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Want good programmers? Then pay them.

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Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#71

Post by tezza »

pavlov wrote: post #31
pmjordan wrote: post #13

Some context/perspective on the Austrian employment situation: * Salaries are typically quoted per month, but there is a bonus of 2 months's salary paid per year, so yearly gross is 14 x monthly. The bonus is taxed at a lower marginal rate (6%, no social security contribution, IIRC, vs 37.5% lowest marginal rate). * There is no fixed minimum wage in Austria. Instead, there is a collective bargaining system, which set…

Salaries are typically quoted per month, but there is a bonus of 2 months's salary paid per year, so yearly gross is 14 x monthly. Interesting. During the recent Euro crisis, when journalists discovered that some workers and officials in Greece enjoy a similar "extended year" of extra salary months, there was wide uproar across Europe about how the corrupted Greeks are being overpaid in ridiculous ways. In the EU it'…

The Press wrongly just focus on one issue at a time. Other problems become side-notes or explicitly ignored.

Any solution to the current focus problem is paraded as a global solution.

But when the long ignored problems finally burst, the Press simply say 'the problem resurfaced' as if it had gone away somehow.

Relating to Austria, their banks were all wiped out lending to Hungary (more than 80% of loans to Hungary were Austrian)

There will be no mention of these zombie Austrian banks until one goes under. (Like Dexia)

---

from 2008:

http://www.economist.com/node/12564042?story_id=12564042

http://www.moneyweek.com/investments/stock-markets/the-plagu...

http://www.moneyweek.com/personal-finance/credit-default-swa...

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#72

Post by seclorum »

accountoftheday wrote: post #53
seclorum wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in Vienna and work for a local startup in the mobile application development scene .. and yeah. Pay-rates are definitely not what they should be, here in Austria. I think it has a lot to do with the "Kollektiv-vertrag" prices being set too low by the government itself ..

one way to think of it: with your average salary you are propping up all the people not as good as you who still get the same salary. if you cannot feel good about this you then move away from your socialist country. I did.

Its definitely a point. Unfortunately I moved to this country, and have gotten too involved in it to be able to move easily (house, wife, kids..) or else I'd definitely move to a country where programmers are paid more what they're worth, not what the socialists want.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#73

Post by dasil003 »

kamaal wrote: post #59

Well this looks like the story of nearly developer community no matter which part of the world you are in. Lets face it 'monthly salaries' suck. Programmers are a unique lot, Well last few weeks I've been pulled up for work on weekends. Almost 18 hour schedules a day. And what do I get in return? Not even a thank you. Its presumed to be a part of my job. Any other profession and unions would be up in arms about bonus…

You're pretty jaded. And believe me I've been through all of this as well. I've been underpaid and overworked for sure.

But put things in perspective. Being a skilled programmer is one of safest careers you could have in these days of cold economic downturn. Instead of worrying about being downsized, realize that even a company in the red can afford to hire you to automate processes which currently require paid employees. In other words, you have the ability generate direct ROI which is not the case for many employees these days.

I think a work to live mentality is good. There's no reason you can't be a great programmer working your 40 hours a week and then going home. There are plenty of companies that will appreciate what you bring to the table. You could also try a lifestyle business rather than joining the "startup lottery", though if you really see it as a lottery then you're devaluing the impact that individual decision-making plays, and you will never be an A-player with that attitude.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#74

Post by vetler »

Iv wrote: post #22
pavlov wrote: post #7

Wake up, people: Are you serious? You want highly specialized people with actual skills, and expect them to be OK with that comparable low payment? If the same person sits down and starts creating his own software, he will probably earn much more one year later by himself already. Probably not. Most programmers don't have any idea what software sells and how to sell it.

Actually since I am freelancing, I have doubled my revenue. There are interesting job offers, for projects I would love to be part of, as a lone freelancer cannot easily tackle big projects, but the pay is really to low compared to what I can earn independently.

Consulting in general is a money machine. Freelance consulting even more so, but I suppose it requires you to have the right network.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#75

Post by draven »

manuletroll wrote: post #56
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.

You might want to rephrase this as "In Paris".

Yep, I'm around €35k/year w/ 6y experience in the "province" (that's what we call the "non-Paris area" in France.)

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#76

Post by shiftpgdn »

marcusf wrote: post #21
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.

If you're willing to move, come to Sweden. Stockholm is screaming for IT talent, we're open to immigration and the pay for someone with a few years of developer experience is quite a bit beyond that.

Any tips for an American wanting to emigrate?

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#77

Post by mgkimsal »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #68
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.

$25k here, but that was a while back ;)

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#78

Post by adrianhoward »

dasil003 wrote: post #70
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.

Surely "let them have a higher problem solving role" == doing interesting work? :-)

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#79

Post by _pferreir_ »

LinXitoW wrote: post #34

German dev here. Here, you hear companies complain about qualified laborer scarcity("Fachkräftemangel") and the politicians eat it up. It's not true though; it's just that the companies have totally wrong ideas of what they can demand/offer. There are a lot of unpaid internships, entry-level pay with senior-level experience jobs and a lot of the companies file much more job offers than they actually need, just so the…

They're just telling your politicians that so that they put more money in training qualified workers and increase the supply. Then, qualified workers will be worth nothing.

Genius, hm?

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#80

Post by dasil003 »

sanxiyn wrote: post #50
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…

Re: basic skills. I think we have a big problem with schools. Why don't they teach how to test? Why don't they teach how to debug? Really, what are they teaching that is more important than these basic skills?

They do teach those things, but a classroom context can not replicate the reality of large-scale long-lived multi-developer projects. There's just not enough time in a college degree to give any realistic approximation of that, plus what does the academic world know about that? They're not qualified to put together that curriculum, and what's the point anyway since you can learn it in the trenches at any company out in the private sector.

Instead CS focuses on theory. The distillation of the most important theoretical foundations of the field is actually a pretty useful thing to get, because you won't find it anywhere else but in a University. You can Google all these things sure, but first you have to know what they are. Having the foundation of these things will be quite useful over the course of a career when best practices for testing, debugging and platforms themselves will change dramatically. A couple decades down the line, sure you won't remember the details of what you learned in this class or that, but sometimes just the tangential awareness of something such as the existence of dynamic programming algorithms will give you the hook needed to google around and find an efficient solution to something which an untrained programmer might never know how to find.

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