What Software Engineers Earn Compared to the General Population • Hacker News Board

Re: What Software Engineers Earn Compared to the General Population

#31

Post by paulmd » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 1:51 PM UTC

_yosefk wrote: post #13

paulmd wrote: post #10

It's meaningless to directly compare software engineer salaries with the rest of the general population because our work is a 'force multiplier'. A single software engineer can displace the labor of 10 staff - often permanently. While we're compensated more highly than 1 lower-skilled staff member it's still actually not commensurate with the amount of value we actually deliver. My (unscientific) belief is that we ac…

Erm... How many people are fed by a combine harvester driver? How many babies and mothers are saved by the staff of a modern hospital, who drastically lower child mortality? If 10 future programmers are delivered by a single nurse, should she be paid 10x what a programmer makes? (Supply and demand I get, "force multiplier" I don't get.)

If a combine harvester allows a farmer to feed as many people as 100 farmers working by hand then they have a force multiplier of 100x. If you can train one nurse to deliver as many babies as 10 normal nurses then they have a force-multiplier of 10x. This doesn't necessarily translate into 10x or 100x the salary - farming is still an extremely capital-intensive business, probably moreso than it was pre-Green Revolution. Tractors and fuel and fertilizer don't buy themselves. There really hasn't been a single improvement that produced a 10x improvement in the number of babies a nurse can deliver. Maybe if someone goes out and invents the robo-midwife, but I can't see that being real popular...

The other way you can go is a qualitative improvement, which is where the child mortality example comes in. If one engineer can remove 75% of the fuck-ups caused by manually performing a task, then that is also worth money, but it's not valued in quite the same way. You'd value lower child-mortality in person-years of economic output (accrued to society), quality-adjusted-life-years (accrued to the individual) and diminished malpractice suits/insurance (accrued to the hospital or the insurance company).

Perhaps a better term would be "productivity multiplier". Productivity is a pretty standard economic measure (average economic output per individual), and engineers both have much higher economic output per individual, and can greatly increase that output for other individuals as well (often with a one-time investment).

Re: What Software Engineers Earn Compared to the General Population

#32

Post by frogpelt » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 1:51 PM UTC

goldbrick wrote: post #20

frogpelt wrote: post #18

Is it meaningful to compare the median annual income of software engineers to the average annual income of the general population? I'm legitimately curious, what is the statistical significance of an average versus a median?

It's a mistake to compare the two -- statistics 101.

So, I guess the point of the notebook was probably not the statistics but the scraping and plotting of the data.

And furthermore, the author just used the data that Bloomberg used here: http://www.bloomberg.com/visual-data/best-and-worst/highest-...

Re: What Software Engineers Earn Compared to the General Population

#33

Post by bryanlarsen » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 1:52 PM UTC

_yosefk wrote: post #13

paulmd wrote: post #10

It's meaningless to directly compare software engineer salaries with the rest of the general population because our work is a 'force multiplier'. A single software engineer can displace the labor of 10 staff - often permanently. While we're compensated more highly than 1 lower-skilled staff member it's still actually not commensurate with the amount of value we actually deliver. My (unscientific) belief is that we ac…

Erm... How many people are fed by a combine harvester driver? How many babies and mothers are saved by the staff of a modern hospital, who drastically lower child mortality? If 10 future programmers are delivered by a single nurse, should she be paid 10x what a programmer makes? (Supply and demand I get, "force multiplier" I don't get.)

I know your question is rhetorical, but a single combine harvester driver can 'feed' about 10,000 people in a couple of weeks. If the driver is the owner/operator of a farm, that's all they do, but there are some who do the circuit, starting in Texas in May and finishing in Northern Alberta in October.

Re: What Software Engineers Earn Compared to the General Population

#34

Post by maxerickson » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 1:54 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #27

glogla wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software engineers are like doctors or lawyers - long period of study on difficult (and in places where people pay for colleges expensive) schools, long hours, but good pay. So it makes sense to compare them with doctors and lawyers. Unlike doctors and lawyers, software engineers don't have any respect and are pretty much working class, but that's another story.

Software engineers are not "working class." Where did you get that idea?

Keep in mind that there's lots of different definitions of classes.

Software reasonably fits in as a white collar job, which is working class.

In general it's probably more interesting to discuss the various things people use to differentiate roles than it is to argue about what words should be used to describe the roles.

Re: What Software Engineers Earn Compared to the General Population

#35

Post by eterm » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 1:55 PM UTC

frogpelt wrote: post #18

Is it meaningful to compare the median annual income of software engineers to the average annual income of the general population? I'm legitimately curious, what is the statistical significance of an average versus a median?

"average income" as reported is usually the median.

Edit: I'm not sure why I'm getting downvotes.

Anywhere you read about average incomes from a serious source it'll be the median, no one uses "mean income" for average when dealing with incomes, since the distribution is so skewed.

If you even just google "average income" it'll report you the median. Median is so completely standard when reporting on income data that it gets short-handed to "average".

Re: What Software Engineers Earn Compared to the General Population

#36

Post by dvirsky » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 1:56 PM UTC

frogpelt wrote: post #18

Is it meaningful to compare the median annual income of software engineers to the average annual income of the general population? I'm legitimately curious, what is the statistical significance of an average versus a median?

It certainly distorts results where the median and average in the general population differ by a lot. Where I live the average is almost 50% higher than the median.

Re: What Software Engineers Earn Compared to the General Population

#37

Post by berntb » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 1:56 PM UTC

V-2 wrote: post #9

TrickedOut wrote: post #2

I really detest when software engineer salaries are compared to the salaries of the general population (often to cite how our sector is "overpaid"). Usually lacking from such simple comparisons: 1. Discussion of how software engineers have to go to college for 4 to 6+ years, but the general population is weighted towards those far fewer years of schooling 2. Discussion of downtime -- the amount of time software engne…

A lot of software engineers are autodidacts and never graduated in IT. I didn't (I have an MA in politics, obviously irrelevant to my profession). In general unemployment in IT is very low, and there's always a shortage of programmers, so job security is clearly above average. (And government administrations have IT departments, too). It's supply vs. demand, that's all there is to it. I'm not buying any of the above…

>> there's always a shortage of programmers

Wow, people really have forgotten the IT-death. :-)

There are cycles and bubbles here too. They just might not be in phase with the general economy.

(And get off my lawn. :-) )

Re: What Software Engineers Earn Compared to the General Population

#38

Post by fecak » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 1:56 PM UTC

glogla wrote: post #4

TrickedOut wrote: post #2

I really detest when software engineer salaries are compared to the salaries of the general population (often to cite how our sector is "overpaid"). Usually lacking from such simple comparisons: 1. Discussion of how software engineers have to go to college for 4 to 6+ years, but the general population is weighted towards those far fewer years of schooling 2. Discussion of downtime -- the amount of time software engne…

Software engineers are like doctors or lawyers - long period of study on difficult (and in places where people pay for colleges expensive) schools, long hours, but good pay. So it makes sense to compare them with doctors and lawyers. Unlike doctors and lawyers, software engineers don't have any respect and are pretty much working class, but that's another story.

Doctors and lawyers require outside certification and extensive post-graduate education just to enter the industry. Comparing them to software engineers is not a useful comparison.

Re: What Software Engineers Earn Compared to the General Population

#39

Post by yread » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 1:57 PM UTC

TrickedOut wrote: post #2

I really detest when software engineer salaries are compared to the salaries of the general population (often to cite how our sector is "overpaid"). Usually lacking from such simple comparisons: 1. Discussion of how software engineers have to go to college for 4 to 6+ years, but the general population is weighted towards those far fewer years of schooling 2. Discussion of downtime -- the amount of time software engne…

> downtime -- the amount of time software engneers spend unemployed (due to economic cycle, startup bankruptcy, downsizing, etc.)

funny but from my circle of friends I never heard of anyone being unemployed and looking for job for more than a month. I myself had exactly 0 time of looking for a job in 12 years of working. I'm in Europe, though, we're ridiculously underpaid compared to the US I think. Very few people earn more than 100K.

Re: What Software Engineers Earn Compared to the General Population

#40

Post by kspaans » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 1:57 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #27

glogla wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software engineers are like doctors or lawyers - long period of study on difficult (and in places where people pay for colleges expensive) schools, long hours, but good pay. So it makes sense to compare them with doctors and lawyers. Unlike doctors and lawyers, software engineers don't have any respect and are pretty much working class, but that's another story.

Software engineers are not "working class." Where did you get that idea?

I think the grandparent is playing a little loose with terms. By "working class", I believe they mean both: have to exchange their labour for money, and low social class (less respect from peers, say at a dinner party).

Though obviously some software engineers "cash out" and then don't _need_ to work anymore, and many doctors would quickly run out of money if they stopped working.