5 ms·

How to pay programmers less

72 points by hardwaresofton 10y ago

hardwaresofton 10y ago
Not the creator of the content, but thought this was something people needed to at least see. Irrespective of how well this blog was written or how many of your own personal views (or mine) were reflected, I think this kind of post is something at least people need to lay eyes on. If you haven't thought about these things yet, you don't have the right friends (at work), or haven't thought enough about your job, the company, the ecosystem, how businesses and the economy at large work, and your place in it all. It's totally fine not to think about those things, if you choose, but at least make sure it's a conscious choice. Not trying to sound condescending, not thinking about those things is a natural state that everyone has been in -- just trying to help illuminate for those that "don't know what they don't know" -- you may see this and think "so what, I'm happy with my current pay and lifestyle, it's fine" and that's totally fine! I'm just trying to reach those who may not even know these things are in play. All that said, being a programmer in this day and age is one of possibly the freest, most open, most rewarding, and well paying jobs.
- kul_ 10y ago
  I feel like the article is more of a satire than practical.
  - tn13 10y ago
    To be honest employer do indeed employ these tricks all the time.
  - hardwaresofton 10y ago
    There's definitely a satirical tone, but this kind of satire isn't very funny until you're fully aware that these things happen. I'm sure most people are familiar with the wage fixing scandal in the bay, which is covered here under the "Make a deal with competitors"
ubernostrum 10y ago
Wage policy is a political topic. Get it off HN.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  Everything startup/tech related is political.
devoply 10y ago
> Make a deal with competitors. Contact your major competitors in the region and agree to not head-hunt their programmers if they don't touch yours. If they reject this deal, try to recruit a few of their key engineers. Just offer to double their salaries. You won't really hire them, of course, but this move will definitely shake your local market, and competitors will be afraid of you. They will agree to never touch your slaves developers. illegal.
- Hydraulix989 10y ago
  Steve Jobs did it anyways EDIT: Why the downvotes? This above is demonstrably factual, and it doesn't necessarily imply that I _think_ that it should be legal nor that I think it was right for him to do it.
  - devoply 10y ago
    Just because a criminal commits a crime and gets away with it, and they still had to pay millions in settlement, does not mean that it's any less legal to do it. If you are not Apple, Google, et. al. that can afford millions of dollars in penalties, then I suggest you don't break the law. The 4 tech giants paid 345 million in fines for this.
    - Hydraulix989 10y ago
      At the time, I'm sure that the math worked out for each party involved though -- $80M per company sounds a lot less than the cost of losing crucial staff members to poaching, that's actually less than the cost of most of their real acquisitions (remember, there is lost knowledge, mindshare, and costs associated with re-hiring and training -- I've heard that it costs upwards of $100k to hire a single engineer at a big company, and then it can take up to a year for them to ramp up depending on the scope of the project that they're working on), AND there's a HUGE cost if you have to pay every single engineer a substantially higher salary. You can't just slot in a new replacement body like changing a tire and then immediately start driving away full throttle whenever you lose a key engineer. Our jobs are so nuanced, and there's a ton of arcane internal knowledge that each person has that took a ton of time to build up and wasn't ever documented (a lot of the most valuable IP doesn't ever leave peoples' heads). Not to mention, there are specialized "your company only" skills and human relationships that people develop that are only applicable to YOUR company that also took a lot of time and experience to build up. This is why I actually think it is worthwhile for HR to always give a counter-offer whenever an engineer decides to leave. Plus, they thought they could get away with it. On a parting note, calling Steve Jobs a criminal is certainly a debatable accusation 'round these parts.
wampler 10y ago
Duplicate? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13116991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13116991
- hardwaresofton 10y ago
  Just a note -- HN usually does a pretty decent job of catching reposts/duplicates when you submit the story... I've tried to submit stuff sometimes and been notified that it's been posted already.
Hydraulix989 10y ago
Best way is to manipulate the supply side. Now you know why Zuckerberg wants everyone to learn how to code (it wasn't actually because of their supposedly "humanitarian" spin). You can also go the remote work route (not sure why this is so shunned -- NOPE, I forgot; you can't do real engineering work unless you pay $3k/month rent to live in San Francisco and cram into a noisy constantly-distracting SoMa open office that smells like bum dung).
tn13 10y ago
Excellent post. Here are some personal experiences: 1. Keep salaries secret. I like this part. I do not like socialist way of deciding salaries. I worked at a place where salaries were open and left within a year. 2. Give raises randomly Know several employers and CEO who do this as a policy. It is mostly like 'yeah lets give them $200 monthly raise' by making it sound like a big deal and then make them work on Christmas to recover it 3. No conferences Make fun of conferences before your employees. Tell them only bozos go to such idiotic nerdy places. We are cool guys we don't go there. I know several companies that work hard to deny their employees any networking opportunity. 4. Spy on them. Not aware. 5. Make a deal with competitors Dont know. 6. Promote corporate values I fell prey to this once. Not again. But the author has ignored trashtalking others. Saying things like "only morons work for google", "facebook is in death spiral". 7. Help them survive Correct. Innumerable examples of how employers use this techniq. This is most common when the employee is H1B. He/she feels indebted for getting the visa. If the employer does not have 401K plan that employer is not worth working for more than 2 years.
- DrScump 10y ago
  Blatantly illegal, in the USA, anyway. Adobe, Apple, Google, and Intel already tried. http://time.com/76655/google-apple-settle-wage-fixing-lawsuit/ http://time.com/76655/google-apple-settle-wage-fixing-lawsui...
  - tn13 10y ago
    Again, being illegal has not stopped Apple and Google from doing it. Remember tech industry is lot more people friendly than say aviation or biotech. Who knows how many other companies have engaged in this sort of predatory policies and government has not yet figured it out ? Illegal is what government thinks people should not do, people do it all the time however.
    - DrScump 10y ago
      Some things are illegal because law is the only protection against abuse by employers. Like this.
CM30 10y ago
Forgot to mention 'give them internships and then have them do the work of a full time employee'. That seems to be a common 'trick' by sleazous companies as well. Internships seem to be much more about saving money than actually teaching anyone anything. In the UK/EU, there's also the 'hire employers from poorer parts of the continent' thing. Yeah, I know, probably not politically correct to say that, but I've definitely seen companies offering far lower than market rate wages for programming, and then filling vacancies with people from areas where that is seen as 'normal' (plus those who are massively inexperienced/don't look around much).
k__ 10y ago
lol, satire at its best, I saw all these things in my career. > Keep salaries secret. This is standard procedure and doesn't work. Sure some of the really highly paid people will keep their mouths shut, but the rest will talk. > Spy on them. Doesn't need to be IT spying, a "You have to be in office with us, so we can work more productive!" is enough distrust for me to "not" join a company nowadays. > Make a deal with competitors. Not just a problem of big corp employees. Often the CEOs of the tech companies of the same size in one city know each. My girlfriend works as a marketer for an agency and they got a big consulting gig with new tech, from a startup, they should set up for a big corp. Now she became a pro in that tech, but she can't apply to the startup, because the CEO of her agency is "biggest friend" with the CEO of the startup. > Promote corporate values. I worked for a company for about 5 years. They tanked and got buyed by an investor. He replaced the management completely with some generic corporate guys. Then these guys ran around preaching our new culture and corporate values as if they have always been there. It felt kinda 1984'ish. I mean I worked there more than half of the time the company even existed, they just got there and tried to tell me how things are running there. Well then I quit, lol. > Stress them Luckily I only stress myself and am quite chill about other peoples problems. > Cushion chairs and tennis tables I was at a few meetups in my city, which were in the offices of startups. They are quite stereotypical. Big open offices, ping-pong-tables, etc. I always have to think about these images of the industrial age, where hundrets of women had to sew clothes in big industry halls. The idea to work there is quite scary to me. > Give them sound titles. Yes, they throw these titels around without any questions asked. Beside the C-level stuff you can be anything. And if you play your cards well and the company gets big it could be that your "dumb titel" gets you a nice place somewhere. > Help them survive. This doesn't work too good. Only with very awkward programmers, I think. The problem with most programmers is, they get mad money, often even if underpaid, and live quite frugal. In 2 years I saved enough money to stop working for 1 year, so I only used ~50% of the money I got. Also the unemployment help in our country is 60% of your last income and is paid for 12 months (9 if you quit yourself). So if you can create software, you're pretty free to change to a different employer quite quickly. > Be a friend. This often doesn't work well with me. I live a rather deviant life, most people don't know what to make of it. They start to go on a personal level, but are overwhelmed by what I'm doing or I don't even respond to their connection attempts, because of my negative experiences in the past.
manish_gill 10y ago
> Keep Salaries Secret This is something that's actually an offense that can get you fired at my company. Their justification is "to reduce gossip".
- troygoode 10y ago
  Are you in the US? It is illegal to fire someone over that here (not that there aren't unethical ways of getting rid of you without out directly tying it to that conduct overtly...).
- emagdnim2100 10y ago
  To simplify a bit, if your company is based in the U.S. and subject to National Labor Relations Board jurisdiction, this is illegal. Knowledge of this is a nice tool to have in your back pocket while dealing with management and HR. (Further information on whether your company is covered: https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/jurisdictional-standards https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/jurisdictional-standa...)
  - manish_gill 10y ago
    Not in the US unfortunately. Don't know enough about labour laws in my country but I doubt there's gonna be something in there.
    - hardwaresofton 10y ago
      You can use sites like Glassdoor to get around this (I'm not affiliated with them in any way). Or start your own glassdoor, more as a public service (even if you don't make money from it) -- let people post their company and salary, so others can see. Glassdoor is a site that lets you view reported salaries from different companies. They're doing lots of things now, but that was the original value prop for that site, IIRC.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
pascalxus 10y ago
In theory, every business will try to extract as much value from every employee as possible for the least amount of cost. This makes sense and is how capitalism works. However, in bay area software companies, I see that most companies would rather extract more value from every employee, rather than cut employee costs by not paying higher salaries. When negotiating for a salary, for example, if you overbid too aggressively for your salary, often the result is that the company wants you even more, especially if you have a recruiter with a fat commission at stake! This isn't too surprising, considering that they're located in the bay area (as opposed to somewhere half the labor cost - like Austin). I know it's not possible for every business model, but If companies were serious about cutting costs, they'd start moving to cheaper areas in the US or even start outsourcing more to India and China ~ with considerable savings. Bay area companies, usually prioritize growth, above cutting costs, though this could change in the future as industries mature.
Raphmedia 10y ago
Ha! So that's the guide the managers at my previous workplace were following! Explains a lot. ... I did say previous workplace.

Not the creator of the content, but thought this was something people needed to at least see. Irrespective of how well this blog was written or how many of your own personal views (or mine) were reflected, I think this kind of post is something at least people need to lay eyes on. If you haven't thought about these things yet, you don't have the right friends (at work), or haven't thought enough about your job, the company, the ecosystem, how businesses and the economy at large work, and your place in it all. It's totally fine not to think about those things, if you choose, but at least make sure it's a conscious choice. Not trying to sound condescending, not thinking about those things is a natural state that everyone has been in -- just trying to help illuminate for those that "don't know what they don't know" -- you may see this and think "so what, I'm happy with my current pay and lifestyle, it's fine" and that's totally fine! I'm just trying to reach those who may not even know these things are in play. All that said, being a programmer in this day and age is one of possibly the freest, most open, most rewarding, and well paying jobs.

kul_ 10y ago
I feel like the article is more of a satire than practical.
- tn13 10y ago
  To be honest employer do indeed employ these tricks all the time.
- hardwaresofton 10y ago
  There's definitely a satirical tone, but this kind of satire isn't very funny until you're fully aware that these things happen. I'm sure most people are familiar with the wage fixing scandal in the bay, which is covered here under the "Make a deal with competitors"

ubernostrum 10y ago

Wage policy is a political topic. Get it off HN.

st3v3r 10y ago
Everything startup/tech related is political.

devoply 10y ago

> Make a deal with competitors. Contact your major competitors in the region and agree to not head-hunt their programmers if they don't touch yours. If they reject this deal, try to recruit a few of their key engineers. Just offer to double their salaries. You won't really hire them, of course, but this move will definitely shake your local market, and competitors will be afraid of you. They will agree to never touch your slaves developers. illegal.

Hydraulix989 10y ago
Steve Jobs did it anyways EDIT: Why the downvotes? This above is demonstrably factual, and it doesn't necessarily imply that I _think_ that it should be legal nor that I think it was right for him to do it.
- devoply 10y ago
  Just because a criminal commits a crime and gets away with it, and they still had to pay millions in settlement, does not mean that it's any less legal to do it. If you are not Apple, Google, et. al. that can afford millions of dollars in penalties, then I suggest you don't break the law. The 4 tech giants paid 345 million in fines for this.
  - Hydraulix989 10y ago
    At the time, I'm sure that the math worked out for each party involved though -- $80M per company sounds a lot less than the cost of losing crucial staff members to poaching, that's actually less than the cost of most of their real acquisitions (remember, there is lost knowledge, mindshare, and costs associated with re-hiring and training -- I've heard that it costs upwards of $100k to hire a single engineer at a big company, and then it can take up to a year for them to ramp up depending on the scope of the project that they're working on), AND there's a HUGE cost if you have to pay every single engineer a substantially higher salary. You can't just slot in a new replacement body like changing a tire and then immediately start driving away full throttle whenever you lose a key engineer. Our jobs are so nuanced, and there's a ton of arcane internal knowledge that each person has that took a ton of time to build up and wasn't ever documented (a lot of the most valuable IP doesn't ever leave peoples' heads). Not to mention, there are specialized "your company only" skills and human relationships that people develop that are only applicable to YOUR company that also took a lot of time and experience to build up. This is why I actually think it is worthwhile for HR to always give a counter-offer whenever an engineer decides to leave. Plus, they thought they could get away with it. On a parting note, calling Steve Jobs a criminal is certainly a debatable accusation 'round these parts.

wampler 10y ago

Duplicate? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13116991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13116991

hardwaresofton 10y ago
Just a note -- HN usually does a pretty decent job of catching reposts/duplicates when you submit the story... I've tried to submit stuff sometimes and been notified that it's been posted already.

Hydraulix989 10y ago

Best way is to manipulate the supply side. Now you know why Zuckerberg wants everyone to learn how to code (it wasn't actually because of their supposedly "humanitarian" spin). You can also go the remote work route (not sure why this is so shunned -- NOPE, I forgot; you can't do real engineering work unless you pay $3k/month rent to live in San Francisco and cram into a noisy constantly-distracting SoMa open office that smells like bum dung).

tn13 10y ago

Excellent post. Here are some personal experiences: 1. Keep salaries secret. I like this part. I do not like socialist way of deciding salaries. I worked at a place where salaries were open and left within a year. 2. Give raises randomly Know several employers and CEO who do this as a policy. It is mostly like 'yeah lets give them $200 monthly raise' by making it sound like a big deal and then make them work on Christmas to recover it 3. No conferences Make fun of conferences before your employees. Tell them only bozos go to such idiotic nerdy places. We are cool guys we don't go there. I know several companies that work hard to deny their employees any networking opportunity. 4. Spy on them. Not aware. 5. Make a deal with competitors Dont know. 6. Promote corporate values I fell prey to this once. Not again. But the author has ignored trashtalking others. Saying things like "only morons work for google", "facebook is in death spiral". 7. Help them survive Correct. Innumerable examples of how employers use this techniq. This is most common when the employee is H1B. He/she feels indebted for getting the visa. If the employer does not have 401K plan that employer is not worth working for more than 2 years.

DrScump 10y ago
Blatantly illegal, in the USA, anyway. Adobe, Apple, Google, and Intel already tried. http://time.com/76655/google-apple-settle-wage-fixing-lawsuit/ http://time.com/76655/google-apple-settle-wage-fixing-lawsui...
- tn13 10y ago
  Again, being illegal has not stopped Apple and Google from doing it. Remember tech industry is lot more people friendly than say aviation or biotech. Who knows how many other companies have engaged in this sort of predatory policies and government has not yet figured it out ? Illegal is what government thinks people should not do, people do it all the time however.
  - DrScump 10y ago
    Some things are illegal because law is the only protection against abuse by employers. Like this.

CM30 10y ago

Forgot to mention 'give them internships and then have them do the work of a full time employee'. That seems to be a common 'trick' by sleazous companies as well. Internships seem to be much more about saving money than actually teaching anyone anything. In the UK/EU, there's also the 'hire employers from poorer parts of the continent' thing. Yeah, I know, probably not politically correct to say that, but I've definitely seen companies offering far lower than market rate wages for programming, and then filling vacancies with people from areas where that is seen as 'normal' (plus those who are massively inexperienced/don't look around much).

k__ 10y ago

lol, satire at its best, I saw all these things in my career. > Keep salaries secret. This is standard procedure and doesn't work. Sure some of the really highly paid people will keep their mouths shut, but the rest will talk. > Spy on them. Doesn't need to be IT spying, a "You have to be in office with us, so we can work more productive!" is enough distrust for me to "not" join a company nowadays. > Make a deal with competitors. Not just a problem of big corp employees. Often the CEOs of the tech companies of the same size in one city know each. My girlfriend works as a marketer for an agency and they got a big consulting gig with new tech, from a startup, they should set up for a big corp. Now she became a pro in that tech, but she can't apply to the startup, because the CEO of her agency is "biggest friend" with the CEO of the startup. > Promote corporate values. I worked for a company for about 5 years. They tanked and got buyed by an investor. He replaced the management completely with some generic corporate guys. Then these guys ran around preaching our new culture and corporate values as if they have always been there. It felt kinda 1984'ish. I mean I worked there more than half of the time the company even existed, they just got there and tried to tell me how things are running there. Well then I quit, lol. > Stress them Luckily I only stress myself and am quite chill about other peoples problems. > Cushion chairs and tennis tables I was at a few meetups in my city, which were in the offices of startups. They are quite stereotypical. Big open offices, ping-pong-tables, etc. I always have to think about these images of the industrial age, where hundrets of women had to sew clothes in big industry halls. The idea to work there is quite scary to me. > Give them sound titles. Yes, they throw these titels around without any questions asked. Beside the C-level stuff you can be anything. And if you play your cards well and the company gets big it could be that your "dumb titel" gets you a nice place somewhere. > Help them survive. This doesn't work too good. Only with very awkward programmers, I think. The problem with most programmers is, they get mad money, often even if underpaid, and live quite frugal. In 2 years I saved enough money to stop working for 1 year, so I only used ~50% of the money I got. Also the unemployment help in our country is 60% of your last income and is paid for 12 months (9 if you quit yourself). So if you can create software, you're pretty free to change to a different employer quite quickly. > Be a friend. This often doesn't work well with me. I live a rather deviant life, most people don't know what to make of it. They start to go on a personal level, but are overwhelmed by what I'm doing or I don't even respond to their connection attempts, because of my negative experiences in the past.

manish_gill 10y ago

> Keep Salaries Secret This is something that's actually an offense that can get you fired at my company. Their justification is "to reduce gossip".

troygoode 10y ago
Are you in the US? It is illegal to fire someone over that here (not that there aren't unethical ways of getting rid of you without out directly tying it to that conduct overtly...).
emagdnim2100 10y ago
To simplify a bit, if your company is based in the U.S. and subject to National Labor Relations Board jurisdiction, this is illegal. Knowledge of this is a nice tool to have in your back pocket while dealing with management and HR. (Further information on whether your company is covered: https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/jurisdictional-standards https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/jurisdictional-standa...)
- manish_gill 10y ago
  Not in the US unfortunately. Don't know enough about labour laws in my country but I doubt there's gonna be something in there.
  - hardwaresofton 10y ago
    You can use sites like Glassdoor to get around this (I'm not affiliated with them in any way). Or start your own glassdoor, more as a public service (even if you don't make money from it) -- let people post their company and salary, so others can see. Glassdoor is a site that lets you view reported salaries from different companies. They're doing lots of things now, but that was the original value prop for that site, IIRC.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

pascalxus 10y ago

In theory, every business will try to extract as much value from every employee as possible for the least amount of cost. This makes sense and is how capitalism works. However, in bay area software companies, I see that most companies would rather extract more value from every employee, rather than cut employee costs by not paying higher salaries. When negotiating for a salary, for example, if you overbid too aggressively for your salary, often the result is that the company wants you even more, especially if you have a recruiter with a fat commission at stake! This isn't too surprising, considering that they're located in the bay area (as opposed to somewhere half the labor cost - like Austin). I know it's not possible for every business model, but If companies were serious about cutting costs, they'd start moving to cheaper areas in the US or even start outsourcing more to India and China ~ with considerable savings. Bay area companies, usually prioritize growth, above cutting costs, though this could change in the future as industries mature.

Raphmedia 10y ago

Ha! So that's the guide the managers at my previous workplace were following! Explains a lot. ... I did say previous workplace.