3 ms·

Supply and demand is one thing, but there are also "ceiling" effects. This is just a hunch (and I'd love to hear some feedback on this) but I would guess that

Supply and demand is one thing, but there are also "ceiling" effects. This is just a hunch (and I'd love to hear some feedback on this) but I would guess that there's more of a ceiling on developers than there is on designers. So maybe the average developer makes more than the average designer (again a hunch), but I'd bet there are a select few really great designers making MUCH MUCH more, and I don't think the same is true for developers. I mean, what's a really stupendous developer going to do for you that makes it worth paying him the equivalent of a 5-man team? a 10-man team? We could make an analogy to construction. The best construction company is no doubt going to build your building faster, more efficiently, with fewer problems, but that's not going to triple the value of the finished product. The architect by contrast can make the difference between a world-famous landmark and just another good-enough building.

eecks 11y ago
The construction analogy falls down when you take complex software into account. The developer can make the difference between a an amazing product and bad/average/good product
sheepmullet 11y ago
> We could make an analogy to construction To borrow your analogy: A construction company that builds single level family homes can't build high rises. No matter how good the architect is. Top developers can conceptualise and build products that 100 average developers couldn't achieve. Not to mention the large reverse economies of scale. Case in point: I can get 1000 low skill Vietnamese developers for the same cost as 50 senior Valley developers. And yet for 90% of the work we do I'm better off with the 50 Valley developers.
- joeclark77 11y ago
  I'm not sure we disagree. When you say "conceptualize and build", you may be talking about a developer-in-the-role-of-designer or developer-in-the-role-of-entrepreneur. Certainly Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, etc. were once developers, but they didn't get rich because they were employed as coders and got a bunch of merit pay raises. So I was simply speculating that there may be a "ceiling" on developer salaries, that is, salaries received for writing code.

eecks 11y ago

The construction analogy falls down when you take complex software into account. The developer can make the difference between a an amazing product and bad/average/good product

sheepmullet 11y ago

> We could make an analogy to construction To borrow your analogy: A construction company that builds single level family homes can't build high rises. No matter how good the architect is. Top developers can conceptualise and build products that 100 average developers couldn't achieve. Not to mention the large reverse economies of scale. Case in point: I can get 1000 low skill Vietnamese developers for the same cost as 50 senior Valley developers. And yet for 90% of the work we do I'm better off with the 50 Valley developers.

joeclark77 11y ago
I'm not sure we disagree. When you say "conceptualize and build", you may be talking about a developer-in-the-role-of-designer or developer-in-the-role-of-entrepreneur. Certainly Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, etc. were once developers, but they didn't get rich because they were employed as coders and got a bunch of merit pay raises. So I was simply speculating that there may be a "ceiling" on developer salaries, that is, salaries received for writing code.