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You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do

theregister.co.uk

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Re: You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do

#21

Post by jrockway »

dinkumthinkum wrote: post #7
SatvikBeri wrote: post #4

You can also just communicate the benefits of your work to people. This works especially well if you do it beforehand...eg with the backup process, tell your boss that it saves X hours/month, and include that in your performance review (you should always be writing your own performance reviews, by the way). There's no need to restrict yourself to tasks with visible, obvious value...you just need to take on the work o…

Well, honestly, for many of the work environments the author refers to, which may not be ones you are I would want to work, the author is correct. The CEO of XYZ corp doesn't care and is not interested in your explanation about how optimizing the thermocouplers makes things better. Even if you tried to relate to how it does save the company, he won't think you know what you're talking about. This is more about playin…

Why work for a CEO that "doesn't care and is not interesting in your explanation about how optimizing the termocouplers makes thing better"? There are plenty of companies run by people that do understand the low-level details that make their businesses successful. Work there instead.

Remember, they need you more than you need them. They already admitted that they don't understand their own business!

Re: You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do

#22

Post by mopoke »

Bear in mind that this from The Register whose audience is much more skewed towards those working in large corporates, BOFHs and PFYs than the typical audience here.

For me the key sentence to the whole article is "Your boss has no idea if you’re good at your job." Why do we do such a bad job of developing people who are good managers/leaders AND understand technology? There seems to be this idea that IT folks are "special" and don't understand business and, because it's always been that way, there's no need to change. If you work for a business, it's not OK to be a not have a clue how a business works.

Re: You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do

#23

Post by dotBen »

mopoke wrote: post #22

Bear in mind that this from The Register whose audience is much more skewed towards those working in large corporates, BOFHs and PFYs than the typical audience here. For me the key sentence to the whole article is "Your boss has no idea if you’re good at your job." Why do we do such a bad job of developing people who are good managers/leaders AND understand technology? There seems to be this idea that IT folks are "s…

"Why do we do such a bad job of developing people who are good managers/leaders AND understand technology?"

because there is the opposite fallacy which is also derided: the one where the best engineer in the team is promoted to be a manager and in turn no longer does much/any development work.

The bottom line is that while there are great people out there, most people are average or worse (bell curve 101, sorry) and they end up progressing up the career ladder too.

Re: You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do

#24

Post by loup-vaillant »

kiba wrote: post #2

Very cynical view. If this is what's happening across companies, than the market system wasn't efficient enough or was impeded to make a change. We all know that the local cable or telephone companies aren't trying their damn hardest and we are not pleased with the services we're getting. However, we can't do anything about it. To me, it's incomprehensible that we can sit on our hand and not make things better. Inste…

> With the billion dollars in hand, the future of you, and everyone else is worse off, because you focused too much on marketing rather than on groundbreaking research.

I don't think so. More likely, we're playing a massively multiplayer Prisoner's Dilemma, where too few of us collaborate. Sure, if a sufficient proportion of humanity worked at making the world a better place instead of trying to get richer, even they would be better off. I doubt however that we're even close to that critical mass.

Also, don't forget that grounbreaking discoveries are science fiction until they're not. No one plans for science fiction. Heck, even the eventual obsolescence of drivers (truck, taxi, bus) is widely perceived as science fiction, even though self-driving exist today. Because, you know, "there always will be the need for human intervention". (Even then, it wouldn't mean a human is needed in the damn truck all the freaking time. The truck can make a phone call when it has a problem.)

Re: You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do

#26

Post by [deleted] »

EliRivers wrote: post #19
csomar wrote: post #17

They key here is that you’re making a difference when it hits the fan, that’s not someone they want to lose. The crap getting paid too much is the author of this article. Your job as software developer (or any other field) is to do your job the best you can. You are offered the salary before you start the work and you agreed on it. The market will define how much valuable you are to the business. You can see that in…

Actually, for what I do, they are paying me too much. They'd know if they were able to monitor what I do all day.

[deleted]

Re: You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do

#27

Post by mopoke »

dotBen wrote: post #23
mopoke wrote: post #22

Bear in mind that this from The Register whose audience is much more skewed towards those working in large corporates, BOFHs and PFYs than the typical audience here. For me the key sentence to the whole article is "Your boss has no idea if you’re good at your job." Why do we do such a bad job of developing people who are good managers/leaders AND understand technology? There seems to be this idea that IT folks are "s…

"Why do we do such a bad job of developing people who are good managers/leaders AND understand technology?" because there is the opposite fallacy which is also derided: the one where the best engineer in the team is promoted to be a manager and in turn no longer does much/any development work. The bottom line is that while there are great people out there, most people are average or worse (bell curve 101, sorry) and…

Even the best engineer on the team should understand how the business works though. There's more to being a good engineer in a business than understanding the technical side.

I tend to see people on three paths - they're an engineer and they want to keep coding and getting rewarded for that; or they're an engineer who wants to manage process and people; or they're an engineer who wants to focus more on architecture and design. The person you want to "manage" is the second one - they've a working knowledge of how the tech works but they're actively developing their leadership skills.

Leadership skills are no different from any other skills - they can be learned. In some cases people show more of a "natural" skill in that area but that doesn't meant that it can't still be learned - it'll take you out of your comfort zone but you don't tend to advance unless you do that.

Re: You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do

#28

Post by ChristianMarks »

This article pertains mostly to large, sclerotic firms with a pronounced suit-geek divide, somewhat like the blood-brain barrier. But it also exists in IT in higher ed as well. I suppose anyone with a modicum of professional pride would not want to work at a firm where the executives believe that managing IT is like herding cats--unless they were paid enough to guarantee the author a sufficiently high commission. (Knuth, incidentally, distinguishes computer science from IT and states that his interests lie with the former.)

Re: You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do

#29

Post by zacharyvoase »

csomar wrote: post #17

They key here is that you’re making a difference when it hits the fan, that’s not someone they want to lose. The crap getting paid too much is the author of this article. Your job as software developer (or any other field) is to do your job the best you can. You are offered the salary before you start the work and you agreed on it. The market will define how much valuable you are to the business. You can see that in…

What do you think ‘the market’ is? The market is made up of people just like you, a pool of bids and offers, with bidders (that is, employers or clients) trying to get the best price for a good or service, and the merchants (employees) trying to make the most money from the provision of those services—or at the very least to make a sale at all.

Markets are most efficient when there is full transparency. Unfortunately you don't know the salaries of the people you work with, or the budgets of the people you work for. We have to accept this information asymmetry as a fact of life, because your colleagues probably feel uncomfortable discussing their compensation packages, and your managers don't reveal their budgets to you specifically so they can save money. They may have been willing to pay you $100k, but if you settle for $80k they aren't going to argue, and you've just put $20k back into their budget that they were planning on giving you anyway. That doesn't mean a lot to them, but to you that could have been a new car and a luxury holiday.

The fact that you don't understand the importance of leverage in negotiations (that is, making yourself seem extremely valuable to the organisation) is precisely why you aren't on $200k or more at the moment.

And please don't kid yourself that you'll get to avoid all of this stuff by joining a startup. A founder or CEO of a small company is going to be even more aggressive in getting you to sign on the dotted line for a low price, since the company may be funded out of their own pocket (as opposed to a manager controlling a budget).

And what about founding a startup? Well, you'll have to decide on a price to set your customers. Again, you need those unique selling points and some great marketing to make your customers feel like they can't function without you. If you decide to go down the VC route, you'll be wrapped up in negotiations and due diligence for weeks or months, and if you don't bring the full force of your negotiating abilities, you'll be signing away a large share of equity at a low price that you may regret for the rest of your life.

No-one, absolutely no-one gets to skip the negotiations and still come out the other end with a 'fair' price or salary. These are facts of life, and whilst I don't think they're particularly unpleasant, if you decide to ignore them you'll be left behind as the rest of us shoot up the career ladder.

Re: You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do

#30

Post by mattquinn »

ChristianMarks wrote: post #28

This article pertains mostly to large, sclerotic firms with a pronounced suit-geek divide, somewhat like the blood-brain barrier. But it also exists in IT in higher ed as well. I suppose anyone with a modicum of professional pride would not want to work at a firm where the executives believe that managing IT is like herding cats--unless they were paid enough to guarantee the author a sufficiently high commission. (Kn…

When you say "IT in higher ed", are you referring to personal experience? That's a pretty specific domain, just wanted to know if you have any specific anecdotes.
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