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Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

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Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#361

Post by malvosenior »

wfo wrote: post #223
d0lph wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 vict…

> If people don't like the concept, they don't really understand it.

I think plenty of people understand it, they just don't agree with it. Why wouldn't humans use every advantage available to them to succeed? It's a tough world out there and people want to thrive and survive, they'd also like to pass along the fruits of their labor to their offspring. That's how nature works.

There will always be a will to be the best, it doesn't matter if the demographics of people with economic advantages shift. I don't imagine we'll ever see people willfully make their lives more difficult and we shouldn't expect them to.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#362

Post by 13of40 »

maxander wrote: post #275
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…

> 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 have been keeping your knowledge up-to-date because the answer in 2018 is v…

> I'm pretty sure 90% of us would just look for a Stack Exchange question

When you're starting from scratch, I think the bigger barrier isn't "where do I store this data", it's "what the hell is data"? Try to explain to a computer illiterate person that the latest Mariah Carey CD is just a really big number and you'll get a glimpse of this. The person who knows they can jump on Stack Exchange is already past the worst part of the learning curve.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#363

Post by Clubber »

nvarsj wrote: post #347
Clubber wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's both. You have to know people of whom you impress with your ability.

Sure, but I don't think the differentiator in the bimodal distribution is technical ability.

I would guess being good hits the first mark, being good and knowing someone who can pay a lot that knows you're good hits the second mark.

Perhaps the second mark not only includes being good and knowing someone, but being good and providing a larger value, like being able to analyze and communicate with a company and quantitatively save them money through business process automation.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#364

Post by to3m »

mieseratte wrote: post #267
d0lph wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> it seems almost built to shame people for having more due to circumstances That's quite literally what it is. I'm not particularly Christian, but at least it doesn't make me pay for the sins of the father unlike whatever this new orthodoxy is.

What about original sin?

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#365

Post by andrei_says_ »

wfo wrote: post #223
d0lph wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 vict…

I think “privilege” because the right is not the norm. Like “black lives matter (, too!)” because being black and having respect for your life and freedom is not the norm, at all.

In a situation where not being exposed to massive dangers and obstacles is a rare occasion, I think it is fair to classify that as a privilege.

White / wealthy / male / educated / citizen of the US, all indicate the top parts of pyramids of oppression and massive obstacles.

The blind acceptance of these structures by the ones standing on top of them, is the actionable part. We (I am definitely amongst the privileged) can’t easily see the nature of the structures, the way we don’t choke on clean air.

But once we’re aware of them, our responsibility kicks in. Not taking actions to actively challenge these structures makes us complicit and defines where we stand.

The anger of the ones living life on “extra hard” so that we can live ours on “quite/super easy” or even “normal”, is fully justified. We are passive perpetrators, there’s no way around it.

Very uncomfortable.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#366

Post by mizzao »

There's a difference between a bimodal and a distribution with a long tail (like a lognormal). The new hire distribution doesn't really give a sense of this because there's an implicit cap to how much companies are willing to pay new hires.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#367

Post by barrkel »

bjourne wrote: post #272
barrkel wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you investigated the correlation between developer location and 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?

I didn't know the United States had unrestricted immigration. :) You're probably right that Silicon Valley developers on average are a little bit sharper than most everyone else. But not by that much. People have other priorities than getting the best colleagues, such as living close to family and in places that feel like home.

> People have other priorities than getting the best colleagues, such as living close to family and in places that feel like home.

Yes: people who don't prioritize excellence in development. And it does require compromises in your life choices. You generally need to move to where the most interesting jobs are, where the cutting edge tech is being developed. It's a virtuous cycle: SV attracts the next generation of high quality developers because it's the place that already has the highest concentration of good developers.

> I didn't know the United States had unrestricted immigration.

FWIW, even though I got my H-1B visa, I stayed in London. It would definitely have been a better career move to follow through and emigrate. I have zero doubt it has cost me in career prospects and quality of opportunities.

Living in London is already a compromise in my quality of life.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#368

Post by screye »

yAnonymous wrote: post #192
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…

Where's all the great Indian, Chinese and Eastern European software? Seriously wondering, because most software I saw from these regions was mediocre at best. The whole world uses operating systems, browsers and development tools made in western countries.

The best ones are making all the software that western companies use. The US (coast) pays an absurdly average high salary as compared to other countries for CS roles.

Now, the quality of engineering education received at top CS/engg. institutes and a local college is night and day. This means that only a small subset of the graduating engineers get any decent quality of education.

Most of these people, often considered the cream of the crop are poached by the aforementioned western companies or go for graduate studies. Graduate institutes in India are underwhelming, so these students land up in the west as well.

The rest of the cream have to choose between software engineering roles that pay around $15-25k with very little vertical movement and business analyst/ consultancy roles where you might earn a bit more and have a much clearer clearer progression up the ladder. These are often referred to as the MBA crowd.

Look at people like Sanjay Ghemawat, whose achievements are as noteworthy as Jeff Dean, having been a fundamental part of developing MapReduce, BigTable, Tensorflow, GFS and Spanner.

It is actually a very ironic situation. One one hand the US is complaining about negative intellectual biases against Asian immigrants, while both the Indian and Chinese govt. are lamenting how they are losing the cream of the crop to the US as well.

If both are the be believed, India and China's best are leaving the countries, but the US is not getting competent people from these countries. So, I guess these people have vanished into thin air. In the mean time Chinese and Indians increasingly churn out ground breaking papers and research in CS.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#369

Post by aaavl2821 »

vostok wrote: post #271
aaavl2821 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are two interesting correlaries: 1) programming seems to be one of the only "hard" professions that pays well (compared to math researchers, hard science researchers, or even things like some social work -- that's really hard in entirely different ways). Of course I'm probably missing some hard stuff that pays well 2) programming seems to be the "hardest" of the high paying jobs mentioned. Once you get…

I think I have to disagree with both statements. banking - extremely long hours with unpredictable work, huge attrition rate (most people who start in banking don't stay in banking), eventual career progression is into sales consulting - long hours, weekly travel, huge attrition rate (most people who start in consulting don't stay in consulting), eventual career progression is into sales law - long hours, high attrit…

I agree with your statement but when I said "hard" I meant the work itself was hard rather than the work "lifestyle", if that makes sense

I woerked in banking and agree it is a hard work environment , but getting the deliverables done was easy and not intellectually challenging. From my friends in big consulting and law firms the work sounds similar in nature

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#370

Post by drharby »

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"?

Very small pebbles
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