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The Programmer Salary Taboo

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Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#31

Post by tjarratt »

xnxn wrote: post #8
jrockway wrote: post #2

I've always wanted to write exactly this blog post. Keeping your salary confidential is great for big companies, but it benefits you in no way. You should be making what your coworkers make. If you make less, you're being fucked, plain and simple. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you can remedy the situation. Sadly, some people go their whole careers without doing so. FWIW, my first programming job only paid $…

> only paid $45,000 a year Reading this kind of thing on HN makes me feel ill; my W-2 says $47k. Maybe I need to make some changes.

Really depends on where you work. There are some managers that make $47k in some parts of the US and live very comfortably.

Aside from that, contracting can help get bump your salary up. Fresh out of college I was making less than $47k and then easily tripled my salary within a year of contracting (although I was working insane hours and basically used all of my allotted overtime hours). It isn't always great for mental health or work/life balance, but it can be a great shot in the arm in terms of providing needed work experience and money.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#32

Post by ig1 »

dbjacobs wrote: post #20

When working for the federal government everyone knows everyone else's salary. So it can be done, and is generally less corrosive than hidden salaries.

Are government salaries merit based or tenure based?

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#33

Post by michaelochurch »

dbjacobs wrote: post #20

When working for the federal government everyone knows everyone else's salary. So it can be done, and is generally less corrosive than hidden salaries.

When working for the federal government everyone knows everyone else's salary. So it can be done, and is generally less corrosive than hidden salaries.

As long as people are happy with their own pay, they really don't care what anyone else is making. In a large company, an incompetent making $5k/year more (because he's been there longer, or does some task no one else wants to learn how to do) isn't going to turn a happy employee into someone who wants to get out immediately.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#34

Post by psadauskas »

harryh wrote: post #29

Consider a hypothetical scenario for the person on the other side of the table: You are hiring up an engineering team and hope to hire up a team of 10 engineers paying 100k/yr each. So far you've hired 9 people at 100k and are working on filling that last slot. You find someone perfect but he has a competing job offer and is asking for 110k/yr instead of just 100. He's no better than the other 9 people you have alrea…

Keep the offer at 100K. If he's no better than the others, you can find another one. If you keep missing out on hiring because other companies pay more, then you need to raise your standard salary, because all your other engineers will jump ship within a year or two.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#35

Post by lukev »

As a developer who, admittedly, has never had trouble finding a salary I'm satisfied with, and who is comfortable negotiating, I'm not a fan of transparency. It seems like it would cause more problems than it solves.

If salaries are private, then salary is purely a function of negotiation between employer and employee. Presumably both are happy, or at least happy enough not to terminate the relationship.

If salaries are public, however, then a ton of other variables get thrown into the mix. For example, it's possible to end up in a situation where I'd be happy to stay for a certain salary, and my employer would be happy to give me that salary to keep me, but because they can't offer all my peers the same salary, it doesn't work out, and nobody is happy.

And that doesn't even take into account all the extra interpersonal conflict and rivalry that transparent salaries could cause.

The mitigation for both of these issues is, of course, is to base compensation on objective performance rankings. But that's a nontrivial problem. How do you compare a sales guy to a developer to a DBA? Even if you did come up with a mostly fair solution, it would still invite endless discussion and dissatisfaction from people who feel the system wasn't evaluating them properly.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#36

Post by tzs »

Wait...Google starts at $100k/year for people fresh out of college with an undergraduate degree? So what do they go up to for people with experience?

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#37

Post by ender7 »

impendia wrote: post #24

In academia, it is common for professors' salaries to be listed in public databases that are searchable by anyone. I don't particularly draw any conclusion from this; indeed, there is some debate as to whether this is a good thing overall. My impression is that it doesn't make much difference one way or another. In any case, it may be interesting to HN readers to know that this is the norm in the public sector.

Incentives in academia can get pretty complex, however. In terms of bragging rights, salary tends to factor in way below publications, tenure, chaired position, etc. Plenty of academics are still lured away to other institutions with the promise of a better salary, but it's less socially acceptable to admit that that's the reason you're switching jobs (instead of, say "I would get to be head of a program/department"). Also, unlike most tech jobs, most academic jobs are not located in the most exciting places to live, which adds yet another confounding factor.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#38

Post by clistctrl »

jrockway wrote: post #2

I've always wanted to write exactly this blog post. Keeping your salary confidential is great for big companies, but it benefits you in no way. You should be making what your coworkers make. If you make less, you're being fucked, plain and simple. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you can remedy the situation. Sadly, some people go their whole careers without doing so. FWIW, my first programming job only paid $…

My first year programming job I made ~50k though I was a contractor, and did a bunch of overtime so it was likely quite a bit more.

I think it was pretty good considering I had not graduated college... so I was getting paid to learn.

I started at $25 an hour. I quickly learned the business, and realized I could make it better. So i spent my nights building an app to do it better. They loved it, became the new thing we used. 6 months later my contract ended. I asked for more... and oh yeah did I mention I was a junior programmer (the code was exactly what you would expect, so I had some good leverage) to me $27 an hour was pretty good. I was 19, and making more than my Dad (he always said this is the benchmark I'm supposed to pass).

about 4 years later I'm now making $77k with about 5k or 6k bonus. I moved to Boston, so I think without a degree, its reasonable but I would definitely be making quite a bit more had I finished college.

I'm Hoping to quit my job soon, and start off on my own. The project I did for a $2/hr raise after 6 months could've been worth millions... and I'm sure I could do it again, seeing better ways to do things is kind of my thing.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#39

Post by dstein »

joezydeco wrote: post #15

My teeth always grind when I read articles like this. Yes, you can make $100K at Google. In Mountain View, California. How does that correlate to someone doing the same job in Austin, Seattle, Chicago, or Cleveland? The cost of living swings greatly when you depart the west coast. Decent wage databases will add another variable to the position and experience axes: the geographic area where the job is offered. (Exampl…

According to CNN's cost of living calculator (http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/costofliving/costofliving.htm...):

  $100,000 in Mountain View, CA
  = $58,302 in Austin, TX
  = $73,992 in Seattle, WA
  = $71,306 in Chicago, IL
  = $61,660 in Cleveland, OH
And from a quick skim down any real estate listing for Mountain View, CA I think these numbers might be a bit on the high side.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#40

Post by gavingmiller »

michaelochurch wrote: post #25
jseliger wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just going to say something like this. In The Logic of Life , Tim Harford writes about how CEO pay reformers thought that making CEO pay public would cause companies to reduce pay because high pay was so outrageous. The opposite happened. Why? Because who wants to be in the bottom 50%? Practically no one. If you open up salary information, everyone is going to want to be "above average," even in companies that…

Fog Creek has a "ladder" system based on some fairly objective criteria. Based on years of experience and certain assessments of project scope and skill level, each employee gets a number between 8 and 16 that determines pay. This means that compensation is based on performance. Now, the only point of controversy is whether the employee and employer agree on performance. If there's a discrepancy there, at least there…

Could you elaborate on this criteria?
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