6 ms·

If anything good programmers are underpaid. If you are making your company a mil, you should be getting 1/2.

nouveaux 8y ago
I'm all for programmers getting paid more. However, by your logic, if the company is losing money, should programmers contribute from their own pockets to keep the company afloat? Starting your own company (not self employed contractor) gives a really good perspective on what it means to be owner and employee.
- devoply 8y ago
  No they should quit and find another company.
  - seem_2211 8y ago
    You can't keep a significant portion of the upside without taking on more risk.
    - devoply 8y ago
      > Privatizing profits and socializing losses refers to the practice of treating firms' earnings as the rightful property of their shareholders, while treating losses as a responsibility that society as a whole must shoulder, for example through taxpayer-funded subsidies or bailouts.
      - friedman23 8y ago
        which software businesses have been bailed out by the government?
      - seem_2211 8y ago
        Not really related to what we're talking about here though?
- Jach 8y ago
  How is this his logic at all? The logic is more similar to a sales person. When a company starts losing money, it doesn't try to claw back commissions from its top sales agents to keep afloat. It might lower %s / do layoffs / something else, but money paid is money gone. The logic is that programmers tend to produce far more value than they capture -- so that gets captured elsewhere, a lot of it typically by management. Except the value can be hard to quantify when the company is old and so is the software, how much of the value is employee #3701 making fixing a bug that's making the product not work for one customer in one instance vs employees #107, #85, and #150 who in their past team's life created the original version of that system to begin with to make the new customer even consider using it? There's no point to moaning about how much you "should" get paid. Just ask for more if you feel underpaid, but be aware that because of competition and because people usually want to hear what more you'll do to justify it, you're not going to always get it.
vectorEQ 8y ago
if you solo develop (usually not the case) an app for 1 mil then make it yourself if you want that large a cut...
jjeaff 8y ago
But what if another programmer is willing to make me a million for only 25%? That's how markets work. You get paid what what the market will bear, not what you "should" make.
- devoply 8y ago
  As I said good programmers are underpaid. They should figure out how much they are making their companies and ask for more. The market can often afford to pay more, if you just negotiate better. You can also unionize to get your employers closer to what you are worth to them rather than what they are worth to you.
  - pmiller2 8y ago
    Suppose I’m working on pulling out some functionality from a large, monolithic application. How much am I making my company?
    - jsjohnst 8y ago
      Depends on what the outcome is. If it makes the site 50% more performant on 25% less hardware, pretty easy to swag it. Same if the outcome makes developers on the team able to ship new functionality 20% faster with 33% fewer bugs.
      - thecrazyone 8y ago
        This seems awfully contrived. Issue 1: It's very difficult to tell if your contribution got 50% improvement in performance because there were 10 other devs pushing in features and bug fixes. This is the attribution problem Issue 2: This happens over time. It's very unlikely that your 50% improvement happens every year or month. Because, think for your self, this is compounding with large rates. It grows quickly. 1.5x improvement in 6 cycles (months or years) is 10x. This essentially is the time problem Issue 3: even if you deliver the results you did, in a large company there's a large bureaucracy and no one person has the ability to increase your salary by that much. This is the control problem.
EpicEng 8y ago
And in tough times are you taking a drastic pay cut, or jumping ship? Sounds like you want a huge share of the good and none of the bad. Also not sure why you value programming so far above all of the other activities it takes to make a successful product.
elorant 8y ago
Define "making". Does the program/service sells itself? If so, then your argument may stand. Nine out of 10 times though it doesn't. There are other people involved in making the sales and they also require a piece of the pie.
cobookman 8y ago
Sales people don't get anywhere near that kind of commission. Most SWEs I know are not making more than they bring in profit.
- walshemj 8y ago
  Good ones do - the Oracle one that sold a large company I used to work for a company wide licence allegedly retired on that single deal.
simonh 8y ago
The usual ratio for top flight talent in the finance industry is 10:1. A trader makes JPMorganStanleyofAmerica $5m, they get $500k compensation. That seems reasonable because there’s a direct line between talent and profit. Even so someone had to build the business, capitalise it, create the business opportunities and relationships, train and support the trader and assume all of the risk. How much of the business risk of the enterprise is your top flight programmer assuming? Are her decisions the only ones that make any difference to the increase in profitability as a result of her work? How direct is the line between back room engineer, no matter how good and profit? The only case where 50% or near it makes sense is for a founder owner who is also the lead talent. Maybe. Because then they are also creating the business opportunity and assuming a big chunk of the risk.
jenscow 8y ago
Sarcasm works really well in a text-only format!
zappo2938 8y ago
It's a team effort. I stopped trying to get software projects off the ground by myself

I'm all for programmers getting paid more. However, by your logic, if the company is losing money, should programmers contribute from their own pockets to keep the company afloat? Starting your own company (not self employed contractor) gives a really good perspective on what it means to be owner and employee.

devoply 8y ago
No they should quit and find another company.
- seem_2211 8y ago
  You can't keep a significant portion of the upside without taking on more risk.
  - devoply 8y ago
    > Privatizing profits and socializing losses refers to the practice of treating firms' earnings as the rightful property of their shareholders, while treating losses as a responsibility that society as a whole must shoulder, for example through taxpayer-funded subsidies or bailouts.
    - friedman23 8y ago
      which software businesses have been bailed out by the government?
    - seem_2211 8y ago
      Not really related to what we're talking about here though?
Jach 8y ago
How is this his logic at all? The logic is more similar to a sales person. When a company starts losing money, it doesn't try to claw back commissions from its top sales agents to keep afloat. It might lower %s / do layoffs / something else, but money paid is money gone. The logic is that programmers tend to produce far more value than they capture -- so that gets captured elsewhere, a lot of it typically by management. Except the value can be hard to quantify when the company is old and so is the software, how much of the value is employee #3701 making fixing a bug that's making the product not work for one customer in one instance vs employees #107, #85, and #150 who in their past team's life created the original version of that system to begin with to make the new customer even consider using it? There's no point to moaning about how much you "should" get paid. Just ask for more if you feel underpaid, but be aware that because of competition and because people usually want to hear what more you'll do to justify it, you're not going to always get it.

vectorEQ 8y ago

if you solo develop (usually not the case) an app for 1 mil then make it yourself if you want that large a cut...

jjeaff 8y ago

But what if another programmer is willing to make me a million for only 25%? That's how markets work. You get paid what what the market will bear, not what you "should" make.

devoply 8y ago
As I said good programmers are underpaid. They should figure out how much they are making their companies and ask for more. The market can often afford to pay more, if you just negotiate better. You can also unionize to get your employers closer to what you are worth to them rather than what they are worth to you.
- pmiller2 8y ago
  Suppose I’m working on pulling out some functionality from a large, monolithic application. How much am I making my company?
  - jsjohnst 8y ago
    Depends on what the outcome is. If it makes the site 50% more performant on 25% less hardware, pretty easy to swag it. Same if the outcome makes developers on the team able to ship new functionality 20% faster with 33% fewer bugs.
    - thecrazyone 8y ago
      This seems awfully contrived. Issue 1: It's very difficult to tell if your contribution got 50% improvement in performance because there were 10 other devs pushing in features and bug fixes. This is the attribution problem Issue 2: This happens over time. It's very unlikely that your 50% improvement happens every year or month. Because, think for your self, this is compounding with large rates. It grows quickly. 1.5x improvement in 6 cycles (months or years) is 10x. This essentially is the time problem Issue 3: even if you deliver the results you did, in a large company there's a large bureaucracy and no one person has the ability to increase your salary by that much. This is the control problem.

EpicEng 8y ago

And in tough times are you taking a drastic pay cut, or jumping ship? Sounds like you want a huge share of the good and none of the bad. Also not sure why you value programming so far above all of the other activities it takes to make a successful product.

elorant 8y ago

Define "making". Does the program/service sells itself? If so, then your argument may stand. Nine out of 10 times though it doesn't. There are other people involved in making the sales and they also require a piece of the pie.

cobookman 8y ago

Sales people don't get anywhere near that kind of commission. Most SWEs I know are not making more than they bring in profit.

walshemj 8y ago
Good ones do - the Oracle one that sold a large company I used to work for a company wide licence allegedly retired on that single deal.

simonh 8y ago

The usual ratio for top flight talent in the finance industry is 10:1. A trader makes JPMorganStanleyofAmerica $5m, they get $500k compensation. That seems reasonable because there’s a direct line between talent and profit. Even so someone had to build the business, capitalise it, create the business opportunities and relationships, train and support the trader and assume all of the risk. How much of the business risk of the enterprise is your top flight programmer assuming? Are her decisions the only ones that make any difference to the increase in profitability as a result of her work? How direct is the line between back room engineer, no matter how good and profit? The only case where 50% or near it makes sense is for a founder owner who is also the lead talent. Maybe. Because then they are also creating the business opportunity and assuming a big chunk of the risk.

jenscow 8y ago

Sarcasm works really well in a text-only format!

zappo2938 8y ago

It's a team effort. I stopped trying to get software projects off the ground by myself