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Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

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Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#251

Post by bpyne »

citizenkeen wrote: post #191
bpyne wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find in in-house IT is that CS curiosity and ability to develop good software aren't the critical traits. In those environments, a "developer" spends the majority of his/her time integrating vendor solutions and writing connector code. Often they are task switching rapidly between projects, operations, and support. The critical skills belong to executive function: time planning, task switching, communications,…

Thank you for writing this. This feels like this vindicates a lot of the things I like and dislike about my current job (my first developer position, in an IT department of a very large company).

Currently I'm enrolled in a grad CS program after 25 years in the field. Most students in my classes have never been in the field before. My caution to them is to understand their own likes and dislikes. If a person loves writing software and delving into a problem for many hours without interruption, then the person needs to be careful with in-house IT.

(I also caution them that some likes and dislikes won't be known until they've been in the field a few years.)

I spent too many years being frustrated by this lack of understanding and outright denial. After all, we're in IT, don't we all want to produce really great software to help people?

Recently I had to admit to myself that the answer to the above question is "No". Often a timely good solution beats out a future great solution in the minds of people who thrive in in-house IT. They accept good enough and have no qualms about a vendor providing it.

[EDIT: spelling correction]

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#252

Post by collyw »

city41 wrote: post #141
tboyd47 wrote: post #135

The discussion about bimodal pay distribution is interesting, but I think there's a much more parsimonious explanation to it. Most of the companies that are going to be paying software developers $150k+ are based in or around SV, where rent is abnormally high. But what's even more interesting to me is another question the author discusses halfway through the article: > How is it possible that programmers are paid so…

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.

Tech is a vast field. We are having trouble finding a Django developer where we are. Project managers decision to hire based on this, my opinion is we should look for a good all rounder, as Django knowledge only makes up around 25% of the knowledge that is needed. Someone that knows HTML, some JavaScript, any other framework, how to set up remote servers and use a database effectively. If your only skill is Omnicore, your suggestion makes sense, but there are so many different things to learn, that having a wide knowledge base makes sense.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#253

Post by AStellersSeaCow »

FTA: "One possibility is that we have a shortage of programmers. If that’s the case, you’d expect more programmers to enter the field, bringing down compensation."

This is imo a big part of why high-end salaries have skyrocketed, but the author's reasoning is total "let them eat cake."

It's not that there's a shortage of programmers overall. There are lots of programmers working non-industry jobs for relatively piddly salaries who would leap at the opportunity to double or triple their compensation at a big name tech company - if they were qualified to do so.

The problem is that there's a shortage of people who have the aptitude and skills to work in a big tech company with very high expectations for even their entry-level engineers. I don't doubt that there are intangibles at play: soft skills, "cultural fit" biases, to a lesser extent academic pedigree, but none of that trumps needing to be an actual honest-to-goodness engineer, rather than a "programmer".

Plenty of other pieces (citation needed) have been written about the growing chasm between the two classifications of development jobs - engineers who can create software, vs. programmers who can write code - and I think the salary differences are just an aspect of that.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#254

Post by collyw »

kriro wrote: post #68

My working hypothesis is that there's more programmers in the "very good" bucket that don't care all that much about monetary compensation than in other domains. As long as a certain X that is deemed fair is reached they are way more interested in interesting problems/an opportunity to learn new things/access to hardware or data they couldn't otherwise get etc. Or in other words, (good) programmers care a lot more ab…

I think this is true to at least some degree. I have noticed that the better paying jobs here are Java or Microsoft stacks, probably more corporate style jobs. Personally I prefer working in a smaller place in Python, and feeling genuinely valuable to the company, having done some corporate stints earlier in my career.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#255

Post by city41 »

collyw wrote: post #252
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.

Tech is a vast field. We are having trouble finding a Django developer where we are. Project managers decision to hire based on this, my opinion is we should look for a good all rounder, as Django knowledge only makes up around 25% of the knowledge that is needed. Someone that knows HTML, some JavaScript, any other framework , how to set up remote servers and use a database effectively. If your only skill is Omnicore…

I agree with all of that. It's a complex issue. And it's compounded by the general "we have no idea how to hire developers" that is found throughout the industry.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#256

Post by BatFastard »

wmil wrote: post #192
gautamdivgi wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 $$$.

One problem seems to be that a lot of schools have a strong emphasis on group work. Usually there's a ton of non dev work to go along with projects - documentation, whatever paperwork the project requires, so someone can make a useful contribution without being able to code. So a weak coder can get through the program as long as he can pass the exams.

Many positions now use behavioral based interviews, and group experience is critical to passing those interviews.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#257

Post by defen »

morgante wrote: post #91
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…

> you would be unlikely to save any money at all living in SF on 150k This statement is farcical. You do realize that the median wage in SF is less than $100k. How do you think those people are living? Have you actually lived in SF or NYC? You're totally out of touch with the actual costs. Yes, housing is expensive. But you can still easily get a solid apartment for $3k/m. Add in another $2k/m for food (high!) and th…

> I made $150k/year in NYC and managed to save almost $100k/year.

Your income after taxes in NYC would be about $100K (assuming Single filing status, no dependents, etc). That's without paying for literally anything, including rent, utilities, food, transportation, entertainment, internet, insurance, etc. Can you clarify how you managed to save so much?

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#259

Post by kafkaesq »

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 $$$.

Why are people who can't code getting the CS or EE degrees?

The short answer seems to be: because they're allowed to.

The longer answer has to do with the "$$$" part. Fundamentally, universities aren't in the business of educating people; they exist to sell credentials. Which has some thematic overlap with "educating people", but is still a step and a half removed. And with the long-term transmogrification of universities from "institutions" to profit centers, the inevitable rush toward mediocrity (and widening of the gap between perceived value of said credentials, and their actual value) results.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#260

Post by dragonwriter »

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 $$$.

> Why are people who can't code getting the CS or EE degrees?

Because neither CS nor, especially, EE are "coding" degrees.

Now, if you want to code CS (and for certain domains, EE) can help you become a much better coder, but that's not really the central focus of the degree. So they aren't irrelevant as qualifications for coding work. But neither are they, on their own, qualifications for such work.

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