Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

yosefk.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 289 posts

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#151

Post by aantix »

bjourne wrote: post #136
padobson wrote: post #112

Money is about being good at something. I know of lawyers that barely scrape by on insurance law suits because all they know how to do is prey on the fear and pain of injured people. Such lawyers have to buy $500 suits and drive BMWs and belong to country clubs to stay presentable, and thus have to scrape by on 80-100k a year. Similarly, I know carpenters and plumbers who will get the job done - and make a lot more t…

Hogwash. For every skilled craftsman you can find, I can find ten other idiots making ten times as much money thanks to being born in the right family. Skilled developers recognize that rockstar developers can be ten times as productive as average ones. I haven't ever heard of any developers making ten times the average salary or even double the average. Stock brokers are regularly getting beaten by monkeys when it c…

Bjourne -

Notice the OP mentioned "promotion, estimation, and pricing" as part of being great.

Thomas Fuchs quotes clients at $800/hr ( http://script.aculo.us/thomas/ ). Thunderbolts labs is quoting $277/hr for their consulting rates ( http://thunderboltlabs.com/ ). And these are people that publicly advertise their rates. I know several other individuals at these levels that just don't publicly advertise.

Skills in this context includes (self)promotion; it's not enough to just code. No one (usually) comes knocking on your door after a great commit. But if you put yourself out there, stand by your work, talk to lots of people and show that you're a problem solver, by all means, you can triple even quadruple your income as a developer.

Honestly, it sounds like you're a good developer, so you're probably already half way there. Put up a site that outlines your major open source commits, your ability to cut through the BS and distill the problem to it's necessities. Tell the client that you ship on time.

Your world will open up with (financial) possibilities my friend.

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#152

Post by georgemcbay »

dpark wrote: post #114
Karunamon wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Do something you love" is a myth. As someone who is currently working his dream job, this statement couldn't be further from the truth.

A dream job is still a job . There are still parts that are tedious, and frustrating (if you're not encountering anything frustrating, you're not doing anything important), and annoying. That's why they pay you. And that's why "do what you love" is a myth. You can't always do what you love. Sometimes you have to do things you do not love, and just be happy that part of the time you get to do what you enjoy. Far too m…

Your argument is so weird to me. Not because I think you're wrong about every job having a bunch of tasks that are tedious and annoying, but because the same thing is true of every single thing we do in life. Jobs aren't unique in this manner, the same thing is true of any creative hobby, relationships, etc.

"Far too many people chase a "dream job" not understanding that every job will have parts they simply will not love."

I don't think that is true, I think most people realize any jobs just like anything at all in life, won't be 100% fun stuff. It is just such an obvious common sense thing that they don't bother talking about it.

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#153

Post by strengthftw »

veemjeem wrote: post #87
strengthftw wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you by chance read Cal Newport's blog? or have read his recent book "So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love"

nope, did he form the same opinion as mine?

yup

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#154

Post by ericb »

UK-AL wrote: post #13

Basic Economics states that with a low barrier to entry and large salary means it won't be for very long. Wish we would professionalise. In the UK now there are software dev jobs being advertised for minimum wage.

I think the barrier to entry to be "good" is fairly high, it just isn't artificial, like most barriers. There is no certification, money, or time barrier artificially constraining supply.

You need persistence, logical (not magical) thinking, willingness to learn a tremendous amount of material, and the ability to envision abstraction in order to become a programmer. These skills co-occur in only a limited portion of the population and of that, only a subset would be willing to live the programmer lifestyle (indoor, bad for extroverts, sedentary, not so high-status as being a Dr.)

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#155

Post by noahc »

bjourne wrote: post #136
padobson wrote: post #112

Money is about being good at something. I know of lawyers that barely scrape by on insurance law suits because all they know how to do is prey on the fear and pain of injured people. Such lawyers have to buy $500 suits and drive BMWs and belong to country clubs to stay presentable, and thus have to scrape by on 80-100k a year. Similarly, I know carpenters and plumbers who will get the job done - and make a lot more t…

Hogwash. For every skilled craftsman you can find, I can find ten other idiots making ten times as much money thanks to being born in the right family. Skilled developers recognize that rockstar developers can be ten times as productive as average ones. I haven't ever heard of any developers making ten times the average salary or even double the average. Stock brokers are regularly getting beaten by monkeys when it c…

It's pretty clear that top preformers don't look at averages. They look at what others have done and from there figure out how to get there in a reasonable time.

A developer who makes 10x a regular developer happens often, but what they are doing is taking on a lot of the risk that companies take on and knock your salary for. Your project is 2x over budget and 4x behind schedule? Oh, that's just Software projects in corporate IT. This has nothing to do with the developer actually being better of course, but the developer willing to assume the risk that results in 10x payouts.

Instead of complaining about Stock Brokers, it might be more effective to look at what they do (transactional work) and try to figure out how to place your self in a position so that you can take advantage of transactional work.

And a minor correction, it should read: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#156

Post by dpark »

georgemcbay wrote: post #152
dpark wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A dream job is still a job . There are still parts that are tedious, and frustrating (if you're not encountering anything frustrating, you're not doing anything important), and annoying. That's why they pay you. And that's why "do what you love" is a myth. You can't always do what you love. Sometimes you have to do things you do not love, and just be happy that part of the time you get to do what you enjoy. Far too m…

Your argument is so weird to me. Not because I think you're wrong about every job having a bunch of tasks that are tedious and annoying, but because the same thing is true of every single thing we do in life. Jobs aren't unique in this manner, the same thing is true of any creative hobby, relationships, etc. "Far too many people chase a "dream job" not understanding that every job will have parts they simply will not…

> I don't think that is true, I think most people realize any jobs just like anything at all in life, won't be 100% fun stuff. It is just such an obvious common sense thing that they don't bother talking about it.

I disagree. People who are happy with their jobs realize this. People who switch aimlessly between jobs and careers definitely do not seem to realize it. They get fed up with dealing with people, or a crappy co-worker, or whatever else they don't like about their current job and leave, assuming that somewhere is a job that doesn't have to deal shitty thing "X", not admitting that most jobs will have shitty thing "X", and the ones that don't will have shitty thing "Y" instead.

On top of this, we get sentiments like the one from calinet6, telling people that if they simply accept that they need to work for a living, then their lives must sad. "Oh, you work as a programmer for money; how sad for you." Yes, how sad that someone can make a good living in a good industry.

How sad instead that so many people look for their life's meaning at work and never find it.

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#157

Post by jackpirate »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #103

I think this is a bit cynical (and dangerous) but agree with the premise that currently the number of programming opportunities continues to exceed the number of programmers. However there are signs that this is changing. I do know a programmer who became an IP attorney (doing well at it too) and a couple of programmers who have gone off to do entirely different things (one is a guide in Africa, another drives a tugb…

another drives a tugboat around Puget Sound for fun and profit

This is one of the most underrated jobs around. Good pilots will make >200k working 4 days a week doing this.

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#158

Post by cpeterso »

johansch wrote: post #125
bzbarsky wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google sure has multi-billion dollar projects. Chrome is an example. They're spending that much just _marketing_ the thing every year. Even if we stick to just the development side, I would be very surprised if Google has not spent > 250 million a year on Chrome development over the last 4 years.

You think Google have had 1000+ people on Chrome for the past four years? The marketing bit is a bit special since they don't actually spend any money by showcasing Chrome on google.com. Edit: They do spend lots of money to get it pre-installed on new PCs, though.

1000 engineers? Probably not, but likely many hundreds plus all the organizational support people like designers, product marketers, product managers, people managers, and admins.

Consider Google's opportunity cost for advertising on the "internet's home page". I've read estimates of $2B.

For a while, Google was also paying Adobe to bundle Chrome with Flash (in addition to bundling Flash with Chrome).

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#159

Post by bzbarsky »

johansch wrote: post #125
bzbarsky wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google sure has multi-billion dollar projects. Chrome is an example. They're spending that much just _marketing_ the thing every year. Even if we stick to just the development side, I would be very surprised if Google has not spent > 250 million a year on Chrome development over the last 4 years.

You think Google have had 1000+ people on Chrome for the past four years? The marketing bit is a bit special since they don't actually spend any money by showcasing Chrome on google.com. Edit: They do spend lots of money to get it pre-installed on new PCs, though.

Even ignoring the google.com thing, estimates are they're spending at least $500 million a year on Chrome marketing for ads on other sites, various bundling deals (including pre-installs on new PCs and auto-installs with other software), etc.

As far as people on Chrome go, you're right that back in 2008 they likely did not have 1000+ people on it. The best data I can find for mid-2008 on the Internet says about 50 in mid-2008.

Looking for newer data, according to the last several updates on http://peter.sh/ at this point there are about 100 daily WebKit commits (not all by Google, obviously) and about 120 daily Chromium commits. That's not counting the parts of Chrome that aren't WebKit or Chromium. What fraction of the WebKit commits are from Google is an interesting question; as of early 2010 according to http://neugierig.org/software/chromium/notes/2010/02/webkit-... it was around 40-45% and growing rapidly.

Now going from "number of commits" to "number of engineers" is hard. For comparison, as of today according to http://oduinn.com/blog/2012/09/04/infrastructure-load-for-au... Mozilla has about 200 commits per day, but about half of those are to the automated testing repository, not to the main code. So that's about 100 commits per day. Mozilla right now has around 700 employees, I believe. So if you assume similar commit patterns (which is an assumption, granted), Google certainly has 1000+ people on Chrome now.

But I'm also not sure you need 1000+ people to hit $250 million/year in spending. In addition to Silicon Valley compensation packages, there's also a lot of test infrastructure and whatnot as part of every browser project which costs nontrivial amounts of money to create and maintain.

Again for comparison, since there's data available there, Mozilla spent about $63 million on "software development" in 2010 ($85 million if you include stuff like office space, HR, marketing, etc) according to http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/documents/mf-2010-audited-... and had about 200 engineers at the time, I believe... and Mozilla does not give out huge stock bonuses, like Google has done with Chrome.

Re: Do you really want to be making this much money when you're 50?

#160

Post by pyre »

hindsightbias wrote: post #80
pyre wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The demand (and hence average salary) in SF for > programmers would go way down Wouldn't this be detrimental to the SF area, considering as the high cost of living? I realize that cost of living will probably lower to meet what people can afford, but not without growing (or shrinking) pains, I imagine.

Detrimental for whom? The changes to the cost of living are primarily a function of the now thousands of google and apple commuters. Not that that is stopping them from complaining when they wonder why moving up to a 2BR costs $4k/month now.

The growing pains associated with pay not meeting (or barely meeting) the cost of living.
Post reply on HN