Hacker News Reader

Comment by corporateslave2 | Hacker News Reader

The real issue is people thinking that they arent valuable enough to make 200k. Most other professional careers reguarly have this level of comp, doctors, lawyers, any job in finance, consulting, higher level management. Yet the value an engineer can provide is high levels of automation, they can build the backbone of a company. If anything, engineers are underpaid. At my current job, I tweeked a major Fortune 50 companies email marketing algorithm, gaining them an extra 1% in marketing engagement, generating easily in the tens of millions in revenue. Any other field would see a massive bonus for that. If anything, we are underpaid.

View on HN

It's true that devs provide massive value to an organization. However, organizations spend less on things that provide more value. For instance, Amazon spends a lot on devs. Imagine that they had to go a year without any devs in any of their offices or warehouses - they'd be hurting pretty badly. Comparatively, Amazon spends next to nothing on oxygen. Yet, I would wager that, if Jeff Bezos was given the choice, he'd much rather run a year without devs than a year without oxygen.

The basic problem is supply and demand. Oxygen provides more value than devs, but the supply is huge, so we don't spend that much on it. Devs aren't as plentiful as oxygen, so there is less supply. They do provide significant value to companies, though not as much as oxygen, so there should be demand. What the op and I are confused by is how, given the fairly copious supply of devs, why are some firms still shelling out 200k? I've seen other organizations paying $40k and having no troubles filling their positions with commensurate levels of talent.

You say that people are underestimating their own value when they work for $40k. I believe that firms are significantly underestimating the supply when they're paying $200k. I'm not sure which of us is correct.

The supply of people who want to be investment bankers is massive.

Saw this first hand at one of the companies I worked at. One developer had built the ENTIRE company backend on his own. A system that every member of staff used on a daily basis to get their work done and that kept the whole $40m+ a year operation going. I'm not 100% sure what he was earning, but I doubt it was more than $80k a year.

Goes to show that creation of wealth and accumulation of wealth are not the same thing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com