The Programmer Salary Taboo • Hacker News Board

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#301

Post by roc » Wed, Apr 13, 2011, 4:51 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #214

MrFoof wrote: post #62

Salaries never stay secrets forever. Hiding them only delays the inevitable. Last year we were having a discussion at lunch. Coworker was building a new house, and when it came to the numbers it was let loose that it was going to cost about $700K. This didn't seem like much, except to a young guy that joined the previous year and had done nothing but kick ass and take names. The new guy was arguably the most talented…

That guy could have been me. Modest upbringing, lean living, doormat at negotiations, accepting absurdly low compensation because it seemed like the thing to do at the time, check check check. I'm glad he is doing better now. That said, mission effing accomplished for the company: they're well north of a million dollars richer because good little kids don't drop their drawers or talk salary numbers. This topic makes…

Ah yes. The old bit where social/moral obligations and judgments are only applied to normal citizens and never corporate citizens.

When a private individual walks away from an underwater mortgage because the deal suddenly sucks, they're seen as a scum-bag leech whose word isn't worth dirt. Get the economic-justice crowd in on the discussion and they start bandying about "debtor's prisons" and erecting straw-men for the dead-beat bonfire.

But when a bank walks away from an underwater property because the deal suddenly sucks, they're seen as smart. Shrewd. Walking might even be a bonus-worthy decision.

Not that private individuals are incapable of screwing one another over and somehow dodging social judgment [1]. It's just far, far less common. And the best treatment they get is a polite look in the other direction. No-one's printing an Op-Ed celebrating those decisions and castigating any attempts at socio-moral critique.

[1] For some reason we all look the other way when it comes to immigrant au-pairs. And that's horrible.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#302

Post by fsipie » Wed, Apr 13, 2011, 5:11 PM UTC

Tycho wrote: post #82

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 $…

Hmmm... when I graduate I'd definitely take a £18000 p/a job. I mean it seems at this age getting your foot in the door, getting started and putting some 'commercial experience' on your CV is far more important than the actual salary. On the other hand, if I could make a living doing freelance web development, then I could build that up until I have an income that employers would need to match (rather than just throw…

Hi,

£18,000 is what I got at my first job over 15 years ago. I know things are tough in the UK for you young 'uns now though.

Commercial experience isn't as good as having some nice websites in your portfolio IMHO.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#303

Post by roc » Wed, Apr 13, 2011, 5:13 PM UTC

GavinB wrote: post #161

brooksbp wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone please shed some light on what would be a good strategy to follow if you were in his position talking to HR, manager, CTO? What's the best way to save yourself once you've realized you're worth nearly double, triple, or quad your current comp pkg?

The easiest way is to just find another offer from another company. You're not "worth" double your current comp if you can't find it somewhere. Then you let them know that you have another offer but would prefer to stay if they can match the other offer. Keep in mind that this happens all the time and is standard procedure in most American and European companies. As long as you act honestly, your boss will probably n…

Never take the counter offer.

If you're going to go, go. If you're going to play employers to get more compensation, play prospective employers.

If you take a counter-offer from your current employer, they'll just put you on the shit list. First to go in any sort of rough terrain. First to get thrown under the bus if they need a body. And most importantly: you'll have set a new normal for salary discussions. That is, they'll feel they can simply say 'no' to every request until you're ready to leave again and then just match the offer.

They get to continue paying you X for however many months you give them; however many months it takes to find a job worth leaving for. Then they coast in and match someone else's 1.2X offer, having enjoyed months and months of paying your old salary and playing all that stress and frustration and work of getting another offer against you.

And you can be certain they'll be playing every social/moral game to make you think you shouldn't get it along the way [1].

Further, you'll have damaged the nascent relationship with the would-be hiring company. They invested nontrivial time and energy vetting and planning for you and will be miffed to find they were a pawn in a raise-play. Sure, it's a valid business decision to change your mind and turn down an offer. But those individuals will remember and give you less preference in the future [2]. Taking a counter offer from your current employer just isn't seen the same way as taking a competing offer from a third firm.

By all means, use a counter-offer to negotiate for more from would-be new employers [3]. But don't take the counter offer and stay put. Unless you really love searching for jobs and can dispassionately go through the "I'm going to quit." stage and that doesn't negatively impact your co-workers [4].

[1] "it's not a good time right now". "the economy has everyone really tightening down". "no-one's getting a raise this year". "i had to really push to get you guys a bonus, there's nothing left for salary". etc.

[2] They'll also see you as one of those "threatening to quit to get the best possible raise" people. Which is a negative for any manager who'd rather not go through that drama.

[3] Keep in mind that asking for a bid against a counter-offer can blow up if you have no intention of taking the counter. If you push for them to bid and they decline, accepting that job marks you as a certain type of negotiator, which isn't helpful for you. So if you really want to take this route, be prepared for the case where you need to actually accept the counter-offer, but continue your job search anyway.

[4] Remember that in any group-work situations, your co-workers will catch nontrivial shit when you move into the negotiating/quitting stage and they have to adjust and plan around your possibly not being there next month. Which they'll be forced to do, because management will ensure they can most-effectively bargain against you.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#304

Post by InnocentB » Wed, Apr 13, 2011, 6:55 PM UTC

smokinn wrote: post #45

teej wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cost of living adjustment is one of the easiest calculations to do. Is it as simple as this ( http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=cost+of+living+in+mount... ), or did I misunderstand your point? It doesn't seem that complicated to take a $100k salary point and normalize for cost of living.

Seems like a good idea but I doubt the data is very accurate. I live in Montreal which is well known to be one of the cheapest places to live in North America (very cheap housing, very cheap energy, etc.) but WA puts Montreal as the most expensive? http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=cost+of+living+in+mount...

WA has good data on cost of living in the US, but I don't think it has comparable data for Canada. For example, if you take out a few of your terms there you'll see that for Toronto it's using the US national average, which is way off. If you try and check their sources, all they list is http://www.coli.org/, which has US data only.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#305

Post by InnocentB » Wed, Apr 13, 2011, 7:27 PM UTC

michael_dorfman wrote: post #285

rweba wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Norway all tax returns are public: http://skattelister.no/ In fact I just looked up an old high school classmate and was initially surprised at how much she was making - until I realized 280,000 Kronor is only about 50,000 USD.

FYI: 280.000 is a pretty poor salary in Norway. Gasoline here just topped $10/gal, if that gives you an idea of the cost-of-living-adjustment necessary. In other words, your friend is not living the life that a $50k salary in the US would buy (in terms of disposible income.) On the other hand, she gets 5 weeks of paid vacation a year, full health care, and a year's paid maternity leave with each child.

Gasoline prices aren't a good indicator of cost of living. They are a factor to be sure, but their prices are too overwhelmed by political policy (ie gasoline taxes) compared with other expenses, which introduces too much noise into the data.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#306

Post by jessedhillon » Wed, Apr 13, 2011, 7:34 PM UTC

llimllib wrote: post #293

praptak wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a sad fact. There are huge (irrational?) barriers for giving employees big raises or bonuses. Take Borland for example - they'd rather sue Microsoft for brain-drain (i.e. paying the employees more) than match the offers: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-279561.html

> There are huge (irrational?) barriers for giving employees big raises or bonuses. Since they exist at almost every company, I think it seems probable that it's rational. Here's a simple possible argument for their rationality: Creating big barriers to large raises/bonuses discourages employees from sharing salary info, since there's little they can do about it. Furthermore, the more your employees are worrying abou…

> ...I think it seems probable that it's rational.

It's an example of bounded rationality: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounded_rationality

The decisions seem rational given the perspective and limitations of the decision-makers.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#307

Post by willyt » Wed, Apr 13, 2011, 7:46 PM UTC

techiferous wrote: post #105

wging wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$175/hour * 40 hours/week * 50 weeks/year = $350,000/year, for anyone else (like me) who can't immediately estimate equivalent yearly rates.

But remember that there is non-billable work (accounting, etc.) and a 15.3% self-employment tax. And also remember that there are probably not 50 weeks of 40 hours/week at this company but rather short-term or part-time work. And you are paying for your own benefits. I've found a good (albeit a bit conservative) rule-of-thumb is to convert the hourly wage into the yearly salary. Working as a consultant for $175/hour…

Yep, my accountants rule of thumb is after deducting time for admin and other downtime you will be doing well to sell about 60% of your available billable hours. So that about ties up with what you are saying.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#308

Post by myth_drannon » Wed, Apr 13, 2011, 8:05 PM UTC

rmc wrote: post #245

brooksbp wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone please shed some light on what would be a good strategy to follow if you were in his position talking to HR, manager, CTO? What's the best way to save yourself once you've realized you're worth nearly double, triple, or quad your current comp pkg?

Apply for other jobs while at your current job. When you have an offer that you would like, go to your current employer and say "I have been offered a job for X". That's all. They'll either decide they want to keep you on at Xish or not.

Now the current employer will say sure we are happy to give a raise. You decline the good job offer. One week later your manager fires you.... That's what actually happened with one guy in my previous job. He actually came to an office party in the new company but then his previous manager asked him to come back with higher salary offer. He came back and was fired . He was very lucky that our company agreed to re-offer and accept him back

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#309

Post by Luyt » Wed, Apr 13, 2011, 9:08 PM UTC

rglullis wrote: post #274

rglullis wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just registered salaryshare.me. Let me see if I can get something going tonight.

Done and done! http://salaryshare.me I also submitted it to HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2441888

Whoah, that's quick! The result looks nice. Is the code open source? I'm curious how you did it.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#310

Post by Tycho » Wed, Apr 13, 2011, 9:38 PM UTC

danssig wrote: post #296

Tycho wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see ads for 'Senior developers' that want to pay £25-33k. Granted there also ones paying better but the highest advertised I've seen is £40-45k p/a. Obviously it will be higher in London though, and there are lots of ads for contractors at £300 per day. Meanwhile I know people who finished their CS degree and never got a programming job. I know one guy who's a decent programmer, only got a couple of interviews, one…

1. Move 2. Go contracting If no one would put up with these low wages they would be forced upward.

But what if I don't want to move, or don't want to spend anytime in unemployment? £1500 per month is pretty appealing when you have rent to pay. Also, while £18000 might be a joke in the respect that you're only slightly better off than the average admin job, despite the vastly different knowledge and problem solving requirements, what about the whole 'majority of developer applicants can't solve FizzBuzz in ten minutes' thing? Or the belief that programming ability is like compound interest - the more you learn, the faster you get better? Or the outsourcing to India (where I bet they get a whole lot less than 18k per head)? Those things would seem to make low starting salaries natural.

But I do like the idea of selling your skills on a freelance/contracting basis, and foregoing all the noise of the industry hiring practices. I'd definitely give that a shot before taking a 18k-24k job. Seriously doubt £25+k for a first, junior dev role is on the cards though.