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That's pretty much where I was going with, with this poll. There are developers who are 5-10x better than average but nobody would think of paying them 10x the
by chime 15y ago
That's pretty much where I was going with, with this poll. There are developers who are 5-10x better than average but nobody would think of paying them 10x the average coder's salary while working on the same type of projects. Even if you can write insurance-claims-database-guis 10x better than average, you won't get 1.5x the average salary.
This poll doesn't really pertain to hiring super-talented people who build JS VMs for Google or rich-UIs for Khan Academy. I'm just talking about productive developers who can do the same thing that usually requires a team of 3-5 average developers.
- kls 15y agoRight, one of the things that has to be clarified is that there are developers in the industry that should not be in it. If we isolate them away from the conjecture and only look at good developers then the question becomes interesting. Say you have two people that can and have proven that they can deliver. When you take totally bad apples out of the equation and only look at competent developers it does become an interesting question. Personally I side with paying the better developer, unless it would be the only developer. It's a huge risk when your entire development progress hinges on one person. Now in a team of 5 or 15 where delivery will happen either way. I would still opt for the 5. I believe that 3x developers can make more creative leaps from understanding a broader picture of what is being developed.
- DanielRibeiro 15y agoThis perception even has a name: Net Negative Producing Programmers[1][2] [1] http://blog.jayfields.com/2009/01/cost-of-net-negative-producing.html http://blog.jayfields.com/2009/01/cost-of-net-negative-produ... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NNPP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NNPP