How much should you pay developers?
blog.stackoverflow.com
blog.stackoverflow.com
That's the only measure that they accept (and this is a formula dammit! We cannot go against that!).
This seems to me to be a complete lack of understanding about what makes a good programmer (Assumption: We pay people according to merit.). I have a friend who was in another industry for several years. She taught herself Ruby and Rails and became very, very good at doing so. It was all done as a personal project. She never was fully employed as a "Full Time Developer" until last year. At the point of her being hired last year, she could write web applications better than most seasoned programmers.
Yes, yes. Anecdote does not make data. But they are proposing that they have come up with The Algorithm with How to Pay Programmers. If that was true, then they could handle this situation. Instead, they would have to come up with a 'special exception' for this particular person and compensate them correctly.
If you get down to every little hole I could poke in this algorithm, you'd find out that almost everyone has a special circumstance and that throwing them into an inhuman algorithmic compensation experiment is Wrong(tm). Instead, you need people that can understand the nuances of Jim, Joe and Sally's situation and can do their best to serve their interests as well as the company's interests.
I'm not saying that the status quo is great, but this 'perfect solution' is anything but.
I agree with your sentiment and they certainly shouldn't present themselves as having 10+ years experience. But similarly, people doing the hiring need to consider this. I'd much rather have that 22 year old with passion who's been programming since he was 12, than the 25 year old who has been programming since he learned in his junior year of university that he could make good money changing from Art History to MIS.
Being a developer is as much about being able to write code as being able to identify the best solutions to problems within the particular domain. This ability can only come through working as a developer and dealing with these situations first hand.
Put another way, I've been called very rude names by very famous musicians and being able to deal with that and continue working with these people was a massive learning experience to me.
When you want some software shipped, you don't only need good programmers, you need good programmers that can work together, and fulltime experience helps with this. That said, I do not think fulltime employment is the only way to get this subset of abilities.
A 'good developer' is someone who can speak to his team, his bosses and if exposed, the stakeholders, to identify the problem and be able to identify any potential hurdles or roadblocks that may pop up. All of this is learning to be a good communicator, (not politician), learning that your tools have limitations and learning how to manage peoples expectations and understand that what they ask for isn't what they actually want.
For what its worth, your post is an oxymoron - you can't be a 'good developer' without the above. You might be able to code but you aren't a developer.
Granted, I zeroed in on the experience point because it particularly boiled my blood and you responded directly to that hang up I had. However, my larger, more nuanced view of why this algorithm is bad definitely agrees with your point :)
So that means he's in the 1-5 years bucket automatically? Sorry, but I don't think so, since he can run circles around most 20+ experience people.
There's just no comparison between people like that who do programming in their spare time since they were a kid and people who just started programming in college and only did it for school or their jobs. It's absurd to rank them the same.
You're not anywhere near the top end of the scale, but it's a relatively normally distributed curve and you're probably starting to move down the downslope of the right side of it :).
"We have a system for evaluating devs, and pay people more for living in NY."
The article has a bunch of words, but doesn't actually say anything about how much you should pay developers. Not sure why there are upvotes.
Well, frankly after reading it I still have no idea how much pay it is for someone that's all B or all AAA+++. Do they use the checklist or an algorithm?
What is SE's starting salary at least?
Every employees salaries are completely public. In addition to this, employees set their own salary. This has been shown to have three effects: 1. People tend to actually value themselves lower than they might otherwise outside. 2. General happiness is higher. 3. People who are earning too much feel guilty, and either work harder or don’t raise their salaries. They’re also expected to perform at that level. If someone sets their salary 5k higher than the guy next to them who churns out the same amount of code but has 1/3rd the defects (and that were the only difference), then questions would be asked.
--- http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/07/how-much-should-you-pa...
Does anybody have some references for this?
We are looking for a lead developer that has 3-5 years of experience creating mobile/tablet applications for the following three platforms: Android (mobile), iOS (iPhone), and iOS (iPad). Knowledge of recently upgraded “versioning” requirements is essential to this position. Coding/programming experience on Android (tablet) and Blackberry is a plus (but not required).
This position will be compensated for generously and the chosen candidate will have the opportunity to lead a team of developers as we continue to scale; this is a salary plus residual-commission paying position. We have a global footprint in the market of custom app development and accordingly the position may grow to encompass development of mobile & tablet apps for customers on several continents.
http://www.thecreativeappco.com/
For consideration, please send three (or more) examples (preferably names of apps already published in the marketplace; apps available for us to download and preview), a resume (or school/work history), and any other relevant anecdotes to:
Jacob@thecreativeappco.com
>Blog posts, open source tools, books
So if I worked at SO and I didn't have a blog, hence presumably scoring a 'F', they'd be having a "stern talk with me"?
Having your own blogs, podcasts, and other public artefacts also helps since it would help build an audience and get the word out to more people about the SE sites. Also don't forget that SE is a startup with VC backing, therefore if the developers don't help in spreading the word the company could fold.
And not the way frog creek does. You architec should be paid less than the programmers since they contribute the value, no programmer should have to be promoted to a role of writing less code.
Oh and I had side jobs in college. Yes, they count as years of experience, since that is a bullshit measure.