Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?
danluu.com

A programmer working at a large internet company may be impacting millions upon millions of people. Building a feature that lets you collect (or save) a penny from a user every month is worth $240K a year when spread out over 2 million users. $120M when spread out over 1 billion users.

That's really my answer to the common question at the end of the post: "I don’t understand this at all and would love to hear a compelling theory for why programming “should” pay more than other similar fields, or why it should pay as much as fields that have much higher barriers to entry."

Problem with coding is that there are 1st,2nd,3rd, and 4th level programmers.

1st level A star guys/gals from big-name cs school like CMU, ... having been pulling in good money since the 1960's upon grad, 2nd tier engineers are the self-trained guys who get lucky, and secure an engineer job after a few years working, they usually don't have degrees and nearly always face a glass-sealing 3rd tier are the hackers, they might get lucky maybe not, 4th tier would be those that never get beyond script, say html, but consider themselves coders.

Teir 1 can develop a system, from scratch, and understand the math,physics, ... Tier 2 really don't understand but by hard-work, and smart enough to hire tier one's they might climb

3/4 are usually called 'techs', never even have clue what's going on, they make ...

In all cases if you want the big bucks you have to start your own company, where you have a chance to scrape 50% of the GROSS, or even sell out and clear millions or billions.

Graduating from a big-name school and getting a +200K job at google, is a lot like being pro-ball, it happens, but luck and family mean more.

The real money is like bill gates, zucker, any of these, which usually means you steal somebody elses software, and you market it as yours, mitch kapor used to say, you only be need to be 1st, best, or fastest to win the MILLION DOLLAR pot.

All great fortunes are made on THEFT, you study oracle, microsoft, google, ... et-all you will find the common pattern,

Small fortunes like millions can be had by delivering a good product, and enjoying it life cycle 5-7 years, keeping the cash, and retiring young.

Rock Star's in BIG companys, unless you the owner isn't that big of a deal, talk to any big GOOGLER and they'll tell you that meaningful contribution of an ordinary mortal is impossible. It's a lot like INTEL, there are a lot of MILLIONAIRES ( which is not a lot of money in silicon valley/beach/forest ), but there are also a lot of very unhappy bored middle age millionaires rotting their lives in shitty jobs.

Then there is the issue that after 40 you can't get hired unless your connected, again this pay's to have been an entrepreneur when young, and keep re-inventing yourself, I see O'Reilly is still around to name one.

IMHO the happiest people are those like Andreesen who are rich and stay to play VC, then their are those who love power like ORACLE boss, and just stay, but most of the happy people retire when they're 35+ and get the hell out of tech and do something else,

Those that stay post 50+ in any big company can't compete with the YOUNG, I have old friends still at fortune 500, and they are miserable, and of course the companys long ago broke all social contract like med insurance for life, pension, ...

In summary start your own biz, be an owner, put in your 5-15 years, and buy all the real-estate you can so when your done you have hard assets and not just stock or smoke-mirrors to show for your work.

For the most part TECH is no fun for old folks, I see it different as a scientist you can still play to you die, ...but for TECH it means nothing after a few years what software you may have been an expert at yesterday,

working for somebody else has always been a bad bet, entrepreneur is fairly certain, unless you ain't wired such, to become a successful $500k/year over-paid partner employee you got to be connected, you to to go to the right school and network the right people, .... for most mortals we are not born so lucky.

It's good to work for a big company when young and learn as much as you can about all, then break away and start your own small company and fill a niche you know that has a real need, so long as your the real owner, you can always pull +50%/year off the table, a good CPA can avoid taxes along the way by deferral,

Best book I ever saw or had was "What ever happened to the wooly mamoth", a book about starting your own company, told the real truth.

Once you have a company and it good, you will have a dozen competitors in 3 years, and you can't drop the ball for a moment, good luck, most people get out 10-15 years or burn out and die, few people are wired to do this stuff after they're say 40, ...

I think its best to have a goal to retire at 35, that was my goal at 15, and certainly by 25 I couldn't work for another person, or company. After 40 unless your an executive and highly tightly wired in to the VC community getting a job is hard,

The main thing is that if your say 20-25 you start your own biz, by the time your 30 you retire and can spend the rest of your life doing what you want, be that investing in start-ups, or sailing, or living as a hermit in the another country.

But you can order a catalogue from a redistributor, containing every persons income from work and income from capital and taxes payed, for previous year. Would not take much to scan it and analyze.

The most amusing aspect is that some degree holders refuse to use formal methods, because they think they don't need them.