I believe this is exactly what happens in Sweden, Denmark, and Finland. Salaries aren't public directly, but tax returns are...so you can easily see what everyone makes.
Just fyi. this is not the case in Denmark, tax returns are private here.
The Programmer Salary Taboo
241–250 of 331 posts
Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo
#242Reading all the replies on HN reminds me why companies like to outsource. Americans are expensive and have a strong sense of entitlement. This race to make more money for the sake of money just leads to accelerating inflation across the board. As far as I am concerned, salary is just a number and people can live just fine on $50,000 if they we weren't such a consumerist society.
There's a considerable difference between having a sense of entitlement and being rational.
Clearly. And this difference is exactly what we're seeing a lot of here.
Rational: "I am unhappy with $60,000 because it does not meet my needs."
Entitlement: "I was happy with $60,000 until I found out Fred was making $61,000."
Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo
#243We need to remember "you are not your salary". Comments like "an insulting $60,000" or "only $100,000" makes me shake my head. Your salary is not something you have to brag about.Your worth is not determined by your salary. A developer can create millions of dollars in value. Think how much value DHH created with Rails or Linus with Git and Linux. Or Damien with CouchDB. Remember Steve Jobs salary is $1 a year. Our g…
Which is all well and good, but to say that salary doesn't matter is bupkis.
If you're creating significant value and getting little for it, you're getting the short end of the stick. If you notice you're getting the short end of the stick, you're probably going to feel like crap.
Mind that lots of developers, if working for a company, don't own what they create.
"Our goal as hackers is to create value, millions of dollars worth of value."
Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo
#244We need to remember "you are not your salary". Comments like "an insulting $60,000" or "only $100,000" makes me shake my head. Your salary is not something you have to brag about.Your worth is not determined by your salary. A developer can create millions of dollars in value. Think how much value DHH created with Rails or Linus with Git and Linux. Or Damien with CouchDB. Remember Steve Jobs salary is $1 a year. Our g…
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Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo
#245Salaries 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?
Apply for other jobs while at your current job. When you have an offer that you would like, go to your current employer and say "I have been offered a job for X". That's all.
They'll either decide they want to keep you on at Xish or not.
Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo
#246Salaries 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…
$175/hour * 40 hours/week * 50 weeks/year = $350,000/year, for anyone else (like me) who can't immediately estimate equivalent yearly rates.
Eeek, only 2 weeks holidays per year? :(
Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
If people are getting $100,000 right out of college, then $45,000 is not very good.
Well, we'd need to know when that was. $45k in 1980 would be pretty awesome.
I'm 25, so this was probably 4 years ago at the most.
(Fun fact: jrockway was once a PHP programmer. And, we did not use source control there. And a web developer did a "push" and overwrote my weeks worth of programming. Then I knew it was time to find a new job :)
Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Or is a SEO
Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo
#249Salaries 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…
I've learned an interesting relation regarding salaries myself. It's not about the amount that you can live with, or what you think you need but about appreciation. I was such an idiot earlier: this whole angle was anything but clear to me. Early in my career I never asked much and I was quite happy with what I got because I didn't spend that much. All my salaries were big enough compared to the previous salary that…
the only tangible way a company can truly appreciate a good employee is biting the bullet and by paying him a bigger compensation
Exactly! A lot of people say what they really want at work is to be appreciated by their boss. Well he will appreciate you a hell of a lot if the money that should be in YOUR salary is in his instead!
Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you're getting the $165k, you're not going to be very enthusiastic about this exercise. Why not? I'd be completely fine being the odd one out, especially if it helped to encourage my lower-paid co-workers to renegotiate their salaries. The whole point of this exercise, IMO, is to determine if there's inequity, and how much. I'd want to know the full salary range, not just the average. Companies rely on you knowi…
More money going to raises for your comrades generally means less available for you
Nah, it means less money available to the tier above you and/or the shareholders and/or the non-LOB parts of the company, e.g. HR.