I agree that a high performing developer is hard to find, but so is a high performing manual worker.
Conversely in my experience retaining a high performing developer at market rates is easier, because the job is more rewarding (that’s what I think makes the job easier to do).
I think what you are talking about is scarcity driving the market salary rates for developers, not performance.
Personally I think a union with members including the scarce developers and the abundant manual workers would be a good thing for all the employees.
I expect 20 years from now there will be no scarcity of developers, and the vast majority of them will not be paid nearly as much as US manual workers - primarily because they will be working in poorer countries with labour laws that favour the employer.
high performing manual workers negotiate superior wages unless they are restrained by a union
> I think what you are talking about is scarcity driving the market salary rates for developers, not performance.
So they are related but the key concept here is that a low performer is more easily replaced, and so does not have the negotiation power to negotiate a higher wage. So these workers benefit from a union.
> Personally I think a union with members including the scarce developers and the abundant manual workers would be a good thing for all the employees.
It would be a good thing for the replaceable workers and a bad thing for the less replaceable workers.
It’s not easy to replace a low performing worker with scarce skills or domain specific knowledge.
It not difficult to replace a manual worker that requires limited training or domain knowledge.
Developers are paid way more than an equitable share of the salary share in organisations like Amazon because their skills are currently scarce.
This will not be the case in 20 years.
I’m defining “high performance” to include those sorts of persons.
> Developers are paid way more than an equitable share of the salary share in organisations like Amazon because their skills are currently scarce.
It is equitable precisely because those skills are scarce.
My point is that you may be confusing the ability to perform a function efficiently with the ability to perform a function that less people can do.
I don’t think many here would define a VBA/Excel analyst that knows the data model and how to access a bunch of legacy platforms to produce a criterial report each month as high performing - but they’re scarce and difficult to replace.
>It is equitable precisely because those skills are scarce.
My use of the use of equitable was as a synonym for fair.
I don’t think it’s fair that those who work in higher risk or less fulfilling jobs should be paid half as much. There are credible arguments about why it’s justified , but I don’t think there are any tenable arguments that it is fair.
I didn’t mean to debate semantics with you and I can see how my language provoked that. My claim is that a scarce, difficult to replace employee deserves more money because of their scarcity and difficulty in being replaced.
> I don’t think it’s fair that those who work in higher risk or less fulfilling jobs should be paid half as much. There are credible arguments about why it’s justified , but I don’t think there are any tenable arguments that it is fair.
I believe its fair. In fact I believe its unfair not to do so. Rather than debate the fairness, I’m more interested in if you think fairness is objective or intersubjective?
It’s unlikely either of us will change the others view, and HN is not the forum to attempt to do so.
I mean “higher performing” according to the people who pay them.
> I often remind my colleagues that we are very lucky to have such easy and well paid jobs by asking the simple question, “how many bags of sand did you carry yesterday?”
I’ve been a welder/fabricator, machine operator, and forklift driver. Programming and web development isn’t easy although it isn’t physically arduous. Whats more relevant to our discussion is that a high performer is not as easily replaced. Physical work is honorable and demanding. Its also something a lot of people can do.