Developer salary growth is an inverted hockey stick • Hacker News Board

Re: Developer salary growth is an inverted hockey stick

#41

Post by Dylanlacey » Tue, Feb 22, 2011, 11:51 PM UTC

nathanh wrote: post #23

meterplech wrote: post #9

In 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.

That's an excellent point. Personally I've never considered that because I feel that experience 'programming' beats experience 'programming $language', at least for people who are above average.

Above average means giving a shit about being a developer, not just being in it for the employment.

Re: Developer salary growth is an inverted hockey stick

#42

Post by Dylanlacey » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 12:04 AM UTC

leelin wrote: post #32

azanar wrote: post #24

There 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 respons…

Not quite. I think this is conventional wisdom: If you take a risk and co-found your own startup with 0 years of experience, then even if you tank 2 years later, you are likely to wind up close to the 5 years of experience point of the hockey stick when applying for a job. Basically, the startup gives you a small chance of huge upside, and on the downside, you become a normal W-2 salaried employee but begin at a poin…

I certainly don't think that. If you're incompetent you can get lucky, have a moderately successful failure, and still know 4/5ths of fuckall. And you may then become that most dangerous of individuals, the ignorant 'expert'.

Re: Developer salary growth is an inverted hockey stick

#43

Post by daemin » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 4:46 AM UTC

Just thinking out loud here.

Could it be that after 5 or so years engineers are in long term relationships, perhaps kids, etc and thus are less inclined to rock the boat and ask for a significant raise.

Could it be that a lot of developers leave after about 5 years or so and go into other fields (management, startups, etc) so that the people left in the job for 10+ years are actually comfortable with just plodding along?

Then again I'm left thinking that it could be because there actually isn't much of a difference between a developer with 5 and one with 10 years of experience (in the general sense).

This is interesting to me, since I've just gone past the whole 5 years of experience thing, hit a limit with one company, and moved elsewhere for nearly 2x the money. Wondering what/where I should go next.