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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

#131

Post by jzwinck »

jazzyk wrote: post #109
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 would argue that plumbers, sewage workers and farmers should be paid higher than programmers. Self-employed plumbers are paid higher than programmers. Every plumber I reached out to quoted $130/hr and they are all booked for weeks in advance.

Plumbers have to spend unbillable time driving from place to place. $130 per hour is great but if each job takes 1-2 hours it could magically halve.

Ever walk into a half empty restaurant and get turned away because they're fully booked?

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

#132

Post by jzwinck »

gaius wrote: post #103
cel1ne wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would add "police" to the list of critically important yet comically underpaid professions.

Well there is a paradox at work here. You need to pay any sort official enough that they aren't desperate for bribes, but not so much that you attract people into the job motivated by personal enrichment. Read "Systems of Survival" by Jane Jacobs for a good study of this.

Which is better motivation for a police officer? Personal enrichment, or the chance to use weapons, violence, and deception for advantage--once common delights now so rare!

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

#133

Post by [deleted] »

pkolaczk wrote: post #123
amelius wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But most programmers are basically plumbers (for data as opposed to water/sewage) :)

Not really. Most programmers I know design systems, not just mechanically program them according to the specs. Plumbers do not design - they just execute designs created by plumbing engineers. And plumbing or mechanical engineers are paid much, much higher (in this region where I live probably not as much as programmers, but close enough).

[deleted]

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

#134

Post by dagw »

gaius wrote: post #96
amelius wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But most programmers are basically plumbers (for data as opposed to water/sewage) :)

Not true. Plumbers work reasonable hours, are paid overtime, don't have to deal with ageism, their skills stay relevant regardless of fashion trends, and their jobs will never be offshored.

and their jobs will never be offshored

Don't know about the US, but in much of Europe plumbing has definitely been 'offshored' in the sense that much of the work is done by non-locals brought in short term.

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

#135

Post by ysavir »

amelius wrote: post #93
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…

But most programmers are basically plumbers (for data as opposed to water/sewage) :)

I hope we can both agree that your language's garbage collection is ultimately less important than your toilet's garbage collection.

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

#136

Post by jfdk »

scandox wrote: post #127

People who care about money will always have trouble understanding people that don't care about money - and vice-versa. (Obviously, the context here is a milieu in which everybody has enough for basic needs.) It's all about head space. Caring about money is quite a binary thing: once you engage with it, it's a huge commitment - intellectually and emotionally. People who don't care about money understand that they're…

I think this largely depends on how much money you are chasing and your aspirations.

I care about money not because I want to have lots of things but because I want the freedom to work on my own ideas (without selling my soul to a VC). A certain amount of money early in life can greatly change your trajectory, for better or for worse. It just takes discipline.

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

#137

Post by siculars »

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…

s/contempt/content

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

#138

Post by Cpoll »

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…

I think that's a disingenuous comparison. If you're comparing to banking software, imagine a plumber that causes four floors of a high-rise to get flooded, leading to 5-figures of damage and additional lost time. Or perhaps an underwater plumber, where the cost to fix the leak is high.

If we're looking at house plumbing, it might be more fair to compare it to a CRUD app that facilitates iguana breeding (unsolved problem here, folks!).

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

#139

Post by uxp100 »

mamon wrote: post #116
billmalarky wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What about the risk of work injuries faced by construction workers every day. That's real risk. I hear you, but the negative health effects of working insane hours developing in a high stress "start-up" environment for many years should not be understated.

Exactly, in fact I think that if you want to stay healthy then working as a construction worker is great: you get physical excercise, fresh air, low stress level. Risk of injury is pretty low, and wages are pretty good. In contrast, being software developer will probably get you heart attack, or problems with your spine, or eyes, or hands or all of the above.

Are you sure this is true?

You think the added risk of heart attack from software development is greater than the risk of death in construction?

You think the rate of spine, eye, or hand injuries from typing all day is greater than the risk of bodily injury in construction?

I find it difficult to find stats for this about software development, but 899 construction workers died on the job in 2014, and construction workers do get these small RSI issues in their shoulders and hands like you were describing for software development, but they are also regularly injured, but not killed, by falling, being crushed, and being cut.

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

#140

Post by arca_vorago »

I think the main thing that most IT workers fail to understand is employment contracts or agreements. Far too often a person needs a job, so too quickly agrees to terms that end up biting them later or causing resentment.

I'm reminded of the guy who outsourced his job to china and just surfed reddit all day. The problem is indicated of a larger issue not really talked about though, and thats the destruction of the middle class and increasing income inequality. I have started heavily referencing cost of living statistics when trying to understand macroeconomics, and when, in one of the most insulated areas from the 08 crash in Texas, with some of the lowest cost of living, and 49k is the living wage, which is almost impossible to get, I see a large storm brewing over the country that hardly anyone else seems to notice.

The true bottom line is that employers have far too much power, and employees need to start expanding theirs, before the neofuedal state kicks in fully and shit gets really fucked.

To give a quick example of bad compensation, I used to contract for some of the best law firms in town, and I got to know the secretaries and paralegals pretty well. well, come to find out, apparently the office managers from the various firms call each other to price fix salaries and compensation for them so they dont want to leave etc. Its blatantly illegal, but what are they gonna do, sue the best lawyers in town who are "good christian men" and "paragons of the community"? So most of them just grin and bear it.

Not to mention the fact that some of them bring in well over 4,5,6 times their salary in client billing themselves (eg not their attorneys) yet they still get a measly 1k christmas bonus.

Econimic warfare is real, and as W Buffett said, the rich are winning.

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