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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

#251

Post by joezydeco »

edwhitesell wrote: post #214
ma2rten wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There are lots of places where teachers easily make 80k or more. Most states also drive additional salary requirements based on the level of education the teacher has. Also, the number of years teaching (though sometimes tied to the number of years in the specific school system/district) include increases too. Source: a friend who taught elementary school in the Boston area.

There are also teacher unions involved.

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

#252

Post by gaius »

alanwatts wrote: post #247
gaius wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>How do those systems manage capital-intensive projects? The use of the word "capital" here indicates a misunderstanding of the social dynamics of tribal economies. They produce and consume that which they need together because of shared benefit. Large scale centralized constructions like the Golden Gate Bridge, the Hoover Dam, or power grids are built to serve the stationary needs of the big city not the small, dist…

Such a tribe would either be pre-technological then, or piggybacking on a technological society that did make those investments.

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

#253

Post by nommm-nommm »

dpeterson wrote: post #218
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…

Can I ask, are you a programmer? My guess is you are not. If you were you would understand the real physical strain and mental toll it takes to be good. If you want to excel, it is a never-ending battle to stay current and there is little to no reward for experience (even though it matters a great deal and must be accomplished on and off the clock). There is limited time to make money before you either burn out or ar…

Maybe in the Valley startup culture but I live very far from the Valley and that's not even close to my experience at all. What kind of "physical strain" does typing code result in? I seriously have one of the most flexible and lowest stress job than anyone I know.

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

#254

Post by [deleted] »

Xylakant wrote: post #245
nilkn wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only proof that they desire more money or can find a use for more money. "Need" is an overloaded term. I know developers with six figure salaries who feel like they "need" more money and occasionally do contract work on the side as a result.

By that argument nobody needs any money. Why pay rent when you can have https://primitivetechnology.wordpress.com/ . Why pay for groceries when https://primitivetechnology.wordpress.com/2016/05/20/sweet-p... feeds you just as well? We just "desire it"

[deleted]

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

#255

Post by dpark »

jazzyk wrote: post #144
jzwinck wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The ones I talked to were not interested in taking on projects further than a 10-15 mins drive. Please note that plumbers also add markups on the products they install (water heaters, etc) and charge higher rates for weekend/after hours emergencies. Nothing wrong with it, they just take advantage of the good market. Not picking on plumbers, just pointing out that jobs in the software industry are not as plum as they…

You're still underestimating the hours that are not billable. That plumber drives 15 minutes each way for a two hour job. That's a 20% loss of time. Plus it's not billable when the plumber has to go pick up materials from a hardware store. Nor is it billable when they deal with the overhead of running a business, maintaining accounts, dealing with bills, providing quotes, etc. Plus benefits are coming out of that $130. A self employed plumber working 40 billable hours/week is likely working more like 60 hours/week.

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

#256

Post by willismichael »

jackhack wrote: post #230
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…

H) Age It is a common belief (especially among startups) is that developers have a "shelf life."

Is a belief in "shelf life" really the problem? Maybe this is really just startups being unwilling to pay for decades of experience, or people with decades of experience not being attracted to the startup culture of long hours, some other confounding factor, or a combination thereof.

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

#257

Post by mizzao »

nommm-nommm wrote: post #231
colanderman wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I had a teacher in high school once explain to us a side lesson on time management, she says she used moments of "downtime" in the school day to do grading and lesson planning so she almost never brought home work as a result. I took it to heart. It worked very, very well for me in college. I'd always have homework with me ready to go and when I was waiting for a class to start, or any other short time with nothing t…

I think the effectiveness of this strategy also depends on how well you can context switch. For some it is a lot easier than others.

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

#258

Post by flexie »

dpeterson wrote: post #229
flexie wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not. Programming is just a hobby and I am not very good at it. I am a lawyer, and my comments would apply to law as well (except that the barrier to entry is a bit higher since regulation forces people to go through law school). Your comments about physical strain, mental toll, risk of burning out etc. describe my field well, though. And I doubt salaries for lawyers and programmers are that different anymore.

The difference being, the older you get the more you will be perceived an expert at law. Your experience ages like a fine wine. Experience in tech ages more like a ripe watermelon sitting in the sun. Your earning potential will only go up the longer you are a lawyer. That is not true for those that stay developers their entire career. P.S. I also spent a great deal of time getting degrees. B.S. in computer science an…

Let's see.

In 20 years your field might have made large parts of my field redundant. I truly hope so :-)

Programming is still a young profession and it's growing at a tremendous pace. The population pyramid of Programmers' Land actually looks like a pyramid which might cause programmers to think that older people can't make it.

I know many older folks in IT who are still active. My old man continued until he was 70. They may not know the newest tricks in node.js or machine learning but they are the only ones who know the old legacy code that lock-in users and protect their jobs.

I bet you and most of your colleagues will be active until retirement. Just like lawyers may continue as partners (partially or mostly doing managing or marketing) many programmers might transfer to management.

A lot of programmers have long formal education but the market for programmers without education is still huge and the salaries for programmers without formal training easily beat almost any other professions where there are no educational requirements and a lot of professions with educational requirements. In which other profession can you realistically hope to start with salaries of 60-80k after a few months of online courses?

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

#259

Post by nilkn »

cel1ne wrote: post #64
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 add "police" to the list of critically important yet comically underpaid professions.

This does not look underpaid at all to me:

http://www.sjpd.org/joinsjpdblue/SalaryBenefits.html

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