Why do business analysts and PMs get higher salaries than programmers? • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by Hominem » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 1:16 AM UTC

dwc wrote: post #62

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.

At a job some years ago I got SMS messages from system monitoring almost continuously, around the clock. Most were spurious "this is an indicator that something might possibly go wrong" status messages, and I worked hard to smarten up the monitoring. Once I was only getting messages when something actually was going wrong , I worked hard to make the system more reliable so that I could get a good night's sleep. The m…

Most of them were due to an outage we had on a "legacy application" due to some sort of screwups with the VMs it was running on. This caused reps to hammer me with questions about our SLAs. Of course I had no answer.

Many more emails were from offshore devs from a project I'm not normally involved with who didn't understand our specs.

There were also a smattering of issues with reps getting calls that our app was down. Ask a few questions and it turns out the person is using it on a train in a tunnel in the middle of iowa type of situation. It's a web app.

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

#122

Post by noonespecial » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 1:38 AM UTC

mgkimsal wrote: post #100

lmkg wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

They have failed though, because someone couldn't get security right.

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

#123

Post by kgen » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 2:06 AM UTC

Well, who should get paid more, the getaway driver, or the guy who orchestrated the bank robbery?

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

#124

Post by bricestacey » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 2:14 AM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #63

jshen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you describe is a dysfunctional organization, not a justification for PMs.

I think that is the right answer - a dysfunctional organisation is the justification for PMs and BAs if the film crew \ theory x idea is right then an org aisation that is becoming dysfunctional hires more PMs I suspect that they are symptom initially and then cause.

I disagree. A PM is an excellent communicator between engineers and the rest of the organization. It's not a matter of dysfunction, but a way of filtering what is important and what isn't.

I've been in both situations where a) I am in direct contact with the rest of the organization and b) where an intermediary is. I prefer B and that is what a PM is for.

Some large organizations may be able to eliminate the middle man, but I wager they've dug a ditch so deep they can't tell the difference.

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

#125

Post by yashchandra » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 2:15 AM UTC

nodemaker wrote: post #109

yashchandra wrote: post #49

after almost 50 comments, I say let the developers, BAs,PM, QAs all win. After all, we all want to get the project out of the door, make some money on the way and go home.

>After all, we all want to get the project out of the door, make some money on the way and go home. This is Hacker News, not Project Manager Forums. I am sure most of us just want to create awesome things and not "go home"!

You took it literally when i said "go home". Fine I will refine it for you. Go home as in go build the next product.

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

#126

Post by heretohelp » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 2:24 AM UTC

flatline3 wrote: post #90

lmkg wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

commensurate

To commiserate is to share in someone's kvetching.

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

#127

Post by wtvanhest » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 2:27 AM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #116

lmkg wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Asking a room of programmers about the value of business analysts is going to result in feedback that is heavily biased. We need not rely upon opinions here, we can be objective instead. Let's ask how many business analysts without programming skills have made working software. Similarly, let's ask the same of the managers. And finally, let's ask programmers without any managerial or business skills how many pieces o…

That's because programming is necessary to write software, whereas management and business analysis is only "nice to have".

That is an interesting philosophy, but it has never been true in real life. Every major corporation in the world has added business analysts and PMs. Even the great technology companies you mention have many, many business analysts.

I love finding exceptions to rules, but I can't find an exception to the rule that if you want to accomplish truly great things with your company, you will eventually add business analysts and PMs.

Small companies will realize that the value of having a marketing professional over a "growth hacker" is when the marketing professional can call a major company and negotiate an ad deal due to their experience doing so. Or when a finance professional can help hammer out terms of a new round of debt financing that allow the company to grow without giving up equity etc.

As a business professional, I understand that hackers have value, but I also understand that even HR people have value. Just because I don't know all the value they have, does not mean it doesn't exist.

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

#128

Post by demian » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 2:28 AM UTC

photon137 wrote: post #95

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'll counter that - even not-so smart programmers with enormous egos would be able to ship something clunky, partly broken, not feature-perfect etc. (case in point: Linux - do you think they required full-time BAs to manage this very nicely working, feature-rich product? They did the BA/PM work themselves with Linus and others as anchors). A team of super-smart skilled BA/PMs will produce zero, zilch, nada if there a…

You are being kind of vague in your definition of "BA/PMs".

Developing a business model is very different from doing customer support, planing and managing programming, and doing business inteligence/marketing.

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

#129

Post by demian » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 2:30 AM UTC

photon137 wrote: post #73

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…

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…

Which is worse, builing something nobody will use or not building anything at all?

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

#130

Post by demian » Thu, Jun 21, 2012, 2:37 AM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #116

lmkg wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Asking a room of programmers about the value of business analysts is going to result in feedback that is heavily biased. We need not rely upon opinions here, we can be objective instead. Let's ask how many business analysts without programming skills have made working software. Similarly, let's ask the same of the managers. And finally, let's ask programmers without any managerial or business skills how many pieces o…

But working software does not mean successful software. If it wasn't used, if it didn't helped people or solved a problem, how can it be considered successful?.

ALL of those products/projects you list did required managment and business skills to be successful.