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Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

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Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#221

Post by ryanianian »

vinceguidry wrote: post #201

The article gives as a potential reason for high developer compensation the possibility of a shortage of talent. That seems obvious to me, but the author goes on to suggest that if there was a shortage, you'd be seeing more people go into development. Does this actually happen? My understanding is that skill supply is simply not elastic in this way. Kids generally pick what to do based on their aptitude and what they…

I've seen lots of teen-aged students take up an interest in coding simply because they heard it was a well-paying and in-demand career. It's no longer a nerd thing to do living in your parents' basement.

This has likely steered some students who otherwise might have found a niche in other fields to try out coding and choose it as a career (out of both satisfaction and salary prospects).

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#222

Post by jnbiche »

thesmallestcat wrote: post #69
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…

Few if any of the 300 applicants were overqualified for that garbage opportunity. Can you describe on how they were overqualified? List a bunch of certs and techs? Good programmers aren't fighting over scraps for underpaid government positions working with JBOSS, they get snapped up immediately when they hit the market. Five years to saturation? Yea right. Readers who just deleted emacs in despair should keep in mind…

While I can't speak to the GP's experiences, I'm guessing you're in SV (most likely), NYC, Chicago, RTP, or Austin based on your remarks on how quickly developers get snatched up.

However, those of us living outside that handful of cities have a totally different experience, regardless of how good we are or how much experience we have. There just are far, far fewer jobs outside that handful of American cities.

And many of us are unable to just up and move due to a personal situation (sick relative, illness, spouse's job, etc.). It's just worth bearing in mind that your experience as a developer is somewhat the exception in the US, not the rule. At best, it's a 50/50 split between devs in the cities I mentioned above and the rest of us.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#223

Post by wfo »

d0lph wrote: post #181
humanrebar wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Is it perverse to go swimming because you were born near a beach? Is it perverse to visit the Louvre if you are Parisian? Is it perverse to go to a good university because the universities in Elbonia aren't good? You're not entirely wrong,…

This is why people don't like the concept of privilege, it seems almost built to shame people for having more due to circumstances.

If people don't like the concept, they don't really understand it. The way the word is often used and even the word itself, absolutely that ruffles some feathers and rightly so.

They do studies, if people are given massive advantages (e.g. rolling two dice instead of one in monopoly and starting with double the cash) that are obvious and explicit, people will still believe they deserved to win, they earned their victory.

Recognizing a lot of your success is because of dumb luck (yes you worked hard, but millions of others worked just as hard or harder and weren't lucky) is a good way to stay humble, and to remind yourself to stop pretending you "deserve" what you have -- we all live in a fundamentally (intentionally) unjust economic system where "desert" has no meaning but we try to superimpose it on our lives because of a need to believe things are fair. Privilege is a word that can be a good way to remember that.

It can also be used as a rhetorical weapon to bludgeon people.

The word itself is terrible and I hate it: it is not a "privilege" in my view to be treated decently, to have a chance at success, to not be discriminated against or assaulted by police or have to face anything that the poor, minorities, women face. It is a right. Everyone has the right to be treated the way straight rich white men are and have been for centuries and using the word "privilege" conjures up this notion that they are getting something they do not deserve: rather, they should be viewed as the model, the goal, they are getting something that we all deserve to have as well alongside them.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#224

Post by d0lph »

riskable wrote: post #196
d0lph wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offshore developed code is not usually the same quality. Not that we all deserve huge salaries, but code quality important.

Let's ignore the fact that this may or may not be true (offshore code quality is bad) and just assume it's true... Why is offshore-developed code not the same quality? What is it about living (growing up?) in the US that has developers producing higher-quality code? I highly suspect that it's merely selection bias. US companies outsource offshore to save money and when your goal is to save money you've already decide…

I would imagine among most companies the cheapest option is not the one they go with. It's not a new business concept, cheapest thing is not usually what you want.

I would also be curious what the relative salaries are, e.g. food and shelter are usually much cheaper in foreign countries.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#225

Post by fuggedaboudit »

solipsism wrote: post #215
fuggedaboudit wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the grass is always greener. I'm a lawyer who lurks here occasionally. Most legal jobs involve 60+ hours of work, being on call 24/7, and there is pretty much no legal equivalent of a 10Xer because almost all work is billed by the hour. There is no way to make a contract that's 10x as valuable as your competitor's, and certainly no legal equivalent of scaling to the degree of Google or Facebook. Law is incred…

Are you at a top tier law firm? Because you're comparing yourself to programmers at a top tier employer of programmers. The life of the average programmer certainly does not involve endless burritos or massages, and the compensation is probably below yours.

Yep - top tier firms pay roughly the same as tech companies do as far as I can tell (with the added bonus that you don't need 250k in grad school loans to work for Google at an entry level - and a much higher ceiling for the truly, amazingly talent).

Another key difference is that in most top tier law firms, literally 2-3% of every starting class can expect to have a full career there. I've heard tech has a similar concept called stack ranking, but it seems much milder in terms of the forced attrition. Not to mention you don't need a full career at Google - you can always take that resume line and go to another big tech company, a startup or something midmarket. Law is much more segmented. The M&A lawyer laid off during a recession isn't going to find a job at a small firm because those generally do not do M&A.

I don't really hear of top tier software engineers struggling to find work - happens to out of work top tier lawyers all the time.

Oh, and for the record 15% of law school grads get that sweet 180k starting salary (a trajectory most won't stay on).

There are many, many lawyers making 40-60k a year working horrendous hours with no real hope of advancement.

Let me be clear: I have zero doubt in my mind, even with my very limited knowledge of the software engineering market, that I have no doubt the median software engineer is far better off than the median lawyer, likely in terms of pay, hours, and prospects all at the same time.

My question related solely to the top tier because that's where it's even remotely competitive.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#226

Post by expertentipp »

ryandrake wrote: post #195
ddorian43 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sounds like you’ve never experienced a tech downturn yet. Having been through two (and there are folks on this forum who have been through more) I can tell you with great certainty that you are wrong. I have been close to broke twice and am eternally grateful for what little safety net actually exists in the US.

I always smile hearing this arrogant "programmers don't need unemployment benefits" or "programmers will always find a job". Not even tech downturn is necessary, just relocate (e.g. family reasons) to a different location where this profession is not appreciated, neither well rewarded.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#227

Post by biztos »

badpun wrote: post #200
d0lph wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offshore developed code is not usually the same quality. Not that we all deserve huge salaries, but code quality important.

I don't think that the code created for example at Google Warsaw is worse than code created at Google Mountain View (you can even check yourself, people in Warsaw work on Kubernetes, which is open source). And yet, the Warsaw salary is maybe 30-50% of the salary in MV.

But wouldn't you live a whole lot better in Warsaw on 50% than in Mountain View on 100% of that relatively high Google salary?

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#228

Post by JamesBarney »

salmonfamine wrote: post #212

I think the explanation for bimodal dev salaries is pretty clear, and is similar to the explanation for the bi-modality in Lawyer salaries. Google, Facebook, Amazon, and whatever other big name you want to throw in the pot, are competing for developers. However, they are not competing for the same developers as Epic Systems, for example. FAANG (or whatever) are competing for a highly skilled subset of devs that can m…

Lawyer salaries are bimodal for a very specific reason. No law firms really believe that a graduate in the top 9% is worth 160k/year, but a graduate in the 11th percentile is only worth 60k.

But they all have to pay the same because it's a signal to their clients that they are the best. If they paid less than their clients would consider their firm second tier not top tier.

And Google is hiring the same devs as everyone else. Having worked in a large company and seeing several people move to Google. They got some smart devs who stood out on their team, but they also got mediocre devs. The average dev they poached was definitely better than the average dev who worked there but it was a moderate difference in degree not kind.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#229

Post by foamflower »

namelost wrote: post #158
foamflower wrote: post #139

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…

> If you want to know just how hard programming is, try teaching it to someone.

> The lack of barriers to entry actually makes it harder. There are "law schools" and "med schools" to teach you all the knowledge required to become a lawyer or a doctor. There is no "programming school", every programmer is self-taught. A computer science degree hardly scratches the surface.

+1024

I have said quite a few times that the best CS program is one where you learn how to learn without being spoon fed. In fact, I know a couple great programmers who were _not_ CS (one studied econ; the other, physics), and they similarly learned how to learn without being spoon fed.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#230

Post by brational »

ju-st wrote: post #79
tatami wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6k is far above anything I have heard of yet. The boni sound like a big company, is this a software or industrial one?

6k is even above IG Metall pay schemes, you will never get 6k in Germany 3years after graduation. I call bullshit. It may be possible if you have a PhD or for some not engineering related reason are rising ranks very fast.

That's absurd I have multiple german friends >70k euro + all the other benefits. All stem yes but only 1 is a phd. Frankfurt, Berlin, and Stuttgart too so not just 1 isolated city.
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