4 ms·

Where are 12 junior dev days worth more then 20k? Not even in silicon valley salaries are that insane. Relying on proprietary technology is in itself a pretty

Where are 12 junior dev days worth more then 20k? Not even in silicon valley salaries are that insane. Relying on proprietary technology is in itself a pretty large risk regardless of the monetary cost.

pjmlp 3y ago
In countries where seniors cost 100+ €/$ per hour in project costs. Do the monthly math for respective FTE costs.
- rowanG077 3y ago
  How does the cost of a senior factor into it? This is about junior cost. Besides even at 100+ €/$ per hour you don't come close to 20k after 12 days.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    It was to make a measurement point, it comes to 9600, with some typical rounding adjustments as buffer, 10 000. Which is half of it, although in projects where Oracle licences are rounding errors, I expect much higher rates.
  - coryrc 3y ago
    Employee total burden is about double their take-home pay, so 2 x $100 x 8 x 12 is $19200.
    - jstimpfle 3y ago
      That is a bit much. I believe a factor like 1.2x to 1.5x, depending on the country, is more realistic.
Veserv 3y ago
I was using 10 K$ as the baseline. Junior devs make 100-200 K$/yr in salary. The fully burdened cost including overhead and benefits is usually around double that at around 200-300 K$ (higher base compensation usually results in lower proportional overhead). In the US there are ~2000 working hours a year, so that amounts to 100-150 $/hr. There are 8 hours per dev-day, so 96 dev-hours. At 100-150 $/hr that is 9600–14400 $. If you are really obstinate about 20 K$, then just double it and call it 25 junior-dev days. Whoopie, still only 10% of the yearly cost of a junior-dev. Yeah, developers are really expensive. So back to the original question, just minimally changed to account for irrelevant factors of two. Do you think having 10% more junior devs on your team is better than having better tooling for the other 90% of the team?
- rowanG077 3y ago
  Well then you are still looking at silicon valley level of salaries. The top of the top of the world. Let's take The Netherlands, where I live. A junior dev is expected to make €34,422/year. This is still a western country so let's go somewhere else. In China a junior dev makes about ¥269,904 a year, or $1.806,89. Is this tool worth 5+ man years of a junior dev? If your back of the envelope calculations only barely make sense for a tiny part of the world maybe the pricing is actually insane. edit: ¥269,904 is $37.002. Point still stands. > Do you think having 10% more junior devs on your team is better than having better tooling for the other 90% of the team? The tool would have to be pretty damn good. And also not introduce business risk or at the very least a minimal business risk.
  - OneWingedShark 3y ago
    > The tool would have to be pretty damn good. And also not introduce business risk or at the very least a minimal business risk. That is actually quite possible. Ada is in a really good place as far as that goes: imagine the cost of writing an IDE (to include compiler) for, say, Ada, PL/SQL, and VHDL -- given the common lineage, you could make a custom internal representations (IR), where each language has a 'Subtype' constraint for its particularity (e.g. `Subtype Ada_IR is General_IR with Dynamic_Predicate => Is_Common(Ada_IR) or Is_Ada(Ada_IR);`, and so on for PL/SQL and VHDL), make these IRs with SPARK proving, as you implement PL/SQL and its query-engine also implement SPARK's proof-tools and SMT-interfaces, proving it as you go, next implement and prove code-gen/HW-synth. Now, put the IDE source through the IDE, and BAM! Now you have a proved IDE+compiler for Ada, PL/SQL, and VHDL giving you a very solid platform. (Also, as you would have a DB-engine onboard, you could populate the IDE with templates and run a query like: SELECT Name, Code FROM Entities WHERE Purpose LIKE “%SCSI%”;... or SELECT Name, Purpose FROM Algorithms WHERE Purpose LIKE “%SORT%” AND Ω <= log_2;.) Also, being Ada-based, you could use Ada's Distributed Systems Annex to distribute portions of the IDE, and/or implement CI/CD as per https://users.ece.utexas.edu/~perry/work/papers/icsm87.pdf https://users.ece.utexas.edu/~perry/work/papers/icsm87.pdf
  - khuey 3y ago
    > In China a junior dev makes about ¥269,904 a year, or $1.806,89. Is this tool worth 5+ man years of a junior dev? Try doing the currency conversion from Yuan to Dollars and not from Yen to Dollars.

pjmlp 3y ago

In countries where seniors cost 100+ €/$ per hour in project costs. Do the monthly math for respective FTE costs.

rowanG077 3y ago
How does the cost of a senior factor into it? This is about junior cost. Besides even at 100+ €/$ per hour you don't come close to 20k after 12 days.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  It was to make a measurement point, it comes to 9600, with some typical rounding adjustments as buffer, 10 000. Which is half of it, although in projects where Oracle licences are rounding errors, I expect much higher rates.
- coryrc 3y ago
  Employee total burden is about double their take-home pay, so 2 x $100 x 8 x 12 is $19200.
  - jstimpfle 3y ago
    That is a bit much. I believe a factor like 1.2x to 1.5x, depending on the country, is more realistic.

Veserv 3y ago

I was using 10 K$ as the baseline. Junior devs make 100-200 K$/yr in salary. The fully burdened cost including overhead and benefits is usually around double that at around 200-300 K$ (higher base compensation usually results in lower proportional overhead). In the US there are ~2000 working hours a year, so that amounts to 100-150 $/hr. There are 8 hours per dev-day, so 96 dev-hours. At 100-150 $/hr that is 9600–14400 $. If you are really obstinate about 20 K$, then just double it and call it 25 junior-dev days. Whoopie, still only 10% of the yearly cost of a junior-dev. Yeah, developers are really expensive. So back to the original question, just minimally changed to account for irrelevant factors of two. Do you think having 10% more junior devs on your team is better than having better tooling for the other 90% of the team?

rowanG077 3y ago
Well then you are still looking at silicon valley level of salaries. The top of the top of the world. Let's take The Netherlands, where I live. A junior dev is expected to make €34,422/year. This is still a western country so let's go somewhere else. In China a junior dev makes about ¥269,904 a year, or $1.806,89. Is this tool worth 5+ man years of a junior dev? If your back of the envelope calculations only barely make sense for a tiny part of the world maybe the pricing is actually insane. edit: ¥269,904 is $37.002. Point still stands. > Do you think having 10% more junior devs on your team is better than having better tooling for the other 90% of the team? The tool would have to be pretty damn good. And also not introduce business risk or at the very least a minimal business risk.
- OneWingedShark 3y ago
  > The tool would have to be pretty damn good. And also not introduce business risk or at the very least a minimal business risk. That is actually quite possible. Ada is in a really good place as far as that goes: imagine the cost of writing an IDE (to include compiler) for, say, Ada, PL/SQL, and VHDL -- given the common lineage, you could make a custom internal representations (IR), where each language has a 'Subtype' constraint for its particularity (e.g. `Subtype Ada_IR is General_IR with Dynamic_Predicate => Is_Common(Ada_IR) or Is_Ada(Ada_IR);`, and so on for PL/SQL and VHDL), make these IRs with SPARK proving, as you implement PL/SQL and its query-engine also implement SPARK's proof-tools and SMT-interfaces, proving it as you go, next implement and prove code-gen/HW-synth. Now, put the IDE source through the IDE, and BAM! Now you have a proved IDE+compiler for Ada, PL/SQL, and VHDL giving you a very solid platform. (Also, as you would have a DB-engine onboard, you could populate the IDE with templates and run a query like: SELECT Name, Code FROM Entities WHERE Purpose LIKE “%SCSI%”;... or SELECT Name, Purpose FROM Algorithms WHERE Purpose LIKE “%SORT%” AND Ω <= log_2;.) Also, being Ada-based, you could use Ada's Distributed Systems Annex to distribute portions of the IDE, and/or implement CI/CD as per https://users.ece.utexas.edu/~perry/work/papers/icsm87.pdf https://users.ece.utexas.edu/~perry/work/papers/icsm87.pdf
- khuey 3y ago
  > In China a junior dev makes about ¥269,904 a year, or $1.806,89. Is this tool worth 5+ man years of a junior dev? Try doing the currency conversion from Yuan to Dollars and not from Yen to Dollars.