Want good programmers? Then pay them. • Hacker News Board

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#61

Post by throwaway1979 » Thu, May 03, 2012, 11:45 AM UTC

Wilya wrote: post #40

coenhyde wrote: post #24

Remember the USA has had 50 years of Silicon Valley. The rest of the world is playing catchup. While developers may understand the what creates a successful software product/company, the businesses adopting software development have no idea what they are doing. There isn't the 50 years of collective physique at play. They haven't seen software giants rise and fall. And they haven't been exposed to the inputs that cre…

To be honest, the US companies probably have also more money to throw at the problem than those of any other country. Everytime I see someone speak about the absurdly high salaries around Silicon Valley and saying that they are too low, I cringe a bit inside.

Why do you cringe? Do you know what the average price of a house is in MV/Palo Alto/Sunnyvale? Cheapest housing I could find that was decent (not fancy but descent by my personal definition) was just over 2K/month in rent. 6 figures in Silicon Valley isn't the same as it is in most parts of the world.

That said, what I find strange is that experience in software doesn't seem to be rewarded. I keep hearing about fresh grads getting offered nearly a 100K right out of school. How much does a veteran developer make? Almost the same as far as I know.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#62

Post by outworlder » Thu, May 03, 2012, 11:46 AM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #23

benjaminwootton wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even freelancing isn't straightforward. It's much more difficult to independently find a good stream of customers and well paying projects than it is to get a job or a contract.

How do you go about it, may I ask? I am close to exhausting my network and not seeing a breakthrough stream.

That's interesting. Ever since we started our company, we had to go looking for potential clients exactly zero times. We are always working on something or other. All from our existing network. My guess is that there was some repressed demand. Currently, the paycheck is lower than what we could get working with a reasonable company, but it's under our control and (potentially) unbounded.

Not sure if we'd have the same luck working by ourselves (there are three of us) instead of opening a business. My guess is that it brings extra credibility to the table, but I have no data to back it up.

It could be worth a try, if no other reason than to be able to ping your network again, now with the news that you've got a business. I realize that there are some extra costs, but keep it to the minimum. And, if you have little to no income at first, they are not likely to be that high.

Context: we are based in Brazil.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#63

Post by laurentb » Thu, May 03, 2012, 11:46 AM UTC

manuletroll wrote: post #11

I'd be very happy to make 2200€. I'm in France, and I'm paid barely above minimum wage. Granted, I don't have a very high level of college education, but even so, I made more when I had a job in a factory a few years ago. And the job market here doesn't seem to be that competitive, unfortunately.

It's gross, not net salary, in the end, it equals to a minimum wage salary =)

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#64

Post by mgkimsal » Thu, May 03, 2012, 11:46 AM UTC

smikhanov wrote: post #37

mgkimsal wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP didn't mention 'entry level' with respect to that post. The post was looking for someone with 5 years of experience in tech X. That's probably not 'entry level' anymore, no matter how you slice it.

From the original post: In Austria, an entry level programmer with high level university training will usually get offered 2200 Euro gross That's what I was referring to.

Sorry - missed that. I saw his reference to 5+ years.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#65

Post by mgkimsal » Thu, May 03, 2012, 11:50 AM UTC

frobozz wrote: post #39

mgkimsal wrote: post #6

most companies don't know how to value the contributions of software developers. i'm not actually sure they know how to value the contributions of most employees, period, except for salespeople. However as a dev, I'm biased some. I do think the potential for high value contributions, and the ability to avoid even costlier mistakes, is higher in the IT/dev dept vs other corporate departments. Several years ago I was o…

I'm not even sure they know how to value salespeople's contributions. Compensation in sales is often in the form of a lower salary combined with percentages of sales and/or bonuses for meeting targets. When a salesperson makes a sale, what percentage of that sale has the salesperson brought in? How much of the sale was actually generated by marketing, design and manufacture? Similarly, if they fail to make a sale, ho…

Good points. At the very least, there are some processes in place such that if you directly bring in more revenue to the company, you generally share in it as a salesperson. Usually not so as anyone else in a company, unless you've got profit sharing of some sort.

It's somewhat worse as a non-salesperson, in that, if you make a sale, you get a commission, and it's yours. The rest of the incoming money/profits go in to the company, but you as employee X generally have no say how the company operates. The profits that should be being funnelled in to XYZ, instead go to ABC, which everyone else can see is a dumb decision, but ... you can't influence it. The salesperson can't either, but they've gotten a direct benefit for their part already (higher/more commission).

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#66

Post by louischatriot » Thu, May 03, 2012, 11:52 AM UTC

MrKurtHaeusler wrote: post #60

migfromparis wrote: post #49

In France the situation is the same. Starting salaries go from 35k€ to 50k€ gross a year. No wonder a lot of students from college start as investment bankers or quant.

That's ok for a starting salary.

It is unfortunately not competitive with trading desks which ask for the same kind of skills. It is a vicious circle : software companies pay less, good programmers go to banks, software companies get bad programmers and so feel they don't have to pay well. It is a shame.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#67

Post by dasil003 » Thu, May 03, 2012, 11:52 AM UTC

marcusf wrote: post #19

frou_dh wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There may be a correlation, but it takes a lot more than good pay to foster an enjoyable company.

It's more of an indicator of negatives rather than positives; A company that pays comparatively shit (€2200/month comes out to about $35000, seriously!?) will probably not be a place that respects developers and attracts talent.

It's actually $40,000+ because they get paid 14 salaries. Given the other benefits of living in Europe, this is competitive with the US in general (not Silicon Valley) for entry level programmers.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#68

Post by MatthewPhillips » Thu, May 03, 2012, 11:54 AM UTC

mgkimsal wrote: post #6

most companies don't know how to value the contributions of software developers. i'm not actually sure they know how to value the contributions of most employees, period, except for salespeople. However as a dev, I'm biased some. I do think the potential for high value contributions, and the ability to avoid even costlier mistakes, is higher in the IT/dev dept vs other corporate departments. Several years ago I was o…

I would have killed to make 60k at my first dev job. I made 35k.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#69

Post by pjmlp » Thu, May 03, 2012, 11:55 AM UTC

Same thing in Germany and Portugal, too markets I know very well.

The sad thing is then watching the outsourcing taking place, and how the money "saved" in outsourcing, is then spent repairing the work from bad deliveries.

So development cost actually increases, but since now two cost centers are being used, the business costs look nicer on the spreadsheets.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#70

Post by dasil003 » Thu, May 03, 2012, 11:55 AM UTC

adrianhoward wrote: post #29

On occasion I have long complicated discussions with companies about how hard it to find developers. Assuming they're actually asking for a sane skill-set the problem is usually down to two factors: 1) Not paying enough 2) Not doing interesting work (with the very occasional 3 of "having a bloody awful reputation") The trick is, of course, finding a non-blunt way of getting this across :-)

I think companies can get away with both those things if they have a good engineering culture. That is to say, if they respect the engineers enough to let them have a higher problem solving role than simply implementing what some non-technical manager passes down.