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Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity

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Re: Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity

#51

Post by nostrademons »

samuel wrote: post #15
raganwald wrote: post #4

Show me how to measure productivity and I'll find a way for the 10x more productive programmer to earn 10x the compensation. I agree with the OP that the problem here is that it is not easy to measure productivity. http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2009-02-1...

It's worse than that. There is a standard way of assesing programmers productivity and is the worst it could be: kLOC's.

Basically every programmer I've worked with agrees that kLOC is a terrible way of assessing productivity. I think it's only "standard" in the stupid section of the industry (which, alas, is much bigger than it should be).

Re: Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity

#52

Post by Psyonic »

dusklight wrote: post #36

I think 10x is really not the right number. First off there are the net negative producing programmers, you can't say the good programmers are 10x the productivity of those guys, because that would make them 10x worse, which is incorrect. Second off, I think the variation between programmers can be much bigger than 10x, easily 50x or more. Of course the 1x programmers really don't like this idea, because their egos c…

50x? Really? That means they achieve in a week what the 1x programmers achieve in a year. I'd say its more likely they are infinitely more productive (as in produce things the 1x programmers could never produce), but those kinds of projects are rather uncommon.

Re: Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity

#53

Post by nostrademons »

raganwald wrote: post #47
DenisM wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Start your own business (even if only a consultancy) and look at your bank account each day. That's the raw, true measure of productivity.

That is roughly equivalent to saying that the true measure of an employee's productivity is their salary. What are you measuring?

It's measuring the amount someone is willing to pay you for your work. By an economist's definition, that's your output. If you divide your output by number of hours worked, that's your productivity, again by economist's definition.

I make no claims as to how useful these definitions are. There's a reason why economics is called the dismal science. But terms like output and productivity do have accepted definitions - so yeah, the true measure of an employee's productivity is almost their salary. (It's actually revenue / employee / hour, so if an employer keeps most of the money as profit, it's still productivity. That's why the grandparent suggested "start your own consultancy".)

Re: Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity

#54

Post by jey »

raganwald wrote: post #47
DenisM wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Start your own business (even if only a consultancy) and look at your bank account each day. That's the raw, true measure of productivity.

That is roughly equivalent to saying that the true measure of an employee's productivity is their salary. What are you measuring?

No, he's saying you have to take it upon yourself to turn "potential income" into "realized income".

Re: Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity

#55

Post by Psyonic »

Poiesis wrote: post #31
ggruschow wrote: post #14

Productivity based compensation for thought-workers isn't a panacea. Expenses based on time, income habituation, success or blame attribution, and differences of opinion on what is productive can actually make it a pretty horrible experience -- even for people who are well above the average. Time-based compensation and productivity-based firing can be a pretty good system for a lot of people in a lot of situations. I…

I started responding to disagree with you, but now I'm not sure what you're saying so I'll just chime in with my views. :) I actually think production based pay is refreshing. I've personally worked under this system (OK, so technically my wife did). It is really egalitarian. Unfortunately it is also very uneven, as production capabilities vary considerably and at times disappear complete (i.e, you're sick). Also, as…

That's one big problem I see with performance based pay, even if an accurate personal metric were available. Time spent helping/mentoring others would have a negative impact on a senior programmers bottom line, even though a company generally wants to encourage this.

Re: Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity

#56

Post by walkon »

rdouble wrote: post #16

The author has not ever worked with the truly 10x more productive programmers. Most people do not get the chance to work with these programmers. They do get paid in proportion to their productivity. There are so many horrible programmers that you can be mediocre and be 10x more productive than the guy next to you. Thus you think you're in the 10x crew. But you really aren't. It's not because you're really that good.…

"There are so many horrible programmers that you can be mediocre and be 10x more productive than the guy next to you. Thus you think you're in the 10x crew. But you really aren't. It's not because you're really that good. It's because the guy next to you is really that bad."

So someone who is 10x more productive then their coworker isn't actually 10x more productive because their coworker is so horrible? Isn't "10x more productive" an explicit measure of productivity relative to the guy(s) next to you?

Re: Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity

#57

Post by SapphireSun »

rpledge wrote: post #43
ballpark wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel best when I'm deleting other's code, and accomplishing the same thing with much less code.

100% agree with this, less code = less maintenance. Very few people truly understand this and why it's important.

In my latest app, I've noticed that I get the greatest highs when I write one specific function, and then rewrite it to be generic enough to handle four different elements. Great fun.

Re: Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity

#58

Post by nostrademons »

btilly wrote: post #8
kingkongreveng_ wrote: post #5

> The most productive programmers orders of magnitude more productive than average programmers This is often repeated, never meaningfully demonstrated. I doubt it is true if we are excluding unqualified programmers.

Never meaningfully demonstrated? Have you tried to verify the claim? Go read Peopleware . You will find described very carefully set up coding comparisons that routinely found a factor of 10 productivity difference between different experienced programmers on the same task, and also a discussion of what organizational factors lead to those productivity differences. There is other research on the topic as well. For in…

I thought the Peopleware claim was that some teams are 10x more productive than other teams. I could easily buy this, because it's very easy to generate more internal communication work than it produces, i.e. be negatively productive.

I'm not sure I buy it for individuals, except in the limiting case of someone completely not knowing what they're doing and having no idea where to start.

I guess it's also possible with the economist's definition of productivity ($$$/hour), since so many projects turn out to be commercial flops. But by that definition, startups and research are some of the least productive sectors of the economy, not the most.

Re: Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity

#59

Post by hvasishth »

DougBTX wrote: post #46
motters wrote: post #22

Being super-productive isn't always wise for the black belt coder. In the traditional world of commercial programming if you solve the problem in a couple of hours and then just spend the rest of the day fooling around, reading scholarpedia or working on your own pet projects managers often don't look upon this kind of behavior favourably - they think you're not being productive, when in fact the opposite is the case…

I'd disagree with your description of "super-productive", that sounds like normal-productive with time to fool around. Do something productive with the extra time (either more coding or, better, something else business related like running the finished app past someone who might have to use it) and there might be a chance of hitting "super-productive". (fast + time wasted = normal speed)

While I agree with fast + time wasted = normal speed, in reality it is not the wasted time that plays the role. In most companies developers don't have a fixed 8 hour job and most of them work more than 8 hours a day on a routine basis. I have seen managers who valued the total time spent working more than the actual work accomplished. So a developer who works about 8 hours a day was ranked below someone who spent 10-12 hours a day working even though it was the former who was accomplishing more tasks.

Re: Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity

#60

Post by PostOnce »

nostrademons wrote: post #49
mattm wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did he get that good?

One guess: practice?

Practice will make you better, certainly, but different people learn at different speeds, and have different ceilings.

Potential is not necessarily proportional to practice. So, what he may be able to do in a year may take you twenty, or a week.

Practice isn't the only factor where ability is concerned.

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