
Ask HN: Why are finance managers paid more than software developers? - thrownengg
I work in a famous technology company. Today, one of the finance managers by mistake left her printed salary slip on my desk while passing me some internal documentation&#x2F;policies. I was shocked to find that she earned much more than I do.<p>For context, I am an experienced software engineer, working in a senior position. In fact, the work my fellow S&#x2F;W engineering colleagues and I do make the backbone of my company. If we quit for some reason, the company is fucked.<p>However, this isn&#x27;t just specific to my company - a quick google search returns that this is the case in most companies.<p>I slog my life away working 12 hours almost, while this chick hardly works for 6 hours. Most of the time, she&#x27;s checking her Facebook or changing tracks on Spotify and so forth. I understand the work she does is important, but is it more important than the guys who actually built the product itself?<p>Please help me understand if I&#x27;m missing something, or is it time to jump ship to somewhere else where the gravity of work I do is respected and appropriately compensated.
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amacalac
LOL. Why is a software developer paid more than a teacher. If for teachers
quit for some reason, the schools are fucked.

Context – I'm a software development manager; with 15 years experience as a
software developer

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La1n
>Please help me understand if I'm missing something, or is it time to jump
ship to somewhere else where the gravity of work I do is respected and
appropriately compensated.

Maybe you are not fully understanding the gravity of someone else's job and do
not respect it. If finance workers would all quit for some reason the company
would be fucked too.

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lelabo_42
Another opinion than the others: I'm french and in my country, the position of
software engineer or developper or any technical position in the making of a
software product / services is still a relatively new job.

I am working in a startup and until now we had more non-technical employees
(it changed after a big pivot and big layoff).

We were the one making the product but every other positions did not have any
considerations for us except treating us like weird wizards accepting any
requests.

As their understanding were limited, they usually had more respect for other
job like finance, or sales, without regards for the actual responsabilities of
the employees.

There is a strange cultural bias that do not recognise the capabilities of a
software engineer as more complex than the work of a young salesman.

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elisharobinson
it would be good to take a step back and have a global perspective on this.

If you consider yourself as a product in the market what value would you
ascribe to yourself . And it also depends on the goals you have for yourself.
the demand and supply of the market dictates your value , if what you do is
easy and anyone can replace you or you can be replaced by software , then you
should probably start to retrain and better position your self .

Having said that a company is also made of people and some people know where
the skeletons are buried and how to manage people (which anyone who has tried,
will tell you is non-trivial) these skill are valued separately based on the
organisation size and age/fame .

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yitchelle
Bringing value to the company is more than just the hours you see a person
doing the work.

For example, if you were able to complete your tasks in 50% less time and
spend the rest of the time reading Hackers News, should your salary go down by
50%?

