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If there is an economic cap on the value of a developer, it doesn't derive from how much code they produce. Value differentials for programmers derive from kno

If there is an economic cap on the value of a developer, it doesn't derive from how much code they produce. Value differentials for programmers derive from knowing the right code, not typing up any code that suffices, and I think pay reflects that. 1 KLOC of the right code can easily be better than 10 KLOC of the wrong code, even if the 1 KLOC is buggy and the 10 KLOC has no bugs. I think programmers are valuable in a power law way, and this can be based on intelligence, domain knowledge, experience, math skills, and other things. You can command a much larger salary if you either have technical/math abilities that almost no one else has (like a Google search engineer), or you can have an economically valuable product sense (like a proven, high-paid early start-up engineer), or you can know a domain in an economically useful way (many technical founders). Programming is an army-of-one kind of job, even if you work in a larger team. Insightful programmers are better than dogged ones by orders of magnitude. I look for programmers who are creative, self-driven, and knowledgeable. EDIT: I ended up editing this for the first 18 minutes it was live. Premise is the same, but I wanted to work on how I said everything.

jamesaguilar 12y ago
In my book, edits like this are fine. You turn a draft into a post-revision work and it makes the site better, especially for folks who aren't reading it conversation style. I agree with this sentiment. It's more effective to find the correct company and correct project within that company to make sure the lines you write are valuable. That's where the money comes from. I know some dudes who are smart and great coders who are making (relatively) little, because they are working on fun things with limited economic value. On the other hand, there are guys who are merely good programmers who are making a lot more, because they sought out projects with very high value and impact and moved those forward. Although it's hard to say how either group can complain too much considering the relative luxury of even entry-level programming jobs in this market. Part of the reason that startups can be so lucrative is not that a lot of code is being produced, but that code doing something never before done is being produced. The code is not the product, the behavior it's implementing is. It's a subtle distinction, but an important one.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
I tend to agree with your basic premise, and I realize that in the general case it is impossible to do analysis. But my fundamental point was that a programmer's salary is limited by that programmers replacement cost. We talk about ageism here now and again, and it is out there, but it is more common in my experience that people who had their salaries ratchet up because their management didn't know what else to do, end up being paid more than their replacement cost. If they try to find a job at a different company, the hiring managers might evaluate their salary requirements as unreasonable. That particular story is way too common in the Bay Area.

jamesaguilar 12y ago

In my book, edits like this are fine. You turn a draft into a post-revision work and it makes the site better, especially for folks who aren't reading it conversation style. I agree with this sentiment. It's more effective to find the correct company and correct project within that company to make sure the lines you write are valuable. That's where the money comes from. I know some dudes who are smart and great coders who are making (relatively) little, because they are working on fun things with limited economic value. On the other hand, there are guys who are merely good programmers who are making a lot more, because they sought out projects with very high value and impact and moved those forward. Although it's hard to say how either group can complain too much considering the relative luxury of even entry-level programming jobs in this market. Part of the reason that startups can be so lucrative is not that a lot of code is being produced, but that code doing something never before done is being produced. The code is not the product, the behavior it's implementing is. It's a subtle distinction, but an important one.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

I tend to agree with your basic premise, and I realize that in the general case it is impossible to do analysis. But my fundamental point was that a programmer's salary is limited by that programmers replacement cost. We talk about ageism here now and again, and it is out there, but it is more common in my experience that people who had their salaries ratchet up because their management didn't know what else to do, end up being paid more than their replacement cost. If they try to find a job at a different company, the hiring managers might evaluate their salary requirements as unreasonable. That particular story is way too common in the Bay Area.