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Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity (2009)

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Re: Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity (2009)

#21

Post by megaman22 »

frank_nitti wrote: post #14
sebleon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> brilliant one who is constantly going down rabbit holes unnecessarily Ha, sounds like an oxymoron

Maybe - I think the missing component is their level of "laziness" as Bill Gates defined it. A brilliant, but "lazy", coder will find the most efficient way to compose a solution that meets the requirements. But it's definitely not an oxymoron to say that some brilliant coders can go down rabbit holes at the expense of their own (and company's) time and productivity. They may spend lots of time reading white papers,…

I like to call it strategic laziness. Knowing what to do, and more importantly what not to do is key.

Re: Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity (2009)

#22

Post by PhasmaFelis »

> The most productive programmers are orders of magnitude more productive than average programmers. But salaries usually fall within a fairly small range in any company. Even across the entire profession, salaries don’t vary that much. If some programmers are 10x more productive than others, why aren’t they paid 10x as much?

Because the 10x Programmer is a pernicious myth.

Even if you believe the original study from the '60s, it found that the best programmers were 10 times better than than the worst programmers, and only 2-3x better than the average.

Re: Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity (2009)

#23

Post by analog31 »

qume wrote: post #5

FTA: "Programmers are most effective when they avoid writing code." I'll take an average coder who only codes what is needed over a brilliant one who is constantly going down rabbit holes unnecessarily.

In my view this highlights an issue, which is identifying the 10x programmers, versus the -10x programmers.

Re: Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity (2009)

#25

Post by analog31 »

kazinator wrote: post #20
sebleon wrote: post #11

I'm generally baffled when companies opt to hire a junior dev for ~$110k, when an additional 30% more income can get them someone 10x more productive.

Or they can get two competent testers. :)

I've told my boss: You can get two junior technicians for what you're paying me, if hours of "productivity" is what you're measuring.

Re: Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity (2009)

#26

Post by ropeadopepope »

frank_nitti wrote: post #14
sebleon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> brilliant one who is constantly going down rabbit holes unnecessarily Ha, sounds like an oxymoron

Maybe - I think the missing component is their level of "laziness" as Bill Gates defined it. A brilliant, but "lazy", coder will find the most efficient way to compose a solution that meets the requirements. But it's definitely not an oxymoron to say that some brilliant coders can go down rabbit holes at the expense of their own (and company's) time and productivity. They may spend lots of time reading white papers,…

This reminds me of the following by General Freiherr von Hammerstein-Equord:

> "I divide my officers into four classes as follows: The clever, the industrious, the lazy, and the stupid. Each officer always possesses two of these qualities.

> Those who are clever and industrious I appoint to the General Staff. Use can under certain circumstances be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy qualifies for the highest leadership posts. He has the requisite nerves and the mental clarity for difficult decisions. But whoever is stupid and industrious must be got rid of, for he is too dangerous."

Re: Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity (2009)

#27

Post by alain_gilbert »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #22

> The most productive programmers are orders of magnitude more productive than average programmers. But salaries usually fall within a fairly small range in any company. Even across the entire profession, salaries don’t vary that much. If some programmers are 10x more productive than others, why aren’t they paid 10x as much? Because the 10x Programmer is a pernicious myth. Even if you believe the original study from…

Am I the only one who believe that the "10x programmer" might actually be someone who is just as good as the others, but actually work constantly and is self sufficient ?

Re: Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity (2009)

#28

Post by firstplacelast »

shanghaiaway wrote: post #12

The code programmers write is worth $0 without the surrounding organization. The company makes the code valuable. Programmers are paid based on supply and demand. It's a completely different measure.

Everyone is paid based on supply/demand or rather how much leverage they have.

It would take a team of scientists and analysts to properly measure how much value each employee creates (and even then, probably wouldn’t be 100% accurate).

If you can’t even measure how much each employee’s contributions are “worth” to the final product, how the hell are you supposed to pay people based on those metrics?

The answer is, you don’t.

So if you want to get paid more, don’t worry about creating more value, worry about increasing your leverage. Form a union or guild, learn a skill very few people have, form close relationships with your customers, etc.

Re: Why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity (2009)

#30

Post by Waterluvian »

concrete-faucet wrote: post #16
m104 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll second that sentiment. The largest source of your tech debt may in fact be that brilliant one writing volumes of code destined to become the collective headache of future dev teams.

Only building what is needed is only part of avoiding writing code. I'd say that during the first half of my career, I was completely ignorant of just how powerful shell scripting was for increasing productivity and reducing the amount of code that I would need to write and then later have to maintain. One of the best pieces of advice you can give to a young developer is to learn about the tools already available on…

I absolutely love the Linux philosophy. Piping outputs means programs are functions. So I can combine programs to get what I want. The only gripe I have is that bash is a pretty hard language to read and write.
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