Comment by michaelochurch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by michaelochurch | Hacker News Reader

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More correct.

It really bugs me that software engineers claim that they're "overpaid" at $120k. Now, $120k isn't poor by any stretch of the imagination, not even in New York or San Francisco. For a talented entry-level programmer, it's about fair. We're not exactly Mr. Moneybags, though. We work a lot harder than most people in technology, and while some of us get a decent payout (those who are decent negotiators) there are many who are terrible at representing their interests, and they bring the whole market down.

We have a tendency to negotiate against ourselves and it hurts us. Right now, we're still able to get fair-ish salaries in a booming market, but we (as a tribe) get so little in terms of equity, cultural control, autonomy, and general respect, compared to what we could. Many programmers still have to deal with "user stories" and "Scrum tickets" when they have 5+ years of experience! That's fucking nuts. This is supposed to be an R&D job in which we advance the state of human knowledge, technology, automation and processes.

That doesn't just hurt us. It hurts society because a bunch of self-promoting charlatans come in, get those VC bucks, and make Snapchats and Clinkles when we could be doing so much more.

Sometimes when my current project isn't doing well I have dark days where I explore my backup plan.

Thinking about which niche to master and what content marketing to do to pull in $200 an hour, kicking myself for missed opportunities, wishing I'd done things differently so I wouldn't be faced with such an unsavoury prospect as working for someone else...

And then I pinch myself. Because you know what? We have it fucking easy. Other people do real work for a living and make a tenth as much as the potential of most here, and that's just in the same country.

You can't have it both ways. We are overpaid by the same free market that you do hastily criticise, for exactly the same reason our managers and VCs are. You want to complain about them? Then complain about us. We aren't special snowflakes fighting for truth and honour, we are tradesmen settling our services for as much cash as we can get away with. And business is booming.

I like your posts, mainly because nobody else here is really supplying the same viewport, but your tendency to rationalise away an us and them attitude is a bit disturbing to me, like you're arguing from self interest rather than consistent philosophy.

"We aren't special snowflakes fighting for truth and honour, we are tradesmen settling our services for as much cash as we can get away with"

That seems to align pretty closely with what michaelochurch is saying--except he's saying that we're settling for less than we could get away with. The thrust of his argument is that we shouldn't sell ourselves short. We should stand up for ourselves, recognize the value our work creates, and negotiate accordingly for a bigger share of the rewards. He's pointing out a cultural problem with software developers, who accept lower pay and poorer working conditions than we otherwise would because we are "passionate" about our work and lack the social skills and confidence to stick up for our own best interests.

Calling ourselves "overpaid nerds" (even jokingly) doesn't align with that goal at all.

There are programmers that negotiate exactly for the value that their work creates. They own their own business, or they're contractors (which basically amounts to owning your own business). Pick the right industry, have decent communication skills and a track record of delivering projects on time, and you can easily make a half mil a year or so.

When you take an employee position for a quarter of that, a large portion of what you're doing is reapportioning risk. Your employer gets to keep all the surplus value of the work you do - and in exchange, they bear all the risk if the product fails entirely, as many software projects do.

You're right that consultants and contractors earn more money because they assume more risk. I don't think that contradicts anything I said though. I think a lot of FTE programmers earn less than they could earn (still as FTEs), purely for lack of negotiating skills.

I don't get your point.

So, because software developers make a decent living means they should just be happy with that, even though it doesn't compare to the value that they actually create?

It's illuminating to look at salaries for other workers in high cost regions such as silicon valley or San Francisco.

http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/rankings/the-100-b...

In San Francisco, the median salary of a software developer working in San Francisco is $114,400. ("average" here is median according to BLS data). It's considerably higher in San Jose apparently, at $131,270k a year.

By contrast, the median salary for a dental hygienist in San Francisco is $112,970 a year.

http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/dental-hygienist/s...

For registered nurses in SF, it's $127,670

I'm glad that dental hygienists and registered nurses are paid well, but why would programmers, supposedly in such desperately short supply that the US president needs to do press appearances with tech CEOs to help recruit more people into the field, need to pinch themselves for earning roughly the same salary as a dental hygienist?

On the bright side, if that dental hygienist and software developer get married and have kids, and the programmer manages not to be a casualty of age discrimination, they can probably afford a house as long as they both continue to work full time. They will need to deal with the roughly $20,000K+ costs of child care, though, if they take this route.

Great point. Also -- at least at the hospital I'm familiar with in SF -- those registered nurses work 36 hours a week (three 12-hour shifts a week).

It's hard to see how being an RN isn't a better job than being a software developer in SF...

My guess is that being a nurse is a fairly tough job. Nurses are well respected and (at least in SF) paid well, as they should be.

I can see reasons why people would want to be nurses or dental hygienists rather than developers, and vice-versa. if you consider pay, training, the possibility of age-related discrimination, career stability, the ability to scale back for a while while you have kids without compromising your ability to get back into the field later… all in all, I think that the decision to avoid software development in favor of other career paths is a very rational one.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying it's necessarily irrational to go into software development, at all. It can be the right choice for some people. I just don't think the case for software development as a career compared to other options available[1] to high talent, academically inclined people is anywhere near compelling enough to be talking about a "shortage" of software developers.

[1] the right to live and work in the US at the time you are making your career decisions is a major factor in what options you have available, of course.

I sympathize very strongly with this position, but I think there is another way to look at it that's at least worth considering.

Think of it as advocating for all work to be paid more. Those people doing "real work for a living" should be being paid enough to live comfortably.

Workers don't actually owe financial sacrifice to the machine because they feel bad about other workers that get paid less. The politics of your loyalty is somewhat misplaced: out of loyalty to other workers, you want the corporate structure to benefit?

Money paid as salary to employees goes towards useful things like housing and childhood education and food. All across the board.

Or, to put it more delicately: suck as much money from the greedy bastards as you can. They're trying to do the same to you anyway.

I suppose that's exactly the 'us vs them' mentality you're worried about, but for the most part programmers aren't real money. Yeah, you might find it easy to buy a house or two, but real money has a million as the lowest denomination bill.

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