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The Programmer Salary Taboo

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Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#131

Post by ido »

michaelochurch wrote: post #112
run4yourlives wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Imagine what would happen if there were five $70k salaries and one $165k salary for six people doing the same work. People would suddenly get very uncomfortable. Isn't that the entire point of the first exercise however? If the 165k salary isn't completely obvious, then it should make people feel uncomfortable - they are being shafted.

If you're getting the $165k, you're not going to be very enthusiastic about this exercise. The modular-arithmetic alternative is better, at least in terms of political stability: they figure out that there's an average of $86k. Then the people making $70k all negotiate up to $90k and, even if getting shafted, people are happier.

Why would you, as an employee, care about "political stability"?

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#132

Post by wtracy »

A1kmm wrote: post #103
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A race to the highest price the market can sustain. Companies will never pay so much they make a loss on a person, so the marginal revenue from having an additional employee is a firm upper bound on how much they will pay that employee. This is good from an employee's perspective, but it reduces profits for companies. As such, it is unlikely that many companies would voluntarily support transparency.

Companies will never pay so much they make a loss on a person

Unless, say, the person is really, really good at sucking up to the CEO.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#133

Post by r00fus »

jseliger wrote: post #17
RyanMcGreal wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, the Verblen effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good (in this case the CEO is the Verblen good, the company is the customer).

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#134

Post by kelnos »

lukev wrote: post #63
okaramian wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that when you're hiding salaries you can't really evaluate the market. Really by hiding that information you're giving the salary giver most of the power and those shopping around for a higher salary need to do a lot more work to evaluate how much they're worth on the market. I mean if Joe is doing half the work I'm doing, shouldn't he get paid significantly less? You're kind of attacking this from an…

Does the market really matter if I'm happy with what I'm being paid? That's ultimately the motivation for my argument - in which system are the greatest number of actors likely to be content?

I guess this is just a "to each his own" sort of thing. Personally I'm only truly happy when I have all the information (or as much as I can get in practical terms, anyway) and I'm still satisfied with the situation. I suppose others are fine without.

Note that this isn't a competition thing. I wouldn't necessarily be dissatisfied just by the concept of an equal peer making more than me; I'd be disappointed that I could be making more but I'm not.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#135

Post by pkteison »

billpaetzke wrote: post #127
MrFoof wrote: post #62

Salaries never stay secrets forever. Hiding them only delays the inevitable. Last year we were having a discussion at lunch. Coworker was building a new house, and when it came to the numbers it was let loose that it was going to cost about $700K. This didn't seem like much, except to a young guy that joined the previous year and had done nothing but kick ass and take names. The new guy was arguably the most talented…

and his bonus nearly matched the new guy's salary, which was an insulting $60K Is it common to get ~$60k yearly bonus as a programmer? Was this for a finance-industry job? All I've seen (either myself or others) so far is a few hundred dollars to a few thousand.

Large firms will do 'bonus targets' as some % of your base salary. Goals are established based on measurable metrics that you probably won't feel like you can directly do much about, such as average revenue per customer. If the company hits the goals, bonuses pay at some multiple of target. E.g., 10% bonus target, it's a good year so bonuses pay double = you get 20% of your base as a bonus. Managers will be given both a higher base salary and a higher bonus target.

Small firms are all over the map, from nothing to "finance industry".

Glassdoor suggests that no, this amount is not normal. But I wouldn't be at all surprised to see ~$10k be normal from a ~10-15% target. And it is certainly possible at a big company that does this sort of thing to get classified as a manager and have a 15% target payout double on a good year for 30% of base = a free car.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#137

Post by wtracy »

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.

Do keep in mind that "most" programming jobs are in areas with high costs of living: San Francisco, San Jose, and New York.

That said, take a look at this: http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Location=Portland-OR/Sal... The median salary for an SE in Portland is $67k.

So, yeah, it's negotiating time.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#138

Post by Luyt »

nostromo wrote: post #55

Here's a trick I once heard to share salary with your coworkers without the uncomfortableness of finding out you are over or under-paid. Over beers with several of your coworkers, each write down your salary on a piece of paper and then mix them up. Randomly draw them out of a hat and then read them to each other. If you're all roughly peers, then you get all the benefit of knowing the salary range of the group, with…

Very nice idea, but wouldn't the handwriting give away who owns what? Maybe everyone should print their salary in Arial 12 Bold on a 1" by 2" piece of paper, so that there will be no clues to who made what note. OTOH, this might be a bit complicated in a pub setting ('over beers').

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#139

Post by varikin »

anon-e-moose wrote: post #76

I graduated with a CS degree and am making about $32k a year, before paying for insurance, at an IT job. Where can I sign up for one of these horribly low paying $45-75k/year programming jobs?

Also note that all these numbers really depend on location. 80-100K out of college in Minnesota (where I am) would be insane. I know people with 15 years experience making 100-120k.

Now if you are in the Bay area making 32K, that sounds weird, otherwise, start investigating salaries in your area.

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