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Ask HN: Why do managers tend to make more money than engineers?

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Re: Ask HN: Why do managers tend to make more money than engineers?

#61

Post by jwinkle »

agotterer wrote: post #29

I'm surprised at how passive aggressive some of these answers sound. I imagine many of you have worked some poor managers who weren't very good at their job. That will make you question why they deserve to get paid so much. For the record, as a manager I've had staff members make as much as I have. I believe a (good) manager gets paid a lot because they make their team more productive, focused, and happy. a good mana…

Why do you assume the manager is a woman? I've actually never seen a woman manager. If you're afraid of gender bias, why not petition the cosmetology industry to fix the female-centric gender bias? Men are under-represented in nail salons too..

Re: Ask HN: Why do managers tend to make more money than engineers?

#62

Post by jogjayr »

jwinkle wrote: post #61
agotterer wrote: post #29

I'm surprised at how passive aggressive some of these answers sound. I imagine many of you have worked some poor managers who weren't very good at their job. That will make you question why they deserve to get paid so much. For the record, as a manager I've had staff members make as much as I have. I believe a (good) manager gets paid a lot because they make their team more productive, focused, and happy. a good mana…

Why do you assume the manager is a woman? I've actually never seen a woman manager. If you're afraid of gender bias, why not petition the cosmetology industry to fix the female-centric gender bias? Men are under-represented in nail salons too..

Jeez. A long, fairly detailed comment like that, and all you had to say was criticize the choice of gender pronoun? There's no pleasing some people. :-)

Re: Ask HN: Why do managers tend to make more money than engineers?

#63

Post by hawkice »

It turns out we can get numbers for how valuable managers are, and indeed, it is more value than the lower level employees, by a factor of about 1.75. In turns out that the difference in increased productivity is roughly in line with the difference in pay.

http://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu/lazear/personal/PDFs/Bosses....

Re: Ask HN: Why do managers tend to make more money than engineers?

#64

Post by brg »

In my experience in major tech companies, at the same levels of experience there is very little disparity between management and engineering salary.

This leads me to believe that this perception is the result of management being more tenured than the population of engineers. This same reason middle aged people make more than those out of school, and that the vast majority of wealth is held by seniors.

Re: Ask HN: Why do managers tend to make more money than engineers?

#65

Post by jazzyk »

UK-AL wrote: post #16

Managers are promoted to managers because the higher ups like them, and want to include them in their circle. They have the right face, fit in, agree on similar things etc. They earn more money for the same reason. If your are not the sort person, who can surpress your own values to fit in with the right crowd. Its best to just regularly reneogiate your salary. Humans are humans after all. We run on emotions/friendsh…

It is very nice to be a developer when everything's going well. Absolute hell when it isn't.

Re: Ask HN: Why do managers tend to make more money than engineers?

#66

Post by codeonfire »

ryandrake wrote: post #35

Not sure that engineering managers even really make that much more than engineers, at least not at medium or large tech-focused companies. Salary ranges at this level tend to have a pretty large overlap. I've been places where the engineer salary range extended past the manager range. On average, I'd guess managers maybe make 10-20% more. But that's nothing compared to the 10X-100X more that the senior execs and CxOs…

Where I worked salaries were the same, but everyone above line manager generally got a 100% bonus. So while engineers might get $25k in stock, a line manager would get $150k, director $300k, and VP could get over a million for successful projects, CX0's 5-10 million. This makes perfect sense when you consider that management is setting salaries and bonuses. Of course no one out of the loop knew it. Engineers generally got disappeared when the project was over.

Re: Ask HN: Why do managers tend to make more money than engineers?

#67

Post by SamReidHughes »

zo1 wrote: post #40
yuvadam wrote: post #9

Kind of like asking why those engineers still make +100x more than the workers at the factory in China that manufactures their computers and smartphones. It's called capitalism and it thrives on inequality. Whoever can be exploited - will be.

Because those engineers produce more value for their employers than the factory workers. It's not "inequality", it's just a cold, hard, fact no matter how much it makes us feel uneasy. I've seen this opinion a lot with individuals who don't understand that "creation" need not be linked to a physical product, or with manual labor. Now, if you'd get back to comparing apples to apples, we'd compare those same "engineers…

> Because those engineers produce more value for their employers than the factory workers.

It's also a question of negotiating power.

Re: Ask HN: Why do managers tend to make more money than engineers?

#68

Post by BWStearns »

I've had one really fantastic engineering manager (miraculously my first solely programming role, wish I was still there), and I have yet to have another good engineering manager. The degree to which time was spent improving the product under the good manager was phenomenally higher under the good manager than the others. Granted this seems to be rare but a good tech manager can deliver crazy outsized returns on the line developers and also make their days easier.

Re: Ask HN: Why do managers tend to make more money than engineers?

#69

Post by zo1 »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #67
zo1 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because those engineers produce more value for their employers than the factory workers. It's not "inequality", it's just a cold, hard, fact no matter how much it makes us feel uneasy. I've seen this opinion a lot with individuals who don't understand that "creation" need not be linked to a physical product, or with manual labor. Now, if you'd get back to comparing apples to apples, we'd compare those same "engineers…

> Because those engineers produce more value for their employers than the factory workers. It's also a question of negotiating power.

That's definitely a component of it, yes. But why do they have more negotiating power? For the sake of argument, let's leave out the trail regarding levels of education/intelligence.
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