6 ms·

>> Appendix B: why are programmers well paid? I'm disappointed at this section, it is missing fairly obvious things. - Because programmers are disproportionat

>> Appendix B: why are programmers well paid? I'm disappointed at this section, it is missing fairly obvious things. - Because programmers are disproportionately also living in the most expensive regions, so they may be paid well, but not as well once you consider the CoL. Imagine if you told 50% of plumbers/pilots/etc they would have to move to Palo Alto or SF to practice their career, those salaries would also jump. - Because volatility. Anyone who's lived thru 2001 or 2008 knows that feast-and-famine jobs have to pay well to compensate for the famine periods, otherwise people wise up and dont take the deal. (EDIT) - Because unlike with law/medicine/plumbing/piloting and practically most other fields, there are constantly new things introduced that dont really push the field forward much. Consider the 200 web frameworks. Some are great. Many are just rehashes of older stuff with slight tweaks. However, this has the effect of making experience moot -- because newcomers always have an incentive to create something new and level the playing field. Look at the Cravath salary scale on the site, and imagine if law vastly completely every 5 or 7 years. The salary curve wouldnt be as steep. - Because they are like athletes and many have a shelf life. There is ageism for many, and for those w/o that problem, there is often a shelf-life for their technology skills. You are being compensated for continuous improvement and the risk that your skills become stale. - Because scale. Like investment firms, one person in tech can have massive impact and collect some of the premium as salary.

xwolfi 6y ago
It s very US centric as well. I disagree there s a shelf life for a known technology since the skillset you require as a programmer is more to adapt, work with a good speed/quality compromise and connect with your business/users beyond the minimum. I wouldnt know the real US wide situation, but I ve worked in continental Europe and Hong Kong, and we have nice salary but well far from 300k a year (I reached 100k this year with 7 years of XP, in an investment bank and I think Im paid at the average). Programmers, in my experience, are still paid less than profit-incentivized workers like sales traders or trading floor quants. But you could say a quant is a programmer and skew the pay up I guess. Just dont let them near your source code (as a Quant you dont get the variable pay part of your big salary if you do enough quality to have version control :D)
ithkuil 6y ago
honest stupid question: are plumbers in SF (relatively) well paid too? How can they afford living there? Is there a "bimodal lifestyle" there too?
- metalforever 6y ago
  Yes.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Tempest1981 6y ago
  Check the data for teachers or firefighters. They tend to be paid more, but are not "well paid" enough to afford living there. Many have long commutes.
- TuringNYC 6y ago
  The thing about plumbers/electricians/doctors and other professions are that licenses are often at the state-level. So while a developer at XYZ startup in SF doesnt have as much option to pack up and move to the exurbs or relocate to a more affordable area in California, most other professions do. This creates a smoother pay/CoL ratio because you have freedom to walk away from a bad deal.
908B64B197 6y ago
> However, this has the effect of making experience moot -- because newcomers always have an incentive to create something new and level the playing field I would rather trust someone who's been through a few paradigm, languages and ecosystems as compared to someone two simply memorized the invocations of whatever framework from the bootcamp-du-jour.
luftbbb 6y ago
And uh, you're leaving out probably the most important reason - being a good software engineer is a skill. Why shouldn't we be compensated for it? People think you can just go ahead and read a medium article and blend in to the industry. Those guys are bottom rung hires. Top software devs worked their asses off to carve out a career and deserve every penny they earn.
formerly_proven 6y ago
> Programming pays so well that it seems a bit absurd. As usual it's important to keep in mind that this is a bubble. This is the SV bubble, where programmers get paid out of wheelbarrows filled with money. Elsewhere programmers get paid about as much as other kinds of engineers, maybe a little bit less on average. Maybe that's because developers outside the SV are garbage, maybe that's because there's a set of fairly unique and hard to replicate conditions in the SV that resulted in companies having to pay these sums.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  > Elsewhere programmers get paid about as much as other kinds of engineers, maybe a little bit less on average. That's not true. I'm in the UK, and while software dev salaries are considerably lower than in SV, they're still quite a bit higher than is typical is other engineering disciplines.
- emteycz 6y ago
  I don't know about elsewhere in the US but here in [edit: south-eastern] EU programmers basically formed their own social class, one considered even higher than executives, top tier managers etc.
  - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
    I like in UK and have never come across this strange idea
    - emteycz 6y ago
      UK isn't in EU, is it? Makes sense though - as all of you and not just programmers are rather well paid compared to people in continental EU, the difference is not that huge. Where I am the average programmer has 5-10x more than any other person, and 2x more than directors - and the outlier programmers can make even 20x more than other people, and that's still ignoring the millionaires (and few $ billionaires) that sold their startup stakes. In the past decade, only programmers became rich from 0 here - all other people inherited their wealth.
remedialhedge 6y ago
SF plumbers only get paid a lot because SF engineers can afford it. Tech companies only pay SF engineers a lot because they can afford it. That entire distributional outcome comes from the top: tech companies make absolutely embarrassing amounts of money, and engineers have (for now) enough bargaining power to get some of it for themselves. Or as a counterexample, there are plenty of industries that do not exist in SF because they don't have large enough profit margins to support it. There are no factories in SF. CoL comes from the high salaries, which comes from the high profits. Not the other way around.
- mettamage 6y ago
  Here here! The more companies I see, the more I experience this as true.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  And half that money is being captured in the totally un-productive real-estate market that adds nothing to the real economy.
  - ForHackernews 6y ago
    still better than adtech. At least you get a crummy apartment to live in.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      It's even worse than adtech. Construction is a small part of the money that gets siphoned away by housing.
  - yourapostasy 6y ago
    I've long maintained to those defending high real estate-dirt pricing to show me how such pricing creates a smartphone industry, cancer treatments, disease lab tests, and more currently, mRNA vaccines, versus letting 100,000 smart people coalesce into the same physical proximity without worrying about shelter costs (in the US, they would also have to not worry about medical bankruptcy). In an age where economic advantage accrues to those with the greatest cognitive capacity to throw around, instead of land, the first nation to commoditize the complement of the cost of land and the utilities underneath it, and shift all that trapped capital into developing many vibrant, dense Shenzen-like communities, will vault over the other nations. I don't have a dog in that hunt. I have my land on a somewhat sane cost basis. My interest is academic.
treis 6y ago
>unlike with law/medicine/plumbing/piloting and practically most other fields The odd thing about software engineering is the number of these jobs that remain unfilled. As an example, Microsoft has 3,746 engineering jobs available plus probably another 1,000 technical roles in sales, service, and support. You'll find pretty similar numbers across the FAANGs and other major tech companies and VC start ups. So you've got lots of open roles and lots of developers that could double their salary but the connection is not being made. Contrast with something like law. Law Firms will fill the roles they have with the best lawyers they can find. There's not a bunch of open slots at top firms that aren't getting filled because they can't find associates that will raise the bar.
- throw1234651234 6y ago
  Is this really true? Seems to me like they get endless applications.
  - geodel 6y ago
    Exactly. It is an old scam. I am surprised otherwise smart engineers still fall for this.
    - treis 6y ago
      Perhaps I'm dense, but what's the scam here?
      - TuringNYC 6y ago
        3,746 openings that supposedly cannot be filled. Except 100,000 people are applying and failing because in order to get the position, you need to pass a test with a 5% pass rate -- because you need to write and debug code on a whiteboard within 30 minutes. Oh, and once you get the position, you dont get all your comp, rather it is in stock that vests over time, and the stock can fall. Oh, and you also have to pay rent NOW (not when your stock vests.) Oh, and the rent is absurd. Oh, and you went to a top school got great grades and you're rewarded with a shitty 1br apartment because that is all your cash comp can buy you since you are limited to one or two cities.

xwolfi 6y ago

It s very US centric as well. I disagree there s a shelf life for a known technology since the skillset you require as a programmer is more to adapt, work with a good speed/quality compromise and connect with your business/users beyond the minimum. I wouldnt know the real US wide situation, but I ve worked in continental Europe and Hong Kong, and we have nice salary but well far from 300k a year (I reached 100k this year with 7 years of XP, in an investment bank and I think Im paid at the average). Programmers, in my experience, are still paid less than profit-incentivized workers like sales traders or trading floor quants. But you could say a quant is a programmer and skew the pay up I guess. Just dont let them near your source code (as a Quant you dont get the variable pay part of your big salary if you do enough quality to have version control :D)

ithkuil 6y ago

honest stupid question: are plumbers in SF (relatively) well paid too? How can they afford living there? Is there a "bimodal lifestyle" there too?

metalforever 6y ago
Yes.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Tempest1981 6y ago
Check the data for teachers or firefighters. They tend to be paid more, but are not "well paid" enough to afford living there. Many have long commutes.
TuringNYC 6y ago
The thing about plumbers/electricians/doctors and other professions are that licenses are often at the state-level. So while a developer at XYZ startup in SF doesnt have as much option to pack up and move to the exurbs or relocate to a more affordable area in California, most other professions do. This creates a smoother pay/CoL ratio because you have freedom to walk away from a bad deal.

908B64B197 6y ago

> However, this has the effect of making experience moot -- because newcomers always have an incentive to create something new and level the playing field I would rather trust someone who's been through a few paradigm, languages and ecosystems as compared to someone two simply memorized the invocations of whatever framework from the bootcamp-du-jour.

luftbbb 6y ago

And uh, you're leaving out probably the most important reason - being a good software engineer is a skill. Why shouldn't we be compensated for it? People think you can just go ahead and read a medium article and blend in to the industry. Those guys are bottom rung hires. Top software devs worked their asses off to carve out a career and deserve every penny they earn.

formerly_proven 6y ago

> Programming pays so well that it seems a bit absurd. As usual it's important to keep in mind that this is a bubble. This is the SV bubble, where programmers get paid out of wheelbarrows filled with money. Elsewhere programmers get paid about as much as other kinds of engineers, maybe a little bit less on average. Maybe that's because developers outside the SV are garbage, maybe that's because there's a set of fairly unique and hard to replicate conditions in the SV that resulted in companies having to pay these sums.

nicoburns 6y ago
> Elsewhere programmers get paid about as much as other kinds of engineers, maybe a little bit less on average. That's not true. I'm in the UK, and while software dev salaries are considerably lower than in SV, they're still quite a bit higher than is typical is other engineering disciplines.
emteycz 6y ago
I don't know about elsewhere in the US but here in [edit: south-eastern] EU programmers basically formed their own social class, one considered even higher than executives, top tier managers etc.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  I like in UK and have never come across this strange idea
  - emteycz 6y ago
    UK isn't in EU, is it? Makes sense though - as all of you and not just programmers are rather well paid compared to people in continental EU, the difference is not that huge. Where I am the average programmer has 5-10x more than any other person, and 2x more than directors - and the outlier programmers can make even 20x more than other people, and that's still ignoring the millionaires (and few $ billionaires) that sold their startup stakes. In the past decade, only programmers became rich from 0 here - all other people inherited their wealth.

remedialhedge 6y ago

SF plumbers only get paid a lot because SF engineers can afford it. Tech companies only pay SF engineers a lot because they can afford it. That entire distributional outcome comes from the top: tech companies make absolutely embarrassing amounts of money, and engineers have (for now) enough bargaining power to get some of it for themselves. Or as a counterexample, there are plenty of industries that do not exist in SF because they don't have large enough profit margins to support it. There are no factories in SF. CoL comes from the high salaries, which comes from the high profits. Not the other way around.

mettamage 6y ago
Here here! The more companies I see, the more I experience this as true.
ClumsyPilot 6y ago
And half that money is being captured in the totally un-productive real-estate market that adds nothing to the real economy.
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  still better than adtech. At least you get a crummy apartment to live in.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    It's even worse than adtech. Construction is a small part of the money that gets siphoned away by housing.
- yourapostasy 6y ago
  I've long maintained to those defending high real estate-dirt pricing to show me how such pricing creates a smartphone industry, cancer treatments, disease lab tests, and more currently, mRNA vaccines, versus letting 100,000 smart people coalesce into the same physical proximity without worrying about shelter costs (in the US, they would also have to not worry about medical bankruptcy). In an age where economic advantage accrues to those with the greatest cognitive capacity to throw around, instead of land, the first nation to commoditize the complement of the cost of land and the utilities underneath it, and shift all that trapped capital into developing many vibrant, dense Shenzen-like communities, will vault over the other nations. I don't have a dog in that hunt. I have my land on a somewhat sane cost basis. My interest is academic.

treis 6y ago

>unlike with law/medicine/plumbing/piloting and practically most other fields The odd thing about software engineering is the number of these jobs that remain unfilled. As an example, Microsoft has 3,746 engineering jobs available plus probably another 1,000 technical roles in sales, service, and support. You'll find pretty similar numbers across the FAANGs and other major tech companies and VC start ups. So you've got lots of open roles and lots of developers that could double their salary but the connection is not being made. Contrast with something like law. Law Firms will fill the roles they have with the best lawyers they can find. There's not a bunch of open slots at top firms that aren't getting filled because they can't find associates that will raise the bar.

throw1234651234 6y ago
Is this really true? Seems to me like they get endless applications.
- geodel 6y ago
  Exactly. It is an old scam. I am surprised otherwise smart engineers still fall for this.
  - treis 6y ago
    Perhaps I'm dense, but what's the scam here?
    - TuringNYC 6y ago
      3,746 openings that supposedly cannot be filled. Except 100,000 people are applying and failing because in order to get the position, you need to pass a test with a 5% pass rate -- because you need to write and debug code on a whiteboard within 30 minutes. Oh, and once you get the position, you dont get all your comp, rather it is in stock that vests over time, and the stock can fall. Oh, and you also have to pay rent NOW (not when your stock vests.) Oh, and the rent is absurd. Oh, and you went to a top school got great grades and you're rewarded with a shitty 1br apartment because that is all your cash comp can buy you since you are limited to one or two cities.