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Why do business analysts and PMs get higher salaries than programmers?

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Re: Why do business analysts and PMs get higher salaries than programmers?

#51

Post by ojbyrne »

timsally wrote: post #10

The top rated comment on this question asserts that the reason why programmers have lower salaries is because they are logical, intelligent individuals who refuse to play the politics game and thus are hated by executives. Not only it this incorrect (have you seen the politics in certain open source software projects ?) but it plays into a narrative that programmers want to believe: business people are corrupt and pr…

Theory X (people only work hard when figuratively whipped) and Theory Y (people only work hard when treated like professionals) are real things in HR management. But they've largely been superseded by Theory Z (both Theory X and Theory Y have value, but a bit of both works best).

Re: Why do business analysts and PMs get higher salaries than programmers?

#52

Post by fragsworth »

tedunangst wrote: post #24
Karunamon wrote: post #3

Aside: Yet another useful and thought provoking question and set of answers on SE shut down "because it's not a good fit for the format".

Honestly, I don't think it is a useful or thought provoking question. As numerous people have pointed out, the entire premise is false. Intentionally or not, it's basically trolling for "programmers are great too!" type comments.

> Intentionally or not, it's basically trolling for "programmers are great too!" type comments.

Wow, this is not true at all. Just because you don't see the question as useful doesn't mean it isn't.

As an entrepreneur (and a programmer), I am genuinely curious about the situation. We don't pay our PMs as much as we pay our programmers. Does this mean we're doing something wrong? Did we decide this because of our technical bias and should we give our PMs more credit? Why do other companies do this?

Re: Why do business analysts and PMs get higher salaries than programmers?

#53

Post by throwaway1979 »

dpeck wrote: post #31
timsally wrote: post #10

The top rated comment on this question asserts that the reason why programmers have lower salaries is because they are logical, intelligent individuals who refuse to play the politics game and thus are hated by executives. Not only it this incorrect (have you seen the politics in certain open source software projects ?) but it plays into a narrative that programmers want to believe: business people are corrupt and pr…

"many programmers work in businesses where software is a cost center. If you want to make money as a programmer, you need to work at a company where software is a generator of profit and negotiate compensation aggressively after demonstrating your value." This is right on. Looking back to when I was finishing my degree an older friend of mine advised that if possibly you shouldn't work for a company who's primary inc…

Actually, being in the R&D group pretty much guarantees that you aren't in the income stream. You are in the futuristic stuff stream. If costs need to be cut, guess what impacts current revenues the least?

Re: Why do business analysts and PMs get higher salaries than programmers?

#54

Post by eitally »

sardonicbryan wrote: post #12

I'm a little surprised that the top answers on Stack Exchange accept the premise that analysts and PMs get paid higher salaries. That is certainly not the case at my company (mid sized tech startup), nor I would imagine at most other tech companies.

I'd argue that most programmers don't work at tech companies.

Re: Why do business analysts and PMs get higher salaries than programmers?

#55

Post by AjJi »

gouranga wrote: post #20
kevinh wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really as easy as you make it sound. Incorrect moderation will cripple a site and prevent people from contributing, but moderation is necessary to prevent the site from declining in quality. Without moderation, a site's quality will decline with its increased size. The default subreddits on reddit are a good example of what will happen without sufficient moderation.

I agree but both SE and Wikipedia suffer from moderators being picked based on karma. Karma is achievable easily despite any motives and personality traits which are bad. They should be picked by humans as they are a better and more objective judge of who is fit to moderating a site to the site's standards.

AFAIK, SE mods are not picked based on karma, you can nominate yourself to be mod, and users will vote according to many indicators, not karma only.

Elections: http://stackoverflow.com/election

Re: Why do business analysts and PMs get higher salaries than programmers?

#56

Post by dpcheng2003 »

This is a true statement for any industry with a highly skilled labor force, whether you write code, run excel models at a bank, or make jet engines.

From my observations/experiences, these three things are consistent (and it's mentioned throughout the thread):

1. Be closer to the money: There's a reason why sales people make more money than marketers. Look at Salesforce.com's operating statement and they spend >3x more money on sales and marketing than R&D.

2. Never be the best at making a widget or they'll have you make the widget forever: If you're the best at something highly technical, the management would be crazy to promote you to something more client facing or more managerial. There are some organizations that truly value technical skill on a meritocratic basis (think traders at a hedge fund or rockstar developers), but they are more rare.

3. If the boss/rest of the company doesn't know what you do, you won't be compensated for it: I wonder if the reason why Codacademy/Udacity is important is because it starts to teach non-technical people like me the value of good code. I have far more appreciation for my technical co-founder now that I've tried to code than I did before (and I thought I already had a lot).

In the end, my suggestion is to gain a broader set of skills that make you more marketable to your company or join a company that appreciates your ability.

Re: Why do business analysts and PMs get higher salaries than programmers?

#57

Post by Karunamon »

patrickyeon wrote: post #47
Karunamon wrote: post #3

Aside: Yet another useful and thought provoking question and set of answers on SE shut down "because it's not a good fit for the format".

That's fine by me. IMO, Reddit (as an example) was a great site, until it became popular and the subject material moved to the lowest common denominator. HN would be ruined too if/when you can get away with posts that do not stay within the topics/style that the community was built up from (I would figure that's why politics/sports are explicitly disallowed, and I am happy that such topics are kept off here) If progr…

Here's that same false dichotomy again that was in the last StackExchange thread.

Listen, it's not a choice between "Let the moderators run wild" and "let the userbase run wild". It never has been. Those are the two silly extremes in an entire spectrum of possible policy choices.

StackExchange sucks because the moderation is too heavy.

r/programming sucks because the moderation is too light.

HN is somewhere in the middle but trending towards SE (if the number of good comments which were hellbanned are any indication)

Re: Why do business analysts and PMs get higher salaries than programmers?

#58

Post by Karunamon »

AjJi wrote: post #13
Karunamon wrote: post #3

Aside: Yet another useful and thought provoking question and set of answers on SE shut down "because it's not a good fit for the format".

It was closed after 2 pages of answers and hundreds of votes - not so problematic IMHO.

If there was no problem, why close it at all?

Re: Why do business analysts and PMs get higher salaries than programmers?

#60

Post by dpeck »

throwaway1979 wrote: post #53
dpeck wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"many programmers work in businesses where software is a cost center. If you want to make money as a programmer, you need to work at a company where software is a generator of profit and negotiate compensation aggressively after demonstrating your value." This is right on. Looking back to when I was finishing my degree an older friend of mine advised that if possibly you shouldn't work for a company who's primary inc…

Actually, being in the R&D group pretty much guarantees that you aren't in the income stream. You are in the futuristic stuff stream. If costs need to be cut, guess what impacts current revenues the least?

I'll grant you that. If times get hard future revenue generation can often be sacrificed to make sure that the business can get through the "now" part. I think I'd likely look at that as a blessing, if things are going downhill for everyone at least you're lucky enough to know and get out early.

Also, I should mention that in my case the research generated is often used as an intelligence source for the current products. In the early days of my career my teams research resulted in a constant stream of snort rules, vulnerability discoveries, and bypass techniques that often made their way into the products/services of the company. Those 2-3 times a week updates being pushed down to client devices were a big part of the perceived value that the customers received.

Modern software and service driven models mean that there doesn't have to be much of a gap between research and deployment.

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