‘Another possibility is that programming is uniquely hard in some way, but that seems implausible to me.’
Seems to be the fatal flaw in the article.
Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?
491–500 of 584 posts
Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?
#492Oddly,this is only even potentially true in the US. The rest of the world, including Europe, pays devs at the low end of the distribution showed here.
I was curious which countries (out of the wealthier developed economies), for programmers, are the most out of line vs the median income for that country (based on a full-time job median wage). The best are the US, Denmark, Israel. Germany has a higher median income than the UK, but the UK pays better in programming. Sweden's median income is quite a bit higher than both Germany and the UK, but Germany and the UK pay…
Would be interesting to hear what data sources you used. There was an article on bloomberg about the same metric, but it's 404 now. Seems like the data has been used in this map, though: http://ramiro.org/map/world/income-software-engineers-countr...
(Results are quite different to yours, but this data is 4 yrs old)
Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?
#493One (semi-pedantic) quibble with the article: there absolutely are barriers to entry for programming. Programming is hard! These barriers may not be artificial, but they are real. To use a non-software example, there are barriers to entry to chip manufacturers and power companies even under anarchy. Fabs are tremendously hard to build. Power plants are extremely hard to build. Building up knowledge and skills about c…
Actually, I think that if someone has got to the point where they are dealing with the details of CPU and OS then they’re well along the learning curve.
Many, perhaps most, people have trouble with the basics of programming. Pointers, functions, even basic iteration are concepts that cause a lot of people to flunk out of introductory programming.
Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?
#494Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is my end goal. My best chance at having a lasting impact on society and this world requires me to first accumulate more capital before I can help. If I spend everything helping others now, then I won't have done all that much, and chances are it won't be a lasting change. It is important to be aware of your place in society. I am a 28 year old white male with only a handful of years of professional experience.…
Are you saying that you think you will be able to climb faster than everyone else and when finished (when are you rich enough btw?) be better at making an impact than all the other efforts trying to change the world? At least be honest. It's not that it's the most efficient way to spend your money; you simply want to be the hero. While letting your spare coins trickle down to those below. And it's ok cause you'll pay…
I don't have to climb faster than others, but I would like to peak in wealth and influence before I come up with my own ultimate plans. That will likely be around the age of 50 or 60.
We must all do our part to look out for others. I give away whatever I can afford to friends and family who are short on money. I accumulate relatively little compared to my earning potential. But I am also laying the groundwork to help others further down the road.
My influence comes from being born a straight white male to a wealthy family in a wealthy nation. I am educated and practice an in-demand vocation. I command a high wage on the labour market, and this allows me to accumulate capital faster than most people. A factory worker makes less than a third of what I do per hour. So I can make a larger impact than them.
Most people do not earn enough to accumulate any meaningful capital in their lifetime. I am more privileged than most, and of course, less privileged than others.
Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?
#495Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want to know just how hard programming is, try teaching it to someone. Programmers have to remember a vast amount of domain knowledge. Consider the basic task of choosing where you are going to store some data, well first you need to know which options exist and there's dozens of them (do you want Postgres, SQLite, Redis, LevelDB, ..?). Then you need to know the strengths and weaknesses of each. And I hope you…
Which is why I question the usefulness of a computer science program/degree for the vast majority of dev positions. Learning how to learn would I imagine be the best use of such a degree; but then one with at least half a brain, given a few years in the field, starts to pick that up independently. I chose to avoid computer science degrees because in those days, in the late 90's, it was pretty much 80-90% math classes…
The number of hours of hands-on programming in a degree (probably only a couple of hundred a year) are too few for a graduate to learn anything but the basics.
Most professional programmers would put in more hours of hands on programming in a months work.
Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?
#496Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm fine with that, as long as they can positively contribute. I'm not fine with bringing in millions of people who immediately go on benefits while US citizens can't afford health care, college, and military vets are living on the street
> millions of people who immediately go on benefits This is difficult in most countries and extremely so in the US. Which benefits? How do they prove entitlement to them? By what process are they entitled to them but the military vets living on the street aren't? I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but I suspect it happens a lot less often than you think. (also, you've done the old "Schroedinger's immigrant" thing: at…
illegal immigrants drive down wages in low skill jobs which depresses wages up the chain because natives have to find more skilled jobs to retain their previous standard of living.
At the same time their children, whether "dreamers" or native born get free education and healthcare the average cost per student in the US is around 15k the highest in the world, which these kids receive for free despite their parents never paying into the system.
The end result is that illegal immigration costs US federal and state governments 85-100 billion a year.
I support highly skilled labor ie top .1% of worldwide talent, not unlimited immigration sponsored by corporations to drive down wages for US citizens, whether that be low skilled manufacturing or software engineering
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/sep/...
https://fairus.org/issue/publications-resources/fiscal-burde...
Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?
#497As a manager I’d probably advice against picking programming unless you love it. In our educational system the increase in short-length programming classes at academy level has exploded and I doubt the market will keep up. Really great comp science or engineering students won’t ever have a problem, but I fully expect the short-length, autodidact or mediocre students to be entering a saturated market within the next f…
This is what I heard about 10 years ago, and advise I got is to go into engineering because programmers would be "just another over-saturated marked like lawyers".
I'm glad I did not treat it seriously.
Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?
#498Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is wrong. Even simple software requires a radically different way of thinking than the way most are trained. I've taught 6th graders how to code and it is clear that the way of approaching problems and creating solutions (i.e. creative thinking, intellectual curiosity, and willingness to collaborate and ask questions) really separates the students from who "get it" and thse who don't. Don't sell it short because…
I disagree, GP is absolutely correct. The reason people think that programming or software engineering is hard is because they were told that it is hard. US and the West in general has this strange culture where those that are supposed to know (teachers, parents, professors) like to tell those who are learning (students, children, etc) that whatever is done is hard. Math, apparently, is hard. Algebra is hard. Trigono…
I think software development is hard, but not because the subject matter is intrinsically difficult. (Sometimes it is, but usually that's not the primary reason.) It's hard because we've invented a mountain of little annoying problems with little annoying workarounds and it takes decades to learn most of them in any particular domain.
Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?
#499Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm curious if you favor a progressive tax system I favor a flat tax if we must pay tax at all. > The crux of this is that while you may disagree, its possible, and even perhaps likely, that your success is less "yours" than you believe, and that your mind is rewriting history, so to speak, to make you feel more in control of your outcomes than you actually were. This is by no means your fault or anything, and ther…
>This is the crux of why I think the concept of privilege is extremely dangerous. You have no idea who I am and I've already stated that I fit some of the demographics that you deem underprivileged. Yet instead of listening to what I had to say (which is a quite simple explanation -- work smart/hard == do good) you fit a very elaborate psychological explanation over my experiences (of which you know nothing about). I…
> Just to be clear, are you arguing that you worked harder/smarter than every person from your hometown who has seen less success than you?
Yeah I'm arguing that. I used to try to help these people. I spent a lot of time doing it in fact. I would try to teach people in my town about computers but was told it was "geek stuff". I would try to get them to read books but again...that's for the nerds. I'd try to tell them there's more to life than football (was told there wasn't). I would tell them that maybe it wasn't a great idea to use crystal meth (this was before they all got hooked on opiods). I'd tell them that joining the military wasn't a path to success. I would tell them that they shouldn't be afraid of people from other cultures and that maybe they could learn from them and teach what was unique to their culture.
It all fell on deaf ears or was met with overt hostility. Even when I started to become successful and it looked like maybe some of this geeky stuff was actually valuable, all I got was anger for "abandoning" my roots. So at some point I just said fuck it. They don't want help. They are lazy and afraid and if you try to help them they will bring you down too.
Fast forward 20 some years and I see very privileged, successful people (such as yourself) making very well meaning but very misguided arguments about how to help underprivileged people. Do they, I and nearly everyone else face some systematic biases? Yes!! I've hit multiple glass ceilings and currently reside at one I don't have the energy to break through. That's not the main problem though. By far the biggest thing holding people back is their own fear of trying to succeed and the lack of strength to stand up to their own community who holds them back.
I don't know your background, but if it were practical I'd suggest actually going to live with some poor people. I think you'll find it's not the "myth of meritocracy" or the "patriarchy" holding them back. It's for the most part their own bad habits. I think most people who have escaped poverty would agree.
Re: Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?
#500Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Compare to mechanical engineering, where if you use the wrong steel your bridge will fall down; or to medicine, where if you prescribe the wrong drug someone might just die. Dereference the wrong pointer and the rocket blows up. Forget a memory barrier and the robot brain gets corrupted memory and sees human life as an impediment to paper clip maximization. Forget to zero out some memory in a goto: cleanup section…
For software developers (and in fact, for the general public), the smart play is to rely on real engineers to provide mechanical, electric, or electronic failsafes in their designs.
Nowadays the electronics has code in it.