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The real problem is that to compete in today's world, your website: 1. Needs to have great design 2. Needs to be rock-solid in terms of stability 3. Needs to b

The real problem is that to compete in today's world, your website: 1. Needs to have great design 2. Needs to be rock-solid in terms of stability 3. Needs to be snappy to use 4. Needs to be able to handle a Reddit traffic swarm 5. Needs to have individualization and customization 6. Needs to play nicely on computers, tablets, and phones The person (or people, more likely) who is good at all of this just isn't available at rates the companies want to pay. This is the important distinction. Hiring somebody for 100k/yr is pretty much the minimum ante for a good developer in a tech city. But these "entrepreneurs" and "founders" think that is too much money, and instead claim there's a shortage. In reality, if you're competing for top talent, 150k/yr should be your ante, and be prepared to go well into the 200s. This shouldn't be a surprise. To get even average talent from a consulting/contracting company, you're paying about 125/hr (of which 60-70 goes to the developer). That's 250k/yr. So why are companies freaking out at paying over 100k/yr for a full-time person who they can invest in? Hell, cut out the contractors and pay your people 200k/yr, and watch the good people come talk to you. This is what Amazon and the like are doing now. I'm hearing 22 year old kids who haven't coed a line of code in a professional capacity, getting offers of 120k/yr with a 20k signing bonus. Netflix pays a significant chunk of its engineers over 200k. The only real problem is that it's getting more expensive to do business in a tech world. But compare the skill sets that used to draw 100k/yr, and the skill sets now required to get 145k/yr (100k/yr in 1998 dollars = 144k in 2014 dollars). Before, you could just know HTML and some shell scripting. Now, you need to know multiple frameworks, how to deal with scalability, multiple data stores, "full stack," etc. If anything, the good talent in this industry is still dramatically under-paid. A common metric is that the company should make from you about 7x your salary to justify your position. So if a company is making 2.1 million, you should be getting 300k. But we all know that's not what's happening. Instead, our wages are being capped and forced down due to illegal collusion between the top tech employers. This all comes down to the people who own the businesses wanting to treat tech people as interchangeable cogs, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

ericd 12y ago
The thing is, it's not usually easy to make money at that rate as a small company, especially on the consumer side. That is objectively a lot of money. I'm not saying that good devs aren't worth a lot, but they're typically only worth that much when applied to a problem that impacts a huge number of people, as at Google, FB, Netflix, etc. The same dev working on a project that a small company launches may only have a $20k/yr impact on the bottom line. It takes a serious amount of usage to create the $2M/dev revenue figure you're quoting, and at that point, how much of the marginal impact is due to the dev vs. the corporate machine that enables him to have that large an impact?
- pjbrunet 12y ago
  You have to pay if you want to play.
- NickNameNick 12y ago
  If your expected return on a project is less than your planned costs to complete the project, why would you start at ANY price?
  - ericd 12y ago
    Because there's something you want to make? And it's possible in the long term to ramp up to that point, it's just that these salary expectations make the first few years rather difficult - almost dependent on raising money at the absurd valuations that are currently the norm. Just saying, something's gotta give.
- kamaal 12y ago
  >>The thing is, it's not usually easy to make money at that rate as a small company, especially on the consumer side. That is objectively a lot of money. This is like saying you want a F1 car, but won't driving fast at all. But you need it anyway. Much of this making money thing depends on knowing how to use people to make money. If you can't use a rockstar or don't even need one why expect them to work for you. >>they're typically only worth that much when applied to a problem that impacts a huge number of people, as at Google, FB, Netflix, etc. Ironically, the chances of a somebody good ending up working on something trivial are high in such places. You can easily get 'placed' into some place where your skills can just rot without having any hope of moving out.
wyclif 12y ago
So why are companies freaking out at paying over 100k/yr for a full-time person who they can invest in? That's a good question, but I'm afraid there's a fatal flaw therein. The assumption is that companies want to invest in training employees, but it seems that they don't. Startups don't have time or money to do it, and established big companies that are engaging in collusion on salaries certainly aren't going to spend money on training (or even mentoring) since they are collectively clutching their strand of pearls at the horrific thought of their best employees getting hired away and taking their newly-minted skills to a more competitive business.
- chii 12y ago
  what i m hearing is 'greed is the root of all evil'.
Animats 12y ago
1. Needs to have great design 2. Needs to be rock-solid in terms of stability 3. Needs to be snappy to use 4. Needs to be able to handle a Reddit traffic swarm 5. Needs to have individualization and customization 6. Needs to play nicely on computers, tablets, and phones. That's what standard products are for, starting with hosted Wordpress and going up from there. Why are you building a web site from scratch?

ericd 12y ago

The thing is, it's not usually easy to make money at that rate as a small company, especially on the consumer side. That is objectively a lot of money. I'm not saying that good devs aren't worth a lot, but they're typically only worth that much when applied to a problem that impacts a huge number of people, as at Google, FB, Netflix, etc. The same dev working on a project that a small company launches may only have a $20k/yr impact on the bottom line. It takes a serious amount of usage to create the $2M/dev revenue figure you're quoting, and at that point, how much of the marginal impact is due to the dev vs. the corporate machine that enables him to have that large an impact?

pjbrunet 12y ago
You have to pay if you want to play.
NickNameNick 12y ago
If your expected return on a project is less than your planned costs to complete the project, why would you start at ANY price?
- ericd 12y ago
  Because there's something you want to make? And it's possible in the long term to ramp up to that point, it's just that these salary expectations make the first few years rather difficult - almost dependent on raising money at the absurd valuations that are currently the norm. Just saying, something's gotta give.
kamaal 12y ago
>>The thing is, it's not usually easy to make money at that rate as a small company, especially on the consumer side. That is objectively a lot of money. This is like saying you want a F1 car, but won't driving fast at all. But you need it anyway. Much of this making money thing depends on knowing how to use people to make money. If you can't use a rockstar or don't even need one why expect them to work for you. >>they're typically only worth that much when applied to a problem that impacts a huge number of people, as at Google, FB, Netflix, etc. Ironically, the chances of a somebody good ending up working on something trivial are high in such places. You can easily get 'placed' into some place where your skills can just rot without having any hope of moving out.

wyclif 12y ago

So why are companies freaking out at paying over 100k/yr for a full-time person who they can invest in? That's a good question, but I'm afraid there's a fatal flaw therein. The assumption is that companies want to invest in training employees, but it seems that they don't. Startups don't have time or money to do it, and established big companies that are engaging in collusion on salaries certainly aren't going to spend money on training (or even mentoring) since they are collectively clutching their strand of pearls at the horrific thought of their best employees getting hired away and taking their newly-minted skills to a more competitive business.

chii 12y ago
what i m hearing is 'greed is the root of all evil'.

Animats 12y ago

1. Needs to have great design 2. Needs to be rock-solid in terms of stability 3. Needs to be snappy to use 4. Needs to be able to handle a Reddit traffic swarm 5. Needs to have individualization and customization 6. Needs to play nicely on computers, tablets, and phones. That's what standard products are for, starting with hosted Wordpress and going up from there. Why are you building a web site from scratch?