A salesperson who is making quota and running way over it into big bonuses is by definition earning their money.

Sometimes people are in the right place at the right time, of course, but in general it's hard to say a sales person is overpaid unless they're completely useless and failing to earn their base pay.

I don’t begrudge high salespeople commissions because that means things are pretty good, just don’t let them run the company (see Steve Jobs ‘lost’ 1995 interview with Cringly).

1) until the restaurant goes under

But don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should try to quantify the efficacy of SW devs more. I had a PM do that once in the form of ticket quantification as a KPI. I had to expend a lot of political capital to opt out from that nightmare.

His code was atrocious, but we'd put up with that until the IMAP incident because getting the CEO to understand that his code was bad enough for him to actually be a net loss in performance for the team didn't work until we had to scramble to recover what we could of the corporate e-mail.

Last I saw he was a senior developer somewhere more prestigious than the position he was fired from. Maybe he's improved. Or maybe he's just managing to stay above the threshold they'd fire him for.

A lot of bad developers just learn to fly sufficiently under the radar and hunker down and accept that they probably won't get many raises until they move jobs and can point to X years of service in company Y, aided by lack of willingness at many companies to stick their neck out when it comes to giving bad references (a lot of places I've worked, HR policy has been clear that we were only allowed to confirm dates of employment).

The key difference between good and bad engineers is that good ones deliver the product/finishes the projects (add bonus points if on time) and bad ones don't. Quality makes much less business sense and is usually only important to the engineer himself and his peers than managers that pay his wage. That's especially true in current "move fast and break things" environment. I have seen a fair share of bad engineers (by this definition) fired, even though they had decent technical skills.

I even talked to one of my professors personally about the push, in which I mentioned how the humanities in general are not amazing at 'selling' their contribution to human progress (she enthusiastically agreed - this was a sign that some of us were 'getting it') - part of that deficiency shows is via the incredible antipathy the internet holds towards the Literature major who then becomes a starbucks barista.

I don't always love salespeople, and I often chafe at the thought of having to emphasize my own efforts in an attempt to gain leverage with those of higher status than myself (a situation known to some as 'playing politics') - yet salesmanship is literally universal to the human condition (really want yammer more and explain what I mean by that, but it is time to shutdown for the day. :) )

It's very hard for me to be so bold as to flatly say, "I designed and built this, and I feel responsible for why it has been such a success." The most I can get out these days is, "I am very proud to see that software still finds value among the other dev teams."

But on the other hand, people can only make decisions based on information that is actually available to them, and so the quiet industrious worker in he corner who rarely pipes up and silently gets the job done but does nothing to make certain his/her contribution is noticed is passed over, because the boss can't magically know that quiet worker is the excellent contributor they are without something imparting that info- good managers will try to understand who's truly contributing in ways like that but even very good managers are frequently subject to imperfect information!

Anyway, I'm glad your advisor told you that, and I'm glad you shared that with me, yours is a succinct way of describing that, I'm almost tempted not to post this reply, as I'm uncertain it adds anything more of value than an emphatic "yes I agree!"

Well, ah, I'm paused at the moment, my wife got semi-unexpectedly pregnant after quite a number of years unsuccessfully trying to do so - she is a salesperson and makes more than me (I was an intern at a genomics startup at the time) so I am being the dad, finishing school, and working on side projects while we map out what we do next - We're planning on swapping roles as soon as I'm finished with school and it's otherwise workable. That does mean I'm focusing more on programming than the data science/bioinformatics side of things, but I'll keep my eyes open for opportunities there too, never know exactly what will happen. Also, the baby is totally amazing, and I adore being his Dad, seriously, I wish stay home dads were a much more common thing than we are, it's freaking fantastic, makes me wish things worked differently to facilitate a pair of parents staying home with anc raising a child as their primary function. :)

Isn't that a resume?

Dats watt we 'ere fer.. we do what's you needs.

Now, I'm not gunna lie to ya, I love ya, why would I lie to ya... what I got 'ere fer ya t'day is da best deal yer gunna see in yer lifes!

So whadda I gotta do ta get you behind this deal ofs a lifetime fer, say, twenty cores on da best DB on da freakin planet for a fraction of what da others would even dream of?

You sign right now and I promise you I'll take dis deal all da way to the top and get the CEOs personal sign-off on dis deal so dat you get da best pricing you ever seen!!

What say you? We gots a deal? C'mon, you have to only say yes and I'll get my guys all over dis and you will look like a freakkn rock star to your boss for savin da moneys! (Plus I'll be out dere in august and I'll take yous out fer a steak dinner, c'mon that will be our celebrations!!)

/oracle