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By the way, since you mention "deserve" - the paycheck is not about what someone deserves. People at McDonalds work hard, I personally know two such people. T

By the way, since you mention "deserve" - the paycheck is not about what someone deserves. People at McDonalds work hard, I personally know two such people. They deserve a lot more. Unfortunately the market does not support the wages they deserve. Do you and I deserve what we earn? Sadly, markets decide wages, we do not. The only real control you and I have is the ability to walk away if we feel we deserve more. People do walk away from $200k salaries. I know lots of people who would absolutely walk away from a $200k salary. Here are some reasons: - Programmers are highly exposed to market cycles, so you need to earn more in good years to make up for bad years. Since you are 27, you have never seen bad years. They do come. People end up unemployed or underemployed for 1 or 2yrs. Some never recover. - Programmers are like athletes, your earning ability goes down rapidly over time due to age-discrimination. So you need to earn $250 or $300k/yr to make up for future down years. Note this is unlike medicine or law where there isnt as much age discrimination. - Programmers need to constantly retrain themselves, often on their own time. For these three reasons, one might argue that programmers deserve more money. However, they dont get more money because they deserve it, they get more because: A. Many tech workers see the above 3 issues B. ...they move into other, better paying or more stable jobs or more long-term sustainable jobs C. ......they reduce supply D. .........market wages go up. If tech jobs were more stable or long-term oriented people would expect lesser wages.

capRidiculous 10y ago
Again, supply and demand aside, I would argue that the amount you get paid is based on the amount of ROI you are bringing in. Your average McDonald's employee works hard for 10 hours a day at an $8/hr rate. Assuming each employ generates $300-$400 in the end, in order to justify their wage increase, they need to generate more than that. I do not know how much value they generate but if generate more than 4x of pay, then I would fully support a pay raise. This can happen if we are willing to pay more than $1 for a McChicken. Are you really willing to pay more than that? Hard work is not equal to more money. Yes, programming is a tough profession and we often have shorter professional lives. But, I chose this path because I love coding and intend to move to a more managerial role in the future. That does not mean we should be paid 300k/year. An NFL athlete can easily command 1 mil/year because their franchise is easily generating more than that off of the athlete's name. Are you as a developer generating more than 1.2 mil/year for your company to get paid 300k?
- TuringNYC 10y ago
  I dont think you can put "supply and demand aside" because the market wages are by definition of where supply meets demand. ROI is a different concept -- you are right that someone needs to generate ~1.2M$ to be worth paying $300k. But that does not mean there is a shortage, it means the business is not a viable business. Consider this example -- I'm going to create cars and sell them for $5000. I need a crew of 10 people, paid $500/yr. I cant find any crew willing to accept that. That doesnt mean there is a shortage of auto workers. It means I'm not paying enough. Just because I've come up with a faulty business (selling cars for $5000) does not mean that people must work for me for peanuts. It means my business is flawed because it relies on underpaid workers. Also, w/r/t you increasing a pay rise for burger flippers - that is not how businesses function. Business would not generally raise salaries as long as they could find workers at depressed salaries. If they did, their Board of Directors would quickly fire the CEO. You could choose to do this for your own company, but that is not representative of how large or most companies work. Companies are constantly hiring McKinsey or Towers Perrin to benchmark labour costs to ensure they are paying as little as possible.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  You continue to forget the point that it really does not matter what your company thinks about ROI if the company next door is offering more money. The qualified people are going to go over there first, and you will get the leftovers. Why would the qualified people do any different?

capRidiculous 10y ago

Again, supply and demand aside, I would argue that the amount you get paid is based on the amount of ROI you are bringing in. Your average McDonald's employee works hard for 10 hours a day at an $8/hr rate. Assuming each employ generates $300-$400 in the end, in order to justify their wage increase, they need to generate more than that. I do not know how much value they generate but if generate more than 4x of pay, then I would fully support a pay raise. This can happen if we are willing to pay more than $1 for a McChicken. Are you really willing to pay more than that? Hard work is not equal to more money. Yes, programming is a tough profession and we often have shorter professional lives. But, I chose this path because I love coding and intend to move to a more managerial role in the future. That does not mean we should be paid 300k/year. An NFL athlete can easily command 1 mil/year because their franchise is easily generating more than that off of the athlete's name. Are you as a developer generating more than 1.2 mil/year for your company to get paid 300k?

TuringNYC 10y ago
I dont think you can put "supply and demand aside" because the market wages are by definition of where supply meets demand. ROI is a different concept -- you are right that someone needs to generate ~1.2M$ to be worth paying $300k. But that does not mean there is a shortage, it means the business is not a viable business. Consider this example -- I'm going to create cars and sell them for $5000. I need a crew of 10 people, paid $500/yr. I cant find any crew willing to accept that. That doesnt mean there is a shortage of auto workers. It means I'm not paying enough. Just because I've come up with a faulty business (selling cars for $5000) does not mean that people must work for me for peanuts. It means my business is flawed because it relies on underpaid workers. Also, w/r/t you increasing a pay rise for burger flippers - that is not how businesses function. Business would not generally raise salaries as long as they could find workers at depressed salaries. If they did, their Board of Directors would quickly fire the CEO. You could choose to do this for your own company, but that is not representative of how large or most companies work. Companies are constantly hiring McKinsey or Towers Perrin to benchmark labour costs to ensure they are paying as little as possible.
st3v3r 10y ago
You continue to forget the point that it really does not matter what your company thinks about ROI if the company next door is offering more money. The qualified people are going to go over there first, and you will get the leftovers. Why would the qualified people do any different?