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

#191

Post by jomamaxx » Tue, Aug 09, 2016, 1:54 PM UTC

riskable wrote: post #165

pc86 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [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.

To be fair, nepotism in tech tends to be of the academic type, and most kids who get into Ivy League have worked pretty hard to get there.

So, in some ways, it's not that bad a kind of nepotism.

Most startups are not hiring actual family members :)

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

#192

Post by ryandrake » Tue, Aug 09, 2016, 1:56 PM UTC

jazzyk wrote: post #153

cel1ne wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Being a policeman can be a tough, dangerous job. But I don't think they are underpaid, at least not in Massachusetts - Police Trooper, 1st class can make $130K-$180K. They also get generous pensions (state employees).

Yea, top ones. This sounds like the same old argument: "A handful of top programmers at Google make $300k! Therefore programmers in general make a lot."

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

#193

Post by sethammons » Tue, Aug 09, 2016, 1:56 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…

Annecdata: as a teacher in an inner city high school, I did not break past 50k/year for the three years I was there. That includes the summers I worked. Between grading, lesson planning, meetings, and teaching, my typical week day started before 7am, ended around 8pm or later. Typically most of my Saturday was used up and half my Sunday. Normally all of spring and winter break was used up likewise. I typically got close to a week off in summer.

As a developer, I started at nearly 2x what I made as a teacher. After getting real experience, I make more than most administrators and more than any teacher could after a lifetime of service. I have multiple weeks of paid vacation. Aside from a (weak) pension, my benefits are better. My work only follows me home when I am behind schedule (not often) or when there is an outage (a bit cyclical). My quality of life is so vastly better. Another benefit, I now get to work with motivated and smart individuals.

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

#194

Post by no_flags » Tue, Aug 09, 2016, 1:58 PM UTC

wschroed wrote: post #159

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.

Hubris: http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-dangerous-jobs/

Taxi drivers more likely to die from homicide than a traffic accident! That's shocking. I wonder what explains this. Is it armed robberies gone wrong?

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

#195

Post by anupshinde » Tue, Aug 09, 2016, 1:58 PM UTC

Couple of interesting quotes that resonate with this.

1. "Company doesn't care about you (employee), and you shouldn't care about the company"

For few years this resonated in my head and I disbelieved it for obvious reasons. Its just demotivating. But after more than a decade I know this is completely true.

2. "Customers don't care how good the code is"

True. As far as the functionality is reliable and acceptable quality. Good code is only a value-enabler.

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

#196

Post by ma2rten » Tue, Aug 09, 2016, 2:03 PM UTC

colanderman wrote: post #168

nilkn wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually according to http://transparentcalifornia.com/ my daughter's elementary school teacher makes around 130k in a public school.

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

#197

Post by olavgg » Tue, Aug 09, 2016, 2:04 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.

Because sometimes they actually have something interesting for me.

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

#198

Post by rantanplan » Tue, Aug 09, 2016, 2:05 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #88

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…

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 th…

> They are calling because they want to sell you like a piece of meat

Compared to..... what?

Calling me because of my good-natured character and my unparalleled virtues?

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

#199

Post by vladimirralev » Tue, Aug 09, 2016, 2:06 PM UTC

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…

> importance of their work, their intelligence, the hours put in, their title or the length of their education or the risk

Well one of these is not like the others. The article clearly focuses on the financial risks. It's destructive to suggest that risk and especially deceptive risk presentation is somehow ignorable and not to worry about it. You can't just let the supply and demand model play itself out. Hostile actors work against you and exploit information advantage to skew the supply and demand [1]. Teachers, construction workers or software engineers - it doesn't matter what your job is. Here we talk about stakeholders in a company. It just happens some software engineers are, and as such you should understand where the numbers come from and what's the value of all that since it's part of the compensation. There are plenty of devs out there who work for no money at all. It's pointless to go into philosophical discussion about jobs, it's outside the scope. This is purely a subject for stakeholders.

[1] http://www.borooah.com/Teaching/Post%20Graduate%20Microecono...

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

#200

Post by fencepost » Tue, Aug 09, 2016, 2:07 PM UTC

LanceH wrote: post #190

ryandrake wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally, no teacher I have ever known has had the summer off. Summer is when they do catch-up work, lesson planning, etc., the technical debt payback of the teaching world. (source: three parents/step-parents were school teachers)

To be fair, no teacher I've ever known as received only 10 day vacation and 10 holidays. They have over 20 days of holidays built in during the school year and a legitimate two months off between years.

No, they have 2 months between school years in which they are not at the front of a classroom. For a lot of teachers that's time used for continuing education, for prep for the upcoming school year, etc. - or for a summer job.