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Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

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Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#251

Post by bpicolo »

JamesBarney wrote: post #228
salmonfamine wrote: post #212

I think the explanation for bimodal dev salaries is pretty clear, and is similar to the explanation for the bi-modality in Lawyer salaries. Google, Facebook, Amazon, and whatever other big name you want to throw in the pot, are competing for developers. However, they are not competing for the same developers as Epic Systems, for example. FAANG (or whatever) are competing for a highly skilled subset of devs that can m…

Lawyer salaries are bimodal for a very specific reason. No law firms really believe that a graduate in the top 9% is worth 160k/year, but a graduate in the 11th percentile is only worth 60k. But they all have to pay the same because it's a signal to their clients that they are the best. If they paid less than their clients would consider their firm second tier not top tier. And Google is hiring the same devs as every…

Whatever Cravath pays, the rest of the Big-law-NYC industry follows.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#252

Post by barrkel »

riskable wrote: post #204
barrkel wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you investigated the correlation between developer location and developer ability? Do you think developers who are very good want to work with the best, thinking the best are in SV, then move to SV? Or perhaps they think they'll get the best return on their effort if they're working on software with big impact, and software with the biggest consumer impact is mostly written in SV?

This is highly dependent on personality. As an anecdote, I know a developer that does not like working with "the best" because they make him look bad (even though he's not a terrible developer). Given, he works at a company with stack ranking so I guess that company is self-selecting for developers like him.

Relevant to your username - people who don't challenge themselves are self-limiting. To grow, you need to go outside your comfort zone, you need to take some risks. And "not terrible" certainly doesn't sound like top 1-5% material.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#253

Post by conanbatt »

wfo wrote: post #239
aphextron wrote: post #134

>Another possibility is that U.S. immigration laws act as a protectionist barrier to prop up programmer compensation. It seems impossible for this to last (why shouldn’t there by really valuable non-U.S. companies), but it does appear to be somewhat true for now. I feel like this is the real issue here. The reason that the US has great companies is simply from the availability of large amounts of capital. And if the…

Instead of worrying about potential foreigners competing for your job, you should wonder why there are so few jobs out there: it's because the rich are hoarding them. The money for them, that is. There is so much work to be done, plenty of work for you and your Indian and Chinese friends to all have well-paying jobs. The reason we all don't have them is that we are just extremely bad at allocating resources: we choos…

> it's because the rich are hoarding them

The enemy are not foreigners man, the enemy are the rich!

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#254

Post by conanbatt »

christophilus wrote: post #169
aphextron wrote: post #134

>Another possibility is that U.S. immigration laws act as a protectionist barrier to prop up programmer compensation. It seems impossible for this to last (why shouldn’t there by really valuable non-U.S. companies), but it does appear to be somewhat true for now. I feel like this is the real issue here. The reason that the US has great companies is simply from the availability of large amounts of capital. And if the…

This is true. I recently applied for a job in the US and one in the UK. In the US, I got a ridiculously good salary offer. The UK job's compensation was maybe half what the US job offered. My cost of living is also lower than the folks in London, so it's just perverse no matter how you slice it. I honestly don't think it will last, though. Economically, it just doesn't make sense. My recommendation to any of my fello…

US Tech also makes a lot more money than UK tech. Starting with the big ones, ending with the amount of investment funding the area has.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#255

Post by bigmanwalter »

wfo wrote: post #223
d0lph wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why people don't like the concept of privilege, it seems almost built to shame people for having more due to circumstances.

If people don't like the concept, they don't really understand it. The way the word is often used and even the word itself, absolutely that ruffles some feathers and rightly so. They do studies, if people are given massive advantages (e.g. rolling two dice instead of one in monopoly and starting with double the cash) that are obvious and explicit, people will still believe they deserved to win, they earned their vict…

The reason people refer to these things as privileges is because they are unavailable to the majority of the population.

It's a very privileged perspective to live in a world where these things are considered normal.

Privilege has to do with the idea that these things are so far from being a reality for so many people that it's evident to them that the world does not consider this to be their right.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#256

Post by kamaal »

gaius wrote: post #157
kamaal wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in the same way, or in the same ball park. Mechanical engineering didn't have its Lisp. We do.

Mechanical engineering didn't have its Lisp. We do The steam engine was more of a productivity multiplier than Lisp could ever dream of.

Steam engine unfortunately can't make itself. So.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#257

Post by ryanianian »

laichzeit0 wrote: post #48
eksemplar wrote: post #3

As a manager I’d probably advice against picking programming unless you love it. In our educational system the increase in short-length programming classes at academy level has exploded and I doubt the market will keep up. Really great comp science or engineering students won’t ever have a problem, but I fully expect the short-length, autodidact or mediocre students to be entering a saturated market within the next f…

Programming for the sake of programming gets boring after a few years. At least for me, this was the case. There is only so far you can go with it as a pure discipline. Once you've mastered design patterns, higher order functions, etc. you end up with writing "just another" app, service, CRUD thing, etc. What I found really interesting was going one step further and using programming to solve "higher order" problems,…

This sounds like natural career progression (and also perhaps why some get bored doing the same thing for so long). You want to move up the lever of impact. For many this means applying their experience to a growing field (e.g. lots of interest in AI/etc recently) or helping other developers be more productive and not have to solve the same problems they did (e.g. growing k8s, cloud, ci tooling, new languages, etc.)

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#258

Post by q845712 »

tclancy wrote: post #156
rossdavidh wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Electrical Engineering, which the article often mentions as a counterexample, the 10-year veteran is not nearly as likely to drop out of the profession. Programming has a constant bleed-out of people who learning how to program, became veterans, and then were dismayed to discover that they were going to have to do it all over again, because the libraries, frameworks, languages, etc. were different. Some just do it…

I always wonder if some of the veteran drop-out in programming is that improvement (in my lone experience anyway) is couple with/ consists of realizing what else could go wrong. Every step up the ladder of experience affords a better view of how things can fail and that can be hard to deal with. I feel like I keep getting slower as I get older but not simply because of age; some of it is the motivation to sit down an…

I was just trying to point this out! Though in a more pedagogic setting: I have a very smart coworker who's been out of school for ~1.5 years. He works quickly and tends to create bugs he has to fix later. I got him to contrast his style against our coworker in his 50s who is slower to merge, but the rarely has to fix a bug!

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#259

Post by ivm »

yAnonymous wrote: post #192
aphextron wrote: post #134

>Another possibility is that U.S. immigration laws act as a protectionist barrier to prop up programmer compensation. It seems impossible for this to last (why shouldn’t there by really valuable non-U.S. companies), but it does appear to be somewhat true for now. I feel like this is the real issue here. The reason that the US has great companies is simply from the availability of large amounts of capital. And if the…

Where's all the great Indian, Chinese and Eastern European software? Seriously wondering, because most software I saw from these regions was mediocre at best. The whole world uses operating systems, browsers and development tools made in western countries.

Eh, nginx? All JetBrains IDEs? Yandex still beating Google locally? Ukraine being a huge outsourcing hub for US companies? China having ten clones for every service blocked by GFW?

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#260

Post by randomdata »

ryanianian wrote: post #213
jcadam wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truth be told, most software development doesn't require a high amount of intelligence, skill, or innate talent. I'm not afraid of a superior person taking my job. They would be no better at it than I am. I would probably be more productive if I were less intelligent (or on booze, but employers frown on that).

This is wrong. Even simple software requires a radically different way of thinking than the way most are trained. I've taught 6th graders how to code and it is clear that the way of approaching problems and creating solutions (i.e. creative thinking, intellectual curiosity, and willingness to collaborate and ask questions) really separates the students from who "get it" and thse who don't. Don't sell it short because…

Perhaps he means in relation to other careers? As someone who is both a software developer and a farmer, software isn't exactly easy, but in comparison to the knowledge and skill required to farm successfully, it is a breeze.
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