171–180 of 584 posts
If one factors out the major tech hubs and only look at e.g. any random city, is the bimodality there too?
Developer salaries in the UK are very modest. Companies don't even know how to identify good developers, so they have no hope of competing over them.
According to www.itjobswatch.co.uk a senior Java developer earns £70k. But can command day rate of £575. That works out at about double. Suggestion it is bimodal.
Though some industries (advertising publishing marketing) that formerly did not have to consider on technical excellence and where used to relaying of cheap Oxbridge liberal arts students with a 1st seem to want to pay temp technical roles at straight time instead of the real contractor day rate.
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 c…
In Electrical Engineering, which the article often mentions as a counterexample, the 10-year veteran is not nearly as likely to drop out of the profession. Programming has a constant bleed-out of people who learning how to program, became veterans, and then were dismayed to discover that they were going to have to do it all over again, because the libraries, frameworks, languages, etc. were different. Some just do it…
>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…
Seriously. A lot of comments in here are "Well it's hard so we deserve it!". There are thousands of developers making fractions of what their equally talented counterparts make in the US.
Yes, it is. And the example used in the article of chemical engineering reinforces the point. It ties into computer science quite nicely. To become a chemical engineer, you first have to complete the course work for a degree in chemistry. Chemistry as chemistry is an extremely modular subject matter; you can solve most problems in discrete steps in isolation. In a computer science sense, chemistry is about pure funct…
As someone trained as a chemical engineer who now is a Data Engineer (SQL & Python pipe fitter), feel free to add me to your anec-data :-)
I think the reason for high compensations is that software is the enabling factor for capital. If software can automate, reduce inefficiencies and generally be the means to accomplish the business goal, then it makes sense for the business side to invest heavily into what is essentially a competitive differentiator. The bimodal compensation reflects a growing split between software activities that are seen as an nece…
Of course, salaries are largely determined by the industry one is in. If you can position yourself at a place in the economy that attracts large amounts of money (per person) then you will be able to siphon off a relatively large amount for yourself.
As software embeds itself in everything we do, developer earning potential will reflect the industry one is in.
High tech firms like Apple and Google make huge amounts of money per employee, so people that work for them make huge amounts of money too. Not just software developers, but also people in sales and strategy, etc. Same for people in finance.
Yes, it is. And the example used in the article of chemical engineering reinforces the point. It ties into computer science quite nicely. To become a chemical engineer, you first have to complete the course work for a degree in chemistry. Chemistry as chemistry is an extremely modular subject matter; you can solve most problems in discrete steps in isolation. In a computer science sense, chemistry is about pure funct…
Tbt, I haven't seen that much evidence that correlates developer ability with salary. For example, developers living in the Silicon Valley are paid the most. Not because they are the best, but because they are living in the Silicon Valley. Geographical factors play a much bigger role in compensation than developer ability.
Do you think developers who are very good want to work with the best, thinking the best are in SV, then move to SV? Or perhaps they think they'll get the best return on their effort if they're working on software with big impact, and software with the biggest consumer impact is mostly written in SV?
>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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seriously. A lot of comments in here are "Well it's hard so we deserve it!". There are thousands of developers making fractions of what their equally talented counterparts make in the US.
Offshore developed code is not usually the same quality. Not that we all deserve huge salaries, but code quality important.
American exceptionalism and absolutely wrong.
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 c…
If you want to know just how hard programming is, try teaching it to someone. Programmers have to remember a vast amount of domain knowledge. Consider the basic task of choosing where you are going to store some data, well first you need to know which options exist and there's dozens of them (do you want Postgres, SQLite, Redis, LevelDB, ..?). Then you need to know the strengths and weaknesses of each. And I hope you…