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Want good programmers? Then pay them.

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Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#461

Post by bmelton »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #285
skerrit_bwoy wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WHY DO PROGRAMMERS THINK LIKE THIS? A radiologist makes $350k whether he's in Manhattan or Memphis. A hedge fund analyst makes comparable, whether he's in LA or Louisville. A BIGLAWyer makes comparable, whether he's in Chicago or Charlestown. They are paid for the value of services rendered, and the doctors, bankers, and lawyers I know seem perfectly content to maximize their income while minimizing their expenses. O…

Most of the software companies in Memphis are probably selling to relatively local customers, thus tying their income to the local markets. The software companies selling to everyone everywhere are in the big tech hubs.

You're probably not terribly wrong there if you're specifically speaking about software companies, but the largest employers in the area are multi-nationals.

FedEx is headquartered in Memphis, as is International Paper, AutoZone, etc.

Of course, they aren't exactly software companies.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#462

Post by Retric »

enjo wrote: post #445
Retric wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a 31 year old programmer working 40 hour weeks in the US. I get 21 days PTO + 2 floating holidays + 7 Government holidays + 5 days training days + 3 months sick leave at full pay + unlimited sick leave at 60% pay (long term disability). I also pay 2k/month in rent for a small, but nice apartment in the DC area. Ignoring sick-leave and training that works out to 30 days / year off, they don't let you cash it out…

Where is this?:)

http://www.boozallen.com/ they start you at 16 or 17 days PTO after 5 years it's bumped to 21, but all the other benefits stay the same.

PS: I know plenty of people who work insane hours there. But, it's not 'required' just useful for promotions etc.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#463

Post by stusmith1977 »

rmc wrote: post #180
dr_ wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doctors don't have infinite sick days, many don't have 30 vacation days (I barely take a week off a year), and most don't have 40 hr work weeks.

Yeah no-where on earth are there 30 holiday days per year and 40 hour maximum. No-one works that. Except several EU countries which have that as the legal minimum… (e.g. France: 35 hr legal working week, 25 days holidays and ~ 13 paid public holidays per year)

UK here: 35 hr week (which I generally stick to), 28 days holiday (rising to 30 in a couple of years, plus I usually buy 5 extra, plus public holidays).

What's interesting is I work for a large multi-national (listed on NYSE and TSX) - local expectations override the rest of their US-centric culture.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#464

Post by geebee »

potatolicious wrote: post #421
fleitz wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I try to raise this point every time someone says WLMT exploits their employees. Wal-Mart extracts about $6000 per employee in profit, this is about half the national average, and when you get to companies like GOOG, MSFT, APPL you're looking at an average of $200,000-$300,000. Who exactly is being exploited with numbers like these? And why are we 'entitled' for demanding a fair share of the value we add to the moder…

Woah, what. I was completely on the side that expecting reasonable hours and time off is not "entitlement", but yours strikes me as the exact attitude OP is railing against. The exploitation people complain about re: Wal-Mart cannot be measured in profit-per-employee, because that's not how exploitation is commonly understood (though you are, of course, free to define that term however you see fit). People complain a…

"a big house in a good school zone"

A low end "six figure salary" in the bay area probably isn't enough to buy a big house in a good school zone. Two workers who earn this salary would have access to that kind of real estate though.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#465

Post by skerrit_bwoy »

potatolicious wrote: post #432
skerrit_bwoy wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any of the medical careers, from nursing to MD to podiatrist to dentist. T14 law school and BIGLAW. MBB consulting drone and then BigCo Apparatchik. Buy-side finance, like equity research, portfolio manager, private equity, etc. Commissioned officer in the US military. CPA Accountant. Patent attorney.

I can't speak for some of the items on that list, but I call BS on the medical jobs. I know some doctors and dentists, and let me tell ya, the only thing they've got on engineers is the pay (and even then, sometimes not). They've got an order of magnitude more stress, worse hours, and way more required commitment than even the worst coding job I've ever had.

lol when you get laid off at 50 and they continue to pull $200k we'll see who's got more stress

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#466

Post by arien »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #451
soup10 wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Jobs was a sucker because his values were different than yours? Really?

No. But he probably was a sucker for imagining that everyone was (or should be) as passionate as he was. That's a very common flaw among passionate bosses: they forget that many employees don't enjoy their jobs as much as they do.

One reason they may not enjoy as much is because being a simple employee following orders it's often not as exciting as being the boss and calling the shots.

I mean, both can be very exciting, but I'm sure they're at very different levels.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#467

Post by iangm »

ricardobeat wrote: post #442
rmc wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah no-where on earth are there 30 holiday days per year and 40 hour maximum. No-one works that. Except several EU countries which have that as the legal minimum… (e.g. France: 35 hr legal working week, 25 days holidays and ~ 13 paid public holidays per year)

Brazil: 44h, 30 days PTO, ~12 public holidays, 13th salary (yeah...). If you're not working as a contractor, that is, which is way too common in the IT field.

It's not really 30 days PTO, isn't it? It's "30 consecutive days", which might even include holidays/weekends. And you don't have much flexibility on taking them. Also, it's not uncommon to have 40h agreements.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#468

Post by khuey »

DominikR wrote: post #440
khuey wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No paid leave.

Do less fortunate women with a new born child receive some kind of support from the state in the US, in case the father or family doesn't support them?

There are various programs to help with different things. Examples are Medicaid [1] for health care, Nutritional Assistance for food [2], and pre-Kindergarten education [3]. How effective these are I'm not sure, I don't have any first-hand experience with them.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicaid [2] http://www.fns.usda.gov/wic/ [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_Start_Program

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#469

Post by roel_v »

rickmb wrote: post #367
cletus wrote: post #264

The comparison to equity being getting paid in lottery tickets is apt (IMHO). Nevertheless there has never been a short of pioneering spirits willing to risk it all to strike it rich (just look at the gold rushes in the Dakotas, California and elsewhere). This is really the modern day equivalent. There was a thread here last year where people talked about their exits. A common story was "worked my ass off for X years…

Enjoy the Kool-Aid. And the burn-out. No more than 40 hours per week and 30 days paid vacation is not "entitlement", it's common sense . It helps to keep people healthy, happy and productive . QED. Sure, it's doable, and sometimes even necessary (but not even half as much as people like to think) if you're doing a start-up, but as a steady job, it's neither in the employee's nor in the employer's interest.

"QED"

I do not think it means what you think it means.

Also, please show that 40 h/w and 30 days vacation are the optimum to keep people healthy, happy, productive and employed. If you're just making stuff up, fine, but at least acknowledge it.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#470

Post by pmjordan »

jakobe wrote: post #417
pmjordan wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I specifically asked at both the SVA and the Finanzamt and they both told me it wasn't possible. Well, too late for me, unfortunately, I got screwed in 2010 and I'm about to shut down my business in Austria anyway.

I think the trick is to just pay the SVA the extra money without asking questions and then hope that the Finanzamt accepts it. But I'm not a specialist and I haven't tried it yet; but I will try it this year.

Strange procedure, but I wouldn't be surprised if your accountant knew more about this than the bureaucrats at the Finanzamt or the SVA. In my experience, the former are friendly but useless and the latter are hostile, inefficient and useless. In any case, good luck with it!
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