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Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

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Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#321

Post by motohagiography »

blackrock wrote: post #293
motohagiography wrote: post #158

Contrarian view: salary disclosure destroys value for people with negotiating skills, which are among the most valuable and useful skills of all. Disclosure advantages people who collude to apply political pressure (gang up) instead of appealing to principles or leveraging their skill and the value they bring. There is general social and economic harm to facilitating this behaviour. Disclosure lowers all boats in tha…

> salary disclosure destroys value for people with negotiating skills I call BS. You, as an employee seeking employment, don’t have much negotiating power. If you really did, then you won’t be seeking a job, that pays money, from someone else. Your best and really only way to negotiate, is to stand firm with your salary demand. And be ready to walk if they try to game you. This is really, your only advantage. It also…

If your skills aren't valuable, then yes, they won't be worth much. If you have invested in developing skills that are valuable, then you have all the leverage in the world. But even if you flip burgers, if you can convincingly commit to being reliable you can command a %15-20 premium.

The power to walk away is the greatest power of all. But if the chips are down, you have to eat, and so your BATNA is poor. This means having a job is the best time to look for the next one. If you need one, you're a price taker. If you don't, you are the price maker.

The hardest thing to accept is that it's mostly attitude.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#322

Post by shados »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #182
motohagiography wrote: post #158

Contrarian view: salary disclosure destroys value for people with negotiating skills, which are among the most valuable and useful skills of all. Disclosure advantages people who collude to apply political pressure (gang up) instead of appealing to principles or leveraging their skill and the value they bring. There is general social and economic harm to facilitating this behaviour. Disclosure lowers all boats in tha…

Why should people get paid more for better negotiating skills if those don’t help them do a better job? It’s good that we eliminate that factor as much as possible. I’d rather go for meritocracy.

Because there's hundreds of nuances and circumstances that can affect how much a business needs to pay someone to secure their service, and not all of it can be compared apple to apple.

Real world example: I'm paid almost twice the market rate for my current job. Why? Not because I'm better at it than my peers, but because when I started, I opted for more RSUs (public company) instead of base salary, and the company has grown tremendously. Folks who didn't take the same gamble have a much lower total comp now. Years ago no one knew this was going to happen, so my base salary was lower. If the market hadn't shifted the way it did, should I have been able to complain others are paid more than me? Seems like a gamble with no drawback which is a bit unfair for the others, no?

Some folks opt for more time off. People with the same title end up at a different place within the salary bands based on countless factors, many of which are very subjective (and if you put too many titles, then people will just negotiate the title instead of the salary, effectively doing the same thing).

People are also generally biaised when talking about themselves and aren't very good at fully understanding the context around the salary of others.

All these factors mean that an objective salary based purely on quantifiable factors won't end up 1:1 with how good people are at their job. Thus we have negotiations.

And then there's environmental factors. If companies aren't allowed to negotiate, you end up with a situation like this:

Company Foo pays 150k for a Sr Eng. Bob is paid 160k at his current job, and Foo is trying to poach him. Bob asks Foo for 165k. Without negotiations, Company Foo can either:

A) Tell Bob tough luck (which in the current market is a bad move. Software Engineers don't grow on trees)

B) Give all their Sr Eng (potentially hundreds or more) a 15k raise. But then the same thing will happen to Company Bar... When does it stop? Should everyone at all tech companies but paid precisely 150k? What if Company Foo and Bar are very different and why? It's very subjective.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#323

Post by motohagiography »

38911BBF wrote: post #189
motohagiography wrote: post #158

Contrarian view: salary disclosure destroys value for people with negotiating skills, which are among the most valuable and useful skills of all. Disclosure advantages people who collude to apply political pressure (gang up) instead of appealing to principles or leveraging their skill and the value they bring. There is general social and economic harm to facilitating this behaviour. Disclosure lowers all boats in tha…

Opposite view: Salary disclosure primarily destroys value for people with strong negotiating skills but who are not necessarily the best contenders for the actual job - especially when it comes to highly specialized tech jobs as many of them are introverts. It also enables work force diversity which is actually the best outcome for the company in the long run. Salary disclosure is also a prerequisite for having a pub…

To say women can't negotiate is the most bizarre and offensively sexist trope I have ever encountered in acceptable discourse. I"m not necessarily making a direct accusation, but we should acknowledge that the very idea is un-serious.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#324

Post by motohagiography »

carterehsmith wrote: post #307
motohagiography wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Negotiation is price discovery. It is literally the empirical process of discovering the clearing price of an agreement based on deductive reason instead of the blind-man's-bluff bullying of a haggle. People on the privileged end of a power imbalance always think they're being co-operative, because they necessarily know they have the power and choose whether or not to co-operate. Negotiation is the art of managing po…

I don't understand your point. You seem to be all about "price discovery", but if it goes the wrong way, ie you discover the price is below what you accept, it is "bullying". Weird.

If it's below what you would accept, there just wasn't a deal to be had. Everyone's time is saved. However, a manager's "no negotiation" policy deprives investors of growth. It's irresponsible.

Of course, if you are at some crappy, hollowed out and debt laden behemoth solving for cost optimization instead of growth, then it's already a race to the bottom and it doesn't matter.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#325

Post by tiew9Vii »

tsycho wrote: post #175
dijit wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a junior sysadmin in London I earned 26k; If not for a senior engineer talking openly about salary I would not have had the guts to ask for a significant increase. At the time the very senior people in the company were earning 75-85k, and the mid-levels between 32-45k. I was fortunate enough to be taught very well, I became senior in that company in a very short amount of time, but I never got the raise th…

Orthogonal to your anecdote, tech salaries in London are ridiculously low :(

Compared to the US, absolutely.

Compared to the rest of the UK, London salaries are significantly higher in general.

I cry when I see juniors in the US posting earnings 2-3x that of a senior developer in the UK. If I could work in the US I’d be there tomorrow just for the work.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#326

Post by kragen »

motohagiography wrote: post #320
kragen wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people with negotiating skills, which are among the most valuable and useful skills of all. Skills at zero-sum negotiation, like street-fighting skills, are among the most valuable and useful skills of all to those who possess them and to their allies. But skills at zero-sum negotiation by definition provide no value to society; the value they provide to their possessors is merely expropriated from someone else. Th…

People who read about negotiation typically learn it's a positive sum process for creating and discovering value. People who have not often conflate haggling with negotiation. There is a critical theory that arbitrarily paints the process as "transactional," or "confrontational," but it is not something that survives and bears out in a competitive environment. The managers I have seen who subscribe to the co-operatio…

Negotiation is not always or usually zero-sum. Salary negotiation is a kind of haggling, which is an exception.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#327

Post by fyfy18 »

dijit wrote: post #211
shuckles wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not on topic, but can you point me to some information about the spending habits of someone making that much in a city which I understand is fairly expensive?

How much money? 26k? I was living in a shared house in Lewisham; which is not an attractive area of the city, the house itself was fairly run-down and there was no heating (electricty would power off because it was on a meter). This room cost me 400gbp/mo, and I put 20gbp for electric and 20gbp for gas in the meters every month. Food was relatively cheap, at most another 400gbp/mo Phone contract was 30gbp/mo, that wa…

I lived in a London 10 years ago, and both salary and expenses were pretty similar. There are a lot of cheap or free (public museums and art galleries are free) things you can do in London if you know where to look.

Unlike SF travel is a heck of a lot cheaper, because there is usable public transport. I lived in zone 3 and worked in zone 1 and typically paid no more than £20/week for travel (usually by train or tube) - compare this to SF where a single Uber trip across town could be that.

I was there again last year for a few months as a contractor, and prices hadn't changed that much other than housing:

This time I rented a studio in zone 2 which was £1200/mo. It included water and heating, and I paid around £20/mo for electricity (with a pre-pay meter so quite expensive). This was a short term contract though, for long term I saw similar places for £1000/mo or less.

I usually ate out for lunch, which was £5-£10/day. I would cook dinner, spending around £20/week on groceries. Coffee was around £2.50 for a cappucino. Sometimes I walked to work, getting breakfast out on the way which was another £2 or so.

I took the bus, cycled or walked to work, so my travel expenses were under £15/week. I'd go home to my family at weekends, so can't comment on 'going out' costs.

Compared to before it isn't that much different. You can live quite well as a single person on £1500/mo in London. That's leaving nothing on the table and is above the living wage, so you can see where the problems come from.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#330

Post by CalRobert »

rcxdude wrote: post #294
CalRobert wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the London average is what's low.

No, it's the US tech average which is ridiculously high. (Seriously, London has some of the highest salaries outside the US).

I suppose I mean for the quality of life offered. If nothing else Dublin seems much better.
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