

Programmers are a commodity... right? - random_guy
http://usingimho.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/programmers-are-a-commodity-right/

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fnid2
I went on a sales call yesterday to a small business in my little rural
village. His current website was done by someone he knows and I talked to him
6 months ago about it and it hasn't changed, so I whipped up a demo and put it
online and went to show him in his office.

When he started typing in the URL to the demo site, he was typing <http://>
into the yahoo search form. I said, "You should type it into the location
bar."

The what? he said. Up there at the top I told him and pointed at it. Whoa.

"Well, you know, my friend is building this one for me and ... " _This one_
was a default wordpress install that had no customization except the header
and footer and nothing at all close to what his business needs, yet he had to
run my site by his friend, who I can tell has no idea how to write code or
create a database.

How can any of us here ever expect someone like that to comprehend the
difference between someone who can put up a web page and someone who can build
an enterprise system with customer interaction, inventory management, and any
sort of security whatsoever?

They can't. Looking at a web page is like looking at the clothes someone is
wearing and trying to figure out if they can do algebra. Yet that's how they
do it. To 90% of people, maybe more, putting up a static web page or a word
press site requires the same knowledge as understanding one-way hashes,
caching, and parameterized queries.

And _yes_ , I believe we should charge _a lot_ more, but instead, we give away
our software for free because it _feels_ good. I love open source, I create
open source, I use open source, yet I know that open source isn't going to
feed me. It feeds some. It feeds the business guys who sell services on top of
free open source systems. Those guys can't use a command-line, but they can
pay programmers 10% of the deal, sometimes more. It feeds programmers who are
lucky enough to work for a progressive employer who can afford to staff a team
to support the project and defend it when it is stolen by a corporation and
embedded in their set top boxes, but for those of us who want to create a path
for ourselves, creating an open source project is like buying a lottery
ticket. Sometimes it works, Zimbra did well, word press does well, MySQL did
well, but those are but a _tiny_ fraction of the open source projects out
there. As long as we give away our work for free, why do we expect people to
pay for it?

Outside the programming world, it is _completely_ different. If a business
person, a sales guy say, works for a technology company, they work on
commission. Sell one product, take 20-50% of the sale price. If a programmer
writes something that increases sales by 50% they get _nothing_ additional. No
percentage increase, hardly a raise at most places. Yet, code on.

Corporations simply _could not operate_ without IT, yet it is considered a
_cost center_ , not a _profit enabler_ , a _cost cutter_. Imagine a human
without a brain!

Yet, code on. Why? Because we love it. Doesn't matter that sales guys also
love to sell. CEO's also love to execute.

When I was a consultant, it angered me greatly that a sales man would win a
client and while I was there, I would sell additional project after additional
project, extending my time at the client and building more and more revenue
for the company and I got a $5k raise the _next year_! The sales guy got the
same commission on the additional work _I_ sold! Why didn't I get the
commission on the additional work? Why didn't someone say, "Awesome, you were
at the client 5x longer than we expected and you doubled your expected
billable hours for the year!"

Instead, the sales guy got a new flat screen TV.

~~~
mattm
That's why you need to be on both sides of the spectrum - create AND sell.
It's much easier for technical people to pick up selling skills than it is for
salesmen to pick up engineering skills.

~~~
fnid2
Eventually I quit that job and did start my own company and I'm _so_ much
happier for it my eyes are welling up right now just thinking of the contrast.
I'm emotional, I know, but it's like I came _alive_ when I started building
something that I owned and loved and appreciated. When other people started
appreciating it and I make other lives better with my work and I get the
reward -- you just have to _feel_ it to know, but it took a long time to get
that feeling -- years.

It was _sooo_ hard. There were months and months of this low frequency buzz in
my gut, constantly thinking, "How am I going to make money? Am I going to make
money? Why don't people understand what I'm building? Will I be able to
survive on my own?" All the while my bank account was going down, down,
down...

And from my own hands, I've created a 1 year runway! A whole year! That I
_built_. That's plenty of time and we're growing and I look back and
understand completely why almost everyone I know thought I was crazy. But now
they are envious. "I wish I could do that. I wish I could quit my job. I have
a mortgage." I had to move back to my childhood home in the middle of nowhere
to make ends meet. I had to make _real_ sacrifice. I was living _on_ the beach
when I quit. Now I'm 1500 miles from salt water, but I'm _happy_.

I do think sales is hard though. I don't get why _they_ don't get it. I don't
know how to speak _their_ language. I don't know what motivates _them_. On the
proposal yesterday, I didn't put a price, because the money doesn't really
matter to me, what I _want_ is to help him have a better site and provide a
better experience for his customers, and _bring technology home_.

My state has had a severe brain drain. People like me don't stay here.
Technology people who work for the corporations are actually consultants who
live in the huge metro areas -- in _other_ states! They fly in on monday and
fly home on friday.

I work with companies all over the world, but people in my own town -- in my
own state for the most part -- don't even understand what I'm doing and I
wonder how or when I'll break through, but I'm going to keep trying. Next time
I'll put the payment options on the form.

I've gotten it down to three options: Fixed fee, Hourly rate, or Revenue
share. I have learned from past experience, that if you just put a price,
people say no. If you give them options, they have something to think about.
Some people want to take no risk. Some want to know what it'll cost up front
and some just want the absolute best you can produce.

 _Every_ potential customer is different. I can't seem to find a strategy that
always works and it's difficult for me to predict how people will react and
how to figure out which kind of customer the person is. Are there subtle
questions I can ask? Can I tell from looking at their business or customers
how I can convince them to proceed. It's good technology. I know for almost
sure that I can help them, but they are suspicious. They don't understand and
don't want to be taken for a ride. How do I reassure them? How do I let them
know I'm not one of those business guys who just wants to take their money?

I read lots of books and keep trying, but I don't know if it's easier to pick
up sales. There is an aspect of gift to it I think. Persuasiveness. That
"status" part of the theater class thread from the other day. Lots can be
learned, but it takes a lot of practice and a lot of time and a lot of -- just
numbers, really. Take your pride out of it. Be confident and tell everyone you
know. Don't worry that you sound like you're tooting your own horn. That's
what you have to do. If you don't tell anyone, no one will know.

I don't begrudge sales guys for what they can do. I envy it, but I also think
it is overvalued. But why shouldn't it be? Sales guys are better able to sell
_their own_ value to their company than the programmers are able to sell
_their_ value. It's not the business guy's fault. It's our fault for settling
for less than we are worth -- literally.

~~~
ww520
Fnid, very good write-up. For sales, I heard from a Harvard Business School
study that good sales people enjoy rejection, or at least turning rejection
into positive feeling. There are 100s of rejections for 1 good sales. Good
sales organizations have been trying to foster environments that celebrate
rejection and make it seems normal. So for those "people don't get it"
encounters you have, just view them as a mild rejection and move on to next
prospect.

------
rbranson
The problem is that there are far more average or mediocre developers than
there are even decent ones, severely diluting our image. Developers are in
such high demand, the good pay has caused millions to enter the field that
would otherwise be unfit for a typical engineering or scientific field, just
because they feel comfortable after a few sessions of hacking together a LAMP
app or getting some watered-down MIS degree. Large corporations victimized by
their rigid hiring policies have been inundated with thousands of these droids
that expend maximum time to build minimum solutions. Further fueling this fire
is a total misunderstanding of the process by upper management, whose day-to-
day role in the company couldn't be any more antithetical to that of a
software developer.

~~~
mortenjorck
It's a similar situation for designers, as you can see with some of the recent
discussions regarding 99designs. There's good pay at the high end (with a
somewhat pronounced falloff), lots of "artsy" kids go into college for it
because it's the one art program that promises to actually make them a living,
and there's certainly a lot of misunderstanding of the process at the
management level.

~~~
Periodic
I was just wondering if we can extend this to any field. Is it true that every
field will have its standouts and then a lot of mediocre members that dilute
the image for everyone else?

I think the problem is that the barrier to entry is so low in a lot of
technical fields right now because demand is high. Companies are willing to
hire a lot of mediocre programmers (or outsource to places of questionable
quality) because they simply need something and the cost of failure is not
catastrophic.

On the other hand, medicine and law have high barriers to entry, and you would
be considered a fool to hire a doctor or lawyer who did not have the
appropriate degrees, certifications, and licenses. This is not true with
technology these days.

It's like the programming industry doesn't even have a bar to jump over.

------
nroach
Programmers are a commodity. Lawyers are a commodity. Managers are a
commodity. Dentists are a commodity.

Experts are not.

In any given field, probably 80% of the practitioners can do an adequate job
and at least complete the tasks required by their position. In my experience,
that number narrows to about 40% if the requirement is that the job is
performed on time, on budget, and performed correctly the first time.

The question for the employer is simply whether the task at hand requires a
“cog” or an expert. Most businesses require both.

~~~
random_guy
Agreed. But: I don’t really know exactly what these guys are looking for,
still I’m pretty sure (because of the ads) they’re having an hard time finding
it. I won’t say programming as a profession is special, because it’s not, but
from my experience even finding just a good coding “cog” is a huge win from
the employer’s perspective. What I think it happened is that those guys went
looking for somebody “ready for industry” into the university, and they hit
the wall. I know a lot of very, very smart guys that are studying CS: I’m sure
one day they will be awesome hackers but they will need a lot of experience
under their belt before they can provide real value to a “real world” project.

~~~
_delirium
To be fair to CS programs, though, that's true of most areas that have
significant practical components. A straight-out-of-college chemical engineer
is not going to be able to provide immediate valuable work on a Dow Chemical
plant; they need to learn all sorts of things first. One difference might be
that Dow expects this more than companies hiring programmers do.

------
j_baker
It doesn't surprise me that this happened at a university. They tend to view
programmers as a neccessary evil rather than as a potentially valuable asset.
Most likely, they didn't get anyone that would work for the salary they wanted
to pay.

~~~
henrikschroder
KTH is the biggest technical university in Sweden, it's got a very good CS
programme and all the other engineering programmes have at least some
programming on their curriculums. It's definitely not a dinky little liberal
arts college, there's no lack of technical knowledge overall. :-)

However, this job ad was posted only outside their little division, because..
well.. uh.. academics are narrow-minded?

If they had bothered to post it about four buildings away from their
department, it would have been seen by about a thousand CS students instead,
which would have increased their chances of getting someone good with quite a
lot.

------
Tichy
I don't get it, what is the problem? That they offer an internship?

~~~
Alex63
I think the point of the post was that the author assumed all the adds were
actually for the same position. The problem (if that was the case) being that
C++ programmers/Flash programmers/HTML designers are not interchangeable.

~~~
Tichy
Even so - in other hacker news post people complain that employers don't
understand that programmers are more versatile than just "5 years of Java
experience". I have never programmed Flash, but I am pretty sure I could pick
it up within 2 days or so.

It actually seems cool that they made an ad saying "no experience required".
When else do you get that? And it makes perfect sense. Why would a student
taking on the challenge be able to learn to program what they need?

