7 ms·

Why do Programmers get paid less than Project Managers or Business Analysts?

73 points by damian2000 15y ago

calibraxis 15y ago
In addition to bargaining power, I think programmers are just worse negotiators. Their educations do not prepare them for this. To hack the system — remember you're putting yourself in a wage-slave situation for years, so best to learn this trash — you should extract the highest price/benefits they're capable of paying you. (Maybe it helps to read _Getting to Yes_, or something.) Plus, there's an obvious class component. The further removed you are from working with your hands, the higher value you're perceived to have. (After all, who hires these project managers and business analysts? Managers. Who naturally value themselves more than underlings, and will transfer that value perception to these managers/analysts. This argument was used in Schmidt's _Disciplined Minds_ to explain some of the higher rank theoretical physicists have over experimental physicists and engineers, even if engineers earn more money.)
- jonnathanson 15y ago
  "The further removed you are from working with your hands, the higher value you're perceived to have." It's that, but it's also (perceived) pedigree. A lot of "business analysts" come from big consultancies like McKinsey, or investment banks like Goldman, et al. Managers and MBA-types have a mystical perception of those firms -- almost as if they trained jedi business knights. The truth may be far from it, at least in my experience. But perception usually trumps truth.
- tomkarlo 15y ago
  More importantly, from a bargaining power perspective, you have to look at their BATNA - best alternative to a negotiated agreement. A programmer is going to take a bigger pay hit switching to another job type than an MBA'ed project manager. In many cases, a project manager may be making less than they would in a management role of another type (e.g. consulting or finance.) That's going to drive up the minimum wage they'll accept, and drive up the overall price as well. The best way to improve bargaining power is to be willing to walk away at a higher offer.
  - calibraxis 15y ago
    Yeah, being willing to walk away for a better offer is the most encouraging thing to have in your pocket. That's worth working to get. Another tip I heard, and tried out, is to start with a price higher than the highest you think they're willing to part with. Even if you cringe to say it. On the logic that the price can easily come down, but it's far harder for you to push it back up. (If they accept your first offer, the reasoning goes, you didn't go nearly high enough. Remember, that first price can affect you for years.) It worked for me, though of course YMMV. (For those who cringe in salary negotiations, Graeber's _Debt: The First 500 Years_ may give you some perspective on why it makes you feel bad.) Definitely helps to get in a position where you interview people. (Not to mention salary negotiations.) Then it'll be clear what employers want, and what other developers do. Based on that, you can present what they truly desire. Take for example do-at-home projects. If you can solve them, then you can really hit them out of the ballpark. The first time I reviewed the solutions, I saw that only one or two had neat complete-ish solutions. (Most had significant cut corners; one was written by an insane fellow.) It was easy to see how to go beyond the best ones: make a build file, a readme that's worthy of a good opensource project, etc.
- zzzeek 15y ago
  > Plus, there's an obvious class component. The further removed you are from working with your hands, the higher value you're perceived to have. I like this point a lot, and it makes sense, but then I thought, how come it doesn't apply to athletes ?
  - mseebach 15y ago
    Because it doesn't actually have anything to do with "working with your hands". Craftsmen are probably a better example - a talented craftsman, like an athlete, though he's working with his body, can command soaring rates. The classical worker, the kind I believe the GP meant to refer to, is a commodity. It's the kind of workers it might make sense to hire as day labourers and, conversely, for whom collective bargaining is beneficial. There has been a tendency for some businesses to treat programmers as this kind of workers, often leading to failed off-shoring efforts.
  - sector 15y ago
    It's not a class issue. A more accurate appraisal would be that one is paid highest for strategic work, next highest for tactical, and the least for operational work. If you're great at operational work, but are no good with tactics or strategy, you won't ever get a huge salary, in the office or in sports. After all, look at pro-sports salaries and you'll see that the highest paid players are the ones who are put in situations where they have the ability to make potentially critical decisions, and who have a history of being relatively good with those calls.
  - drcube 15y ago
    It did, for a hundred years. Professional athletes (outside of a few rare "rock stars" like Babe Ruth) often had to get second jobs in the off season up until the 1970s. If they wanted to continue playing sports professionally, they were at the whim of their team's owner, who could and did forbid them from playing for any other team. Read up on the Reserve clause and Curt Flood for more info about how this all changed starting with Major League Baseball in the 1970s.
dfc 15y ago
The same reason a general contractor makes more than the carpenter he subs out? Or the same reason the real estate developer makes more than the architect?
- patricklynch 15y ago
  I'd like to note this isn't actually an answer; you've just begged the question.
  - dfc 15y ago
    Begging the question or Socratic method. The answer is that the lower paid workers are all lower level inputs to a business operation. The other answer is that the wage is a reflection of market value / cost of labor. I think that's probably a function of supply.
    - dfc 15y ago
      Whomever is doing the downvoting on all of my posts on this topic please speak up. Why the down voting? Because I do not share your opinion?
      - msbarnett 15y ago
        You're not making any real arguments in any of your posts (except the grandparent to this one), in my opinion. When confronted with the assertion "X", responding with "does anyone else feel not-X?" or "the same reason Y?" strike me as lazy rhetorical cheats to assert your opinion while trying to avoid just laying out an argument for it. As such, people seem to be downvoting them as noise.
        Selvik 15y ago
        I think they shouldn't (upvoted all of them for balance) the analogy is valid and ought to be obviously so. Programming is not the only industry where the best "craftsmen" often make less than the "middlemen", that's a very common pattern.
tripzilch 15y ago
Additionally, it's that managers are also supposed to carry more responsibility, if they make a decision and tell the coder to "no, do it like this", it should be their neck on the line if it turned out to be the wrong decision. Even though it doesn't always turn out that way, just appearing to carry the burden of responsibility is often enough to make justifications for being paid more. In reality, the truth is of course somewhere in between the optimistic first paragraph and the cynical second.
nupark2 15y ago
As a programmer-turned-CEO, I firmly subscribe to the Mythical Man Month's suggestion that your top engineers should be paid the same or more than your managers. Otherwise (as MMM notes), the only career advancement available to your engineers is to move into management, and that's a waste of a great engineer, and a good way to wind up with a poor manager. Speaking from experience: being a CEO is something I've learned to do, being a programmer is something that I just am. The only reason I got into management is that the size of projects I wanted to tackle exceeded what I was capable of doing myself. Unless I wanted to work on other people's projects, it meant I needed to put together my own team. While I wouldn't want to encourage programmers to move into management as their only career path, I also wouldn't ever hire someone into management who didn't work their way up in the field. Understanding how to manage technical projects is often much easier for someone who actually knows how to implement a technical project. Apple was/is similar -- Bertrand Serlet (SVP of Software Engineering) wrote malloc, Avi Tevanian (SVP of Software Engineering, Chief Software Technology Officer) was one of the primary authors of Mach. In conclusion: programmers do not always get paid less than project managers or business analysts. If you feel that you're stuck earning less than you deserve, don't treat that as an axiom of the industry -- figure out how to move forward in your career, even if that means finding a company that sufficiently values senior engineering staff, or working to become a senior engineer.
- brc 15y ago
  I've had several positions in my career where I was paid more than my manager, usually revealed to me by the manager in an informal setting. If you're delivering more value than you cost, this is not necessarily unremarkable. It does require you to be an effective employee, an effective manager, and to be an effective negotiator.
dfc 15y ago
Am I really the only person that was a little troubled by the stated assumption that programming is generally more difficult?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- dfc 15y ago
  Sometimes the down voting here is rather perplexing. The post starts out by denying a rational explanation for the cause of salary differences without any justification. How is noting a flaw in the argument/question-setup worthy of downvoting?
- dwc 15y ago
  You are not completely alone in this. And there's also the statement right alongside that equates the difficulty level with working late. One problem is that the term "programmer" covers such a wide range, from "code monkey" through "business analyst who codes." The range of productivity in code monkeys varies greatly, but they are still essentially fungible. When you start adding analysis and problem solving skills value goes up and fungibility goes down. In organizations that have formalized the separation of coding from analysis and problem solving, the coding roles will (and should) pay less. I think that's a bad decision, but it's certainly common enough.
- lawnchair_larry 15y ago
  You think project management is generally more difficult than programming? You must not be a programmer. :)
  - dfc 15y ago
    I think "difficult" is a tough term to pin down. I was troubled by the fact that the assumption was made as if it was a scientific fact; especially since making the assumption clearly eliminates a valid answer to the question. Maybe I just took too many logical reasoning / philosophy classes in college...
nice1 15y ago
This is an easy one: the ACCEPT lower pay.
drivingmenuts 15y ago
A good programmer is as valuable to the team as a good project manager (and vice-versa) but the project manager's work will be explainable to corporate in a way that the programmer's work isn't. Suits (and yes, I know this is an us-vs-them mentality) understand charts and numbers and projections, etc., but rarely give a damn about what actually has to happen to earn their quarterly profit. Project managers can produce enough of those to warm the cold pits of any executive's heart; programmers can point to lines of code and get a confused, annoyed look and a trip out the door. It's not that executives are, by nature, evil or bad people (OK, not Hitlerian evil), they just don't worry about the tiny details.
- mgkimsal 15y ago
  Given the hierarchical nature of most companies, developers tend to be at the bottom rung. They've got project managers above them, then department managers above them. Almost by definition, anything a developer is working on is a "detail" (and can often be regarded as 'tiny' in comparison to the whole of a project or department). Doesn't matter if that one 'tiny' detail can actually close down the company or not, by the very nature of how projects and depts are structured, it's set up to be an uphill battle to get noticed and get heard from a dev point of view.
viandante 15y ago
Business analyst/finance here. I believe you are generalizing quite a bit. Some types of programming skills are a commodity. Such as some types of 'analytical' skills: all that is done on a spreadsheet on a regular basis is a commodity, that is why there are so many 'analysts' in the emerging countries. Regarding programming, making 'apps' in .NET for a big corp is considered (and maybe it is) a commodity by the management. So, if you want higher salaries, you may want to move away from that. What also doesn't help the programmers (generalizing again, but let's do it for the sake of discussion) is this complete misunderstanding they have regarding the 'suits'. It is absolutely true that a lot of 'suits' talk BS, but they do have a feeling of the business that programmers seem not to have, otherwise there wouldn't be so many todo and project management apps out there. My strong advise would be to actually move away from the technical side for a moment and talk with the 'suits', ask them what problems they have, ask them about the business, etc. Companies have so many problems, but they are totally disregarded and this kind of discussions don't help. Now, a programmer that cares about the business: that is a skill that is not a commodity...
- BerislavLopac 15y ago
  Regarding your last line: it heavily depends where you live. In some places, it won't get you anywhere...
  - viandante 15y ago
    That means you either move in the suits department, or you leave the company as programmer skills are not core for the business or the support of the business.
    - wildjim 15y ago
      There is a continuing misunderstanding between "suits" and dev's, where most dev's _do_ learn the business through experience, but the suits continually choose not to, and instead of working as the "teacher" and filter between both areas, just push the demands down to the dev. And "yes": teacher is always part of the job.
    - 15y ago
damoncali 15y ago
People are paid in proportion to how hard they are to hire and retain. End of story.
ypcxz 15y ago
Because based on various bullshit spit out mainly by the PM and BA asshole types (kudos to exceptions), programmers somehow believe that it's too difficult to run their own companies.
jleyank 15y ago
The business guys tend to have the checkbook. So, if they're intellectually lazy, they go with what they know rather than whatever they might need. Given that you're not going to be able to hire Bill Joy very often, there's a lot of developers out there looking for work. Anywhere there's "lots", there's downward salary pressure (chemists, engineers, ...). Things might change a bit when they can outsource management or when non-Western competition truly arrives.
ap22213 15y ago
From what I understand of the Washington DC market, senior software engineers are generally paid more than technical managers. But, given that many good technical managers were at one point good technical developers, it makes sense that they're paid more. Having done both roles, being the 'lead' senior technical developer is the more difficult of the two. Though technical project management is more difficult than programming.
reustle 15y ago
Please link to the original SO post if all you're going to do is copy paste one of the answers.
illumen 15y ago
Supply and demand. In some places they get paid more.
jeffdavis 15y ago
One point I haven't seen so far in this thread: even if manager types make more money than programmer types, that does not imply that management is a more lucrative career choice. To make the point, let me turn the question around: if management is easier and pays more, why don't more programmers choose management? The answer is that it's not necessarily easy to land a management job, whereas there's often work for programmers to do (though programmers may need to do consulting and travel around or something). What happens is that business types get comfortable communicating with specific managers, and then they don't want to spend time building rapport with new managers. Great if you're that one manager, but not necessarily good for the 5 that are stuck trying to apply as a manager while unemployed. (I'm sure it's more complex than this, but I believe the above describes a significant factor.)
- jsavimbi 15y ago
  I think you're right. Becoming a [good] product manager involves a long path that starts as an intern/co-op in college to assisting project managers, becoming one and polishing your skills in order to get those bigger projects and ultimately a product manager and/or operations chief. Granted, at a startup, anyone can become the product manager overnight, but in that enterprisey world it takes considerable more time and you have the added problem of extended down time should you lose your job, which can occur at a moment's notice if you're on the mid-level business side. Any decent engineer with experience under their belt is usually last to be fired and first to be rehired. Witchcraft exists on the business side and its mysteries remain the domain of tall, handsome people. It really gets to me that even smart engineers will fall for it, too. Having been on both sides of the table I can tell you that engineers who take the stance that they shouldn't be making up the business rules are doing themselves a disservice. Most business types are sitting around waiting to be prompted by the engineers and have no clue of how something is supposed to work until the actual work is done. /End rant.
- F_J_H 15y ago
  "if management is easier and pays more, why don't more programmers choose management?" Um...they are completely different skill sets.
rayiner 15y ago
Salaries are a strange combination of supply and demand and superstition and belief. First, fundamentally, it is difficult to evaluate the contribution of either a manager or a programmer. So people fall back to the notion that, well there are fewer of the former and they're higher on the org chart so they should get paid more. Second, programming skills are seen as a commodity, while business analysis skills are seen as a rarity. This is mostly self-reinforcing perception. At the hiring stage, because people see programming as a commodity they're willing to recruit widely, while because they see business analysis as a rarity they place disproportionate emphasis on pedigree (hiring ex consultants at McKinsey, etc) which limits supply. Given the Bell Labs study, pedigree is probably vastly overrated, but business types place insane value on it. I'm in the legal field and see big firms perfectly happy to hire someone from the middle of the class at a top 10 school over someone in the top decile of a top 50 school. The difference in standardized entrance exam scores between the two is often quite small, and law firm work takes more work ethic than it does brilliance, but firms hire the folks with the pedigree because it's easier to sell that to a business type. Third, without using too broad of a brush, I think business analysis, etc, on average, attracts a more aggressive crowd. Programmers tend to be more mellow in my experience, and that affects people's perception of whether you've got "killer instinct" and whatnot. My law school's parent university has a business school, and frankly those folks are a little strange. They Facebook-friend people indiscriminately, always seem like they're trying to sell you something, and are really dedicated to physical fitness and grooming. Given that a large component of compensation is perception, it's easy to see why these folks would have a leg up.
Ecio78 15y ago
And what can we say about system administrators? As a member of this category I think that probably we are lower in the (salary/st) ladder..
tryitnow 15y ago
At bigger companies there are often arbitrary pay limits set for non-manager employees. Nobody is going to change those pay scales without making a business case to the finance department. The problem is that most finance people have no clue about the underlying cost dynamics of software development. Most finance analysts learned from textbook examples based on manufacturing. Many big company finance systems are still set up using software designed for manufacturing. Guess what that means? You're basically an assembly line worker. BA's and PM's are viewed as either managers or "management track" assets. This must change. Both for the sake of profitability and fairness to top programmers. My recommendation, if you know anyone in the finance department try to educate them a little about the cost dynamics of software development. The sort of stuff you'd read about in Code Complete or MMM. They'll probably ignore you. If they do, fine, whatever. If not, you may have taken the first step in getting your company to understand how to manage their most valuable asset: programming talent.
- nobody3141592 15y ago
  It gets even funnier in government. In the 80s I worked in a special government lab (where 'critical' event wasn't a euphemism!) To get the young mathematicians and programmers we needed we had to pay the same rates they would get in industry - but the pay scales were all set by rank. So the only solution was to promote 21 year old maths grads to the heights of the command structure. There were senior site meetings that had a 'general' rank head of each dept and 20 or 30 'general' rank 20 something maths specialists!
acchow 15y ago
He has the agents reversed. At general equilibrium (assuming open markets), a corporation's "reservation price" will be equal to the employee's "marginal product", so we don't generally use the term "reservation price" in the employer's perspective. OTOH, an employee will have a "reservation price" that is the minimum they'd accept to force themselves to wake up at 8am everyday and go to work. If you are the last COBOL programmer on earth, then surely many companies formerly using COBOL have switched to other languages and platforms and, most likely, there is a cross-compiler to COBOL from Python or C or something. Thus, a COBOL programmer's marginal product to any corporation would not really be that high since the company could switch to another language instead of hiring you (especially since they will have to switch eventually (assuming you, the last COBOL programmer on earth, are mortal).
- damian2000 15y ago
  Actually its not that simple in real life regarding legacy systems. To rewrite even small parts of critical real time systems (I'm thinking bank's end of day accounting reconciliation software) in a new language could be a hugely complex undertaking, and they must maintain and update legacy apps in the meantime, even while new development is ongoing.
parasitius 15y ago
BA's making more than programmers?? News to me! I took a BA position because no one would give me a shot at development. Now I work 8 hour days and study coding 4 hours after work trying to have a chance in the future to move up to development so I can making a good enough wage to get dates, go on occasional vacations, etc.
suyash 15y ago
I don't agree, mostly I've seen in the valley is that engineers are paid more than project managers and business analysts.
rwhitman 15y ago
I was under the impression that most programmers hired these days get paid more than managers and analysts with comparable experience, often by a good margin. Evidence: http://www.simplyhired.com/a/salary/search/q-analyst/q_1-software+engineer/q_2-project+manager/q_3-programmer http://www.simplyhired.com/a/salary/search/q-analyst/q_1-sof... I'm surprised few have pointed out that this entire conversation is based on a generalization that could easily be false...

73 points by damian2000 15y ago

In addition to bargaining power, I think programmers are just worse negotiators. Their educations do not prepare them for this. To hack the system — remember you're putting yourself in a wage-slave situation for years, so best to learn this trash — you should extract the highest price/benefits they're capable of paying you. (Maybe it helps to read _Getting to Yes_, or something.) Plus, there's an obvious class component. The further removed you are from working with your hands, the higher value you're perceived to have. (After all, who hires these project managers and business analysts? Managers. Who naturally value themselves more than underlings, and will transfer that value perception to these managers/analysts. This argument was used in Schmidt's _Disciplined Minds_ to explain some of the higher rank theoretical physicists have over experimental physicists and engineers, even if engineers earn more money.)

jonnathanson 15y ago
"The further removed you are from working with your hands, the higher value you're perceived to have." It's that, but it's also (perceived) pedigree. A lot of "business analysts" come from big consultancies like McKinsey, or investment banks like Goldman, et al. Managers and MBA-types have a mystical perception of those firms -- almost as if they trained jedi business knights. The truth may be far from it, at least in my experience. But perception usually trumps truth.
tomkarlo 15y ago
More importantly, from a bargaining power perspective, you have to look at their BATNA - best alternative to a negotiated agreement. A programmer is going to take a bigger pay hit switching to another job type than an MBA'ed project manager. In many cases, a project manager may be making less than they would in a management role of another type (e.g. consulting or finance.) That's going to drive up the minimum wage they'll accept, and drive up the overall price as well. The best way to improve bargaining power is to be willing to walk away at a higher offer.
- calibraxis 15y ago
  Yeah, being willing to walk away for a better offer is the most encouraging thing to have in your pocket. That's worth working to get. Another tip I heard, and tried out, is to start with a price higher than the highest you think they're willing to part with. Even if you cringe to say it. On the logic that the price can easily come down, but it's far harder for you to push it back up. (If they accept your first offer, the reasoning goes, you didn't go nearly high enough. Remember, that first price can affect you for years.) It worked for me, though of course YMMV. (For those who cringe in salary negotiations, Graeber's _Debt: The First 500 Years_ may give you some perspective on why it makes you feel bad.) Definitely helps to get in a position where you interview people. (Not to mention salary negotiations.) Then it'll be clear what employers want, and what other developers do. Based on that, you can present what they truly desire. Take for example do-at-home projects. If you can solve them, then you can really hit them out of the ballpark. The first time I reviewed the solutions, I saw that only one or two had neat complete-ish solutions. (Most had significant cut corners; one was written by an insane fellow.) It was easy to see how to go beyond the best ones: make a build file, a readme that's worthy of a good opensource project, etc.
zzzeek 15y ago
> Plus, there's an obvious class component. The further removed you are from working with your hands, the higher value you're perceived to have. I like this point a lot, and it makes sense, but then I thought, how come it doesn't apply to athletes ?
- mseebach 15y ago
  Because it doesn't actually have anything to do with "working with your hands". Craftsmen are probably a better example - a talented craftsman, like an athlete, though he's working with his body, can command soaring rates. The classical worker, the kind I believe the GP meant to refer to, is a commodity. It's the kind of workers it might make sense to hire as day labourers and, conversely, for whom collective bargaining is beneficial. There has been a tendency for some businesses to treat programmers as this kind of workers, often leading to failed off-shoring efforts.
- sector 15y ago
  It's not a class issue. A more accurate appraisal would be that one is paid highest for strategic work, next highest for tactical, and the least for operational work. If you're great at operational work, but are no good with tactics or strategy, you won't ever get a huge salary, in the office or in sports. After all, look at pro-sports salaries and you'll see that the highest paid players are the ones who are put in situations where they have the ability to make potentially critical decisions, and who have a history of being relatively good with those calls.
- drcube 15y ago
  It did, for a hundred years. Professional athletes (outside of a few rare "rock stars" like Babe Ruth) often had to get second jobs in the off season up until the 1970s. If they wanted to continue playing sports professionally, they were at the whim of their team's owner, who could and did forbid them from playing for any other team. Read up on the Reserve clause and Curt Flood for more info about how this all changed starting with Major League Baseball in the 1970s.

dfc 15y ago

The same reason a general contractor makes more than the carpenter he subs out? Or the same reason the real estate developer makes more than the architect?

patricklynch 15y ago
I'd like to note this isn't actually an answer; you've just begged the question.
- dfc 15y ago
  Begging the question or Socratic method. The answer is that the lower paid workers are all lower level inputs to a business operation. The other answer is that the wage is a reflection of market value / cost of labor. I think that's probably a function of supply.
  - dfc 15y ago
    Whomever is doing the downvoting on all of my posts on this topic please speak up. Why the down voting? Because I do not share your opinion?
    - msbarnett 15y ago
      You're not making any real arguments in any of your posts (except the grandparent to this one), in my opinion. When confronted with the assertion "X", responding with "does anyone else feel not-X?" or "the same reason Y?" strike me as lazy rhetorical cheats to assert your opinion while trying to avoid just laying out an argument for it. As such, people seem to be downvoting them as noise.
      - Selvik 15y ago
        I think they shouldn't (upvoted all of them for balance) the analogy is valid and ought to be obviously so. Programming is not the only industry where the best "craftsmen" often make less than the "middlemen", that's a very common pattern.

tripzilch 15y ago

Additionally, it's that managers are also supposed to carry more responsibility, if they make a decision and tell the coder to "no, do it like this", it should be their neck on the line if it turned out to be the wrong decision. Even though it doesn't always turn out that way, just appearing to carry the burden of responsibility is often enough to make justifications for being paid more. In reality, the truth is of course somewhere in between the optimistic first paragraph and the cynical second.

nupark2 15y ago

As a programmer-turned-CEO, I firmly subscribe to the Mythical Man Month's suggestion that your top engineers should be paid the same or more than your managers. Otherwise (as MMM notes), the only career advancement available to your engineers is to move into management, and that's a waste of a great engineer, and a good way to wind up with a poor manager. Speaking from experience: being a CEO is something I've learned to do, being a programmer is something that I just am. The only reason I got into management is that the size of projects I wanted to tackle exceeded what I was capable of doing myself. Unless I wanted to work on other people's projects, it meant I needed to put together my own team. While I wouldn't want to encourage programmers to move into management as their only career path, I also wouldn't ever hire someone into management who didn't work their way up in the field. Understanding how to manage technical projects is often much easier for someone who actually knows how to implement a technical project. Apple was/is similar -- Bertrand Serlet (SVP of Software Engineering) wrote malloc, Avi Tevanian (SVP of Software Engineering, Chief Software Technology Officer) was one of the primary authors of Mach. In conclusion: programmers do not always get paid less than project managers or business analysts. If you feel that you're stuck earning less than you deserve, don't treat that as an axiom of the industry -- figure out how to move forward in your career, even if that means finding a company that sufficiently values senior engineering staff, or working to become a senior engineer.

brc 15y ago
I've had several positions in my career where I was paid more than my manager, usually revealed to me by the manager in an informal setting. If you're delivering more value than you cost, this is not necessarily unremarkable. It does require you to be an effective employee, an effective manager, and to be an effective negotiator.

dfc 15y ago

Am I really the only person that was a little troubled by the stated assumption that programming is generally more difficult?

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
dfc 15y ago
Sometimes the down voting here is rather perplexing. The post starts out by denying a rational explanation for the cause of salary differences without any justification. How is noting a flaw in the argument/question-setup worthy of downvoting?
dwc 15y ago
You are not completely alone in this. And there's also the statement right alongside that equates the difficulty level with working late. One problem is that the term "programmer" covers such a wide range, from "code monkey" through "business analyst who codes." The range of productivity in code monkeys varies greatly, but they are still essentially fungible. When you start adding analysis and problem solving skills value goes up and fungibility goes down. In organizations that have formalized the separation of coding from analysis and problem solving, the coding roles will (and should) pay less. I think that's a bad decision, but it's certainly common enough.
lawnchair_larry 15y ago
You think project management is generally more difficult than programming? You must not be a programmer. :)
- dfc 15y ago
  I think "difficult" is a tough term to pin down. I was troubled by the fact that the assumption was made as if it was a scientific fact; especially since making the assumption clearly eliminates a valid answer to the question. Maybe I just took too many logical reasoning / philosophy classes in college...

nice1 15y ago

This is an easy one: the ACCEPT lower pay.

drivingmenuts 15y ago

A good programmer is as valuable to the team as a good project manager (and vice-versa) but the project manager's work will be explainable to corporate in a way that the programmer's work isn't. Suits (and yes, I know this is an us-vs-them mentality) understand charts and numbers and projections, etc., but rarely give a damn about what actually has to happen to earn their quarterly profit. Project managers can produce enough of those to warm the cold pits of any executive's heart; programmers can point to lines of code and get a confused, annoyed look and a trip out the door. It's not that executives are, by nature, evil or bad people (OK, not Hitlerian evil), they just don't worry about the tiny details.

mgkimsal 15y ago
Given the hierarchical nature of most companies, developers tend to be at the bottom rung. They've got project managers above them, then department managers above them. Almost by definition, anything a developer is working on is a "detail" (and can often be regarded as 'tiny' in comparison to the whole of a project or department). Doesn't matter if that one 'tiny' detail can actually close down the company or not, by the very nature of how projects and depts are structured, it's set up to be an uphill battle to get noticed and get heard from a dev point of view.

viandante 15y ago

Business analyst/finance here. I believe you are generalizing quite a bit. Some types of programming skills are a commodity. Such as some types of 'analytical' skills: all that is done on a spreadsheet on a regular basis is a commodity, that is why there are so many 'analysts' in the emerging countries. Regarding programming, making 'apps' in .NET for a big corp is considered (and maybe it is) a commodity by the management. So, if you want higher salaries, you may want to move away from that. What also doesn't help the programmers (generalizing again, but let's do it for the sake of discussion) is this complete misunderstanding they have regarding the 'suits'. It is absolutely true that a lot of 'suits' talk BS, but they do have a feeling of the business that programmers seem not to have, otherwise there wouldn't be so many todo and project management apps out there. My strong advise would be to actually move away from the technical side for a moment and talk with the 'suits', ask them what problems they have, ask them about the business, etc. Companies have so many problems, but they are totally disregarded and this kind of discussions don't help. Now, a programmer that cares about the business: that is a skill that is not a commodity...

BerislavLopac 15y ago
Regarding your last line: it heavily depends where you live. In some places, it won't get you anywhere...
- viandante 15y ago
  That means you either move in the suits department, or you leave the company as programmer skills are not core for the business or the support of the business.
  - wildjim 15y ago
    There is a continuing misunderstanding between "suits" and dev's, where most dev's _do_ learn the business through experience, but the suits continually choose not to, and instead of working as the "teacher" and filter between both areas, just push the demands down to the dev. And "yes": teacher is always part of the job.
  - 15y ago

damoncali 15y ago

People are paid in proportion to how hard they are to hire and retain. End of story.

ypcxz 15y ago

Because based on various bullshit spit out mainly by the PM and BA asshole types (kudos to exceptions), programmers somehow believe that it's too difficult to run their own companies.

jleyank 15y ago

The business guys tend to have the checkbook. So, if they're intellectually lazy, they go with what they know rather than whatever they might need. Given that you're not going to be able to hire Bill Joy very often, there's a lot of developers out there looking for work. Anywhere there's "lots", there's downward salary pressure (chemists, engineers, ...). Things might change a bit when they can outsource management or when non-Western competition truly arrives.

ap22213 15y ago

From what I understand of the Washington DC market, senior software engineers are generally paid more than technical managers. But, given that many good technical managers were at one point good technical developers, it makes sense that they're paid more. Having done both roles, being the 'lead' senior technical developer is the more difficult of the two. Though technical project management is more difficult than programming.

reustle 15y ago

Please link to the original SO post if all you're going to do is copy paste one of the answers.

illumen 15y ago

Supply and demand. In some places they get paid more.

jeffdavis 15y ago

One point I haven't seen so far in this thread: even if manager types make more money than programmer types, that does not imply that management is a more lucrative career choice. To make the point, let me turn the question around: if management is easier and pays more, why don't more programmers choose management? The answer is that it's not necessarily easy to land a management job, whereas there's often work for programmers to do (though programmers may need to do consulting and travel around or something). What happens is that business types get comfortable communicating with specific managers, and then they don't want to spend time building rapport with new managers. Great if you're that one manager, but not necessarily good for the 5 that are stuck trying to apply as a manager while unemployed. (I'm sure it's more complex than this, but I believe the above describes a significant factor.)

jsavimbi 15y ago
I think you're right. Becoming a [good] product manager involves a long path that starts as an intern/co-op in college to assisting project managers, becoming one and polishing your skills in order to get those bigger projects and ultimately a product manager and/or operations chief. Granted, at a startup, anyone can become the product manager overnight, but in that enterprisey world it takes considerable more time and you have the added problem of extended down time should you lose your job, which can occur at a moment's notice if you're on the mid-level business side. Any decent engineer with experience under their belt is usually last to be fired and first to be rehired. Witchcraft exists on the business side and its mysteries remain the domain of tall, handsome people. It really gets to me that even smart engineers will fall for it, too. Having been on both sides of the table I can tell you that engineers who take the stance that they shouldn't be making up the business rules are doing themselves a disservice. Most business types are sitting around waiting to be prompted by the engineers and have no clue of how something is supposed to work until the actual work is done. /End rant.
F_J_H 15y ago
"if management is easier and pays more, why don't more programmers choose management?" Um...they are completely different skill sets.

rayiner 15y ago

Salaries are a strange combination of supply and demand and superstition and belief. First, fundamentally, it is difficult to evaluate the contribution of either a manager or a programmer. So people fall back to the notion that, well there are fewer of the former and they're higher on the org chart so they should get paid more. Second, programming skills are seen as a commodity, while business analysis skills are seen as a rarity. This is mostly self-reinforcing perception. At the hiring stage, because people see programming as a commodity they're willing to recruit widely, while because they see business analysis as a rarity they place disproportionate emphasis on pedigree (hiring ex consultants at McKinsey, etc) which limits supply. Given the Bell Labs study, pedigree is probably vastly overrated, but business types place insane value on it. I'm in the legal field and see big firms perfectly happy to hire someone from the middle of the class at a top 10 school over someone in the top decile of a top 50 school. The difference in standardized entrance exam scores between the two is often quite small, and law firm work takes more work ethic than it does brilliance, but firms hire the folks with the pedigree because it's easier to sell that to a business type. Third, without using too broad of a brush, I think business analysis, etc, on average, attracts a more aggressive crowd. Programmers tend to be more mellow in my experience, and that affects people's perception of whether you've got "killer instinct" and whatnot. My law school's parent university has a business school, and frankly those folks are a little strange. They Facebook-friend people indiscriminately, always seem like they're trying to sell you something, and are really dedicated to physical fitness and grooming. Given that a large component of compensation is perception, it's easy to see why these folks would have a leg up.

Ecio78 15y ago

And what can we say about system administrators? As a member of this category I think that probably we are lower in the (salary/st) ladder..

tryitnow 15y ago

At bigger companies there are often arbitrary pay limits set for non-manager employees. Nobody is going to change those pay scales without making a business case to the finance department. The problem is that most finance people have no clue about the underlying cost dynamics of software development. Most finance analysts learned from textbook examples based on manufacturing. Many big company finance systems are still set up using software designed for manufacturing. Guess what that means? You're basically an assembly line worker. BA's and PM's are viewed as either managers or "management track" assets. This must change. Both for the sake of profitability and fairness to top programmers. My recommendation, if you know anyone in the finance department try to educate them a little about the cost dynamics of software development. The sort of stuff you'd read about in Code Complete or MMM. They'll probably ignore you. If they do, fine, whatever. If not, you may have taken the first step in getting your company to understand how to manage their most valuable asset: programming talent.

nobody3141592 15y ago
It gets even funnier in government. In the 80s I worked in a special government lab (where 'critical' event wasn't a euphemism!) To get the young mathematicians and programmers we needed we had to pay the same rates they would get in industry - but the pay scales were all set by rank. So the only solution was to promote 21 year old maths grads to the heights of the command structure. There were senior site meetings that had a 'general' rank head of each dept and 20 or 30 'general' rank 20 something maths specialists!

acchow 15y ago

He has the agents reversed. At general equilibrium (assuming open markets), a corporation's "reservation price" will be equal to the employee's "marginal product", so we don't generally use the term "reservation price" in the employer's perspective. OTOH, an employee will have a "reservation price" that is the minimum they'd accept to force themselves to wake up at 8am everyday and go to work. If you are the last COBOL programmer on earth, then surely many companies formerly using COBOL have switched to other languages and platforms and, most likely, there is a cross-compiler to COBOL from Python or C or something. Thus, a COBOL programmer's marginal product to any corporation would not really be that high since the company could switch to another language instead of hiring you (especially since they will have to switch eventually (assuming you, the last COBOL programmer on earth, are mortal).

damian2000 15y ago
Actually its not that simple in real life regarding legacy systems. To rewrite even small parts of critical real time systems (I'm thinking bank's end of day accounting reconciliation software) in a new language could be a hugely complex undertaking, and they must maintain and update legacy apps in the meantime, even while new development is ongoing.

parasitius 15y ago

BA's making more than programmers?? News to me! I took a BA position because no one would give me a shot at development. Now I work 8 hour days and study coding 4 hours after work trying to have a chance in the future to move up to development so I can making a good enough wage to get dates, go on occasional vacations, etc.

suyash 15y ago

I don't agree, mostly I've seen in the valley is that engineers are paid more than project managers and business analysts.

rwhitman 15y ago

I was under the impression that most programmers hired these days get paid more than managers and analysts with comparable experience, often by a good margin. Evidence: http://www.simplyhired.com/a/salary/search/q-analyst/q_1-software+engineer/q_2-project+manager/q_3-programmer http://www.simplyhired.com/a/salary/search/q-analyst/q_1-sof... I'm surprised few have pointed out that this entire conversation is based on a generalization that could easily be false...