If a sales guy sells 10x, he gets 10x commision.. If a coder produces 10x, pay him 10x. What is so hard to understand about that ?
Science says that will give you worse results:
How to reward skilled coders with something other than people management
151–158 of 158 posts
Re: How to reward skilled coders with something other than people management
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's even worse because you might code up a storm and not add any value. You might work a dead project and only loose the company money. Very true. We have the value-add potential that, on paper, would justify upward of $700,000 per year. Unfortunately, most of us are managed ineptly and so much of that value is squandered. There are plenty of ways that the surplus generated by our talents could be spent (expansion,…
I can summarize your point of view as, "pay me a million dollars and I'll blame others for the problems" Who wants to hire that attitude?
With all due respect, you're interpreting what I say in the most negative light possible, and I don't think you understand the point that I'm trying to drive through.
Programmers can add immense value relative to the cost of employing them. There are many ways in which this surplus could be reinvested. Unfortunately, it tends to be invested in tolerance of mismanagement.
We're capable of adding value at 5x our base salary (and that's a low estimate; 20-100x is defensible) but this gives corporations an excuse to run us at ~20% efficiency.
Re: How to reward skilled coders with something other than people management
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can summarize your point of view as, "pay me a million dollars and I'll blame others for the problems" Who wants to hire that attitude?
With all due respect, you're interpreting what I say in the most negative light possible, and I don't think you understand the point that I'm trying to drive through. Programmers can add immense value relative to the cost of employing them. There are many ways in which this surplus could be reinvested. Unfortunately, it tends to be invested in tolerance of mismanagement. We're capable of adding value at 5x our base s…
It sounds to me like the value is coming more from management than the programmer. After all, you admit that few people have the skill to deliver that value and the programmer can't deliver it themselves.
Re: How to reward skilled coders with something other than people management
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am glad you liked it. I know HN doesn't like the supposedly contentless "thanks for sharing" type of comments but I appreciate it and think it is important to express such sentiments. In fact, about half way in to writing my comment I almost deleted it -- thinking no one would really care. I am glad I was wrong and that I completed it.
I loved it entirely. It was literally the first thing I read after the front page (I always read comments before the article). I understand HN reason for not wanting countless thanks as it adds to scroll and doesnt add to the discussion... but it would be nice if they had a simple collapsible thread like reddit so once you got the gist or saw things are getting repetative you could jump down to the next main comment
Incidentally, it was this comment thread that led me to find this[1] for the same reason you list. The lack of collapsible threads has bugged me for a bit and I have been considering doing my own bookmarklet for a while but never got around to it.
[1] - https://github.com/akirk/hackernews-collapsible-threads
Re: How to reward skilled coders with something other than people management
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
With all due respect, you're interpreting what I say in the most negative light possible, and I don't think you understand the point that I'm trying to drive through. Programmers can add immense value relative to the cost of employing them. There are many ways in which this surplus could be reinvested. Unfortunately, it tends to be invested in tolerance of mismanagement. We're capable of adding value at 5x our base s…
It sounds to me like the value is coming more from management than the programmer. After all, you admit that few people have the skill to deliver that value and the programmer can't deliver it themselves.
I would argue that many programmers can deliver that value directly. However, most corporate management filters get in the way.
The percentage of managers in technology/software who add more than they take away is small: maybe 5 percent. Another 15 percent or so are essentially neutral, and the other 80 percent do more damage than they add.
Re: How to reward skilled coders with something other than people management
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
I loved it entirely. It was literally the first thing I read after the front page (I always read comments before the article). I understand HN reason for not wanting countless thanks as it adds to scroll and doesnt add to the discussion... but it would be nice if they had a simple collapsible thread like reddit so once you got the gist or saw things are getting repetative you could jump down to the next main comment
Incidentally, it was this comment thread that led me to find this[1] for the same reason you list. The lack of collapsible threads has bugged me for a bit and I have been considering doing my own bookmarklet for a while but never got around to it. [1] - https://github.com/akirk/hackernews-collapsible-threads
Sweet, thank you!
Re: How to reward skilled coders with something other than people management
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sounds to me like the value is coming more from management than the programmer. After all, you admit that few people have the skill to deliver that value and the programmer can't deliver it themselves.
I would argue that many programmers can deliver that value directly. However, most corporate management filters get in the way. The percentage of managers in technology/software who add more than they take away is small: maybe 5 percent. Another 15 percent or so are essentially neutral, and the other 80 percent do more damage than they add.
Have you ever managed for than a few people?
Re: How to reward skilled coders with something other than people management
#158If a sales guy sells 10x, he gets 10x commision.. If a coder produces 10x, pay him 10x. What is so hard to understand about that ?
Produces 10x what? Lines of code? Don't make me laugh.
Measuring productivity by lines of code is like measuring aircraft quality by weight added..
Never met someone that is 10x more productive than the rest?