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Comment by flexie | Hacker News Reader

I think it's mostly supply and demand, timing and where you live. But those are the factors we rarely talk about.

Instead, people complain they are not compensated enough relative to the importance of their work, their intelligence, the hours put in, their title or the length of their education or the risk they take.

If people were paid according to the importance of their jobs, I would argue that plumbers, sewage workers and farmers should be paid higher than programmers. If it were about intelligence, most physicists I know are underpaid and programmers are generally compensated fairly. If it were about hours put in, many of the people producing our clothes should be paid better than us. If it were about titles, programming should be behind almost any other engineering field. If it were about length of education, programmers would generally rank much lower than they do because so many don't have any or much formal training. If it were about risk, in just about any other profession people have taken larger risks than a programmer joining a startup. So you "risk" only making $40,000 for a couple of years? Yeah, well, that's the calculated risk your English high school teacher knowingly took on for life when she decided to take a bachelor in arts. And yes, she could have become a developer or lawyer instead. What about the risk of work injuries faced by construction workers every day. That's real risk. Our financial risks are modest worries.

Programmers in 2016 are generally very well compensated for a low risk, indoor job with a very low barrier to entry.

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I think there's truth here, but I also think programmers routinely underestimate the quality and compensation of other careers that they think are "below" them.

For instance, you did it in this very post. Do you really think that all high school teachers are locked into making $40k for life? Here where I live (a large city, but also a pretty affordable one), teachers start at ~$55k in base salary, get a whole range of benefits including a pension plan, actually really do have the summers off (plus numerous other breaks), and leave work at 3:20 PM every day. If you were to have them work year-round and go home at 6-7PM and convert the pension plan into salary, the salary would easily exceed that of most entry-level engineers across all disciplines in the area. When I graduated college, I had engineering friends being offered salaries in the $60-70k range for considerably less stable jobs, much longer hours, virtually no time off, and much fewer benefits.

To be fair, no teacher I have ever known has stopped working at 3:20 PM. Grading and planning often go far into the evening.

Additionally, no teacher I have ever known has had the summer off. Summer is when they do catch-up work, lesson planning, etc., the technical debt payback of the teaching world.

(source: three parents/step-parents were school teachers)

To be fair, no teacher I've ever known as received only 10 day vacation and 10 holidays.

They have over 20 days of holidays built in during the school year and a legitimate two months off between years.

No, they have 2 months between school years in which they are not at the front of a classroom. For a lot of teachers that's time used for continuing education, for prep for the upcoming school year, etc. - or for a summer job.

Both my parents were teachers. While there was some summer work, in no way was it nearly as intense as the school year.

The mere fact that many do take summer jobs is proof of that, IMO.

> The mere fact that many do take summer jobs is proof of that, IMO.

Or it's a proof that they need the money.

It's only proof that they desire more money or can find a use for more money. "Need" is an overloaded term. I know developers with six figure salaries who feel like they "need" more money and occasionally do contract work on the side as a result.

By that argument nobody needs any money. Why pay rent when you can have https://primitivetechnology.wordpress.com/. Why pay for groceries when https://primitivetechnology.wordpress.com/2016/05/20/sweet-p... feeds you just as well? We just "desire it"

If I had two months off a year I'd take a summer job at Starbucks or whatever as well yet I don't need the money by any means whatsoever even if I took a prorated pay cut. Hell, I don't need to work at all because my spouse's income is more than enough to live off of very comfortably, but I do. The amount of time I work isn't an indication of the amount of money I need.

The argument in the parent posts is that teachers actually don't have two month off. They just have two month where they don't have to do client (that is pupil) - facing work to do.

Teachers actually need to cram a lot in that time. All the preparation for next year, all self-education they need to do to stay up-to-date, select reading and learning materials. Planning the curriculum etc. The equivalent to all that work that freelancers factor into their daily rate and all the work that employees often do on the job ("I'll need to read the documentation so I know how to properly do that", "I'll google it", ...).

The fact that they still take on summer jobs on top of that can serve as an indicator that they actually don't have too much to do in that time or it can serve as an indicator that they need the money more than their time off.

(I'm the one who made the original reply about teachers.)

My comment was based on observations of my SO, who is a high school biology teacher. She legitimately does not have to work at all for the great majority of the summer if she doesn't want to. I understand this may vary a lot by school district and location, and of course even if you don't have to work over the summer there are still benefits to doing so.

Or if you're in Germany, many teachers are running on temporary contracts that always last for the school year, so they will be receiving unemployment benefits during the summer break, and (hopefully!) get a new contract for the next school year.

It's a great way to shuffle cost from one government budget (education) to another one (unemployment benefits), and also a convenient way to get rid of annoying parts of the staff.

Teachers in my mother's district in Virginia also work on a contractual basis. However, they renew their contracts at the end of the school year even though they aren't actually working and getting paid over the summer. As a result, they are technically employed and ineligible for unemployment.

Alternatively, I have 3 teacher friends coming back from month long vacations right now.

In all careers, some people are martyrs unnecessarily. Yes, there's a bit of prep work needed right before the next school year depending on what classes they have for the following year, but except that last week, the time's free if they want it to be.

Actually according to http://transparentcalifornia.com/ my daughter's elementary school teacher makes around 130k in a public school.

There are lots of places where teachers easily make 80k or more. Most states also drive additional salary requirements based on the level of education the teacher has. Also, the number of years teaching (though sometimes tied to the number of years in the specific school system/district) include increases too.

Source: a friend who taught elementary school in the Boston area.

There are also teacher unions involved.

I once had it explained by a teacher in highschool (in CA), that the compensation was based on both years worked and additional education they had completed. IIRC, teaching for 20+ years and taking all the education could net you $65k-$85k ~ 20 years ago. That was the upper range though.

That probably includes medical and pension.

Many are faculty sponsors of extracurricular activities. Band directors, for instance, have to stay late for marching/pep band practices and for football/basketball games. Science and math teachers stay late for the academic competition teams. Team sports have coaches.

Where I went to school, teachers with less than five years of tenure essentially had to sponsor at least one extracurricular activity, just to earn enough extra pay to live on.

And then they still have to do grading and planning when the kids aren't there. That can be done away from the school building, but it still counts as work.

I had a teacher in high school once explain to us a side lesson on time management, she says she used moments of "downtime" in the school day to do grading and lesson planning so she almost never brought home work as a result.

I took it to heart. It worked very, very well for me in college. I'd always have homework with me ready to go and when I was waiting for a class to start, or any other short time with nothing to do, I'd do homework. I'd only get a bit done at a time but it really added up and reduced my take home workload considerably.

I think the effectiveness of this strategy also depends on how well you can context switch. For some it is a lot easier than others.

I was bad at context switching too but if you really put your mind to it and put in the effort it can be learned. It does get easier with time. For people that it doesn't come naturally to (like me) it takes a lot of willpower to work like this but the payoff is huge.

I had a total of 3 hours a day on a bus to/from high school. I wish I could have done homework during that time!

But you know how spine-jarring school busses are. Maybe if I'd been able to complete it on a laptop instead of worksheets.

But nah, with how I was treated by folks on my bus, my laptop would've been tossed out the window the second day.

I've often wondered about those that commuted long ways for school. Was it because the school was better, or because there was no closer school? If it was just a better school, do you think it was more beneficial overall to have that time used on the bus when it could have been put to work on something else, or was the local school unsafe?

I was lucky enough to always live very close to my schools, so hours spent commuting to school is entirely alien to me, and barring safety issues, I'm not sure a directed extracurricular learning program wouldn't be more beneficial (and if the student or parents care enough to commute, I imagine they could work out some program from available sources). Then again, I've never been put in a situation that young where it relied that much on my own motivation.

It was a magnet school that had resources (one of the best performing arts departments in the state; one of the only AP comp sci programs in a 45 mi radius) that my locally assigned high school did not.

The primary reasons the school-bus commute was long was a) meandering suburbia with only 1-2 students per stop and b) a 20 mile trek on the highway at 45mph.

If I had been able to drive (or carpooled), my commute would have been less than 35 minutes.

> It was a magnet school that had resources

I guess that makes sense. It's not just "better" in the sense of different schools in an area may be better or worse, but also highly directed in certain areas. I can see the draw of that.

> meandering suburbia with only 1-2 students per stop

Yes, come to think of it, people that rode the bus at my school probably had at least a 40-45 minute ride in the earlier stops just from this. I think I rode the bus once when going to a friend's house after school, so this didn't come to mind. The rest of the time I always walked (High School was literally across the street from my house, Middle School was a 20 minute brisk walk). Like I said, alien.

Thanks for your explanation. :)

Gym teachers don't need to grade papers. Planning probably doesn't take too long for them either.

Annecdata: as a teacher in an inner city high school, I did not break past 50k/year for the three years I was there. That includes the summers I worked. Between grading, lesson planning, meetings, and teaching, my typical week day started before 7am, ended around 8pm or later. Typically most of my Saturday was used up and half my Sunday. Normally all of spring and winter break was used up likewise. I typically got close to a week off in summer.

As a developer, I started at nearly 2x what I made as a teacher. After getting real experience, I make more than most administrators and more than any teacher could after a lifetime of service. I have multiple weeks of paid vacation. Aside from a (weak) pension, my benefits are better. My work only follows me home when I am behind schedule (not often) or when there is an outage (a bit cyclical). My quality of life is so vastly better. Another benefit, I now get to work with motivated and smart individuals.

It's my understanding, from an ex-gf in college who was going through the teaching credential program at the time and had a mother that was a teacher, that there's a lot of work loaded on teachers inthe beginning, as they need to develop lesson plans for everything from scratch (where "develop" may mean find and adapt in some cases). Then, after a couple years it's settles into a normal churn of updating or replacing a much smaller portion of lesson plans as you go, and the rest of the time is the normal grading work.

That said, I'm not sure I've ever met a teacher who takes off at 3:20 every day. I imagine it probably averages out to around an hour before and after school, so 7 AM to 4 PM? But there's often grading that happens at home throughout the week. I wouldn't be surprised to see veteran teachers averaging 44-50 hours a week of actual work for the year (with lulls and spikes for midterms/finalls, etc).

Teachers make less to start as a result of the unions. The people running the union are later in their careers so the increased wages tend to accumulate to more senior positions. At least, that's how it's going for my friend who is a teacher.

Once you put in the time it pretty much turns into one of the most comfortable jobs you can get between decent compensation, lots of time off, good benefits.

They may leave at 3:20, but that doesn't mean they are done working. Teachers do lots of work -- lesson planning, grading, etc. -- out of the classroom and outside of "working" hours. Not to mention the money they spend on basic supplies for their job that aren't provided by their employer -- or the time they sirens trying to solicit other people to find that.

Comments like the parent is why our teachers are undervalued. In my younger years, my roommate was a high school math teacher. And the soccer coach. He traveled a lot with the team and drove the bus, stayed late for practices, went in early to to supervise for safety...At nights when he comes home, he comes home tired, passes out, wakes up and grades papers.

Not all, but the one in my example did, and many do: http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=High_School_Teacher/...

I am sure that by getting a master's degree, teaching in private schools, being in certain states or cities, teaching classes that are in great demand, etc., teachers can reach higher salaries. But I think we can agree that by becoming teachers in the first place, they pretty much accepted the risk of never earning much.

Likewise, not all programmers in start-ups earn 40k, which is what the example was about.

Especially true for nurses. Very tough job, but there's more money in it than many realize. My friend who already does well for himself is now going to do 1 more year of school to get a CRNA and says he'll likely make 160k in Miami or 220k in SF. Yet a co-worker asked "how can nurses survive here?" SF nurse salaries are public and you can see they can out earn most engineers esp via overtime (which lots of engineers work uncompensated). Still, nursing is a very tough job and can have a low status stigma.

My mother's actually a nurse, and it's been a really great career choice for her, especially as she's aged. Over the last five years or so my parents have had to move several times due to volatility in my dad's career. And yet at every move my mom hasn't had any trouble finding stable and well-paid employment as a nurse.

Nursing is similar to teaching in that you're not likely to get rich off of it, and it's not even an easy job at all, but it is a very stable one which pays a solid middle-class wage for life in pretty much any area of the country, from huge cities to small rural towns in the midwest. And, while the hours are rough as a new nurse fresh out of school, they're not bad at all with experience -- certainly it's a far more family friendly career than many others in healthcare, like being a physician.

If my mom had been a programmer, she definitely wouldn't have weathered the moves they've made as well as she has. In fact, she'd have been the one forcing my dad to move with her, as decent programming jobs simply do not exist where they live.

Similarly, I thought I was rolling in the dough starting out at 65k as a developer right out of a 4 yr degree. Then I met an old friend in the same city who, after a couple years as an apprentice in a rural town, at 21y/o he's now making six figures as a plumber in the city/burbs.

I totally agree. Being a developer is one of the best careers you can have right now. Well paid and high in demand everywhere in the world, very little "soul crushing" (and can even be very fulfilling) compared to most jobs and you can even get a job where you work from home, anywhere you want, with flexible time etc. What other jobs exist out there like it? And if your only complaint is "well my employer makes millions off me and I get only get paid $GOOD_SALARY!", well then go and start your own business! It's, again, the easiest, cheapest and highest possible return of any business you can start in the world today, and it only requires your time. If you don't want do do it (because you'd rather have a stable job, or you don't want or can't risk your savings, etc) at the very least, don't complain you should be making an even better salary. Keep in mind I don't want to imply "just be contempt with whatever salary you have" or "never seek a better job or salary", but by all means, don't complain that "programmers are underpaid" in general, because I think that's just plain not true if we compare all aspects of the job with any job out there. It's pretty much a dream time in history to be a developer right now.

As I understood the article, the gist of the issue is, that besides salary, many/some programmers could also have another form(s) of compensation, so why not negotiate for it?

s/contempt/content

> Well paid and high in demand everywhere in the world, very little "soul crushing" (and can even be very fulfilling) compared to most jobs and you can even get a job where you work from home, anywhere you want, with flexible time etc.

Assuming you like and are good at a specialty that is in demand, and can convince someone else of that. As someone who does not like web or enterprise CRUD development I don't feel very in-demand, nor do I feel like I can get one of those sweet working arrangements[1] that get discussed here. I have spent the past couple of years wrestling with whether to keep trying to do what I want to do (real-time embedded systems) and be "underpaid" doing it or do something I am good at but really don't like (Java backend systems/"big data") in order to make more money. I think the latter is going to win by default, since I have been out of the embedded game too long at this point.

[1] Not to say my current arrangement isn't better than average with respect to flexibility, vacation, benefits, and such. I think the average HNer would probably consider my fringe benefits kinda crappy.

In my opinion employers should listen to those complaints. Most likely the only way to increase my salary would be to swap jobs, which I'd rather not do, and I don't see it being good for my employer either.

If there are millions to be made from programmers then must it not follow that programmers are actually underpaid (or that the services are over priced)?

Yes programmers are well compensated, but they are also in very high demand.

One day at a big family union I got three phonecalls from recruiters. My whole family rolled their eyes, while I politely said no to those recruiters with below average offers. I told them that this is usual, I get a few phonecalls from recruiters every week. None of them who work as doctors, teachers, accounting, geophysicist, even an old CEO of a $200 mill company has ever experienced something like that. They may get a recruiter calling once a year.

Most programmers don't know their real value and way too many say yes to work below average market rate. Younger ones a often preferred as they are easier to manipulate, have no idea about their value, and hardly ever says no to something. And they are brilliant and smart for bargain.

What they lack is experience, but as the technology landscape changes every second year many believe experience doesn't matter. That may be why so many companies are struggling with technical debt.

None of them who work as doctors, teachers, accounting, geophysicist, even an old CEO of a $200 mill company has ever experienced something like that. They may get a recruiter calling once a year.

Those recruiters aren't calling for your benefit tho'. They are calling because they want to sell you like a piece of meat. That's just a sign that nearly everyone connected to the industry who isn't actually an engineer themselves is trying to exploit engineers in some way.

What they lack is experience, but as the technology landscape changes every second year many believe experience doesn't matter

People believe what is to their advantage to believe. Getting an experienced engineer at a knock down rate because they've been tricked into undervaluing their experience suits VCs and managers very well...

> They are calling because they want to sell you like a piece of meat

Compared to..... what?

Calling me because of my good-natured character and my unparalleled virtues?

My gf is a physician and she has recruiters contacting her exactly how we get contacted and with the same vein, recruiters are calling about jobs no one wants.

Why do you even empower these people by answering the phone? I never answer when they call.

I know a lot of people don't bother to answer their phone unless it's from a number in their contacts, but not everyone is like that. I almost always answer calls from numbers I don't recognize, and it's often a call that's actually important. A coworker or friend whose number I don't have, the bank calling me about strange activity on my account, a callback about a message I left and forgot about -- who knows? It only takes a few seconds to realize it's a recruiter and say "No thanks, please don't call me again" and I certainly don't want to add their numbers to my contacts list to filter them out. I like being immediately accessible in emergencies, and a minor inconvenience is worth that to me.

Because sometimes they actually have something interesting for me.

My wife is a Physical Therapist. She put her resume on Career Builder (after graduation) on a Sunday Night before bed (11pm-ish), by 7am already had two voicemails, and had more than 8 more voicemails by noon Monday.

Just a data point, but it happens to other fields as well. Also, FWIW, she's making about 80k and if she commuted into Seattle, I see jobs posted there for 100-110k quite frequently, for non-managerial positions as a PT. She claims she could make more (at least hourly) as Home Health or a inpatient retirement home type of situation, but likes outpatient too much.

Granted, that's about it, unless she opens her own clinic or goes into management, where as 110k in Seattle gives me some room for salary growth. She also doesn't get other compensation so my point is more about demand of PTs being pretty comparable.

To be fair, most programmers also have never experienced a recruiter literally cold calling them sight unseen with a job offer. It's usually "hey can we chat, I know of a great company..." which is so different from a job offer it's meaningless.

Right, I get maybe two recruiters contacting me via email per year. Even then it's occasionally asking me if I have any leads for them...

Well said, but I think you missed the point of the article.

The article itself isn't even about programmers, really (even if the author didn't recognize it). It applies to all employees and founders of start ups, whether they are programmers, designers, or even just a person with an idea but no technical expertise

It's not about how much you make or how much is fair. It's about properly understanding what your compensation is. The soul of the article is in the complexity of non-salary compensations, and how many surprises and pitfalls lurk in the small text, that most non-finance people don't even notice is there. And the author is reminding us to learn about those surprises and pitfalls, so that when the anticipated pay-day comes, our expectations are met properly.

And it's good advice.

> [P]eople complain they are not compensated enough relative to the importance of their work, their intelligence, the hours put in, their title or the length of their education or the risk they take.

Most developers would be wise to understand that with few exceptions, none of these things have anything to do with your compensation. Your compensation is based almost entirely on some amorphous combination of:

  A) Supply of similarly skilled labor (if enough similarly skilled devs are happy to do the work for $80k that gives you a ceiling)
  B) Supply of less skilled labor (if an army of unskilled devs are happy to do the work for $8/hr ...)
  C) Your leverage over your [prospective] employer
  D) How the company has done over the last *n* quarters
  E) Patronage
  F) Nepotism
  G) Luck

I know I'm just repeating most of what you said.

I'd put Luck and Nepotism at the top of the list followed by D. But maybe that's just because I work in finance.

To be fair, nepotism in tech tends to be of the academic type, and most kids who get into Ivy League have worked pretty hard to get there.

So, in some ways, it's not that bad a kind of nepotism.

Most startups are not hiring actual family members :)

> Most startups are not hiring actual family members :)

It's harder to convince your own family to work for you for free with constant overtime and vague promises of great profits in the future. :).

Perhaps patronage covers this, but I would put skill at office politics/ass kissing high on the list.

Also known as: "Works well with others."

I think about 50% of the time someone bemoans office politics what they really mean is "I don't have the emotional bandwidth not to be an asshole to people."

H) Age

It is a common belief (especially among startups) is that developers have a "shelf life."

Is a belief in "shelf life" really the problem? Maybe this is really just startups being unwilling to pay for decades of experience, or people with decades of experience not being attracted to the startup culture of long hours, some other confounding factor, or a combination thereof.

One thing I want to mention is related to your last line:

> Programmers in 2016 are generally very well compensated for a low risk, indoor job with a very low barrier to entry.

Most employers don't get it, but Google, Facebook, and others do; programming well has a much higher barrier to entry than people realize.

When I was 10 I could make an HTML page, when I was 14 I started incorporating JavaScript and building websites... A decade later (24), I am still improving and building bigger/better programs (full stack, but mostly data science). I went to school, worked all the way through tutoring for C, C++, and Go, and built websites as well.

Yet there are people making the same salary as me that literally started programing 4 months ago. Those people who just started cannot build a website in a week (or even a few), it takes them months. Even then, thats with help, and it will have loads of bugs.

I know because part of my job is training them. I have to explain how they just tried to access an array outside the bounds. Seriously, the other week I was interviewing a "master software engineer" for an internal role on my team and they failed a basic string flipping question... He's making at least double what I am.

To put this into greater perspective, let's walk through a mental exercise. Say programmer one introduces 1 bug every 10 lines. The second programmer introduces 1 bug every 25 lines. After 10000 lines what do we have?

Programmer #1: 1000

Programmer #2: 400

At an average of 30 minutes a lot of hours of bug fixes:

Programmer #1: 500 hours

Programmer #2: 200 hours

My point, 200 hours is 5 weeks, 500 hours is 12.5 weeks of bug fixes. I'll grant you, this is napkin math, but trust me - this is why some developers think (and probably should) get paid more. Relative to their co-workers if they can make half as many mistakes they save time both upfront, and bug catching. Now compare that to the master software engineer I mentioned, whos already making double what I am... Based on that assessment, I'd likely be underpaid.

All that being said, I generally agree, but coming from a pretty standard office, I can see why people feel underpaid. It's probably because people around them are being over paid.

"> programming well has a much higher barrier to entry than people realize."

"Yet there are people making the same salary as me that literally started programing 4 months ago."

That certainly sounds like a low barrier to entry to me. Compare with the barrier to entry to becoming a doctor, for instance. There, in many locations, you'll be looking at a decade of proving yourself to the club, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs to do that, before you are even allowed to start working. Four weeks, and maybe a computer that costs hundreds of dollars, is absolutely nothing in comparison.

> this is why some developers think (and probably should) get paid more. Relative to their co-workers if they can make half as many mistakes they save time both upfront, and bug catching.

But it still boils down to supply an demand, and if employers do not demand those with better bug fixing ability, there is going to be no corresponding premium for finding such people. What your post does indicate to me is that programmers have done a poor job of marketing the importance of bug fixing ability (or whatever features of an experienced developer you think is important) so that employers start demanding the subset of developers who have those skills.

There are always jobs that are worse in some way. If a plumber screws up you might get a wet floor or sewage in the street. If some banking software makes a flaw, you can't just pick up a mop and clean it up.

There are always jobs that come out worse in some category compared to programming. The problem here specifically is that given you have written 50% of the software people are using and investors are making some millions out of it while you make $40K a year, because they sort of lured you into a deal that apparently is not working out too great for you because you were so focussed on getting the lines of code rolling out they sort of took advantage of the situation?

Investors may be taking advantage of your labour but this is the nature of every business. The business owners take advantage of employee labour to make a lot more money than the employees. I find the entitlement to better terms than people inother fields that frequently crops up here incredibly pretentious and self righteous.

I think that's a disingenuous comparison. If you're comparing to banking software, imagine a plumber that causes four floors of a high-rise to get flooded, leading to 5-figures of damage and additional lost time. Or perhaps an underwater plumber, where the cost to fix the leak is high.

If we're looking at house plumbing, it might be more fair to compare it to a CRUD app that facilitates iguana breeding (unsolved problem here, folks!).

BOSS: Uh, Bob, you forgot to close a loop in your code so we've got a bit of an iguana problem...

PROGRAMMER: What kind of problem?

BOSS: Call the Pentagon.

... or perhaps the Laundry

> What about the risk of work injuries faced by construction workers every day. That's real risk.

I hear you, but the negative health effects of working insane hours developing in a high stress "start-up" environment for many years should not be understated.

Exactly, in fact I think that if you want to stay healthy then working as a construction worker is great: you get physical excercise, fresh air, low stress level. Risk of injury is pretty low, and wages are pretty good.

In contrast, being software developer will probably get you heart attack, or problems with your spine, or eyes, or hands or all of the above.

Are you sure this is true?

You think the added risk of heart attack from software development is greater than the risk of death in construction?

You think the rate of spine, eye, or hand injuries from typing all day is greater than the risk of bodily injury in construction?

I find it difficult to find stats for this about software development, but 899 construction workers died on the job in 2014, and construction workers do get these small RSI issues in their shoulders and hands like you were describing for software development, but they are also regularly injured, but not killed, by falling, being crushed, and being cut.

But don't you know that software developers are the best and most noble population in the world, bravely suffering for the good of humanity? </sarcasm>

I would love someone to try and complain about RSI to someone who's been a construction worker for 20 years. "But you get fresh air and exercise!" Ha! According to this source, 8.2% of construction workers have carpal tunnel: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4476336/ And CTS is generally the least of their worries!

Exactly.

Actual construction work == Moldy crawlspaces. Hot attics. Slippery roofs. Muddy trenches. Asbestos & fiberglass dust (yay for silicon fibrosis!). Lead paint. pneumatic paint sprayers, heavy equipment, nail guns, projection injuries, cuts/scrapes/falls/broken bones, temperature range extremes, noise (hearing loss), eye injury due to projectiles, etc. etc.

Run a belt sander for an hour. Numb hands for the next half hour. Or a jackhammer for "just" 15 minutes. makes Carpal tunnel seem tame.

Spend a year doing HVAC work bent over in crawlspaces. Or try working as a brick mason standing in a muddy ditch or climbing scaffolding with thousands of pounds of block and mortar. Or roofing. Or framing straddling a rafter. It's no health tonic.

My guess is that most desk jockeys would beg for the safety of an Aeron chair and a mouse after just one week.

Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of satsifaction to having a hands-on job and getting things done, being able to show actual achievements per day. However, it is TOUGH work aAnd I think all those aches and pains are the reason so many construction workers self-medicate with alcohol.

I removed this from my (grand)parent post, since it was irrelevant, but since we're here:

I had to help with dad's business every school break from age 13-21. Mainly renovation, a spec home, some sheds, rarely roofing. Small town stuff. I'm sure I was a terrible worker, but it was shocking and alienating that my first job out of college I made triple what my dad did. And maybe from my own children I will hear comments like these in this thread, which I think are a bit disconnected from the reality of labor.

And I guess that's fine, just don't quit programming for construction if you are trying to avoid injury. My dad is in great shape in terms of cardio and strength for 60, but he can't raise his shoulder, or move some fingers, but the overall joint pain isn't bad most days, and he thinks he's gotten off pretty lucky. If he had fallen off that scaffold slightly differently when I was 5, he might be dead.

Also, another small satisfaction is if you can get the radio tuned to a good station, and do something straightforward, like, uh, nailing a subfloor or something. You can just sort of get into a groove with good music or interesting talk and have your day fly by, whereas I mainly get nothing done with the radio on while programming.

> Exactly, in fact I think that if you want to stay healthy then working as a construction worker is great: you get physical excercise, fresh air, low stress level. Risk of injury is pretty low, and wages are pretty good.

There's a pretty significant risk of DEATH (guys falling off from scaffolding, someone accidentally driving over you with an excavator etc.), you need to be on your toes a lot of the time or you'll hurt yourself, you work in heat, in cold, in dusty or moldy environments, in noise, with chemicals. On top of that, your boss is often an asshole (there's none of the white collar world politeness). Consider that construction work can pay pretty well even to people who hardly speak the country's language and have only moderate skills - I think it's largely because it's just shit.

There's degrees of risk associated with the type of construction work you do. I know someone who used to be a pipe fitter. Unless he showed up drunk at the job site (which may have happened a few times, hah) I don't think he was ever at risk of being run over by a backhoe or having something dropped on his head.

Roofers, on the other hand, have extremely high risk of severe injury and death. Those guys are nuts! If I was in charge of OSHA regulations for roofers I'd make sure that no one was allowed to get on to a roof without being attached to some kind of harness that would catch them if they fell. Or surround the home with airbags or something. It seems far too easy to slip, trip, or just plain ol' fall in that job.

I've personally witnessed a young man (roofer) fall from a roof once (on to a big pile of bricks). I found out later that he wound up paralyzed.

Electricians and plumbers are also relatively low risk depending on the work they do. You'd think working with high-voltage electricity would be higher risk than it is but with modern (insulated) tools and training it's quite safe.

On the other hand, I've recently seen a wall painter balance on a thin and wobbly piece of wood stretched over a stairway (if he falls, it's going to be about 4 meters down and onto concrete stairs). That was apparently necessary to reach some parts of the ceiling. I wouldn't be surprised if electricians or plumbers had to do to this kind of (to me) completely crazy shit from time to time.

> On top of that, your boss is often an asshole (there's none of the white collar world politeness).

Being an asshole has very little to do with crude language.

I actually didn't meant the language only. I think white collar workers (well developers at least) are pampered. Almost every boss I had paid at least some attention to my wellbeing on the job. I don't think that's true in blue collar world where, by nature of the job, you're just expected to "tough it out".

Hubris: http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-dangerous-jobs/

Taxi drivers more likely to die from homicide than a traffic accident! That's shocking. I wonder what explains this. Is it armed robberies gone wrong?

I think that is correct, though I'm not sure if there is anyone who tracks the exact cause, maybe it would surprise us.

Last time I heard about a violence against a taxi driver they were shot in the back in a carjacking, and then the assailant was not able to bypass some interlock device to actually restart the cab. So the cab company makes it hard to actually get away with the car, but the driver is probably carrying a lot of cash.

So... don't do that?

There's plenty of programming/IT jobs that aren't in start-ups.

Can I ask, are you a programmer? My guess is you are not. If you were you would understand the real physical strain and mental toll it takes to be good. If you want to excel, it is a never-ending battle to stay current and there is little to no reward for experience (even though it matters a great deal and must be accomplished on and off the clock). There is limited time to make money before you either burn out or are perceived to be too old to stay relevant. So, yes, there is a lot of risk putting the best earning years into companies that promise one thing and deliver another.

I am not. Programming is just a hobby and I am not very good at it. I am a lawyer, and my comments would apply to law as well (except that the barrier to entry is a bit higher since regulation forces people to go through law school). Your comments about physical strain, mental toll, risk of burning out etc. describe my field well, though. And I doubt salaries for lawyers and programmers are that different anymore.

The difference being, the older you get the more you will be perceived an expert at law. Your experience ages like a fine wine. Experience in tech ages more like a ripe watermelon sitting in the sun. Your earning potential will only go up the longer you are a lawyer. That is not true for those that stay developers their entire career.

P.S. I also spent a great deal of time getting degrees. B.S. in computer science and a Master's in Software Engineering. It is often not required to get a job, but it is still a barrier for many openings.

Let's see.

In 20 years your field might have made large parts of my field redundant. I truly hope so :-)

Programming is still a young profession and it's growing at a tremendous pace. The population pyramid of Programmers' Land actually looks like a pyramid which might cause programmers to think that older people can't make it.

I know many older folks in IT who are still active. My old man continued until he was 70. They may not know the newest tricks in node.js or machine learning but they are the only ones who know the old legacy code that lock-in users and protect their jobs.

I bet you and most of your colleagues will be active until retirement. Just like lawyers may continue as partners (partially or mostly doing managing or marketing) many programmers might transfer to management.

A lot of programmers have long formal education but the market for programmers without education is still huge and the salaries for programmers without formal training easily beat almost any other professions where there are no educational requirements and a lot of professions with educational requirements. In which other profession can you realistically hope to start with salaries of 60-80k after a few months of online courses?

I think we've lost sight of the argument. I do not disagree that people taking a few months of online courses are being paid well (or above) what they should be earning as a programmer.

Maybe in the Valley startup culture but I live very far from the Valley and that's not even close to my experience at all. What kind of "physical strain" does typing code result in? I seriously have one of the most flexible and lowest stress job than anyone I know.

Sitting in one position while making only minute movements and staring at a screen causes significant strain if you don't balance it out with exercise.

Call me a fanboy, but my Apple Watch's hourly reminders to get up and walk around have helped immensely.

Once try to solve a bug, from a program of size 100mb. Then you will probably known what happens to your brain. Try to continue a project, which is huge, without any documentation, it takes years of efforts, to do so.

My favorite improvement that our agency made to our workspace isn't the dual monitors, isn't the shorter hardware upgrade cycle; my favorite improvement is the sit-stand desk. Seriously. I think every desk worker should get something like this.

I used to have all sorts of minor aches and pains from sitting most of the day. Now I spent an hour standing, an hour sitting, plus the usual breaks, etc. I'm more productive and happier. If your company won't buy one for you, buy it yourself. It's worth it.

Hmmm, "And if you go in on a Saturday afternoon, I can tell you which start-ups will succeed, without even knowing what they do. Being there on the weekend is a huge indicator of success" - Marissa Mayer

Maybe you can get away with doing just your job and going home to relax. I would wager, you may have difficulty finding your next job however. Have you never programmed so much you start having dreams that it takes steps to breath and you subsequently have a difficult time breathing? The physical toll takes years to manifest. I am in my 30s. If I did not exercise at least every other day I would not be able to continue doing what I do. You are most likely in your early 20s. Wait and see what a lifetime of programming does to your nervous system. I would not be surprised if a study reveals programming causes brain damage.

>Maybe you can get away with doing just your job and going home to relax. I would wager, you may have difficulty finding your next job however.

That's just not how it works outside the Valley. I've only crammed extra hours in to meet a deadline a few days a year, and only at one company. I've worked at 3 different companies in two different cities 400 miles away. Nobody expected 80 hours a week or whatever and I, quite frankly, wouldn't do it because I value time with my family and I'm not productive 80 hours a week. We also highly value experienced programmers and they command a higher salary. I don't have a government job either and I never have. "Valley culture" isn't synonymous with programming as a profession.

Any Marissa Mayer? Isn't she mocked for her poor leadership?

There's a lot more to running a successful business than people being physically present on Saturdays.

You're running into quite the hyperbole. If programming literally makes your lungs stop working why keep doing it?

>You are most likely in your early 20s.

I am in my late 30s.

Programming in general is a really good cushy job. Valley culture is what is toxic. I'm sure it you worked construction 80 hours a week for however many years you'd be in much worse shape than if you were getting paid a large salary to write some CRUD app.

This. So true. No disrespect to the author of (grand-) parent comment, but working in SV or a startup is not always refelective of working elsewhere (in the US or further afield). I'm based in the UK, and had to endure long working hours/insane deadlines early in my career while working for various consultancy firms. Once I moved away from these 'churn and burn' factories, I made a point of working for employers who take care of their employees. Since then I rarely work weekends (never in my current role), and would rarely work more than the required 45 hours a week. Despite this, I find I'm more productive, and achieve more than I ever did earlier in my career when I was working long hours.

Value creation is by far the pre-dominant variable when one thinks about compensation. Arguably, there is more value creation in the process of programming (infinite distribution) than there is in let's say plumbing or some of the other analogies you make here.

The more democratized a field is and the more systematic efficiencies there are to be gained, the more easy it will be to both create and capture value and hence, resulting in a more even playing field for expected compensations. This has historically been true for entrepreneurship, modern-day programming is also a good example of this effect.

That is what programmers like to say (when they are comparing their salaries with the value they say they have created).

The reality,of course, is that most of the value created is attributable to the franchise value of the company, not the programmer.

>I would argue that plumbers, sewage workers and farmers should be paid higher than programmers.

Self-employed plumbers are paid higher than programmers. Every plumber I reached out to quoted $130/hr and they are all booked for weeks in advance.

Plumbers have to spend unbillable time driving from place to place. $130 per hour is great but if each job takes 1-2 hours it could magically halve.

Ever walk into a half empty restaurant and get turned away because they're fully booked?

The ones I talked to were not interested in taking on projects further than a 10-15 mins drive. Please note that plumbers also add markups on the products they install (water heaters, etc) and charge higher rates for weekend/after hours emergencies. Nothing wrong with it, they just take advantage of the good market.

Not picking on plumbers, just pointing out that jobs in the software industry are not as plum as they seem to some posters here, compared to other jobs.

You're still underestimating the hours that are not billable. That plumber drives 15 minutes each way for a two hour job. That's a 20% loss of time. Plus it's not billable when the plumber has to go pick up materials from a hardware store. Nor is it billable when they deal with the overhead of running a business, maintaining accounts, dealing with bills, providing quotes, etc. Plus benefits are coming out of that $130. A self employed plumber working 40 billable hours/week is likely working more like 60 hours/week.

A lot of self-employed consultant/freelance programmers charge that or more, and are booked for months (on the same project..)

True, but most plumbers are self-employed, most programmers are not...

Yeah, this is quite true. Even if it doesn't seem like it, the fact that programmers have a relatively stable job and stable income -- worrying about getting the right about of pay vs equity is much different than worrying, "Will I get paid?" -- it show some lack of self awareness to even complain about these kinds of topics. Yes, you might have a difficult time making ends meet in SF with a $100k job in a nice apartment, but you can always move to a city that doesn't have obscene rent and living costs and live more comfortably, and most likely be able to afford the associated moving costs, something many, many people can't even begin to think about.

Barring those comments, I think this article is actually good advice for software developers who don't know that much about how this works and what to ask, and could be burned in the end. Many people don't think about the specifics and if they have less than scrupulous founders, if they're not careful they can be in for a lot of trouble. I actually wish this would touch on the more psychological aspects of this topic, because you might want to understand these things, but might be worried about pressing buttons when applying them, and shouldn't be. For example, when you initially interview, don't be afraid to negotiate and definitely don't be afraid to leave if the terms aren't to your liking. If the company is profitable or is "awesome and will be worth tons of money, we promise!" they should put their money where their mouth is and compensate well, not just with equity. If you're not getting paid what you should be, or not getting the equity you think you should be getting, talk to the founders or whomever you can, and don't be afraid to leave if the situation is toxic or isn't acceptable (of course, this is mostly startup advice; when at a larger company you might get some say in the compensation package, but it's likely mostly up to bureaucratic processes unless you're being hired way up like VP/P/C level). It's not necessarily true that they need you more than need them, what's probably more truthful is that neither party needs the other.

> importance of their work, their intelligence, the hours put in, their title or the length of their education or the risk

Well one of these is not like the others. The article clearly focuses on the financial risks. It's destructive to suggest that risk and especially deceptive risk presentation is somehow ignorable and not to worry about it. You can't just let the supply and demand model play itself out. Hostile actors work against you and exploit information advantage to skew the supply and demand [1]. Teachers, construction workers or software engineers - it doesn't matter what your job is. Here we talk about stakeholders in a company. It just happens some software engineers are, and as such you should understand where the numbers come from and what's the value of all that since it's part of the compensation. There are plenty of devs out there who work for no money at all. It's pointless to go into philosophical discussion about jobs, it's outside the scope. This is purely a subject for stakeholders.

[1] http://www.borooah.com/Teaching/Post%20Graduate%20Microecono...

Compensation is a market. It's not about what you "deserve" or how smart you are, or even your job performance. Your comp is driven by what the market will bear, in other words "what you can make elsewhere." Just like the price of a gadget is not based on the cost of its parts, or how much value the customer derives from it. It's based on what the market will bear.

The point of the article is not so much about what should be the right level of compensation for technical people but rather the issue of technical people not bothering to understand the terms of the financial agreements they get into.

If they did examine the terms, as you said supply and demand would ensure the terms are fair.

> If they did examine the terms, as you said supply and demand would ensure the terms are fair.

Only if all parties have all the information. The person being hired has now idea how desperate the company is for their skills, how much they're willing to spend, or even if the pay being offered is good for the location/position in a lot of cases.

And the company has no idea of whether the person being hire is as good as he pretends to be. This uncertainty goes both ways.

I would add "police" to the list of critically important yet comically underpaid professions.

Well there is a paradox at work here. You need to pay any sort official enough that they aren't desperate for bribes, but not so much that you attract people into the job motivated by personal enrichment. Read "Systems of Survival" by Jane Jacobs for a good study of this.

I agree. In return for the higher pay, I'm in favour of much stronger selection, screening and higher penalties for wrong-doing.

Which is better motivation for a police officer? Personal enrichment, or the chance to use weapons, violence, and deception for advantage--once common delights now so rare!

Being a policeman can be a tough, dangerous job. But I don't think they are underpaid, at least not in Massachusetts - Police Trooper, 1st class can make $130K-$180K. They also get generous pensions (state employees).

Yea, top ones. This sounds like the same old argument: "A handful of top programmers at Google make $300k! Therefore programmers in general make a lot."

There are ~1800 police officers (out of 3185 listed in the DB) in MA alone who make > $100K [1]. Not too shabby either.

Also, to make $300K at Google you have to be a genius, to make $200K as a State Trooper, no college degree is required, only some seniority and overtime.

[1] http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/03/massachus...

This does not look underpaid at all to me:

http://www.sjpd.org/joinsjpdblue/SalaryBenefits.html

They are well compensated but to not push for better upside more when the investors and founders have a lot of upside seems naive.

Life is expensive if you plan to have children and give them a good start. Being smart about investments is essential to ensure a secure future.

Just because a plumber earns less is irrelevant. Many people in trades go on to apply their knowledge to renovations anyway. Is a plumber more important? Impossible to quantify. Maybe a programmer works on a cad application that helps design a faucet that doesn't leak. The programmer is now indirectly a plumber.

Not sure aniut the low barrier to entry. Take 1000 programmers, how many can be made into decent plumbers in 6 months? Now take 1000 plumbers, how many can be made ibto decent programmers in 6 months? Also, I am nit aware how often tevhnology materials and tooling changes for plumbers (I guess some of these spsn generations), but I am aware that platform I have been working full time for 4 years did not exist 8 years ago, and the language I write my code in did not exist three years ago.

Most programmers would be able to do usual plumbing stuff like connecting the sink or dishwasher to water pipes with almost no prior learning, just by looking how things are done, maybe asking a few basic questions at the plumbing supplies store, and reading the attached instructions. These things are no rocket-science really. Sure, an experienced plumber would do all of these things much faster and probably better, that's why we call them. But the barrier to entry is definitely much lower - that's a no-brainer to me.

While I agree that the barrier to entry is lower, I feel like you may be overestimating the average programmer’s “hands-on” abilities as well as the simplicity of being a plumber. Sure, most programmers have the problem solving skills to get the job done, but when it comes to actually doing it, things are sometimes different. In my own personal experience, only a small percentage of the programmers that I know (myself included) actually know how to turn a wrench, figuratively speaking.

Another example is welding. I know how to weld, but I am not good at it. The only way I would get better is to keep practicing, which I never really have a chance to do since it’s not my day job. This is a slightly more extreme example than plumbing, but a similar concept.

I would consider the usual plumbing stuff to be more along the lines of sweating copper pipes, using lead and oakum to connect cast iron sewage pipes, installing toilet flanges, etc... I feel like connecting a dishwasher is more along the lines of a handy man.

I respectfully disagree. Alot of jobs plumbers do is that kind of easy jobs (just like most software devs are really writing CRUD apps.) Even redoing old plumbing in the house is super simple - soldering copper pipes with all the tools available is very straightforward.

I will say the same about welding. After very little reading i was able to make my own tig welder and even modified it later to weld aluminium (which requires AC vs DC normally, and spark starter)

This all information is readily available on internet if you know how to search for it. And that's what today's software developers are good at - finding quickly solution to something unknown.

Perhaps for simple plumbing jobs (like the ones you mention). However, things are rarely so easy once you start actually working. Like with most things, being skilled at plumbing is being able to handle the edge cases. And trust me, plumbing is not fault tolerant. :)

Exactly - you start setting up, then discover a 100 year old shutoff valve, which then breaks off in your hand, or there's mercury in an old heating system, or water leaks appearing 10m away from the source... In both programming and plumbing there's no substitute for years of experience in learning how to handle uncooperative reality.

Except that in plumbing industry we have artificial barriers in form of licensing. I wonder when time will come for similar barriers in software development.

The barrier to entry in the trades isn't the difficulty of the work. If you trained 1000 programmers for six months, a good number of them would be competent, but none of them would be able to get licensed. Every single one of them would need to work as an apprentice to a licensed plumber as part of the licensing requirements.

On the flip side, all you need to do to get a job programming is an internet connection and the desire to learn it. Anyone can teach themselves and if you can code enough BS on a whiteboard, somebody will hire you.

:-) where are the jokes that plumbing is a hardware problem, not a software one?

But most programmers are basically plumbers (for data as opposed to water/sewage) :)

Not true. Plumbers work reasonable hours, are paid overtime, don't have to deal with ageism, their skills stay relevant regardless of fashion trends, and their jobs will never be offshored.

and their jobs will never be offshored

Don't know about the US, but in much of Europe plumbing has definitely been 'offshored' in the sense that much of the work is done by non-locals brought in short term.

Everyone "learning to code" instead is probably why! If I were giving career advice to any young person now, I would definitely tell them plumbing or a similar trade. As we say in Yorkshire "where there's muck there's brass".

I always thought "where there's brass there's brass".

> Plumbers work reasonable hours, are paid overtime,

Indeed, over here many I talked to refused to do more than 8 hours a day. I didn't understand until... -- ever tried to do a hard physical work several days in a row? How about the entire life?

> don't have to deal with ageism

But have to deal with knee joints and back pains. Don't underestimate the joy of physical work at an advanced age.

> their skills stay relevant regardless of fashion trends

Old ones refuse to service modern equipment, say "I am a plumber, not an electrician". Admittedly, probably because they have got enough pure-plumbing work to do as it is.

A plumber we had in recently said electrical work is boring and it's no wonder electricians are miserable all the time, whereas plumbing is actually fun :-)

As we are sharing anecdotes: A plumber we had here a couple of years ago, changing thermostats on the radiators in the 40+ houses in our small townhouse community, caused serious water damages in 10+ of the houses. As he came by to fix the leaks, it didn't look like he had much fun plumbing..

Not really. Most programmers I know design systems, not just mechanically program them according to the specs. Plumbers do not design - they just execute designs created by plumbing engineers. And plumbing or mechanical engineers are paid much, much higher (in this region where I live probably not as much as programmers, but close enough).

I hope we can both agree that your language's garbage collection is ultimately less important than your toilet's garbage collection.

Hayek's short 'Social' or Distributive Justice [0] neatly shows the disconnection between value and virtue, and that no market system rewards them in lockstep.

And that no such system can function if you try to force it to reward them in lockstep.

[0] Either as a chapter in the second volume of Law, Legislation and Liberty or as a standalone essay in The Essence of Hayek.

Downvoted. Your response did not make much sense to me given the article. The article just states that programmers should understand the intricate details of their compensation and make a balanced judgment (whether to take an offer or not) based on that. (edit) The article does not make a judgment on whether programmers are well compensated or not.

>I think it's mostly supply and demand, timing and where you live. But those are the factors we rarely talk about.

I think those are the exact factors constantly mentioned by the HackerNews community.

The measure of "importance" that results in programmers being paid a lot of money is the ability to do something once and have it benefit millions of people.

I don't think that's true because a) lots of people do that kind of work, in the physical world too, such as the guy who paints lines on the roads, and b) you don't do it once, you do it again and again every time a new JS framework comes out...

I know a water treatment plant worker, two plumbers, and an electrician in the Kansas City area, and they all make as much, if not more than my programming contemporaries. For instance, a friend tried to get me to work at Cerner for ~75-80k (good money in the Midwest), but those plumbers were making that plus some (45 dollars an hour, so in some cases would make more depending on overtime), the Electrician worked for himself and though I don't know his yearly earnings, he was making closer to 60/hr (based on a quote to install a ceiling fan, and since he was a HS buddy, he probably gave me a discount). The wastewater plant worker? He's a manager now making 100k or so, but started out at 60k, not bad for the midwest as well.

I'd not trade my cushy, indoor job for that, mind you, just the idea that trade workers necessarily make peanuts, I believe, is without merit.

> If it were about intelligence, most physicists I know are underpaid and programmers are generally compensated fairly.

Most physicists I know are searching for stuff that already exists, whereas most programmers I know are actually building new stuff.

All programs also exist, in the sense you can program a computer to generate one by one all possible valid x86 instruction sequences. What programmers are doing is searching for one program among them that will solve their problem.

New stuff = this week's rip of another game, Snapchat feature, or productivity app. Yippee.

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