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How to reward skilled coders with something other than people management

lizthedeveloper.com

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Re: How to reward skilled coders with something other than people management

#71

Post by mateo411 »

ionforce wrote: post #48
jshen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's flawed reasoning in so many ways.

How is it flawed?

The figure 779,000 makes sense if you could take a programmer today and have him travel back in time to 1999. While the programmer was back in 1999 he(or she) would have access to everything that is available in 2014. The programmer would have access to the frameworks, the infrastructure(AWS), and everything else that we have available.

The reason average programmers today don't make on average 779,000 dollars a year, is because like many things, programming hours and talent have been commoditized. There are many people that can learn how to perform these programming tasks. It's easier and more accessible than ever.

Re: How to reward skilled coders with something other than people management

#72

Post by cookiecaper »

ultimape wrote: post #40
jaunkst wrote: post #5

Give me equity stake. I don't want to manage, I want to come out of the end ready to start my own venture or retire and do what I love and build and awesome open source project to give back to the community.

If money is a means to an end, why not just find an employer who provides and supports that kind of work directly?

Because having the actual money lets you determine the end and implement it by your own definition.

Re: How to reward skilled coders with something other than people management

#73

Post by cookiecaper »

notastartup wrote: post #19
clueless123 wrote: post #13

If a sales guy sells 10x, he gets 10x commision.. If a coder produces 10x, pay him 10x. What is so hard to understand about that ?

you are actually a cost saver, not a profit generator. sales generate profit, a coder does not do this directly (e.g. selling).

The coder may be a cost saver in some cases, but not necessarily all; if that sales guy is selling software that the coder wrote, then the coder is just as much of a profit generator (actually more) as the sales guy who just sold the product that someone else made. The manufacturer and salesperson are both important. Generally speaking, the value of these positions is about even; specific situations may slightly favor one position over the other.

Re: How to reward skilled coders with something other than people management

#74

Post by waterlesscloud »

cookiecaper wrote: post #73
notastartup wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you are actually a cost saver, not a profit generator. sales generate profit, a coder does not do this directly (e.g. selling).

The coder may be a cost saver in some cases, but not necessarily all; if that sales guy is selling software that the coder wrote, then the coder is just as much of a profit generator (actually more) as the sales guy who just sold the product that someone else made. The manufacturer and salesperson are both important. Generally speaking, the value of these positions is about even; specific situations may slightly favo…

I worked a while as an "engineer who accompanies the sales guy to potential clients". Not really a sales engineer, as I didn't do actual salesman-y stuff and didn't manage accounts or anything. More as the guy who answered tech questions, gathered requirements, communicated back to the engineering team to get feature request time estimates, that kind of thing. More a 'liaison to the salesguy' than anything, though I would sit in on sales meetings.

It was fun, really. Lots of travel, lots of meeting people, lots of finding out what they really wanted us to be offering.

Anyway, I learned a lot about the art of sales, and while I was admittedly jealous of the money our salesguys made (some in 7-figure-land), I also learned it takes a specific kind of person to do it well.

And I could easily see why so many of them were such heavy drinkers. Combination of having to be very social and having the pressure of the revenue riding personally on your shoulders. I think as engineers you don't feel that pressure so directly. Certain execs in a startup, sure, but they're also part sales, in a way.

Re: How to reward skilled coders with something other than people management

#75

Post by jefffoster »

Whilst I agree that technical leadership is one aspect that skilled engineers can develop (and I agree that it's important for all engineers) there are many more.

For example, developers can grow into great product managers. Some can deep-dive into a topic and develop by sharing that knowledge through conferences, blogs etc. Some are interested in the people management side of things (scrum, kanban etc). All of these (and much more) are incredibly valuable and increase the value to the company they work for.

The challenge for companies is to recognize all these degrees of value (and reward them appropriately). I did some work to try and capture this with a visualization called a skills map (http://blog.red-gate.com/skills-maps/). Any feedback greatly appreciated!

Re: How to reward skilled coders with something other than people management

#76

Post by noname123 »

cookiecaper wrote: post #66
vinceguidry wrote: post #59

As a coder that's soon to be taking on a management responsibility, I definitely feel the weight of it, but I'm up for the task of figuring out leadership. I might well be more suited to it than a lot of engineers would, but I also think that management and leadership is less hard than it seems and that engineers would actually be better at it than their superiors if they would just give themselves a chance. The tric…

Ah, the innocence of the engineer on the cusp of a new management position. This is more or less what every engineer thinks when they start a "bridge position". Very few survive, because the reality is that the management world is much different than the world we engineers are used to, even after we have a lot of experience as an employed engineer. We think that since we've seen a lot of bosses come and go and met an…

Just came to say that I really appreciate this comment and an example why I still read HN despite all of the signal-to-noise of startup hoopla's.

I want to second and say that when I was very young, I had the perspective of the coder who thought I was being meritocratic when I judged my lead or project manager by their technical worth, ability to lead, whatever; and thought what a dumb naive and pandering move my PM would do by bring Dunkin' Donuts Munchkin's to our morning meeting, but the truth is I judged him unconsciously for those Munchkin's; and after learning the hard way, I'm bringing out all of the proverbial Munchkin's of pandering/cajoling/politicking to everyone at work now.

I'd say for myself that I had once retreated to a purgatory of technical "proving ground". But it was a false purgatory with empty promises, and I'm slowly coming back to the harsh reality of the physical pecking order of lunch tables at junior high cafeteria. But it bothers me less because I realize now how petty both technical and social people are in their own ways.

Re: How to reward skilled coders with something other than people management

#77

Post by ownagefool »

peteretep wrote: post #34
zobzu wrote: post #14

One thing that always fails with that is that management always get more money. Wanna be a tech leader paid 150k? (fancy title, +- same salary as before) Or wanna be a director paid 250k? (fancier title, way bigger salary) Kinda difficult not to choose the "free tesla every year" isn't it? Plus.. the directory job is generally going to mean a more relaxed job (albeit less interesting for an engineer maybe, but that's…

> Plus.. the director job is generally going to mean a > more relaxed job If you believe responsibility over people, budgets, liabilities and policy is less stressful than responsibility over systems, you're high. As a programmer, let me tell you: people who have only ever done programming for a career have no clue how relatively easy they have it.

Not really, it just depends on where you've worked in the past. If you came up under a decent management structure, you've had it easy. If you didn't, you get all the BS in addition to trying to solve potentially complex tasks.

I've had 1 good manager who I was too inexperienced to appreciate. Beyond that, the better managers I've had was too soft that the other departments were able to play politics with or hijack their staff and the worst did their best to keep you ultra stressed 24/7 because they thought you'd deliver more work that way.

We've all came up in different ways, unless you've had multiple lifes experiences, it's really hard to decide that's the way it is for everyone.

Re: How to reward skilled coders with something other than people management

#78

Post by blub »

dmfdmf wrote: post #54
choppaface wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing!! Like this story a lot better than the linked blog article. A positive example of real evidence is so much more effective than an essay of meta.

I am glad you liked it. I know HN doesn't like the supposedly contentless "thanks for sharing" type of comments but I appreciate it and think it is important to express such sentiments. In fact, about half way in to writing my comment I almost deleted it -- thinking no one would really care. I am glad I was wrong and that I completed it.

Thank you for sharing, it was inspiring and I really liked it. Such stories from the trenches are for me an important part of why I enjoy reading HN.

Re: How to reward skilled coders with something other than people management

#79

Post by blumkvist »

solistice wrote: post #63
jghn wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. The best managers I've ever had were the ones that completely shielded the rest of us from the absolute BS that always exist. Go figure, those were the companies where the rank & file didn't think political BS existed - surprise, your manager was protecting you from that!

So essentially managers are people sysadmins. They make sure everyone is working, try to resolve conflicts and ideally make sure that everyone is running the right tools. What would be a people engineer in that vein?

HR.

Re: How to reward skilled coders with something other than people management

#80

Post by blumkvist »

analog31 wrote: post #42
JimboOmega wrote: post #22

Am I the only coder who's always wanted to move into the business side eventually? I go back and forth on if I want to pursue an MBA every couple years or so (though I doubt the education would be worth it, it'd be a stamp on my resume for wanting to go that direction). Working with brilliant people and managing people problems are very complex and interesting to me.

My observation is that the MBA degree is primarily valued by other MBA's.

That really depends on where you got your MBA.
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