

You're crap and paid too much for the little work you actually do - sbmassey
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/21/how_to_get_paid_more/
A recruiter's guide on how to get mo' money...
======
patio11
I wish I had written this. If the humor/cynicism gets to you please power
through and look at the _actionable tips which will earn you more money_.

There is approximately no-one on HN, not even at the best managed firms with
the least BS imaginable, who would not experience positive ROI from "Congrats
guys, we just shipped X, let's have a celebratory dinner at $FAVORITE and I'm
buying." That idea is _freaking genius_. It gets you instant political capital
and will make sure decisionmakers actually remember X the next time it rolls
around because they'll have a hundred projects to worry about but only one or
two which were so important they had celebratory dinners at completion.

~~~
skrebbel
Come on, seriously. A team of 20 ships a product and some junior engineer buys
everybody a dinner out, incl all the bosses and their bosses?

Yeah, OK, that's one way of making all your peers feel really awkward and
uncomfortable. And wondering what the little suckup is up to.

~~~
marvin
Wow. I didn't realize there is actually _peer pressure_ in IT companies not to
use knowledge of social relationships and human nature for your own benefit.
In my opinion, the general unwillingness of computer workers to stand up for
their own rights and interests is keeping our entire profession back from
getting the money and respect it deserves. If we _actively_ sabotage efforts
of people who are trying to improve things, I don't see that there is much
hope. Being nerds does not have to imply being clueless nerds.

~~~
ticks
A lot of IT people just want an easy life - doing what they [used to] love,
and gradually progress up the chain based on their skills and experience.
People who take short-cuts like this probably don't care about the work, their
focus is manipulating their way up the organisation.

~~~
SatvikBeri
In my experience this isn't really true. People are perfectly capable of being
ambitious, enjoying their work, and wanting to make a big impact. And there's
definitely a positive correlation between social skills and impact.

------
jrockway
This is sarcasm, right? All of these things are clear warnings that it's time
to flee that company for your life.

You get paid what you get paid because someone else is willing to pay you
more. The market is competitive and you're being hired by your peers, who
recognize the value of "making the backup 50% faster".

If you wear a tie and are trying to become a Managing Director at Merrill
Lynch, then yes, you need to play this bullshit game. But in that case, you're
not getting a "pay rise" for your value to the engineering organization,
you're getting paid for your ability to keep the status quo alive and well.

~~~
dingfeng_quek
No. This is non-fiction in finance. "Dominic Connor is a City headhunter at QF
Search with a sideline in teaching C++ to bankers", he's also a well-known and
respectable enough online personality.

Such evidence also provides a basis for many explanations (appealing to the
financial products being to complex) of the 2008 global financial crisis.

I've once played with the idea of a career in quantitative finance, but
subsequently fled for my life. Yet, attesting to the wonders of biodiversity,
many kinds of life have evolved to thrive in the harshest of conditions.

~~~
pja
Oh, it's Dominic. The first person I didn't already know to follow me on G+.
He's dedicated to his chosen profession, I'll give him that.

------
billybob
I'm not huge on the cynicism, but there are solid points here that I wanted to
remember. Here's my less-cynical spin in a motivational-speaker style
condensation: Show, Celebrate, Support.

Show: make sure the awesome stuff you do is visible to people, and prioritize
stuff that will be visible.

Celebrate: do something visible to celebrate your successes and your team's.
It makes people feel good and reinforces a sense of progress and success. Buy
a round at the pub, bring in a cake, whatever.

Support: publicly support and thank others: other devs, business people, etc.
Find nice things to say.

All of these really fall under "be nice and encourage people", and may have
the side benefit of getting you paid more.

That's not too hard to swallow, is it?

~~~
kpennell
I like this TLDR much better than the article!

------
mopoke
Bear in mind that this from The Register whose audience is much more skewed
towards those working in large corporates, BOFHs and PFYs than the typical
audience here.

For me the key sentence to the whole article is "Your boss has no idea if
you’re good at your job." Why do we do such a bad job of developing people who
are good managers/leaders AND understand technology? There seems to be this
idea that IT folks are "special" and don't understand business and, because
it's always been that way, there's no need to change. If you work for a
business, it's not OK to be a not have a clue how a business works.

~~~
parfe
_> Why do we do such a bad job of developing people who are good
managers/leaders AND understand technology?_

From my experience I think the issue stems for looking at management as the
next rung on a ladder. A good developer might never gain or want the
experience needed to make her a good manager. A manager might never learn what
it takes to be a developer. But the idea of moving up to management ignores
the real issue.

Management relates to handling people and handling projects. If you can't deal
with people enough to understand how they fit into your project you manage
poorly. If you can't manage a project well enough to use the people you have,
then you manage poorly.

The skills to manage, and the skills to be a
developer/engineer/designer/widgeteer seem, to me, orthogonal. I could write
code for ten more years and never learn a thing about management.

The best run tech project I ever worked on involved a PM who could still
remember the Great Depression. She had the ability to ask the right questions
and had a clear picture of how to move the project forward. The worst managed
projects came from the PM who used to code.

~~~
mopoke
But there's no reason a good developer can't be a good manager. They may not
have the skills in their current role, but everyone should be able to acquire
those skills.

I see no problem with developers becoming managers in theory. But something
goes wrong in that transition. Management skills are just like learning any
other skill. Skill-learning is something that developers (or the good ones)
typically excel at. So why can't developers learn management skills?

~~~
crasshopper
I agree with you that any developer who is curious about the larger reasons
their paycheck arrives in the mail can & should learn how their business
works.

But so many management skills -- empathy, listening, communicating
clearly/fairly, inspiring people, making people feel valued -- are orthogonal
to programming knowledge/skill.

~~~
mopoke
Do you think? I'm not sure. Speaking as a developer who is now a manager,
they're certainly not skills that came naturally but I think I have learned
them and practice them fairly well.

Maybe I'll never be the natural that some people are but, with hard work and
forcing myself out of my comfort zone, I am doing a good enough job.

~~~
jameshart
"orthogonal" just means "uncorrelated" - not "inversely correlated". Your OP
isn't saying those skills are automatically absent in people who code, but
rather that ability to code has no bearing on your ability to manage - and
vice versa.

Not saying I agree with the OP on that front.

------
itmag
I found this article very enlightening, in an odd way. I've committed several
of the errors mentioned in it (out of blithe naiveté, I might add). Very
interesting take on Machiavellian job hacking, this.

Personally, I would rather be myself always. Even if I could speed up my
career by X% using methods like this, it would still take years upon years to
get where I want to be, and by that time my soul would be a burnt out husk.

If you have the intelligence, patience and willpower to put on a mask for that
long, I would think that doing a startup is a saner and more enjoyable pursuit
in any case.

~~~
drucken
I would agree with every word you said, except failure rates on startups are
very high (much higher than 50%).

So, there is already a large opportunity cost due to the flat time and effort
invested plus loss of corporate experience which has the many significant side
effects such as skill, social/business contact and guaranteed compensation
accrual.

------
ttt_
I hope this is some kind of joke that I just didn't get, but otherwise:

This is just a guide for you to be hipocritical and a complete jackass to your
coworkers while throwing out any values you have out the window. That's the
kind of atitude that ruins the workplace for everyone, congrats on getting
more money and also an even shittier job than before.

I know plenty of people that are willing to act like this in order to get more
money and they have no respect from me. Grow up and start trying to make yours
and everyone else's life better not shittier. Please.

I rather take my work seriously, constructively criticize bullshit company
police, and make less money if that's what it takes. At least I won't regret
being myself.

~~~
lani
err.. the visibility thing's all too real. just happened to me last week.
project is nine months old. was an orphan until 1 month ago manager(s) 2
levels up asked about it. now ? daily updates. and i work at a well known co.

------
theoj
Depends where you get hired. This article seems to deal with getting hired at
a company whose main line of business is not technology (say finance, which
Dominic seems to recruit for). In that case, your employer will not care about
your beautiful C++ code or super-efficient way to do X -- unless you can tie
it back to the company's main line of business and making money for the firm.
An internal squabble about the more correct way to do X will mean nothing to
the non-technical upper management in a non-tech firm. Non-tech firms don't
care about technology for the sake of technology because they don't sell
technology -- the firm has other priorities and IT is just a side show to help
get the firm's mission done.

------
SatvikBeri
You can also just communicate the benefits of your work to people. This works
especially well if you do it beforehand...eg with the backup process, tell
your boss that it saves X hours/month, and include that in your performance
review (you should _always_ be writing your own performance reviews, by the
way). There's no need to restrict yourself to tasks with visible, obvious
value...you just need to take on the work of communicating what it is you
contribute.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Well, honestly, for many of the work environments the author refers to, which
may not be ones you are I would want to work, the author is correct. The CEO
of XYZ corp doesn't care and is not interested in your explanation about how
optimizing the thermocouplers makes things better. Even if you tried to relate
to how it does save the company, he won't think you know what you're talking
about. This is more about playing a psychological, even childish, game with
your boss. And I suspect, in fact I'm completely sure, that in these kinds of
companies, this is probably the advice you can get. These are the kinds of
CEOs for which you could just explain until you're blue in the face about how
important backups are for customers and they will stare blankly and wonder why
they hired you in the first place.

~~~
jrockway
Why work for a CEO that "doesn't care and is not interesting in your
explanation about how optimizing the termocouplers makes thing better"? There
are plenty of companies run by people that do understand the low-level details
that make their businesses successful. Work there instead.

Remember, they need you more than you need them. They already admitted that
they don't understand their own business!

~~~
dinkumthinkum
I agree, which is why I wouldn't work there. But that is the reality many face
in our industry. Not everybody works at a hip startup. Many work at those
"enterprise" places.

------
ChristianMarks
This article pertains mostly to large, sclerotic firms with a pronounced suit-
geek divide, somewhat like the blood-brain barrier. But it also exists in IT
in higher ed as well. I suppose anyone with a modicum of professional pride
would not want to work at a firm where the executives believe that managing IT
is like herding cats--unless they were paid enough to guarantee the author a
sufficiently high commission. (Knuth, incidentally, distinguishes computer
science from IT and states that his interests lie with the former.)

~~~
mattquinn
When you say "IT in higher ed", are you referring to personal experience?
That's a pretty specific domain, just wanted to know if you have any specific
anecdotes.

~~~
ChristianMarks
I'm afraid to say now that the original comment was downvoted without
explanation. ;)

------
kirillzubovsky
A bit one-sided argument, but might be very common in some large companies.
Indeed, if you're in the situation described in the article, the best bet is
to play the game, knowing the constraints, and to do the least work for the
most bang.

If you actually want to enjoy your work, having a chance to create something
new/different/efficient, in the environment where your "boss" is your peer,
and your boss understand the value of 50% performance increase and is willing
to spend time to understand why your backend is better than other's backend,
then pick a startup.

I am not just saying pick my startup, no, pick any startup that fits you.
There are so many companies out there, if you search hard enough you can find
the product / team that interests you, and people you're willing to work with.
That said, be prepared to work hard, to have to fix bugs on the weekends, to
probably carry your laptop everywhere you go, and finally, to have a lower
salary than before.

It's pretty simple, imho, you can't have everything all at once, but you can
pick the combination that is right for you. All you need is to do it. Do or do
not, there's no try. ;)

~~~
jiggy2011
I think this article is aimed at people in the UK where there is not much of a
startup culture except in a small handful of places.

It also seem to be more aimed at general IT/tech/MCSE type guys rather than
developers who are probably in less demand for startups.

------
pjmlp
A bit cynical, but quite close to my experience in big companies, where
employees are just seen as expenses.

------
ilaksh
I think that most of this is STILL true, even for many startups and small
departments.

There are a lot of fundamental problems with our society, and studying this
article may help people realize that.

This man should win an award for being honest.

------
mokus
If "your boss has no idea if you’re good at your job," then he is not good at
his.

~~~
paulhauggis
my boss, the owner of the company, had me explain my job to him at least 3
times during my time there. He was the one that hired me and still didn't know
exactly what I did.

It was extremely frustrating when he asking me to do graphic design work and
he didn't understand why it wasn't part of my job (I was hired as a developer,
I wrote their entire e-commerce system which ran their business for 4 years).

------
pagekalisedown
A recruiter makes the most money by getting the most people hired, not by
getting fewer people hired for the most money.

~~~
protomyth
That isn't quite true. A lot of recruiters that I've met get paid based on the
salary of the recruited, so fewer people at higher salary might make the
recruiter more money.

~~~
pagekalisedown
It doesn't usually make up the difference.

~~~
salemh
salary fee % n fee total 65000 0.2 3 39000 80000 0.2 2 32000 90000 0.2 1 18000
120000 0.2 1 24000

Simplistic EG (and a 2x 80,000 vs 120,000 is realistic), but, like a real
estate agent, the cost of NOT closing the sale is greater then pushing for a
marginal increase in the sale.

EG salary, pushing for 115,000 vs 105,000 the difference in fee on 20% is
2,000. Which is ~200-400 dollars difference in commission. Losing the offer
for pushing for 115,000? 2,300~4,600 (10-20% of fee).

~~~
pagekalisedown
Prefix a line with double spaces preserves the formatting:

    
    
      salary fee  %  n fee total
           65000 0.2 3 39000
           80000 0.2 2 32000
           90000 0.2 1 18000
          120000 0.2 1 24000

~~~
protomyth
Your making some interesting assumptions like it is three times as easy to
fill a $65k spot than a $120k spot. The recruiters I knew had pretty good
contacts that gave them the ability to place highly paid salaries (Oracle DBA,
SAP developer) at a pretty good clip, much better than the generic recruiter.
Their shooting for the higher-end gave them the right reputation to do this
well.

------
itmag
What are your favorite career hacks?

A dude at a previous place of work took the following initiative: he emailed
everyone at the company asking for their ideas for improvement, promising a
daily prize in the form of movie tickets (which were presumably funded by
upper management).

He did this for several weeks, collecting a ton of great, actionable ideas
from the people in the trenches. It was all kinds of stuff, from IT to
customer service to employee morale, etc.

Then, he went to upper management with a bunch of curated, highly relevant,
enterprise-spanning improvement ideas. Win-win-win situation: employees get
movie tickets and fixes, upper management gets a better-running business,
idea-rally dude gets to take credit for all of it.

Brilliant move.

------
wisty
There's no law against refusing to promote weasels. And it's really not too
hard to detect them, if you spend any time with them - psychopaths are
superficially charming, but always trip up with their continuous and
inconsistent lies.

But businesses think "he's a weasel, but he's our weasel". Yeah, right.

------
jyou
My fellow readers, this article is definitely not cynicism or sarcasm, it has
some very good suggestions for the "IT" people in corporate of America,
especially Fortune 100.

If you think or use the word "hack" in your job, then it is not for you - and
that is a good thing, isn't.

------
zoowar
Your product sucks and is over priced for what little value it actually
offers.

------
mvip
...and that's why smart people avoid enterprises.

~~~
billswift
No, that's why _honest_ people avoid enterprises. There are lots of smart
people with slack morals working for big businesses and Wall Street. ADDED:
There are also plenty of less smart and honest people working for big
businesses on lower level jobs, I was just objecting to the claim that all
smart people avoided them.

------
spinchange
This is like _The Prince_ for Nerds.

------
SkyMarshal
That EDS video was funny, haven't seen that before.

Fwiw, the author Dominic Connor is a pretty well known financial
engineering/quant recruiter.

The 'Related Articles' section at the bottom has some other funny ones by and
about him.

~~~
georgemcbay
The EDS video was a Super Bowl ad from the peak of the dot-com boom back in
2000. I remember it well because that was the year virtually all of the ads
aired during the Super Bowl were dot-com related.. lots of money spent on lots
of ads by companies that mostly don't exist anymore (see also: the infamous
Pets.com sockpuppet guy).

------
jmitcheson
This article could be an advertisement for starting your own company.

------
Radzell
Programmer and Scientist tend to be the nice guys in life so I would be
surprised if some programmer were underpaid.

------
csomar
_They key here is that you’re making a difference when it hits the fan, that’s
not someone they want to lose._

The crap getting paid too much is the author of this article. Your job as
software developer (or any other field) is to do your job the best you can.
You are offered the salary before you start the work and you agreed on it. The
market will define how much valuable you are to the business. You can see that
in the last year, our salaries have increased considerably.

~~~
EliRivers
Actually, for what I do, they are paying me too much. They'd know if they were
able to monitor what I do all day.

~~~
jiggy2011
What do you do all day?

~~~
tbsdy
Two words: Hacker News.

------
kiba
Very cynical view. If this is what's happening across companies, than the
market system wasn't efficient enough or was impeded to make a change.

We all know that the local cable or telephone companies aren't trying their
damn hardest and we are not pleased with the services we're getting. However,
we can't do anything about it.

To me, it's incomprehensible that we can sit on our hand and not make things
better. Instead of being a big bully in the market, why not aim to make our
lives better? Why all the politicking when it's quite urgent that medical
progress need to be made now?

After all, a million dollars or three won't make much a difference in respect
to making a billion dollars on a monopoly. With the billion dollars in hand,
the future of you, and everyone else is worse off, because you focused too
much on marketing rather than on groundbreaking research.

Do pharmaceutical CEOs only care about their short term bottom line and not
the future of their health, their family, and their friends?

Do AT & T corporate board really only care about what they made each day
rather than the future of the internet? By expanding and making the
infrastructure cheaper, they will benefit from the numerous services of future
internet.

Expand pie, and don't focus too much on getting a larger portion of the pie.
Don't compromise the size of the pie.

~~~
epo
Try reading the article, it might give you something else to write a banal
rant about. Or should I say rants, each sentence seems to be about a different
subject.

Your final exhortation about pies is just baffling, "don't compromise the size
of the pie" is something I might just put on a T shirt.

~~~
kiba
Well, I thought "expanding the pie" versus "taking a larger portion of the
pie" are particularly common metaphor for growing economy versus taking
advantage of the economy.

~~~
ajross
Around here, the somewhat more technical terms "production" and "rent seeking"
will probably serve you better. Folks on news.yc have already passed Randian
Thought 101.

