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I wonder if software presents a unique situation as we generally make a pretty decent salary and to transition to a new career involves a pretty significant pay

I wonder if software presents a unique situation as we generally make a pretty decent salary and to transition to a new career involves a pretty significant pay cut. So some developers become trapped in jobs they hate with golden handcuffs. I really don't enjoy software development at all, but at this stage, to even think about doing something else would result in a massive pay cut. I did it once when I was younger, quit software and started a new career with a 55% pay cut. Liked the new work and did it for 5 years. Then I had kids and needed more money so I returned to software, since then I just exist in a constant state of burnout.

atlgator 5y ago
That's the problem I have. I really want to switch to finance but I make so much money now I dread starting over at $60k or something.
- wonderwonder 5y ago
  yup, my salary allowed my wife to recently switch careers and take a 50% salary cut. There is no way we could do the same for my career though unless we made drastic changes like selling the house and never retiring.
cloverich 5y ago
I was thinking a lot about Golden Handcuff situations and in a weird sense its artificially creating the actually bad scenario where someone is stuck in a job because they NEED it to make ends meat. You can be sure people in low paying jobs with low mobility are also burnt out. The difference is recognizing that golden handcuffs is an artificial situation and money doesn't create happiness (once you cross that base threshold). Its easy to see in others but hard to act on yourself. Ultimately its one of those things where you just need to be principled -- never stay at a job (career, etc) because of Golden Handcuffs. Its just like building flexibility or resiliency into an engineering system. You don't need to specifically justify it, its just a good principle to follow as a general rule.
Aeolun 5y ago
> since then I just exist in a constant state of burnout The worst part is that even that doesn’t seem to matter. Whether I do my best work because I’m 100% into the job, or my worst because I just cannot be bothered any more, people perceive me the same way, and my salary remains the same. If the effect is nil why should I even bother.
- xyzzy123 5y ago
  This is true for many jobs. Roofer? Car mechanic? Yeah most customers won't know the difference. Burger flipper drops one on the floor. Toss it or put it back? Nobody knows. This goes right up to CEOs - it's hard to _really_ evaluate performance. Stock price is a lagging indicator of company health. The reasons to try to do a "whole-ass job" (its ok to phone it in, just do it solid) for me are: a) It's what I'd like others to do when they do stuff for me and b) I think it's psychologically safer, long term.
- flippinburgers 5y ago
  This is exactly my experience as well. My current company has no clue the value I provide and my salary is going nowhere. It is a social game. People who are outgoing and good looking win.
ThrustVectoring 5y ago
It's not at all unique, it's a mix of "efficiency wages" and tournament-based compensation. Efficiency wages just means that the pay is set higher than what it'd take to clear the market. It means that people who'd otherwise have even better career prospects become programmers instead, people who would otherwise quit to work in a different field or for a competitor don't, and that employees generally see jobs at the current compensation level as something relatively scarce and hard to acquire in unemployment. Employers pay these efficiency wages because getting more out of their programmers is worth the extra expense, but on the flip side it means that they're more able to ask for overtime and otherwise apply stressors to employees. Lots of places have efficiency wages, and they all tend to be stressful AIUI. Oil workers are notorious for this - massive salaries for dirty, dangerous, and difficult work shifts. Tournament theory is more about how difficult it is to measure programmer productivity. So, don't even bother; instead get a sense of which programmers are doing better than the others, and make a significant portion of compensation based off "winning" this vaguely stack-rank shaped "tournament". In theory, if employees are risk-agnostic, this is as economically efficient as measuring their output and paying piece rates, but without the overhead of measuring output. In practice, this is yet more incentive for overtime, hard work, extracurriculars, networking, etc. Basically, instead of paying for the direct output of giving your job your all, they pay the best at doing that the most and let people figure out how that should translate. The stereotypical jobs for tournament theory compensation are corporate executives and professional athletes - how hard an athlete works in the gym and what statistical performance is worth what are hard questions, but "who's the best 10 players in the NBA" is a lot easier to answer. Anyhow, that's my understanding of the main factors leading to software developers being so well-compensated in the US and why there are so many unhappy and burnt-out developers. Part of the same complex IMO, it's fundamentally a result of programmer productivity being so important to businesses and yet so hard to measure. The thing I'm curious most about is how pretty much all the example jobs I gave are skewed male. It's not every male-skewed job that fits the bill, but it's still something. I'm not at all sure what, though.

atlgator 5y ago

That's the problem I have. I really want to switch to finance but I make so much money now I dread starting over at $60k or something.

wonderwonder 5y ago
yup, my salary allowed my wife to recently switch careers and take a 50% salary cut. There is no way we could do the same for my career though unless we made drastic changes like selling the house and never retiring.

cloverich 5y ago

I was thinking a lot about Golden Handcuff situations and in a weird sense its artificially creating the actually bad scenario where someone is stuck in a job because they NEED it to make ends meat. You can be sure people in low paying jobs with low mobility are also burnt out. The difference is recognizing that golden handcuffs is an artificial situation and money doesn't create happiness (once you cross that base threshold). Its easy to see in others but hard to act on yourself. Ultimately its one of those things where you just need to be principled -- never stay at a job (career, etc) because of Golden Handcuffs. Its just like building flexibility or resiliency into an engineering system. You don't need to specifically justify it, its just a good principle to follow as a general rule.

Aeolun 5y ago

> since then I just exist in a constant state of burnout The worst part is that even that doesn’t seem to matter. Whether I do my best work because I’m 100% into the job, or my worst because I just cannot be bothered any more, people perceive me the same way, and my salary remains the same. If the effect is nil why should I even bother.

xyzzy123 5y ago
This is true for many jobs. Roofer? Car mechanic? Yeah most customers won't know the difference. Burger flipper drops one on the floor. Toss it or put it back? Nobody knows. This goes right up to CEOs - it's hard to _really_ evaluate performance. Stock price is a lagging indicator of company health. The reasons to try to do a "whole-ass job" (its ok to phone it in, just do it solid) for me are: a) It's what I'd like others to do when they do stuff for me and b) I think it's psychologically safer, long term.
flippinburgers 5y ago
This is exactly my experience as well. My current company has no clue the value I provide and my salary is going nowhere. It is a social game. People who are outgoing and good looking win.

ThrustVectoring 5y ago

It's not at all unique, it's a mix of "efficiency wages" and tournament-based compensation. Efficiency wages just means that the pay is set higher than what it'd take to clear the market. It means that people who'd otherwise have even better career prospects become programmers instead, people who would otherwise quit to work in a different field or for a competitor don't, and that employees generally see jobs at the current compensation level as something relatively scarce and hard to acquire in unemployment. Employers pay these efficiency wages because getting more out of their programmers is worth the extra expense, but on the flip side it means that they're more able to ask for overtime and otherwise apply stressors to employees. Lots of places have efficiency wages, and they all tend to be stressful AIUI. Oil workers are notorious for this - massive salaries for dirty, dangerous, and difficult work shifts. Tournament theory is more about how difficult it is to measure programmer productivity. So, don't even bother; instead get a sense of which programmers are doing better than the others, and make a significant portion of compensation based off "winning" this vaguely stack-rank shaped "tournament". In theory, if employees are risk-agnostic, this is as economically efficient as measuring their output and paying piece rates, but without the overhead of measuring output. In practice, this is yet more incentive for overtime, hard work, extracurriculars, networking, etc. Basically, instead of paying for the direct output of giving your job your all, they pay the best at doing that the most and let people figure out how that should translate. The stereotypical jobs for tournament theory compensation are corporate executives and professional athletes - how hard an athlete works in the gym and what statistical performance is worth what are hard questions, but "who's the best 10 players in the NBA" is a lot easier to answer. Anyhow, that's my understanding of the main factors leading to software developers being so well-compensated in the US and why there are so many unhappy and burnt-out developers. Part of the same complex IMO, it's fundamentally a result of programmer productivity being so important to businesses and yet so hard to measure. The thing I'm curious most about is how pretty much all the example jobs I gave are skewed male. It's not every male-skewed job that fits the bill, but it's still something. I'm not at all sure what, though.