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A note on programmer salaries

stephaniehurlburt.com

81–90 of 230 posts

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#81

I mean, it's pretty simple, but it took a long time to internalize: If you don't have anyone else making you an offer, then you're worth that amount. In this case, you were worth $42k and $56k respectively. If you'd shopped around, you'd have been worth more. But you didn't, so you weren't. That's not a bad thing, either. Security is nice, and interviews are a pain. But it really is that simple. If you don't like you…

If you don't have anyone else making you an offer, then you're worth that amount.

That's how much that counterparty has offered. It may not necessarily be how much you're worth to that party, let alone some other party.

They may be bluffing. They may not have enough money at the moment. And so on.

If later on they get $10 million income and they can't continue without you, then even though they are still paying you $X you can easily find out you're worth more by threatening to leave.

You're worth whatever it costs to replace you in the open market.

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#82

I mean, it's pretty simple, but it took a long time to internalize: If you don't have anyone else making you an offer, then you're worth that amount. In this case, you were worth $42k and $56k respectively. If you'd shopped around, you'd have been worth more. But you didn't, so you weren't. That's not a bad thing, either. Security is nice, and interviews are a pain. But it really is that simple. If you don't like you…

> the reason why, yet you're paid table scraps -- it's because that's what you're worth.

That doesn't make any sense and sounds like everyone is always paid fairly. That's far from true.

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#83
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you'd shopped around, you'd have been worth more. But you didn't, so you weren't. Isn't that circular logic? By that logic, nothing can ever be undervalued, because its fair value is defined by how much it's sold for. If you want to go all supply-and-demand, an employee's value is still not what they request, it's what it would cost to replace them, on average

Not circular logic, it's excactly how it works. Someone offers you money for your time and if both parties find an agreement on how much that time is worth, they've determined a value that is acceptable for both parties. No one is forced to employ or be employed.

Circumstances can differ quite a lot, and claiming that everyone is paid fairly because they aren't leaving is just crooked.

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#84

I'm a junior developer in a megacorp, where I sometimes think about how I'm not getting the salary I could be getting if I moved to SF, negotiated a bit harder, pushed for quicker promotions... But I'm not the lowest paid person in the office. Even the junior devs who started well after I did and haven't had as many raises aren't the lowest paid in the office. I'm fairly sure the lowest paid people in the office are…

Developers are in a completely different situation than a lot of other people. The money we might get by aggressively negotiating would mean a lot more to other people. But refusing to negotiate or to that raise won't increase other people's salary. Having empathy with other people's situation doesn't require us to ignore our own higher salaries. Political action (whether company or government) or charitable contributions would be a lot more effective in improving peoples lives.

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#87
post #25

I mean, it's pretty simple, but it took a long time to internalize: If you don't have anyone else making you an offer, then you're worth that amount. In this case, you were worth $42k and $56k respectively. If you'd shopped around, you'd have been worth more. But you didn't, so you weren't. That's not a bad thing, either. Security is nice, and interviews are a pain. But it really is that simple. If you don't like you…

While this is a simplistic view that might help you feel good about taking advantage of someone, it is ridiculously easily abused. And, quite frankly, scares me if I think about it for too long. I don't want a society where there are people left behind simply because they did not make a job out of making more money. Nor do I want a society where services performed by folks leads to a massive wealth imbalance in workf…

As software engineers in America, you have quite a great deal of financial freedom. No one is coercing you into accepting a job offer because life is hard and you just don't have the time to shop around for job offers.

If both parties sign an agreement with complete agency, who is getting abused? How can it be "unfair" if you both parties freely agreed to the exchange?

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#88
post #25

I mean, it's pretty simple, but it took a long time to internalize: If you don't have anyone else making you an offer, then you're worth that amount. In this case, you were worth $42k and $56k respectively. If you'd shopped around, you'd have been worth more. But you didn't, so you weren't. That's not a bad thing, either. Security is nice, and interviews are a pain. But it really is that simple. If you don't like you…

While this is a simplistic view that might help you feel good about taking advantage of someone, it is ridiculously easily abused. And, quite frankly, scares me if I think about it for too long. I don't want a society where there are people left behind simply because they did not make a job out of making more money. Nor do I want a society where services performed by folks leads to a massive wealth imbalance in workf…

No different than shopping for a car and buying the first one you see. You HAVE to shop around for your career. Holy crap, it's the biggest investment of your life. If you don't care, it's nobody's job to care for you, and it shouldn't be. ALWAYS shop around or don't complain when you find out you're being paid below market.

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#89

It seems like these kinds of salaries only really exist for full time employees in the US. As a software architect (engineer team size ~100) in the UK I was only making £65k. I could have shopped around and got more, much more if I went to London but still nothing like I read about in the US. I ended up leaving full time employment for contracting/consulting.

I completely agree... It is even worse if you live on latin america. The really sad part is when you take into consideration that programming and CS jobs in general are one of the jobs on which you can generate the same value being on-site or at the other end of the world. So in theory there is no reason why you couldn't do the same thing someone in the US is doing and get paid the same amount. Oh well, such is life.…

Being local and together on the same team discussing the same problems from the same location can have a multiplier effect on the productivity of a project. In particular for complex domain-driven industries. Our job as engineers is to translate domain-specific problems into solutions through code. There's a lot of context there that can be lost in translation across borders.

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#90
It's mostly a question of negotiating position.

If you have some savings, you can take longer to search for a new job, or you can give yourself the upside option of starting a new business. If you're broke, you basically have to take whatever you can find before food runs out.

At the moment, there's pressure on people's budgets coming from rent. Asset prices are inflated thanks to cheap money (in several places around the world), and that pushes up rents as well as mortgages. This adds to everyone's burn rate, and transfers both actual wealth but also opportunity people who owned homes before it all went crazy.

(Another thing that ate up opportunity for the masses was that they didn't let the economy fail.)

> "That feeling that I am actually the one making this work, and I'm also perfectly capable of talking with people and selling it"

I've come to this conclusion as well. It's narrow minded, but I do tend to think that technologists are actually the only people making the world better.

Organisers (leaders, management, bureaucrats, sales) have existed since the dawn of civilisation. What do they do? They use influence to manipulate some group of people to behave in some way that they like. Sometimes it works for everyone, sometimes it works just for them. But they've always been around, and we've never lacked for people who thought they were good leaders.

Technologists, by contrast, make new things. That's in the word. And by making new things new ways of organising society arise, often benefitting a lot of people.

What's interesting about our time is that there's a perception, pretty much unfounded, that technical people aren't social. And with that the idea that there are certain people (called BSers when they do it badly) who are naturally more social and thus better at handling relations such as sales. It is of course totally wrong; you can practice social skills as much as you can practice algorithms.

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