
How to pay programmers less - hardwaresofton
http://www.yegor256.com/2016/12/06/how-to-pay-programmers-less.html
======
hardwaresofton
Not the creator of the content, but thought this was something people needed
to at least see. Irrespective of how well this blog was written or how many of
your own personal views (or mine) were reflected, I think this kind of post is
something at least people need to lay eyes on.

If you haven't thought about these things yet, you don't have the right
friends (at work), or haven't thought enough about your job, the company, the
ecosystem, how businesses and the economy at large work, and your place in it
all. It's totally fine not to think about those things, if you choose, but at
least make sure it's a conscious choice.

Not trying to sound condescending, not thinking about those things is a
natural state that everyone has been in -- just trying to help illuminate for
those that "don't know what they don't know" \-- you may see this and think
"so what, I'm happy with my current pay and lifestyle, it's fine" and that's
totally fine! I'm just trying to reach those who may not even know these
things are in play.

All that said, being a programmer in this day and age is one of possibly the
freest, most open, most rewarding, and well paying jobs.

~~~
kul_
I feel like the article is more of a satire than practical.

~~~
hardwaresofton
There's definitely a satirical tone, but this kind of satire isn't very funny
until you're fully aware that these things happen.

I'm sure most people are familiar with the wage fixing scandal in the bay,
which is covered here under the "Make a deal with competitors"

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CM30
Forgot to mention 'give them internships and then have them do the work of a
full time employee'.

That seems to be a common 'trick' by sleazous companies as well. Internships
seem to be much more about saving money than actually teaching anyone
anything.

In the UK/EU, there's also the 'hire employers from poorer parts of the
continent' thing. Yeah, I know, probably not politically correct to say that,
but I've definitely seen companies offering far lower than market rate wages
for programming, and then filling vacancies with people from areas where that
is seen as 'normal' (plus those who are massively inexperienced/don't look
around much).

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pascalxus
In theory, every business will try to extract as much value from every
employee as possible for the least amount of cost. This makes sense and is how
capitalism works.

However, in bay area software companies, I see that most companies would
rather extract more value from every employee, rather than cut employee costs
by not paying higher salaries. When negotiating for a salary, for example, if
you overbid too aggressively for your salary, often the result is that the
company wants you even more, especially if you have a recruiter with a fat
commission at stake! This isn't too surprising, considering that they're
located in the bay area (as opposed to somewhere half the labor cost - like
Austin). I know it's not possible for every business model, but If companies
were serious about cutting costs, they'd start moving to cheaper areas in the
US or even start outsourcing more to India and China ~ with considerable
savings. Bay area companies, usually prioritize growth, above cutting costs,
though this could change in the future as industries mature.

------
tn13
Excellent post. Here are some personal experiences:

1\. Keep salaries secret. I like this part. I do not like socialist way of
deciding salaries. I worked at a place where salaries were open and left
within a year.

2\. Give raises randomly

Know several employers and CEO who do this as a policy. It is mostly like
'yeah lets give them $200 monthly raise' by making it sound like a big deal
and then make them work on Christmas to recover it

3\. No conferences

Make fun of conferences before your employees. Tell them only bozos go to such
idiotic nerdy places. We are cool guys we don't go there. I know several
companies that work hard to deny their employees any networking opportunity.

4\. Spy on them.

Not aware.

5\. Make a deal with competitors

Dont know.

6\. Promote corporate values

I fell prey to this once. Not again. But the author has ignored trashtalking
others. Saying things like "only morons work for google", "facebook is in
death spiral".

7\. Help them survive

Correct. Innumerable examples of how employers use this techniq. This is most
common when the employee is H1B. He/she feels indebted for getting the visa.

If the employer does not have 401K plan that employer is not worth working for
more than 2 years.

~~~
DrScump
Blatantly illegal, in the USA, anyway. Adobe, Apple, Google, and Intel already
tried.

[http://time.com/76655/google-apple-settle-wage-fixing-
lawsui...](http://time.com/76655/google-apple-settle-wage-fixing-lawsuit/)

~~~
tn13
Again, being illegal has not stopped Apple and Google from doing it. Remember
tech industry is lot more people friendly than say aviation or biotech. Who
knows how many other companies have engaged in this sort of predatory policies
and government has not yet figured it out ?

Illegal is what government thinks people should not do, people do it all the
time however.

~~~
DrScump
Some things are illegal because law is the only protection against abuse by
employers. Like this.

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devoply
> Make a deal with competitors. Contact your major competitors in the region
> and agree to not head-hunt their programmers if they don't touch yours. If
> they reject this deal, try to recruit a few of their key engineers. Just
> offer to double their salaries. You won't really hire them, of course, but
> this move will definitely shake your local market, and competitors will be
> afraid of you. They will agree to never touch your slaves developers.

illegal.

~~~
Hydraulix989
Steve Jobs did it anyways

EDIT: Why the downvotes? This above is demonstrably factual, and it doesn't
necessarily imply that I _think_ that it should be legal nor that I think it
was right for him to do it.

~~~
devoply
Just because a criminal commits a crime and gets away with it, and they still
had to pay millions in settlement, does not mean that it's any less legal to
do it. If you are not Apple, Google, et. al. that can afford millions of
dollars in penalties, then I suggest you don't break the law. The 4 tech
giants paid 345 million in fines for this.

~~~
Hydraulix989
At the time, I'm sure that the math worked out for each party involved though
-- $80M per company sounds a lot less than the cost of losing crucial staff
members to poaching, that's actually less than the cost of most of their real
acquisitions (remember, there is lost knowledge, mindshare, and costs
associated with re-hiring and training -- I've heard that it costs upwards of
$100k to hire a single engineer at a big company, and then it can take up to a
year for them to ramp up depending on the scope of the project that they're
working on), AND there's a HUGE cost if you have to pay every single engineer
a substantially higher salary.

You can't just slot in a new replacement body like changing a tire and then
immediately start driving away full throttle whenever you lose a key engineer.
Our jobs are so nuanced, and there's a ton of arcane internal knowledge that
each person has that took a ton of time to build up and wasn't ever documented
(a lot of the most valuable IP doesn't ever leave peoples' heads).

Not to mention, there are specialized "your company only" skills and human
relationships that people develop that are only applicable to YOUR company
that also took a lot of time and experience to build up. This is why I
actually think it is worthwhile for HR to always give a counter-offer whenever
an engineer decides to leave.

Plus, they thought they could get away with it.

On a parting note, calling Steve Jobs a criminal is certainly a debatable
accusation 'round these parts.

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Hydraulix989
Best way is to manipulate the supply side. Now you know why Zuckerberg wants
everyone to learn how to code (it wasn't actually because of their supposedly
"humanitarian" spin).

You can also go the remote work route (not sure why this is so shunned --
NOPE, I forgot; you can't do real engineering work unless you pay $3k/month
rent to live in San Francisco and cram into a noisy constantly-distracting
SoMa open office that smells like bum dung).

------
manish_gill
> Keep Salaries Secret

This is something that's actually an offense that can get you fired at my
company. Their justification is "to reduce gossip".

~~~
emagdnim2100
To simplify a bit, if your company is based in the U.S. and subject to
National Labor Relations Board jurisdiction, this is illegal. Knowledge of
this is a nice tool to have in your back pocket while dealing with management
and HR.

(Further information on whether your company is covered:
[https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/jurisdictional-
standa...](https://www.nlrb.gov/rights-we-protect/jurisdictional-standards))

~~~
manish_gill
Not in the US unfortunately. Don't know enough about labour laws in my country
but I doubt there's gonna be something in there.

~~~
hardwaresofton
You can use sites like Glassdoor to get around this (I'm not affiliated with
them in any way). Or start your own glassdoor, more as a public service (even
if you don't make money from it) -- let people post their company and salary,
so others can see.

Glassdoor is a site that lets you view reported salaries from different
companies. They're doing lots of things now, but that was the original value
prop for that site, IIRC.

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Raphmedia
Ha! So that's the guide the managers at my previous workplace were following!
Explains a lot. ... I did say _previous_ workplace.

------
k__
lol, satire at its best, I saw all these things in my career.

> Keep salaries secret.

This is standard procedure and doesn't work. Sure some of the really highly
paid people will keep their mouths shut, but the rest will talk.

> Spy on them.

Doesn't need to be IT spying, a "You have to be in office with us, so we can
work more productive!" is enough distrust for me to "not" join a company
nowadays.

> Make a deal with competitors.

Not just a problem of big corp employees. Often the CEOs of the tech companies
of the same size in one city know each. My girlfriend works as a marketer for
an agency and they got a big consulting gig with new tech, from a startup,
they should set up for a big corp. Now she became a pro in that tech, but she
can't apply to the startup, because the CEO of her agency is "biggest friend"
with the CEO of the startup.

> Promote corporate values.

I worked for a company for about 5 years. They tanked and got buyed by an
investor. He replaced the management completely with some generic corporate
guys. Then these guys ran around preaching our new culture and corporate
values as if they have always been there. It felt kinda 1984'ish. I mean I
worked there more than half of the time the company even existed, they just
got there and tried to tell me how things are running there. Well then I quit,
lol.

> Stress them

Luckily I only stress myself and am quite chill about other peoples problems.

> Cushion chairs and tennis tables

I was at a few meetups in my city, which were in the offices of startups. They
are quite stereotypical. Big open offices, ping-pong-tables, etc. I always
have to think about these images of the industrial age, where hundrets of
women had to sew clothes in big industry halls. The idea to work there is
quite scary to me.

> Give them sound titles.

Yes, they throw these titels around without any questions asked. Beside the
C-level stuff you can be anything. And if you play your cards well and the
company gets big it could be that your "dumb titel" gets you a nice place
somewhere.

> Help them survive.

This doesn't work too good. Only with very awkward programmers, I think. The
problem with most programmers is, they get mad money, often even if underpaid,
and live quite frugal. In 2 years I saved enough money to stop working for 1
year, so I only used ~50% of the money I got. Also the unemployment help in
our country is 60% of your last income and is paid for 12 months (9 if you
quit yourself). So if you can create software, you're pretty free to change to
a different employer quite quickly.

> Be a friend.

This often doesn't work well with me. I live a rather deviant life, most
people don't know what to make of it. They start to go on a personal level,
but are overwhelmed by what I'm doing or I don't even respond to their
connection attempts, because of my negative experiences in the past.

------
wampler
Duplicate?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13116991](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13116991)

~~~
hardwaresofton
Just a note -- HN usually does a pretty decent job of catching
reposts/duplicates when you submit the story... I've tried to submit stuff
sometimes and been notified that it's been posted already.

