3 ms·

You say that now, just you wait until supply of programmers catch up.

jjoonathan 12y ago
Yep. It has always amazed me how my peers can assume that their pay should be proportionate to their value in one breath while ranting about unions in the next. I mean, it's one thing to realize that the supply/demand situation for programmers currently makes unions unnecessary, but it's quite another to slam people in other fields for doing what they have to in order to secure the same damn privilege (getting paid according to value). The opportunity to make this extremely modest dream a reality is not some kind of right inherent to the free market! It's something we're going to have to fight for once supply/demand equilibrium has been reached.
- cdbajorin 12y ago
  When the supply of programmers catch up, the weak go to slaughter. 2 people digging a hole for $5 an hour are more effective than 1 person digging for $10 an hour, almost completely irrelevant to digging ability. 2 dummies don't make 1 smartie in programming. Unions exist in fields where replaceability is high. That happens much less in educated professions. The main other reason they exist is for professions with a high risk of injuries. Carpal tunnels only takes so many programmers every year.
  - jjoonathan 12y ago
    Ok, so how do you explain the situation for chemists? The variation in their productivity due to competence is at least comparable to that of programmers if not more -- yet their pay is uniformly low and the job security is uniformly poor. The only escape route is having the flair (!=competence) required to go into administration or attract investors (which is basically the same thing). OTOH if you assume that supply/demand is king, it all makes sense. To assume that your competence will save you, you need both to assume that your evaluation of your own skills is correct and that others will confidently agree. Both of those propositions sound shaky. I've met a lot of overconfident programmers and I've met a lot of disinterested HR people.
    - cdbajorin 12y ago
      I don't know anything about chemists. However, I struggle to believe an industry with a career path starting freshman year has more variance in ability than a technical field pulling poli-sci majors off the curb to fill seats. Supply/demand of a chair takes a distance second to the value of the product of that chair. Medicine/law/finance are all oversupplied with high salaries. Try showing up to a teaching position interview and convincing them to pay you more because of econ 101.
- ptaipale 12y ago
  > secure the same damn privilege (getting paid according to value). I think this is the hard part: what is the value according to which people should be paid? Who should decide it? Not easy. It gets particularly hairy when technological change has an impact on value. This is happening faster and faster. Consider the classical example of Wapping dispute [0] where old hot-metal methods of printing, which unions sought to protect, were replaced by electronic publishing tools and printing machines. Today, it would look quite funny if papers still had to employ Linotype professionals to be able to print things in newspapers. The more acute concern is whether publishers print anything at all on paper, or if everything is in the net. If the unions could decide, of course you couldn't publish in the net, because it is destructive to jobs in the printing industry. At some time, the commercial "value" of Linotype operators was very high. Now it is only historical; as a commercial operation, the machines have gone to obscurity. Who should have decided the value of those workers? I think the only one who really can decide is the one who owns and runs the operation. The unions mostly have an incentive to preserve the status quo - while happily accepting a change in other businesses, if it benefits them. No doubt that the modern-day Linotype operator would see it fit that he uses his union pay to buy an iPhone. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wapping_dispute http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wapping_dispute
  - jjoonathan 12y ago
    > what is the value according to which people should be paid? Who should decide it? Not easy. On the contrary, it's economics 101. I have a feeling our disagreement is due to definitions so let me be more specific about my intended meanings. There is a minimum price at which you are willing to not switch vocations and there is a maximum price at which you can be profitably employed. The latter is what I was calling value, as in "value to the company." Relative bargaining power determines where on that spectrum your salary will be. It's arguable that the final price is "value" but that's not the meaning I intended. What should happen is a question for the philosophers. What does happen is up to us. The Wapping dispute is an example of a union failing to recognize that the value (same definition I was using above) of their employees had fallen below their asking price. Sure, it happens -- I have no doubt that unions increase friction, which is bad and hurts the economy. But underpaying workers "because you can" is also bad, also introduces friction (increased need for loans, decreased ability of workers to bootstrap), and also hurts the economy. So I don't buy the argument that one is better or worse. As far as I'm concerned it's a zero-sum power struggle, philosophically and morally speaking. I'd rather be on the winning side and I don't begrudge others for wanting to be on the winning side.
brandonmenc 12y ago
> just you wait until supply of programmers catch up Been hearing this for decades and the only things happening are: 1. The multiplier effect of programmers keeps going up. 2. Programming work is growing faster than the supply of programmers. I don't plan on seeing these trends reverse during my lifetime. It's not a zero-sum game.
- collyw 12y ago
  Is there evidence of this? In Europe all I have seen is wages going down over the last 10 - 15 years. Admittedly I only started taking notice during the dot com boom, but I get the impression they were better before that. The other thing I notice is that I personally manage a database that would have taken three of four people ten years ago. We have loads more frameworks and libraries that make the task manageable. I use Django, whereas ten years ago, the stuff done by Django would likely be done with in house libraries, so needed more people. Also I think many of the problems are "solved", we have ideas about how to do things that were not as clear when the internet was staring out.
jimmaswell 12y ago
A small subset of the population even has the potential to program and that's probably not going to change. If a lot more people are encouraged to try it out then a small amount more of the people who had an aptitude for it but didn't realize it will enter the workforce. The leftover majority will still not be able to. No dramatic increase in programmers is going to happen. http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/ http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-from-non-programming-goats/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-fr...

Yep. It has always amazed me how my peers can assume that their pay should be proportionate to their value in one breath while ranting about unions in the next. I mean, it's one thing to realize that the supply/demand situation for programmers currently makes unions unnecessary, but it's quite another to slam people in other fields for doing what they have to in order to secure the same damn privilege (getting paid according to value). The opportunity to make this extremely modest dream a reality is not some kind of right inherent to the free market! It's something we're going to have to fight for once supply/demand equilibrium has been reached.

cdbajorin 12y ago
When the supply of programmers catch up, the weak go to slaughter. 2 people digging a hole for $5 an hour are more effective than 1 person digging for $10 an hour, almost completely irrelevant to digging ability. 2 dummies don't make 1 smartie in programming. Unions exist in fields where replaceability is high. That happens much less in educated professions. The main other reason they exist is for professions with a high risk of injuries. Carpal tunnels only takes so many programmers every year.
- jjoonathan 12y ago
  Ok, so how do you explain the situation for chemists? The variation in their productivity due to competence is at least comparable to that of programmers if not more -- yet their pay is uniformly low and the job security is uniformly poor. The only escape route is having the flair (!=competence) required to go into administration or attract investors (which is basically the same thing). OTOH if you assume that supply/demand is king, it all makes sense. To assume that your competence will save you, you need both to assume that your evaluation of your own skills is correct and that others will confidently agree. Both of those propositions sound shaky. I've met a lot of overconfident programmers and I've met a lot of disinterested HR people.
  - cdbajorin 12y ago
    I don't know anything about chemists. However, I struggle to believe an industry with a career path starting freshman year has more variance in ability than a technical field pulling poli-sci majors off the curb to fill seats. Supply/demand of a chair takes a distance second to the value of the product of that chair. Medicine/law/finance are all oversupplied with high salaries. Try showing up to a teaching position interview and convincing them to pay you more because of econ 101.
ptaipale 12y ago
> secure the same damn privilege (getting paid according to value). I think this is the hard part: what is the value according to which people should be paid? Who should decide it? Not easy. It gets particularly hairy when technological change has an impact on value. This is happening faster and faster. Consider the classical example of Wapping dispute [0] where old hot-metal methods of printing, which unions sought to protect, were replaced by electronic publishing tools and printing machines. Today, it would look quite funny if papers still had to employ Linotype professionals to be able to print things in newspapers. The more acute concern is whether publishers print anything at all on paper, or if everything is in the net. If the unions could decide, of course you couldn't publish in the net, because it is destructive to jobs in the printing industry. At some time, the commercial "value" of Linotype operators was very high. Now it is only historical; as a commercial operation, the machines have gone to obscurity. Who should have decided the value of those workers? I think the only one who really can decide is the one who owns and runs the operation. The unions mostly have an incentive to preserve the status quo - while happily accepting a change in other businesses, if it benefits them. No doubt that the modern-day Linotype operator would see it fit that he uses his union pay to buy an iPhone. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wapping_dispute http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wapping_dispute
- jjoonathan 12y ago
  > what is the value according to which people should be paid? Who should decide it? Not easy. On the contrary, it's economics 101. I have a feeling our disagreement is due to definitions so let me be more specific about my intended meanings. There is a minimum price at which you are willing to not switch vocations and there is a maximum price at which you can be profitably employed. The latter is what I was calling value, as in "value to the company." Relative bargaining power determines where on that spectrum your salary will be. It's arguable that the final price is "value" but that's not the meaning I intended. What should happen is a question for the philosophers. What does happen is up to us. The Wapping dispute is an example of a union failing to recognize that the value (same definition I was using above) of their employees had fallen below their asking price. Sure, it happens -- I have no doubt that unions increase friction, which is bad and hurts the economy. But underpaying workers "because you can" is also bad, also introduces friction (increased need for loans, decreased ability of workers to bootstrap), and also hurts the economy. So I don't buy the argument that one is better or worse. As far as I'm concerned it's a zero-sum power struggle, philosophically and morally speaking. I'd rather be on the winning side and I don't begrudge others for wanting to be on the winning side.

brandonmenc 12y ago

> just you wait until supply of programmers catch up Been hearing this for decades and the only things happening are: 1. The multiplier effect of programmers keeps going up. 2. Programming work is growing faster than the supply of programmers. I don't plan on seeing these trends reverse during my lifetime. It's not a zero-sum game.

collyw 12y ago
Is there evidence of this? In Europe all I have seen is wages going down over the last 10 - 15 years. Admittedly I only started taking notice during the dot com boom, but I get the impression they were better before that. The other thing I notice is that I personally manage a database that would have taken three of four people ten years ago. We have loads more frameworks and libraries that make the task manageable. I use Django, whereas ten years ago, the stuff done by Django would likely be done with in house libraries, so needed more people. Also I think many of the problems are "solved", we have ideas about how to do things that were not as clear when the internet was staring out.

jimmaswell 12y ago

A small subset of the population even has the potential to program and that's probably not going to change. If a lot more people are encouraged to try it out then a small amount more of the people who had an aptitude for it but didn't realize it will enter the workforce. The leftover majority will still not be able to. No dramatic increase in programmers is going to happen. http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/ http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-from-non-programming-goats/ http://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-fr...