Is developer compensation becoming bimodal? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#41

Post by mafribe » Tue, Sep 27, 2016, 11:06 AM UTC

deanCommie wrote: post #35

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…

Actually doesn't your experience hint at the opposite trend in the working sector? If everyone (roughly) either fails programming, or aces it, then the working professionals are the ones who passed AND excelled.

This is an interesting suggestion.

However, it is very easy to cheat your way through college and obtain good grades. My assessed coursework regularly shows up on rentacoder.com and similar. There is an industry out there for writing dissertations. Group work is another mechanism that weak programmers use to avoid getting better: they let the good programmers do all the programming and then do documentation, or UI design, or nothing. In addition, there is a pronounced grade inflation, so even weak students look great on paper.

Not every organisation has the know-how to filter out weak students that look great on paper.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#42

Post by Bahamut » Tue, Sep 27, 2016, 11:08 AM UTC

asdf742 wrote: post #21

Does anybody else think the salaries are a little high? Perhaps the sample size is skewed? I'm somewhat senior in software engineering, but I literally don't know a single person making over 200k. Nada. Not one. I also don't know any college grads who started making 150k. That seems absurd, unless you're only looking at certain companies and top performers or something.

I know plenty of people making over $200k in the Bay Area, some over $300k.

I think that is the point of the article commenting on the bimodal distribution of salaries.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#43

Post by redcalx » Tue, Sep 27, 2016, 11:11 AM UTC

deanCommie wrote: post #35

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…

Actually doesn't your experience hint at the opposite trend in the working sector? If everyone (roughly) either fails programming, or aces it, then the working professionals are the ones who passed AND excelled.

I believe your comment is missing a /s tag.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#44

Post by stdbrouw » Tue, Sep 27, 2016, 11:12 AM UTC

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 don't think the conclusion follows from the data. It's not implausible that in computer science you need to "get" a whole bunch of things before it clicks and you start being productive, and a bimodal distribution of grades would then be indicative only of people who are further along in the learning process vs. those that have not yet reached that critical point, rather than any huge difference in intrinsic ability. This is just speculation, of course, but so is any other explanation and I prefer giving people the benefit of the doubt.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#45

Post by pathy » Tue, Sep 27, 2016, 11:12 AM UTC

antocv wrote: post #7

You can find salaries data by looking at Swedish IRS, the numbers are public, but may not be in digital form/easy API yet. But you can order a catalogue from a redistributor, containing every persons income from work and income from capital and taxes payed, for previous year. Would not take much to scan it and analyze.

Here is a quick Google Sheets with most "Developer employee codes" that are reported to the tax authority/Statistics Sweden.

Salaries listed per Quartile, in SEK. The categories are quite broad. There is a listing per decile but I could not find it right now.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yPjcXoKuwq8SBngQ2-G9...

http://SCB.se is the source.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#46

Post by rajeshp1986 » Tue, Sep 27, 2016, 11:13 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.

Construction workers are traditionally resources, They can be quickly replaced. With software this becomes tricky. You need to spend considerable time, amount and energy to find the correct replacement who can drive it with same efficiency. The 2 reasons why companies like Google, Facebook etc pay so much is because: 1) They want to attract the top talent, top 1%, 5% may be. 2) They want to keep people happy so that the key people working on most important features don't leave the company.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#47

Post by mafribe » Tue, Sep 27, 2016, 11:15 AM UTC

stdbrouw wrote: post #44

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 don't think the conclusion follows from the data. It's not implausible that in computer science you need to "get" a whole bunch of things before it clicks and you start being productive, and a bimodal distribution of grades would then be indicative only of people who are further along in the learning process vs. those that have not yet reached that critical point, rather than any huge difference in intrinsic abilit…

I agree, I don't think there is much difference in intrinsic ability. I'm absolutely convinced that every healthy person can become a really good programmer.

But becoming a really good programmer requires putting in a lot of time doing programming, and a lot of students don't put in that time.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#48

Post by kgwgk » Tue, Sep 27, 2016, 11:23 AM UTC

mafribe wrote: post #36

meric wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a theory where the bimodal distributions comes from two sets of people: one set focused only passing the course/assignment/test, the other set focused on actually knowing the content. Appearance and substance.

Interesting theory. I have a different one, derived from teaching 1000s of students over 2 decades. the bimodal distributions comes from two sets of people: one set working hard and putting the hours in until the master the subject, the other set being lazy, cheating, and don't put the hours in, so they never achieve mastery. Appearance and substance.

How is it different?

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#49

Post by gotchange » Tue, Sep 27, 2016, 11:25 AM UTC

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…

Or these tests were designed from the first moment to exhibit this distribution of grades since they favor only geniuses and insiders alike.

I am not really buying that this is some kind of a reflection of a natural or deterministic phenomenon.

Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?

#50

Post by bonoboTP » Tue, Sep 27, 2016, 11:27 AM UTC

meric wrote: post #34

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 have a theory where the bimodal distributions comes from two sets of people: one set focused only passing the course/assignment/test, the other set focused on actually knowing the content. Appearance and substance.

That's my experience too. There are those who want to get a degree with the least amount of work and don't really find the topic interesting. And then there are those who will discuss it and debate it before/after class, etc.

Good test to tell them apart: if the lecturer mistakenly starts to talk about stuff that he already said in the last lecture (i.e. mistakenly doing the last one again), the first group will be happy and silent because there will be less stuff to learn for the test. The second group will tell the lecturer because they want to learn. This is then often mistaken by the first kind of people as trying to please the professor or "siding" with the prof instead of the fellow students. Because they think in a school-mindset.