related question: would you pay a single employee who is 40x as productive, and can single-handedly replace a team of 40 (with heavy scripting of course)...one million dollars per year.
Poll: Would you pay a developer who is 3x as good as average, 3x the salary?
41–50 of 57 posts
Re: Poll: Would you pay a developer who is 3x as good as average, 3x the salary?
#42This question is about managing risk. Risk of the person leaving is probably highest on the list. You see 2x or 3x the normal rate in consulting. You are paying for a temporary boost in expertise. Salary wise it usually doesn't happen because you don't want that much risk.
Risk of the person leaving is probably highest on the list.
Assuming that leaving could be solved for in some form of contract or golden handcuffs, I would consider it. As much as there are drawbacks there are also benefits. Such as a person with 3X the companies overall technology picture in their head. A flatter knowledge structure. More accountability, so it does cut both ways, I would have no issue paying 3X for the tradeoff, so long as they where not my sole employee. In a sole employee situation I would prefer hiring a 2X and a 1X over a single 3X unless it was a temporary project based effort. The harder issue up front would be how to identify the 3X developer. I have a good process for spotting talent, but there is a gradient within that talent. Some are a good deal for market rate, other are what are refer to as the 10Xers and worth far more than they can command. Both are worth hiring and are above the industry but spotting the 10xer up front proves to be a daunting task.
Re: Poll: Would you pay a developer who is 3x as good as average, 3x the salary?
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
It becomes even more obvious when you consider more and more talented workers. I've met people that were easily five or ten times better than their peers, and they were the difference between a tightly-coordinated three-person team and a fifteen-person failure.
That's pretty much where I was going with, with this poll. There are developers who are 5-10x better than average but nobody would think of paying them 10x the average coder's salary while working on the same type of projects. Even if you can write insurance-claims-database-guis 10x better than average, you won't get 1.5x the average salary. This poll doesn't really pertain to hiring super-talented people who build J…
Right, one of the things that has to be clarified is that there are developers in the industry that should not be in it. If we isolate them away from the conjecture and only look at good developers then the question becomes interesting. Say you have two people that can and have proven that they can deliver. When you take totally bad apples out of the equation and only look at competent developers it does become an interesting question. Personally I side with paying the better developer, unless it would be the only developer. It's a huge risk when your entire development progress hinges on one person. Now in a team of 5 or 15 where delivery will happen either way. I would still opt for the 5. I believe that 3x developers can make more creative leaps from understanding a broader picture of what is being developed.
Re: Poll: Would you pay a developer who is 3x as good as average, 3x the salary?
#44Yes, and here's why. it's not about project productivity, it's about building your company. "A" players hire "A" players. "B" player hire "C" players. "C" Players don't want to look bad so they hire "F" players. That being said, I wouldn't pay them 3x in straight salary. Equity and profit sharing is a better motivator.
I don't know if Ive just seen too much but equity is one of the poorest motivators you can give me. I don't think I'm totally alone in this sentiment in that it seems like many are trending towards cash payment over equity.
Agree.. i'm programming in a pretty demanded field, and am motivated way more when my employer agrees to pay the salary i'm comfortable with, rather than trying to negotiate with worthless equity (exception for when the company is already profitable, several rounds of funding in, and the equity actually has a quantifiable value)
Re: Poll: Would you pay a developer who is 3x as good as average, 3x the salary?
#45I would pay 3x the salary, because a 3x developer creates a lot more value than that
Many people (including op) look at the 3x in a linear fashion. They think the 3x programmer is working 3 times faster, like a 3ghz CPU to 3 1ghz CPUs, or that they work 3 times longer, or a combination of these. This leads to 3 times more code, documentation, delivery etc. of exactly the same quality
I've never met such a programmer
Usually the x comes from better quality, and less quantity. So the 3x programmer has achieved 3x the functionality as requested, but that code base is likely 2x - 3x simpler, with 3x less bugs, which combined is closer to 6-9x easier to maintain. This code also influences the cost of code built on top of it. So the value increase in some areas is exponential rather than linear. You're unlikely to get this exponential increase in value from 1x developers
Another exponential value characteristic of 3x developers is that they have much better decision making. Maybe that means choosing the right tool for the job (choosing a distributed DB in stead of MySQL when you know you need scalability) or designing a customer facing UI. Recovering from a wrong decision can be very costly
These exponential traits mean that the earlier you are in a project, the more value there is in hiring that 3x developer
Re: Poll: Would you pay a developer who is 3x as good as average, 3x the salary?
#46First of all, I would assume that you already know this person and what he's capable of.
Hiring someone with a 3x salary just because people say he's good or is a Rockstar in the community doesn't work for me.
I experienced several situations where a Rockstar didn't match expectations and unknown guys had to clean Rockstar's mess when they left.
I'm not saying that Rockstars are shit and you should not hire them, what I'm going to say applies to everyone:
Hire this person for a X amount. If he excels at his tasks delivering what you want, and you realize that his performance if above the average, raise his payment and both of you will be happy. Both sides win.
Re: Poll: Would you pay a developer who is 3x as good as average, 3x the salary?
#47Yours sounds like a question assuming all people can build all software. That is simply not true. Sure, if you want to build some enterprise software with open source tools, hire an average bloke with XP and TDD experience.
I would pay someone 3X the salary to someone 3X "above average," but that does _NOT mean that s/he would accomplish the work in 1/3 the time at the same quality.
The difference between _brilliant programmers and average programmers is MASSIVE: someone 3X as "good" needs to be paid 3X the salary because they can create something new, imaginative, life-changing.
Re: Poll: Would you pay a developer who is 3x as good as average, 3x the salary?
#48I think the real question would be if that is sustainable, so I am voting no.
Re: Poll: Would you pay a developer who is 3x as good as average, 3x the salary?
#49Reading the comments so far, this question seems to necessarily raise another:
What is the best team size?
Let's say it's 3. (1 has too much risk and 10 has too much overhead.) Once your productivity needs exceed what 3 average developers can accomplish, if you place importance on team size, it makes sense to pay more for higher performance in order to avoid increasing the team size.
It's like paying to upgrade hardware on the network nodes you have (which exist to mitigate risk), rather than distributing work across more and more network nodes.
Re: Poll: Would you pay a developer who is 3x as good as average, 3x the salary?
#50The average is a pretty low bar in our industry. 3x as good as average is like the bar to even be employed in a small team environment.
With that in mind, I'd say that the industry is already paying 3x developers around 1.5x to 2x and lately it is moving into the 3x range.