
Results of Joel Spolsky's "What Programmers Want" Survey - brianwillis
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/wp-content/uploads/WPW-Summary.pdf
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casca
One thing that programmers like are decently formatted reports that present
the information in a meaningful and elegant manner.

Sadly this is none of those things.

~~~
phillco
What, you don't love charts and graphs fresh from Excel 95? With text so
crisp, it could have gone through a brand new fax machine?

Edit: Apologies, that wasn't meant to be so snarky.

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fragsworth
It's somewhat unfortunate that there's no breakdown between the different
levels of experience.

That is to say, those with 12+ years of experience probably have very
different views of what is important to them in a workplace than those with
1-2 years of experience. The data for the survey should allow us see this
breakdown, right?

~~~
vitovito
I would not make that assumption.

I held a survey for the Austin design community last year, and the things
people with 10+ years of experience wanted to learn and felt were missing in
the workplaces was not statistically significantly different from everyone
else.

Surprised us.

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nod
Pie charts for comparison?! Here, I made you some bar charts instead:
<http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/wpw/Country>

Thanks to gavinballard for the CSV link.

If you want to see different breakdowns, just download the workbook/software
and play with it yourself.

~~~
perfunctory
<http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/wpw/Experience>

Where do developers disappear after 8 years? And then pop back up after 12.

~~~
jeroen
I think the right question is: what happened 12 years ago?

The answer could be that the bubble burst.

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semisight
I think the most interesting question is not what the "average" programmer
(this study is likely skewed) whats, but what they're willing to do to get it.
That 93% would take a significant cut to work somewhere is better is
staggering to me (although I'd do the same). Money certainly does not buy
happiness.

~~~
nbclark
I'm not surprised by taking a 10% paycut for a better fitting role. I was
surprised that having equity or options in the company was one of the least
important "wants".

~~~
spamizbad
I took the survey and rated equity/options pretty low. My rationale (which may
very well be wrong):

1) Options offerings are typically a fraction of 1%: even for the first
engineer at companies with no technical co-founders. This (I think) is a
carry-over from the dot-com era where IPO exits came hot and heavy. These
days, if you're lucky, you're looking at a low-7 to mid-8 figure exit. And to
become fully vested, you're going to have to stick around for 3-4 years.

2) Even with a big successful exit, you never know if the company will pull a
Skype/Zynga on you.

With that said, I wouldn't scoff at them, I just won't be weighting them
heavily in compensation talks.

~~~
nbclark
Yeah I agree. I would not sacrifice (much) salary for equity, but would
certainly negotiate to have as much equity as I could. Regardless of how it
all shakes out, I would like to think that I am somewhat vested in the
eventual outcome of the company.

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thiele
The lack of interest in "Stock Options/Profit Sharing Program" should be a
sobering reality for business people looking for technical co-
founders/employees.

~~~
amcintyre
I wonder...is it a complete lack of interest, or is it, "I'm not interested in
the tiny amount of equity/sharing I typically get offered?"

~~~
sambeau
The latter leads to the former.

Everyone starts out young and enthusiastic and thinking that they can build
something cool that will make everyone rich. Young, clever guys do what they
think is the hard work: designing and building a cool product. They think that
they are sharing their talent with some lucky money guys and everyone will
benefit. Sadly, they learn that they were giving their talent to the money
guys and the money guys got rich.

I've been bitten four times now. I've never seen a penny from an option. Every
time I've wanted to buy some, the rules have changed and I have to wait
another year and then realise that my options have been diluted again without
my say-so.

So at first I assumed that my options would make me rich. Now I assume that my
options are just an unobtainable carrot dangled in front of me.

~~~
amcintyre
Do you ever ask for salary/bonuses/other "real value" up front instead of
options, and if so, does it get you anywhere?

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larsberg
I found the "would you take a 10% paycut" matched my experience precisely.
Back when I worked at Microsoft on developer tools, I would sometimes get
contacted by people who were in the finance industry with salaries 2-4x what
we could offer, and often transitioning from some nice CTO/Chief Head
Architect title to Software Design Engineer.

But, universally, they were _excited_ for the opportunity to work on real
compilers, tools, etc. and especially to be surrounded by people they could
learn from. I'm would expect the lurking Google hiring managers have
experienced the same thing.

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drcube
This would be a lot better without pie charts.

~~~
klodolph
I was thinking the same thing. Maybe someone will plug the numbers into bar
charts so we can read the damn thing.

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darxius
If an employer were to take anything away from this survey, I'd say it should
be the last question. Way too often have I been interviewed by monotonous and
unorganized people who misrepresent an otherwise great position.

Please. When performing interviews, try and get people who both like what
they're doing and are organized.

~~~
vosper
On the flipside - interviewers at my previous company were excited and
interesting, but misrepresented a monotonous and unorganized [sic] position.

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gavinballard
The raw data is available here: <http://s.tk/wpwraw>

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sambeau
I suspect many managers, if they ever see this report, would only take-away:
programmers don't care about money and stock options.

I know some of my past managers would (and they would use it as an excuse to
justify not upgrading dev machines so often). Unsurprisingly none of them
would ever read it as it isn't in the form of a management guru book.

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philgo20
After reading about Joel Spolsky "What Programmers Want" survey, I thought
it'd be interesting to know how programmers feel about their current employer.

Fill up the 3 questions survey, it really takes 3 minues
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEx6LUN...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dEx6LUNRWHZHWHRBTmxGcEtIM05IeWc6MQ)

Thank you already for taking the time, we'll publish the result on matchFWD
blog at <http://blog.matchfwd.com> as soon as we have significant data.

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vectorjohn
I wish that benefits and perhaps vacation related questions were on here. Next
time I look for a job, a sane amount of vacation is something I am going to
demand, and I think I would sacrifice significant salary to get it.

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alexholehouse
I'm shocked at how many people are in start ups - does that perhaps reflect
the fact that if your a start up you're typically building your own tools from
scratch in areas you're less familiar with, so perhaps need access to experts
you don't have locally (i.e. in your company)?

~~~
ktsmith
The breakdown for start up/small business isn't great. We have less than 25
people but the company has been around for 17 years.

~~~
whostolemyhat
Agreed - both companies I've worked for have been around for 7-8 years and
only have about 10-15 people.

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wisty
"Good management" wasn't on the list?

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ck2
Easy browser viewing
[https://docs.google.com/gview?url=http://blog.stackoverflow....](https://docs.google.com/gview?url=http://blog.stackoverflow.com/wp-
content/uploads/WPW-Summary.pdf)

~~~
AgentConundrum
HN automatically adds a Scribd link to any PDF submission. Why not just use
that?

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ricardobeat
I hate being in the "other" slice. Look at it.

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willvarfar
I like pie-charts, but I wish that those who did not respond were shown as a
missing slice.

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jalopezp
I noticed 49 people currently work for a company whose size is 'other'. What's
this about?

~~~
sambeau
Perhaps, they are currently between jobs or unemployed.

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egillie
Wait, where's "food"?

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mjwalshe
Interesting there is no mention of Pensions

