I Don’t Care How Well You Code, Understand Your Compensation • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by gaius » Tue, Aug 09, 2016, 1:31 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #71

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…

The measure of "importance" that results in programmers being paid a lot of money is the ability to do something once and have it benefit millions of people.

I don't think that's true because a) lots of people do that kind of work, in the physical world too, such as the guy who paints lines on the roads, and b) you don't do it once, you do it again and again every time a new JS framework comes out...

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

#162

Post by lmm » Tue, Aug 09, 2016, 1:32 PM UTC

aub3bhat wrote: post #52

lmm wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you walk into a casino you're going to lose money. I don't even know the rules of any of the games and I can tell you that. Some situations are so tilted in favour of one side or the other that it's not worth trying to compete on that playing field. Valuing the options at zero and demanding adequate salary without them is the opposite of meekness.

Rather than loudly proclaiming your ignorance about casions and options, you should introspect. I know several people who successfully negotiated better terms. Demanding "adequate" salary and valueing options at "zero" are two seperate tasks. You assume latter (options not valued at 0) implies former (salary not adequate) its a statement about your risk averse world view, not a statememt of fact. As far as meekness,…

> As far as meekness, loudly proclaiming that you are valuing options at zero is great way of letting your co workers and others know of your level of interest in the success of company. At which point if not meek you would surely come across as contemptuous, lest the company suceed and your coworkers end up better off than you.

You don't have to be contemptuous to be confident in your own worth and realistic about how much you can influence the company's chances. By working for a company you are already long that company; you should be looking to diversify. The people who "drink the kool-aid" and get extremely personally devoted to their company are not exactly respected, IME.

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

#163

Post by gtycomb » Tue, Aug 09, 2016, 1:32 PM UTC

> I would argue that plumbers, sewage workers and farmers should be paid higher than programmers.

Then, of course, the plumber et. al. should consider moving into programming. No one is stopping them from training themselves and learning what it takes to make the switch.

The programmer getting $80,000, who developed a key technology to start a multi-million organisation, if she finds she is not compensated appropriately, should consider teaming up and starting something on her own probably.

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

#164

Post by gaius » Tue, Aug 09, 2016, 1:32 PM UTC

etatoby wrote: post #104

YuriNiyazov wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really wrong. You can very well assume that it's worthless. If you do, chances are you will not do your research on things like early exercise and 83(b) filing (whether, for example, you work at a company that even allows things like that). Then, in the very small chance that your equity is actually worth something, you will be kicking yourself really hard because if you'd only prepared, you could've been pay…

> you will be kicking yourself really hard because if you'd only prepared, you could've been paying LTCG... AMT... illiquid stock... IRS... CA FTB... ACME... Road Runner... Look, I won't be kicking myself neither hard not soft, because I made a conscious decision to study and become proficient in another field. You finance people work under the assumption that everybody cares—or should care—about the underlying conce…

You finance people work under the assumption that everybody cares—or should care—about the underlying concepts of your field

Those aren't finance terms, they are taxpayer terms! Long term capital gains, alternative minimum tax, everyone knows who the IRS are...

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

#165

Post by riskable » Tue, Aug 09, 2016, 1:33 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #154

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…

> [P]eople 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. Most developers would be wise to understand that with few exceptions, none of these things have anything to do with your compensation. Your compensation is based almost entirely on some amorphous combination of: A) Suppl…

I'd put Luck and Nepotism at the top of the list followed by D. But maybe that's just because I work in finance.

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

#166

Post by erroneousfunk » Tue, Aug 09, 2016, 1:34 PM UTC

_RPM wrote: post #151

olavgg wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why do you even empower these people by answering the phone? I never answer when they call.

I know a lot of people don't bother to answer their phone unless it's from a number in their contacts, but not everyone is like that. I almost always answer calls from numbers I don't recognize, and it's often a call that's actually important. A coworker or friend whose number I don't have, the bank calling me about strange activity on my account, a callback about a message I left and forgot about -- who knows? It only takes a few seconds to realize it's a recruiter and say "No thanks, please don't call me again" and I certainly don't want to add their numbers to my contacts list to filter them out. I like being immediately accessible in emergencies, and a minor inconvenience is worth that to me.

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

#167

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 09, 2016, 1:35 PM UTC

ethanbond wrote: post #113

amelius wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it were about intelligence, most physicists I know are underpaid and programmers are generally compensated fairly. Most physicists I know are searching for stuff that already exists, whereas most programmers I know are actually building new stuff.

New stuff = this week's rip of another game, Snapchat feature, or productivity app. Yippee.

[deleted]

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

#168

Post by colanderman » Tue, Aug 09, 2016, 1:35 PM UTC

nilkn wrote: post #160

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 think there's truth here, but I also think programmers routinely underestimate the quality and compensation of other careers that they think are "below" them. For instance, you did it in this very post. Do you really think that all high school teachers are locked into making $40k for life? Here where I live (a large city, but also a pretty affordable one), teachers start at ~$55k in base salary, get a whole range o…

To be fair, no teacher I have ever known has stopped working at 3:20 PM. Grading and planning often go far into the evening.

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

#169

Post by gaius » Tue, Aug 09, 2016, 1:36 PM UTC

alanwatts wrote: post #155

pjc50 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finance is bad, but it's kind of a least-worst situation. What's the alternative that doesn't rely on philosopher-kings or omniscient omnibenevolent central planners?

>What's the alternative that doesn't rely on philosopher-kings or omniscient omnibenevolent central planners? Distributed sharing economies, like that of most tribal organizations.

How do those systems manage capital-intensive projects? Bridges and dams and airliners and power grids and so on...

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

#170

Post by hippich » Tue, Aug 09, 2016, 1:40 PM UTC

pkolaczk wrote: post #121

rimantas wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure aniut the low barrier to entry. Take 1000 programmers, how many can be made into decent plumbers in 6 months? Now take 1000 plumbers, how many can be made ibto decent programmers in 6 months? Also, I am nit aware how often tevhnology materials and tooling changes for plumbers (I guess some of these spsn generations), but I am aware that platform I have been working full time for 4 years did not exist 8 years…

Most programmers would be able to do usual plumbing stuff like connecting the sink or dishwasher to water pipes with almost no prior learning, just by looking how things are done, maybe asking a few basic questions at the plumbing supplies store, and reading the attached instructions. These things are no rocket-science really. Sure, an experienced plumber would do all of these things much faster and probably better,…

Except that in plumbing industry we have artificial barriers in form of licensing. I wonder when time will come for similar barriers in software development.