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I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation

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Re: I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation

#81

Post by greyman »

manuelflara wrote: post #63
flexie wrote: post #56

I think it's mostly supply and demand, timing and where you live. But those are the factors we rarely talk about. Instead, people complain they are not compensated enough relative to the importance of their work, their intelligence, the hours put in, their title or the length of their education or the risk they take. If people were paid according to the importance of their jobs, I would argue that plumbers, sewage wo…

I totally agree. Being a developer is one of the best careers you can have right now. Well paid and high in demand everywhere in the world, very little "soul crushing" (and can even be very fulfilling) compared to most jobs and you can even get a job where you work from home, anywhere you want, with flexible time etc. What other jobs exist out there like it? And if your only complaint is "well my employer makes milli…

As I understood the article, the gist of the issue is, that besides salary, many/some programmers could also have another form(s) of compensation, so why not negotiate for it?

Re: I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation

#83

Post by signa11 »

jondubois wrote: post #53

Finance is evil. Day trading, investment banking, venture capital; they don't produce anything for society, they just sit at the intersection of various people, companies and industries and they capture big chunks of the money that flows between them - They rely on information asymmetry and market manipulation to do so; but 'information asymmetry' is just a euphemism for 'deception'. Even startups which are doing wel…

> Finance is evil

that's a pretty strong viewpoint to take. have you looked at 'the ascent of money' by niall-ferguson to get a more historical perspective on how we got here ?

Re: I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation

#84

Post by signa11 »

20yrs_no_equity wrote: post #24
dboreham wrote: post #15

One of the cases where jwz is spot on : it's a lottery ticket, nothing more.

Except that you can pay $1 for a lottery ticket with long odds of a $100M return, here you are paying $70k for a $1M lottery ticket with equally long odds of return.

> ... here you are paying $70k for a $1M lottery ticket ...

care to elaborate a bit on how you got that ? thanks !

Re: I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation

#85

Post by bbcbasic »

flexie wrote: post #56

I think it's mostly supply and demand, timing and where you live. But those are the factors we rarely talk about. Instead, people complain they are not compensated enough relative to the importance of their work, their intelligence, the hours put in, their title or the length of their education or the risk they take. If people were paid according to the importance of their jobs, I would argue that plumbers, sewage wo…

They are well compensated but to not push for better upside more when the investors and founders have a lot of upside seems naive.

Life is expensive if you plan to have children and give them a good start. Being smart about investments is essential to ensure a secure future.

Just because a plumber earns less is irrelevant. Many people in trades go on to apply their knowledge to renovations anyway. Is a plumber more important? Impossible to quantify. Maybe a programmer works on a cad application that helps design a faucet that doesn't leak. The programmer is now indirectly a plumber.

Re: I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation

#87

Post by dnh44 »

westoque wrote: post #82

Not all people are motivated my money. Some people really just don't care about their compensations. They are just motivated either by the idea, the people, the leader, the industry, etc.

Even if one is not motivated by money, one should at least still have the self-respect to make sure they are being fairly compensated for their time.

Re: I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation

#88

Post by gaius »

olavgg wrote: post #69
flexie wrote: post #56

I think it's mostly supply and demand, timing and where you live. But those are the factors we rarely talk about. Instead, people complain they are not compensated enough relative to the importance of their work, their intelligence, the hours put in, their title or the length of their education or the risk they take. If people were paid according to the importance of their jobs, I would argue that plumbers, sewage wo…

Yes programmers are well compensated, but they are also in very high demand. One day at a big family union I got three phonecalls from recruiters. My whole family rolled their eyes, while I politely said no to those recruiters with below average offers. I told them that this is usual, I get a few phonecalls from recruiters every week. None of them who work as doctors, teachers, accounting, geophysicist, even an old C…

None of them who work as doctors, teachers, accounting, geophysicist, even an old CEO of a $200 mill company has ever experienced something like that. They may get a recruiter calling once a year.

Those recruiters aren't calling for your benefit tho'. They are calling because they want to sell you like a piece of meat. That's just a sign that nearly everyone connected to the industry who isn't actually an engineer themselves is trying to exploit engineers in some way.

What they lack is experience, but as the technology landscape changes every second year many believe experience doesn't matter

People believe what is to their advantage to believe. Getting an experienced engineer at a knock down rate because they've been tricked into undervaluing their experience suits VCs and managers very well...

Re: I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation

#89

Post by paublyrne »

crasp wrote: post #61
flexie wrote: post #56

I think it's mostly supply and demand, timing and where you live. But those are the factors we rarely talk about. Instead, people complain they are not compensated enough relative to the importance of their work, their intelligence, the hours put in, their title or the length of their education or the risk they take. If people were paid according to the importance of their jobs, I would argue that plumbers, sewage wo…

There are always jobs that are worse in some way. If a plumber screws up you might get a wet floor or sewage in the street. If some banking software makes a flaw, you can't just pick up a mop and clean it up. There are always jobs that come out worse in some category compared to programming. The problem here specifically is that given you have written 50% of the software people are using and investors are making some…

Investors may be taking advantage of your labour but this is the nature of every business. The business owners take advantage of employee labour to make a lot more money than the employees. I find the entitlement to better terms than people inother fields that frequently crops up here incredibly pretentious and self righteous.
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