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Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

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Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#231

Post by mattmanser »

nvarsj wrote: post #102
luckydata wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You're definitely on to something here. This is probably also why engineers like to 1. rebuild everything from scratch (but better!) 2. can't handle staying at a company more than a few years.

I was reflecting on why I'm hating my current client's codebase so much whereas 6 months ago it was tolerable.

I think for a while you pretend to yourself it's going to get better, then it never does. Code is a always messy, confusing, etc. There's never time to really fix it.

Switching every 2 years helps you pretend that's not the case, at the new place it'll be better and you'll definitely have an impact on this code base this time.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#232

Post by wcarron »

jarsin wrote: post #205
Clubber wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only is it hard, but the landscape changes frequently. You wouldn't design a system like you designed it pre-mobile, and you wouldn't design a system pre-mobile like you designed it pre-internet, and those are just the big shifts. Cloud is another big shift. A lot of people read how so and so design a system. So and so is successful, so I will design my systems that way. That's rarely ideal. Also, designs can cha…

Whats this thing you call "good specs"?

What are "specs"? The most I get is a shout from the marketing director, "I NEEEEEEED X! Project Manager ok'd it 3 days ago!"

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#233

Post by dhd415 »

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…

I think skill differentials in programming is a contributing factor to the bimodal distribution. I think there's also another factor which is the degree to which one is an active "curator" of one's own career. I've known some devs who were quite talented but were perfectly content to stay at low-paying jobs where the value they generated for their companies for developing CRUD or other low-multiplier apps was moderate. Others who were much more deliberate about developing skills in areas of software where much higher multiples were possible and choosing jobs strategically to build their careers made MUCH more money than the former despite not necessarily being more technically skilled. These latter developers are much more likely to be the ones working at FAANGs (or whatever) for $200k+.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#234

Post by salmonfamine »

JamesBarney wrote: post #228
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 every…

Maybe, but top firms are still only hiring lawyers from top schools. And as far as salaries go, that bottleneck is the only differentiating factor.

You could also argue that maybe Facebook doesn't need devs to be able to independently produce Tarjan's algorithm while standing on their heads, blindfolded. But for some reason, these companies believe that it is essential. Maybe that's well-founded -- maybe not. But it remains the case.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#235

Post by geodel »

galieos_ghost wrote: post #211
ForHackernews wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you did absolutely nothing to earn having good family members? Most people feel at least sheepish about their own success when faced with others, no less deserving, who experience failure.

The point is that millions of people made sacrifices for themselves and their families which cumulatively created the greatest civilization in history. Why should we feel guilty about reaping the benefits of those sacrifices? Why should we feel obligated to hand over our prosperity to those who contributed nothing to it?

Ideally not. But then your government unilaterally decided that spreading American values, culture, and products is the best thing to do. And now a lot of people want to come here and experience first hand.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#236

Post by lr4444lr »

aphextron wrote: post #134

>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…

Ask the other side of the equation: why don't their countries have well-heeled tech companies attracting capital and ideas with the same investment opportunity so that they can live a comparable lifestyle to you where they come from?

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#237

Post by mncolinlee »

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…

This is absolutely true. I've claimed for years that programming is easy and it's not hard to teach to children, but I started when I was six. For older people, the field is hard to break into due to a cognitive barrier I've seen. "I don't know how to program and computers are mysterious-- therefore I don't know how to learn how to program."

The biggest impediment to much larger participation in the top tiers of software engineering is imposter syndrome and the elitism of the industry when faced with a trainable candidate. Every startup aims to hire someone who can "hit the ground running" and who doesn't need an assist from anyone.

Also, the largest tech companies have chosen to use LeetCode-like problems almost solely to assess candidates, which are unlike most tasks done on the job most days. These tend to select for people who trained specifically for the interview and for coding competitions, such as ACM.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#238

Post by lr4444lr »

jcadam wrote: post #143
aphextron wrote: post #134

>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…

Truth be told, most software development doesn't require a high amount of intelligence, skill, or innate talent. I'm not afraid of a superior person taking my job. They would be no better at it than I am. I would probably be more productive if I were less intelligent (or on booze, but employers frown on that).

I don't know what type of code you write, or where you went to school, but I had a professor who actually put the exam score distribution on the whiteboard after each test in a second level CS class, and the bimodal distribution was stark. And these are people motivated or interested enough to spend their academic career pursuing it beyond intro level washout.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#239

Post by wfo »

aphextron wrote: post #134

>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…

Instead of worrying about potential foreigners competing for your job, you should wonder why there are so few jobs out there: it's because the rich are hoarding them. The money for them, that is. There is so much work to be done, plenty of work for you and your Indian and Chinese friends to all have well-paying jobs. The reason we all don't have them is that we are just extremely bad at allocating resources: we choose the most inefficient method, market capitalism. We, essentially at random, select a tiny group of elite wealth hoarders who centrally plan and distribute nearly all of the world's wealth without any concern for social good or welfare or anything other than their continued accumulation of wealth and power. Then we beg them to give us jobs, to give us their table scraps and we fight each other for them, terrified at any moment our benefactors might take away our livelihood instead of rolling up our sleeves and getting to work.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#240

Post by austenallred »

foamflower wrote: post #229
namelost wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I run a Computer Science academy, and that’s quite literally our goal.
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