Comment by josho | Hacker News Reader

Comment by josho | Hacker News Reader

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There are several reasons why software engineers are underpaid compared to their performance. Keep in mind these are generalizations and therefore you will find exceptions to what I outline below.

-Software developers typically aren't comfortable negotiating, nor are we well versed at it. Therefore, we accept job offers for less than we know we are worth and accept raises offered rather than negotiate raises based on our actual performance. -We have no collective bargaining capability, and anyone can enter the field. In Canada engineers have a professional designation, the software industry is typically not a part of that collective. Lawyers have the bar exam to pass before they can practice. These restrictions restrict the labor supply in those industries to ensure higher wages. In our industry anyone can join, even foreigners, or employers can even outsource the labor to another cheaper country. This has the combined effective of raising the labor supply, and reducing our ability to negotiate as a group. -It is difficult to measure the performance from one developer to another. Look at sales as an industry, it is very easy to measure a top performer. If we were better able to demonstrate performance it would be easier for a developer to earn 50% more than his/her peers. Where I live some shops that hire refuse to pay even 10% more for a developer because they are filling head count and treat developers somewhat like a commodity.

The above realization has left me a little jaded. I love this field, but realize that I can earn more selling software than building software.

That's also the beauty of software development—I don't need to have a fancy degree or work ridiculous hours as an associate/intern to get a job in it.

Or given the startup context of this site, I'd phrase it as software development has no Barriers to Entry, which as startups (and yourself) have learned is great for getting into the market, but can be really bad once you establish a foothold and gain experience and realize that competition from new entries into the market severely undercut you on price.

So, for those in the industry we need to find ways to add barriers to entry so that our salaries are protected.

> So, for those in the industry we need to find ways to add barriers to entry so that our salaries are protected.

This argument for professionalization is fundamentally flawed because salaries are not suppressed by an excess of supply. Just look at all the companies who constantly have open headcount. If wage suppression in our industry were caused by an excess of supply, you'd expect there to be lots of unemployed software engineers—but there are barely any. You'd never see firms trying so hard to poach from competitors and agreements like this would be totally unnecessary (nobody bothers to recruit passive candidates if people are queueing up to get hired).

So, this argument for professionalization is completely flawed. Professionalization imposes a price floor but we're dealing with a price ceiling (firms unwilling to pay the higher market rate). In such a scenario, a price floor is completely useless.

Personally, the day somebody demands that I get a certification to be a software developer is the day I quit developing and go put my econ education to use on Wall St. At least in finance there's a pot of gold waiting after all the hoops.

I understand your point, and agree, to an extent.

However, there is value in operating more as a collective. Employees are uniquely disadvantaged when negotiating for salary. Employers have experienced negotiators, they know their salary ranges as well as the industry. While the employee has only the knowledge of perhaps a few of his peers, if that.

A professional organization could aid employees in their negotiations. That would be a nice way to start. I'm not entirely convinced that a 'bar exam' for developers is the right path. But, clearly as this article states we are being taken advantage of. In my experience the problem is larger than SV.

This is why, as bad as this scandal is, I'm thoroughly opposed to 'professionalization,' and unions in software. Keeping the barriers to entry low is our best bet across the industry. As someone mentioned, a few major SV companies is not the whole tech industry. There are software engineers in every sector of the economy, and if it's payscales we are talking about, the Big Banks can match it.

Rather than barriers - create talent tiers, and have professional associations control the tiers and education.

> I don't need to [...] work ridiculous hours

And yet sometimes it's seems the norm to do so anyway, even if there is no apparent reason why they would "need" to do so

If you are really good with programming, I guess the only reasonable thing to do is start a Software firm as a solo practitioner or as a partner with other Software developers.

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