11 ms·

I think it's mostly supply and demand, timing and where you live. But those are the factors we rarely talk about. Instead, people complain they are not compens

by flexie 10y ago

I think it's mostly supply and demand, timing and where you live. But those are the factors we rarely talk about. Instead, people complain they are not compensated enough relative to the importance of their work, their intelligence, the hours put in, their title or the length of their education or the risk they take. If people were paid according to the importance of their jobs, I would argue that plumbers, sewage workers and farmers should be paid higher than programmers. If it were about intelligence, most physicists I know are underpaid and programmers are generally compensated fairly. If it were about hours put in, many of the people producing our clothes should be paid better than us. If it were about titles, programming should be behind almost any other engineering field. If it were about length of education, programmers would generally rank much lower than they do because so many don't have any or much formal training. If it were about risk, in just about any other profession people have taken larger risks than a programmer joining a startup. So you "risk" only making $40,000 for a couple of years? Yeah, well, that's the calculated risk your English high school teacher knowingly took on for life when she decided to take a bachelor in arts. And yes, she could have become a developer or lawyer instead. What about the risk of work injuries faced by construction workers every day. That's real risk. Our financial risks are modest worries. Programmers in 2016 are generally very well compensated for a low risk, indoor job with a very low barrier to entry.

crasp 10y ago
There are always jobs that are worse in some way. If a plumber screws up you might get a wet floor or sewage in the street. If some banking software makes a flaw, you can't just pick up a mop and clean it up. There are always jobs that come out worse in some category compared to programming. The problem here specifically is that given you have written 50% of the software people are using and investors are making some millions out of it while you make $40K a year, because they sort of lured you into a deal that apparently is not working out too great for you because you were so focussed on getting the lines of code rolling out they sort of took advantage of the situation?
- paublyrne 10y ago
  Investors may be taking advantage of your labour but this is the nature of every business. The business owners take advantage of employee labour to make a lot more money than the employees. I find the entitlement to better terms than people inother fields that frequently crops up here incredibly pretentious and self righteous.
- Cpoll 10y ago
  I think that's a disingenuous comparison. If you're comparing to banking software, imagine a plumber that causes four floors of a high-rise to get flooded, leading to 5-figures of damage and additional lost time. Or perhaps an underwater plumber, where the cost to fix the leak is high. If we're looking at house plumbing, it might be more fair to compare it to a CRUD app that facilitates iguana breeding (unsolved problem here, folks!).
  - 1812Overture 10y ago
    BOSS: Uh, Bob, you forgot to close a loop in your code so we've got a bit of an iguana problem... PROGRAMMER: What kind of problem? BOSS: Call the Pentagon.
    - triplesec 10y ago
      ... or perhaps the Laundry
manuelflara 10y ago
I totally agree. Being a developer is one of the best careers you can have right now. Well paid and high in demand everywhere in the world, very little "soul crushing" (and can even be very fulfilling) compared to most jobs and you can even get a job where you work from home, anywhere you want, with flexible time etc. What other jobs exist out there like it? And if your only complaint is "well my employer makes millions off me and I get only get paid $GOOD_SALARY!", well then go and start your own business! It's, again, the easiest, cheapest and highest possible return of any business you can start in the world today, and it only requires your time. If you don't want do do it (because you'd rather have a stable job, or you don't want or can't risk your savings, etc) at the very least, don't complain you should be making an even better salary. Keep in mind I don't want to imply "just be contempt with whatever salary you have" or "never seek a better job or salary", but by all means, don't complain that "programmers are underpaid" in general, because I think that's just plain not true if we compare all aspects of the job with any job out there. It's pretty much a dream time in history to be a developer right now.
- greyman 10y ago
  As I understood the article, the gist of the issue is, that besides salary, many/some programmers could also have another form(s) of compensation, so why not negotiate for it?
- siculars 10y ago
  s/contempt/content
- vonmoltke 10y ago
  > Well paid and high in demand everywhere in the world, very little "soul crushing" (and can even be very fulfilling) compared to most jobs and you can even get a job where you work from home, anywhere you want, with flexible time etc. Assuming you like and are good at a specialty that is in demand, and can convince someone else of that. As someone who does not like web or enterprise CRUD development I don't feel very in-demand, nor do I feel like I can get one of those sweet working arrangements[1] that get discussed here. I have spent the past couple of years wrestling with whether to keep trying to do what I want to do (real-time embedded systems) and be "underpaid" doing it or do something I am good at but really don't like (Java backend systems/"big data") in order to make more money. I think the latter is going to win by default, since I have been out of the embedded game too long at this point. [1] Not to say my current arrangement isn't better than average with respect to flexibility, vacation, benefits, and such. I think the average HNer would probably consider my fringe benefits kinda crappy.
cel1ne 10y ago
I would add "police" to the list of critically important yet comically underpaid professions.
- gaius 10y ago
  Well there is a paradox at work here. You need to pay any sort official enough that they aren't desperate for bribes, but not so much that you attract people into the job motivated by personal enrichment. Read "Systems of Survival" by Jane Jacobs for a good study of this.
  - cel1ne 10y ago
    I agree. In return for the higher pay, I'm in favour of much stronger selection, screening and higher penalties for wrong-doing.
  - jzwinck 10y ago
    Which is better motivation for a police officer? Personal enrichment, or the chance to use weapons, violence, and deception for advantage--once common delights now so rare!
- jazzyk 10y ago
  Being a policeman can be a tough, dangerous job. But I don't think they are underpaid, at least not in Massachusetts - Police Trooper, 1st class can make $130K-$180K. They also get generous pensions (state employees).
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    Yea, top ones. This sounds like the same old argument: "A handful of top programmers at Google make $300k! Therefore programmers in general make a lot."
    - jazzyk 10y ago
      There are ~1800 police officers (out of 3185 listed in the DB) in MA alone who make > $100K [1]. Not too shabby either. Also, to make $300K at Google you have to be a genius, to make $200K as a State Trooper, no college degree is required, only some seniority and overtime. [1] http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/03/massachusetts_state_employee_salary_database_2015.html?appSession=95147227184811268029989767586954614584181196174987987482089076529120348108380722573479813521533500576706445510995314684093721343 http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/03/massachus...
sidi 10y ago
Value creation is by far the pre-dominant variable when one thinks about compensation. Arguably, there is more value creation in the process of programming (infinite distribution) than there is in let's say plumbing or some of the other analogies you make here. The more democratized a field is and the more systematic efficiencies there are to be gained, the more easy it will be to both create and capture value and hence, resulting in a more even playing field for expected compensations. This has historically been true for entrepreneurship, modern-day programming is also a good example of this effect.
- james1071 10y ago
  That is what programmers like to say (when they are comparing their salaries with the value they say they have created). The reality,of course, is that most of the value created is attributable to the franchise value of the company, not the programmer.
olavgg 10y ago
Yes programmers are well compensated, but they are also in very high demand. One day at a big family union I got three phonecalls from recruiters. My whole family rolled their eyes, while I politely said no to those recruiters with below average offers. I told them that this is usual, I get a few phonecalls from recruiters every week. None of them who work as doctors, teachers, accounting, geophysicist, even an old CEO of a $200 mill company has ever experienced something like that. They may get a recruiter calling once a year. Most programmers don't know their real value and way too many say yes to work below average market rate. Younger ones a often preferred as they are easier to manipulate, have no idea about their value, and hardly ever says no to something. And they are brilliant and smart for bargain. What they lack is experience, but as the technology landscape changes every second year many believe experience doesn't matter. That may be why so many companies are struggling with technical debt.
- gaius 10y ago
  None of them who work as doctors, teachers, accounting, geophysicist, even an old CEO of a $200 mill company has ever experienced something like that. They may get a recruiter calling once a year. Those recruiters aren't calling for your benefit tho'. They are calling because they want to sell you like a piece of meat. That's just a sign that nearly everyone connected to the industry who isn't actually an engineer themselves is trying to exploit engineers in some way. What they lack is experience, but as the technology landscape changes every second year many believe experience doesn't matter People believe what is to their advantage to believe. Getting an experienced engineer at a knock down rate because they've been tricked into undervaluing their experience suits VCs and managers very well...
  - rantanplan 10y ago
    > They are calling because they want to sell you like a piece of meat Compared to..... what? Calling me because of my good-natured character and my unparalleled virtues?
- qudat 10y ago
  My gf is a physician and she has recruiters contacting her exactly how we get contacted and with the same vein, recruiters are calling about jobs no one wants.
nitrogen 10y ago
The measure of "importance" that results in programmers being paid a lot of money is the ability to do something once and have it benefit millions of people.
- gaius 10y ago
  I don't think that's true because a) lots of people do that kind of work, in the physical world too, such as the guy who paints lines on the roads, and b) you don't do it once, you do it again and again every time a new JS framework comes out...
yladiz 10y ago
Yeah, this is quite true. Even if it doesn't seem like it, the fact that programmers have a relatively stable job and stable income -- worrying about getting the right about of pay vs equity is much different than worrying, "Will I get paid?" -- it show some lack of self awareness to even complain about these kinds of topics. Yes, you might have a difficult time making ends meet in SF with a $100k job in a nice apartment, but you can always move to a city that doesn't have obscene rent and living costs and live more comfortably, and most likely be able to afford the associated moving costs, something many, many people can't even begin to think about. Barring those comments, I think this article is actually good advice for software developers who don't know that much about how this works and what to ask, and could be burned in the end. Many people don't think about the specifics and if they have less than scrupulous founders, if they're not careful they can be in for a lot of trouble. I actually wish this would touch on the more psychological aspects of this topic, because you might want to understand these things, but might be worried about pressing buttons when applying them, and shouldn't be. For example, when you initially interview, don't be afraid to negotiate and definitely don't be afraid to leave if the terms aren't to your liking. If the company is profitable or is "awesome and will be worth tons of money, we promise!" they should put their money where their mouth is and compensate well, not just with equity. If you're not getting paid what you should be, or not getting the equity you think you should be getting, talk to the founders or whomever you can, and don't be afraid to leave if the situation is toxic or isn't acceptable (of course, this is mostly startup advice; when at a larger company you might get some say in the compensation package, but it's likely mostly up to bureaucratic processes unless you're being hired way up like VP/P/C level). It's not necessarily true that they need you more than need them, what's probably more truthful is that neither party needs the other.
bbcbasic 10y ago
They are well compensated but to not push for better upside more when the investors and founders have a lot of upside seems naive. Life is expensive if you plan to have children and give them a good start. Being smart about investments is essential to ensure a secure future. Just because a plumber earns less is irrelevant. Many people in trades go on to apply their knowledge to renovations anyway. Is a plumber more important? Impossible to quantify. Maybe a programmer works on a cad application that helps design a faucet that doesn't leak. The programmer is now indirectly a plumber.
amelius 10y ago
But most programmers are basically plumbers (for data as opposed to water/sewage) :)
- gaius 10y ago
  Not true. Plumbers work reasonable hours, are paid overtime, don't have to deal with ageism, their skills stay relevant regardless of fashion trends, and their jobs will never be offshored.
  - dagw 10y ago
    and their jobs will never be offshored Don't know about the US, but in much of Europe plumbing has definitely been 'offshored' in the sense that much of the work is done by non-locals brought in short term.
    - gaius 10y ago
      Everyone "learning to code" instead is probably why! If I were giving career advice to any young person now, I would definitely tell them plumbing or a similar trade. As we say in Yorkshire "where there's muck there's brass".
      - amag 10y ago
        I always thought "where there's brass there's brass".
  - minipci1321 10y ago
    > Plumbers work reasonable hours, are paid overtime, Indeed, over here many I talked to refused to do more than 8 hours a day. I didn't understand until... -- ever tried to do a hard physical work several days in a row? How about the entire life? > don't have to deal with ageism But have to deal with knee joints and back pains. Don't underestimate the joy of physical work at an advanced age. > their skills stay relevant regardless of fashion trends Old ones refuse to service modern equipment, say "I am a plumber, not an electrician". Admittedly, probably because they have got enough pure-plumbing work to do as it is.
amelius 10y ago
> If it were about intelligence, most physicists I know are underpaid and programmers are generally compensated fairly. Most physicists I know are searching for stuff that already exists, whereas most programmers I know are actually building new stuff.
- yomritoyj 10y ago
  All programs also exist, in the sense you can program a computer to generate one by one all possible valid x86 instruction sequences. What programmers are doing is searching for one program among them that will solve their problem.
- ethanbond 10y ago
  New stuff = this week's rip of another game, Snapchat feature, or productivity app. Yippee.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
billmalarky 10y ago
> What about the risk of work injuries faced by construction workers every day. That's real risk. I hear you, but the negative health effects of working insane hours developing in a high stress "start-up" environment for many years should not be understated.
- mamon 10y ago
  Exactly, in fact I think that if you want to stay healthy then working as a construction worker is great: you get physical excercise, fresh air, low stress level. Risk of injury is pretty low, and wages are pretty good. In contrast, being software developer will probably get you heart attack, or problems with your spine, or eyes, or hands or all of the above.
  - uxp100 10y ago
    Are you sure this is true? You think the added risk of heart attack from software development is greater than the risk of death in construction? You think the rate of spine, eye, or hand injuries from typing all day is greater than the risk of bodily injury in construction? I find it difficult to find stats for this about software development, but 899 construction workers died on the job in 2014, and construction workers do get these small RSI issues in their shoulders and hands like you were describing for software development, but they are also regularly injured, but not killed, by falling, being crushed, and being cut.
    - erroneousfunk 10y ago
      But don't you know that software developers are the best and most noble population in the world, bravely suffering for the good of humanity? </sarcasm> I would love someone to try and complain about RSI to someone who's been a construction worker for 20 years. "But you get fresh air and exercise!" Ha! According to this source, 8.2% of construction workers have carpal tunnel: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4476336/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4476336/ And CTS is generally the least of their worries!
jazzyk 10y ago
>I would argue that plumbers, sewage workers and farmers should be paid higher than programmers. Self-employed plumbers are paid higher than programmers. Every plumber I reached out to quoted $130/hr and they are all booked for weeks in advance.
- jzwinck 10y ago
  Plumbers have to spend unbillable time driving from place to place. $130 per hour is great but if each job takes 1-2 hours it could magically halve. Ever walk into a half empty restaurant and get turned away because they're fully booked?
  - jazzyk 10y ago
    The ones I talked to were not interested in taking on projects further than a 10-15 mins drive. Please note that plumbers also add markups on the products they install (water heaters, etc) and charge higher rates for weekend/after hours emergencies. Nothing wrong with it, they just take advantage of the good market. Not picking on plumbers, just pointing out that jobs in the software industry are not as plum as they seem to some posters here, compared to other jobs.
    - dpark 10y ago
      You're still underestimating the hours that are not billable. That plumber drives 15 minutes each way for a two hour job. That's a 20% loss of time. Plus it's not billable when the plumber has to go pick up materials from a hardware store. Nor is it billable when they deal with the overhead of running a business, maintaining accounts, dealing with bills, providing quotes, etc. Plus benefits are coming out of that $130. A self employed plumber working 40 billable hours/week is likely working more like 60 hours/week.
- dagss 10y ago
  A lot of self-employed consultant/freelance programmers charge that or more, and are booked for months (on the same project..)
jacques_chester 10y ago
Hayek's short 'Social' or Distributive Justice [0] neatly shows the disconnection between value and virtue, and that no market system rewards them in lockstep. And that no such system can function if you try to force it to reward them in lockstep. [0] Either as a chapter in the second volume of Law, Legislation and Liberty or as a standalone essay in The Essence of Hayek.
rimantas 10y ago
Not sure aniut the low barrier to entry. Take 1000 programmers, how many can be made into decent plumbers in 6 months? Now take 1000 plumbers, how many can be made ibto decent programmers in 6 months? Also, I am nit aware how often tevhnology materials and tooling changes for plumbers (I guess some of these spsn generations), but I am aware that platform I have been working full time for 4 years did not exist 8 years ago, and the language I write my code in did not exist three years ago.
- pkolaczk 10y ago
  Most programmers would be able to do usual plumbing stuff like connecting the sink or dishwasher to water pipes with almost no prior learning, just by looking how things are done, maybe asking a few basic questions at the plumbing supplies store, and reading the attached instructions. These things are no rocket-science really. Sure, an experienced plumber would do all of these things much faster and probably better, that's why we call them. But the barrier to entry is definitely much lower - that's a no-brainer to me.
  - Unklejoe 10y ago
    While I agree that the barrier to entry is lower, I feel like you may be overestimating the average programmer’s “hands-on” abilities as well as the simplicity of being a plumber. Sure, most programmers have the problem solving skills to get the job done, but when it comes to actually doing it, things are sometimes different. In my own personal experience, only a small percentage of the programmers that I know (myself included) actually know how to turn a wrench, figuratively speaking. Another example is welding. I know how to weld, but I am not good at it. The only way I would get better is to keep practicing, which I never really have a chance to do since it’s not my day job. This is a slightly more extreme example than plumbing, but a similar concept. I would consider the usual plumbing stuff to be more along the lines of sweating copper pipes, using lead and oakum to connect cast iron sewage pipes, installing toilet flanges, etc... I feel like connecting a dishwasher is more along the lines of a handy man.
    - hippich 10y ago
radmuzom 10y ago
Downvoted. Your response did not make much sense to me given the article. The article just states that programmers should understand the intricate details of their compensation and make a balanced judgment (whether to take an offer or not) based on that. (edit) The article does not make a judgment on whether programmers are well compensated or not.
ysavir 10y ago
Well said, but I think you missed the point of the article. The article itself isn't even about programmers, really (even if the author didn't recognize it). It applies to all employees and founders of start ups, whether they are programmers, designers, or even just a person with an idea but no technical expertise It's not about how much you make or how much is fair. It's about properly understanding what your compensation is. The soul of the article is in the complexity of non-salary compensations, and how many surprises and pitfalls lurk in the small text, that most non-finance people don't even notice is there. And the author is reminding us to learn about those surprises and pitfalls, so that when the anticipated pay-day comes, our expectations are met properly. And it's good advice.
cm2187 10y ago
The point of the article is not so much about what should be the right level of compensation for technical people but rather the issue of technical people not bothering to understand the terms of the financial agreements they get into. If they did examine the terms, as you said supply and demand would ensure the terms are fair.
- riskable 10y ago
  > If they did examine the terms, as you said supply and demand would ensure the terms are fair. Only if all parties have all the information. The person being hired has now idea how desperate the company is for their skills, how much they're willing to spend, or even if the pay being offered is good for the location/position in a lot of cases.
  - cm2187 10y ago
    And the company has no idea of whether the person being hire is as good as he pretends to be. This uncertainty goes both ways.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
pc86 10y ago
> [P]eople complain they are not compensated enough relative to the importance of their work, their intelligence, the hours put in, their title or the length of their education or the risk they take. Most developers would be wise to understand that with few exceptions, none of these things have anything to do with your compensation. Your compensation is based almost entirely on some amorphous combination of: A) Supply of similarly skilled labor (if enough similarly skilled devs are happy to do the work for $80k that gives you a ceiling) B) Supply of less skilled labor (if an army of unskilled devs are happy to do the work for $8/hr ...) C) Your leverage over your [prospective] employer D) How the company has done over the last *n* quarters E) Patronage F) Nepotism G) Luck I know I'm just repeating most of what you said.
- riskable 10y ago
  I'd put Luck and Nepotism at the top of the list followed by D. But maybe that's just because I work in finance.
  - jomamaxx 10y ago
    To be fair, nepotism in tech tends to be of the academic type, and most kids who get into Ivy League have worked pretty hard to get there. So, in some ways, it's not that bad a kind of nepotism. Most startups are not hiring actual family members :)
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      > Most startups are not hiring actual family members :) It's harder to convince your own family to work for you for free with constant overtime and vague promises of great profits in the future. :).
- n72 10y ago
  Perhaps patronage covers this, but I would put skill at office politics/ass kissing high on the list.
  - 10y ago
nilkn 10y ago
I think there's truth here, but I also think programmers routinely underestimate the quality and compensation of other careers that they think are "below" them. For instance, you did it in this very post. Do you really think that all high school teachers are locked into making $40k for life? Here where I live (a large city, but also a pretty affordable one), teachers start at ~$55k in base salary, get a whole range of benefits including a pension plan, actually really do have the summers off (plus numerous other breaks), and leave work at 3:20 PM every day. If you were to have them work year-round and go home at 6-7PM and convert the pension plan into salary, the salary would easily exceed that of most entry-level engineers across all disciplines in the area. When I graduated college, I had engineering friends being offered salaries in the $60-70k range for considerably less stable jobs, much longer hours, virtually no time off, and much fewer benefits.
- ditonal 10y ago
  Especially true for nurses. Very tough job, but there's more money in it than many realize. My friend who already does well for himself is now going to do 1 more year of school to get a CRNA and says he'll likely make 160k in Miami or 220k in SF. Yet a co-worker asked "how can nurses survive here?" SF nurse salaries are public and you can see they can out earn most engineers esp via overtime (which lots of engineers work uncompensated). Still, nursing is a very tough job and can have a low status stigma.
  - nilkn 10y ago
    My mother's actually a nurse, and it's been a really great career choice for her, especially as she's aged. Over the last five years or so my parents have had to move several times due to volatility in my dad's career. And yet at every move my mom hasn't had any trouble finding stable and well-paid employment as a nurse. Nursing is similar to teaching in that you're not likely to get rich off of it, and it's not even an easy job at all, but it is a very stable one which pays a solid middle-class wage for life in pretty much any area of the country, from huge cities to small rural towns in the midwest. And, while the hours are rough as a new nurse fresh out of school, they're not bad at all with experience -- certainly it's a far more family friendly career than many others in healthcare, like being a physician. If my mom had been a programmer, she definitely wouldn't have weathered the moves they've made as well as she has. In fact, she'd have been the one forcing my dad to move with her, as decent programming jobs simply do not exist where they live.
epimetheus 10y ago
I know a water treatment plant worker, two plumbers, and an electrician in the Kansas City area, and they all make as much, if not more than my programming contemporaries. For instance, a friend tried to get me to work at Cerner for ~75-80k (good money in the Midwest), but those plumbers were making that plus some (45 dollars an hour, so in some cases would make more depending on overtime), the Electrician worked for himself and though I don't know his yearly earnings, he was making closer to 60/hr (based on a quote to install a ceiling fan, and since he was a HS buddy, he probably gave me a discount). The wastewater plant worker? He's a manager now making 100k or so, but started out at 60k, not bad for the midwest as well. I'd not trade my cushy, indoor job for that, mind you, just the idea that trade workers necessarily make peanuts, I believe, is without merit.
vtlynch 10y ago
>I think it's mostly supply and demand, timing and where you live. But those are the factors we rarely talk about. I think those are the exact factors constantly mentioned by the HackerNews community.
vladimirralev 10y ago
> importance of their work, their intelligence, the hours put in, their title or the length of their education or the risk Well one of these is not like the others. The article clearly focuses on the financial risks. It's destructive to suggest that risk and especially deceptive risk presentation is somehow ignorable and not to worry about it. You can't just let the supply and demand model play itself out. Hostile actors work against you and exploit information advantage to skew the supply and demand [1]. Teachers, construction workers or software engineers - it doesn't matter what your job is. Here we talk about stakeholders in a company. It just happens some software engineers are, and as such you should understand where the numbers come from and what's the value of all that since it's part of the compensation. There are plenty of devs out there who work for no money at all. It's pointless to go into philosophical discussion about jobs, it's outside the scope. This is purely a subject for stakeholders. [1] http://www.borooah.com/Teaching/Post%20Graduate%20Microeconomics/Week%203_Adverse%20Selection.pdf http://www.borooah.com/Teaching/Post%20Graduate%20Microecono...
lettergram 10y ago
One thing I want to mention is related to your last line: > Programmers in 2016 are generally very well compensated for a low risk, indoor job with a very low barrier to entry. Most employers don't get it, but Google, Facebook, and others do; programming well has a much higher barrier to entry than people realize. When I was 10 I could make an HTML page, when I was 14 I started incorporating JavaScript and building websites... A decade later (24), I am still improving and building bigger/better programs (full stack, but mostly data science). I went to school, worked all the way through tutoring for C, C++, and Go, and built websites as well. Yet there are people making the same salary as me that literally started programing 4 months ago. Those people who just started cannot build a website in a week (or even a few), it takes them months. Even then, thats with help, and it will have loads of bugs. I know because part of my job is training them. I have to explain how they just tried to access an array outside the bounds. Seriously, the other week I was interviewing a "master software engineer" for an internal role on my team and they failed a basic string flipping question... He's making at least double what I am. To put this into greater perspective, let's walk through a mental exercise. Say programmer one introduces 1 bug every 10 lines. The second programmer introduces 1 bug every 25 lines. After 10000 lines what do we have? Programmer #1: 1000 Programmer #2: 400 At an average of 30 minutes a lot of hours of bug fixes: Programmer #1: 500 hours Programmer #2: 200 hours My point, 200 hours is 5 weeks, 500 hours is 12.5 weeks of bug fixes. I'll grant you, this is napkin math, but trust me - this is why some developers think (and probably should) get paid more. Relative to their co-workers if they can make half as many mistakes they save time both upfront, and bug catching. Now compare that to the master software engineer I mentioned, whos already making double what I am... Based on that assessment, I'd likely be underpaid. All that being said, I generally agree, but coming from a pretty standard office, I can see why people feel underpaid. It's probably because people around them are being over paid.
- randomdata 10y ago
  "> programming well has a much higher barrier to entry than people realize." "Yet there are people making the same salary as me that literally started programing 4 months ago." That certainly sounds like a low barrier to entry to me. Compare with the barrier to entry to becoming a doctor, for instance. There, in many locations, you'll be looking at a decade of proving yourself to the club, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs to do that, before you are even allowed to start working. Four weeks, and maybe a computer that costs hundreds of dollars, is absolutely nothing in comparison. > this is why some developers think (and probably should) get paid more. Relative to their co-workers if they can make half as many mistakes they save time both upfront, and bug catching. But it still boils down to supply an demand, and if employers do not demand those with better bug fixing ability, there is going to be no corresponding premium for finding such people. What your post does indicate to me is that programmers have done a poor job of marketing the importance of bug fixing ability (or whatever features of an experienced developer you think is important) so that employers start demanding the subset of developers who have those skills.
dpeterson 10y ago
Can I ask, are you a programmer? My guess is you are not. If you were you would understand the real physical strain and mental toll it takes to be good. If you want to excel, it is a never-ending battle to stay current and there is little to no reward for experience (even though it matters a great deal and must be accomplished on and off the clock). There is limited time to make money before you either burn out or are perceived to be too old to stay relevant. So, yes, there is a lot of risk putting the best earning years into companies that promise one thing and deliver another.
- flexie 10y ago
  I am not. Programming is just a hobby and I am not very good at it. I am a lawyer, and my comments would apply to law as well (except that the barrier to entry is a bit higher since regulation forces people to go through law school). Your comments about physical strain, mental toll, risk of burning out etc. describe my field well, though. And I doubt salaries for lawyers and programmers are that different anymore.
  - dpeterson 10y ago
    The difference being, the older you get the more you will be perceived an expert at law. Your experience ages like a fine wine. Experience in tech ages more like a ripe watermelon sitting in the sun. Your earning potential will only go up the longer you are a lawyer. That is not true for those that stay developers their entire career. P.S. I also spent a great deal of time getting degrees. B.S. in computer science and a Master's in Software Engineering. It is often not required to get a job, but it is still a barrier for many openings.
    - flexie 10y ago
      Let's see. In 20 years your field might have made large parts of my field redundant. I truly hope so :-) Programming is still a young profession and it's growing at a tremendous pace. The population pyramid of Programmers' Land actually looks like a pyramid which might cause programmers to think that older people can't make it. I know many older folks in IT who are still active. My old man continued until he was 70. They may not know the newest tricks in node.js or machine learning but they are the only ones who know the old legacy code that lock-in users and protect their jobs. I bet you and most of your colleagues will be active until retirement. Just like lawyers may continue as partners (partially or mostly doing managing or marketing) many programmers might transfer to management. A lot of programmers have long formal education but the market for programmers without education is still huge and the salaries for programmers without formal training easily beat almost any other professions where there are no educational requirements and a lot of professions with educational requirements. In which other profession can you realistically hope to start with salaries of 60-80k after a few months of online courses?
ryandrake 10y ago
Compensation is a market. It's not about what you "deserve" or how smart you are, or even your job performance. Your comp is driven by what the market will bear, in other words "what you can make elsewhere." Just like the price of a gadget is not based on the cost of its parts, or how much value the customer derives from it. It's based on what the market will bear.

by flexie 10y ago

crasp 10y ago

There are always jobs that are worse in some way. If a plumber screws up you might get a wet floor or sewage in the street. If some banking software makes a flaw, you can't just pick up a mop and clean it up. There are always jobs that come out worse in some category compared to programming. The problem here specifically is that given you have written 50% of the software people are using and investors are making some millions out of it while you make $40K a year, because they sort of lured you into a deal that apparently is not working out too great for you because you were so focussed on getting the lines of code rolling out they sort of took advantage of the situation?

paublyrne 10y ago
Investors may be taking advantage of your labour but this is the nature of every business. The business owners take advantage of employee labour to make a lot more money than the employees. I find the entitlement to better terms than people inother fields that frequently crops up here incredibly pretentious and self righteous.
Cpoll 10y ago
I think that's a disingenuous comparison. If you're comparing to banking software, imagine a plumber that causes four floors of a high-rise to get flooded, leading to 5-figures of damage and additional lost time. Or perhaps an underwater plumber, where the cost to fix the leak is high. If we're looking at house plumbing, it might be more fair to compare it to a CRUD app that facilitates iguana breeding (unsolved problem here, folks!).
- 1812Overture 10y ago
  BOSS: Uh, Bob, you forgot to close a loop in your code so we've got a bit of an iguana problem... PROGRAMMER: What kind of problem? BOSS: Call the Pentagon.
  - triplesec 10y ago
    ... or perhaps the Laundry

manuelflara 10y ago

I totally agree. Being a developer is one of the best careers you can have right now. Well paid and high in demand everywhere in the world, very little "soul crushing" (and can even be very fulfilling) compared to most jobs and you can even get a job where you work from home, anywhere you want, with flexible time etc. What other jobs exist out there like it? And if your only complaint is "well my employer makes millions off me and I get only get paid $GOOD_SALARY!", well then go and start your own business! It's, again, the easiest, cheapest and highest possible return of any business you can start in the world today, and it only requires your time. If you don't want do do it (because you'd rather have a stable job, or you don't want or can't risk your savings, etc) at the very least, don't complain you should be making an even better salary. Keep in mind I don't want to imply "just be contempt with whatever salary you have" or "never seek a better job or salary", but by all means, don't complain that "programmers are underpaid" in general, because I think that's just plain not true if we compare all aspects of the job with any job out there. It's pretty much a dream time in history to be a developer right now.

greyman 10y ago
As I understood the article, the gist of the issue is, that besides salary, many/some programmers could also have another form(s) of compensation, so why not negotiate for it?
siculars 10y ago
s/contempt/content
vonmoltke 10y ago
> Well paid and high in demand everywhere in the world, very little "soul crushing" (and can even be very fulfilling) compared to most jobs and you can even get a job where you work from home, anywhere you want, with flexible time etc. Assuming you like and are good at a specialty that is in demand, and can convince someone else of that. As someone who does not like web or enterprise CRUD development I don't feel very in-demand, nor do I feel like I can get one of those sweet working arrangements[1] that get discussed here. I have spent the past couple of years wrestling with whether to keep trying to do what I want to do (real-time embedded systems) and be "underpaid" doing it or do something I am good at but really don't like (Java backend systems/"big data") in order to make more money. I think the latter is going to win by default, since I have been out of the embedded game too long at this point. [1] Not to say my current arrangement isn't better than average with respect to flexibility, vacation, benefits, and such. I think the average HNer would probably consider my fringe benefits kinda crappy.

cel1ne 10y ago

I would add "police" to the list of critically important yet comically underpaid professions.

gaius 10y ago
Well there is a paradox at work here. You need to pay any sort official enough that they aren't desperate for bribes, but not so much that you attract people into the job motivated by personal enrichment. Read "Systems of Survival" by Jane Jacobs for a good study of this.
- cel1ne 10y ago
  I agree. In return for the higher pay, I'm in favour of much stronger selection, screening and higher penalties for wrong-doing.
- jzwinck 10y ago
  Which is better motivation for a police officer? Personal enrichment, or the chance to use weapons, violence, and deception for advantage--once common delights now so rare!
jazzyk 10y ago
Being a policeman can be a tough, dangerous job. But I don't think they are underpaid, at least not in Massachusetts - Police Trooper, 1st class can make $130K-$180K. They also get generous pensions (state employees).
- ryandrake 10y ago
  Yea, top ones. This sounds like the same old argument: "A handful of top programmers at Google make $300k! Therefore programmers in general make a lot."
  - jazzyk 10y ago
    There are ~1800 police officers (out of 3185 listed in the DB) in MA alone who make > $100K [1]. Not too shabby either. Also, to make $300K at Google you have to be a genius, to make $200K as a State Trooper, no college degree is required, only some seniority and overtime. [1] http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/03/massachusetts_state_employee_salary_database_2015.html?appSession=95147227184811268029989767586954614584181196174987987482089076529120348108380722573479813521533500576706445510995314684093721343 http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/03/massachus...

sidi 10y ago

Value creation is by far the pre-dominant variable when one thinks about compensation. Arguably, there is more value creation in the process of programming (infinite distribution) than there is in let's say plumbing or some of the other analogies you make here. The more democratized a field is and the more systematic efficiencies there are to be gained, the more easy it will be to both create and capture value and hence, resulting in a more even playing field for expected compensations. This has historically been true for entrepreneurship, modern-day programming is also a good example of this effect.

james1071 10y ago
That is what programmers like to say (when they are comparing their salaries with the value they say they have created). The reality,of course, is that most of the value created is attributable to the franchise value of the company, not the programmer.

olavgg 10y ago

Yes programmers are well compensated, but they are also in very high demand. One day at a big family union I got three phonecalls from recruiters. My whole family rolled their eyes, while I politely said no to those recruiters with below average offers. I told them that this is usual, I get a few phonecalls from recruiters every week. None of them who work as doctors, teachers, accounting, geophysicist, even an old CEO of a $200 mill company has ever experienced something like that. They may get a recruiter calling once a year. Most programmers don't know their real value and way too many say yes to work below average market rate. Younger ones a often preferred as they are easier to manipulate, have no idea about their value, and hardly ever says no to something. And they are brilliant and smart for bargain. What they lack is experience, but as the technology landscape changes every second year many believe experience doesn't matter. That may be why so many companies are struggling with technical debt.

gaius 10y ago
None of them who work as doctors, teachers, accounting, geophysicist, even an old CEO of a $200 mill company has ever experienced something like that. They may get a recruiter calling once a year. Those recruiters aren't calling for your benefit tho'. They are calling because they want to sell you like a piece of meat. That's just a sign that nearly everyone connected to the industry who isn't actually an engineer themselves is trying to exploit engineers in some way. What they lack is experience, but as the technology landscape changes every second year many believe experience doesn't matter People believe what is to their advantage to believe. Getting an experienced engineer at a knock down rate because they've been tricked into undervaluing their experience suits VCs and managers very well...
- rantanplan 10y ago
  > They are calling because they want to sell you like a piece of meat Compared to..... what? Calling me because of my good-natured character and my unparalleled virtues?
qudat 10y ago
My gf is a physician and she has recruiters contacting her exactly how we get contacted and with the same vein, recruiters are calling about jobs no one wants.

nitrogen 10y ago

The measure of "importance" that results in programmers being paid a lot of money is the ability to do something once and have it benefit millions of people.

gaius 10y ago
I don't think that's true because a) lots of people do that kind of work, in the physical world too, such as the guy who paints lines on the roads, and b) you don't do it once, you do it again and again every time a new JS framework comes out...

yladiz 10y ago

Yeah, this is quite true. Even if it doesn't seem like it, the fact that programmers have a relatively stable job and stable income -- worrying about getting the right about of pay vs equity is much different than worrying, "Will I get paid?" -- it show some lack of self awareness to even complain about these kinds of topics. Yes, you might have a difficult time making ends meet in SF with a $100k job in a nice apartment, but you can always move to a city that doesn't have obscene rent and living costs and live more comfortably, and most likely be able to afford the associated moving costs, something many, many people can't even begin to think about. Barring those comments, I think this article is actually good advice for software developers who don't know that much about how this works and what to ask, and could be burned in the end. Many people don't think about the specifics and if they have less than scrupulous founders, if they're not careful they can be in for a lot of trouble. I actually wish this would touch on the more psychological aspects of this topic, because you might want to understand these things, but might be worried about pressing buttons when applying them, and shouldn't be. For example, when you initially interview, don't be afraid to negotiate and definitely don't be afraid to leave if the terms aren't to your liking. If the company is profitable or is "awesome and will be worth tons of money, we promise!" they should put their money where their mouth is and compensate well, not just with equity. If you're not getting paid what you should be, or not getting the equity you think you should be getting, talk to the founders or whomever you can, and don't be afraid to leave if the situation is toxic or isn't acceptable (of course, this is mostly startup advice; when at a larger company you might get some say in the compensation package, but it's likely mostly up to bureaucratic processes unless you're being hired way up like VP/P/C level). It's not necessarily true that they need you more than need them, what's probably more truthful is that neither party needs the other.

bbcbasic 10y ago

They are well compensated but to not push for better upside more when the investors and founders have a lot of upside seems naive. Life is expensive if you plan to have children and give them a good start. Being smart about investments is essential to ensure a secure future. Just because a plumber earns less is irrelevant. Many people in trades go on to apply their knowledge to renovations anyway. Is a plumber more important? Impossible to quantify. Maybe a programmer works on a cad application that helps design a faucet that doesn't leak. The programmer is now indirectly a plumber.

amelius 10y ago

But most programmers are basically plumbers (for data as opposed to water/sewage) :)

gaius 10y ago
Not true. Plumbers work reasonable hours, are paid overtime, don't have to deal with ageism, their skills stay relevant regardless of fashion trends, and their jobs will never be offshored.
- dagw 10y ago
  and their jobs will never be offshored Don't know about the US, but in much of Europe plumbing has definitely been 'offshored' in the sense that much of the work is done by non-locals brought in short term.
  - gaius 10y ago
    Everyone "learning to code" instead is probably why! If I were giving career advice to any young person now, I would definitely tell them plumbing or a similar trade. As we say in Yorkshire "where there's muck there's brass".
    - amag 10y ago
      I always thought "where there's brass there's brass".
- minipci1321 10y ago
  > Plumbers work reasonable hours, are paid overtime, Indeed, over here many I talked to refused to do more than 8 hours a day. I didn't understand until... -- ever tried to do a hard physical work several days in a row? How about the entire life? > don't have to deal with ageism But have to deal with knee joints and back pains. Don't underestimate the joy of physical work at an advanced age. > their skills stay relevant regardless of fashion trends Old ones refuse to service modern equipment, say "I am a plumber, not an electrician". Admittedly, probably because they have got enough pure-plumbing work to do as it is.

amelius 10y ago

> If it were about intelligence, most physicists I know are underpaid and programmers are generally compensated fairly. Most physicists I know are searching for stuff that already exists, whereas most programmers I know are actually building new stuff.

yomritoyj 10y ago
All programs also exist, in the sense you can program a computer to generate one by one all possible valid x86 instruction sequences. What programmers are doing is searching for one program among them that will solve their problem.
ethanbond 10y ago
New stuff = this week's rip of another game, Snapchat feature, or productivity app. Yippee.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

billmalarky 10y ago

> What about the risk of work injuries faced by construction workers every day. That's real risk. I hear you, but the negative health effects of working insane hours developing in a high stress "start-up" environment for many years should not be understated.

mamon 10y ago
Exactly, in fact I think that if you want to stay healthy then working as a construction worker is great: you get physical excercise, fresh air, low stress level. Risk of injury is pretty low, and wages are pretty good. In contrast, being software developer will probably get you heart attack, or problems with your spine, or eyes, or hands or all of the above.
- uxp100 10y ago
  Are you sure this is true? You think the added risk of heart attack from software development is greater than the risk of death in construction? You think the rate of spine, eye, or hand injuries from typing all day is greater than the risk of bodily injury in construction? I find it difficult to find stats for this about software development, but 899 construction workers died on the job in 2014, and construction workers do get these small RSI issues in their shoulders and hands like you were describing for software development, but they are also regularly injured, but not killed, by falling, being crushed, and being cut.
  - erroneousfunk 10y ago
    But don't you know that software developers are the best and most noble population in the world, bravely suffering for the good of humanity? </sarcasm> I would love someone to try and complain about RSI to someone who's been a construction worker for 20 years. "But you get fresh air and exercise!" Ha! According to this source, 8.2% of construction workers have carpal tunnel: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4476336/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4476336/ And CTS is generally the least of their worries!

jazzyk 10y ago

>I would argue that plumbers, sewage workers and farmers should be paid higher than programmers. Self-employed plumbers are paid higher than programmers. Every plumber I reached out to quoted $130/hr and they are all booked for weeks in advance.

jzwinck 10y ago
Plumbers have to spend unbillable time driving from place to place. $130 per hour is great but if each job takes 1-2 hours it could magically halve. Ever walk into a half empty restaurant and get turned away because they're fully booked?
- jazzyk 10y ago
  The ones I talked to were not interested in taking on projects further than a 10-15 mins drive. Please note that plumbers also add markups on the products they install (water heaters, etc) and charge higher rates for weekend/after hours emergencies. Nothing wrong with it, they just take advantage of the good market. Not picking on plumbers, just pointing out that jobs in the software industry are not as plum as they seem to some posters here, compared to other jobs.
  - dpark 10y ago
    You're still underestimating the hours that are not billable. That plumber drives 15 minutes each way for a two hour job. That's a 20% loss of time. Plus it's not billable when the plumber has to go pick up materials from a hardware store. Nor is it billable when they deal with the overhead of running a business, maintaining accounts, dealing with bills, providing quotes, etc. Plus benefits are coming out of that $130. A self employed plumber working 40 billable hours/week is likely working more like 60 hours/week.
dagss 10y ago
A lot of self-employed consultant/freelance programmers charge that or more, and are booked for months (on the same project..)

jacques_chester 10y ago

Hayek's short 'Social' or Distributive Justice [0] neatly shows the disconnection between value and virtue, and that no market system rewards them in lockstep. And that no such system can function if you try to force it to reward them in lockstep. [0] Either as a chapter in the second volume of Law, Legislation and Liberty or as a standalone essay in The Essence of Hayek.

rimantas 10y ago

Not sure aniut the low barrier to entry. Take 1000 programmers, how many can be made into decent plumbers in 6 months? Now take 1000 plumbers, how many can be made ibto decent programmers in 6 months? Also, I am nit aware how often tevhnology materials and tooling changes for plumbers (I guess some of these spsn generations), but I am aware that platform I have been working full time for 4 years did not exist 8 years ago, and the language I write my code in did not exist three years ago.

pkolaczk 10y ago
Most programmers would be able to do usual plumbing stuff like connecting the sink or dishwasher to water pipes with almost no prior learning, just by looking how things are done, maybe asking a few basic questions at the plumbing supplies store, and reading the attached instructions. These things are no rocket-science really. Sure, an experienced plumber would do all of these things much faster and probably better, that's why we call them. But the barrier to entry is definitely much lower - that's a no-brainer to me.
- Unklejoe 10y ago
  While I agree that the barrier to entry is lower, I feel like you may be overestimating the average programmer’s “hands-on” abilities as well as the simplicity of being a plumber. Sure, most programmers have the problem solving skills to get the job done, but when it comes to actually doing it, things are sometimes different. In my own personal experience, only a small percentage of the programmers that I know (myself included) actually know how to turn a wrench, figuratively speaking. Another example is welding. I know how to weld, but I am not good at it. The only way I would get better is to keep practicing, which I never really have a chance to do since it’s not my day job. This is a slightly more extreme example than plumbing, but a similar concept. I would consider the usual plumbing stuff to be more along the lines of sweating copper pipes, using lead and oakum to connect cast iron sewage pipes, installing toilet flanges, etc... I feel like connecting a dishwasher is more along the lines of a handy man.
  - hippich 10y ago

radmuzom 10y ago

Downvoted. Your response did not make much sense to me given the article. The article just states that programmers should understand the intricate details of their compensation and make a balanced judgment (whether to take an offer or not) based on that. (edit) The article does not make a judgment on whether programmers are well compensated or not.

ysavir 10y ago

Well said, but I think you missed the point of the article. The article itself isn't even about programmers, really (even if the author didn't recognize it). It applies to all employees and founders of start ups, whether they are programmers, designers, or even just a person with an idea but no technical expertise It's not about how much you make or how much is fair. It's about properly understanding what your compensation is. The soul of the article is in the complexity of non-salary compensations, and how many surprises and pitfalls lurk in the small text, that most non-finance people don't even notice is there. And the author is reminding us to learn about those surprises and pitfalls, so that when the anticipated pay-day comes, our expectations are met properly. And it's good advice.

cm2187 10y ago

The point of the article is not so much about what should be the right level of compensation for technical people but rather the issue of technical people not bothering to understand the terms of the financial agreements they get into. If they did examine the terms, as you said supply and demand would ensure the terms are fair.

riskable 10y ago
> If they did examine the terms, as you said supply and demand would ensure the terms are fair. Only if all parties have all the information. The person being hired has now idea how desperate the company is for their skills, how much they're willing to spend, or even if the pay being offered is good for the location/position in a lot of cases.
- cm2187 10y ago
  And the company has no idea of whether the person being hire is as good as he pretends to be. This uncertainty goes both ways.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

pc86 10y ago

> [P]eople complain they are not compensated enough relative to the importance of their work, their intelligence, the hours put in, their title or the length of their education or the risk they take. Most developers would be wise to understand that with few exceptions, none of these things have anything to do with your compensation. Your compensation is based almost entirely on some amorphous combination of: A) Supply of similarly skilled labor (if enough similarly skilled devs are happy to do the work for $80k that gives you a ceiling) B) Supply of less skilled labor (if an army of unskilled devs are happy to do the work for $8/hr ...) C) Your leverage over your [prospective] employer D) How the company has done over the last *n* quarters E) Patronage F) Nepotism G) Luck I know I'm just repeating most of what you said.

riskable 10y ago
I'd put Luck and Nepotism at the top of the list followed by D. But maybe that's just because I work in finance.
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  To be fair, nepotism in tech tends to be of the academic type, and most kids who get into Ivy League have worked pretty hard to get there. So, in some ways, it's not that bad a kind of nepotism. Most startups are not hiring actual family members :)
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    > Most startups are not hiring actual family members :) It's harder to convince your own family to work for you for free with constant overtime and vague promises of great profits in the future. :).
n72 10y ago
Perhaps patronage covers this, but I would put skill at office politics/ass kissing high on the list.
- 10y ago

nilkn 10y ago

I think there's truth here, but I also think programmers routinely underestimate the quality and compensation of other careers that they think are "below" them. For instance, you did it in this very post. Do you really think that all high school teachers are locked into making $40k for life? Here where I live (a large city, but also a pretty affordable one), teachers start at ~$55k in base salary, get a whole range of benefits including a pension plan, actually really do have the summers off (plus numerous other breaks), and leave work at 3:20 PM every day. If you were to have them work year-round and go home at 6-7PM and convert the pension plan into salary, the salary would easily exceed that of most entry-level engineers across all disciplines in the area. When I graduated college, I had engineering friends being offered salaries in the $60-70k range for considerably less stable jobs, much longer hours, virtually no time off, and much fewer benefits.

ditonal 10y ago
Especially true for nurses. Very tough job, but there's more money in it than many realize. My friend who already does well for himself is now going to do 1 more year of school to get a CRNA and says he'll likely make 160k in Miami or 220k in SF. Yet a co-worker asked "how can nurses survive here?" SF nurse salaries are public and you can see they can out earn most engineers esp via overtime (which lots of engineers work uncompensated). Still, nursing is a very tough job and can have a low status stigma.
- nilkn 10y ago
  My mother's actually a nurse, and it's been a really great career choice for her, especially as she's aged. Over the last five years or so my parents have had to move several times due to volatility in my dad's career. And yet at every move my mom hasn't had any trouble finding stable and well-paid employment as a nurse. Nursing is similar to teaching in that you're not likely to get rich off of it, and it's not even an easy job at all, but it is a very stable one which pays a solid middle-class wage for life in pretty much any area of the country, from huge cities to small rural towns in the midwest. And, while the hours are rough as a new nurse fresh out of school, they're not bad at all with experience -- certainly it's a far more family friendly career than many others in healthcare, like being a physician. If my mom had been a programmer, she definitely wouldn't have weathered the moves they've made as well as she has. In fact, she'd have been the one forcing my dad to move with her, as decent programming jobs simply do not exist where they live.

epimetheus 10y ago

I know a water treatment plant worker, two plumbers, and an electrician in the Kansas City area, and they all make as much, if not more than my programming contemporaries. For instance, a friend tried to get me to work at Cerner for ~75-80k (good money in the Midwest), but those plumbers were making that plus some (45 dollars an hour, so in some cases would make more depending on overtime), the Electrician worked for himself and though I don't know his yearly earnings, he was making closer to 60/hr (based on a quote to install a ceiling fan, and since he was a HS buddy, he probably gave me a discount). The wastewater plant worker? He's a manager now making 100k or so, but started out at 60k, not bad for the midwest as well. I'd not trade my cushy, indoor job for that, mind you, just the idea that trade workers necessarily make peanuts, I believe, is without merit.

vtlynch 10y ago

>I think it's mostly supply and demand, timing and where you live. But those are the factors we rarely talk about. I think those are the exact factors constantly mentioned by the HackerNews community.

vladimirralev 10y ago

> importance of their work, their intelligence, the hours put in, their title or the length of their education or the risk Well one of these is not like the others. The article clearly focuses on the financial risks. It's destructive to suggest that risk and especially deceptive risk presentation is somehow ignorable and not to worry about it. You can't just let the supply and demand model play itself out. Hostile actors work against you and exploit information advantage to skew the supply and demand [1]. Teachers, construction workers or software engineers - it doesn't matter what your job is. Here we talk about stakeholders in a company. It just happens some software engineers are, and as such you should understand where the numbers come from and what's the value of all that since it's part of the compensation. There are plenty of devs out there who work for no money at all. It's pointless to go into philosophical discussion about jobs, it's outside the scope. This is purely a subject for stakeholders. [1] http://www.borooah.com/Teaching/Post%20Graduate%20Microeconomics/Week%203_Adverse%20Selection.pdf http://www.borooah.com/Teaching/Post%20Graduate%20Microecono...

lettergram 10y ago

One thing I want to mention is related to your last line: > Programmers in 2016 are generally very well compensated for a low risk, indoor job with a very low barrier to entry. Most employers don't get it, but Google, Facebook, and others do; programming well has a much higher barrier to entry than people realize. When I was 10 I could make an HTML page, when I was 14 I started incorporating JavaScript and building websites... A decade later (24), I am still improving and building bigger/better programs (full stack, but mostly data science). I went to school, worked all the way through tutoring for C, C++, and Go, and built websites as well. Yet there are people making the same salary as me that literally started programing 4 months ago. Those people who just started cannot build a website in a week (or even a few), it takes them months. Even then, thats with help, and it will have loads of bugs. I know because part of my job is training them. I have to explain how they just tried to access an array outside the bounds. Seriously, the other week I was interviewing a "master software engineer" for an internal role on my team and they failed a basic string flipping question... He's making at least double what I am. To put this into greater perspective, let's walk through a mental exercise. Say programmer one introduces 1 bug every 10 lines. The second programmer introduces 1 bug every 25 lines. After 10000 lines what do we have? Programmer #1: 1000 Programmer #2: 400 At an average of 30 minutes a lot of hours of bug fixes: Programmer #1: 500 hours Programmer #2: 200 hours My point, 200 hours is 5 weeks, 500 hours is 12.5 weeks of bug fixes. I'll grant you, this is napkin math, but trust me - this is why some developers think (and probably should) get paid more. Relative to their co-workers if they can make half as many mistakes they save time both upfront, and bug catching. Now compare that to the master software engineer I mentioned, whos already making double what I am... Based on that assessment, I'd likely be underpaid. All that being said, I generally agree, but coming from a pretty standard office, I can see why people feel underpaid. It's probably because people around them are being over paid.

randomdata 10y ago
"> programming well has a much higher barrier to entry than people realize." "Yet there are people making the same salary as me that literally started programing 4 months ago." That certainly sounds like a low barrier to entry to me. Compare with the barrier to entry to becoming a doctor, for instance. There, in many locations, you'll be looking at a decade of proving yourself to the club, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs to do that, before you are even allowed to start working. Four weeks, and maybe a computer that costs hundreds of dollars, is absolutely nothing in comparison. > this is why some developers think (and probably should) get paid more. Relative to their co-workers if they can make half as many mistakes they save time both upfront, and bug catching. But it still boils down to supply an demand, and if employers do not demand those with better bug fixing ability, there is going to be no corresponding premium for finding such people. What your post does indicate to me is that programmers have done a poor job of marketing the importance of bug fixing ability (or whatever features of an experienced developer you think is important) so that employers start demanding the subset of developers who have those skills.

dpeterson 10y ago

Can I ask, are you a programmer? My guess is you are not. If you were you would understand the real physical strain and mental toll it takes to be good. If you want to excel, it is a never-ending battle to stay current and there is little to no reward for experience (even though it matters a great deal and must be accomplished on and off the clock). There is limited time to make money before you either burn out or are perceived to be too old to stay relevant. So, yes, there is a lot of risk putting the best earning years into companies that promise one thing and deliver another.

flexie 10y ago
I am not. Programming is just a hobby and I am not very good at it. I am a lawyer, and my comments would apply to law as well (except that the barrier to entry is a bit higher since regulation forces people to go through law school). Your comments about physical strain, mental toll, risk of burning out etc. describe my field well, though. And I doubt salaries for lawyers and programmers are that different anymore.
- dpeterson 10y ago
  The difference being, the older you get the more you will be perceived an expert at law. Your experience ages like a fine wine. Experience in tech ages more like a ripe watermelon sitting in the sun. Your earning potential will only go up the longer you are a lawyer. That is not true for those that stay developers their entire career. P.S. I also spent a great deal of time getting degrees. B.S. in computer science and a Master's in Software Engineering. It is often not required to get a job, but it is still a barrier for many openings.
  - flexie 10y ago
    Let's see. In 20 years your field might have made large parts of my field redundant. I truly hope so :-) Programming is still a young profession and it's growing at a tremendous pace. The population pyramid of Programmers' Land actually looks like a pyramid which might cause programmers to think that older people can't make it. I know many older folks in IT who are still active. My old man continued until he was 70. They may not know the newest tricks in node.js or machine learning but they are the only ones who know the old legacy code that lock-in users and protect their jobs. I bet you and most of your colleagues will be active until retirement. Just like lawyers may continue as partners (partially or mostly doing managing or marketing) many programmers might transfer to management. A lot of programmers have long formal education but the market for programmers without education is still huge and the salaries for programmers without formal training easily beat almost any other professions where there are no educational requirements and a lot of professions with educational requirements. In which other profession can you realistically hope to start with salaries of 60-80k after a few months of online courses?

ryandrake 10y ago

Compensation is a market. It's not about what you "deserve" or how smart you are, or even your job performance. Your comp is driven by what the market will bear, in other words "what you can make elsewhere." Just like the price of a gadget is not based on the cost of its parts, or how much value the customer derives from it. It's based on what the market will bear.