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Stop complaining and pay programmers more

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Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#171

Post by tl »

dirtyaura wrote: post #143

I feel that good/great programmers ask too little. Because there's order of magnitude of variance in skill sets and productivity, there should be much more variance in salaries. In Finland, if you leave out top 0.5%, the variance is between 2000€-5000€. And most of it settles around 3000-4000€. Finland is very eqalitarian society when it comes to salaries and thus that has to be taken into account. But still. 2.5 is…

Different parts of the US have such large variances in the cost of living that it's hard to give a meaningful answer (i.e. non-skilled labor here has greater variance than that).

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#172

Post by kranner »

BrandonM wrote: post #165
kranner wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually thought it was better to be specific about why I liked the parent link, because that way the parent would get more upvotes, which I believe it deserved.

This is not a community concerned with upvotes. It is a community concerned with content, and especially with getting good content as quickly and as easily as possible. We upvote to signal good content. We do not comment to signal good content; that is what upvoting is for. We comment to add content; this can be in the form of insight, correction, elaboration, humor, summarizing a long article well, adding a personal…

OK, I appreciate this explanation. By your rules 'upvote for satire' deserves its downvotes. I agree.

I still don't see why the child-post was downvoted. In my view I wasn't whining there, merely asking.

So I'm skeptical that everyone here behaves perfectly rationally in the context of the community rules you've listed. And I don't view this as a waste of time, because I'm trying to figure out how things work here.

Edit: OK, forget it. I'm taking it too personally. You're right, asking 'why the downvotes' is also not good content I'd like to read from other comment'rs.

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#173

Post by travem »

ido wrote: post #141
timr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You may attract more qualified people, but the number of unqualified people may increase as well." ...which is why you have a screening process. When people are complaining that there are no good programmers (and this is a common complaint on HN; it's not just a straw man), there's at least one of two things going on: 1) Their screening process sucks. 2) They aren't attracting good programmers. High salaries help wi…

Maybe the interviewing process is different where you are, but around here the salary is normally not mentioned in the posting - you'd normally get asked about your salary expectations once you've been through the interview.

I no longer apply to jobs where the salary is not advertised. After turning up to a few interviews in the past where the salary was well below market rate I don't bother wasting my time any more.

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#174

Post by kleiba »

ulrich wrote: post #145
ido wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the interviewing process is different where you are, but around here the salary is normally not mentioned in the posting - you'd normally get asked about your salary expectations once you've been through the interview.

I will not attend a long interview process if the salary is completely unknown. The least I do is to tell the possible employer what my expectations are and check whether this is ok for them. Of course it would be better to make them define a salary range, but until now I was never able to do this.

As the parent pointed out, in some areas/countries it's completely uncommon to announce salary ranges in job ads. What are you going to do then? Never apply? Move to another country?

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#175

Post by RiderOfGiraffes »

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…

Centuries and centuries of evidence that people respond to incentives is based on prescriptive work. The studies that Dan Pink is referring to concern the more recent advent of creative and cognitive work does not have centuries and centuries of evidence for money as a motivator. That's why it's being studied, and that's partly why the results of the studies are so intriguing.

It's interesting that your gut reaction is that this is all nonsense, and that you dismiss a single presentation as being nonsense purely on your own feelings and reactions. The book that Dan Pink wrote, and the work being done in the field is at odds with your reaction.

I know I won't convince you, and I know that you'll simply dismiss me as crazy, or stupid, or both, but the programmers who work for me often took a pay cut to do so. And they've stayed.

My recent complaints haven't been about being able to find good programmers, they've been about incompetent programmers who claim they're great, and in all probability honestly believe it.

If you're solving any problem at all, it's the wrong one. I don't want more job applicants, I just want applications from better candidates. My experience, and the studies I've read, say that offering more money won't help. I hope you understand that I'll put more stock in them than in your naked and unsupported assertions.

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#176

Post by JoachimSchipper »

lowdown wrote: post #88
danudey wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you'll have to offer them equivalent worth to what they're making. I left a high-paying job at a company that didn't appreciate its geeks to go to a lower-paying job whose entire staff (except for three project managers and the accountant) were geeks. The founder started the company doing websites in Perl in the 90's, and grew it into a small-scale hosting/app dev company. It's still private, it's still owned b…

really, keep your "perks" - it is like giving a gift card. Just give me the cash and I will buy what I want.

It may be hard to buy extra vacation, though.

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#177

Post by [deleted] »

loxs wrote: post #153
mkramlich wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree, I think that's rare across the whole spectrum of programming work that's done. The vast majority of websites have perhaps 100's of users at most. The majority of software written has anywhere from 1 user to 10's, sometimes 100's, and more rarely thousands to millions. For every hedge fund trading platform I bet there are 1000's of Bubba's blogs and Joe's file-munging Perl scripts. The latter is the general…

I disagree. Medicine is not that powerful. Doctors don't have that big power over people's lives. And the ones that do have are mostly edge cases, like it is in programming. Most of the doctors just move you around the "system". I can tell you this because I am a doctor myself. And gave up medicine in favor of programming. Medicine is a beauroucratic closed society, that is not willing to accept new members. They hav…

[deleted]

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#178

Post by mister_chips »

loxs wrote: post #153
mkramlich wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree, I think that's rare across the whole spectrum of programming work that's done. The vast majority of websites have perhaps 100's of users at most. The majority of software written has anywhere from 1 user to 10's, sometimes 100's, and more rarely thousands to millions. For every hedge fund trading platform I bet there are 1000's of Bubba's blogs and Joe's file-munging Perl scripts. The latter is the general…

I disagree. Medicine is not that powerful. Doctors don't have that big power over people's lives. And the ones that do have are mostly edge cases, like it is in programming. Most of the doctors just move you around the "system". I can tell you this because I am a doctor myself. And gave up medicine in favor of programming. Medicine is a beauroucratic closed society, that is not willing to accept new members. They hav…

Okay, I've just graduated as a vet and I had a bit of a crisis where I was worried: 1) That medical professions remain in their elite positions by using inaccessible language and a closed community 2) That there was a limited range of tools where much clinical work is just remembering someone else's solution to a particular disease and involved little in the way of problem solving and as a consequence something that I thought would be a mentally stimulating career just wasn't. I don't think I would have got into programming had some parts not been fairly dull.

So i finished the course and am looking forward to going into practice. As far as having a closed and (seemingly) elite community goes thats actually not such a big problem. Textbooks are available to anyone. The closed society should just be considered as a quality control. It is possible to get hold of any of the equipment required for medical practice but when you go to a doctor (a member of a profession) you are seeing an individual who has their competence vouched for and is subjective to professional discipline should their service be found to be lacking. I think it is difficult to justify the rates doctors get paid but self regulating professions do at least have quality assurance.

I also agree that there is a lot of university education in terms of what is learnt didactically is unnecessary for most of the day to day job but this totally misses the paint. Even though pharmaceutical tools may be fairly limited our understanding of pathology and epidemiology is continuously expanding fairly rapidly and what it teaches you is to educate yourself rapidly as this information emerges (and particularly in veterinary medicine collate this information sensibly when the information you want is not directly addressed in the literature - something that can only be done with a thorough understanding of physiology, immunology etc). Secondly since this discussion seems to be focusing on edge cases a lot we should not forget emerging diseases since these cannot be properly addressed by someone that is limited to the day to day 'do the job skills'. An excellent example of this is the diagnosis of blue-tongue virus when it first arrived in England.

As for wanting to be in a profession where you have to think all the time, I think it is possible but I think you need some kind of developer spirit. To do this you need to try and get yourself to some kind of cutting edge. This is easier to find with programming because it is a much newer skill set (and with veterinary medicine as compared to human medicine). To this end if you consider specialising and doing clinical research or doing something that involves policy making, or practicing somewhere where resources are fairly limited then I think you can have an intellectually rewarding career. Any career can be as interesting as you make it. If you find yourself bored because you are having to treat the same thing over and over again either change your specialty in medicine (pick a different "style" or "philosophy" [you may see the problems the patient has differently and take a different approach in addressing them]) or go and try address the root cause of the problem. You miss also that what is interesting in programming is that problems that you are faced with also seem to be changing rapidly as do areas of new development. I'm sure new tools would eventually get boring if the problems became static.

I think you're spot on about picking a career that you enjoy. I you've shown as well how important it is to consider where your at regularly and make an effort to keep what yo do interesting. The implication that all programmers love their job is as easy to disprove as other professionals not loving theirs. Providing you have some control on the development of your own skills I think any job can be satisfying. Don't use this love as an excuse for poor pay. Price yourself to show how much your are worth.

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#179

Post by Vivtek »

stretchwithme wrote: post #79
mkramlich wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The examples you gave are edge cases and exceptions -- relatively very rare situations. Most programming work is hum-drum, with errors being no big deal, and easily and cheaply caught and caught early. I was comparing cases "in the main" between these 3 professions. Also, by pointing out the cases that you did, you actually increased the strength of the point I was making: these 3 professions are very different and o…

and I don't think everything a doctor or lawyer does is then thoroughly tested. And if you fail to meet the high barriers to entry for doctors and lawyers, the likelihood that you'll make disastrous errors is pretty high.

For a very long time indeed in America, the majority of medicine was practiced at community clinics by nursing staff. A doctor was consulted only when necessary.

The vast majority of medicine could easily be done by the intelligent layman. Like programming.

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#180

Post by JoachimSchipper »

roel_v wrote: post #158
coffeemug wrote: post #53

I suppose this refers to us (and our Will the real programmers please stand up post). If it doesn't, excuse our self-centeredness and kindly disregard this message. Our salary structure is designed to select for exactly the type of people we want to attract - the kinds of people that will go through walls to bend the world to their will, for some deeply ingrained reason unknown to anyone but them. For people like tha…

(2.25% of everyone's contribution on the high end) I'm probably dense, but what does that mean?

They offer stock options.
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