Stop complaining and pay programmers more • Hacker News Board

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#271

Post by njharman » Fri, Jul 02, 2010, 4:06 PM UTC

alextingle wrote: post #155

mikemainguy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's silly, physicians, mechanics, lawyers, and many other skilled tradesmen are just like programmers. The problem is that many folks see programmers as somehow different than these folks.

We should not seek to emulate doctors or lawyers, but cabinetmakers, watchmakers and joiners. Programming isn't a profession, it's a craft. The trouble is that traditional crafts are not really valued any more, as their purpose has largely been supplanted by mass production. So, we have no current role models for how to organise ourselves.

So you want programming profession to follow a model which leads to devaluation and replacement by mass production? Think programming is there already.

Outsorucing, Java schools churning out schlubs, seem like mass production analogs to me.

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#272

Post by lessthanideal » Fri, Jul 02, 2010, 5:20 PM UTC

Money is obviously part of it, but now the whole picture. The difficulty in finding programmers that are gifted is not that you are competing with other companies, it's that you are competing with the programmer taking his ability and resulting wares directly to the consumer. Between startups and lifestyle businesses the lone programmer has a lot of options that other professions don't necessarily have (nurses, for example).

You have to keep in mind that you are competing with the excitement and potential earnings of running your own show.

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#273

Post by blacksmythe » Fri, Jul 02, 2010, 5:21 PM UTC

jtheory wrote: post #254

blacksmythe wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real question is will two $150k programmers produce more than three $100k programmers. In Silicon Valley, my experience is yes. The same ratio probably applies anywhere, but the relative scale changes.

Ah, but programmers don't come with these labels, do they? And of course the $100K programmers are happy to accept an offer at $150K as well (though they won't be any more productive), in which case you've actually just chopped out a third of your productivity.

The $150k programmers don't answer job ads. They get all of their work through referrals.

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#274

Post by bitwize » Fri, Jul 02, 2010, 5:28 PM UTC

Vivtek wrote: post #179

stretchwithme wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and I don't think everything a doctor or lawyer does is then thoroughly tested. And if you fail to meet the high barriers to entry for doctors and lawyers, the likelihood that you'll make disastrous errors is pretty high.

For a very long time indeed in America, the majority of medicine was practiced at community clinics by nursing staff. A doctor was consulted only when necessary. The vast majority of medicine could easily be done by the intelligent layman. Like programming.

The clinic I go to has a staff with two doctors and several nurse practitioners (nurses with special training who are authorized to do some doctor-like things like make diagnoses and prescriptions for low-risk conditions). When I see an NP I am grateful for their presence, as my doctor probably has enough shit to do and can't be bothered by my mild to moderate medical questions.

The proliferation of nurse practitioners and physician assistance may provide something of a release valve to counteract the elitism, scarcity, and costs associated with doctors at least until there is reform within the medical profession itself.

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#275

Post by winternett » Fri, Jul 02, 2010, 6:09 PM UTC

I am tired of being offered $120k for a 3month contract without things like parking, vacation, and health benefits. I am lucky to be employed full time currently. I always ignore recruiter calls of that kind because what it really means is $30k for 3 months, which creates a "mercenary" job environment out of what should really be a more full time/stable developer job environment. I can do that by marketing my own skills. Employers need to end the short-term hiring practices, they're artificially boosting the economic outlook and creating shoddy work that is a piecemeal result of several developers that work on DEV projects temporarily.

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#276

Post by milesvp » Fri, Jul 02, 2010, 7:35 PM UTC

lowdown wrote: post #88

danudey wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you'll have to offer them equivalent worth to what they're making. I left a high-paying job at a company that didn't appreciate its geeks to go to a lower-paying job whose entire staff (except for three project managers and the accountant) were geeks. The founder started the company doing websites in Perl in the 90's, and grew it into a small-scale hosting/app dev company. It's still private, it's still owned b…

really, keep your "perks" - it is like giving a gift card. Just give me the cash and I will buy what I want.

Um, does your cash lower your tax burden? You should look at your marginal tax rate. I'm personally pushing 40% marginally, which means that any "perks" that the company can offer me which don't show up on my final W-2 are worth almost twice as much as if I'd had to pay for them out of pocket. Once you reach a certain salary level, you're wasting money not negotiating down your salary for things you value more.

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#277

Post by huhtenberg » Fri, Jul 02, 2010, 7:45 PM UTC

earl wrote: post #245

huhtenberg wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for extremely low pay Not sure where you are from, but here in Canada nurses lead very cushy lives. Salaries of 80 to 120K are not uncommon, and that's with 4 weeks of vacation, 1 day in / 3 days out schedule, etc.

Do you actually know any nurses, because I doubt it from your description. My gf is an EMT, and two of my sisters are nurses. Here's the actuality: Nurses are paid OK. They work long stressful jobs with severe penalties, both moral and civil, for screwing anything up. There is a high chance of serious injury, particularly while trying to move or assist fat or obese patients, of which there are more and more due to th…

> Do you actually know any nurses

I do. My best friend is an ER nurse.

> I wouldn't describe their actual jobs as anything like "cushy".

Cushy in terms of compensation and benefits. Not in terms of work being easy. Please read the post that I was replying to.

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#278

Post by glomek » Fri, Jul 02, 2010, 7:49 PM UTC

j_baker wrote: post #5

You have to understand: there's more to hiring programmers than paying lots of money. If that were the case, we wouldn't have had a dot-com bust and software companies would be dominated by MBAs. That's the hard part of hiring programmers. How do you incentivize the good ones to work for you? If you have a solution to that problem, I suspect you'll be a very much in-demand person.

> How do you incentivize the good ones to work for you?

Easy. Instead of giving the programmers managers, put the programmers in charge of their own projects and give them administrative assistants to handle all of the non-programming and non-decision-making parts of the job.

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#279

Post by glomek » Fri, Jul 02, 2010, 7:54 PM UTC

superuser2 wrote: post #255

j_baker wrote: post #5

You have to understand: there's more to hiring programmers than paying lots of money. If that were the case, we wouldn't have had a dot-com bust and software companies would be dominated by MBAs. That's the hard part of hiring programmers. How do you incentivize the good ones to work for you? If you have a solution to that problem, I suspect you'll be a very much in-demand person.

You make them respect you by understanding what they do and treating them like what they are: the people who create value for your business. You show actual respect for the work they do and give them interesting things to work on. I think Fog Creek gets it right. You don't treat programmers like second-class drones who make things for you; you treat them like the primary creators of value for you company, and yoursel…

> you treat them like the primary creators of value for you company, and yourself as their support staff

Bingo! The best managers I have had over the years spent far more time getting me what I needed in order to do my job than they did telling me what to do. They also got the most value out of me, and ended up looking the best in front of their bosses.

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#280

Post by Rickasaurus » Fri, Jul 02, 2010, 8:42 PM UTC

As a highly skilled programmer, what I really want is a fair piece of the pie percentage wise. Even a high salary for the field compares little to the prospect of making exponentially more. Also, nothing motivates like having the product of your work bring you money or prestige directly.

Because I'm currently only a few years out of school, no one would come close to paying me what I really feel I deserve. Even in the best case, the long term for a programmer doesn't look all that great. This is an extremely ageist industry.

For this reason in my off hours I've been working on trying to increase my prestige through writing books, blogging, and speaking at events. Eventually, I hope this helps me either find a startup with excellent prospects or allows me to charge large amounts to existing companies for consulting.

I can't see doing this with a family though. It's a difficult road either way.