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Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

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Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#171

Post by Retric »

alistproducer2 wrote: post #155
Retric wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe I'm missing something but in your two examples, what you refer to as skill is just recall. I would argue that in the context of alternative solutions, the skill would be knowing when a better alternative is needed when it isn't immediately obvious. If I knew mod wasn't available yet I neded an analogous operation finding an alternative is trivial even if I don't recall it. I wouldn't call that a skill.

It might seem obvious if A and B do the same thing then you can use A or B to move on to the next step, but many people don't think this way.

For a non programming example, you can use the handle of a shovel as a long stick. This should be more or less obvious when looking at a shovel, but I have seen people ignore shovels when looking for a stick to do something.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#172

Post by JoeAltmaier »

jghn wrote: post #164
logicchains wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it depends where you study. In my university, SE was basically "Write essays about why OO is great and draw lots of UML".

Perhaps things have changed since I was in school about 15 years ago but I always called it "academics teaching you their warped view of what life as an industry programmer is like". I quickly learned that nothing which was covered in those classes were things I did in my jobs once I graduated.

Be fair. Some of it is just learning what code is, and how to think about it. They provide some practice with various dogmas. The idea is, once you are working you'll learn more/different ones and have some facility doing so.

"Nothing I learned as a toddler is anything I do now that I'm an adult"

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#173

Post by hasenj »

gvb wrote: post #149
mafribe wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I don't think there is much difference in intrinsic ability. I'm absolutely convinced that every healthy person can become a really good programmer. But becoming a really good programmer requires putting in a lot of time doing programming, and a lot of students don't put in that time.

I've been programming for nearly 40 years. Based on my interactions with others, programming is an intrinsic ability. People that don't have that intrinsic ability can cut'n'paste their way through simple programs, but really struggle to understand what they are doing and why their program works (or not). Anecdata: My high school got access to a computer (dialup modem). I essentially taught myself programming and the…

I haven't been programming nearly as long but I've seen this pattern many times as well, and within my own family too!

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#174

Post by bzbarsky »

morgante wrote: post #91
pmorici wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally disagree. Housing is such an over riding cost that no amount of things you can buy on Amazon will save you. The housing prices are rising so fast in SF that it makes estimates like this one LOW. you would be unlikely to save any money at all living in SF on 150k but Kansas has such a wide variety of hosing options that range form super cheap to substantially affordable that you could easily save as much or…

> you would be unlikely to save any money at all living in SF on 150k This statement is farcical. You do realize that the median wage in SF is less than $100k. How do you think those people are living? Have you actually lived in SF or NYC? You're totally out of touch with the actual costs. Yes, housing is expensive. But you can still easily get a solid apartment for $3k/m. Add in another $2k/m for food (high!) and th…

If you're single and make $150k/year in SFO, you only have $110k post-tax income or so; a bit higher if you are putting money into a 401k. There's no way you can be saving $100k/year at that income level.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#175

Post by gautamdivgi »

Bartweiss wrote: post #166
mafribe wrote: post #15

I teach computer science at a well-known, large and mediocre university. I see bimodal grade distributions all the time. The more technical a subject, the more bimodal the grades. In fluff subjects like software engineering where grading relates to essay writing and group projects, grade distribution tends to be gaussian. OTOH in technical subjects where I grade by automated test suits, basically students fail almost…

I've held this basic theory for a while, and it seems to explain a lot of things about the state of software engineering. Most visibly, there's a wild disagreement about whether we have too many programmers, or not enough. Big tech companies consistently say that they struggle to find programmers, while contrarians at places like The Atlantic love writing pieces about how we're education way more programmers than we…

Then the point remains. Why are people who can't code getting the CS or EE degrees?

Generally, the degree is supposed to indicate some sort of sufficiency with development. Probably universities are dumbing down requirements for $$$.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#176

Post by drpgq »

gvb wrote: post #149
mafribe wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I don't think there is much difference in intrinsic ability. I'm absolutely convinced that every healthy person can become a really good programmer. But becoming a really good programmer requires putting in a lot of time doing programming, and a lot of students don't put in that time.

I've been programming for nearly 40 years. Based on my interactions with others, programming is an intrinsic ability. People that don't have that intrinsic ability can cut'n'paste their way through simple programs, but really struggle to understand what they are doing and why their program works (or not). Anecdata: My high school got access to a computer (dialup modem). I essentially taught myself programming and the…

Isn't intrinsic ability just g in the end?

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#177

Post by city41 »

tboyd47 wrote: post #165
city41 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they? If you're the one developer in the world keeping their tech going, and the nearest next developer is 6 months of ramp up time away (plus the time for the hiring process), you'd have some leverage.

In this hypothetical scenario, the developer has no leverage to renegotiate, because they have no job options outside of OmniCorp, hence, no BATNA (best alternative to negotiated agreement). If the developer was homeless or independently wealthy, and not in need of a job, they might have the ability to terminate the agreement without reaching a new one. Then the company would truly have something to lose. But OmniCor…

It happened to me. I got out of it by studying open source tech stacks and building side projects until I could get a job away from the proprietary stuff. It wasn't ideal, but I managed to pull it off.

I'm mostly playing devil's advocate with my replies. It's generally better to stick with mainstream -- and ideally open source -- tech. But I don't entirely agree that proprietary tech is only beneficial to the company in these scenarios. They are taking risks that the employee can take advantage of. Heck, for me, that proprietary company still contacts me on occasion to see if I'll come back.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#178

Post by hasenj »

henrik_w wrote: post #58
charlesdm wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you enjoy something, it's much easier to put a lot of time in to figure it out. For example, I became a software entrepreneur about five years ago making money from my own projects. Dealing with a lot of business related "work", I actually discovered I also really like law, in particular tax law. A friend of mine was a pretty good lawyer (hung up his hat to do more entrepreneurial stuff) and I occasionally a…

I think the question of whether anybody can get good at programming is very interesting. I often hear "anybody can do it, but you can only become really good if you enjoy it". So then the question is: why do you enjoy something? Are we born that way, or is it something we do? (I don't know what the answer is) Edit: also, it is interesting to replace "programmer" with "math professor". Can anybody become a good math p…

I think our enjoyment of an activity depends on how we see our progress.

If we keep struggling with it, we will hate it, even if we thought we would like it at first.

We could also begin to enjoy an activity if we see ourselves progressing in it. When you see your improvements, your brain probably releases dopamine (or another one of those addiction chemicals) and that makes us want to do it more (to taste that sweet taste of victory/progress).

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#179

Post by cle »

extremely_smart wrote: post #138
nnq wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Often, smart people seek challenges and complexity. This can be dangerous in software engineering, if left unchecked.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#180

Post by dkopi »

bbcbasic wrote: post #31
dkopi wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valid point, but most roads aren't profitable. They're subsidized by tax payers.

Toll roads ftw?

Even Toll roads aren't necessarily profitable. They're often viewed as "public goods", and might be heavily subsidized together with regulated prices.

Most times the toll roads also have to compete with "free roads", limiting the amount of money you can charge per ride. http://reasonrail.blogspot.co.il/2011/06/do-toll-roads-make-...

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