doubling their rates are a good way to get started.

We hired a clown for my daughter's first birthday and it was about $100 per hour. She only works weekends though. Remember that these workers (cleaners, clowns, or other on demand workers) don't have a realistic possibility of working 40 hours a week at that rate like a developer does. They will have a few gigs a week, and they spend a lot of time idling or driving.
Clowns can probably only do one child's birthday party per day, since they are all around the same time.
They don't get paid for travel time or vacation and don't have insurance. If they really are being paid under the table, they also don't have the kind of paper trail that's needed to get a loan for a house or car, or an employment history that would help them find a better job.

But it's mostly the travel time that kills them, I think.

I am just really curious to understand why their wages are so different than what we should expect.

"What we should expect"? What does this even mean? What do you expect someone who provides a service that is in demand charge or make? Why should they make any less than what the market is willing to pay?

I don't know for sure, but I imagine OP is curious because cleaning is a relatively unskilled job, and would thus expect higher supply.
If this is the case, then it betrays significant naivety on the part of the OP (which is my assertion of the question in general). Good cleaning people/individuals, not just cleaning services, are not easy to find. My household has gone through a handful and at times struggled to keep the good ones.

The same goes for competency in many other jobs, like plumbing and yard work, that may be considered "unskilled" or not. The difference between some of these is that you often hire cleaning or yardwork services on a regular or scheduled basis, so you have a nice feedback loop on determining their value (both monetarily and for keeping them around/finding a new one). Versus services like plumbers, who most people only call when there is a problem (that is, no one keeps a plumber on retainer).

Correct, that was the initial assumption.
If you're hiring from a company or agency, the company or agency may be taking a large cut of that. I know many cleaners round here make around minimum wage; £6.31 (around $10.50) an hour. Whereas hiring from a cleaning company will run you out to around £10-11 an hour (roughly $17)

So, if you knock a third of the price in OP off - and say that's what the company keeps - you'd be looking at more like $20-23 an hour in Bay Area.

Then you've got travel time to count in - say it takes them a half hour to get to your house and a half hour back to base. If they work your house for two hours at a stretch that's another third. So, 40 over 3. That'd get you down to $13 an hour.

And then you've got to ask how many hours they can really fit into the day.

Ask HN: why do the entitled elite feel so persecuted?
can you explain how $30/hr equates to $50/hr ? As stated in other answers, $50/hr is very low for an independent sw developer in the bay area (and many other places too)

EDIT: Just think on how may real billable hours any of those contractors have in the year

Compare annual earnings and SW developers earn lots more... with more job security
Because cleaners provide value.