When I'm in the mood to wear my extra cynical hat I quite like the developers who think good business analysts and project managers don't add significant value.
Gives me a heck of a competitive advantage :-)
Why do business analysts and PMs get higher salaries than programmers?
161–170 of 178 posts
Re: Why do business analysts and PMs get higher salaries than programmers?
#162There's a reason why we all aspire to be Rock Stars in our respective crafts and why the entrepreneur in us wants to hire the Rock Star. Give me a business analyst who knows his marketplace inside and out. Who can break down the value proposition our business offers to 25 different demographics the same way John Madden breaks down a cover-two defense. Who can see where the market is going before the market knows its…
Your view of business roles is flawed. The programmer has to do those things but also know the marketplace better than the business analyst. the programmer has to guide the less capable and new programmers on the team. The BA can't. The programmer has to set up the Continuous integration server, issue tracking system, source control repository, and use all of these things that the PM is reading about with amazement.…
I think you're giving "programmers" too much credit or "project managers" not enough.
I'm the product guy at a small-ish company and my main dev-side pet projects are deployment/CI and development workflow, and I've implemented 95% of the solutions for these as well as architecting our overall system.
Some would just say I'm a programmer then, but I think what padobson was getting at is that good people in any of these roles get their hands dirty in optimizing their area of concern, even if that overlaps in other areas.
Re: Why do business analysts and PMs get higher salaries than programmers?
#163It's simple, really. The core of society is composed of... You guessed it! Social shit!
So why do lawyers, politicians, lawmakers and managers get the most money even though they do nothing useful? Because we do not reward what we do not understand. Engineering, the sciences and the arts are esoteric enough that only a small collection of people 'get' them. Arguing a criminal case, promising to fix society for the billionth time, drawing up a law or telling people that they should do what you say because everyone says that you're the person to listen to is something that everybody can understand. Every person on this planet understands that a new law will affect them just as they appreciate that the country going in a different direction will do the same. In comparison, few people know what goes into making the world tick and how much of their lives are supported by IT infrastructure.
Ofcourse, everybody can understand cleaning, cooking and chopping wood too, so why do those professions pay so badly? This is where supply and demand come in - one needs higher education to perform bureaucratic functions; this is not so for cleaning and cooking. Since getting that education costs money, motivation and time, most people cannot afford it, hence it is in comparatively low supply and therefore more expensive.
In other words, it's a combination of how easy it is to understand and relate to the profession coupled with the barrier to entry.
In my not-so-humble opinion, the fact that we live in a society which values talking over walking is completely and utterly idiotic. We've all been had and we're having ourselves for doing so little about it. However, I feel no resentment towards people in these professions - the game is broken, the players are only doing what they can. The best we can do to fix this situation is to educate ourselves and each other. When the older generation dies out, the ideas in our heads will become the status quo.
Re: Why do business analysts and PMs get higher salaries than programmers?
#164I can always tell I'm in a room full of programmers when they say "coding" is the most important part of making software. Oh really? That's a bit like saying the person laying asphalt on the road is the most important part of making the road. Oh, hey, what about the Engineers who designed the roading material? The Planners who decided where the road should go. The Project Manager who actually gets people to do things, and stops management from changing their mind about where the road should go, and when it should be created.
Nope, just the guy physically laying the road.
I had a big debate with a programmer about why Business Analysts, Project Managers, and even Enterprise Architects get paid more than programmers. Programmers create something from nothing. Without them, there would be no software. And that's indeed correct. But has the problem of getting software working in large enterprise environments been down to a lack of technology?
Generally not. It's more down to those human factors like what are the requirements, who is the stakeholder, who has responsibility for this project, who's got the budget, what are we doing, when is this ready, why did we build this when we could have bought that, all of these soft skills, they're the reasons why software projects fail. Not the software (generally, don't find an edge case and be all Aha!).
That's why I'm working on becoming an Enterprise Architect. I can barely code, and I'm OK with that. Because I do know about the structure of the business, the canonical data model with an organisation, the high level enterprise applications that support that information, and the infrastructure that support the applications. Sure I'm not an expert in any one of those areas, but being knowledgeable combined with being able to talk to the CIO and the CEO with them understanding what I'm saying, that's a rare skill indeed.
Re: Why do business analysts and PMs get higher salaries than programmers?
#165In my opinion, it's because, outside a few rare companies, programmers are generally viewed as mental laborers: the digital, modern equivalent of blue collar workers.
Some comments above seem to rationalize this by saying that software development is viewed as a cost center. Perhaps that's part of it. But, there are many types of cost centers but which aren't viewed like programming.
Re: Why do business analysts and PMs get higher salaries than programmers?
#166Programmer for Citigroup here, Computer Science and Financial Engineering major-
At citigroup, entry level programmers are paid just as much as entry level business analysts. In a large company, no one needs "great" programmers. They really jsut need capable programmers to get everything executed correctly in such thick beurocracy. The reality is that good MANAGERS are much harder to come by, so whenever anyone, business side or technical side, proves to be a good manager, they move up and get paid more. So it's not that the programmers are paid less, it's that they don't really look like programmers once the company wants then to manage programmers, which is much much more valuable.
Bottom line, being a "good programmer" won't get you paid more. Anywhere. Not even at google. Showing that you can make a company productive and be a good manager will always get you paid more, because those are fewer and far between.
Re: Why do business analysts and PMs get higher salaries than programmers?
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not self-bullshitting. In many smaller companies the programmers already have to play the roles of the BAs/PMs. Can you say the opposite for BAs/PMs? These positions are introduced after an organization or project reaches a certain size. It's simple specialization, you don't want everybody to do everything. When this transition happens, some programmers might become BAs or PMs. Alas, what about the opposite? How…
You're talking about tech companies where the business is basically programming. In a company that builds cars or medical devices or a bank, a programmer is about as likely to become a BA as the other way round. As for project management, that's, well, a management position. Tends to have a better salary, prestige and career prospects than non-management positions. That fully explains why many people want to move int…
> In a company that builds cars or medical devices or a bank, a programmer is about as likely to become a BA as the other way round.
This makes no sense to me, what makes you think that?
Re: Why do business analysts and PMs get higher salaries than programmers?
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
But a freelance BA or PM cannot produce software independently, whereas a developer can. A developer has all of the skills of a developer, and many of the skills of a BA/PM, the reverse is not true.
Re: Why do business analysts and PMs get higher salaries than programmers?
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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.
But a freelance BA or PM cannot produce software independently, whereas a developer can. A developer has all of the skills of a developer, and many of the skills of a BA/PM, the reverse is not true.
A developer can definitely produce software independently. I do that as well. But the question is about selling that software to the business users. This is where a good BA/PM comes in again. I have said before that in small setup such as startups etc which produce software as their core business, a developer can possibly wear all hats. But in large corporate settings, developers do not want to go through the pain of people management, bureaucracy, follow ups etc.
Re: Why do business analysts and PMs get higher salaries than programmers?
#170Writing software != Selling software