22 ms·

Want good programmers? Then pay them.

• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
• mhofer 14y ago
  I am a Vienna-based programmer and am looking at job adverts regularly. I fully agree with what you have written, sometimes I feel they mus be joking. There is no appreciation for hackers and what they are worth. Take this advert for example: http://derstandard.at/anzeiger/derjob/d/155533/c-senior-software-entwickler-%28m-w%29 http://derstandard.at/anzeiger/derjob/d/155533/c-senior-soft... 5 years experience in C++ and only 2,500 EUR gross? Seriously?
  • irrlichthn 14y ago
    You are right. But about that advert: Most people don't see that that's the minimum payment as demanded by the state. They actually pay more (and funnily, in that case, I know that company and they pay quite well and know to honor the skills of their developers). Kind of sad that recruiters in Austria haven't yet noticed that everybody thinks the minimum payment is not what people are interested in reading on there and confuse it with the actual payment.
    • mhofer 14y ago
      I agree. The minimum salary notation is just stupid, but in engineering it is used often times. In Sales/PM/BizDev I mostly read "We pay 60,000 EUR or above" for jobs demanding 5 years of experience, which makes much more sense than the "2,500 EUR per month" in this advert.
    • nasmorn 14y ago
      Really I didnt know that. I always thought they are crazy. But then I am a free lancer so I don't go interview.
  • seclorum 14y ago
    I'm in Vienna and work for a local startup in the mobile application development scene .. and yeah. Pay-rates are definitely not what they should be, here in Austria. I think it has a lot to do with the "Kollektiv-vertrag" prices being set too low by the government itself ..
    • mhofer 14y ago
      +1, which comes back to the low appreciation for hackers :-)
    • philipp-spiess 14y ago
      /agree The "Kollektiv" is nice, but not for everybody.
    • accountoftheday 14y ago
      one way to think of it: with your average salary you are propping up all the people not as good as you who still get the same salary. if you cannot feel good about this you then move away from your socialist country. I did.
      • seclorum 14y ago
        Its definitely a point. Unfortunately I moved to this country, and have gotten too involved in it to be able to move easily (house, wife, kids..) or else I'd definitely move to a country where programmers are paid more what they're worth, not what the socialists want.
      • deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
      • DominikR 14y ago
        Well, I've been thinking about moving from Vienna to somewhere more competetive for some time (though its not about the money, I'm paid really well here - just about competition, which I happen to enjoy a lot), but the reasons for not doing it are some of the features you get when living in a more "socialist" (though I wouldn't call Austria socialist) country. Security, low crime rate, very few homeless people, drug addicts etc.. I can basically go to a party, get drunk there and take a walk after that in any part of the city during night without being afraid that some homeless person will attack me. If you ask me, thats a big pro for staying here. Sure, I would probably earn more if I did the same job in San Francisco, but then I would have to deal with a much worse social situation, and I would have to be more cautious.
  • amm 14y ago
    I am from Vienna as well and I have been working for about 5 years in this city. From my experience, almost all numbers in job adverts are merely symbolic. You are supposed to negotiate. If you have some expertise and make a good impression, you can easily double the number in the advert. As an austrian colleague once put it: Maul auf oder Geldbörsl auf!
  • Quiark 14y ago
    Interesting. I was actually considering going to work in Vienna (not far from my current location, Brno). It's a really nice city.
• facorreia 14y ago
  In my experience, from what I see in Brazil, entry-level programmers with no professional experience are paid much more than the equivalent in other professions. And, even after years of "training" in college, they will need a year of two of actual on-the-job training before they start adding enough value to justify their cost. In short, a company that hires fresh-out-of-college programmers is making an investment in them.
  • mattdeboard 14y ago
    This is probably either a symptom or a contributor to Brazil's rising prominence on the world tech stage.
  • thdn 14y ago
    Im interested on moving on to Brazil, how much its the average salary ? and there's some craiglist like site for IT jobs ??
    • facorreia 14y ago
      It's a bit hard to compare, with different costs of living and the overvaluation of the Brazilian Real exchange rate. But salaries are mostly way below American levels. A decent programmer can make US$ 20k/year. More gratuated developers, analysts and architects will make US$ 30k - 50k. Over US$ 60k would be considered a very good pay. As for websites, I suppose one of the biggest is http://www.catho.com.br/ http://www.catho.com.br/. As a foreigner you would probably want to go to São Paulo because it's the main economical center and it's pretty safe for Brazilian standards.
• francoisdevlin 14y ago
  There's another way of looking at this. Do you want to work with smart colleagues and good management? Work for a company that pays you & the other developers well. It'll be much more enjoyable to go to work each day.
  • frou_dh 14y ago
    There may be a correlation, but it takes a lot more than good pay to foster an enjoyable company.
    • marcusf 14y ago
      It's more of an indicator of negatives rather than positives; A company that pays comparatively shit (€2200/month comes out to about $35000, seriously!?) will probably not be a place that respects developers and attracts talent.
      • frou_dh 14y ago
        That's what the blog post already conveys :)
        • marcusf 14y ago
          True, just wanted to hammer home the point.
      • dasil003 14y ago
        It's actually $40,000+ because they get paid 14 salaries. Given the other benefits of living in Europe, this is competitive with the US in general (not Silicon Valley) for entry level programmers.
        • marcusf 14y ago
          $40k entry level is competitive? That's a whole factor of three away from the $120k people volley around here for entry level jobs in the valley. It's really that much of a difference?
• mgkimsal 14y ago
  most companies don't know how to value the contributions of software developers. i'm not actually sure they know how to value the contributions of most employees, period, except for salespeople. However as a dev, I'm biased some. I do think the potential for high value contributions, and the ability to avoid even costlier mistakes, is higher in the IT/dev dept vs other corporate departments. Several years ago I was offered $60k at a company as a developer. I was coming to them with, at that point, 12 years of web development (backend, php, etc). I pointed out that $60k was not something I thought was reasonable for what I was bringing. "This is what everyone starts at here," was the reply, and I learned that was their starting salary for 'just out of college' devs. They hadn't hired any senior-level devs before (but had dozens of devs), and didn't even know how to put a value on the skills one brought to the table. I've learned they've since changed their policies some, but that policy actually did a lot of damage to their rep in the local scene, and it was hard for them to get good devs for a while. The few I knew who were really good generally didn't start there, or started, then left after a bit. But... because I knew people there, I learned about their internal stuff. I was (sort of) shocked at how many basic dev mistakes they made, which ended up costing them extreme time/money to fix months or years later. These were rather elementary mistakes in most cases - I'd made them 10 years earlier myself in some cases. How does one put a value on the savings experienced devs bring to a company, in terms of simply not making bone-headed decisions which cost a lot to fix later on? This is not saying I'm perfect - of course I'd make some mistakes. But mine would be harder to detect ;) Lastly, somewhat relatedly, devs just coming out of school are almost never taught a few basic skills which are nearly universally required - how to break down a project in to smaller parts, debugging techniques (how to think about debugging, not particular tools), testing (including how to think about making code testable the first time), and version control concepts (again, not a particular tool, but the importance of version control). I'm seeing devs come out of school with degrees who have never heard of git/svn/cvs, nor understand why they need version control ("it's just me on a project").
  • frobozz 14y ago
    I'm not even sure they know how to value salespeople's contributions. Compensation in sales is often in the form of a lower salary combined with percentages of sales and/or bonuses for meeting targets. When a salesperson makes a sale, what percentage of that sale has the salesperson brought in? How much of the sale was actually generated by marketing, design and manufacture? Similarly, if they fail to make a sale, how much of that failure is their own?
• pavlov 14y ago
  Wake up, people: Are you serious? You want highly specialized people with actual skills, and expect them to be OK with that comparable low payment? If the same person sits down and starts creating his own software, he will probably earn much more one year later by himself already. Probably not. Most programmers don't have any idea what software sells and how to sell it.
  • scotty79 14y ago
    You just ask people what they need and make it for them and they pay you. It's called freelancing. Almost no selling and absolutely no market research involved.
    • benjaminwootton 14y ago
      Even freelancing isn't straightforward. It's much more difficult to independently find a good stream of customers and well paying projects than it is to get a job or a contract.
      • lifeisstillgood 14y ago
        How do you go about it, may I ask? I am close to exhausting my network and not seeing a breakthrough stream.
        • outworlder 14y ago
          That's interesting. Ever since we started our company, we had to go looking for potential clients exactly zero times. We are always working on something or other. All from our existing network. My guess is that there was some repressed demand. Currently, the paycheck is lower than what we could get working with a reasonable company, but it's under our control and (potentially) unbounded. Not sure if we'd have the same luck working by ourselves (there are three of us) instead of opening a business. My guess is that it brings extra credibility to the table, but I have no data to back it up. It could be worth a try, if no other reason than to be able to ping your network again, now with the news that you've got a business. I realize that there are some extra costs, but keep it to the minimum. And, if you have little to no income at first, they are not likely to be that high. Context: we are based in Brazil.
• manuletroll 14y ago
  I'd be very happy to make 2200€. I'm in France, and I'm paid barely above minimum wage. Granted, I don't have a very high level of college education, but even so, I made more when I had a job in a factory a few years ago. And the job market here doesn't seem to be that competitive, unfortunately.
  • marcusf 14y ago
    If you're willing to move, come to Sweden. Stockholm is screaming for IT talent, we're open to immigration and the pay for someone with a few years of developer experience is quite a bit beyond that.
    • shiftpgdn 14y ago
      Any tips for an American wanting to emigrate?
      • marcusf 14y ago
        For non-EU peeps, it's a bit harder. First, there's always the love visa -- find yourself a swedish girl and move here (you don't need to marry). On a more serious note, the easiest thing is to get a job at a Swedish company with a US presence (or vice versa) and get them to help you move. For example I know Spotify is recruiting aggressively and they have offices in Stockholm, SF and NYC. Most medium to big software companies here already has international people on staff and a lot of them has experience with the (comparatively little) bureaucracy required. If you're any good and really serious about it, feel free to send me a mail (on my profile) and I'll see if I can help you out in any way :)
    • forza 14y ago
      ....IF you don't mind buying (speculate on) an apartment, paying twice as much as everyone else, or live outside of the city with transportation issues.
      • marcusf 14y ago
• pmjordan 14y ago
  Some context/perspective on the Austrian employment situation: * Salaries are typically quoted per month, but there is a bonus of 2 months's salary paid per year, so yearly gross is 14 x monthly. The bonus is taxed at a lower marginal rate (6%, no social security contribution, IIRC, vs 37.5% lowest marginal rate). * There is no fixed minimum wage in Austria. Instead, there is a collective bargaining system, which sets minimum salaries for each industry. Within each industry there are defined categories of jobs, education and levels of experience, along with minimum employment contract conditions and payment for each. This has some bizarre consequences, such that equivalent jobs (e.g. secretary) have different minimum wages in different industries. * Employers are required to pay a lot of social security/tax on top of what the employees themselves pay. (just checked this: 21.83% social security, communal tax 3%, about 6% other "social" contributions according to http://www.gruendungswissen.at/gruendungswissen/blog-post/2011/04/06/gruenderlexikon-lohnnebenkosten/ http://www.gruendungswissen.at/gruendungswissen/blog-post/20... ) * Employees are almost impossible to fire. If that programmer ends up doing negative work, he's going to be on your books for a while. I've never been anything but self-employed in Austria (we get screwed in entirely different ways) but culturally I think there is an expectation that you won't negotiate on your salary. This is further reinforced by the built-in graduated minimum pay: why permit the employee to negotiate a raise if they'll legally be due a raise anyway?
  • pavlov 14y ago
    Salaries are typically quoted per month, but there is a bonus of 2 months's salary paid per year, so yearly gross is 14 x monthly. Interesting. During the recent Euro crisis, when journalists discovered that some workers and officials in Greece enjoy a similar "extended year" of extra salary months, there was wide uproar across Europe about how the corrupted Greeks are being overpaid in ridiculous ways. In the EU it's nowadays easy to see the speck in your brother's eye, but not notice the log in your own...
    • pmjordan 14y ago
      I don't know if it's still the case, but bankers used to receive 16 salaries in Austria. The 4 bonus months presumably taxed at the low rate. That said, it's irrelevant if you get paid 14 salaries or 12 salaries that are 1/6th higher and correspondingly adjusted tax/social security rates. It's just a trick to make the "common man" feel better, just like the employer's share of tax & social security. Employees would be outraged if it all came off their (correspondingly higher) paycheck.
• benvds 14y ago
  As a 28 year old, developing part-time since 15, full-time since 22, and always self-learning in my own time i've seen lots of people in other industries with just 4 years full-time experience, not self-learning, doing nothing in their own free time getting offered a lot more for job positions. The strange thing is, often these people have trouble finding work as most industries aren't as easy as ours. I guess supply and demand is just skewed in the jobmarket. I also guess it-work is under appreciated but it's all our own fault. B.t.w. I started as a freelancer so I have only myself to blame for my income.
• coenhyde 14y ago
  Remember the USA has had 50 years of Silicon Valley. The rest of the world is playing catchup. While developers may understand the what creates a successful software product/company, the businesses adopting software development have no idea what they are doing. There isn't the 50 years of collective physique at play. They haven't seen software giants rise and fall. And they haven't been exposed to the inputs that create a successful software company. As time goes on things will improve. Just avoid these companies like the plague.
  • Wilya 14y ago
    To be honest, the US companies probably have also more money to throw at the problem than those of any other country. Everytime I see someone speak about the absurdly high salaries around Silicon Valley and saying that they are too low, I cringe a bit inside.
    • throwaway1979 14y ago
      Why do you cringe? Do you know what the average price of a house is in MV/Palo Alto/Sunnyvale? Cheapest housing I could find that was decent (not fancy but descent by my personal definition) was just over 2K/month in rent. 6 figures in Silicon Valley isn't the same as it is in most parts of the world. That said, what I find strange is that experience in software doesn't seem to be rewarded. I keep hearing about fresh grads getting offered nearly a 100K right out of school. How much does a veteran developer make? Almost the same as far as I know.
      • Wilya 14y ago
        A naive search shows you get a 1000 sq feet house for 2K$ in MV/Sunnyvale. If it's really true, that doesn't exactly sound a huge amount. Look at the rents in Paris or Stockholm, and imagine you're paid 50k$.
        • jackhoy 14y ago
          You are right. A 1000sqft place in London will cost you at least $3500 a month ($42k a year). In certain locations outside of SV programmers have lower salaries and higher cost of living. I guess its a supply/demand thing. SV has high demand for engineers and not enough supply of employee talent, therefore salaries increase to compensate. (Although judging from this thread they haven't increased enough..) Europe does not match the talent demands of SV (maybe because fewer big internet companies based there), therefore salaries don't need to increase as much to attract talent. The demand is a lower proportion of the supply...
• smikhanov 14y ago
  There are two sides behind this story. In small, not very competitive markets, like the one in Austria, companies are not expecting the programmers they hire to be great; not being very bad would be enough. All they will be asked to do is to support the legacy accounting system -- what's the point of hiring a ninja for that? This, combined with the typical CFO mentality ("That's all the budget I can allocate and I don't care about the position not being filled because it's the IT director who will be affected by that, not me. Frankly, I don't even think that accounting system needs rewriting. When's the lunch?") drives the offer side down. On the other side, as an "entry level programmer", are you absolutely sure you worth more than 2200 EUR? Care to prove it to a Google recruiter, speaking in your native language just across the border, in Munich? Care to prove to the free market that you can run your own business and earn more? Great. That's what we have free markets for. EDIT: Just want to add that I'm all for "pay well to hire great developers" approach, but I think this advice mostly applies to companies operating in highly competitive environments: think London startups competing with the salaries paid in the City, or startups in SV trying to lure people away from Facebook. Apart from that, your average employer don't care about what you think you worth and probably doing it for the right reason.
  • mgkimsal 14y ago
    The OP didn't mention 'entry level' with respect to that post. The post was looking for someone with 5 years of experience in tech X. That's probably not 'entry level' anymore, no matter how you slice it.
    • smikhanov 14y ago
      From the original post: In Austria, an entry level programmer with high level university training will usually get offered 2200 Euro gross That's what I was referring to.
      • mgkimsal 14y ago
        Sorry - missed that. I saw his reference to 5+ years.
• benjaminwootton 14y ago
  Sometimes small and medium businesses simply don't have the money to pay the big bucks that we think we are worth. I've worked with a number of companies turning over in the low £millions, and it's very rare that the founder is taking lots of money off the table whilst low balling the staff on salaries. These businesses simply don't have the margins and the runways to let salaries get out of hand. As most of the economy is made up of these kinds of businesses, many of which have IT as the cost centre providing some non-remarkable CRUD development, this is probably a big factor that holds down average salaries. Turn it around a little and image you are the small-medium sized business owner. You need a person, but can can only sensibly offer a salary of 75% of the market rate. Are you best just not to offer the job for fear of exploiting someone or looking like a cheapskate, or do you put it out there and hope to find someone who is happy to work for that price? [I'm a developer who agrees with the OP so I'm playing devils advocate slightly, but there are two sides to this.]
  • mgkimsal 14y ago
    Everyone is probably better off if the contracted out to freelancers in those cases. Hrmm... probably any way. It's harder to find people who can get up to speed on the business specifics quickly, but... it's also easier to augment on an as-needed basis. It requires companies to be better/faster at documenting their processes/operations, or at least being able to communicate them to a new person faster, and this part people aren't very good at. Therefore it takes a long time to get contractors up to speed, and therefore it's viewed as excessive, vs. just hiring someone. Problem is, that hired someone goes through the same process. It's just that they don't do that as often, so the problem isn't as apparent (or seems 'normal' for employees to have to endure). I'm simplifying, but, I think more companies would do better outsourcing more of their stuff to freelancers. But, to outweigh the negatives, it requires more discipline on a company's part, and most don't have it (or even recognize they need it).
  • dagw 14y ago
    can can only sensibly offer a salary of 75% of the market rate I'd happily consider working for 75% of market rate, if I could work a 60% week. Add to that the ability to work remotely and things can start to look really enticing. If on the other hand you expect someone to work 100%, plus unpaid over time, plus be in the office every morning by 8 am, plus being on call, plus an absolute minimum of vacation days, and still only want to pay them 75%, then hiring will be almost impossible. If you really can only afford 75% of market rate, you can probably still get good people if you're willing to be flexible on all the other non-salary aspects of the job.
• adrianhoward 14y ago
  On occasion I have long complicated discussions with companies about how hard it to find developers. Assuming they're actually asking for a sane skill-set the problem is usually down to two factors: 1) Not paying enough 2) Not doing interesting work (with the very occasional 3 of "having a bloody awful reputation") The trick is, of course, finding a non-blunt way of getting this across :-)
  • dasil003 14y ago
    I think companies can get away with both those things if they have a good engineering culture. That is to say, if they respect the engineers enough to let them have a higher problem solving role than simply implementing what some non-technical manager passes down.
    • adrianhoward 14y ago
      Surely "let them have a higher problem solving role" == doing interesting work? :-)
      • dasil003 14y ago
        Yes I would agree with that, though it's non-obvious. I mean the best solution could be a CRUD app that would be the very epitome of boring to many seasoned programmers, and yet I think there will always be some smart programmers who will find it interesting if for no other reason then that they personally haven't done that type of thing before.
  • yxhuvud 14y ago
    4) Doing interesting work but not being able express that to prospective developers.
    • adrianhoward 14y ago
      That's not one I've ever come across - interesting. Wonder how common it is.
• LinXitoW 14y ago
  German dev here. Here, you hear companies complain about qualified laborer scarcity("Fachkräftemangel") and the politicians eat it up. It's not true though; it's just that the companies have totally wrong ideas of what they can demand/offer. There are a lot of unpaid internships, entry-level pay with senior-level experience jobs and a lot of the companies file much more job offers than they actually need, just so they can get more applications. According to simple market rules, less supply with more demand should increase the price/salary, but it doesn't.
  • gaius 14y ago
    Quite; allowing for inflation, developer salaries have been flat since 2001. There is not a shortage of developers, and that is provable.
    • weavejester 14y ago
      Provable how? Not raising developer salaries might be indicative of there being no shortage of developers, but it's not proof by any stretch of the imagination. In markets of asynchronous information, supply and demand fails. It's quite possible for developer salaries to remain constant or even decrease at the same time as demand for good developers goes through the roof.
  • _pferreir_ 14y ago
    They're just telling your politicians that so that they put more money in training qualified workers and increase the supply. Then, qualified workers will be worth nothing. Genius, hm?
  • moocow01 14y ago
    Maybe they picked up on that technique from the US - our politicians eat it up as well :(
• abhaga 14y ago
  This is like saying, "Want diamonds? Pay for them!" which, I agree, is an entirely valid statement. But the reason the diamonds/good programmer are so expensive has little to do with their inherent value. It has more to do with lack of supply. A B level player will not suddenly graduate to A level if you start paying him higher.
  • bgilroy26 14y ago
    Who is DeBeers in this analogy?
    • abhaga 14y ago
      I don't have a very good answer to that but in India, our education system is certainly a big shareholder. And the job security afforded even at low skill levels due to outsourcing, another.
• jacquesm 14y ago
  I've seen crap programmers get paid insane amounts of money and incredibly good ones get paid peanuts... If only there was a strong correlation between programmers self-assessment with respect to their value and what they're actually being paid. That would help everybody and would make salary negotiations a lot easier.
  • kamaal 14y ago
    Programmer salaries are decided most of the times by people, who don't know a jack about programming. I know a lot of people make money just by being the manager's 'best man', Just polish the managers boot and he will give you the title of 'best team player' around. On the other most good programmers tend to concentrate on their work, poor social skills and merely delivering stuff that doesn't get highlighted. You can do a lot of fire fighting at work, no body above your immediate manager will even know about it. There are a lot of people around you who are known to level above you manager just because they can make more noise and blow their trumpet louder than anybody else. Perceptions drive a lot of things in this world.
  • eli 14y ago
    Not just programmers.
• _pferreir_ 14y ago
  I think this is a consequence of the corporate mentality that prevails in Europe. We're still (or at least many of the big players) at the stage at which developers are seen as easily replaceable, as "mere code writers". People do not value our contribution as they should, it's like we're doing something that in a couple of years will be done by robots. While it's still true that it's easier to find a job in IT than somewhere else, the pay is quite limited in some countries, and unless you are willing to sell your soul to the devil, your career aspirations too.
• migfromparis 14y ago
  In France the situation is the same. Starting salaries go from 35k€ to 50k€ gross a year. No wonder a lot of students from college start as investment bankers or quant.
  • manuletroll 14y ago
    You might want to rephrase this as "In Paris".
    • draven 14y ago
      Yep, I'm around €35k/year w/ 6y experience in the "province" (that's what we call the "non-Paris area" in France.)
  • MrKurtHaeusler 14y ago
    That's ok for a starting salary.
    • louischatriot 14y ago
      It is unfortunately not competitive with trading desks which ask for the same kind of skills. It is a vicious circle : software companies pay less, good programmers go to banks, software companies get bad programmers and so feel they don't have to pay well. It is a shame.
  • pbiggar 14y ago
    A French e50K salary probably costs the employer the same as a $100K US employer, or at least very similar.
• TamDenholm 14y ago
  2200EUR a month is around £21.5k a year, which while in London is not enough to live on where i live (Edinburgh) is on the lower end of a normal wage range (£20k-£25k) for a PHP Developer here. This is specifically the reason I work in London for 4-6 months of the year as a contractor and do my own thing the rest of the time.
• kamaal 14y ago
  Well this looks like the story of nearly developer community no matter which part of the world you are in. Lets face it 'monthly salaries' suck. Programmers are a unique lot, Well last few weeks I've been pulled up for work on weekends. Almost 18 hour schedules a day. And what do I get in return? Not even a thank you. Its presumed to be a part of my job. Any other profession and unions would be up in arms about bonuses and pay for extra time. But not here, not in our profession. We don't have any work hours, we don't have holidays and vacation, we don't have a concept of over time pay. What we get in return are stupid certificates, mementos and some bravos(as though somebody cares about them). Compensations in the software world are a huge rip off. There is no co relation between the work and pay that we get. And please don't tell me about start up's. If you are lucky by any means to end up with good amount of stock, and an another round of luck if the start up is successful then you are OK. But most of us fail ingloriously, spend best years of lives burning through crazy hours, without vacations for peanuts in return. The Start up lottery is what it is, its a lottery. Over the years my net learning's are: 1. Corporate/Company loyalty is JackCrap. 2. Work only as much as your paid, use rest of your time for personal projects and other ways of making money. 3. Save money, and invest for your early retirement. Never having to depend on employment to make a living post 40's. 4. Make people pay, never do anything for free. Cash counts. 5. Your biggest asset is time. Use your time well to make money, and invest it over large periods of time to make more of it.
  • dasil003 14y ago
    You're pretty jaded. And believe me I've been through all of this as well. I've been underpaid and overworked for sure. But put things in perspective. Being a skilled programmer is one of safest careers you could have in these days of cold economic downturn. Instead of worrying about being downsized, realize that even a company in the red can afford to hire you to automate processes which currently require paid employees. In other words, you have the ability generate direct ROI which is not the case for many employees these days. I think a work to live mentality is good. There's no reason you can't be a great programmer working your 40 hours a week and then going home. There are plenty of companies that will appreciate what you bring to the table. You could also try a lifestyle business rather than joining the "startup lottery", though if you really see it as a lottery then you're devaluing the impact that individual decision-making plays, and you will never be an A-player with that attitude.
• pjmlp 14y ago
  Same thing in Germany and Portugal, too markets I know very well. The sad thing is then watching the outsourcing taking place, and how the money "saved" in outsourcing, is then spent repairing the work from bad deliveries. So development cost actually increases, but since now two cost centers are being used, the business costs look nicer on the spreadsheets.
• kayoone 14y ago
  Its pretty similar in germany. I know quite alot of people that do some more or less simple work for some of the big german industrial companies (cars, food stuff etc) and work 9-5, have alot of holidays and earn more than the average software developer that works his butt off. If you throw in a couple of late/night shifts at those jobs you will get a very good extra pay as well... as a developer ? you wish... I think its because competition for dev jobs is much lower in europe because there is no Google, no Facebook, no Microsoft etc. That said, if you work as a contractor for some of the big companies in cities like Berlin, Hamburg, Munich etc you can easily make 100K EUR, even as a bread and butter PHP dev.
• pwaring 14y ago
  This reflects my experience (UK) - I get recruiters asking me on a regular basis why they can't find any PHP developers, when I look at the job ad it's because the offers are things like 'experienced mid-level developer, 20-24k'.
• Apreche 14y ago
  So true. I get calls from startup recruiters all the time. They don't seem to realize there's this thing called rent. They want to pay with equity. Might as well pay me with lottery tickets. Here's the minimum I need to even bother talking to a recruiter. That means that for me to accept the offer, it probably needs more than this. Six figures, 30 vacation days, full benefits, infinite sick days, convince me that you won't be out of business in any short span of time and you won't bounce a check. Also, under no circumstances do I work more than 40 hours a week. The other thing that gets me is how companies expect you to really want to work for them. The fact is you need me more than I need you. I'm not going to spend my time solving your cute little puzzles and what not. My experience speaks for itself. If you want to hire me, you should be the one jumping through hoops to convince me I should quit my job and work for you. Only the past naive college version of myself thought otherwise. TL;DR: if you want to hire me, pretend that I am a doctor and you are a pharmaceutical company.
  • PaulHoule 14y ago
    I definitely hear from startups who are hiring and will pay O.K. but it seems to me that for every startup that pays, there are 3-5 that won't. I get myself fired up on this issue because I hear from enough companies that I need to quickly qualify opportunities. I'm a curious and generous person, so I'm inclined to listen to these people, but I don't have the time.
    • smiler 14y ago
      Some startups probably just can't afford a high salary...
      • dreamdu5t 14y ago
        If they needed one then they screwed up their business plan.
  • throwaway1979 14y ago
    I'm really glad you mentioned "cute little puzzles". I am sick of them. I'm not really sure who has sufficient time to spend blazing the employer with feats of their programming prowess (I was going to say only undergrads would do that - however, many undergrads in top programs have little time to bathe). If this was big companies being stupid, I'd get it. The HN crowd ... some of the smartest hackers around do little better sometimes. I was very interested in Stripe after hearing some of their folks speak (I don't mean to single them out ... they are a pretty amazing bunch from what I've seen) and saw the cute puzzles (https://stripe.com/jobs#engineer https://stripe.com/jobs#engineer) as a listed way of impressing them. I immediately hit the back button and decided not to apply there. Perhaps it means we would not have been a good fit. Or perhaps, we need more respect in the recruiting process. I understand the need for fiz-buzz tests and all ... but things have gone a bit too far.
• tschellenbach 14y ago
  What crap, just go to a company which does pay well. I'm a coder myself and my startup Fashiolista pays competitively. (Amsterdam though)
• josephcooney 14y ago
  "we're having trouble finding people" is a familiar refrain from people looking to hire developers. if you're having trouble finding people you are, by definition, not paying enough.
  • Mikushi 14y ago
    Or there is a shortage of developers in your area. My previous company was offering competitive salaries, good environment, challenging work, and we had trouble filling position with decent developers...
    • waterlesscloud 14y ago
      Raise salaries and attract developers from outside your area. The problem was that you weren't actually offering "competitive" salaries, you were merely offering what may have been standard for your area but no longer was sufficient, by your own report.
      • tensor 14y ago
        When someone says "there is a shortage of oil" it is indeed true that oil costs skyrocket. It is also true that there is a shortage of oil. Shortages cause prices to increase, so much so that many people might not be able to afford a resource at all. It's a bit silly to say "there are no shortages! Only cheap consumers!"
        • waterlesscloud 14y ago
          The point here is that if you can't find programmers at a given salary, that salary is not in fact "competitive". You can decide that you can't afford actual competitive salaries, but calling your salary offers competitive when they are not will not help you in any way.
          • tensor 14y ago
            That is certainly true and I am not taking issue with that.
• shaydoc 14y ago
  "there ain't no money in poetry, and that's what sets the poet free"....
• alFReD-NSH 14y ago
  Since I am a programmer, I vote up this post, hoping it helps that I get a raise!
• JVIDEL 14y ago
  And the sad part is that recruiters are going to keep talking crap about "motivation" and how gamification makes working "fun". Pay up: there's an actual deficit of coders in the market, know why? because years ago people who were grade-A material for programming decided to go into finance instead, because those guys actually get paid You know who makes the most money in the gaming industry? not the artists, they are actually among the worst paid. The coders? they are above the artists that's for sure, but still not even close to the highest tier: business. Yeah, the beancounters, the guys that take 1/3 of the game and sell it separately as a DLC, they are the best paid in the gaming industry, not the guys that you know, actually make the games...
  • mseebach 14y ago
    > because years ago people who were grade-A material for programming decided to go into finance instead, because those guys actually get paid That's not just "years ago", that's very current.
    • JVIDEL 14y ago
      OK I meant when it started
• ClementM 14y ago
  Programmers do get paid...sometimes. Look at programmers in the finance industry. It is somewhat unfair, but it seems that your pay depends more on the industry you work for, than your actual skills. It's a market. It's all about where you are.
  • vetler 14y ago
    Indeed. You want a higher salary, go where the money is.
• snowwrestler 14y ago
  > There are currently 22% more open job positions in this area compared to last year If there is an overall shortage of qualified developers, paying more to hire great developers does not fix it. All it does is raise the salaries of the existing qualified developers. That is fine and great for them, but it doesn't solve the shortage.
  • ArtB 14y ago
    Well over the longer period it will bring more people into the career. Economic issues work on the scale of years. But I assure you that if you start paying more now you'll see more people entering in 6 years (ie. you'll catch the attention of people in the middle of highschool and then when they pop out of uni they are yours for the hiring).
  • stellar678 14y ago
    It fixes the shortage if you're the company having a hard time filling a position and you offer more money than anybody else. That's the basic premise of a market.
  • danssig 14y ago
    If you raise the salaries enough, people from other locations will move to take advantage of the opportunity.
• matant 14y ago
  In South Italy professionist graduated, certificated, with ten yeas of experience as Java programmer, earn net 1500 euros. I’m graduated and work from 2 years and earn net 1200 euros. I prefer be waiter, i’m moving away from Italy to start as waiter, it’s better!
  • manmal 14y ago
    Consider remote working as a freelancer in other European countries, they pay 70€+ per hour if they need you (and you are good ;)). All you need is a fast internet connection and a coffee machine at home :)
• balajiviswanath 14y ago
  As a programmer, I love the fact that the demand is outpacing supply. But, I also have this weird feeling that we are back in 1999. Back then, even crappy programmers commanded 6 figure salaries. Hopefully, I'm wrong.
• redguava 14y ago
  "If the same person sits down and starts creating his own software, he will probably earn much more one year later by himself already." I think people really underestimate what a small portion of a successful business the ability to code well is. I am not saying it isn't helpful, but I would put my money on someone that is an average coder with great business, marketing, customer service skills over a great coder that lacks those any day. This isn't to downplay a developers role in business, I am a developer myself, it's just that a great developer can't turn that into money without working for someone else, or having the other business skills that are required.
• lucian1900 14y ago
  Yep. I get paid £18k with 5+ years experience in what we're doing.
• carlob 14y ago
  I wouldn't compare European salaries with US so quickly. I have a cautionary tale to tell: when in 1990 the USSR collapsed, many Russian physicists decided to move abroad, some to western Europe, some to the USA. At first the European ones were complaining about their lower salaries, but once they started having kids and needing more medical care, they realized that they were actually much better off than their American counterparts. The lesson here is: you might even make much less, but in Europe there are much much better public schools which are free, hospitals are (mostly) free and in general Universities are either free or at least one order of magnitude less expensive than in the US. Should I go on? Most contracts in the US do not have unlimited sick leave, whereas in Europe we get that and 20 days of holiday; the US are one of the four countries in the world with no national law on maternity leave (who are the other three is left as an exercise to the reader…). But I agree with the general point that salaries of developers should not be so low compared to managerial positions.
  • jacoblyles 14y ago
    The US has a national law on maternity leave, the family and medical leave act. Of course, we expect US laws to be less generous because it is the government of a federation of states, like something between a European national government and the EU.
    • carlob 14y ago
      A national law that imposes at least 0 weeks of maternity leave. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave#Americas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave#Americas
      • khuey 14y ago
        No paid leave.
        • DominikR 14y ago
          Do less fortunate women with a new born child receive some kind of support from the state in the US, in case the father or family doesn't support them?
• nicolasd 14y ago
  I agree with you. They always say there are so much job offers and the industry search developers but with around ~1600 without taxes you don't get enough.
• TheCapn 14y ago
  I think companies forget the concept of compensation and its relation to attracting talent. You don't pay a person necessarily what they deserve because you'll often fall short. You pay what is necessary to secure the talent you require. I'm from the Canadian Prairies; a lot of our industry here is oil. Rig workers don't require much skill, the job is physically demanding yes but almost anyone can pick it up and do it should they wish to do so. This is a low skilled labour job but its extremely high demand because oil is a massive industry. Guess what? They earn $75,000+ per year in some cases. That's more than entry level programmers who require degrees. I don't think its unfair as a programmer because their jobs are in demand. If you want me to work as a programmer in the area then you better make it worth my while. Shortage of programmers? Attract them with incentives!
• horsehead 14y ago
  Frankly, this is an issue in all industries. The company i work for is always complaining about the quality of people they have to hire. But then they offer salaries of $26,000 a year (not in software obviously). But point is: to get quality, it costs money.
  • rmc 14y ago
    It's probably less of an issue in some industries, like law or surgery or constitutional lawyers. In these places employers pay much more, and they expect to pay more.
• dkarl 14y ago
  In Austria, an entry level programmer with high level university training will usually get offered 2200 Euro gross. I'm not kidding. I think employers should be cut a little slack with entry-level, straight-out-of-school programmers. They regard them as having no proven value, which is fair, and in most cases they will have to sink a significant amount of time and effort into making them productive in a business environment. The world is more than 19-year-old open source celebrities and wizard start-up coders. There are a lot of regular people with CS degrees and no experience beyond school projects. Entry-level positions exist for people like that. (Even programmers with a history of open-source contributions are an unknown quantity when it comes to their ability to contribute to projects they didn't choose, that don't scratch their own itch, that don't come with public bragging rights, etc.) Not providing an exceptional starting point for exceptional kids is forgivable, because exceptional contributors have their own contacts already that they are presumably working. If you don't have contacts and are stuck looking at normal entry-level jobs, then forgive the corporate world for being a little skeptical. If we want corporations to hire and train normal graduates (and we do, if we care about unemployment, and our future pool of skilled tech workers) then we should accept them being payed a fair guess at what they'll be worth in their first year of employment. If you think you're worth more, then maybe you should forgive employers for not being psychic enough to take you at your word. If you think you're worth more and you have better options, then why do you think entry-level positions are intended for you? You have your path, and these jobs are for someone else.
• KeyBoardG 14y ago
  We've built our team around the idea that, you pay people enough so that money isn't an issue and then move on. The main focus is on creating a positive work environment and doing our best to keep moving forward with new and interesting work. As a result we have a great team who are generally positive go-getters even in rough times. We've had a couple people here who were soley motivated by money which stuck out like a sore thumb and ultimately didnt last.
• njharman 14y ago
  $$ gets you more programmers, not necessarily good ones. Just look at dot com era (if you're old enough to remember). Tons of money, thrown at everybody and anybody. The vast majority of which were not "good" programmers. Many weren't even programmers just good at faking it, till they made it.
  • danssig 14y ago
    More money may not get you good programmers but below market rate will absolutely get you crappy ones.
• geebee 14y ago
  I think a big part of the problem is that employers are competing only for the pool of existing programmers. This makes sense - the bigger problem (expanding the size of the pool) is beyond the influence of almost all employers (maybe the giants facebook and google can influence this somewhat). As a result, only very incremental progress can be made. If the standard salary is 70k, employers will balk at offering more than 80k. If they have to offer 90k, they'll feel that a bad shortage exists, because they're offering way above the "market" salary - causing them to conclude that good devs can't be had "at any price". Here's what I think they don't get - to really solve this, they need to start attracting people from other professions. They need to get the top minds that are currently going into medicine, law, finance, and so forth (well, the percentage that could and would go into software development if they rewards were greater). Honestly, I don't see industry ever making this jump. I think they'll keep competing for the same smallish pool of talent and scratching their heads about why they can't attract more candidates for an incremental increase in pay/benefits.
  • cbsmith 14y ago
    It works both ways though. A programmer position that makes business sense at 40K might not make any sense at 90K. It's not like all companies need programmers regardless of price. If the price is too high, they can just go another way.
    • geebee 14y ago
      I agree - my criticism is directed only at those companies that claim that they desperately need programmers and can't find them at "any" price. I understand that there's an implicit "reasonable" condition on price, so my real disagreement is around what counts as reasonable. Most of these companies would view a 200k salary as unreasonable. I'm not so sure. Examples abound, but I remember a company talking about how great its salaries were, and one example was a guy with a PhD from University of Texas (Austin) and 5 years work experience. His salary was $125,000. I wouldn't expect it to endear me to many Americans to scoff at $125k a year, but when you think about how long PhD programs are, how high the attrition rates are, how much talent it takes, and the kind of salaries available to people with professional degrees that take a shorter time (with far lower attrition rates)... well, it's pretty clear that $125k actually isn't all that competitive. I'm sure that it would give employers sticker shock, but to get competitive with the other fields attracting the best and brightest, they might well have to go over 200k for someone like this. If it's not "worth it", then clearly there is no shortage, it would be a suboptimal use of talent.
• solsenNet 14y ago
  Microsoft has learned a trick about recruiting straight from college developers. Microsoft quotes the new higher a large number (120k per year) but it is all back end weighted to a bonus at the 15th month or some sort. this allows Microsoft to see the work product and fire the ones that don't cut it, way before the bonus comes.
  • keithnoizu 14y ago
    I think my benefactors approach to hiring fresh grads has more to do with lowered resistance to, in my personal opinion, horrible internal politics & internal systems. It is my understanding that generally a new hire will do well on their first year's review cycle as a low mark would reflect poorly on the hiring manager that approved them. So generally you'll hit your target bonus of 15% or whatever it is nowadays.
• xbryanx 14y ago
  Corollary: you'll never have a mass of good programmers in sectors that CAN'T PAY them competitive salaries. This is a bad thing.
  • khuey 14y ago
    Why is that a bad thing?
    • xbryanx 14y ago
      The brightest and the best selling ads while very little programming talent goes towards combating ignored problems like teen homelessness, and other under represented issues is bad in my book. But, I'm a bleeding heart idealist, and possible dinosaur.
• tluyben2 14y ago
  I see people getting low salaries who do not assert themselves. I know of friends and employees who are capable of sticking up for themselves getting over twice the amount the ones get who do not. Employees who don't ask for a raise don't get one as apparently they don't want one. One of my best friends (developer) gets FAR too little for his experience, intelligence etc, but when I tell him to ask for more he says that he's happy like this and he doesn't care. Most devs (I met here and I met a lot) are like that; of the 100s of devs we employed we had maybe 30 asking for a raise directly. The rest (and we are talking a period of 12 years now) are just happily plodding along. People rather have the boss not whine when they don't turn up after a boozer or when they want to suddenly out with the family than more money. Fine. I'm from EU, the Netherlands. Most people are know are not very money focused; quality of life is the word. A lot of them work less to spend time with their kids/family and most are happy making nice money to live, go on vacation twice a year (and the trend here is to go inside of EU because 'there is enough beauty, why go further?', which is often much cheaper than flying to the other side of the world) and have a good pension.
• cletus 14y ago
  The comparison to equity being getting paid in lottery tickets is apt (IMHO). Nevertheless there has never been a short of pioneering spirits willing to risk it all to strike it rich (just look at the gold rushes in the Dakotas, California and elsewhere). This is really the modern day equivalent. There was a thread here last year where people talked about their exits. A common story was "worked my ass off for X years, ended up with $10k". It's survivor bias. There is something to be said for getting paid well. I work for Google, I'm not high-level and I haven't been here forever (~1.5 years) and, honestly, you get paid--and treated--really well. Now you'll never strike it rich but you can live incredibly well and, if you prove yourself, have an awful lot of freedom to pursue your goals with an amazing amount of resources and latitude. Some of the comments in this thread bother me, particularly the 30 days paid vacation a year. In Europe maybe. In the US? Good luck. Never working more than 40 hours a week nor staying late? It just smacks of entitlement. I'm not saying you need to kill yourself for the company but it really is a two-way street. I tried pursuing that once. The end result of that is what Chris Dixon calls "transactional" work [1]. You owe them nothing. They owe you nothing. I've worked in banking and finance and that's as good as it gets there. It's really soul-destroying actually. So I work more than I should. Thing is, I'm never looking at my watch because I enjoy what I do. And if I want to go off for a nap or wander off and see a movie or do something else to relax or recharge I can. Now someone will inevitably bring up that not everyone can do that. Fine. Whatever. You've made other life choices. I get it. The biggest problem startups are facing in hiring (IMHO) is that there is a disconnect between equity offered to early employees and the risk. Last cofounder? 33% or 50% typically (before dilution). First employee? 1-2%. Maybe 3%. We're not in 1999 anymore. You don't need $5-10 million to launch a startup anymore. What used to take $5 million now takes as little as $50,000. The lowering of the barrier to entry means talented engineers are nearly always better off starting their own startup rather than working for yours, unless you have an amazing track record. [1]: http://cdixon.org/2009/10/23/twelve-months-notice/ http://cdixon.org/2009/10/23/twelve-months-notice/
  • potatolicious 14y ago
    I really disagree with the notion of the post here, and I think this part really nails why: > "Thing is, I'm never looking at my watch because I enjoy what I do." So do I. In fact, I love what I do. I'd be extremely disappointed if I had to stop going to work. But it isn't the only thing I enjoy. You want stable hours and liberal time off because there is more enjoyment to your life than writing code and creating software. I dislike long hours not because I dislike what I do at work, but because my life is more than my work. I have other passions, hobbies, people, other things I want to be able to commit to. > "Fine. Whatever. You've made other life choices. I get it." And so have you - so we'd appreciate it if you stop referring to the rest of us as entitled and petulant. I respect your choice to throw the entirety of your life at your primary craft - so respect our choice not to.
• socialist_coder 14y ago
  Funny, my first post on hacker news was about programmer salary in Austria. I got offered a senior programmer job in Vienna for a fraction of what I'm making here in the US. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2473544 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2473544 It's good to know that I wasn't crazy for thinking the salary was too low.
• drivingmenuts 14y ago
  The one thing I do need is the ability to pay rent and bills WITHOUT WORRYING about them. Because every minute I spend worrying about my financial situation is a minute I absolutely cannot spend working on your software. After that, it's all good. Though sick days and vacation is nice, too. Or at least don't ask me about it when I just kinda disappear for a day or have a completely unproductive day.
• RedwoodCity 14y ago
  Something tells me this question exists in all industries and has existed for most of human history.
• EternalFury 14y ago
  Smart individuals don't relish the thought of being saddled by hustlers who intend to ride them to the top of the mountain. Granted, you can't make everyone a co-founder, but there is quite a bit of leeway between that and token equity. I get contacted all the time by start-up hustlers who tell me in detail what they expect or want. When I compare their "wild desires" to what I estimate they will contribute to building something from nothing, I am left with only one conclusion: They believe engineering/programming/technology is as trivial as blogging about your dream of becoming the next Mark Zuckerberg. Sorry, fellas, but coding and talking are not the same thing. Coding and hustling are not the same thing either. Another pet peeve of mine is people who contact me claiming they are looking for a technical co-founder. I go along and quickly learn they have already made all technical decisions and claim they have "90% of the code in place". In the back of my mind, I know why they say that: They just don't want to admit my contribution would be worth more than a single-digit percentage of their unborn company. In the end, I can see through all that and I am not about to let anyone take advantage of me. I am not alone either and all those smart individuals you need to build a successful company can see through it all as well. Conclusion: 90%+ of all start-ups fail lamentably. Because too many entrepreneurs just want to get rich before anything else and it's hard to convince people to join you when you are so obviously self-centered.
  • eli_gottlieb 14y ago
    Granted, you can't make everyone a co-founder Yes, you can. It's called a collective, or a cooperative. There are some functioning software cooperatives, Galois Systems being one of the more lucrative examples.
• encoderer 14y ago
  From my own experience of comparing my salary to those of friends in this industry, a lot of the discrepancy I see is largely based on very poor negotiation skills. In my case, my dad taught me how to negotiate salary on my first real job the way some guys dad's teach them how to box. I'm horrible in a fight but have proven to be a fairly good negotiator. And I can understand why people compare software engineers to doctors and attorneys: Cases of highly trained "knowledge workers". But one big difference is that doctors are most often hired by other doctors. And lawyers are most often hired by other lawyers. Most engineers are hired as support-staff in an unrelated field. The ones that do work for software companies and startups are usually paid more. These are all just a few correlated data points but I think there's something to it.
  • skerrit_bwoy 14y ago
    Excellent points. Your typical doctor or lawyer is in a revenue generating function (doctors, in fact, are THE revenue generators of hospitals), and are therefore hired by other revenue generators and paid accordingly. But your typical programmer is writing some access database for the HR department to throw away in a year.
• noodleey 14y ago
  I can say exactly the same thing for designers. Want good designers? Pay them good.
• csaba 14y ago
  Try to work as webdev in Hungary (mostly php, rails and other mainstream languages are not really used). I know a place where you could get about $1200. But that's the rare case. For a freshman $400 is the max, if you're not lucky enough to born in Budapest. I deeply consider moving somewhere abroad, because here I don't feel I can be as good as I want to be...
• eternalban 14y ago
  Learn to negotiate.
• wyclif 14y ago
  "There's no shortage of smart, hardworking engineers. There's a shortage of smart, hardworking engineers willing to work for very little money." ~ David "Pardo" Keppel
• markokocic 14y ago
  Seems like everyone in discussion focuses on vacation, sick leave and salary in the US, and noone is talking why is the software engineer salary in Austria, and similarly in the rest of Europe less than in the US. The reason is simple. Try to remember one software package developed in Austria? Can you name one software company based in Austria that is successful in selling software or services? Do you know of any, even moderate, company from Austria whose primary role is creating and selling software? That's right, you can't. That's because software engineers there work for companies where spending money in producing software is a cost, not an investment. If software is not a primary line of business, than there are two things in place. One is that developers are an expense. Second is that you don't need that good or experienced developers working on glorified enterprise internal applications. So, if you want money, either work for a company where software development is primary line of business and be paid accordingly, or work on your own. You can't make good bucks working for cost center.
• physicslover 14y ago
  At my last company I had 20 days vacation and about to transition to 25 days. However, work was so busy that I had to plan and request my vacations 3-6 mos in advance. I now have less vacation but more freedom to take it when i want. If one really wants to maximize free time contract work is where its at.