Is developer compensation becoming bimodal? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#501

Post by mr_toad » Fri, Feb 09, 2018, 11:30 PM UTC

logfromblammo wrote: post #385

jopsen wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you've become a highly paid software engineer it's very human to try and justify your status by claiming that programming is exceptionally hard and therefore your status/salary is justified. That's not to say that the job isn't hard... but lots of jobs are hard. Dealing with the constant loss of people around you if you work in a retirement home or hospice is also hard; but those jobs aren't rewarded equally.

Writing software is not difficult. Anyone can do it. The hard part is learning to structure your thinking such that the software you will be writing will actually solve a problem as it currently exists in a cost-effective way. With that skill, you don't even always need to know how to write software programs. Sometimes, you're better off delegating specific tasks to humans. When someone hands you a problem like "make…

‘Writing software is not difficult. Anyone can do it’

The drop out rates from programming courses suggest otherwise.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#502

Post by bigmanwalter » Fri, Feb 09, 2018, 11:31 PM UTC

null000 wrote: post #377

bigmanwalter wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that others' lack of access to the Louvre or the beach isn't preventing them from feeding their families. To a degree, we should feel bad for having access to capital when there are far greater needs for this capital elsewhere. Most of us don't have any real power to change the situation unfortunately. But it is definitely something to be conscious of and you should reflect on what you can do to hel…

I think it's kinda pointless to "feel bad" about something we have no control over (while we could not take the job, we definitely can't give someone else our seat). It's mostly just unhealthy. Much better to support political movements trying to help spread the wealth and donating money to things that advance the public good in the mean time.

It is useful to feel bad so that one can change what it is they can about their situation that causes those feelings. But to continue to feel bad beyond that, yes I completely agree, it is of no use.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#503

Post by joshuamorton » Fri, Feb 09, 2018, 11:44 PM UTC

malvosenior wrote: post #499

joshuamorton wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is the crux of why I think the concept of privilege is extremely dangerous. You have no idea who I am and I've already stated that I fit some of the demographics that you deem underprivileged. Yet instead of listening to what I had to say (which is a quite simple explanation -- work smart/hard == do good) you fit a very elaborate psychological explanation over my experiences (of which you know nothing about). I…

> Just to be clear, are you arguing that you worked harder/smarter than every person from your hometown who has seen less success than you? Yeah I'm arguing that. I used to try to help these people. I spent a lot of time doing it in fact. I would try to teach people in my town about computers but was told it was "geek stuff". I would try to get them to read books but again...that's for the nerds. I'd try to tell them…

>Yeah I'm arguing that. I used to try to help these people. I spent a lot of time doing it in fact. I would try to teach people in my town about computers but was told it was "geek stuff". I would try to get them to read books but again...that's for the nerds. I'd try to tell them there's more to life than football (was told there wasn't). I would tell them that maybe it wasn't a great idea to use crystal meth (this was before they all got hooked on opiods). I'd tell them that joining the military wasn't a path to success. I would tell them that they shouldn't be afraid of people from other cultures and that maybe they could learn from them and teach what was unique to their culture.

And every person in your town was like this? You were the valedictorian of your high school and worked jobs on the side to make money because your parents didn't but you needed to be able to take care of your sister and keep the lights on anyway.

>I don't know your background, but if it were practical I'd suggest actually going to live with some poor people.

Aren't you the one assuming things now? I've lived with and interacted with some very-not-well-off people, more similar to the crystal meth hooked in-and-out of jail people you describe than you might at first think. Some of them are even relatively successful now. And yeah it absolutely took hard work and determination and grit in every case. But that's not all it took, for any of them. They all got lucky breaks, and they mostly admit that readily. I'm not as naive about this as you want to believe.

I mean, to be clear here, you appear to have had reliable access to computers 20+ years ago. That's a huge advantage over many people. And don't get me wrong, I don't mean to belittle your success, success is a good thing. But you seem resistant to recognizing your biases. Biases that everyone has and that are well documented. I don't really know why that is, but the fact that you picked that specific line to target, and ignored everything else I said is revealing. That you think hard work is all it takes is, if nothing else, naive.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#504

Post by jpindar » Fri, Feb 09, 2018, 11:58 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #273

mncolinlee wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 soft…

It's not just old people. When I was a kid, the Commodore 64 was the absolute state of the art in consumer computer hardware. What I was able to produce in C64 Basic after a few months of trying was, at least to a first order of approximation, comparable to the sorts of things that were considered professional software back then: the machine just couldn't do that much, so writing a simple game with an amorphous blob…

Have you tried creating a game in a modern engine such as Unity3d? If you try going through a few tutorials, and browse through the asset store, you might be surprised.

While the gameplay in your first game may still be simple, it can look great because the engine does most of the work. It absolutely won't look like something from a C64 (unless you want it to).

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#505

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Feb 09, 2018, 11:59 PM UTC

TheHegemon wrote: post #403

maxander wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 describing a bunch of popular database platforms and choose whichever looked best after thinking about it for a few minutes, and that outside of extreme circumstances (>terabytes of data, distributed over an actually unreliable network, other exotica) almost any option would work well enough. And you're the reason why I have to mop up poor perf…

[deleted]

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#506

Post by tryptophan » Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 12:01 AM UTC

s73v3r_ wrote: post #475

skybrian wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree that the main problem is lack of spending money in the hands of people who actually need it. There's plenty of work to be done, if only the people who need it had money to pay for it. However, capitalism (in the form of Walmart and its suppliers, for example) does seem quite efficient at supplying material things to poor people. More spending power in the right places would go pretty far to fix the…

"However, capitalism (in the form of Walmart and its suppliers, for example) does seem quite efficient at supplying material things to poor people. " Does it? I don't know if I'd really agree with that.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/declining-global-poverty-...

Like it or not, the greedy evil capitalists are making the world a better place for all of us.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#507

Post by malvosenior » Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 12:02 AM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #503

malvosenior wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just to be clear, are you arguing that you worked harder/smarter than every person from your hometown who has seen less success than you? Yeah I'm arguing that. I used to try to help these people. I spent a lot of time doing it in fact. I would try to teach people in my town about computers but was told it was "geek stuff". I would try to get them to read books but again...that's for the nerds. I'd try to tell them…

>Yeah I'm arguing that. I used to try to help these people. I spent a lot of time doing it in fact. I would try to teach people in my town about computers but was told it was "geek stuff". I would try to get them to read books but again...that's for the nerds. I'd try to tell them there's more to life than football (was told there wasn't). I would tell them that maybe it wasn't a great idea to use crystal meth (this…

Yes, my town was a hellhole and very, very small. I'm the only person who has achieved professional success. Most are dead, in jail or hooked on drugs. My relatives included.

> You were the valedictorian of your high school

No, I was a very poor student as I knew back then that school had little to do with success.

> worked jobs on the side to make money

There were no jobs in my town.

I admit I'm making some assumptions about you since I've literally never heard a poor person say the things you're saying but many, many middle-upper middle class people say them. I could be very wrong though.

> you appear to have had reliable access to computers 20+ years ago

My school had some very dated Apple IIes. The rest I got from magazines and library books. If there was a privilege there it was that I was alive at a time that booting up a machine dumped you into BASIC.

I'm 100% sure I'm biased. Everyone is, including yourself. Our conversation has drifted far from the original topic but I do appreciate you taking the time to have it. I don't think we could ever agree on many of these issues but its interesting to see them juxtaposed.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#508

Post by duderific » Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 12:05 AM UTC

ryanianian wrote: post #436

atomicUpdate wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> realize that you're not entitled to what you have That's ridiculous. The fact that his parents worked hard is what entitled him to the life he has, all the way up the chain to the ones that emigrated to America and earlier. This 'original sin' stuff that people are trying to push just because we are born in the US is crap.

I'm not super interested in debating this philosophy and your response reads to me as pretty flippant and entitled, so I'll bow out. I hope you receive everything you're entitled to.

I don't understand why you're "bowing out" instead of debating, if you have a strong case to make. What about the GP's post is factually incorrect?

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#509

Post by dredmorbius » Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 12:25 AM UTC

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'd argue the reverse: that in software, very small errors can have vast consequences, but it's virtually impossible in many cases to tell what those consequences may be or where they'll fall.

The reason is that software systems are at another level of complexity.

The Space Shuttle is often given as an example of the most complex machine every built, with more than 2.5 million parts. The Airbus A380 has about 4 million parts.

https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-most-complex-machine-ever-bu...

The Linux Kernel, not necessarily the most complex software ever written, has nearly 10 million lines of executable code, over 12 million with comments, scattered over 36,000+ files.

https://www.quora.com/How-many-lines-of-code-are-in-the-Linu...

Google's back-end cluster and services are frequently given as the most complex software existing.

The full LoC in Debian GNU/Linux has been estimated as 324 million as of 2009. This is the stable archive, which includes somewhere between about 30k to 70k individual software packages (I'd have to do some digging to see what the count was for the stable release as of 2009).

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/111281/exploding-am...

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#510

Post by duderific » Sat, Feb 10, 2018, 12:30 AM UTC

SkyPuncher wrote: post #301

Perhaps anecdotal, but my opinion is this basically comes down to two general types of workers: those who know what competitive salary rates are and those who don't or don't care. The first category knows exactly what they're worth and they'll push to get that worth. They know that if their current company won't pay that, they'll easily find another company that will. They end up switching jobs relatively frequently…

That's pretty reductionist. There are more factors that go into choosing a job than the salary. Commute time, work life balance, perks, liking the people you work with, quality of the work, etc. It's a balance between all these aspects and the salary.