It's more of a 180-degree rotated hockey stick.
All hockey sticks are.
Developer salary growth is an inverted hockey stick
21–30 of 43 posts
Re: Developer salary growth is an inverted hockey stick
#22Re: Developer salary growth is an inverted hockey stick
#23In economics the reverse hockey stick growth is known as diminishing marginal returns. This simply means the market values the earliest years of experience as much more beneficial to a developers skill than the later. While I understand the idea behind hiring young and inexperienced, it should be noted that the wage rates are there for a reason. The training costs/possible managerial time may be greater for the avera…
You're right about training costs for college graduates. Another thing to consider which isn't directly mentioned in the post is training across a (programming) language difference. If someone is a C# developer and wants to join a company that uses Ruby or Scala, they might be willing to take a pay cut to get experience with new technologies.
Re: Developer salary growth is an inverted hockey stick
#24There is an interesting subtext in this article, which is to suggest that you take more risks as you get closer to the asymptote of salary growth, because it's the way to avoid diminishing returns for the additional skills you've learned between hitting the level of "experienced" and now.
It's the opposite advice that makes up common wisdom, which is to take risks when you are young, inexperienced and without responsibilities, and then settle into the comfortable long-term job with small raises once you get past that phase. I'm not surprised by this; if technical skills compound at all, it would seem that a developer's value would trend exponential and not logarithmic. That is, so long as they don't weary and stagnate.
But then, there is also value for the inexperienced in a startup, in that you'll learn a ton, and be given a lot of responsibility and autonomy. It might be that common wisdom is only half-broken.
Granted, there are opportunity costs involved. You might be in a position where you have to trade capitalistic striving for a paycheck, as a ribbonfarm article posted here a while back put it. It's as much being aware of those opportunity costs, though, as it is knowing whether or not you are in a position to need to accept them.
Re: Developer salary growth is an inverted hockey stick
#25Anyone have a sense of how true this is at big places like Google and Microsoft?
Re: Developer salary growth is an inverted hockey stick
#26This has created a pretty serious issue at my current job. My experience is increasing in value faster than policy lets my salary appreciate.
Policy is forcing me to find a job elsewhere. I cannot rationalize continually taking a relative pay cut to stay where I am.
Re: Developer salary growth is an inverted hockey stick
#27A labeled y axis or error bars would be nice...just to dispel that vague link-spammy feeling.
The y axis doesn't have specific units because they vary so much by location. I tried to mention a few specific data points below the graph to provide a bit more context. Good point about the error bars. I'll try to include them in an update to the post.
any chance you'd release the raw data? my email is in my profile, i'd be happy to share the results.
Re: Developer salary growth is an inverted hockey stick
#28This got blocked by the proxy server at work. Can anyone summarize (if a summary is even needed beyond the title)?
I think they're telling you to find a new place to work.
Speculation: maybe the proxy server blocked it because the domain name includes the word "hire", and the company is trying to keep people from finding a new place to work.
Re: Developer salary growth is an inverted hockey stick
#29This is true in most industries. You either move on to a management position or stagnate. The problem is it doesn't really work in the development world where you can get better and better the more deeply you use and understand the technology. Plus it has the side effect of pushing highly technical people with no management skills out of jobs they're good at and into jobs they can't do well (imagine Woz trying to be…
>That's why many big tech companies have moved to a "level" system
Although you have to do it right. Netscape had such a system, with levels ranging from T1 to T7. I started at T4. Two years later, I was doing work that, according to the written definitions, should have put me into T5. I asked my manager if I could get promoted; he bumped it up to his director. About four months later, the director answered me: yes, I did meet the written definition, but, no, I couldn't have a promotion, because they didn't actually use the written definitions. They were guidelines, but the real standard for promoting to level N was comparing the person to other people who were already at level N...and there were no T5s in the company.
Basically, it was a firebreak, which provided the appearance of a career path, without providing the reality. (I expect this wasn't on purpose, but that was the effect.) Three months later, I moved to another company, hired as what Netscape would've called a T7.
Re: Developer salary growth is an inverted hockey stick
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think they're telling you to find a new place to work.
Speculation: maybe the proxy server blocked it because the domain name includes the word "hire", and the company is trying to keep people from finding a new place to work.
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