vbtemp

Gigantum (https://docs.gigantum.com/docs --- https://gigantum.com/) is trying to solve this and related problems by making the whole research environment open-access and reproducible (code, data, results.. not just the manuscript).

Not really. If you have a life and meaningful relationships and purpose, this is but a little hack to increase your long term earnings to make that life a bit more comfortable.

It's a market, but I don't think we're at a point yet where we're a commodity that is line replacable. There's no fair running daily auction on standard-issue developer/tech talent. Everyone has backgrounds and specialties that are so unique you can't really make apples-to-apples comparison.

This is good advice.

Also, never let people who pay you tell you what is fair. You only talk about what you think you're worth, and what they are willing to pay -- if there's overlap then great, otherwise no cigar.

And final point to OP of thread

> How can I come up with what is a fair raise?

You search inside your soul and find a number that below which you'll feel bad (resentful/undervalued/cheated/etc) and above which you'll feel good (well-compensated/proud/valued/etc). That is the number you aim for

1. Have you defined your value statement? What qualities you bring to the table, and what you have developed over the previous year that make you more impactful and invaluable at your current company. That is your starting point for discussing a raise.

2. Determine what would make you feel good (i.e., a what salary increase would make you feel short changed and resentful, and what would make you feel good and valued and fairly compensated). Take that number and use that as your baseline.

If what comes in is under that threshold (at which you feel fairly compensated), you can discuss the raise again with the manager and how you feel it doesn't reflect your increased value. If this does not bring your salary to the lower end of your fair-compensation threshold, it's time to look for a new job. Otherwise, unless you're able to not let it bother you too much (I can't do this), resentment builds and it's best to look for an exit.

Good formalization of a value statement

Thank you!

The question was simply what steps should one take (in tech) to become valuable enough to earn a highly-substantial premium in earnings -- to cross the next threshold so to speak -- using approx $250K as a benchmark.

Responses about changing lifestyle, location, or ponderings on the meaning of wealth in our modern age are simply not responses to the question posed.

High COL east-coast city

1. Find a company or startup that desperately needs someone with your skillset ASAP

2. Negotiate hard

3. Have a good reputation

I think this is correct.

It's understandable when it's a physicist or electrical engineer trying to code something up to get something working. What really upsets me is when it's professional software developers who never evolve out of that mindset.

I feel like at the end of the day the trick is to think algebraically -- Your data types and structures are some domain and you define operations over the elements of that domain in such a way that certain properties hold.

I'd warmly encourage you to not make excuses or find reasons from your past to justify current maladaptive behaviors. If you're 18+ and grew up in safety, comfort, and with education you possess all the necessary executive functionality to take hold of what life will deal you.

Certainly not. This was hundreds of years before before the Arab/Muslim conquests. Perhaps they had Semitic roots, but consider Hebrew and Syriac (still spoken in small measure today) -- it would be absurd to call them dialects of one another.

Salary range and the attributes of what a candidate would need to get to be the top of that range.

Appearances of avoiding or deferring that discussion frustrate me immensely, as it seems like the company is trying to compensate with fluff before getting to the facts of it. This is because - at the end of the day - salary is simply the most important thing. It is how you provide for yourself and your family. It is how you build wealth and stability and safety for your life, and nothing else comes close. When my company provides me, via a solid salary, this financial security, I am 200% invested in making its mission successful, whatever the tech stack or other details of the role.

Thanks for sharing this story.

Thanks and appreciation to him as well for his service to his country and to the defeat of tyranny during the second world war.

> most of it is just wiring form fields to databases in new and exciting ways.

I'm so sorry to hear you've had an underwhelming career working on boring projects. There's so much more that's passed you by.

From the article:

> Added Maloney: “There’s a lot of attention on empowering girls. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but males are the ones in crisis in education.”

It's no secret here that there is a crisis of masculinity and of men's role in our society.

There are plenty of men at the top, and plenty in powerful positions. Contemporary social justice movements certainly are aware of that. But what they don't account for is this: most mean are _not_ in positions of power, and a lot are living lives in the shadows of underemployment and partnerlessness.

In this environment men get squeezed at both ends: Painted as suspicious and exploitative when successful, but still shamed and unable to find partners when not successful. When people offer compelling messages that resonate with men - take for example Jordan Peterson's message of living honestly, embracing duty and responsibility, and promoting conscientious habits - it is immediately pilloried as regressive or simply horrible. And we end up back where we started: A relative handful of successful men that made it "over the hump", and the rest who live in society's margins with little interest or regard by broader society and increasingly distanced from wealth, mates, and family. There will be fallout still for generations to come.

I'm glad it mentions H-1Bs.

Similarly to identity-conservatives, for whom belief in global warming is heresy and tax cuts are gospel, I believe there is a similar phenomenon with identity-progressives around immigration, in this case specifically the H-1B program. There seems to be some belief in its sacred power that is not to be questioned and not to be curtailed.

As I see it, big businesses - not least the major tech companies - are loaded with incredibly bright, incredibly well-compensated staff. These companies can figure out solutions to the toughest scientific and technical problems, can create new markets when regulations shift, and change the world. They sure as sh*t will figure out how to adapt if immigration policies change and the H-1B program is reduced. As it stands right now, to me it seems - by and large - a handout for companies to get mid-range IT talent enslaved to them for a fractional price of what they'd pay an American.

FYI this comment has been quoted by The Atlantic... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/03/uber/...

Thanks for this comment, incredibly well put.

With the sole exception of item (3) in that list (pertaining to dynamic allocation), which others carry a cost?

Why not just call it "Rules for Writing Code"?

Who would ever, for example, consider checking the return value of some function but then think "ah, this isn't safety critical, I'm just skip writing a quick _if_ statement and then leave this as a place that mysterious bugs can arise"? Same thing with assertions.

> Git is, like many professional tools, something you simply got to learn.

Nailed it.

This kind of thing triggers my crazy buttons: What kind of person goes into debt to get a PhD and then becomes a postdoc?

Why not just leave off with a masters or BS and go off to get a great paying job and do actual work with a livable lifestyle?

Yes, but this is also a false dichotomy. In my experience doing something the "right" way is generally no overhead over doing it the "quick" way. Adding a check, or a log message, or making sure you're using consistent styling, or an assertion before/after some kind of operation... these things don't add time or complication to something

I used to spend the vast amount of my time debugging.

Fast forward a few years - Experience, good programming habits, and the gratuitous use of assertions. Now I spend a negligible amount of time debugging, and it never ceases to amaze me how frequently things just work the first time.

Edit: I guess I want to say that there is one, and only one, bottom line: the relentless, ruthless pursuit of quality. It takes time to develop the good habits and watch for the pitfalls, but once you're there you develop your software products in a quarter as much time, with one tenth the stress, and everyone on your team feels proud of themselves and each other. Then with your free time you can focus on what's really important - your business and your life

Beautiful comment

The funny thing is, writing good code takes no longer than writing crappy code. For anything non-trivial, writing good code takes less effort, less time, minimizes aggravation, and saves you so much more time to work on other things that are important.

People have always struck me as masochistic when it comes to this. I think people write crappy software because they've become so habituated into acting "busy" that writing crappy code is just the thing into tricking them into feeling like they're doing what they ought to do (instead of just doing it right the first time, and going at a relaxed pace)

> One of the important lessons you need to learn is that code is a liability not an asset

I cannot upvote this enough.

Quite honestly, it creates a class of "tokens". They nominally have jobs, but their real job (for the sake of the company being awarded the contract) is to simply be a token. Certain minorities count for more than others.

> "fill as many seats with bodies as you can, win the contract, and charge by the hour"

THIS MAN knows what he's talking about. I wish more people would be aware of this.

What's even more perverse? When contracts are awarded based on the above while factoring in "diversity points" - different minorities count for different numbers of points. I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out what perversity follows.