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The Programmer Salary Taboo

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Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#141

Post by abeppu »

nathanb wrote: post #60

It would be extremely interesting to see whether or not having these data publicly available (especially in such a context-free fashion as in this article) is truly helpful or not. It reminds me of another HN story which saw the front page today: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/entdev/article.php/3930466/... Full transparency could lead to a more equitable distribution of salary, or it could mean that companies are…

The state of California releases salary info for all kinds of state employees (which has shown up on HN before : http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/). When I first found out, I spent 30 minutes looking up the salaries of all my old UC Berkeley professors, and comparing them to prison doctors and state troopers. I was saddened to see that salaries and talent/research output/prestige are often very unrelated, even in the presence of total transparency. George Smoot, who's a Nobel laureate only around 150k!

I also wondered whether (for example) Martin Wainwright and Michael I. Jordan, who've collaborated on papers, classes and a book on my to-read list, ever experience friction as a consequence of salary, given that Jordan appears to earn roughly 85% more than Wainwright.

I know that state employees and academic salaries are subject to a lot of forces that aren't present in tech companies -- but this makes me doubt that transparency is enough to bring about reasonable, equitable salaries.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#142

Post by phillmv »

fourk wrote: post #119
michaelochurch wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several strategies exist: 1. Bump everyone to $105k and ask if he's willing to take that number. If he's going to turn the job down over $5,000, do you really want him? 2. Offer him a $10,000 signing bonus and the same salary as everyone else. 3. Hire him at $110k but give him more responsibility-- including tasks that the other developers don't want to do, such as responsibility for 3:00 am phone calls when the data…

Re: "If he's going to turn the job down over $5,000, do you really want him?" Couldn't the same be said from the applicant's perspective? If a prospective employer is going to nickel and dime you over 5k, do you really want to work for them?

A good work place environment is easily worth $10k in salary. If a manager were up front with me - "Hey we pay everyone the same rate, and everyone else makes this much. Still interested?" - I would consider that to be a good sign.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#143

Post by gyardley »

michaelochurch wrote: post #115
gyardley wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will they be paid a fraction of their salary if the company performs poorly? The biggest rewards go to the biggest risk-takers.

I can see the point you're trying to make, but humanistically and morally speaking, this isn't true. A person with $10 million who puts $3 million into a business isn't taking that much of a risk. There's some risk there and, yes, it should be rewarded. But a person with no net worth is taking a huge risk every time he takes a new job: career risk. This dynamic exists in startups as well. The people who are taking th…

Career risk in startups?

There's job risk in startups, yes, but not career risk. Working for startups serves you very well.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#144

Post by krakensden »

Tangaroa wrote: post #123
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?

You need to buy insurance for your IT job? Please describe. I've never heard of this before. Are there different standards for employee fault in different states? Are there any notable court cases? I did once work at a place where employees were financially liable for the cost to the company of any mistakes they made, but I assumed that was legally along the same lines as the company's policy of not sending employees…

He probably means health insurance.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#145

Post by afterburner »

elai wrote: post #75
smokinn wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a good idea but I doubt the data is very accurate. I live in Montreal which is well known to be one of the cheapest places to live in North America (very cheap housing, very cheap energy, etc.) but WA puts Montreal as the most expensive? http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=cost+of+living+in+mount...

Higher Taxes. Quebec has generally higher taxes vs. the rest of canada, and places like washington have no state income tax. Also the locations it could be comparing could be downtown metro area's and their costs. 3km away from the downtown core and you get a huge drop in price.

The taxes aren't that much higher. And the rent is cheaper than Toronto.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#146

Post by brooksbp »

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…

Can someone please shed some light on what would be a good strategy to follow if you were in his position talking to HR, manager, CTO?

What's the best way to save yourself once you've realized you're worth nearly double, triple, or quad your current comp pkg?

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#147

Post by shpxnvz »

kelnos wrote: post #130
lukev wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>people have time to accept that there's just that one incompetent guy making 20% more than he should and within a few hours they forget about it. Really? I'm not sure about that. >My contention is that people discover a lot of this information anyway and get more angry in a private-salary system. I've never personally heard of a person getting upset upon discovering someone else's private salary. I know lots of peop…

I've never personally heard of a person getting upset upon discovering someone else's private salary. I have, on several occasions. I've been that upset person once, even. I know lots of people who are dissatisfied because they're obviously far more valuable than a peer at the same level, and lots of people who are resented because of their parasitism at a higher-level job. (This is in the government system, where sa…

If you're far more valuable than a peer but are being paid the same or less, you should be dissatisfied.

Value is not only completely subjective, but almost always biased. Most people think they are more valuable than their peers, and most are wrong.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#148

Post by bennysaurus »

techiferous wrote: post #105
wging wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$175/hour * 40 hours/week * 50 weeks/year = $350,000/year, for anyone else (like me) who can't immediately estimate equivalent yearly rates.

But remember that there is non-billable work (accounting, etc.) and a 15.3% self-employment tax. And also remember that there are probably not 50 weeks of 40 hours/week at this company but rather short-term or part-time work. And you are paying for your own benefits. I've found a good (albeit a bit conservative) rule-of-thumb is to convert the hourly wage into the yearly salary. Working as a consultant for $175/hour…

Even using your conservative numbers, this guy is earning almost 3 times what he was previously, a fantastic effort and do envy him :-)

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#149

Post by scythe »

harryh wrote: post #29

Consider a hypothetical scenario for the person on the other side of the table: You are hiring up an engineering team and hope to hire up a team of 10 engineers paying 100k/yr each. So far you've hired 9 people at 100k and are working on filling that last slot. You find someone perfect but he has a competing job offer and is asking for 110k/yr instead of just 100. He's no better than the other 9 people you have alrea…

>You find someone perfect but he has a competing job offer and is asking for 110k/yr instead of just 100. He's no better than the other 9 people you have already hired.

If he's not better than any of the other people working for you, these people can also presumably get a $110k job. Otherwise, if they can't, he is better; the market deems it so, and the solution is to publicly give the guy $110k. Is it fair? Well, it's not biased -- it certainly isn't egalitarian, but were I an employee making $100k in this situation I'd much prefer transparency to shadiness!

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#150

Post by [deleted] »

jfong wrote: post #70
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…

Good idea! Although for the most part if you don't work with people you consider friends this subject would never come up.

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