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

How to avoid the software salary ceiling

thinkfaster.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 84 posts

Re: How to avoid the software salary ceiling

#41

Post by gsarrica »

mattdeboard wrote: post #20

I agree with the premise of this article (if you wanna get paid, specialise) as it strongly echoes my own, perhaps limited, experience. I am a generalist. I like being able to solve problems across a wide spectrum of fields. Working at a startup for the last three years has given me plenty of time for that. The flipside is that I have not had much opportunity to specialise. I take pride in being comfortable diving in…

I know many companies who would rather have someone like you. Someone who they can give a problem to and they know you can solve it because of your wide knowledge base. "Sorry we can't give this problem to Bob to solve because all he knows is tech X." This is worth a lot to some people.

It's also not that you know many things, it's that you can learn other things easily and quickly. (without training)

The hard part is finding the right place to work at. Many large corporations are looking for a square peg for a square hole.

Re: How to avoid the software salary ceiling

#42

Post by lnanek2 »

jblok wrote: post #5

What other specialisms aside from WebGL/graphics, and QA, as mentioned, might be open to a standard web developer?

You may not realize it, but a lot of web developers still only know things like ASP, .NET, ColdFusion, PHP, etc.. So knowing modern languages and APIs like Go, Ruby on Rails, Python, NodeJS JavaScript, etc. is already a step toward specialization. Another frequent ask I see from clients is knowing modern streaming methods like Web Sockets, Comet, Meteor, etc. which is another level again. Past that their is mobile development, which can be done in HTML/JS on platforms like Cordova, and also scaling and deployments. It's often different to write something that can run on hundreds of servers at once than a single web server, for example.

Re: How to avoid the software salary ceiling

#43

Post by fbr »

jblok wrote: post #5

What other specialisms aside from WebGL/graphics, and QA, as mentioned, might be open to a standard web developer?

You can imagine everything, you "just" have to find a niche big enough (ex: security, performances, SEO, AWS, varnish specialist...)

Re: How to avoid the software salary ceiling

#44

Post by sammyo »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #31

Moneyquote: "Now I understand why older programmers complain about rampant ageism in Tech. Younger workers are cheaper, and programmer productivity is notoriously difficult to measure, so most companies opt for the cheaper option." Wow that is so spot on, as a "generic" programmer asking $150K versus a "generic" programmer asking $75K ? Easy choice, we'll get two and double our productivity and halve the sick days! I…

The issue with a narrow specialty in Tech is that the lucrative niche can evaporate almost overnight.

Re: How to avoid the software salary ceiling

#45

Post by fecak »

I recently blogged about this similar topic (http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2015/05/20/moremoney/) and listed a handful of ways to avoid what I referred to as a salary plateau. The basic list was change jobs, get promoted, ask for a raise, brand additional benefits to your hire (network, visibility, etc.), consult/contract, moonlight or add revenue streams, and specialize.

I haven't read "Career Superpowers, but it sounds like Whitaker did almost all of these things - moved between Google/Apple, became a nationally recognized authority, specialized, added a revenue stream (book), and got promoted to VP.

Re: How to avoid the software salary ceiling

#46

Post by FigBug »

sammyo wrote: post #44
ChuckMcM wrote: post #31

Moneyquote: "Now I understand why older programmers complain about rampant ageism in Tech. Younger workers are cheaper, and programmer productivity is notoriously difficult to measure, so most companies opt for the cheaper option." Wow that is so spot on, as a "generic" programmer asking $150K versus a "generic" programmer asking $75K ? Easy choice, we'll get two and double our productivity and halve the sick days! I…

The issue with a narrow specialty in Tech is that the lucrative niche can evaporate almost overnight.

Yes if you specialize in a specific technology. Not as much if you specialize in something more fundamental like audio DSP. you may have to jump between telephony and pro audio as the markets change, but there will always be work. And the barrier to entry is quite high.

Re: How to avoid the software salary ceiling

#47

Post by moistgorilla »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #31

Moneyquote: "Now I understand why older programmers complain about rampant ageism in Tech. Younger workers are cheaper, and programmer productivity is notoriously difficult to measure, so most companies opt for the cheaper option." Wow that is so spot on, as a "generic" programmer asking $150K versus a "generic" programmer asking $75K ? Easy choice, we'll get two and double our productivity and halve the sick days! I…

To add some more things that can be specialized in

Data Analysis

Distributed Computing

High Performance Computing

Modelling and Simulation

Artificial Intelligence

Re: How to avoid the software salary ceiling

#48

Post by meatysnapper »

logfromblammo wrote: post #39
dudul wrote: post #2

"Many people reach senior software engineer, and then they get stuck. They’ll still be a “senior” level developer 5 or 10 years later. For many, getting stuck is just fine. They like coding, and they don’t want to manage people, and the money is pretty good." I have a problem with this part. Basically, being a developer and not making it to a managing position is "getting stuck". I strongly disagree with that. Develo…

Regardless of salary numbers, becoming a manager is not a promotion. It is changing career tracks. It just so happens that the lowest rung on that ladder is somewhat reachable from the highest rung of the software ladder. The problem in many companies is that the positions into which a senior developer may be promoted do not exist. Other positions with greater pay and prestige are on other career tracks. Positions li…

I'm convinced that most management either

1) does not understand the time value of money 2) does not care about the time value of money

There is no value placed on the reduction of future expenses- for example, not needing to train another new guy when a senior person leaves, or having a simpler, more reasonable codebase that is harder to introduce bugs into.

I think this is because people (both minions and management) switch teams or jobs too quickly for these savings to become apparent, and therefore there is zero incentive to do things right. It's monkey-patch some crap together, keep it running at the absolute bare minimum, and get promoted and someone else has to deal with the problem.

Re: How to avoid the software salary ceiling

#50

Post by moistgorilla »

sammyo wrote: post #44
ChuckMcM wrote: post #31

Moneyquote: "Now I understand why older programmers complain about rampant ageism in Tech. Younger workers are cheaper, and programmer productivity is notoriously difficult to measure, so most companies opt for the cheaper option." Wow that is so spot on, as a "generic" programmer asking $150K versus a "generic" programmer asking $75K ? Easy choice, we'll get two and double our productivity and halve the sick days! I…

The issue with a narrow specialty in Tech is that the lucrative niche can evaporate almost overnight.

This is most obvious in front end web but the simple solution is to not be an "Angular JS specialist" but a "Front End specialist".
Post reply on HN