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

Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

danluu.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 310 posts

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#131

Post by sidlls »

whorleater wrote: post #109
driverdan wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fluff subjects like software engineering where grading relates to essay writing and group projects How is SE a "fluff subject?" Why are they writing essays? When I took SE we had individual programming projects and a group project to write a compiler. Not fluff at all.

SE is often relegated to a "fluff" subject in schools simply because it's, well, not very challenging. Classes based around the topic of SE are often topics like "Formal Software Development Methods" where you learn about verification of concurrent programs, formal symbolic testing, contracts, explicit model checking, etc. These are all "soft skills" and hard to directly generalize into a programming assignment, so s…

Wow, things have changed since I took my SE electives (17-18 years ago). We had to write code and there were final projects that required the development of a non-trivial application. One that compiled and at least nominally worked. Granted I only took a course of about three electives at the sophomore and junior level, so maybe I missed the "fluff" in other levels.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#132

Post by meric »

kgwgk wrote: post #48
mafribe wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting theory. I have a different one, derived from teaching 1000s of students over 2 decades. the bimodal distributions comes from two sets of people: one set working hard and putting the hours in until the master the subject, the other set being lazy, cheating, and don't put the hours in, so they never achieve mastery. Appearance and substance.

How is it different?

"The ten-thousand thing-kinds are ultimately alike and ultimately different. This is called the great similarity-difference." - Zhuangzi

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#133

Post by pathy »

pathy wrote: post #45
antocv wrote: post #7

You can find salaries data by looking at Swedish IRS, the numbers are public, but may not be in digital form/easy API yet. But you can order a catalogue from a redistributor, containing every persons income from work and income from capital and taxes payed, for previous year. Would not take much to scan it and analyze.

Here is a quick Google Sheets with most "Developer employee codes" that are reported to the tax authority/Statistics Sweden. Salaries listed per Quartile, in SEK. The categories are quite broad. There is a listing per decile but I could not find it right now. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yPjcXoKuwq8SBngQ2-G9... http://SCB.se is the source.

Cannot edit the original post anymore.

I have added new statistics at the bottom, including 10th and 90th percentile.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yPjcXoKuwq8SBngQ2-G9...

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#134

Post by geodel »

alecco wrote: post #92

I'd like to see that adjusted to cost of living where the job is. I bet is not bimodal anymore.

I do not have US data but in India a few friends and relatives living in same city have 5:1 ratio in compensation for same no of years as experience. The lower ones are in traditional IT job others in mobile app / big data.

I think in US it will be same cutting edge skill vs traditional skills.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#135

Post by tboyd47 »

The discussion about bimodal pay distribution is interesting, but I think there's a much more parsimonious explanation to it. Most of the companies that are going to be paying software developers $150k+ are based in or around SV, where rent is abnormally high.

But what's even more interesting to me is another question the author discusses halfway through the article:

> How is it possible that programmers are paid so well without these other barriers to entry that similarly remunerative fields have?

The author posits three hypotheses: 1) supply of programmers is naturally low, 2) immigration laws keep the supply artificially low, and 3) the overall relative efficiency of American companies create a productivity force multiplier for everyone at the company, including programmers.

I want to introduce a fourth hypothesis, which is that programming skills are highly commoditized, which causes demand for those skills to increase.

If I work for OmniCorp using 100% proprietary OmniCorp technologies, they have no reason to pay me more than the bare minimum because I'm effectively married to them. If I work for OpenCorp on a 100% open-source stack, then the buzzwords listed on my resume prove I can be productive at thousands of other companies, giving them all incentive to compete for me.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#136

Post by vc4devil »

daxfohl wrote: post #121
rayiner wrote: post #117

I suspect the bimodal distribution for programming and law have the same explanation: a group of highly profitable firms targeting a subset of the overall industry have imposed a de facto hiring floor that limits supply, raising wages.[1] Why is Cravath raising salaries while 85% of legal grads are taking jobs making half or less of its old salary scale? Because it has a hiring floor. It won't hire lawyers that aren'…

Most of the comments seem to be focusing on the supply side. I agree the demand side is probably the greater factor.

The focus is also similar to sports. There are very few 100 million dollar players, and there are very few high school kids that even become $1,000 players.

While the story's about Google/Apple programmer's getting $150k are well and good, most hungry un-employed 40% unemployment under 25 world-wide kids these days, would be glad to get an indoor job for $10/hour.

The sport analogy is excellent. Let's look at the hood, the ghetto kid tosses balls in the hoop from 6-14, with dreams of NBA, then one day he realizes the odd's are not in his favor, he see's his destiny at flipping burgers at micky-d, or hustling drugs, the drug dealers have the best women, best cars, ... and the micky guys are a joke, by 16 most ghetto kids know that nobody becomes an NBA, but it rather easy to go be a drug dealer, with micky-d always waiting.

Our little nerd is much the same, he gets his computer, and maybe codes in high-school, but if he doesn't get accepted into Harvard at 14 years old like Bill Gates, then most likely by 16 he knows that he's never going be a Zuckerberg, he looks around see's everybody around him working in high-tech as fat, miserable, and bald. The only people having fun are doctors, and lawyers, and financial guys.

People who like math, and physics, and make it to college, and along the way take to coding go on to be excellent teir-1 programmers. Most people that get into IT, just know enough to get an interview, and most of the time its 'who you know'.

Even 50+ years ago in man-month-metholgoy of Brooks, it was noted that most developers ranged by an order of magnitude in ability. In all organizations it usually one guy that does the work of 100, and what do the other 99 do? Mostly meetings and bullshit, eventually the golden-boy bails and starts his own company.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#137

Post by Retric »

alistproducer2 wrote: post #127
Retric wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's really about the CS concepts as it is being able to link them together flexibly. Suppose you want the median value in an array. Well sorting makes it easy, but you don't need to fully sort the array. A modified quick sort seems like a good compromise, then again using a built in sort is probably fast enough and much less code. That's the kind of thinking that really works. Because you can look up w…

I would argue that in order to link them together one must first understand the CS concepts and their uses. Once a person has that understanding, it becomes trivial to know when a naive solution is no longer the right approach. Once a normal person has the ability to see problem solving like that, they've pretty much got it. That's not to say there's not a difference between all possible solutions and the people tryi…

I get where your coming from, but many people can get all the individual concepts and still not make the connection.

If they want to double X, they are happy to use X + X, 2 * X, or X It's probably a learnable skill, but it's just not directly part of CS classes. Someone can learn X XOR 1 is the same as X MOD 2, it's another to use XOR when they can't recall the MOD symbol.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#138

Post by extremely_smart »

nnq wrote: post #52
deanCommie wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually doesn't your experience hint at the opposite trend in the working sector? If everyone (roughly) either fails programming, or aces it, then the working professionals are the ones who passed AND excelled.

I imagine you've never been the one hiring or interviewing developers, have you? There is an amazing bit though: there are the ones that you classify as "surely worthless", but then you see they can indeed get some jobs done , so a non-technical manager or HR-person can easily confuse one of those that "can sometimes program computers to do useful stuff or keep things running" vs someone who can do "software engineer…

How did your category-three people drag the project down?

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#139

Post by Bahamut »

Amezarak wrote: post #55
jasode wrote: post #10

If there's a pronounced bimodal distribution, it seems like the biggest driver of it would be the lumping of various programmer specialties into one giant bucket. It seems like the 2 sub-buckets would be: 1) $100k or less: backoffice programmers where software itself is not the product sold. Also known as enterprisey/LOB/CRUD developers working outside Silicon Valley. (E.g. programmer working on mortgage servicing so…

I really think it's location, location, location, not necessarily whether or not the software is the product. I've worked for consulting companies, product companies, and right now I work for a sort-of back-office organization. The best I've been able to do, despite several years of experience, good references, inside connections, a graduate degree, and being pretty (I think, anyway) personable is...75k. And I don't…

I hit $85k in DC in under a year of experience without a CS degree (MS in math though). Many places in the country it is easy to hit six figures, and $200k is not out of the realms of possibility outside of the Bay Area or NYC either.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#140

Post by base698 »

personjerry wrote: post #32
ffjffsfr wrote: post #2

Majority of new IT grads earning 150k? This can't be representative sample for US. > this is from about 100 data points, members of the “Hackathon Hackers” Facebook group, in 2015. What's the point of analyzing data from such narrow and unusual sample? RE: how to get data about programmers salaries, I'd say try to check job postings, they usually say how much company offers.

Does 150k include bonuses and stock? In my experience, 150k base pay sounds awfully high

It's about average for LA at the moment. Not new grads mind you but 5+ years experience.
Post reply on HN