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Stop complaining and pay programmers more

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Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#131

Post by starkfist »

binaryfinery wrote: post #126
starkfist wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have $1.2 million dollars, they can't pay more. $125K is a huge pre series-a salary.

They're also offering stock of course, and it actually looks interesting :-) Plus they may not be so time sensitive: 4 programmers for 10 months vs 5 programmers for 8 months (yes I know). But if its $125k vs $150k will that $25k break the bank? Maybe. Maybe not.

I used to recruit and hire people and have been working with early stage companies for over a decade. The two companies I've worked with who tried this sort of hiring scheme blew through all their cash within 18 months, and they had a lot more money to burn.

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#132

Post by jdale27 »

GBond wrote: post #102
raffi wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read a great article in the Harvard Business Review about what defines a profession. Their question: are managers a profession akin to Doctors and Lawyers? The author defined a professional as someone whose work you have to take on faith. Not being doctors or lawyers ourselves, we're usually unable to evaluate the quality of legal advice or medical care we're receiving. The best we can do is seek another opinion. T…

Your comment peaked my interest to read the HBR article you mentioned. Thanks. http://hbr.org/2010/07/the-big-idea-no-management-is-not-a-p...

No, it piqued your interest.

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#133

Post by binaryfinery »

j_baker wrote: post #5

You have to understand: there's more to hiring programmers than paying lots of money. If that were the case, we wouldn't have had a dot-com bust and software companies would be dominated by MBAs. That's the hard part of hiring programmers. How do you incentivize the good ones to work for you? If you have a solution to that problem, I suspect you'll be a very much in-demand person.

Assuming you get everything else right, you have to offer more money. It has been suggested that this will cause your inbox to fill up too fast.

How about an online test? A web server that runs sandboxed C? Or maybe a character in Lambda MOO that requires you to complete a "quest" in a time frame that would require a programmed response? (telnet://lambda.moo.mug.org:8888)

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#134

Post by binaryfinery »

mikemainguy wrote: post #29

But there's a perverse side to this. By offering MORE compensation, it would seem likely that MORE unqualified people will apply. For your logic to work, we'd need to show that making a skill more expensive would automatically cause inept people to stop applying. If that doesn't hold true, you could be throwing away 999 out of 1000 candidates instead of 199 out of 200.

Actually you'd be throwing away We don't have to show that it would make inept people stop applying. We just have to be able to get better at weeding out the rubbish ones - i.e. in less time, lower cost.

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#135

Post by ErrantX »

wake_up_sticky wrote: post #95
mkn wrote: post #18

If you've been around yc for more than a month, you've doubtless seen a number of links to articles on motivation as it pertains to creative activities like software development. The consensus is pretty clear. Incentives hurt productivity in creative activities. This seems to have something to do with the relationship between creative effort and intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation. The prospect of an incentive seems t…

"Incentives hurt productivity in creative activities." Unadulterated nonsense. On the one hand, I recall a cartoon-drawing presentation about school contests and the like. On the other hand, there are these centuries and centuries of evidence that PEOPLE RESPOND TO INCENTIVES, PERIOD. If you think that a company couldn't assemble a team of OUTSTANDING programmers by offering each $200k a year, you're crazy or stupid…

As a meta point the guidelines here request we use italics for emphasis rather than caps (you can do italics by putting a * either side of a section).

(I just noticed you were a new commentor so I hope that comes across ok :))

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#136

Post by ChRoss »

jshen wrote: post #118
kjksf wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that when you interview you can't really judge those. At best during interview you meet a few team members for an hour each and maybe another hour during team lunch and everyone (including you) puts their best foot forward. There's no way to tell if they'll be a great team to work with or a daily nightmare. The same goes for fun: rarely you know exactly what you'll be doing or how interesting it'll be.…

"the problem is that when you interview you can't really judge those" this is a real challenge. I'm trying to get better at judging if a company is good to work for, but so far it still feels like a crapshoot. Of course, we often cheat and go to places where we already know someone :)

well, it applies to everywhere I guess, you just gamble it. I myself still in quest to find 'good' one (but I'm not a job hopper :))

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#137

Post by didtrade »

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Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#138

Post by jseliger »

The same problem happens in grant writing, my family's field, to the point that I wrote a longish blog post on the subject: http://blog.seliger.com/2008/08/08/tilting-at-windmills-why-... . My guess is that it happens in many others too, and people who are smart eventually realize they'll have to pay for quality or accept lower quality.

Sometimes bargains can probably be found, but they're probably rare and difficult and don't last very long.

Getting really good grant writers (like us) is going to cost at least $100 an hour, and probably more like $125 – 200. The same is, as far as I can tell, true of web consultants. Good lawyers? $300/hour. Escorts? Probably also $300 in most of the country.

If you don't realize how much things and services costs, you'll end up with sub-par quality, or you'll pay, and/or you'll complain. A lot of people do the latter. I wouldn't expect it to stop.

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#139

Post by kranner »

kranner wrote: post #66
danudey wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hey, I've got 'two years of experience with .NET'! I remember, because it was my birthday last week and on my birthday two years ago I wrote a little digital clock app from a tutorial I found in a magazine. Man, who ever thought ten minutes in Notepad would net me a $100k job! I'm totally going to apply, and when I get this job I'm never working at another Burger King again!"

Upvote for satire!

I'm curious about why this was downvoted.

Is "upvote for x" too reddit-y?

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#140

Post by jseliger »

j_baker wrote: post #5

You have to understand: there's more to hiring programmers than paying lots of money. If that were the case, we wouldn't have had a dot-com bust and software companies would be dominated by MBAs. That's the hard part of hiring programmers. How do you incentivize the good ones to work for you? If you have a solution to that problem, I suspect you'll be a very much in-demand person.

You have to understand: there's more to hiring programmers than paying lots of money. If that were the case, we wouldn't have had a dot-com bust and software companies would be dominated by MBAs.

That's probably half-true: you're right that there's more to hiring programmers (and many other kinds of professionals) than paying lots of money, but there's also probably a minimum barrier to entry. I doubt you're going to find high-quality programmers to work for $30K per year, even if you buy them an Embody (http://www.hermanmiller.com/Products/Embody-Chairs), give them a window, offer to let them rewrite everything in Scheme, and do whatever else Joel Spolsky has mentioned.

I'm not sure what the minimum really good programmers will go for in most of the country, but I'd be surprised if the answer is less than about $50K, and even that's probably way too low. Until you hit the minimum threshold, the rest of your comment doesn't take effect.

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