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

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

#231

Post by rayiner »

dhugiaskmak wrote: post #229
rayiner wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, compensation in banking is very related to performance. Investment bankers get paid on the size of their deals, traders get paid based on how much they make, money managers get paid based on how much they bring in. The majority of people get pushed out within a few years if they aren't top performers. The key thing to realize is that value to the customer isn't part of the performance equation. It doesn't…

compensation in banking is very related to performance The last four or five are conclusive proof that this is not even remotely true.

Those bankers that helped caused the collapse were making money hand over first for their companies, and even with the reduced profitability during the recession the banks came out way ahead.

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

#233

Post by [deleted] »

noahc wrote: post #155
bjourne wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

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

#234

Post by shmerl »

> Give me a profession remotely close to programming in the following ways: Little or no required education...

> Programming is money for nothing.

This is not called programming. It's called monkey job. Programming requires education (i.e. being a knowledgeable professional in computing, software engineering and so on) and it's not money for nothing by any means.

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

#235

Post by CamperBob2 »

ghostoffuture wrote: post #225

Perhaps I can add my experience in this. I was very good at programming in college. I was one of those guys that left the labs under the hatefull gaze of the entire lab section having finished his assignment early. And boy I loved it too. I was so happy having finished a large programming project or a large engineering design assignment. After getting an interesting assignment I would literally skip on the way back h…

The consequences of bad legal work are uncertain and tend to be much delayed.

That's a really good point. Well over 50% of the "lines of code" in a typical complex business contract cover contingencies that ideally will not happen. That means they will likely never be "executed." That, in turn, allows the legal profession to be held to very different quality standards than an engineer or programmer.

As a freelance developer I often find myself reviewing contracts and consulting agreements prior to signing them, and I'm rarely impressed with either the original language of the documents I'm given by clients, or with the reviewing skills of the attorneys I engage to look them over. Yet it's inevitable that the attorneys who wrote (i.e., cut-and-pasted together) these agreements, and who review them on my behalf, will make more on an hourly basis than I will when I perform the work.

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

#236

Post by gruseom »

ghostoffuture wrote: post #225

Perhaps I can add my experience in this. I was very good at programming in college. I was one of those guys that left the labs under the hatefull gaze of the entire lab section having finished his assignment early. And boy I loved it too. I was so happy having finished a large programming project or a large engineering design assignment. After getting an interesting assignment I would literally skip on the way back h…

This sort of intelligent reflection on personal experience makes for valuable comments.

Particularly good: "You see this question of 'can you see yourself as a programmer when you are 50' does not have much to do with ageism or the labor market but about people's inner feelings and desires. Some people are horrified to see themselves as programmers when they are 50, not because of the market but because they secretly loathe it."

I hope you do get back into engineering, and write about it.

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

#237

Post by hpvic03 »

tmp458 wrote: post #230
fatbird wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all about the money. New graduates are cheaper. It's that simple. Technology and business are both over-populated with Randian/Libertarian douchebags for whom the quarterly bottom line is more important than good engineering or business as a sustainable entity in the larger social setting. Everything else is handwaving to hide this fact.

Besides advocating murder in some other comment, a quick scan of your post history reveals you mostly leave incendiary political remarks and don't really add anything useful, in my opinion, to a hacker discussion. In other words, fatbird is a troll account. __Could someone with administrative access take a look and ban fatbird's account?__ Regarding this post specifically: I'm not sure what kind of sensible forum let…

Calling people names is against the guidelines and the spirit of HN regardless of past comment history.

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

#238

Post by emmett »

jaxn wrote: post #228
nostrademons wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I haven't ever heard of any developers making ten times the average salary or even double the average." Programmers who are making that kind of money know enough to keep it quiet.

I have never met a programmer making 10x the average salary ($500k - $1mm depending) excluding liquidity events.

That says more about who you know than the real distribution of programmer salaries. It's not common, but those kinds of compensation scales definitely exist?

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

#239

Post by sesqu »

rayiner wrote: post #138
bjourne wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To be fair, compensation in banking is very related to performance. Investment bankers get paid on the size of their deals, traders get paid based on how much they make, money managers get paid based on how much they bring in. The majority of people get pushed out within a few years if they aren't top performers. The key thing to realize is that value to the customer isn't part of the performance equation. It doesn't…

There's a quote I can't quite place right now (maybe from a TED talk?), but a metrics-oriented guy went to one of these top salesman companies and calculated the inter-year correlation of performance bonuses. Most of the salesmen figured it would be low - it turned out to be almost exactly 0.

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

#240

Post by fatbird »

tmp458 wrote: post #230
fatbird wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all about the money. New graduates are cheaper. It's that simple. Technology and business are both over-populated with Randian/Libertarian douchebags for whom the quarterly bottom line is more important than good engineering or business as a sustainable entity in the larger social setting. Everything else is handwaving to hide this fact.

Besides advocating murder in some other comment, a quick scan of your post history reveals you mostly leave incendiary political remarks and don't really add anything useful, in my opinion, to a hacker discussion. In other words, fatbird is a troll account. __Could someone with administrative access take a look and ban fatbird's account?__ Regarding this post specifically: I'm not sure what kind of sensible forum let…

Says the guy with a username of 'tmp458' who has exactly one comment, above. How many accounts did you create to flag my comment?

I'm not a troll account. I haven't been terribly active. I do tend to read more than write. "Take a look and ban"? Why bother taking a look if banning is called for?

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