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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?

#81

Post by trobertson »

brazzy wrote: post #78
photon137 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with this. I am a quant working at a bank writing trading strategies in C++. I have a colleague in "Infrastructure" (they call it) who sits two desks away from me and he writes C++ code that loads my code and runs it on a massive grid, does load balancing, interfacing and all kinds of cool stuff. Yet he's in a "cost-center" and I'm in a revenue-center when, basically, without his work my code would be…

> Think about it, a programmer can very well exist without BAs/PMS etc but BAs/PMs can't exist without programmers. That's exactly the same kind of self-bullshitting your parent comment was arguing against. NONE of the parts of a business can really work effectively without the others. A bunch of super-smart skilled programmers with attitudes, no leaders and no clear requirements is going to produce a lot of efficien…

I realize this is an extreme case, but you should check out Valve's corporate structure. No one has a "title", everyone can move to whatever project that want to work on, and they still turn out excellent software.

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

#82

Post by mattmanser »

rubyrescue wrote: post #29
gm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. But neither coding horror nor joel give a sh*t about that: coding horror: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=4132668 - Basically says "If you're bitching about it, it's because it's working as intended" Joel: http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=4132020 - Says "Yeah, but look at the quality" I just want a filter for high-activity closed SE Q/A's, that way I can read highly engaging and interesting topics.

create "mystackrunnethover.com" (or mystackoverfloweth.com) and just post those questions... use OSQA to keep the same format?

There's already a http://programmers.stackexchange.com/ but personally I find its answers woefully lacking compared to similar ones that happened on SO.

There seems to be a certain type of person drawn to a site dedicated entirely to program architecture which means the input from more practical programmers (and their sanity votes) gets lost.

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

#83

Post by scotty79 »

brazzy wrote: post #78
photon137 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with this. I am a quant working at a bank writing trading strategies in C++. I have a colleague in "Infrastructure" (they call it) who sits two desks away from me and he writes C++ code that loads my code and runs it on a massive grid, does load balancing, interfacing and all kinds of cool stuff. Yet he's in a "cost-center" and I'm in a revenue-center when, basically, without his work my code would be…

> Think about it, a programmer can very well exist without BAs/PMS etc but BAs/PMs can't exist without programmers. That's exactly the same kind of self-bullshitting your parent comment was arguing against. NONE of the parts of a business can really work effectively without the others. A bunch of super-smart skilled programmers with attitudes, no leaders and no clear requirements is going to produce a lot of efficien…

BAs and PMs can't exist without programmer because they can't build while programmers can exist without BAs and PMs because they can as well as any human find out what is to be done. Seen any freelancing PMs or BA?

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

#84

Post by mprovost »

trobertson wrote: post #81
brazzy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Think about it, a programmer can very well exist without BAs/PMS etc but BAs/PMs can't exist without programmers. That's exactly the same kind of self-bullshitting your parent comment was arguing against. NONE of the parts of a business can really work effectively without the others. A bunch of super-smart skilled programmers with attitudes, no leaders and no clear requirements is going to produce a lot of efficien…

I realize this is an extreme case, but you should check out Valve's corporate structure. No one has a "title", everyone can move to whatever project that want to work on, and they still turn out excellent software.

...but not on schedule.

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

#85

Post by scotty79 »

Hominem wrote: post #8

My PM is on vacation this week and I've had to partially fill in. I have been getting frantic urgent emails from roughly 7 am till 1 am. If this is what the guy puts up with, he deserves a couple bucks.

On my friend's company that's the role of customer support. To extract what people want and pass it to the workers that can provide it.

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

#86

Post by scotty79 »

mprovost wrote: post #84
trobertson wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize this is an extreme case, but you should check out Valve's corporate structure. No one has a "title", everyone can move to whatever project that want to work on, and they still turn out excellent software.

...but not on schedule.

Nothing ever get's built on schedule or within budget.

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

#87

Post by yashchandra »

scotty79 wrote: post #83
brazzy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Think about it, a programmer can very well exist without BAs/PMS etc but BAs/PMs can't exist without programmers. That's exactly the same kind of self-bullshitting your parent comment was arguing against. NONE of the parts of a business can really work effectively without the others. A bunch of super-smart skilled programmers with attitudes, no leaders and no clear requirements is going to produce a lot of efficien…

BAs and PMs can't exist without programmer because they can't build while programmers can exist without BAs and PMs because they can as well as any human find out what is to be done. Seen any freelancing PMs or BA?

"Seen any freelancing PMs or BA?"

Seen many.If you understand business domains, have experience dealing with lines of business, managers, executives, you can freelance. Not everyone needs to (or should) write code.

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

#88

Post by andr3w321 »

tatsuke95 wrote: post #64
pumblechook wrote: post #14

The easy answer is: because that is what the market dictates. Programming may be difficult, but I'd be willing to bet there are a lot more programmers out there than people willing to be a PM (and stick with it).

Yep. And notice you got down voted for saying so. It happens to me every time. Programmers don't want to hear that in many industries (those that aren't pushing cutting edge tech) their skills are a commodity. It's just a fact, and globalization is making it worse.

This. Programming is skilled labor which is why they make more than the guys that work at McDonalds but there's still a ton of programmers out there. There's a lot fewer people out there that know what to create, when to create it and how to get the right team together to accomplish it than there are people who know how to program. For every Elon Musk how many aerospace engineers are there out there?

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

#90

Post by flatline3 »

lmkg wrote: post #45
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…

Programmers tend to think that programming is the most important part of making software. However, managers think that managing is the most important part of making software, and business analysts think that defining business requirements is the most important part of making software. Asking a room of programmers about the value of business analysts is going to result in feedback that is heavily biased. As you say, w…

> Programmers tend to think that programming is the most important part of making software. However, managers think that managing is the most important part of making software, and business analysts think that defining business requirements is the most important part of making software. Asking a room of programmers about the value of business analysts is going to result in feedback that is heavily biased. As you say, we've invented a narrative of moral superiority, and it's a seductive one.

This is all true. However, you forgot this additional piece:

Managers and business analysts generally sit higher in the organizational chart than programmers, and thus have an advantage when negotiating salaries, presenting the programmer's relative value to the rest of the organization, etc.

> The value PM's provide is enabling specialization of labor. They act as the interface between business stuff and tech stuff--translating business requirements to tech requirements for their programmers, and tech trade-offs into business trade-off for their stakeholders. It's something that programmers can do themselves (especially entrepreneurial ones), but taking that work off their plate lets them focus on technical matters.

However, many would argue that translating abstract business requirements into technical requirements is a technical matter.

That said, the notion that programmers always make less is not universally true, and many organizations are more sane about paying commiserate with value generated.

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