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I don't think the passion argument is that valuable. For a LOT of people programming is their passion. Yet they command some of the highest salaries. The labor

I don't think the passion argument is that valuable. For a LOT of people programming is their passion. Yet they command some of the highest salaries. The labor market doesn't care about passion. It will settle where it needs to based on demand and supply.

zhoujianfu 6y ago
I think he's saying the passion factor will increase the supply. I think the same thing happens some with programming, it's just a lot fewer people have the passion (and ability?) than for cooking food. The same thing happens with teachers, nurses, firemen, police... I think the reason they generally don't make more money is many people have a passion for doing those jobs (ask ten kids what they want to be when they grow up), but they aren't super difficult, so there's a large supply.
- deathgrips 6y ago
  >The same thing happens with teachers, nurses, firemen, police Maybe there's something different going on there since government salaries don't respond normally to market supply and demand. Perhaps a better way to track the true value of those jobs is by looking at private sector counterparts, such as security contractors or teachers at private schools.
  - Leherenn 6y ago
    Also, as far as I know (that would depends on the country, but I believe it is generally true), those professions (except for teachers) can't go on strike too much, they have to keep a minimum service running, which vastly limits their negotiating power.
- veggieburglar 6y ago
  They aren’t super difficult? Teachers, nurses, firemen, and police officers would like to have a word with you. Programming may be mathematically complex and difficult to learn, but it does not corner the market on difficulty. Try adapting a teaching curriculum for online learning for fourth graders, working 16 shifts in an ICU during a pandemic while trying to keep people safe, planning and organizing a response to statewide wildfires, or de-escalating complex interpersonal issues dealing with crime, safety, and mental illness on the daily. Do any of those sound easy to you?
  - curryst 6y ago
    The devil is in how well you do your job. Handling those things well is difficult; handling them well enough the government won't fire you (for which the bar seems to be fairly low) is not. We've been flooded with reports of how we are not adapting to the change to online learning well. Working in the ICU during a pandemic is not a complex task; the procedures for doing so are fairly simple steps posted on charts everywhere. There are degrees of complexity to being a nurse depending on the level of certification you have. Physician's assistants have abilities fairly close to a doctor. Planning and organizing responses to state wildfires is far outside the scope of a firefighter. There are a very small number of people that plan and organize, and a large number of people who implement. I do not think de-escalating is well-embraced form of policing in the US. If it is, we are doing a terrible job. Police in the US kill drastically more people than other countries. It's not uncommon for European countries to go a full year without police killing a single citizen. There are, of course, more complexities to it than that, but it would be hard to reconcile a doctrine of de-escalation with the absurd number of police shootings we have. Doing those things well is hard. The fact of the matter is that there is a distinct lack of expectation that those things will be executed well. No one is going to be punished for online schooling failing, botched responses to wildfires, or for shooting a homeless person. In the face of that, they're certainly not herculean feats of strength.
MattGaiser 6y ago
Is it a work for $0 market due to passion though? I love programming. I am either programming, writing, or sleeping. I wouldn't live in a box with roommates to be one though. I think many of us would find regular engineering or analytics jobs instead. Slightly less interesting, but we could still program within those jobs. People who love food are basically willing to live in poverty to do it.
- mtrower 6y ago
  Yeah... and here's a thing. I can write programs all day long at home. I could spend the rest of my life on personal projects if I so chose, and had the financial security to do so. If I somehow ran out of ideas, I could write software for friends and family. If I wanted to scale up from there, I could work on open source projects. Some types of projects would be closed to me (big research, projects requiring specialized hardware, etc), but there's a lot a person can do on their own as a hobby. Compare this to food. Beyond a very small scale (cooking for the immediate family, occasionally cooking for family events) there's a very fast, hard limit on what you can do as a hobbyist.
gambiting 6y ago
May I introduce you to the video games industry? While there are good paying jobs out there, I'd risk saying the vast majority of people working in games are hugely underpaid. At my first job I was literally told "yeah the pay is crap, but you get to work on big titles so it's fine". And it's not just demand and supply - we're having a very hard time recruiting for senior positions as there just aren't any candidates around, but the pay is still very poor compared to other industries.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
  If you are not able to recruit then that pretty much proves you are underpaying, right? If you pay market price for devs you would not have trouble recruiting, well, devs.
  - gambiting 6y ago
    Yes, seems obvious, right. But every time I tell HR that we have to pay more or we won't find candidates it's always the same - "that's the standard industry pay, there's nothing wrong with it, we've done our research and programmers in comparable positions are paid this much or less"
    - deathgrips 6y ago
      Sounds like your company is dying if people who don't understand labor market economics are overruling managers on hiring decisions.
    - jlokier 6y ago
      Both statements are true at the same time. So my answer to HR's answer is: If we offer industry standard pay for games companies, we get industry standard hiring crisis and candidate quality, as seen at other games companies. Have you researched hiring success at other companies and not just salaries? Experience suggests the answer to that from HR would be cultural inertia though, so it's not really them you'd need to persuade. It's a strategic decision for the company leaders, whether they think it's worth spending more to attract hires of the type who get better offers elsewhere.
GlennS 6y ago
It boils down to supply and demand, though, right? I think the large number of people who love programming makes getting an "elite" programming job difficult. But, I think the vast majority of people think they'd hate or couldn't do programming, and so never consider it as a job despite how much demand there is for it. And that keeps our entry level wages safe.
- scarface74 6y ago
  There is an entire world of people who are willing to work for less and developing can be done remotely. Even ignoring that. Everything gets commoditized over time. How much does your typical PHP/Wordpress developer make now? Companies like make it easy for someone who doesn’t know anything about programming to make a decent website. There are companies now that make it easy to make a cut and paste iOS app.
  - jlokier 6y ago
    PHP/Wordpress developer salaries are low by developer standards, but compare favourably with jobs in general (median income). So PHP/Wordpress developer is still a great job from that point of view.
    - scarface74 6y ago
      And even that is being commoditized by sites like Squarespace where you don’t need to know that. But have you looked at what developers are charging on places like UpWork? Even the simplest mobile app use to cost a lot. Now you have services like this. https://buildfire.com/ https://buildfire.com/

zhoujianfu 6y ago

I think he's saying the passion factor will increase the supply. I think the same thing happens some with programming, it's just a lot fewer people have the passion (and ability?) than for cooking food. The same thing happens with teachers, nurses, firemen, police... I think the reason they generally don't make more money is many people have a passion for doing those jobs (ask ten kids what they want to be when they grow up), but they aren't super difficult, so there's a large supply.

deathgrips 6y ago
>The same thing happens with teachers, nurses, firemen, police Maybe there's something different going on there since government salaries don't respond normally to market supply and demand. Perhaps a better way to track the true value of those jobs is by looking at private sector counterparts, such as security contractors or teachers at private schools.
- Leherenn 6y ago
  Also, as far as I know (that would depends on the country, but I believe it is generally true), those professions (except for teachers) can't go on strike too much, they have to keep a minimum service running, which vastly limits their negotiating power.
veggieburglar 6y ago
They aren’t super difficult? Teachers, nurses, firemen, and police officers would like to have a word with you. Programming may be mathematically complex and difficult to learn, but it does not corner the market on difficulty. Try adapting a teaching curriculum for online learning for fourth graders, working 16 shifts in an ICU during a pandemic while trying to keep people safe, planning and organizing a response to statewide wildfires, or de-escalating complex interpersonal issues dealing with crime, safety, and mental illness on the daily. Do any of those sound easy to you?
- curryst 6y ago
  The devil is in how well you do your job. Handling those things well is difficult; handling them well enough the government won't fire you (for which the bar seems to be fairly low) is not. We've been flooded with reports of how we are not adapting to the change to online learning well. Working in the ICU during a pandemic is not a complex task; the procedures for doing so are fairly simple steps posted on charts everywhere. There are degrees of complexity to being a nurse depending on the level of certification you have. Physician's assistants have abilities fairly close to a doctor. Planning and organizing responses to state wildfires is far outside the scope of a firefighter. There are a very small number of people that plan and organize, and a large number of people who implement. I do not think de-escalating is well-embraced form of policing in the US. If it is, we are doing a terrible job. Police in the US kill drastically more people than other countries. It's not uncommon for European countries to go a full year without police killing a single citizen. There are, of course, more complexities to it than that, but it would be hard to reconcile a doctrine of de-escalation with the absurd number of police shootings we have. Doing those things well is hard. The fact of the matter is that there is a distinct lack of expectation that those things will be executed well. No one is going to be punished for online schooling failing, botched responses to wildfires, or for shooting a homeless person. In the face of that, they're certainly not herculean feats of strength.

MattGaiser 6y ago

Is it a work for $0 market due to passion though? I love programming. I am either programming, writing, or sleeping. I wouldn't live in a box with roommates to be one though. I think many of us would find regular engineering or analytics jobs instead. Slightly less interesting, but we could still program within those jobs. People who love food are basically willing to live in poverty to do it.

mtrower 6y ago
Yeah... and here's a thing. I can write programs all day long at home. I could spend the rest of my life on personal projects if I so chose, and had the financial security to do so. If I somehow ran out of ideas, I could write software for friends and family. If I wanted to scale up from there, I could work on open source projects. Some types of projects would be closed to me (big research, projects requiring specialized hardware, etc), but there's a lot a person can do on their own as a hobby. Compare this to food. Beyond a very small scale (cooking for the immediate family, occasionally cooking for family events) there's a very fast, hard limit on what you can do as a hobbyist.

gambiting 6y ago

May I introduce you to the video games industry? While there are good paying jobs out there, I'd risk saying the vast majority of people working in games are hugely underpaid. At my first job I was literally told "yeah the pay is crap, but you get to work on big titles so it's fine". And it's not just demand and supply - we're having a very hard time recruiting for senior positions as there just aren't any candidates around, but the pay is still very poor compared to other industries.

kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
If you are not able to recruit then that pretty much proves you are underpaying, right? If you pay market price for devs you would not have trouble recruiting, well, devs.
- gambiting 6y ago
  Yes, seems obvious, right. But every time I tell HR that we have to pay more or we won't find candidates it's always the same - "that's the standard industry pay, there's nothing wrong with it, we've done our research and programmers in comparable positions are paid this much or less"
  - deathgrips 6y ago
    Sounds like your company is dying if people who don't understand labor market economics are overruling managers on hiring decisions.
  - jlokier 6y ago
    Both statements are true at the same time. So my answer to HR's answer is: If we offer industry standard pay for games companies, we get industry standard hiring crisis and candidate quality, as seen at other games companies. Have you researched hiring success at other companies and not just salaries? Experience suggests the answer to that from HR would be cultural inertia though, so it's not really them you'd need to persuade. It's a strategic decision for the company leaders, whether they think it's worth spending more to attract hires of the type who get better offers elsewhere.

GlennS 6y ago

It boils down to supply and demand, though, right? I think the large number of people who love programming makes getting an "elite" programming job difficult. But, I think the vast majority of people think they'd hate or couldn't do programming, and so never consider it as a job despite how much demand there is for it. And that keeps our entry level wages safe.

scarface74 6y ago
There is an entire world of people who are willing to work for less and developing can be done remotely. Even ignoring that. Everything gets commoditized over time. How much does your typical PHP/Wordpress developer make now? Companies like make it easy for someone who doesn’t know anything about programming to make a decent website. There are companies now that make it easy to make a cut and paste iOS app.
- jlokier 6y ago
  PHP/Wordpress developer salaries are low by developer standards, but compare favourably with jobs in general (median income). So PHP/Wordpress developer is still a great job from that point of view.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    And even that is being commoditized by sites like Squarespace where you don’t need to know that. But have you looked at what developers are charging on places like UpWork? Even the simplest mobile app use to cost a lot. Now you have services like this. https://buildfire.com/ https://buildfire.com/