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Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

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Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#181

Post by 1_800_UNICORN »

shados wrote: post #160
pmorici wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally disagree. Housing is such an over riding cost that no amount of things you can buy on Amazon will save you. The housing prices are rising so fast in SF that it makes estimates like this one LOW. you would be unlikely to save any money at all living in SF on 150k but Kansas has such a wide variety of hosing options that range form super cheap to substantially affordable that you could easily save as much or…

Housing is generally an investment, so what I'm dumping in my mortgage, I don't have to dump in retirement funds (assuming im planning on selling the place and moving out when I no longer care about big cities). So I literally don't mind dumping a million+ in my condo. Second, even that million+ condo only cost me a third of my salary, including property tax and HoA after tax breaks and shit. Literally everything els…

A single property does not make a good substitute for a retirement fund. There's a reason why retirement funds allow you to invest in a diverse set of bonds with different rates of risk and across different industries. Putting all of your eggs in one basket is a stupidly risky move.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#182

Post by roel_v »

gautamdivgi wrote: post #175
Bartweiss wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've held this basic theory for a while, and it seems to explain a lot of things about the state of software engineering. Most visibly, there's a wild disagreement about whether we have too many programmers, or not enough. Big tech companies consistently say that they struggle to find programmers, while contrarians at places like The Atlantic love writing pieces about how we're education way more programmers than we…

Then the point remains. Why are people who can't code getting the CS or EE degrees? Generally, the degree is supposed to indicate some sort of sufficiency with development. Probably universities are dumbing down requirements for $$$.

Programming is to CS what telescopes are to astronomy.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#183

Post by goostavos »

gautamdivgi wrote: post #175
Bartweiss wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've held this basic theory for a while, and it seems to explain a lot of things about the state of software engineering. Most visibly, there's a wild disagreement about whether we have too many programmers, or not enough. Big tech companies consistently say that they struggle to find programmers, while contrarians at places like The Atlantic love writing pieces about how we're education way more programmers than we…

Then the point remains. Why are people who can't code getting the CS or EE degrees? Generally, the degree is supposed to indicate some sort of sufficiency with development. Probably universities are dumbing down requirements for $$$.

>Probably universities are dumbing down requirements for $$$.

I 100% believe this is true. When I was in college it was pretty staggering to see my fellow classmates receive passing grades and get shoveled through the programs despite never grasping the basic fundamentals of CS. These were people who, at the end of CS 101, still couldn't tell you the difference between a string and an int, who after CS 202 _still_ couldn't tell you the difference between a string and an int, and so on and so on. Yet happily through the system they continued.

I eventually became part of the lowly drop-out club (I found attending college later in life to be a maddening experience of pointless busy work, rather than a challenging mind-expanding one). However, those people who fumbled around randomly swapping out types until things compile are now CS degree holders.

It seems true even for the higher tier degrees too. It seems even a masters degree isn't a good indicator. In the past year alone I've watched several guys with masters enter and then promptly leave our startup due to having just absolutely no idea how to write software. :(

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#184

Post by whoops1122 »

tboyd47 wrote: post #144
city41 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't OmniCorp married to their devs too? Those devs probably took a while to get up to speed on the proprietary stack, and outside devs would have a ramp up time. Not to mention outside devs would be hesitant to take the job seeing as they'd get stuck learning proprietary technology making them less mobile.

True, but you can't re-negotiate your salary once you're in the job. So OmniCorp has all the leverage there.

dont forget, when you can easily apply for 1000s of other jobs, they can also easily find 1000s of ppl out there to replace you. and as far as OmniCorp goes, you know how much IBM is paying now for one of their mainframe programmer? those guys... you lose one, you wont get another.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#185

Post by Alex3917 »

mafribe wrote: post #15

I teach computer science at a well-known, large and mediocre university. I see bimodal grade distributions all the time. The more technical a subject, the more bimodal the grades. In fluff subjects like software engineering where grading relates to essay writing and group projects, grade distribution tends to be gaussian. OTOH in technical subjects where I grade by automated test suits, basically students fail almost…

> I find it plausible that grade distributions turn into similar income distributions later in life.

Given that the people earning the most money aren't necessarily the ones with the most technical ability, why would this be the case?

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#186

Post by whoops1122 »

1_800_UNICORN wrote: post #181
shados wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing is generally an investment, so what I'm dumping in my mortgage, I don't have to dump in retirement funds (assuming im planning on selling the place and moving out when I no longer care about big cities). So I literally don't mind dumping a million+ in my condo. Second, even that million+ condo only cost me a third of my salary, including property tax and HoA after tax breaks and shit. Literally everything els…

A single property does not make a good substitute for a retirement fund. There's a reason why retirement funds allow you to invest in a diverse set of bonds with different rates of risk and across different industries. Putting all of your eggs in one basket is a stupidly risky move.

depends on the location of your property, a nice condo in NYC is better than most of the retirement funds.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#187

Post by tboyd47 »

city41 wrote: post #177
tboyd47 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this hypothetical scenario, the developer has no leverage to renegotiate, because they have no job options outside of OmniCorp, hence, no BATNA (best alternative to negotiated agreement). If the developer was homeless or independently wealthy, and not in need of a job, they might have the ability to terminate the agreement without reaching a new one. Then the company would truly have something to lose. But OmniCor…

It happened to me. I got out of it by studying open source tech stacks and building side projects until I could get a job away from the proprietary stuff. It wasn't ideal, but I managed to pull it off. I'm mostly playing devil's advocate with my replies. It's generally better to stick with mainstream -- and ideally open source -- tech. But I don't entirely agree that proprietary tech is only beneficial to the company…

Aha! Well done - I hope you are getting some high in the sky hourly rates now for your highly specific skills.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#188

Post by tuna-piano »

coredog64 wrote: post #162
city41 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't OmniCorp married to their devs too? Those devs probably took a while to get up to speed on the proprietary stack, and outside devs would have a ramp up time. Not to mention outside devs would be hesitant to take the job seeing as they'd get stuck learning proprietary technology making them less mobile.

There's actually a practical case study in this. Epic Systems, which uses MUMPS, is reasonably well known for hiring naive college grads, teaching them MUMPS, and then exploiting the crap out of them.

Also while doing it in Madison, Wisconsin (not too many other large employers for programmers), and with a 1 year non-compete on Epic software.

So if they leave the company, they probably have to leave town and learn something totally new.

(All those, and more, are the reasons I decided not to go to an on-site interview with them after invited.)

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#189

Post by chrisdbaldwin »

gautamdivgi wrote: post #175
Bartweiss wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've held this basic theory for a while, and it seems to explain a lot of things about the state of software engineering. Most visibly, there's a wild disagreement about whether we have too many programmers, or not enough. Big tech companies consistently say that they struggle to find programmers, while contrarians at places like The Atlantic love writing pieces about how we're education way more programmers than we…

Then the point remains. Why are people who can't code getting the CS or EE degrees? Generally, the degree is supposed to indicate some sort of sufficiency with development. Probably universities are dumbing down requirements for $$$.

The group projects of 6 people with one person at computer while everyone else watches for an few hours, then it's done. Four people doing nothing, one person coding, and one person searching the internet for help. Typically the four doing nothing are having an existential panic attack because they realize how useless they are being, or maybe they don't. Who cares? They're about to get an 'A'.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#190

Post by whorleater »

sidlls wrote: post #131
whorleater wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SE is often relegated to a "fluff" subject in schools simply because it's, well, not very challenging. Classes based around the topic of SE are often topics like "Formal Software Development Methods" where you learn about verification of concurrent programs, formal symbolic testing, contracts, explicit model checking, etc. These are all "soft skills" and hard to directly generalize into a programming assignment, so s…

Wow, things have changed since I took my SE electives (17-18 years ago). We had to write code and there were final projects that required the development of a non-trivial application. One that compiled and at least nominally worked. Granted I only took a course of about three electives at the sophomore and junior level, so maybe I missed the "fluff" in other levels.

Yeah the first "formal" sophomore SE elective I took was literally "hey isn't OO the best? Don't you love drawing UML diagrams? What word is P-O-L-Y-M-O-R-P-H-I-S-M, and can you write a 1 page essay on it?"

Once you get up to the actual SE electives, they're all about the formalization of software and how it can be represented. These classes are usually avoided by students as well, since students opt for fun (from the student's pov) classes like robotics programming, compiler design, web development, crypto, etc, which only makes the SE classes seem like more "fluff".

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