Is developer compensation becoming bimodal? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#131

Post by TwoFactor » Fri, Feb 09, 2018, 2:12 PM UTC

YPCrumble wrote: post #122

A good answer to why software pays more than industries like law or medicine is that profit per employee in software is enormous. Of the 12 American companies on this chart of the highest profit per employee, 6 are software companies: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-facebook-alphabet-most-... I would love to hear an economist explain why this might or might not lead to higher salaries. My hypothesis is there is…

I'm not sure that list is a fair way to determine an industry's profit per employee.

Law firms aren't allowed to form C corps, which limits their size and would keep them off that list. I would expect top law firms to be in those ranges in for profit per employee, but they're much smaller so it isn't a fair comparison.

2 of the top 6 in that list are in medicine.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#132

Post by notacoward » Fri, Feb 09, 2018, 2:12 PM UTC

It would be interesting to see if compensation is bimodal within a market. There's clearly a bimodal distribution between the US and the rest of the world, and has been for a long time. I think we're also moving toward a bimodal distribution between the top five or ten unicorns and everyone else even in the US. Quite simply, the companies with billions to spend are bidding up the price of talent willing to work there, while growth for everyone else remains slow. While the same has happened with fintech for a while, that has remained too small to show up on graphs. MAGA/FAANG/whatever, on the other hand, are collectively large enough to create a very visible second peak.

There are effectively two markets now. People don't expect to carry their compensation packages from one side of that fence to the other. I should know, since I made such a transition myself within the past year. In terms of effect on personal income, it's not that different than changing careers.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#133

Post by kamaal » Fri, Feb 09, 2018, 2:12 PM UTC

luckydata wrote: post #19

banku_brougham wrote: post #13

To the puzzle about developer comp outstripping EE or other engineering disciplines pay (ie Civil Engineering god help me), I agree that the student in those fields could apply themselves to become able programmers. So why the huge disparity in pay? I have two ideas: 1. Lots of technically able people still don’t enjoy plugging their mind into a machine. Its probably hard to believe in the HN community but many peopl…

Engineer turned product manager here: there is way too much yak shaving involved in bring a software engineer. Dealing with all the poorly written libraries, unpredictable bugs and shitty APIs made me realize it wasn't something I wanted to do 12 hours per day for the rest of my life. I enjoy the intellectual challenge but I enjoy less figuring out which version of which package crashes my app

But as a programmer wanting to getting into a management role of some sort. Lets be frank here, the true reason most people want to do is because, the pay as a manager is just way too good, the working hours are next to nothing. And there is a default master-slave relation ship between a manager and a programming, despite the skill, output and intellectual value of the programming being many orders of magnitude more superior.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#134

Post by aphextron » Fri, Feb 09, 2018, 2:13 PM UTC

>Another possibility is that U.S. immigration laws act as a protectionist barrier to prop up programmer compensation. It seems impossible for this to last (why shouldn’t there by really valuable non-U.S. companies), but it does appear to be somewhat true for now.

I feel like this is the real issue here. The reason that the US has great companies is simply from the availability of large amounts of capital. And if the millions and millions of Indian, Chinese, and Eastern European programmers who are inifinitely more talented/driven/intelligent/educated than myself were able to simply move here and seek employment with no immigration restraints, I know that I would be out of a job instantly. In that sense it feels perversly exploitative and priveleged to make so much more money than practically anyone else on earth due to nothing but the physical location I was born.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#135

Post by jcadam » Fri, Feb 09, 2018, 2:15 PM UTC

Yes, this is true. At some point which I seem to be unable to identify in retrospect, I became too expensive for about 2/3 of the market. Ah well.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#136

Post by xya3453 » Fri, Feb 09, 2018, 2:15 PM UTC

meuk wrote: post #9

IMHO, the title should be fixed to mention that it is only about developer compensation in the USA . I am always surprised at the salaries in the USA. I have two bachelor degrees and two master degrees from two well established universities, and earn about 2k euro a month (before 20% tax deduction), which is considered fairly decent for a starter. Even then, many corporations outsource software development to Eastern…

Europe does not value software or developers anywhere near the levels the US does. Other developed economies e.g, Australia, Canada and Singapore are closer to the US but still trail behind.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#137

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Feb 09, 2018, 2:15 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#138

Post by randomdata » Fri, Feb 09, 2018, 2:18 PM UTC

computator wrote: post #56

eksemplar wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it’s anecdotal from experience and my network. 10 years ago we would get 1-5 applications for a programming job, and most would frankly be underqualified. The last position I put up for a regular .net, jboss and sharepoint position had over 300 applicants, several vastly overqualified. I work in the public sector, so it’s not exactly because we offer what most developers consider “dream positions” and we certai…

> The last position I put up ... had over 300 applicants, several vastly overqualified. Interesting how this contrasts with the widely-held perception that there is a programmer shortage.

Is that really the perception in 2018? If we go back to the early 2010s, I would agree. That the message was spread frequently back then. I really haven't heard it recently. And it makes sense that the market over the last 5+ years should have started to close the gap. That is plenty of time to allow people to become able in development.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#139

Post by foamflower » Fri, Feb 09, 2018, 2:22 PM UTC

One (semi-pedantic) quibble with the article: there absolutely are barriers to entry for programming. Programming is hard! These barriers may not be artificial, but they are real.

To use a non-software example, there are barriers to entry to chip manufacturers and power companies even under anarchy. Fabs are tremendously hard to build. Power plants are extremely hard to build. Building up knowledge and skills about computers is also very hard, especially when our genes don't seem to guide us toward thinking highly logically.

And programming is hard because it requires us to understand a bunch of modular systems and then the systems they're built on, all the way down, and in some cases, all the way up. Then, we have to understand the whole integrated system of the individual modules. Not all programming problems require this level of difficulty, but these problems do exist. I've been on teams where I'm the only one who understands what the OS is doing or the CPU is doing or what the network is doing or why some other distributed component might have stopped working. Most of my teammates in these cases seemed to enjoy programming, but didn't care to become overall experts in computers as a whole.

I once had a top-tier business school grad friend claim that programming really isn't that hard and that we're all whiners. He is a genuinely smart person. Today, he himself is trying to code in JavaScript on the client side. He's a friend so I help him, but the problems he has are junior-level or even entry-level. Suffice it to say, I haven't heard much more about how programmers are "whiners" when we say programming is hard.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#140

Post by Clubber » Fri, Feb 09, 2018, 2:23 PM UTC

ddorian43 wrote: post #109

dx034 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably 250/month for health insurance plus 20% pension contribution and few unemployment benefits.

Programmers don't need unemployment benefits. You can always find a job. Maybe unable-to-work (like accidents etc) insurance.

I would agree with you, but I lived through the dot bomb / 9-11. There are times when companies, collectively, decide to hold off on hiring for a few quarters while doing massive layoffs. Thats when the market gets flooded.

It's hard to imagine today, but it sure did happen.