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Want good programmers? Then pay them.

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Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#31

Post by pavlov »

pmjordan wrote: post #13

Some context/perspective on the Austrian employment situation: * Salaries are typically quoted per month, but there is a bonus of 2 months's salary paid per year, so yearly gross is 14 x monthly. The bonus is taxed at a lower marginal rate (6%, no social security contribution, IIRC, vs 37.5% lowest marginal rate). * There is no fixed minimum wage in Austria. Instead, there is a collective bargaining system, which set…

Salaries are typically quoted per month, but there is a bonus of 2 months's salary paid per year, so yearly gross is 14 x monthly.

Interesting. During the recent Euro crisis, when journalists discovered that some workers and officials in Greece enjoy a similar "extended year" of extra salary months, there was wide uproar across Europe about how the corrupted Greeks are being overpaid in ridiculous ways.

In the EU it's nowadays easy to see the speck in your brother's eye, but not notice the log in your own...

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#32

Post by mgkimsal »

smikhanov wrote: post #26

There are two sides behind this story. In small, not very competitive markets, like the one in Austria, companies are not expecting the programmers they hire to be great; not being very bad would be enough. All they will be asked to do is to support the legacy accounting system -- what's the point of hiring a ninja for that? This, combined with the typical CFO mentality ("That's all the budget I can allocate and I do…

The OP didn't mention 'entry level' with respect to that post. The post was looking for someone with 5 years of experience in tech X. That's probably not 'entry level' anymore, no matter how you slice it.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#33

Post by zeemonkee »

pmjordan wrote: post #13

Some context/perspective on the Austrian employment situation: * Salaries are typically quoted per month, but there is a bonus of 2 months's salary paid per year, so yearly gross is 14 x monthly. The bonus is taxed at a lower marginal rate (6%, no social security contribution, IIRC, vs 37.5% lowest marginal rate). * There is no fixed minimum wage in Austria. Instead, there is a collective bargaining system, which set…

I've had a similar experience in Finland - the shitty salaries (and lack of interesting work that isn't somehow tied to the sinking ship that is Nokia) are one reason I avoid Finnish companies like the plague, and just work for foreign clients.

This is the reason Finnish companies don't advertise salary, which is common in the UK and US for example - it's all collectively bargained in some way out of your control.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#34

Post by LinXitoW »

German dev here. Here, you hear companies complain about qualified laborer scarcity("Fachkräftemangel") and the politicians eat it up. It's not true though; it's just that the companies have totally wrong ideas of what they can demand/offer. There are a lot of unpaid internships, entry-level pay with senior-level experience jobs and a lot of the companies file much more job offers than they actually need, just so they can get more applications.

According to simple market rules, less supply with more demand should increase the price/salary, but it doesn't.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#35

Post by abhaga »

This is like saying, "Want diamonds? Pay for them!" which, I agree, is an entirely valid statement. But the reason the diamonds/good programmer are so expensive has little to do with their inherent value. It has more to do with lack of supply. A B level player will not suddenly graduate to A level if you start paying him higher.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#36

Post by pmjordan »

pavlov wrote: post #31
pmjordan wrote: post #13

Some context/perspective on the Austrian employment situation: * Salaries are typically quoted per month, but there is a bonus of 2 months's salary paid per year, so yearly gross is 14 x monthly. The bonus is taxed at a lower marginal rate (6%, no social security contribution, IIRC, vs 37.5% lowest marginal rate). * There is no fixed minimum wage in Austria. Instead, there is a collective bargaining system, which set…

Salaries are typically quoted per month, but there is a bonus of 2 months's salary paid per year, so yearly gross is 14 x monthly. Interesting. During the recent Euro crisis, when journalists discovered that some workers and officials in Greece enjoy a similar "extended year" of extra salary months, there was wide uproar across Europe about how the corrupted Greeks are being overpaid in ridiculous ways. In the EU it'…

I don't know if it's still the case, but bankers used to receive 16 salaries in Austria. The 4 bonus months presumably taxed at the low rate.

That said, it's irrelevant if you get paid 14 salaries or 12 salaries that are 1/6th higher and correspondingly adjusted tax/social security rates. It's just a trick to make the "common man" feel better, just like the employer's share of tax & social security. Employees would be outraged if it all came off their (correspondingly higher) paycheck.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#37

Post by smikhanov »

mgkimsal wrote: post #32
smikhanov wrote: post #26

There are two sides behind this story. In small, not very competitive markets, like the one in Austria, companies are not expecting the programmers they hire to be great; not being very bad would be enough. All they will be asked to do is to support the legacy accounting system -- what's the point of hiring a ninja for that? This, combined with the typical CFO mentality ("That's all the budget I can allocate and I do…

The OP didn't mention 'entry level' with respect to that post. The post was looking for someone with 5 years of experience in tech X. That's probably not 'entry level' anymore, no matter how you slice it.

From the original post:

In Austria, an entry level programmer with high level university training will usually get offered 2200 Euro gross

That's what I was referring to.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#38

Post by tdrgabi »

pavlov wrote: post #31
pmjordan wrote: post #13

Some context/perspective on the Austrian employment situation: * Salaries are typically quoted per month, but there is a bonus of 2 months's salary paid per year, so yearly gross is 14 x monthly. The bonus is taxed at a lower marginal rate (6%, no social security contribution, IIRC, vs 37.5% lowest marginal rate). * There is no fixed minimum wage in Austria. Instead, there is a collective bargaining system, which set…

Salaries are typically quoted per month, but there is a bonus of 2 months's salary paid per year, so yearly gross is 14 x monthly. Interesting. During the recent Euro crisis, when journalists discovered that some workers and officials in Greece enjoy a similar "extended year" of extra salary months, there was wide uproar across Europe about how the corrupted Greeks are being overpaid in ridiculous ways. In the EU it'…

I guess the workers and officials were getting "bonuses" payed by the state in a bankrupt country.

The developers are payed by companies, they don't get money from your pockets while also working against you.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#39

Post by frobozz »

mgkimsal wrote: post #6

most companies don't know how to value the contributions of software developers. i'm not actually sure they know how to value the contributions of most employees, period, except for salespeople. However as a dev, I'm biased some. I do think the potential for high value contributions, and the ability to avoid even costlier mistakes, is higher in the IT/dev dept vs other corporate departments. Several years ago I was o…

I'm not even sure they know how to value salespeople's contributions. Compensation in sales is often in the form of a lower salary combined with percentages of sales and/or bonuses for meeting targets.

When a salesperson makes a sale, what percentage of that sale has the salesperson brought in? How much of the sale was actually generated by marketing, design and manufacture? Similarly, if they fail to make a sale, how much of that failure is their own?

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#40

Post by Wilya »

coenhyde wrote: post #24

Remember the USA has had 50 years of Silicon Valley. The rest of the world is playing catchup. While developers may understand the what creates a successful software product/company, the businesses adopting software development have no idea what they are doing. There isn't the 50 years of collective physique at play. They haven't seen software giants rise and fall. And they haven't been exposed to the inputs that cre…

To be honest, the US companies probably have also more money to throw at the problem than those of any other country.

Everytime I see someone speak about the absurdly high salaries around Silicon Valley and saying that they are too low, I cringe a bit inside.

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