Is developer compensation becoming bimodal? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#301

Post by SixSigma » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 1:53 AM UTC

ryuker16 wrote: post #287

SixSigma wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm doing a degree in Supply Chain Management focusing on Computational Logistics. I really didn't want to sit through a CS degree either learning stuff I know already or stuff I know won't be much use in industry. So I chose a tangential discipline and am enjoying it thoroughly, being a bridge between Operations and IT provides real value to an organisation.

Make sure you pile on the private software projects: without the CS degree, they're gonna want either experience or some proof you can code. Ironically, plenty of tech departments hire guys who are skilled first rather than having some intrinsic interest in the area they program for. Believe me, some old school companies will hire a CS grad who couldn't spell supply chain over you in a heart beat. Maybe it's differen…

It's more about model building than out & out coding. Papers are algebra and describe clever heuristics. The main issue seems to be marrying the theory and practice.

I am building direct industry experience rather than filling GitHub.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#302

Post by jamez1 » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:14 AM UTC

thesimpsons1022 wrote: post #230

beachstartup wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because it is. don't you know any bankers, lawyers, or doctors? discussing how much they get paid is a big part of the culture.

i think there is a lot of embarrassment discussing salary because it shows how you're valued by the company. I get uncomfortable discussing mine because i don't want to provoke jealousy. However, if i was paid less than most i'd find it embarrassing to admit the company found me less valuable than others.

Discussing with your peers how much you are being paid is the only way you figure out your value.

Companies are quite opaque and it's hard to know what you are worth to them, that's why they don't disclose this sort of thing. (and get angry when workers discuss it)

You would do yourself (and the people in your world around you) a whole lot better service if you worked together, rather than worrying about embarrassment.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#303

Post by thesimpsons1022 » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 3:46 AM UTC

jamez1 wrote: post #302

thesimpsons1022 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think there is a lot of embarrassment discussing salary because it shows how you're valued by the company. I get uncomfortable discussing mine because i don't want to provoke jealousy. However, if i was paid less than most i'd find it embarrassing to admit the company found me less valuable than others.

Discussing with your peers how much you are being paid is the only way you figure out your value. Companies are quite opaque and it's hard to know what you are worth to them, that's why they don't disclose this sort of thing. (and get angry when workers discuss it) You would do yourself (and the people in your world around you) a whole lot better service if you worked together, rather than worrying about embarrassmen…

i had a friend stop talking to me because I made more money than him. Maybe its rare but his jealousy was insane and don't want to deal with again.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#304

Post by mrep » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 4:22 AM UTC

rmk2 wrote: post #11

dkopi wrote: post #3

The most important thing to remember about developer compensation, especially when comparing to more "traditional" roles, is scale. A programmer working at a large internet company may be impacting millions upon millions of people. Building a feature that lets you collect (or save) a penny from a user every month is worth $240K a year when spread out over 2 million users. $120M when spread out over 1 billion users. T…

A roadworker should be paid amazing rates, then, because millions of people will end up using that road.

And this is where the supply side of the equation comes into play. Many people can build the road and there shouldn't be any differentiation in how it is built (assuming they have common engineering standards). Thus, the supply is almost perfectly competitive causing low wages.

However, there are infinite ways a developer can make something. 1 developer can make design a system that can save/make their company millions that most other developers would miss. The supply side of developers is more like a monopolistically competitive market. Thus, they can extract some of those savings/profits in wages.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#305

Post by richmarr » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 8:07 AM UTC

Bartweiss wrote: post #166

mafribe wrote: post #15

I teach computer science at a well-known, large and mediocre university. I see bimodal grade distributions all the time. The more technical a subject, the more bimodal the grades. In fluff subjects like software engineering where grading relates to essay writing and group projects, grade distribution tends to be gaussian. OTOH in technical subjects where I grade by automated test suits, basically students fail almost…

I've held this basic theory for a while, and it seems to explain a lot of things about the state of software engineering. Most visibly, there's a wild disagreement about whether we have too many programmers, or not enough. Big tech companies consistently say that they struggle to find programmers, while contrarians at places like The Atlantic love writing pieces about how we're education way more programmers than we…

> .. and they're not really describing the same things

I'd apply this to the other end of your argument too. The reason there's wild disagreement, i.e. "too many programmers, or not enough" is that they're talking about very different things.

There is no linear scale between "can't code" and "great programmer". Anyone smart enough to be a great programmer should understand very well that no system is that simple; especially one involving people.

On the personality side, you have pioneers, early adopters, people who are comfortable being in the wild, out of their depth... and you have town planners, who like to optimise systems they understand already... and in the middle settlers, who are best when taking innovations and promoting them to a wider audience. In a large software organisation you need ALL THREE types, because they all fulfil important functions.

There are similar differences in terms of learning style, ambition, network, experience, confidence, bias, and luck.

Putting people into buckets like this is ill-advised.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#306

Post by Amezarak » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 10:03 AM UTC

ryuker16 wrote: post #290

Amezarak wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really think it's location, location, location, not necessarily whether or not the software is the product. I've worked for consulting companies, product companies, and right now I work for a sort-of back-office organization. The best I've been able to do, despite several years of experience, good references, inside connections, a graduate degree, and being pretty (I think, anyway) personable is...75k. And I don't…

IDK, I'm calling horse on that. I'm a self taught developer who have roughly 1 year exp. and moved to Tennessee(40th poorest state in the union, ultra low cost of living) for a software gig last year. I'm black, 30 year old male, and have a resume with more job/career hopping than a con-artist. I'm not really that great at programming(got fired after 6 months!).....first offer(I took it) was low ball....at 55k!! Next…

I mostly have done enterprisey stuff, webdev and desktop, so C#, Python, Java, C++, Javascript, and then a long tail of other stuff. Really good at SQL. No IT stuff.

I can't explain the .NET world, but I think what could hurt me with open-source type companies is my lack of a Github. Nothing I've done for work has been public, my personal projects are nothing I'd be willing to share and, quite simply, the very last thing I want to do when I get home at the end of a ten-hour day is program, especially when I have many, many other things that need to be done - around the house, with the family, etc.

Like I said, my plan is to somehow find the time and contribute, so there's something out there, but it's going to be rough and take a while. But if that's what I've gotta do, that's what I've gotta do.

Overall, I think the biggest factor is my unwillingness to move. I do live in a very poor state. I am very confident that if I went elsewhere I could make a lot more. There are maybe a dozen and a half employers here. Generally the rule seems to be the commercial companies pay nothing, and the government contractors pay by what you can negotiate plus years of seniority.

Maybe I should go the recruiter route - I never have. That's one reason I posted, to see what other experiences are. Thank you.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#307

Post by 72deluxe » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 10:11 AM UTC

wnevets wrote: post #229

goostavos wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Probably universities are dumbing down requirements for $$$. I 100% believe this is true. When I was in college it was pretty staggering to see my fellow classmates receive passing grades and get shoveled through the programs despite never grasping the basic fundamentals of CS. These were people who, at the end of CS 101, still couldn't tell you the difference between a string and an int, who after CS 202 _still_ co…

>It seems true even for the higher tier degrees too. It seems even a masters degree isn't a good indicator. In the past year alone I've watched several guys with masters enter and then promptly leave our startup due to having just absolutely no idea how to write software. :( is this a problem with degrees or the interview process? How did they get the job without ever proving they knew anything about software?

Having a degree doesn't necessarily mean you have a clue about the architecture of software, how to separate data from the GUI, or even have a full grasp of a simple language. I do not have a degree but having worked with degree holders who came to the company fresh from University, I can safely say that some of them hadn't a clue about how to write software (this was C++).

The skills required for writing software only truly come about if set your own project at home and work through it and write it fully.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#308

Post by nnq » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 11:16 AM UTC

extremely_smart wrote: post #138

nnq wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine you've never been the one hiring or interviewing developers, have you? There is an amazing bit though: there are the ones that you classify as "surely worthless", but then you see they can indeed get some jobs done , so a non-technical manager or HR-person can easily confuse one of those that "can sometimes program computers to do useful stuff or keep things running" vs someone who can do "software engineer…

How did your category-three people drag the project down?

John X is assigned to project Y with team A but find it very boring for him. So he overengineers in a way so that it only works by solving a very complicated engineering problem that he wants to solve instead (think "developing your own distributed no-sql db" class overengineering).

John X leaves for a more interesting project, team A can't make modifications to the current over-engineered system so they need do a rewrite of a few key components that incurs a huge delay.

And yes, it was not John X's fault. It was the manager's who assigned it to the wrong team and project, and the team leader's that they didn't have working code review process to be able to give JX feedback early to "write code easier to maintain by a less experienced team even if it's maybe less efficient and takes him a bit longer".

So you're right in insinuating that category-three people don't really drag projects down: it happens when they are assigned to the wrong place and when you have teams with broken processes, so objectively speaking, bad management is actually what's dragging things down in this case. But isn't "bad management" close to a pleonasm anyway?

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#309

Post by dionidium » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 5:00 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #227

dionidium wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Have you considered that there might be people who don't fetishize cars like you do? I feel like you might have this loaded as a sort of generic thing you say to people, but it doesn't apply here. I'm talking about the tradeoffs people make in general. Calling me a car fetishist is a non sequitur.

You literally just assumed that millions of people would rather own a car but are forced not to instead of considering the possibility that some people simply don't want to drive.

That doesn't make me a car fetishist anymore than noticing that most people are religious makes me a believer in the afterlife.

What I'm actually saying, though, is far more benign, which is that just as many people would own a car in NYC as in Kansas City if it were equally convenient and inexpensive [0]. People (in general) don't choose public transit merely because it's convenient. They choose transit when it's more convenient than car ownership.

The flip side of this is that high car ownership rates aren't necessarily evidence of nonexistent or inadequate transit. Where car ownership is cheap and convenient, people almost universally choose to own a car (even if other options exist).

[0] Well, clearly not just as many. I don't like driving, either, and New York is attractive to me, too, because it enables that preference. But, still, consider that nearly half of all New Yorkers do own a car, despite how wildly inconvenient that is. Consider also that even in cities like Detroit and St. Louis something like 25% of people are carless, so there's some baseline level of poverty (even in very inexpensive cities) that prevents ownership. All of which is to say that a 50% ownership rate in NYC actually strikes me as pretty high (and as evidence, again, that people really will put up with a lot to keep driving).

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#310

Post by yourapostasy » Wed, Sep 28, 2016, 5:13 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #66

pmorici wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$80k in Kansas City and $150k in San Francisco is exactly the same amount of money after accounting for differences in the cost of living. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=$80000+salary+Kansas+C...

I hate these reductive COL adjustments. They're preposterous. Even if you assume that all your expenses are linearly multiplied (hint: Amazon costs the same no matter where you live), your savings are a lot more afterwards. If you were living on $40k/yr in Kansas City, you could move to SF and suddenly be saving $80k/yr. Would you really rather have $600k in Kansas City than $1 million in SF?

It isn't the things that you buy that linearly increase (as you correctly pointed out) as much as labor, and any thing/service that has a large labor component.

Because the staff delivering that labor also experiences an X multiplier in shelter costs (and for lower-wage workers, the multiplier is highly regressive and frequently much higher for them to obtain an equivalent quality of life), the labor input cost is increased. Unless you DIY everything, including not eating out (restaurants have very high labor input costs), fixing your own vehicles, do your own plumbing/electrical/HVAC, do your own dry cleaning/dentistry/vision care, etc., you'll see commensurately higher costs for any material goods and services with high proportion labor input costs.

For busy single professionals, two-income couples, or families, it is not realistic to even mitigate these costs. A big chunk will unavoidably come out in property taxes for everyone, paying for public schooling: all those administrative staff, operations staff and teachers, wanting to live as close-in as they can afford, paying those linearly-increased dirt costs, will be expressed in your property tax bill.

For the vast majority of people not connected with the real estate industry, they are far better off commoditizing their shelter cost complement, see [1] for this complements concept. This means vigorously opposing any increase of the "value" of their homes, even when selling. In the US, you will never, ever make back that "increased value" in the average time most US homeowners hold a mortgage (7 years), if you honestly accounted for all the actual costs you bear in all consumed goods and services for increased real estate prices. That increased value only benefits those who have a high churn rate on their properties.

[1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html