8 ms·

Tech salaries are high for a number of reasons: programmers are highly productive, reducing the amount of work that others must do, the job is hard, and require

by moosey 7y ago

Tech salaries are high for a number of reasons: programmers are highly productive, reducing the amount of work that others must do, the job is hard, and requires basically autodidacts to do it. The personality traits for being a good programmer, I think, are rare. There are a whole suite of poorly paid positions in the United States that are similarly difficult and not as highly paid as they could be: teachers, for instance. But why do we even discuss it when there is a whole cohort of salaries that actually make no sense in comparison: All of the VP's, CEO's, etc... even stock holders just wasting efficiency collecting dividends from existing wealth and the productivity of others. Why are tech people trying to defend their salaries when we could just point at the next people up the chain?

ForHackernews 7y ago
> All of the VP's, CEO's, etc According to one theory, if you overpay the guy at the top, it makes all the underlings work harder to try and climb up that greasy pole. The more grossly and obviously overpaid that top guy is, the more desirable it is to try and somehow work your way to his position.
- mcv 7y ago
  According to another theory, it's demotivating for the underlings because they know they're not getting paid fairly.
qnsi 7y ago
In your opinion CEO role is easier then programmers?
- RugnirViking 7y ago
  In your opinion CEO role is thousands of times harder then programmers? or tens of thousands harder than working long hours doing construction? Sure, it might be a little harder, but to me its absurd to claim the salary difference makes any moral sense.
tudelo 7y ago
"The personality traits for being a good programmer" Could you expand on this? I would be interested in what part you find 'rare' -- I find there are tons of different niches/archetypes that a SWE can have.
- hobofan 7y ago
  My very anecdotal experience: After teaching/mentoring quite a few SWEs from varying skill levels, the two traits that I find are the most important and at the same time rare are: - Attention to detail - High frustration barrier Over the course of a career those become less and less important as one learns to use the appropriate tools (e.g. linters) and processes, but you still need them to get to that point. Especially for beginners, those two in practice most often break the "everyone can learn to program" trope, that I'd like to be true.
  - cestith 7y ago
    Indeed, I think it's two different frustration barriers. There's a high barrier to being frustrated enough to stop working on a difficult problem to improve a situation. There's a fairly low barrier to being frustrated enough with an existing solution to want to make that improvement.
    - hobofan 7y ago
      I agree that that's also a very nice trait for a SWE to have, but I actually had the far more boring attention to detail in mind: Spotting syntactic errors in code and similar things like misspelling of variables, etc.. Hunting those down in the beginning also goes hand in hand with a high frustration barrier.
  - magicalhippo 7y ago
    > everyone can learn to program Indeed. Everyone can learn to write code. Not everyone can learn to program. http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/SD_PPIG_2009.pdf http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/SD_PPIG_2009...
- 7y ago
bluGill 7y ago
I wouldn't be CEO for the kind of pay they get. Getting a few million dollars a year sounds nice until you realize they all work excess hours, are often on the road: they don't get to spend much time with their family. Seeing my 6 year old solve "laser maze" puzzles is worth far more to me than the money.
- eximius 7y ago
  I'm young and don't have kids (and plan not to). I think my wife and I would gladly trade a year or two of overworking to effectively be able to retire immediately thereafter (or at least, have financial independence and get to choose work and hours). EDIT: I'm not suggesting a large company is going to hire me as CEO...
  - bluGill 7y ago
    You need to work up the ladder - it isn't one or two years, it is 30 years of this. The pay does go up as you go up the ladder, but still...
  - jonas21 7y ago
    Well, I think it would be pretty rare for someone to suddenly find themselves the CEO of a large company without first having spent many years working just as hard at lower levels. And it would also be rare for someone to be hired as CEO if the board knew they were planning on leaving after a year or two (unless it was an interim position). Since the OP mentioned Matt Levine's Money Stuff, here's a fun little bit from today's newsletter [1]: > Every time you read about a workaholic billionaire and think “boy, not me, if I had a billion dollars I’d be on the beach,” the answer is always “well that’s why you don’t have a billion dollars.” If you have the characteristics that enable you to make a billion dollars, you don’t usually turn them off once you get there. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-02-03/amazon-wanted-some-tax-breaks https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-02-03/amazon...
- blackearl 7y ago
  Sure, but you can also fuck upwards, as in the company can fail under your leadership but you'll still get a nice bonus with the excuse that they don't want to scare off potential incoming CEOs or some other nonsense.
Jagat 7y ago
You're saying that programmers have a unique set of skills which is why they're paid so much. And in the next sentence you're questioning why CEOs get paid so much. A good CEO or CFO or CMO can generate value for the company at a scale that's much much larger than what a single programmer does. During Satya Nadella's reign as the CEO, Microsoft went from people speculating its impending demise to a trillion dollar company. Don't you think he deserves a billion from that $700bn rise in market cap? TSLA stock will tank the moment Elon Musk decides to step down? In a cynical world, maybe he's just a figurehead and there are others running the show behind the scene, but creating such persona is still something that a CEO has to do. This is the same old Tesla vs Edison discussion. It's a common misconception among people that it's enough to be a genius lone worker to be able to provide value to a company.
- davidcbc 7y ago
  > Don't you think he deserves a billion from that $700bn rise in market cap? No, nobody deserves a billion dollars, I don't care what they do.
  - xyzelement 7y ago
    Seems like an odd thing to say in response to such a clear example. Deserves maybe isn’t the right word but they earn it and people are willing to pay for the value so why not?
    - Twixes 7y ago
      Even if you had been earning your current salary since the day Jesus was born, you still wouldn't have today even a quarter of a billion dollars. That's the outrageous part. That kind of wealth should not be attainable for any single person. If the company is doing that well, the wealth should go to everyone who's part of it. After all, without them no actual work would be done.
      - xyzelement 7y ago
        (a) depends on the salary and (b) have you heard of compounding? :) But seriously, that's a weird way to think about it. Nobody pays you to be a billionaire - it happens that you create something that grows in value and takes you up with it. I used to work for Bloomberg - Mike is rich because the thing he created is just that valuable. He didn't take the money from anyone, didn't make anyone pay him a crazy salary. He just made something amazing that's been generating value for 30+ years, and has made lots of people rich in the process. Why begrudge him that?
pbk1 7y ago
It's almost impossible to directly quantify in dollar terms the productivity of individual programmers. I am suspicious of the claim that all programmers who command a high salary are "highly productive" and "reduce the amount of work that others must do." Unlike professional sports or finance, where extreme outperformers are generally compensated in proportion to their contributions, the output of engineers is generally less quantifiable at tech companies so median engineers are paid more than their personal labor can justify. Tech salaries are also a function of how much VC money has flooded the sector since the crisis - expect this effect to dissipate as (i) investors focus on profitability before growth at all costs in the wake of WeWork etc. and (ii) if/when valuations in private capital markets undergo a correction (for which they are long overdue!)
madeofpalk 7y ago
> programmers are highly productive This is an extremely optimistic view of the majority of developers who are essentially building glorified Wordpress themes.
- barrkel 7y ago
  It would be more precise to say that programmers can be highly leveraged by the scale of organizations. A glorified Wordpress theme for a cornershop isn't valuable. The same thing for a redesign that materially affects the decisions of millions of consumers may be super valuable.

by moosey 7y ago

ForHackernews 7y ago

> All of the VP's, CEO's, etc According to one theory, if you overpay the guy at the top, it makes all the underlings work harder to try and climb up that greasy pole. The more grossly and obviously overpaid that top guy is, the more desirable it is to try and somehow work your way to his position.

mcv 7y ago
According to another theory, it's demotivating for the underlings because they know they're not getting paid fairly.

qnsi 7y ago

In your opinion CEO role is easier then programmers?

RugnirViking 7y ago
In your opinion CEO role is thousands of times harder then programmers? or tens of thousands harder than working long hours doing construction? Sure, it might be a little harder, but to me its absurd to claim the salary difference makes any moral sense.

tudelo 7y ago

"The personality traits for being a good programmer" Could you expand on this? I would be interested in what part you find 'rare' -- I find there are tons of different niches/archetypes that a SWE can have.

hobofan 7y ago
My very anecdotal experience: After teaching/mentoring quite a few SWEs from varying skill levels, the two traits that I find are the most important and at the same time rare are: - Attention to detail - High frustration barrier Over the course of a career those become less and less important as one learns to use the appropriate tools (e.g. linters) and processes, but you still need them to get to that point. Especially for beginners, those two in practice most often break the "everyone can learn to program" trope, that I'd like to be true.
- cestith 7y ago
  Indeed, I think it's two different frustration barriers. There's a high barrier to being frustrated enough to stop working on a difficult problem to improve a situation. There's a fairly low barrier to being frustrated enough with an existing solution to want to make that improvement.
  - hobofan 7y ago
    I agree that that's also a very nice trait for a SWE to have, but I actually had the far more boring attention to detail in mind: Spotting syntactic errors in code and similar things like misspelling of variables, etc.. Hunting those down in the beginning also goes hand in hand with a high frustration barrier.
- magicalhippo 7y ago
  > everyone can learn to program Indeed. Everyone can learn to write code. Not everyone can learn to program. http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/SD_PPIG_2009.pdf http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/SD_PPIG_2009...
7y ago

bluGill 7y ago

I wouldn't be CEO for the kind of pay they get. Getting a few million dollars a year sounds nice until you realize they all work excess hours, are often on the road: they don't get to spend much time with their family. Seeing my 6 year old solve "laser maze" puzzles is worth far more to me than the money.

eximius 7y ago
I'm young and don't have kids (and plan not to). I think my wife and I would gladly trade a year or two of overworking to effectively be able to retire immediately thereafter (or at least, have financial independence and get to choose work and hours). EDIT: I'm not suggesting a large company is going to hire me as CEO...
- bluGill 7y ago
  You need to work up the ladder - it isn't one or two years, it is 30 years of this. The pay does go up as you go up the ladder, but still...
- jonas21 7y ago
  Well, I think it would be pretty rare for someone to suddenly find themselves the CEO of a large company without first having spent many years working just as hard at lower levels. And it would also be rare for someone to be hired as CEO if the board knew they were planning on leaving after a year or two (unless it was an interim position). Since the OP mentioned Matt Levine's Money Stuff, here's a fun little bit from today's newsletter [1]: > Every time you read about a workaholic billionaire and think “boy, not me, if I had a billion dollars I’d be on the beach,” the answer is always “well that’s why you don’t have a billion dollars.” If you have the characteristics that enable you to make a billion dollars, you don’t usually turn them off once you get there. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-02-03/amazon-wanted-some-tax-breaks https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-02-03/amazon...
blackearl 7y ago
Sure, but you can also fuck upwards, as in the company can fail under your leadership but you'll still get a nice bonus with the excuse that they don't want to scare off potential incoming CEOs or some other nonsense.

Jagat 7y ago

You're saying that programmers have a unique set of skills which is why they're paid so much. And in the next sentence you're questioning why CEOs get paid so much. A good CEO or CFO or CMO can generate value for the company at a scale that's much much larger than what a single programmer does. During Satya Nadella's reign as the CEO, Microsoft went from people speculating its impending demise to a trillion dollar company. Don't you think he deserves a billion from that $700bn rise in market cap? TSLA stock will tank the moment Elon Musk decides to step down? In a cynical world, maybe he's just a figurehead and there are others running the show behind the scene, but creating such persona is still something that a CEO has to do. This is the same old Tesla vs Edison discussion. It's a common misconception among people that it's enough to be a genius lone worker to be able to provide value to a company.

davidcbc 7y ago
> Don't you think he deserves a billion from that $700bn rise in market cap? No, nobody deserves a billion dollars, I don't care what they do.
- xyzelement 7y ago
  Seems like an odd thing to say in response to such a clear example. Deserves maybe isn’t the right word but they earn it and people are willing to pay for the value so why not?
  - Twixes 7y ago
    Even if you had been earning your current salary since the day Jesus was born, you still wouldn't have today even a quarter of a billion dollars. That's the outrageous part. That kind of wealth should not be attainable for any single person. If the company is doing that well, the wealth should go to everyone who's part of it. After all, without them no actual work would be done.
    - xyzelement 7y ago
      (a) depends on the salary and (b) have you heard of compounding? :) But seriously, that's a weird way to think about it. Nobody pays you to be a billionaire - it happens that you create something that grows in value and takes you up with it. I used to work for Bloomberg - Mike is rich because the thing he created is just that valuable. He didn't take the money from anyone, didn't make anyone pay him a crazy salary. He just made something amazing that's been generating value for 30+ years, and has made lots of people rich in the process. Why begrudge him that?

pbk1 7y ago

It's almost impossible to directly quantify in dollar terms the productivity of individual programmers. I am suspicious of the claim that all programmers who command a high salary are "highly productive" and "reduce the amount of work that others must do." Unlike professional sports or finance, where extreme outperformers are generally compensated in proportion to their contributions, the output of engineers is generally less quantifiable at tech companies so median engineers are paid more than their personal labor can justify. Tech salaries are also a function of how much VC money has flooded the sector since the crisis - expect this effect to dissipate as (i) investors focus on profitability before growth at all costs in the wake of WeWork etc. and (ii) if/when valuations in private capital markets undergo a correction (for which they are long overdue!)

madeofpalk 7y ago

> programmers are highly productive This is an extremely optimistic view of the majority of developers who are essentially building glorified Wordpress themes.

barrkel 7y ago
It would be more precise to say that programmers can be highly leveraged by the scale of organizations. A glorified Wordpress theme for a cornershop isn't valuable. The same thing for a redesign that materially affects the decisions of millions of consumers may be super valuable.