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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

#71

Post by joe_the_user »

scott_s wrote: post #68
walkon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 m…

He meant in the class of 10x better than the average programmer, which would include all developers in the world, not just the few you can see.

Why would the developers you couldn't see be 10x better than the developers you can see?

Could there be a dark matter halo of great programmers lurking around the world's mediocre-programmer-filled corporate cubicals?

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

#72

Post by scott_s »

joe_the_user wrote: post #71
scott_s wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He meant in the class of 10x better than the average programmer, which would include all developers in the world, not just the few you can see.

Why would the developers you couldn't see be 10x better than the developers you can see? Could there be a dark matter halo of great programmers lurking around the world's mediocre-programmer-filled corporate cubicals?

I meant "the developers you can see" to imply the people around you. That's a small sample size, and not representative of the entire world.

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

#73

Post by cellis »

nostrademons wrote: post #67
raganwald wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make good points. However... if we accept the economist's definition of productivity, then the article becomes a NOOP: We measure the marketplace, we discover that given a set of programmers with roughly the same conditions, there isn't a 10x disparity in output divided by hours worked, therefore no programmer is 10x more productive. The only way there is something to discuss is when we presume there is another m…

I think that there is easily a 10x disparity in output divided by hours worked. Why did the Etherpads just make 8 figures over the past 3 years, while I made only 6 figures? They certainly didn't work 100x more. By the economist's definition, they were easily 100x more productive. I think that there's a more interesting question in the article - why do salaries "flatten out" the productivity curve, so that programmer…

This is one of the best posts I've read in a long time. It is easy to forget that, with regard to creating wealth, there are lot more factors at work than raw programming skill.

Networking, for instance, can greatly increase your output if you choose an awesome cofounder. It has a benefit that is not easily defined because of how hard it is to decouple the work and effect of each individual team member.

I know of one person that is worth easily in the 8 figures range, but he got in early to the venture. This does not mean he's a better programmer than everyone else, but he does benefit from a lot of factors that sum to being more important than programming skills.

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

#74

Post by zackattack »

PostOnce wrote: post #60
nostrademons wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm skeptical. What evidence do you have for this? Maybe some people who have a better start (those who are "naturally" talented) receive better instruction, or are more inclined to practice more often.

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

#75

Post by joe_the_user »

damienkatz wrote: post #48
kingkongreveng_ wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I just googled the peopleware citation and it seems the study backing this often repeated claim is from the 1960s and people have plenty of questions about its methodology. I'll easily buy 2X or 3X productivity difference. I'm not buying these casually tossed off claims about 10X or 30X productivity differences without the supporting research discussed in detail front and center. Unacknowledged differences of t…

If you view computer programmers as mental ditch diggers, then the idea that one could be so much more productive than another seems crazy. But when you see it as a creative endeavor, it's completely rational that some could be orders of magnitude more productive, even infinitely so. For example, when you have a hard problem (like a networked 3d game with physics) that is beyond the abilities of a developer A (he can…

But this reasoning applies if:

1) Knowledge is entirely linear. If there some tasks programmer A fails at and some tasks programmer B fails at, then all you have is an apples-to-oranges comparison (which is what a lot of the x10 chest-pounding comes down to).

2) Knowledge isn't shared in the group. My proudest moments have involved actually teaching my co-workers how to write a recursive descent parser, why ACID matters in databases or how to divide a multi-threaded application between worker and consumer threads. It might be true that if I'd just kept my knowledge to my self and laughed as they failed, I might have been a 10x or even a 100x programmer. But it was more pleasant and satisfying to be the guy who actually helped everyone.

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

#76

Post by Confusion »

DenisM wrote: post #45
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...

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.

But it is not a measure of the productivity of a programmer. It may be a measure of the productivity of an entrepreneur, but that is not what this article is about.

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

#77

Post by zackattack »

meunierc wrote: post #63

From the article: > someone who stares quietly into space for a few minutes ...and exactly here lies the problem. I've been fired from a job because according to an old retiree who never saw anyone programming before, "he spent his days scratching his beard and looking blankly at the screen". No mention about the job being done and the extra $1M my ideas saved. And certainly no apologies after they had to replace me…

And this kind of hostility is why I left corporate america.

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

#78

Post by dagw »

nostrademons wrote: post #53
raganwald wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 -…

In the real world the amount someone is willing to pay for your work is greatly influenced by how it is marketed and sold. I known some great programmers whom I suspect would fall flat on their face if forced to start their own company, but when placed in a team where they can focus on their strength can produce great things. So while it might be good way to measure the productivity of companies it isn't a great way to measure the productivity of individuals.

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

#79

Post by jxcole »

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.…

It might be true that you are only 10 times better than the guy sitting next to you because he is 10 times worse than you, but this is something of a red herring. There are plenty of terrible programmers out there who are 10 times worse than me. Do I get paid 10x more than them? Not even close. This article is more about why a 10x productivity increase does not equate to a 10x pay increase than it is about the possible existence of programmers who are 100s, 1000s, or 10,000s times better than the worst possible programmer.

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

#80

Post by rdouble »

scott_s wrote: post #68
walkon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 m…

He meant in the class of 10x better than the average programmer, which would include all developers in the world, not just the few you can see.

Yes, this is what I meant. I don't know why you got voted down.
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