4 ms·

Developers are dramatically underpaid, just like all non-exec labor. It's ridiculous to complain about devs making 300k-500k a year when execs are pulling in mi

Developers are dramatically underpaid, just like all non-exec labor. It's ridiculous to complain about devs making 300k-500k a year when execs are pulling in millions or tens of millions a year with 10M-100B worth of equity under their belt. Focusing on anything other than that is a complete distraction and counterproductive. Devs should be getting 10X their current salary and execs should be getting 1/100th theirs. I'll add that if you can't easily afford a family house next to your office, you're not overpaid.

golergka 4y ago
If you truly think that this radical change will make the company more productive, what's stopping you from raising a seed round for your new company built on this innovation as competitive edge?
- epicureanideal 4y ago
  > what's stopping you from raising a seed round for your new company Knowing what’s true and being able to convince some investors, who are not universally omniscient and reasonable and open to conversation from people they don’t already know, are different things.
- wootland 4y ago
  I have done that and it's a great management strategy. You can hire world class developers and talent if you just treat them as peers and don't jack your own compensation up to astronomical levels. It's like a "cheat" to win at management. People will also be less likely to quit and much more likely to join you at your next role.
AlexTWithBeard 4y ago
They (well, we) are not underpaid. Some time ago I used to work in a large organization on the very bottom of the food chain. I was making, say, $100k a year, which was quite decent money. Sitting there, doing same thing I could've grown to a "senior bottom of the food chain" of $150k. That was the limit. A soft one, but still the limit. The organization was quite picky in selecting their workforce. Think FAANG. So in every team you have a bunch of quite smart opinionated folks, who somehow have to be steered in the same direction. With that I see it kinda reasonable for the team lead to make at least $200k a year. Give or take. Now we move one step up. Someone has to pull all these "creme de la creme" cats together and herd them, so that at the very minimum teams don't work against each other. Ideally work together for some common goal. And I can understand team leads who is not willing to go to this snake pit for 30% salary increase. Why would they? 50% - may be. 70% - that sounds interesting and worth consideration. Bottom line: according to my humble experience in "the organization", the salary roughly doubles each time you get up the ladder. And being on different steps of this ladder I can understand why.
- wootland 4y ago
  > They (well, we) are not underpaid. Can a family of 4 purchase a home within walking distance of the office? Is the CEO of the company making 1000X more than those at the bottom? How much equity do the execs have and how much is it worth? Devs are very underpaid, it's just so much value is captured by those at the top that we're all used to fighting for the scraps that happen to fall off the real dinner table.
  - AlexTWithBeard 4y ago
    Is there enough homes within walking distance of the office for all the developers?
    - wootland 4y ago
      Well, all developers should be WFH so that shouldn't be an issue. For those companies backward enough to force their devs onsite, if there aren't enough homes to house the workforce local to the office, then the office is in the incorrect location.
  - banannaise 4y ago
    You could argue that devs are being paid the money that is being extracted from lower-class workers, too. Companies get to underpay for physical production labor, construction labor, etc., and some of that gets fed into developer salaries. More gets fed into their profits and the executive salaries, but I think you get the idea.
    - wootland 4y ago
      I don’t think you can make the argument that devs are extracting money from lower paid employees when: 1. Exec pay is 100-1000x that of dev pay. I’d also include huge war chests of cash and stock buy backs as evidence that devs aren’t the problem. 2. The vast majority of “high paying” dev roles don’t pay enough money to buy a house in the real estate market that their office is in. A metric that I’d consider bare minimum to call someone adequately paid.
specialist 4y ago
I'd be fine with equitable profit sharing, writ large. Resume progressive redistribution by taxing wealth more than income, switch back to pensions (and fully fund them), and fund the social safety net.
iamthemonster 4y ago
This comment right here is proof of the bubble - normalising 300-500k per year salaries. Developers don't have a skillset that is harder to develop than university academics or mechanical/electrical engineers in industry. Out in the real world for equivalently skilled professionals in other industries, a 100k salary is great and a 150k salary is fabulous. I'm a 16-year-experienced engineering team leader responsible for process safety on multiple billion-dollar oil and gas facilities and I'm on a great base salary 140k, which is more than many of my peers. There are engineering professors who outstrip my skills level by a factor of ten who are on half my salary. The exponential elevation of dev salaries into the stratosphere was a natural overshoot of demand vs supply of suitably skilled labour. Now the overshoot is resolving itself starting with decreased demand. Anyone who banked on 300k-500k salaries being the norm has made the same mistake as oil and gas folk have done in every boom throughout the 20th century.
- wootland 4y ago
  $300k a year will not buy you a 3bd house in the geographies that pay $300k a year. That's a middle (not upper) class life milestone. That others are paid even less is a travesty and a sign of a deeply broken society. Again, the problem is not with those making $XXXk a year, it's those making $XXXM+ a year, or not working at all but controlling $XB. The problem is also that capital has distorted the housing, health and education markets to the point that basically no worker can afford what used to be a middle class lifestyle.
dennis_jeeves1 4y ago
>I'll add that if you can't easily afford a family house next to your office, you're not overpaid. You are correct, though I will not say that underpayment per se is the problem. It's more along lines of housing is very expensive due to a whole combination of govt interference like taxes, inflation, regulations etc.
danaris 4y ago
The number of developers making $300k-$500k/yr is a rounding error. The rest of us plebes, who make more or less the same kind of white-collar salaries as non-programmers, are certainly underpaid.

golergka 4y ago

If you truly think that this radical change will make the company more productive, what's stopping you from raising a seed round for your new company built on this innovation as competitive edge?

epicureanideal 4y ago
> what's stopping you from raising a seed round for your new company Knowing what’s true and being able to convince some investors, who are not universally omniscient and reasonable and open to conversation from people they don’t already know, are different things.
wootland 4y ago
I have done that and it's a great management strategy. You can hire world class developers and talent if you just treat them as peers and don't jack your own compensation up to astronomical levels. It's like a "cheat" to win at management. People will also be less likely to quit and much more likely to join you at your next role.

AlexTWithBeard 4y ago

They (well, we) are not underpaid. Some time ago I used to work in a large organization on the very bottom of the food chain. I was making, say, $100k a year, which was quite decent money. Sitting there, doing same thing I could've grown to a "senior bottom of the food chain" of $150k. That was the limit. A soft one, but still the limit. The organization was quite picky in selecting their workforce. Think FAANG. So in every team you have a bunch of quite smart opinionated folks, who somehow have to be steered in the same direction. With that I see it kinda reasonable for the team lead to make at least $200k a year. Give or take. Now we move one step up. Someone has to pull all these "creme de la creme" cats together and herd them, so that at the very minimum teams don't work against each other. Ideally work together for some common goal. And I can understand team leads who is not willing to go to this snake pit for 30% salary increase. Why would they? 50% - may be. 70% - that sounds interesting and worth consideration. Bottom line: according to my humble experience in "the organization", the salary roughly doubles each time you get up the ladder. And being on different steps of this ladder I can understand why.

wootland 4y ago
> They (well, we) are not underpaid. Can a family of 4 purchase a home within walking distance of the office? Is the CEO of the company making 1000X more than those at the bottom? How much equity do the execs have and how much is it worth? Devs are very underpaid, it's just so much value is captured by those at the top that we're all used to fighting for the scraps that happen to fall off the real dinner table.
- AlexTWithBeard 4y ago
  Is there enough homes within walking distance of the office for all the developers?
  - wootland 4y ago
    Well, all developers should be WFH so that shouldn't be an issue. For those companies backward enough to force their devs onsite, if there aren't enough homes to house the workforce local to the office, then the office is in the incorrect location.
- banannaise 4y ago
  You could argue that devs are being paid the money that is being extracted from lower-class workers, too. Companies get to underpay for physical production labor, construction labor, etc., and some of that gets fed into developer salaries. More gets fed into their profits and the executive salaries, but I think you get the idea.
  - wootland 4y ago
    I don’t think you can make the argument that devs are extracting money from lower paid employees when: 1. Exec pay is 100-1000x that of dev pay. I’d also include huge war chests of cash and stock buy backs as evidence that devs aren’t the problem. 2. The vast majority of “high paying” dev roles don’t pay enough money to buy a house in the real estate market that their office is in. A metric that I’d consider bare minimum to call someone adequately paid.

specialist 4y ago

I'd be fine with equitable profit sharing, writ large. Resume progressive redistribution by taxing wealth more than income, switch back to pensions (and fully fund them), and fund the social safety net.

iamthemonster 4y ago

This comment right here is proof of the bubble - normalising 300-500k per year salaries. Developers don't have a skillset that is harder to develop than university academics or mechanical/electrical engineers in industry. Out in the real world for equivalently skilled professionals in other industries, a 100k salary is great and a 150k salary is fabulous. I'm a 16-year-experienced engineering team leader responsible for process safety on multiple billion-dollar oil and gas facilities and I'm on a great base salary 140k, which is more than many of my peers. There are engineering professors who outstrip my skills level by a factor of ten who are on half my salary. The exponential elevation of dev salaries into the stratosphere was a natural overshoot of demand vs supply of suitably skilled labour. Now the overshoot is resolving itself starting with decreased demand. Anyone who banked on 300k-500k salaries being the norm has made the same mistake as oil and gas folk have done in every boom throughout the 20th century.

wootland 4y ago
$300k a year will not buy you a 3bd house in the geographies that pay $300k a year. That's a middle (not upper) class life milestone. That others are paid even less is a travesty and a sign of a deeply broken society. Again, the problem is not with those making $XXXk a year, it's those making $XXXM+ a year, or not working at all but controlling $XB. The problem is also that capital has distorted the housing, health and education markets to the point that basically no worker can afford what used to be a middle class lifestyle.

dennis_jeeves1 4y ago

>I'll add that if you can't easily afford a family house next to your office, you're not overpaid. You are correct, though I will not say that underpayment per se is the problem. It's more along lines of housing is very expensive due to a whole combination of govt interference like taxes, inflation, regulations etc.

danaris 4y ago

The number of developers making $300k-$500k/yr is a rounding error. The rest of us plebes, who make more or less the same kind of white-collar salaries as non-programmers, are certainly underpaid.