For instance, you did it in this very post. Do you really think that all high school teachers are locked into making $40k for life? Here where I live (a large city, but also a pretty affordable one), teachers start at ~$55k in base salary, get a whole range of benefits including a pension plan, actually really do have the summers off (plus numerous other breaks), and leave work at 3:20 PM every day. If you were to have them work year-round and go home at 6-7PM and convert the pension plan into salary, the salary would easily exceed that of most entry-level engineers across all disciplines in the area. When I graduated college, I had engineering friends being offered salaries in the $60-70k range for considerably less stable jobs, much longer hours, virtually no time off, and much fewer benefits.
As a developer, I started at nearly 2x what I made as a teacher. After getting real experience, I make more than most administrators and more than any teacher could after a lifetime of service. I have multiple weeks of paid vacation. Aside from a (weak) pension, my benefits are better. My work only follows me home when I am behind schedule (not often) or when there is an outage (a bit cyclical). My quality of life is so vastly better. Another benefit, I now get to work with motivated and smart individuals.
That said, I'm not sure I've ever met a teacher who takes off at 3:20 every day. I imagine it probably averages out to around an hour before and after school, so 7 AM to 4 PM? But there's often grading that happens at home throughout the week. I wouldn't be surprised to see veteran teachers averaging 44-50 hours a week of actual work for the year (with lulls and spikes for midterms/finalls, etc).
Once you put in the time it pretty much turns into one of the most comfortable jobs you can get between decent compensation, lots of time off, good benefits.
I took it to heart. It worked very, very well for me in college. I'd always have homework with me ready to go and when I was waiting for a class to start, or any other short time with nothing to do, I'd do homework. I'd only get a bit done at a time but it really added up and reduced my take home workload considerably.
But you know how spine-jarring school busses are. Maybe if I'd been able to complete it on a laptop instead of worksheets.
But nah, with how I was treated by folks on my bus, my laptop would've been tossed out the window the second day.
I was lucky enough to always live very close to my schools, so hours spent commuting to school is entirely alien to me, and barring safety issues, I'm not sure a directed extracurricular learning program wouldn't be more beneficial (and if the student or parents care enough to commute, I imagine they could work out some program from available sources). Then again, I've never been put in a situation that young where it relied that much on my own motivation.
The primary reasons the school-bus commute was long was a) meandering suburbia with only 1-2 students per stop and b) a 20 mile trek on the highway at 45mph.
If I had been able to drive (or carpooled), my commute would have been less than 35 minutes.
I guess that makes sense. It's not just "better" in the sense of different schools in an area may be better or worse, but also highly directed in certain areas. I can see the draw of that.
> meandering suburbia with only 1-2 students per stop
Yes, come to think of it, people that rode the bus at my school probably had at least a 40-45 minute ride in the earlier stops just from this. I think I rode the bus once when going to a friend's house after school, so this didn't come to mind. The rest of the time I always walked (High School was literally across the street from my house, Middle School was a 20 minute brisk walk). Like I said, alien.
Thanks for your explanation. :)
(source: three parents/step-parents were school teachers)
It's a great way to shuffle cost from one government budget (education) to another one (unemployment benefits), and also a convenient way to get rid of annoying parts of the staff.
They have over 20 days of holidays built in during the school year and a legitimate two months off between years.
My comment was based on observations of my SO, who is a high school biology teacher. She legitimately does not have to work at all for the great majority of the summer if she doesn't want to. I understand this may vary a lot by school district and location, and of course even if you don't have to work over the summer there are still benefits to doing so.
The mere fact that many do take summer jobs is proof of that, IMO.
Or it's a proof that they need the money.
Teachers actually need to cram a lot in that time. All the preparation for next year, all self-education they need to do to stay up-to-date, select reading and learning materials. Planning the curriculum etc. The equivalent to all that work that freelancers factor into their daily rate and all the work that employees often do on the job ("I'll need to read the documentation so I know how to properly do that", "I'll google it", ...).
The fact that they still take on summer jobs on top of that can serve as an indicator that they actually don't have too much to do in that time or it can serve as an indicator that they need the money more than their time off.
Source: a friend who taught elementary school in the Boston area.
Where I went to school, teachers with less than five years of tenure essentially had to sponsor at least one extracurricular activity, just to earn enough extra pay to live on.
And then they still have to do grading and planning when the kids aren't there. That can be done away from the school building, but it still counts as work.
Nursing is similar to teaching in that you're not likely to get rich off of it, and it's not even an easy job at all, but it is a very stable one which pays a solid middle-class wage for life in pretty much any area of the country, from huge cities to small rural towns in the midwest. And, while the hours are rough as a new nurse fresh out of school, they're not bad at all with experience -- certainly it's a far more family friendly career than many others in healthcare, like being a physician.
If my mom had been a programmer, she definitely wouldn't have weathered the moves they've made as well as she has. In fact, she'd have been the one forcing my dad to move with her, as decent programming jobs simply do not exist where they live.
I am sure that by getting a master's degree, teaching in private schools, being in certain states or cities, teaching classes that are in great demand, etc., teachers can reach higher salaries. But I think we can agree that by becoming teachers in the first place, they pretty much accepted the risk of never earning much.
Likewise, not all programmers in start-ups earn 40k, which is what the example was about.
Assuming you like and are good at a specialty that is in demand, and can convince someone else of that. As someone who does not like web or enterprise CRUD development I don't feel very in-demand, nor do I feel like I can get one of those sweet working arrangements[1] that get discussed here. I have spent the past couple of years wrestling with whether to keep trying to do what I want to do (real-time embedded systems) and be "underpaid" doing it or do something I am good at but really don't like (Java backend systems/"big data") in order to make more money. I think the latter is going to win by default, since I have been out of the embedded game too long at this point.
[1] Not to say my current arrangement isn't better than average with respect to flexibility, vacation, benefits, and such. I think the average HNer would probably consider my fringe benefits kinda crappy.
If there are millions to be made from programmers then must it not follow that programmers are actually underpaid (or that the services are over priced)?
One day at a big family union I got three phonecalls from recruiters. My whole family rolled their eyes, while I politely said no to those recruiters with below average offers. I told them that this is usual, I get a few phonecalls from recruiters every week. None of them who work as doctors, teachers, accounting, geophysicist, even an old CEO of a $200 mill company has ever experienced something like that. They may get a recruiter calling once a year.
Most programmers don't know their real value and way too many say yes to work below average market rate. Younger ones a often preferred as they are easier to manipulate, have no idea about their value, and hardly ever says no to something. And they are brilliant and smart for bargain.
What they lack is experience, but as the technology landscape changes every second year many believe experience doesn't matter. That may be why so many companies are struggling with technical debt.
Those recruiters aren't calling for your benefit tho'. They are calling because they want to sell you like a piece of meat. That's just a sign that nearly everyone connected to the industry who isn't actually an engineer themselves is trying to exploit engineers in some way.
What they lack is experience, but as the technology landscape changes every second year many believe experience doesn't matter
People believe what is to their advantage to believe. Getting an experienced engineer at a knock down rate because they've been tricked into undervaluing their experience suits VCs and managers very well...
Compared to..... what?
Calling me because of my good-natured character and my unparalleled virtues?
Just a data point, but it happens to other fields as well. Also, FWIW, she's making about 80k and if she commuted into Seattle, I see jobs posted there for 100-110k quite frequently, for non-managerial positions as a PT. She claims she could make more (at least hourly) as Home Health or a inpatient retirement home type of situation, but likes outpatient too much.
Granted, that's about it, unless she opens her own clinic or goes into management, where as 110k in Seattle gives me some room for salary growth. She also doesn't get other compensation so my point is more about demand of PTs being pretty comparable.
The article itself isn't even about programmers, really (even if the author didn't recognize it). It applies to all employees and founders of start ups, whether they are programmers, designers, or even just a person with an idea but no technical expertise
It's not about how much you make or how much is fair. It's about properly understanding what your compensation is. The soul of the article is in the complexity of non-salary compensations, and how many surprises and pitfalls lurk in the small text, that most non-finance people don't even notice is there. And the author is reminding us to learn about those surprises and pitfalls, so that when the anticipated pay-day comes, our expectations are met properly.
And it's good advice.
Most developers would be wise to understand that with few exceptions, none of these things have anything to do with your compensation. Your compensation is based almost entirely on some amorphous combination of:
A) Supply of similarly skilled labor (if enough similarly skilled devs are happy to do the work for $80k that gives you a ceiling)
B) Supply of less skilled labor (if an army of unskilled devs are happy to do the work for $8/hr ...)
C) Your leverage over your [prospective] employer
D) How the company has done over the last *n* quarters
E) Patronage
F) Nepotism
G) Luck
So, in some ways, it's not that bad a kind of nepotism.
Most startups are not hiring actual family members :)
It's harder to convince your own family to work for you for free with constant overtime and vague promises of great profits in the future. :).
It is a common belief (especially among startups) is that developers have a "shelf life."
> Programmers in 2016 are generally very well compensated for a low risk, indoor job with a very low barrier to entry.
Most employers don't get it, but Google, Facebook, and others do; programming well has a much higher barrier to entry than people realize.
When I was 10 I could make an HTML page, when I was 14 I started incorporating JavaScript and building websites... A decade later (24), I am still improving and building bigger/better programs (full stack, but mostly data science). I went to school, worked all the way through tutoring for C, C++, and Go, and built websites as well.
Yet there are people making the same salary as me that literally started programing 4 months ago. Those people who just started cannot build a website in a week (or even a few), it takes them months. Even then, thats with help, and it will have loads of bugs.
I know because part of my job is training them. I have to explain how they just tried to access an array outside the bounds. Seriously, the other week I was interviewing a "master software engineer" for an internal role on my team and they failed a basic string flipping question... He's making at least double what I am.
To put this into greater perspective, let's walk through a mental exercise. Say programmer one introduces 1 bug every 10 lines. The second programmer introduces 1 bug every 25 lines. After 10000 lines what do we have?
Programmer #1: 1000
Programmer #2: 400
At an average of 30 minutes a lot of hours of bug fixes:
Programmer #1: 500 hours
Programmer #2: 200 hours
My point, 200 hours is 5 weeks, 500 hours is 12.5 weeks of bug fixes. I'll grant you, this is napkin math, but trust me - this is why some developers think (and probably should) get paid more. Relative to their co-workers if they can make half as many mistakes they save time both upfront, and bug catching. Now compare that to the master software engineer I mentioned, whos already making double what I am... Based on that assessment, I'd likely be underpaid.
All that being said, I generally agree, but coming from a pretty standard office, I can see why people feel underpaid. It's probably because people around them are being over paid.
"Yet there are people making the same salary as me that literally started programing 4 months ago."
That certainly sounds like a low barrier to entry to me. Compare with the barrier to entry to becoming a doctor, for instance. There, in many locations, you'll be looking at a decade of proving yourself to the club, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs to do that, before you are even allowed to start working. Four weeks, and maybe a computer that costs hundreds of dollars, is absolutely nothing in comparison.
> this is why some developers think (and probably should) get paid more. Relative to their co-workers if they can make half as many mistakes they save time both upfront, and bug catching.
But it still boils down to supply an demand, and if employers do not demand those with better bug fixing ability, there is going to be no corresponding premium for finding such people. What your post does indicate to me is that programmers have done a poor job of marketing the importance of bug fixing ability (or whatever features of an experienced developer you think is important) so that employers start demanding the subset of developers who have those skills.
There are always jobs that come out worse in some category compared to programming. The problem here specifically is that given you have written 50% of the software people are using and investors are making some millions out of it while you make $40K a year, because they sort of lured you into a deal that apparently is not working out too great for you because you were so focussed on getting the lines of code rolling out they sort of took advantage of the situation?
If we're looking at house plumbing, it might be more fair to compare it to a CRUD app that facilitates iguana breeding (unsolved problem here, folks!).
PROGRAMMER: What kind of problem?
BOSS: Call the Pentagon.
I hear you, but the negative health effects of working insane hours developing in a high stress "start-up" environment for many years should not be understated.
Last time I heard about a violence against a taxi driver they were shot in the back in a carjacking, and then the assailant was not able to bypass some interlock device to actually restart the cab. So the cab company makes it hard to actually get away with the car, but the driver is probably carrying a lot of cash.
In contrast, being software developer will probably get you heart attack, or problems with your spine, or eyes, or hands or all of the above.
You think the added risk of heart attack from software development is greater than the risk of death in construction?
You think the rate of spine, eye, or hand injuries from typing all day is greater than the risk of bodily injury in construction?
I find it difficult to find stats for this about software development, but 899 construction workers died on the job in 2014, and construction workers do get these small RSI issues in their shoulders and hands like you were describing for software development, but they are also regularly injured, but not killed, by falling, being crushed, and being cut.
I would love someone to try and complain about RSI to someone who's been a construction worker for 20 years. "But you get fresh air and exercise!" Ha! According to this source, 8.2% of construction workers have carpal tunnel: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4476336/ And CTS is generally the least of their worries!
Actual construction work == Moldy crawlspaces. Hot attics. Slippery roofs. Muddy trenches. Asbestos & fiberglass dust (yay for silicon fibrosis!). Lead paint. pneumatic paint sprayers, heavy equipment, nail guns, projection injuries, cuts/scrapes/falls/broken bones, temperature range extremes, noise (hearing loss), eye injury due to projectiles, etc. etc.
Run a belt sander for an hour. Numb hands for the next half hour. Or a jackhammer for "just" 15 minutes. makes Carpal tunnel seem tame.
Spend a year doing HVAC work bent over in crawlspaces. Or try working as a brick mason standing in a muddy ditch or climbing scaffolding with thousands of pounds of block and mortar. Or roofing. Or framing straddling a rafter. It's no health tonic.
My guess is that most desk jockeys would beg for the safety of an Aeron chair and a mouse after just one week.
Don't get me wrong, there is a lot of satsifaction to having a hands-on job and getting things done, being able to show actual achievements per day. However, it is TOUGH work aAnd I think all those aches and pains are the reason so many construction workers self-medicate with alcohol.
I had to help with dad's business every school break from age 13-21. Mainly renovation, a spec home, some sheds, rarely roofing. Small town stuff. I'm sure I was a terrible worker, but it was shocking and alienating that my first job out of college I made triple what my dad did. And maybe from my own children I will hear comments like these in this thread, which I think are a bit disconnected from the reality of labor.
And I guess that's fine, just don't quit programming for construction if you are trying to avoid injury. My dad is in great shape in terms of cardio and strength for 60, but he can't raise his shoulder, or move some fingers, but the overall joint pain isn't bad most days, and he thinks he's gotten off pretty lucky. If he had fallen off that scaffold slightly differently when I was 5, he might be dead.
Also, another small satisfaction is if you can get the radio tuned to a good station, and do something straightforward, like, uh, nailing a subfloor or something. You can just sort of get into a groove with good music or interesting talk and have your day fly by, whereas I mainly get nothing done with the radio on while programming.
There's a pretty significant risk of DEATH (guys falling off from scaffolding, someone accidentally driving over you with an excavator etc.), you need to be on your toes a lot of the time or you'll hurt yourself, you work in heat, in cold, in dusty or moldy environments, in noise, with chemicals. On top of that, your boss is often an asshole (there's none of the white collar world politeness). Consider that construction work can pay pretty well even to people who hardly speak the country's language and have only moderate skills - I think it's largely because it's just shit.
Roofers, on the other hand, have extremely high risk of severe injury and death. Those guys are nuts! If I was in charge of OSHA regulations for roofers I'd make sure that no one was allowed to get on to a roof without being attached to some kind of harness that would catch them if they fell. Or surround the home with airbags or something. It seems far too easy to slip, trip, or just plain ol' fall in that job.
I've personally witnessed a young man (roofer) fall from a roof once (on to a big pile of bricks). I found out later that he wound up paralyzed.
Electricians and plumbers are also relatively low risk depending on the work they do. You'd think working with high-voltage electricity would be higher risk than it is but with modern (insulated) tools and training it's quite safe.
Being an asshole has very little to do with crude language.
There's plenty of programming/IT jobs that aren't in start-ups.
P.S. I also spent a great deal of time getting degrees. B.S. in computer science and a Master's in Software Engineering. It is often not required to get a job, but it is still a barrier for many openings.
In 20 years your field might have made large parts of my field redundant. I truly hope so :-)
Programming is still a young profession and it's growing at a tremendous pace. The population pyramid of Programmers' Land actually looks like a pyramid which might cause programmers to think that older people can't make it.
I know many older folks in IT who are still active. My old man continued until he was 70. They may not know the newest tricks in node.js or machine learning but they are the only ones who know the old legacy code that lock-in users and protect their jobs.
I bet you and most of your colleagues will be active until retirement. Just like lawyers may continue as partners (partially or mostly doing managing or marketing) many programmers might transfer to management.
A lot of programmers have long formal education but the market for programmers without education is still huge and the salaries for programmers without formal training easily beat almost any other professions where there are no educational requirements and a lot of professions with educational requirements. In which other profession can you realistically hope to start with salaries of 60-80k after a few months of online courses?
I used to have all sorts of minor aches and pains from sitting most of the day. Now I spent an hour standing, an hour sitting, plus the usual breaks, etc. I'm more productive and happier. If your company won't buy one for you, buy it yourself. It's worth it.
Maybe you can get away with doing just your job and going home to relax. I would wager, you may have difficulty finding your next job however. Have you never programmed so much you start having dreams that it takes steps to breath and you subsequently have a difficult time breathing? The physical toll takes years to manifest. I am in my 30s. If I did not exercise at least every other day I would not be able to continue doing what I do. You are most likely in your early 20s. Wait and see what a lifetime of programming does to your nervous system. I would not be surprised if a study reveals programming causes brain damage.
That's just not how it works outside the Valley. I've only crammed extra hours in to meet a deadline a few days a year, and only at one company. I've worked at 3 different companies in two different cities 400 miles away. Nobody expected 80 hours a week or whatever and I, quite frankly, wouldn't do it because I value time with my family and I'm not productive 80 hours a week. We also highly value experienced programmers and they command a higher salary. I don't have a government job either and I never have. "Valley culture" isn't synonymous with programming as a profession.
Any Marissa Mayer? Isn't she mocked for her poor leadership?
There's a lot more to running a successful business than people being physically present on Saturdays.
You're running into quite the hyperbole. If programming literally makes your lungs stop working why keep doing it?
>You are most likely in your early 20s.
I am in my late 30s.
Programming in general is a really good cushy job. Valley culture is what is toxic. I'm sure it you worked construction 80 hours a week for however many years you'd be in much worse shape than if you were getting paid a large salary to write some CRUD app.
The more democratized a field is and the more systematic efficiencies there are to be gained, the more easy it will be to both create and capture value and hence, resulting in a more even playing field for expected compensations. This has historically been true for entrepreneurship, modern-day programming is also a good example of this effect.
The reality,of course, is that most of the value created is attributable to the franchise value of the company, not the programmer.
Self-employed plumbers are paid higher than programmers. Every plumber I reached out to quoted $130/hr and they are all booked for weeks in advance.
Ever walk into a half empty restaurant and get turned away because they're fully booked?
Not picking on plumbers, just pointing out that jobs in the software industry are not as plum as they seem to some posters here, compared to other jobs.
Barring those comments, I think this article is actually good advice for software developers who don't know that much about how this works and what to ask, and could be burned in the end. Many people don't think about the specifics and if they have less than scrupulous founders, if they're not careful they can be in for a lot of trouble. I actually wish this would touch on the more psychological aspects of this topic, because you might want to understand these things, but might be worried about pressing buttons when applying them, and shouldn't be. For example, when you initially interview, don't be afraid to negotiate and definitely don't be afraid to leave if the terms aren't to your liking. If the company is profitable or is "awesome and will be worth tons of money, we promise!" they should put their money where their mouth is and compensate well, not just with equity. If you're not getting paid what you should be, or not getting the equity you think you should be getting, talk to the founders or whomever you can, and don't be afraid to leave if the situation is toxic or isn't acceptable (of course, this is mostly startup advice; when at a larger company you might get some say in the compensation package, but it's likely mostly up to bureaucratic processes unless you're being hired way up like VP/P/C level). It's not necessarily true that they need you more than need them, what's probably more truthful is that neither party needs the other.
Well one of these is not like the others. The article clearly focuses on the financial risks. It's destructive to suggest that risk and especially deceptive risk presentation is somehow ignorable and not to worry about it. You can't just let the supply and demand model play itself out. Hostile actors work against you and exploit information advantage to skew the supply and demand [1]. Teachers, construction workers or software engineers - it doesn't matter what your job is. Here we talk about stakeholders in a company. It just happens some software engineers are, and as such you should understand where the numbers come from and what's the value of all that since it's part of the compensation. There are plenty of devs out there who work for no money at all. It's pointless to go into philosophical discussion about jobs, it's outside the scope. This is purely a subject for stakeholders.
[1] http://www.borooah.com/Teaching/Post%20Graduate%20Microecono...
If they did examine the terms, as you said supply and demand would ensure the terms are fair.
Only if all parties have all the information. The person being hired has now idea how desperate the company is for their skills, how much they're willing to spend, or even if the pay being offered is good for the location/position in a lot of cases.
Also, to make $300K at Google you have to be a genius, to make $200K as a State Trooper, no college degree is required, only some seniority and overtime.
[1] http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/03/massachus...
Life is expensive if you plan to have children and give them a good start. Being smart about investments is essential to ensure a secure future.
Just because a plumber earns less is irrelevant. Many people in trades go on to apply their knowledge to renovations anyway. Is a plumber more important? Impossible to quantify. Maybe a programmer works on a cad application that helps design a faucet that doesn't leak. The programmer is now indirectly a plumber.
On the flip side, all you need to do to get a job programming is an internet connection and the desire to learn it. Anyone can teach themselves and if you can code enough BS on a whiteboard, somebody will hire you.
Another example is welding. I know how to weld, but I am not good at it. The only way I would get better is to keep practicing, which I never really have a chance to do since it’s not my day job. This is a slightly more extreme example than plumbing, but a similar concept.
I would consider the usual plumbing stuff to be more along the lines of sweating copper pipes, using lead and oakum to connect cast iron sewage pipes, installing toilet flanges, etc... I feel like connecting a dishwasher is more along the lines of a handy man.
I will say the same about welding. After very little reading i was able to make my own tig welder and even modified it later to weld aluminium (which requires AC vs DC normally, and spark starter)
This all information is readily available on internet if you know how to search for it. And that's what today's software developers are good at - finding quickly solution to something unknown.
Indeed, over here many I talked to refused to do more than 8 hours a day. I didn't understand until... -- ever tried to do a hard physical work several days in a row? How about the entire life?
> don't have to deal with ageism
But have to deal with knee joints and back pains. Don't underestimate the joy of physical work at an advanced age.
> their skills stay relevant regardless of fashion trends
Old ones refuse to service modern equipment, say "I am a plumber, not an electrician". Admittedly, probably because they have got enough pure-plumbing work to do as it is.
Don't know about the US, but in much of Europe plumbing has definitely been 'offshored' in the sense that much of the work is done by non-locals brought in short term.
And that no such system can function if you try to force it to reward them in lockstep.
[0] Either as a chapter in the second volume of Law, Legislation and Liberty or as a standalone essay in The Essence of Hayek.
I think those are the exact factors constantly mentioned by the HackerNews community.
I'd not trade my cushy, indoor job for that, mind you, just the idea that trade workers necessarily make peanuts, I believe, is without merit.
Most physicists I know are searching for stuff that already exists, whereas most programmers I know are actually building new stuff.
Instead, people complain they are not compensated enough relative to the importance of their work, their intelligence, the hours put in, their title or the length of their education or the risk they take.
If people were paid according to the importance of their jobs, I would argue that plumbers, sewage workers and farmers should be paid higher than programmers. If it were about intelligence, most physicists I know are underpaid and programmers are generally compensated fairly. If it were about hours put in, many of the people producing our clothes should be paid better than us. If it were about titles, programming should be behind almost any other engineering field. If it were about length of education, programmers would generally rank much lower than they do because so many don't have any or much formal training. If it were about risk, in just about any other profession people have taken larger risks than a programmer joining a startup. So you "risk" only making $40,000 for a couple of years? Yeah, well, that's the calculated risk your English high school teacher knowingly took on for life when she decided to take a bachelor in arts. And yes, she could have become a developer or lawyer instead. What about the risk of work injuries faced by construction workers every day. That's real risk. Our financial risks are modest worries.
Programmers in 2016 are generally very well compensated for a low risk, indoor job with a very low barrier to entry.