
How much should you pay developers? - brianwillis
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/07/how-much-should-you-pay-developers/
======
hammerdr
Experience = Full Time Work Experience.

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.

~~~
beseku
I think you're showing a fundamental misunderstanding of what working within a
team means. Full time experience interacting with other people and with
stakeholders of the product you are creating is something you're friend won't
have, regardless of how amazing she is with RoR.

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.

~~~
robryan
Then you weigh in favour of those that aren't very good developers but are
good at navigating office politics.

~~~
uniclaude
There is a real difference between being able to work in a team, and "being
good at navigating office politics".

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.

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tednaleid
Title is kind of linkbait. The article talks about how to pay equitably and
transparently compared to co-workers, but doesn't actually say how _much_ you
should pay. No real dollar numbers are discussed other than a range that "top-
notch" C# developers are paid $30k to $200k (and with bonuses and other
compensation, I think the top end is actually low on this).

~~~
artmageddon
$200k is low? I just got a new job paying near $100k and thought I was hitting
the high end of the scale...(C# dev, 6 years full-time exp after university in
NYC). I'm fairly satisfied with the pay but I'm happy to know there's still
room for growth :)

~~~
tednaleid
I'm not saying $200k is a low salary, just that the top end is higher than
$200k.

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 :).

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bcRIPster
Damn! I better start brushing up on my modem whistling skills! I used to
whistle Hayes 300bps and AppleCat 1200bps handshakes in order to lock open
lines when speed dialing. If you timed it right you could 99% of the time
secure the dialup line with the real modem when the remote modem cycled the
line connection.

~~~
andrewstuart
Yes but can you whistle up a GIF file? If you can whistle a GIF image of
yourself into a modem then I name you King Of The Universe.

~~~
Uchikoma
I only can whistle JPGs

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littleidea
tl;dr

"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.

~~~
jquery
Maybe the linkbait title?

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Joakal
Is a top notch C# salary $30,000 in some parts of the world?

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?

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e1ven
What's the algorithm? You list the factors you use to decide, but I'm confused
as to how those combine. How much do you weight Modem Whistling Skills versus
Blog Posts versus years of experience?

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andrewstuart
Anyone who has dedicated enough time to master the lost art of modem whistling
should be able to name their own salary.

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troels
Interesting comment by Tim:

 _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...](http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/07/how-much-should-you-pay-
developers/#comment-59962)

Does anybody have some references for this?

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biot
This is like GM's vision of how much you should pay for a Saturn vehicle:
everyone ends up paying the same amount for the same model and options. That's
a good, fair system if the amount is competetive but I wonder if others
adopting this salary model don't end up like Saturn's pricing -- the biggest
beneficiary of menu pricing is the company.

~~~
lemming
I don't think that's true. What I think is most important about this is that
it tries, at least, to be transparent and fair. In my current company I've
been exposed for the first time to how salaries are chosen, and in many cases
it's almost totally arbitrary, or worse. It's certainly based far less than I
would like (and far less than I expected) on the person's ability to do their
job. The biggest beneficiary of a system as proposed by the OP are people who
are good at their jobs (not friends of the boss, better negotiators, prettier,
etc).

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Uchikoma
I thought the salary matrix on the old joel on software was more insightful -
it showed how the different factors summed up.

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JacobIrwin
San Francisco, USA (from home and office-based work; split)

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

~~~
JacobIrwin
^^ this is the advertisement we posted recently. Our salary range is
40-65k/year to start plus a 5-10k retainer/sign-on. Plus residuals.. plus
equipment... ladada...

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robryan
This all sounds good in theory, I wonder though it someone who is pretty key
to what they are doing had an offer from a competitor they would stick rigidly
to what they say here or would be willing to make exceptions.

~~~
lemming
Right, it would require a lot of discipline in that case - I was wondering how
strictly they stick to it, too. The problem is, if they've intentionally
defined a totally rigid system (for good reasons, IMO) then even a slight
deviation from that undermines the whole thing.

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atomicdog
>Creates public artifacts

>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"?

~~~
middus
I guess they mean that you engage in the SE communities (e.g. SO, Superuser
etc.) or contribute posts to their blogs.

~~~
daemin
Well considering at StackExchange their main focus is the StackExchange set of
sites, community building Q&A. If you didn't participate then you wouldn't be
eating your own dog food and hence would not be as good a developer on the
project. Having developers actively work in the community also helps keep them
more focused on what they are building, and it means there are more people
actually building the ecosystems.

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.

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tomjen3
Enough that they are happy to work for you.

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.

~~~
currywurst
more code != more value. Lots of people can crank out thousands of lines per
week, but someone should be responsible for the system to make sense as a
cohesive whole - and that is usually the job of a software architect ( pretty
unglamourous, I should add ;) ).

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latch
The new default Word theme got lame fast.

