6 ms·

Please don't attempt to operationalize this data by saying "I know PHP. If I learn Ruby, then I can get a $5,000 raise!" I talk to more engineers than is heal

by patio11 13y ago

Please don't attempt to operationalize this data by saying "I know PHP. If I learn Ruby, then I can get a $5,000 raise!" I talk to more engineers than is healthy, and many of them think that languages are the primary differentiator in salary (or some other metric of interest in their career). They're very mistaken. Far more salient are negotiating skill, location, what company you work for, where you're assigned in that company (profit center or cost center, favored project/division/etc or not, etc), and ability to use computer code as leverage to accomplish things that capitalism cares about. Also, the dynamic range among e.g. Ruby programmers of my acquaintance goes from something like $2k a month to $2k a day, not primarily based on skill with Ruby. (If I were comfortable describing the individuals at the high end some people might say "That's cheating! They're getting compensated for non-Ruby things which happen to be expressed in Ruby programs." I call that winning rather than cheating but to each their own.)

BlobbleBlab 13y ago
There are two factors that determine how much money you can make in a job such as programming: - How much money are you making for your employer - What are the costs your employer needs to make to allow you to make that money for him If there's a large and growing gap between the two, you can expect a raise, event if the company as a whole isn't doing too well. If there's a small or shrinking gap, you'll be looking for another job soon. If the gap is negative, you're probably the owner.
- alinajaf 13y ago
  The only thing I'd add to this is that there exist organisations in the world that can afford to hire a team of developers (or, as it were, execute long-term contracts with a consultancy at an aggregated $10k+ day rate) indefinitely with little or no function that couldn't be achieved with Wordpress 1.0, including the security vulnerabilities. In the worst case, I... I mean my made-up friend Bob... has worked on teams that seemed to have no other purpose than to execute the new idea that week, with little or no connection to any actual business value. Bob has seen this happen too many times for it to be a random occurrence. According to Bob, such engagements/teams are typically funded by the taxpayer or upper management at companies that have more cash than God. Then I told Bob to shut up, because he's in breach of all the NDAs and sometimes people read things on Hacker News.
  - yogo 13y ago
    Nice work... Bob :)
edw519 13y ago
ability to use computer code as leverage to accomplish things that capitalism cares about For the people that ultimately pay the bills, this is the only thing that matters. They don't give a shit what technology you know or what a nice guy you are. They just want it done. To them, the ability to understand their domain, communicate effectively, and get things done is far more important that how you do it. I regularly hear from people who say, "I need x fixed/working/solved. We use y. If you don't know y, then figure it out." Languages and technologies are only important to CTOs and recruiters. The point when you get beyond them and start talking to their bosses is when your career will really take off, not when you learn a "better language".
- ghc 13y ago
  If that was the only thing that mattered, how do some consultants make 3x others, with exactly the same performance or worse? While the people who pay the bills think that's the only thing that matters, your ability to confidently market yourself as providing perceived value plays a big part in your payment or salary negotiations, regardless of the actual value you provide. Unfortunately I, like many others in our field, suck at this. Strangely, I've always found it easier to to market the work I do than to learn to market my own value. I can't even write a short bio without feeling like I'm stepping out of line.
  - apgwoz 13y ago
    > I can't even write a short bio without feeling like I'm stepping out of line. 150% agree. I had to write a bio when I judged a hackathon last month. It took 2 hours two write, what ultimately became one sentence.
  - runako 13y ago
    In my talks with programmers, a lot of the disconnect is the perception that there's "legitimate work" on one hand and "marketing" on the other. While one may understand the importance of marketing at an intellectual level, the technical mind may still have an aversion to actually doing it. My suggestion: replace the word "market" with "communicate" in your thinking. So: "your ability to confidently communicate your value plays a big part in your payment or salary negotiations" So it's not marketing, it's kind of like writing docs for end users. Still not coding, but a little further from "marketing". A small change, but it may give some mileage.
olitreadwell 13y ago
This is definitely an interesting read, though I wouldn't be using this as someone just getting started with regard to programming.
mathattack 13y ago
Very good point. It's not the language, it's how you market what you're doing with it. What would be interesting in this survey is slicing it by industry and years of experience. Do Python programmers in Financial Services make more or less than C++ if they both have 3 years of experience? Which languages show tapering of salary after a certain amount of experience?
ig1 13y ago
I'm not sure I'd agree. By and large employers exist in language silos and will only hire devs with experience in their specific language, this means that there are distinct markets for different languages. That effect is amplified that entire sectors focus on specific languages. So for example Java in London tends to be pretty well paid because all the investment banks hire for it heavily, this has also pushed up Java salaries in non-banking role. The best PHP dev with great negotiating skill probably still makes less than an average Java dev at a bank.
ritchiea 13y ago
So how do the people at the high end get there if not exclusively by becoming better Rubyists?
xiaoma 13y ago
Language is a primary differentiator in hire-ability. In case you don't remember, we had a discussion about the job market last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4214543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4214543 You were claiming the hiring market was on fire and that being fizzbuzz capable was about enough to get meetings with hiring directors and that your clients were begging you to find them an engineer. During that time I was spending a great deal of time applying to jobs, going to tech meetups and interviewing and had very little success despite a track record of successfully taking on challenges in the business world and demonstrable junior-level programming skills. I asked you to your back up your claims and put me in touch with any of these clients dying for an engineer, as you might remember. Now—about a year later—I've achieved the goals I had at that time. I'm working in a purely technical role building a large site that many, many people use. My compensation is at least in the top decile of both programmers in the US and residents of the city where I live. And one thing that was key to me getting a flood of offers from both large companies and start-ups a few months ago was developing domain-expertise in JavaScript and becoming proficient in several frameworks. Putting up projects on github and contributing to others played a role, too. There is a high rate of unemployment in the US right now. As a result, many, many people are trying to break into the software world. For new graduates, there's a bit of an open door via internships but it's not at all easy in the general case. I've seen many talented people struggle for months to break in and then suddenly get a flood of offers. There's clearly a good degree of herd behavior involved. Without the specific framework skills that I had, companies would have had a very long list of applicants to consider before getting to me. And both understanding the frameworks and doing well in the technical interviews required some fairly deep understanding of the language. Yes, the company you work for and the team you're working on have a great deal to do with your compensation. But both of those things are heavily influenced by how skilled you are in what technologies, especially for typical engineering roles. Knowing the right stack can open doors for networking around the front-door, too! >They're getting compensated for non-Ruby things which happen to be expressed in Ruby programs." I call that winning rather than cheating but to each their own. I wouldn't call that cheating but I would call it a poor anecdote to generalize from. Some people with a legal background translate contracts and earn a great deal of money for it, but that fact doesn't speak much to the market for translators as a whole or show there's no appreciable difference in career trajectories for translators of various languages.

by patio11 13y ago

BlobbleBlab 13y ago

There are two factors that determine how much money you can make in a job such as programming: - How much money are you making for your employer - What are the costs your employer needs to make to allow you to make that money for him If there's a large and growing gap between the two, you can expect a raise, event if the company as a whole isn't doing too well. If there's a small or shrinking gap, you'll be looking for another job soon. If the gap is negative, you're probably the owner.

alinajaf 13y ago
The only thing I'd add to this is that there exist organisations in the world that can afford to hire a team of developers (or, as it were, execute long-term contracts with a consultancy at an aggregated $10k+ day rate) indefinitely with little or no function that couldn't be achieved with Wordpress 1.0, including the security vulnerabilities. In the worst case, I... I mean my made-up friend Bob... has worked on teams that seemed to have no other purpose than to execute the new idea that week, with little or no connection to any actual business value. Bob has seen this happen too many times for it to be a random occurrence. According to Bob, such engagements/teams are typically funded by the taxpayer or upper management at companies that have more cash than God. Then I told Bob to shut up, because he's in breach of all the NDAs and sometimes people read things on Hacker News.
- yogo 13y ago
  Nice work... Bob :)

edw519 13y ago

ability to use computer code as leverage to accomplish things that capitalism cares about For the people that ultimately pay the bills, this is the only thing that matters. They don't give a shit what technology you know or what a nice guy you are. They just want it done. To them, the ability to understand their domain, communicate effectively, and get things done is far more important that how you do it. I regularly hear from people who say, "I need x fixed/working/solved. We use y. If you don't know y, then figure it out." Languages and technologies are only important to CTOs and recruiters. The point when you get beyond them and start talking to their bosses is when your career will really take off, not when you learn a "better language".

ghc 13y ago
If that was the only thing that mattered, how do some consultants make 3x others, with exactly the same performance or worse? While the people who pay the bills think that's the only thing that matters, your ability to confidently market yourself as providing perceived value plays a big part in your payment or salary negotiations, regardless of the actual value you provide. Unfortunately I, like many others in our field, suck at this. Strangely, I've always found it easier to to market the work I do than to learn to market my own value. I can't even write a short bio without feeling like I'm stepping out of line.
- apgwoz 13y ago
  > I can't even write a short bio without feeling like I'm stepping out of line. 150% agree. I had to write a bio when I judged a hackathon last month. It took 2 hours two write, what ultimately became one sentence.
- runako 13y ago
  In my talks with programmers, a lot of the disconnect is the perception that there's "legitimate work" on one hand and "marketing" on the other. While one may understand the importance of marketing at an intellectual level, the technical mind may still have an aversion to actually doing it. My suggestion: replace the word "market" with "communicate" in your thinking. So: "your ability to confidently communicate your value plays a big part in your payment or salary negotiations" So it's not marketing, it's kind of like writing docs for end users. Still not coding, but a little further from "marketing". A small change, but it may give some mileage.

olitreadwell 13y ago

This is definitely an interesting read, though I wouldn't be using this as someone just getting started with regard to programming.

mathattack 13y ago

Very good point. It's not the language, it's how you market what you're doing with it. What would be interesting in this survey is slicing it by industry and years of experience. Do Python programmers in Financial Services make more or less than C++ if they both have 3 years of experience? Which languages show tapering of salary after a certain amount of experience?

ig1 13y ago

I'm not sure I'd agree. By and large employers exist in language silos and will only hire devs with experience in their specific language, this means that there are distinct markets for different languages. That effect is amplified that entire sectors focus on specific languages. So for example Java in London tends to be pretty well paid because all the investment banks hire for it heavily, this has also pushed up Java salaries in non-banking role. The best PHP dev with great negotiating skill probably still makes less than an average Java dev at a bank.

ritchiea 13y ago

So how do the people at the high end get there if not exclusively by becoming better Rubyists?

xiaoma 13y ago

Language is a primary differentiator in hire-ability. In case you don't remember, we had a discussion about the job market last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4214543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4214543 You were claiming the hiring market was on fire and that being fizzbuzz capable was about enough to get meetings with hiring directors and that your clients were begging you to find them an engineer. During that time I was spending a great deal of time applying to jobs, going to tech meetups and interviewing and had very little success despite a track record of successfully taking on challenges in the business world and demonstrable junior-level programming skills. I asked you to your back up your claims and put me in touch with any of these clients dying for an engineer, as you might remember. Now—about a year later—I've achieved the goals I had at that time. I'm working in a purely technical role building a large site that many, many people use. My compensation is at least in the top decile of both programmers in the US and residents of the city where I live. And one thing that was key to me getting a flood of offers from both large companies and start-ups a few months ago was developing domain-expertise in JavaScript and becoming proficient in several frameworks. Putting up projects on github and contributing to others played a role, too. There is a high rate of unemployment in the US right now. As a result, many, many people are trying to break into the software world. For new graduates, there's a bit of an open door via internships but it's not at all easy in the general case. I've seen many talented people struggle for months to break in and then suddenly get a flood of offers. There's clearly a good degree of herd behavior involved. Without the specific framework skills that I had, companies would have had a very long list of applicants to consider before getting to me. And both understanding the frameworks and doing well in the technical interviews required some fairly deep understanding of the language. Yes, the company you work for and the team you're working on have a great deal to do with your compensation. But both of those things are heavily influenced by how skilled you are in what technologies, especially for typical engineering roles. Knowing the right stack can open doors for networking around the front-door, too! >They're getting compensated for non-Ruby things which happen to be expressed in Ruby programs." I call that winning rather than cheating but to each their own. I wouldn't call that cheating but I would call it a poor anecdote to generalize from. Some people with a legal background translate contracts and earn a great deal of money for it, but that fact doesn't speak much to the market for translators as a whole or show there's no appreciable difference in career trajectories for translators of various languages.