Great article, although there are a couple of things that probably should be mentioned: (1) Part of the reason programmers are bad negotiators are because they

Great article, although there are a couple of things that probably should be mentioned: (1) Part of the reason programmers are bad negotiators are because they don't usually have highly cultivated social skills. If by some chance a programmer is a budding socialite, there is a good chance he/she isn't that great of a programmer. (2) Trying to get compensation derived from worth to company is not a bad idea except -- and this is a big except -- it can create additional pressures on the person delivering. If you are the best member of a team and also being compensated more than the other members of the team, your management is going to consistently want more value from you and they are going to likely want that in the form of tangible and immediate value, not a refactoring of this or that or some cool experimental project. Which is to say, the more highly compensated you are, the less likely that you will actually be able to enjoy the work you are doing. As far as I'm concerned that is a very good reason to either (1) accept a lower salary on the basis of the factors mentioned or (2) work as a consultant at a high hourly rate and spend your free time on other more interesting projects. (3) This is related to (2), but people don't work as well when they are thinking about compensation (e.g. the surprising truth about what motivates us short film http://ow.ly/1s8Y9r http://ow.ly/1s8Y9r). Definitely consultants in general are much worse programmers than hobbyists (I've worked with both), although hobbyists may not be the best people to rely on when you are facing a hard deadline. What can you do about it? For me, I think the simple answer is simply do what you love doing and make sure you have enough money to keep on doing it -- which is to say, don't worry about money all that much. But maybe I'm still in that typical programmer paradigm...