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Why business analysts and project managers get higher salaries than programmers?

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Re: Why business analysts and project managers get higher salaries than programmers?

#41

Post by sskates »

jasonkester wrote: post #5
lionhearted wrote: post #2

Because programmers don't ask for more money often enough. Seriously. Here's the three minute version of doing it: 1. Work hard on tangible stuff, document and claim credit for doing it, and notify people with what benefit the work provides . This sounds maybe stupidly obvious, but a lot of non-technical people don't understand the value in something. So, "Upgraded XYZ so our website loads faster, which is proven to…

I find that in practice, it's a lot easier to do steps 1 and 2, then simply take one of those offers to work someplace else. Your value as a developer increases so fast early in your career that you'll literally double your market rate during the course of your first job after college. There's simply no way that you can convey to a company that they need to pay you twice as much as they did when they hired you 3 year…

It's widely held that the best programmers are orders of magnitude better than the worst ones. [1] This also goes for you x years ago versus you now. Why this isn't reflected in pay everywhere is beyond me. While people exploit these inefficiencies (exhibit A:startups) I'm surprised that the market still allows things like this to exist. Perhaps it's because there isn't such a large disparity for the vast majority of other professions?

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html

Re: Why business analysts and project managers get higher salaries than programmers?

#42

Post by cal5k »

cao825 wrote: post #8

It really depends on how your departments runs. A lot of times the gathering of requirements for BAs is by far the hardest, most time consuming, most frustrating task on the project. They have to travel, deal with users / clients, play political games, etc. If the programmers are more of code monkeys in the organization: in that they get tech specs with pseudo code and just transition it to real code, then they do no…

Exactly. The answer offered here is surprisingly ignorant and one-dimensional. The reality is that there aren't two types of software development companies, there are a spectrum of them.

At our company, because we don't sell products, client interaction, requirements gathering, coaching, politicking, etc. are all extremely important functions. It's really, really hard to find people who get our industry and can do this well. Often because of this they command a high salary.

On the flip side, we pay our developers above-market rates, and again it depends on their skill level and interaction with our clients and even with each other. Scrum Masters will earn more than developers (in most cases, not all). Senior developers will earn good money too. An entry-level developer will earn about the same as an "analyst" or product manager.

Re: Why business analysts and project managers get higher salaries than programmers?

#43

Post by firemanx »

sarkozy wrote: post #30
yummyfajitas wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(a) corporations make massively disproproportionate wealth relative to employees... Depends on the corporation. Walmart only makes about $10,700/employee in profit, for example (about $6/hour if all employees work 35 hours). Since walmart typically pays $10-12/hour at minimum, employees are capturing about 2/3 of the value they create. http://www.advfn.com/p.php?pid=financials&symbol=NYSE:WM... Of course, the numbers…

That undermines my assumptions. Thanks for the link. I'm very surprised a company of Walmart's size has such low profit per-employee. I would have assumed some accounting tricks were responsible but maybe it's the nature of their business.

It's a retail business - they are inevitably tied to the price they get from the manufacturer, and compete extremely strongly with a million other places, big and small. That really limits the margins they can make. Some retail businesses can get slightly higher margins due to exclusivity or just general scarcity, but overall the vast majority of profit is probably due to either 1. Cost Savings or 2. Economies of Scale such that you can eek some additional padding out of your vendors (WalMart is notoriously aggressive with vendors).

Re: Why business analysts and project managers get higher salaries than programmers?

#44

Post by portman »

sudonim wrote: post #28
edw519 wrote: post #13

Not anywhere I've ever worked. Hmmm, makes me wonder about this meme... 1. Ask why a myth is true. 2. Discussion ensues. 3. The mythiness gets lost and is accepted as a given.

I second this. I'm the product person at a startup w/ 5 devs. I know for a fact that rails developers in NY generally command a higher salary than I am making. I can't speak about their equity situation. My responsibilities are to decide what we build and why. I'm also the shit umbrella for the developers, and end up having to speak with clients. Ultimately it's me who is held responsible for the success / failure of…

+1. At all of the companies I've worked (where I've been privy to compensation numbers), the PMs consistently earn less than the engineers.

From my experience - I'm basing this on approximately 80 positions at 4 different companies - PMs are paid $55k - $80k while engineers/developers are paid $75k - $140k.

Re: Why business analysts and project managers get higher salaries than programmers?

#45

Post by yummyfajitas »

_delirium wrote: post #34
sarkozy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That undermines my assumptions. Thanks for the link. I'm very surprised a company of Walmart's size has such low profit per-employee. I would have assumed some accounting tricks were responsible but maybe it's the nature of their business.

Walmart is the canonical example of a low-margin / high-volume business. Especially during their growth phase, every time they would find a way to reduce costs, they would funnel that savings into lower prices, rather than taking the savings in the form of a higher profit margin.

Very true, Walmart is a bit of a loaded example.

But I found data more useful to the tech industry. If MS or GOOG pays their employees $200k/year, then employees are capturing about half of the value they create [1]. Worse than Walmart, but not that bad.

http://royal.pingdom.com/2009/05/14/congratulations-google-s...

[1] This is actually a fallacy, since it assumes all returns are due to labor, not capital.

Re: Why business analysts and project managers get higher salaries than programmers?

#46

Post by jshen »

jasonkester wrote: post #5
lionhearted wrote: post #2

Because programmers don't ask for more money often enough. Seriously. Here's the three minute version of doing it: 1. Work hard on tangible stuff, document and claim credit for doing it, and notify people with what benefit the work provides . This sounds maybe stupidly obvious, but a lot of non-technical people don't understand the value in something. So, "Upgraded XYZ so our website loads faster, which is proven to…

I find that in practice, it's a lot easier to do steps 1 and 2, then simply take one of those offers to work someplace else. Your value as a developer increases so fast early in your career that you'll literally double your market rate during the course of your first job after college. There's simply no way that you can convey to a company that they need to pay you twice as much as they did when they hired you 3 year…

"There's simply no way that you can convey to a company that they need to pay you twice as much as they did when they hired you 3 years ago."

You can at smart small companies. My salary tripled in the 5 years I spent at my first programming job. I admittedly took a really small salary because I hadn't finished school and had no real world experience.

Re: Why business analysts and project managers get higher salaries than programmers?

#47

Post by umjames »

sskates wrote: post #41
jasonkester wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that in practice, it's a lot easier to do steps 1 and 2, then simply take one of those offers to work someplace else. Your value as a developer increases so fast early in your career that you'll literally double your market rate during the course of your first job after college. There's simply no way that you can convey to a company that they need to pay you twice as much as they did when they hired you 3 year…

It's widely held that the best programmers are orders of magnitude better than the worst ones. [1] This also goes for you x years ago versus you now. Why this isn't reflected in pay everywhere is beyond me. While people exploit these inefficiencies (exhibit A:startups) I'm surprised that the market still allows things like this to exist. Perhaps it's because there isn't such a large disparity for the vast majority of…

No, it's more likely the idea of "you don't get rich by writing checks" at work.

I think most programmers dislike the idea of what they see as kissing their boss's ass so much, that they'd rather start their own startup to get what they want (more interesting work, potentially higher pay, more amenable working conditions, etc). I can't say I blame them.

Re: Why business analysts and project managers get higher salaries than programmers?

#48

Post by Timothee »

There's a lot of assumptions in that question: 1. that programmers are paid less than business analysts and project managers, and 2. that "programming is much more difficult than creating documentation or even creating Gantt chart and asking progress to programmers".

I would like to see some real-life numbers about point #1, and #2 is clearly biased. How can you compare two things that have so little in common? For one thing, you can't reduce BA/PM to this, and regardless of if #1 is true or not, the salary is not just based on skills. If having a good PM means that the project will be delivered on time and that it makes a big difference for the company, they might deserve more than the people who made the product. If the insights from a business analyst means that the product is exactly what the market wants, they might deserve more too.

It's very easy to imagine two products that require the same technical abilities but one being very well-defined and on-target, while the other misses the mark. The programmer's work in both cases would be the same. The work done by BA/PM makes the difference. (in that particular imaginary example)

And, of course, it's very easy to imagine the same product requirements being a great success or a fantastic failure, depending on the dev team that implements them...

TL;DR it's not as simple as that. And check your assumptions first.

Re: Why business analysts and project managers get higher salaries than programmers?

#49

Post by misterbwong »

reposted from the other dupe

This is the best advice I got about this subject when I was a wee programming padawan:

Your skills are worth what you're getting paid. No more, no less.

As much as we'd like to say we create more value than other branches of the company, we don't. Value is determined by the buyer, not the creator. It's simple-much of the working world values the work of managers and analysts more than the work of the programmers. Therefore, they are paid more. Value is malleable so as you increase your perceived value, your pay will increase accordingly.

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