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The Programmer Salary Taboo

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Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#11

Post by michaelochurch »

gte910h wrote: post #5
jrockway wrote: post #2

I've always wanted to write exactly this blog post. Keeping your salary confidential is great for big companies, but it benefits you in no way. You should be making what your coworkers make. If you make less, you're being fucked, plain and simple. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you can remedy the situation. Sadly, some people go their whole careers without doing so. FWIW, my first programming job only paid $…

If you're making less, you're possibly being fucked. You're possibly avoiding a layoff. If you're making more, I'm not sure how showing your salary data can help you personally.

If you're making more, I'm not sure how showing your salary data can help you personally.

Status, at least when you transition.

In investment banking, people would quickly discover what the top bonus was for their year and report it when they moved on to jobs in, for example, private equity. The banks saw it as symbiotic and would confirm inflated compensation. It made the ex-analysts get better jobs but it also made the firms look more generous, so it was seen as win-win.

It becomes an issue when next year's class expects the middle bonus to be last year's top bonus.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#14

Post by elbrodeur »

michaelochurch wrote: post #7

I actually think full transparency on salary could make this nasty issue go away. Post what everyone is making and let people negotiate a fair package. There would be some transitional pain in the first 2 months, and payroll costs might go up 10 percent, but people would be happier in the long run. Why use inaccurate gossip instead of full transparency? What drove up compensation in banking in the 2000s was inaccurat…

Transparency would also level the playing field in terms of negotiations. Whether or not you are a good negotiator should not affect how much you get paid for most types of positions. As it stands, in most companies, negotiation is welcome and if you're savvy, you can get all sorts of perks that someone who is not savvy will be unable to get.

I'm a big fan of salary transparency -- the last startup I was a part of practiced this and I found it great for a number of reasons, primarily because anyone can say, "Hey, I'm performing at or above this person's level, I should be compensated accordingly."

Unfortunately, talking about compensation is still a pretty big taboo so I don't see this becoming mainstream anytime soon.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#15

Post by joezydeco »

My teeth always grind when I read articles like this.

Yes, you can make $100K at Google. In Mountain View, California. How does that correlate to someone doing the same job in Austin, Seattle, Chicago, or Cleveland? The cost of living swings greatly when you depart the west coast.

Decent wage databases will add another variable to the position and experience axes: the geographic area where the job is offered. (Example: http://www.erieri.com/)

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#16

Post by benihana »

jrockway wrote: post #2

I've always wanted to write exactly this blog post. Keeping your salary confidential is great for big companies, but it benefits you in no way. You should be making what your coworkers make. If you make less, you're being fucked, plain and simple. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you can remedy the situation. Sadly, some people go their whole careers without doing so. FWIW, my first programming job only paid $…

>FWIW, my first programming job only paid $45,000 a year. What a ripoff.

How is that a ripoff? That seems right at about average for starting salary programming.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#17

Post by jseliger »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #10
michaelochurch wrote: post #7

I actually think full transparency on salary could make this nasty issue go away. Post what everyone is making and let people negotiate a fair package. There would be some transitional pain in the first 2 months, and payroll costs might go up 10 percent, but people would be happier in the long run. Why use inaccurate gossip instead of full transparency? What drove up compensation in banking in the 2000s was inaccurat…

I rather suspect that full salary transparency would result in a race-to-the-top.

I was just going to say something like this. In The Logic of Life, Tim Harford writes about how CEO pay reformers thought that making CEO pay public would cause companies to reduce pay because high pay was so outrageous. The opposite happened.

Why? Because who wants to be in the bottom 50%? Practically no one. If you open up salary information, everyone is going to want to be "above average," even in companies that pride themselves on hiring exceptional people--like Google.

This year, the median is $90K, so everyone will want $95K. Next year, it'll be 95K, so everyone will want $100K, and so on.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#18

Post by michaelochurch »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #10
michaelochurch wrote: post #7

I actually think full transparency on salary could make this nasty issue go away. Post what everyone is making and let people negotiate a fair package. There would be some transitional pain in the first 2 months, and payroll costs might go up 10 percent, but people would be happier in the long run. Why use inaccurate gossip instead of full transparency? What drove up compensation in banking in the 2000s was inaccurat…

I rather suspect that full salary transparency would result in a race-to-the-top.

It could, but it could also save companies major headaches because people would at least have accurate information instead of gossip. Average salaries would go up a little bit (10-15%?) but there'd be a lot less volatility, and managers wouldn't have to worry about people coming in pissed off that they've been underpaid for three years.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#19

Post by viggity »

xnxn wrote: post #8
jrockway wrote: post #2

I've always wanted to write exactly this blog post. Keeping your salary confidential is great for big companies, but it benefits you in no way. You should be making what your coworkers make. If you make less, you're being fucked, plain and simple. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you can remedy the situation. Sadly, some people go their whole careers without doing so. FWIW, my first programming job only paid $…

> only paid $45,000 a year Reading this kind of thing on HN makes me feel ill; my W-2 says $47k. Maybe I need to make some changes.

Try contracting. Seriously. Go to a local user group and talk with people who contract and see what the going rate is in your area. Its probably 2x to 2.5x of what you're getting now.
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