4 ms·

>The ultimate way to get market price is to work for yourself, by starting your own company. see... this (and the implication that people working at large comp

by lsc 11y ago

>The ultimate way to get market price is to work for yourself, by starting your own company. see... this (and the implication that people working at large companies get less than market rate) doesn't ring true for me. The real "free markets" of labor, like craigslist and the rent-a-coder marketplaces pay about 20% of what you get if you go through a recruiter who has "a relationship" with a large company... for doing essentially the same thing, and from what I've seen, contractor pay (after the middleman takes his cut) is about the same as base pay (for the same work) at a large company. Now, when I started contracting in the early aughts, base pay was basically the same as total comp, and so I subtracted the payroll taxes and health insurance and could pretty much directly compare contract vs salary wages. In the early aughts, it was pretty unusual for individual contributors to get big bonuses or even stock refreshes (or that was my perception; I was considerably less senor at the time.) But, from what I've seen, if you are full-time at a big company here, you get a pretty significant bump now, in terms of bonuses and stock. My point here is just that my experience has been that when I'm selling my labor, the further I move away from "the free market for labor" and the closer I get to a system of rank and privilege as pg describes 20th century corporations, the more I get paid.

r2dnb 11y ago
True, but PG doesn't consider selling your time as starting a company, you're not talking about the same thing
- lsc 11y ago
  right, but running a company requires a rather different skillset from working for someone else as a programmer. It's a different job. My point is just that as a full timer at a big company, you are at the top end of "market rate" for programmers. If you start your own company, you are on the 'business person' payscale, which is a rather different thing.
  - r2dnb 11y ago
    Your point makes sense, however look : You develop a software and are the PM / product lead. You get paid 8 months, while your client makes $8,000 per month during the next 5 years. This is the market rate. The market PG refers to is not the labour market but the consumer market where the metric used is not time but value.
    - lsc 11y ago
      Yeah, but "value" as measured by the market is a funny thing... you can write an advanced compiler and it will generate "zero value" as far as the market is concerned, because all the good compilers are open source, or you can setup a couple jabber servers, and the market values you at billions. I mean, I use scare quotes to convey my scorn, but the point here is that agree with it or not, the market doesn't value technical skills very highly. Sure, as a modern business person, you need to have some technical skills; but technical skills alone? technical skills alone gets you one of those rent-a-coder jobs. Most of this "value" is... well, if I understood business well enough to tell you why a couple of jabber servers was worth Billions of dollars, I'd be making a lot more money than I am. but my point is just that a lot of that "value" to the end customer is something that happens between a business person and the customer; it's something that the technical people are not very involved in.
      - r2dnb 11y ago
        Yes you got it all, now the next logical step is : "Stop being a technical person only", this is what PG is saying. My advice is keep doing your stuff, but aggressively start building your product-based business on the side. I encourage you to bookmark my blog and read the categories : "Startups", and "Software Engineering" (coming very soon) for free and valuable information. In 2016, there'll be new essays almost daily. http://read.reddy.today http://read.reddy.today
        lsc 11y ago
        >My advice is keep doing your stuff, but aggressively start building your product-based business on the side. I've been trying to do that for the last decade. I apparently have what it takes to do rather better than rent-a-coder, but my business skills aren't nearly enough to be "opportunity cost profitable" - I can make rent, but I'm not paying myself nearly what one of the local big companies would. Hell, right now I'm contracting to one of the big companies, and spending the money getting my own company back up to snuff. (and again, it's an education. Contractors, if you do the math, make about what 'base salary' would be for the position as an employee. A decade ago, this was also true... the difference being that a decade ago, base salary was pretty much total comp. These days, bonuses and regular stock grants are the norm and make up a large part of compensation. And if you are a contractor? you don't see that money... either it goes to the middleman or contractor bill rates haven't risen with full time compensation. Either way, it's another example of how technical people get paid worse the closer they are to a "free market") From my observations? (and always consider "you shall know him by his fruits" when listening for advice; People who aren't successful, obviously, don't know how to become successful. So look at successful people, and look at what they did not what they say) From my observations, a lot of business is like getting a $BIGCO job. A whole lot of it is who you know, not what you can do. My next project, actually, is to get myself into an elite college. Now I don't know if I can pull it off, I'm not saying it's going to be easy... but if I want to get rich, as far as I can tell, the contacts one acquires at an elite college are far more valuable than any amount of actual skill or effort I put into an actual product-based business. edit: re-reading, I sound kinda bitter, and I'm not, or I shouldn't be. I have a comfortable place in this economic system; I'm certainly not at the top, but I'm pretty far from the bottom. I'd probably be doing worse in almost any system that most people would consider "fair" Further, if I really was great? or, for that matter, if I hadn't made two or three of the mistakes that I made, I would very likely have become rich off of my own product business. You can succeed that way; I was close enough to see the possibility. But the point is that I did not. I wasn't good enough, while I am good enough to get a pretty cushy $BIGCO job.

by lsc 11y ago

r2dnb 11y ago

True, but PG doesn't consider selling your time as starting a company, you're not talking about the same thing

lsc 11y ago
right, but running a company requires a rather different skillset from working for someone else as a programmer. It's a different job. My point is just that as a full timer at a big company, you are at the top end of "market rate" for programmers. If you start your own company, you are on the 'business person' payscale, which is a rather different thing.
- r2dnb 11y ago
  Your point makes sense, however look : You develop a software and are the PM / product lead. You get paid 8 months, while your client makes $8,000 per month during the next 5 years. This is the market rate. The market PG refers to is not the labour market but the consumer market where the metric used is not time but value.
  - lsc 11y ago
    Yeah, but "value" as measured by the market is a funny thing... you can write an advanced compiler and it will generate "zero value" as far as the market is concerned, because all the good compilers are open source, or you can setup a couple jabber servers, and the market values you at billions. I mean, I use scare quotes to convey my scorn, but the point here is that agree with it or not, the market doesn't value technical skills very highly. Sure, as a modern business person, you need to have some technical skills; but technical skills alone? technical skills alone gets you one of those rent-a-coder jobs. Most of this "value" is... well, if I understood business well enough to tell you why a couple of jabber servers was worth Billions of dollars, I'd be making a lot more money than I am. but my point is just that a lot of that "value" to the end customer is something that happens between a business person and the customer; it's something that the technical people are not very involved in.
    - r2dnb 11y ago
      Yes you got it all, now the next logical step is : "Stop being a technical person only", this is what PG is saying. My advice is keep doing your stuff, but aggressively start building your product-based business on the side. I encourage you to bookmark my blog and read the categories : "Startups", and "Software Engineering" (coming very soon) for free and valuable information. In 2016, there'll be new essays almost daily. http://read.reddy.today http://read.reddy.today
      - lsc 11y ago
        >My advice is keep doing your stuff, but aggressively start building your product-based business on the side. I've been trying to do that for the last decade. I apparently have what it takes to do rather better than rent-a-coder, but my business skills aren't nearly enough to be "opportunity cost profitable" - I can make rent, but I'm not paying myself nearly what one of the local big companies would. Hell, right now I'm contracting to one of the big companies, and spending the money getting my own company back up to snuff. (and again, it's an education. Contractors, if you do the math, make about what 'base salary' would be for the position as an employee. A decade ago, this was also true... the difference being that a decade ago, base salary was pretty much total comp. These days, bonuses and regular stock grants are the norm and make up a large part of compensation. And if you are a contractor? you don't see that money... either it goes to the middleman or contractor bill rates haven't risen with full time compensation. Either way, it's another example of how technical people get paid worse the closer they are to a "free market") From my observations? (and always consider "you shall know him by his fruits" when listening for advice; People who aren't successful, obviously, don't know how to become successful. So look at successful people, and look at what they did not what they say) From my observations, a lot of business is like getting a $BIGCO job. A whole lot of it is who you know, not what you can do. My next project, actually, is to get myself into an elite college. Now I don't know if I can pull it off, I'm not saying it's going to be easy... but if I want to get rich, as far as I can tell, the contacts one acquires at an elite college are far more valuable than any amount of actual skill or effort I put into an actual product-based business. edit: re-reading, I sound kinda bitter, and I'm not, or I shouldn't be. I have a comfortable place in this economic system; I'm certainly not at the top, but I'm pretty far from the bottom. I'd probably be doing worse in almost any system that most people would consider "fair" Further, if I really was great? or, for that matter, if I hadn't made two or three of the mistakes that I made, I would very likely have become rich off of my own product business. You can succeed that way; I was close enough to see the possibility. But the point is that I did not. I wasn't good enough, while I am good enough to get a pretty cushy $BIGCO job.