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This is a really awesome blog. The post about programmer salaries is insightful: https://danluu.com/bimodal-compensation/ https://danluu.com/bimodal-compensatio

• sprt 6y ago
  Interesting, wonder if he's looked at the data from levels.fyi. Although it's surely not representative.
  • borramakot 6y ago
    All the offer's I've gotten have been pretty solidly in the bell curve of what levels.fyi indicated.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• julianeon 6y ago
  I was thinking the answer to 'why are programmers paid more than other white-collar professions that are similarly profitable' is: because programmers control the means of production. I might be a great telecomm tech, a genius even, but once I'm out of a job, I can't build my own telecomm system - that would cost billions. I have to go back to some other telecomm system to start making money again. But, at a startup, a kicked-out senior engineer can actually pretty much exactly recreate the company; they can do the equivalent of a laid-off telecomm employee starting a new, almost-as-good (except for branding) telecomm company. No billions in infrastructure required: within a month or two, the cloned company could be near-indistinguishable from the original. So companies have to pay employees more like partners, instead of employees, because either they pay them as equals or they'll be forced to compete against them, as equal rivals.
  • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    Interesting. I hadn't thought about it that way before, but it does seem to predict the bimodality; the lower mode is (presumably) programmers who either aren't skilled enough or don't work in the right areas to be able to take their ball and found a startup with it.