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Pricing Programmers

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Re: Pricing Programmers

#81

Post by neals »

hasenj wrote: post #78
lemevi wrote: post #10

For years, from one job in the bay area to the next I worked on products that never made any money and ended up being canceled. Even when I worked on a project that ended up making money I spent a year working on a version that was rebooted from scratch before customers ever saw it. At a couple of startups that never took of afterward I could clearly see the impact that code I wrote was making on sales and value. It…

It doesn't reflect well on you to say that basically all the projects you worked on failed.

It doesn't reflect well on you to not understand how this works.

Re: Pricing Programmers

#82

Post by fsloth »

gizi wrote: post #26
sl8r wrote: post #25

The labor market for programers in the tech industry has two features (anecdotally observed) that are interesting to me: 1. Labor does not receive (or insist on) percent-of-value or percent-of-transaction compensation. This is in contrast to some other professional disciplines (e.g., salespeople often get paid on a percentage or commission, bankers often take a % cut, pe / vc / hf has 2% and 20%, real estate is on a…

You can never make good money as a programmer, if you let non-programmers pick the subject, or let non-programmers monetize the platform in your stead. Google and Facebook are worth hundreds of billions of dollars exactly because there is not one non-programmer with a say in them.

I think you confuse the founder/owner status with the work role. I would rephraze this - you can never make good money as a salaried employee (google with it's early-stock-millionaires is an exception).

The second question is, how can a company be succesfull? I know several very succesfull software businesses which were not directed by software engineers. The question about competence to run a company is far more complex than saying if domaim specialists won't run the show it will tank.

Re: Pricing Programmers

#83

Post by gotchange »

Well, at the risk of sounding negative but I'm surprised that this incoherent rambling made it to the top of the chart on HN and garnered such interest from the community.

I read the whole thing but I couldn't follow exactly what he was trying to convey there. Yeah pricing is difficult and one of the most intricate subjects in marketing and just ask any marketer or MBA student/pro and he will confirm that and labor is no different.

I also think that compensation would be a better choice of words than pricing. Human labor is a commodity and thus carries a price but the human being itself is not a commodity and can't be priced, bought or sold whether he be a programmer, plumber, astronaut ... etc.

Re: Pricing Programmers

#84

Post by fsloth »

Alex3917 wrote: post #2

Programmers are worth $0 because programming isn't a job. It's not even a skill; rather, it's more of an active literacy. Asking how much you should pay a programmer is like asking how much you should pay a telephone user, or how much you should pay a pencil user.

Sure, we can go philosophical and say that when I'm ordering a taxi I'm programming - although my input is a simple time-coordinate pair.

Since we are using natural language as real human beings our communication is context sensitive and this instance the context was the role of a paid position in a programming role. Don't go too philosophical without setting up the context, preferably with examples. And then think if you are actually saying something non-obvious.

Re: Pricing Programmers

#85

Post by fsloth »

gizi wrote: post #39
ketralnis wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need someone with programming skills and are willing to pay them, and someone with those skills will work for that amount, that's the price of a programmer. Asserting that the skill is worthless doesn't make sense as long as people will pay for it. Even if you just consider it a form of literacy, scribes absolutely were paid to do their work before literacy was as widespread

The existing platforms on the internet are worth trillions already. The ones that truly work, are built, operated, and owned by programmers. The other ones ultimately only crash and burn. What do we need non-programmers for, in that context? We may pay them to do something menial, but besides that, what else would we need them for?

I for one welcome our new programmer overlords. Kneel before the quadrocopter swarm of doom!

But really. Menial? Like teachers, doctors and kindergarten workers?

Societys true value is in something else than the value in the bank account.

Re: Pricing Programmers

#86

Post by douche »

uptownfunk wrote: post #27
sl8r wrote: post #25

The labor market for programers in the tech industry has two features (anecdotally observed) that are interesting to me: 1. Labor does not receive (or insist on) percent-of-value or percent-of-transaction compensation. This is in contrast to some other professional disciplines (e.g., salespeople often get paid on a percentage or commission, bankers often take a % cut, pe / vc / hf has 2% and 20%, real estate is on a…

This is interesting, I would be more bold and call these problems instead of features, as I think programmers deserve better. (Then again I may be biased!) Problem 1 is more systemic and harder to solve. For Problem 2 I feel there may be a way to strategize around it. Specifically, wondering if there is a point where salaries increase, and then after a certain point, rate of salary increase drops off at which point i…

I'd be very hesitant to push a system that gave significant bonuses to salary increases based on going out and getting an additional degree. A.) Does the material in the additional education in any way contribute to making you better/more efficient/whatever at your job? B.) The risk of bullshit diploma mills goes up again.

I have family in education, and many districts have incentive programs for teachers to get Master's degrees, so that in addition to the pay bump, they get some or all of the tuition covered. I've known a number of people who've done this, and not one says that it helped them do a better job as a teacher - the programs were big rubber-stampers, and the only real outcome is that they are now not quite so pitifully paid.

Re: Pricing Programmers

#87

Post by Joof »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #74
gsnedders wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's incredibly pervasive—it's essentially one way of imposer syndrome manifesting itself.

It doesn't seem to be so common among marketing people, lawyers, or politicians - all of whom, in increasing order of severity, might benefit from more if it.

They often have different personalities.

Also: Marketing has a measurable outcome.

Lawyers work like slaves (very well paid ones) and have a measurable outcome.

Politicians do a lot of marketing / fundraising.

Programmers don't always measurably see the value of the things they create. Especially on a large team. This obviously depends on the product.

Re: Pricing Programmers

#88

Post by [deleted] »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #74
gsnedders wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's incredibly pervasive—it's essentially one way of imposer syndrome manifesting itself.

It doesn't seem to be so common among marketing people, lawyers, or politicians - all of whom, in increasing order of severity, might benefit from more if it.

[deleted]

Re: Pricing Programmers

#89

Post by spoiler »

lemevi wrote: post #10

For years, from one job in the bay area to the next I worked on products that never made any money and ended up being canceled. Even when I worked on a project that ended up making money I spent a year working on a version that was rebooted from scratch before customers ever saw it. At a couple of startups that never took of afterward I could clearly see the impact that code I wrote was making on sales and value. It…

It's nice to see someone have such a nice experience with their employment history. I actually have the opposite experience.

tldr: I am happy you had such good luck; mine sucked.

Worked in Tech Support (for a tech-related company), made tools to make mine and colleagues' from the department job easier and faster. This caught some attention from the infrastructure department, which got me "promoted" to junior sys admin. Nearly everyone kept point out how useful I am[1]. Yay!

But it's not really that much of a yay. It's now expected of me to still do tech support, work on those tools, do sys-ops for some big/corporate/enterprise clients, be the "errand boy" for the other [senior] sys admins (ie, do stuff that's "below" them or that they don't know how to do)

It gets worse. I am the lowest paid employee in the company, too. I get paid less than our DNS admins, simply because they're there longer (there's this certain "culture" in the company which I'll get to in a bit) and they hardly do anything, because most of their job is automated (and more so since I made their job even easier). I wouldn't even mind doing all this, but then pay me for all the three jobs I do. The reason for my salary is "historic": Is started working as a student, and even though I did get a few raises since my initial salary, it's still the lowest one in the company because the "base" salary is still what my student one was. I get paid ~£450 while the next person with the lowest salary gets ~£600 which is an [also under-appreciated] girl from the DNS department. Everyone from the tech support had at least ~£700, while my two sys admin colleagues get ~£1100 + bonuses; oh and I don't get bonuses for the same shit that they do; they even make me do something and then get the bonus for what I did. Sometime in the past they agreed to track "overtime" (which also includes any really special stuff for the really big clients which are outside of the contract that we'd do) under one user on Harvest, and just split it between themselves. I was given access to the harvest account and I tracked my time on it because I was told to do that. But they'd still split the money in half? The fuck. When I asked about it because I was genuinely not sure if I was doing something wrong, the response I got is, and I quote--because the absurdity of that moment is etched into my mind--was, "but I have three kids and you don't." I was too shocked to say anything and just murmured something in agreement. The other admin hasn't got any kids. He doesn't even have pets.

Also, some of the longer-employed employees are trying to push this "we're a family" bullshit, when anyone who's not them is clearly not part of the family, which is clear from how they all interact. If anyone from one of the "newbs" tries to buddy up, all they get is attitude.

And can't look for another job, because I wouldn't be able to relocate due to certain life circumstances that tie me to this town (at least for now).

Typing this is just making me furious so I'll stop now. I'll just like to add that, I am not in need of money, because I come from what is considered a "middle class" (I hate the labels, but they get the point across here) background. However the unfairness is what really gets to me.

[1]: Maybe I'm retarded and they want to make me feel nice.

Re: Pricing Programmers

#90

Post by Joof »

dasil003 wrote: post #77
freyr wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Labor does not receive (or insist on) percent-of-value or percent-of-transaction compensation. This is true of pretty much all engineering jobs, and more broadly, most non-sales jobs. Commission becomes feasible when you can directly attribute sales or billable hours to a specific person. > Initial salaries are good, but there is wage stagnation. This is true for all engineering jobs, and also most jobs in general.…

> I'd suggest that in most fields, you don't make significantly more money until you're managing a significant percentage of people, or tasked with making decisions that set the direction the company. Why should programmers be an exception? One way of looking at programmers is that they are managers of an extremely cheap, fast, scalable, yet stupid, workforce. Once that workforce is put into action it can operate ind…

Maybe, but that unfairly biases towards writing types of code that scales when that isn't always the case. Lots of work doesn't scale in the same manner and still needs to get done. Plus the company owns those workers you made now.

Of course, the company itself captures most of the created value from this process, so if we're sticking with capitalism I'm fine with making extra money.

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