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Comment by odshoifsdhfs | Hacker News Reader

Pay.

I know everyone says no, I want this or that, but at the end of the day, you are trading time for money. Only when people have enough money to not worry do they care about other things, and unless they are were getting 300k+ in a FAANG company for the last few years and now can live ok for a few years, pay is the important factor.

If you can't save a penny, even if work conditions are great, people will change to start building their 401k or to get their kid to a better school.

Then there is also the cultural factor that if a manager asks 'what kinds of things motivate you' if you just say money, you are branded an heretic, so people say independence or agency or whatever.

I would say (assuming they have another option of course) more than 95% of the people here and everywhere would change jobs if they got a 20% payout or something, so that probably says a lot about it.

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The problem with the example of getting a 20% payout is that there are diminishing returns on each additional dollar. Most software developers make far more than a living wage. After that threshold is met, most people have a lot of other things that matter more to them.

For example, for me, I work to support my family. Pretty much any software job in my area will be able to do that for me, so the bigger consideration in choosing is which jobs will actually allow me to spend quality time with my family (since that's the entire reason why I go to work). No amount of additional pay could persuade me to work 60 hours a week or work in an environment that leaves me drained by the end of the day.

But I mentioned it is money in exchange for time. If you are paid 1000 a week and work 40 hours, or you are paid 1200 a week for 60 hours, the 60 hours one is actually less pay, thus still the main consideration. Now if you are paid 5000 a week for 60 hours, you will start to look at it differently. And believe it or not, I don't think the fact developers make more than average is the point, as they also have much higher cost of life (see any HN post about house prices, even developers mention they will probably never own)

I think people in general say not work 60 hours a week, or freedom, etc. Which is fine, but for me that is the starting point. Same as I don't need to say 'not be physically or sexually assaulted at work' as I expect that is the norm.

Developers do not have a higher cost of life. People in cities do. Plenty of developers live in suburban or rural areas and make nearly as much as their urban counterparts. And plenty of HR Generalists making $35k/yr work in NYC or San Francisco as well.

I don't think developers are more concentrated in urban centers than any other jobs are.

I don't have data, so I won't say you are right or wrong, but if you go by the anecdote in HN, SV/NY/Seattle pay significantly more than in rural areas, and have 10x or so more opportunities.

And 10x the people. I'm sure per capita there are still more job postings but certainly not 10x. 1.5-2x maybe? And anecdotally, my company which has been "ass in your seat by 8am" since it started over a century ago is now completely open to hiring 100% remote workers since they've seen the productivity increase in the last few months. As more companies in rural and suburban areas do that, the incentive to live in insane COL areas (which the above three absolutely are) decreases even more.

I've done the math but just to maintain the same standard of living I'd need to make around $400k a year cash comp in San Francisco. Doable for a very small minority, maybe, but not with my resume and experience. And that's not even counting California taxes, where the marginal tax rate is 4x my current rate (I know the math is more complicated than that which is why I called out marginal), and the increased Federal taxes if I was actually making $400k. So it's probably in the neighborhood of 10-15% higher. And there's little things like a Roth IRA, which I would become ineligible for. That's $6k a year in tax-advantaged retirement contributions, gone. Obviously a good deal for a big pay raise, but a net loss if I'm just maintaining the same savings.

I understand you!

I work remotely for the last 10 or so years so I understand that. But you gave a good example, if a company wants to hire good talent in SF, as you said, it will be 400k. No amount of free sushi or bean bags will change your mind. So, pay is the reason you aren't there. No amount of 'like minded individuals' or whatnot will make you move.

> After that threshold is met, most people have a lot of other things that matter more to them.

Absolutely true. People don't jump ship to get a 10% increase in salary once most of their usual financial needs are met.

However, when people feel they are underpaid compared to other companies, it might seems unfair and unjust. Engineers can feel unappreciated and leave because of that.

Furthermore, many companies seem to be able to think only in terms of money: very often the employee that is paid more is also listened to, given opportunities to grow, treated with respect.

"After that threshold is met, most people have a lot of other things that matter more to them."

This is brainwashing. You will spend almost all of your life working, get all that you can. Its a business transaction, dont live like a slave

Someone values something different than you, and that's brainwashing? Baloney. (Maslow's Hierarchy, while not perhaps perfect, does seem to have some reasonable insight into how humans work. It seems more accurate than your comment.)

I agree but I think it's more subtle.

Most of us look at billionaires and think "why would anybody want so much more money than they need?", identify this as the vice of "greed", and implicitly stear ourselves away from that vice. However, the quantitative disparity here makes these phenomena qualitatively different. As you said, employment is a business transaction and should be treated as such, and this attitude only becomes a vice when it dominates someone's life (as in the case of the billionaire).

It's not just a "business" transaction. That is incredibly naive. There are implicit health, family costs as well. Chronic stress is real and dangerous.

It is possible to work without putting your real life on "pause" (we age every moment whether we are present with that truth or not).

Business transactions aren't solely financial. I don't think the comment you replied to is suggesting "focus only on career" but rather "maximize dollars earned per hours worked".

The "brainwashing" is people who don't pursue or request raises because "I'm already comfortable".

>there are diminishing returns on each additional dollar

>For example, for me, I work to support my family. Pretty much any software job in my area will be able to do that for me,

Yes, but are you thinking outside of right now? What happens if the software jobs dry up in your area, or you have something happen where you aren't as competitive at your job and need to change careers. What if the new career you land on doesn't typically offer health insurance? Do you have enough money for a change like that? Do you have 6 months to a year in expenses saved up? Money isn't money, money is freedom, and we're all trying to buy our freedom.

I've always disliked how widely accepted this argument is. I agree, if you have a family or really value time outside of work for some reason, money has a serious diminishing effect. However, even if I'm totally satisfied with my wage, having more of it means I HAVE to work for less years in my life. Giving me 500k/year versus 100k/year means I have to work roughly 4 less years per year I work now. That is EXTREMELY valuable.

I don't exclusively value money, and there are trade offs that I won't make, but lets not pretend like making more money isn't very impactful for nearly everyone.

Exactly - there's a reason you can find a good number of stories of physicians retiring or going to very part-time work in their 40's. It's because they made $500k for a decade (for some specialties), didn't spend like a drunken sailor, and now they don't have to work.

The economics are different for software developers for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that we don't have a cartel protecting our licensure, but you give me an extra $350k a year and it definitely will raise the bar on what I'm willing to put up with. But a decade in, I'd be willing to give up more than $350k for more of the intangible valuables.

I agree with this thread. There really isn't a diminishing return. I'd even argue that the return gets even better. Beyond the point where your basic needs/expenses are covered, every extra $N reduces the amount of time I need to continue working before retiring, and my goal is to retire as quickly as possible. So there's really no upper limit where I could say "more money doesn't help". If you offered me like $500K more for a year to work 16 hour days, sacrifice my mental health, family life, and social connections, I'd do it because that probably cuts 10 years off my retirement date. What an amazing trade: temporary pain for an extra decade.

There's definitely decreasing marginal utility of each additional dollar, but IMO the slope is very gradual (if not flat) for what software engineers are making in the Bay Area. Housing and college costs are only slowing down a bit in the face of cataclysmic shocks to the economy. If you can get another 30k in annual comp, that roughly translates to an extra 100k in house budget which is a big deal.

> The problem with the example of getting a 20% payout is that there are diminishing returns on each additional dollar. Most software developers make far more than a living wage. After that threshold is met, most people have a lot of other things that matter more to them.

The question was not "What is the way to keep software developers without paying them"

> For example, for me, I work to support my family. Pretty much any software job in my area will be able to do that for me, so the bigger consideration in choosing is which jobs will actually allow me to spend quality time with my family (since that's the entire reason why I go to work). No amount of additional pay could persuade me to work 60 hours a week or work in an environment that leaves me drained by the end of the day.

Have you asked your wife if she would take a $1,000,000 a year for 2-4 years in exchange for you working 60 hour weeks? Because actual financial security as described by having extra half a million a year in a bank sounds like a boon to any family that does not already have millions of dollars in cash and cash equivalents.

> Most software developers make far more than a living wage.

This is a strange way of thinking and an absurd baseline. Most software developers have also gone out of their way to study, keep up their skills, etc. Why would you think "making more than a live wage" is a good thing -- perhaps the comparison should be the value they are adding? If all those years studying for SATs, struggling thru tough CS courses, grad school, GREs, etc get compared to earning a living wage, why even bother?

Also, I grew up on a "living wage". Living wage means your kids dont get braces. They go to schools with gangs. It means wearing shoes with holes. It means you skip doctors appointments because your living wage does not cover the deductible or copay. It means you cant get a review book for your SAT and you need to chip in with friends to share a review book and allocate time among yourselves.

SWEs: If you've busted your arse to get where you are and add value, dont fall for the "remember you're making more than living wage" argument.

Every time I've gone on to the next company it has been in response to a "no raises" and a subsequent 25-50% pay bump by next employer.

Companies think they can retain people out of fear, this only works on people without options. The ones without options are the lowest value slice of employee to have.

I agree with the idea of pay. With that said, there really are some caveats.

"I know everyone says no, I want this or that, but at the end of the day, you are trading time for money."

Not all time is equal. Let's say you're paid $2000 and you're at a job that has no stress, feels cognitively easy and career advancement is possible. Now suppose you're being paid $4000, but you're lightly stressed all the time at baseline. In fact, the whole company is. Now you're being paid $6000 with chronic moderate stress. Or imagine being paid $8000 with heavy chronic stress and you barely have it under control.

In these scenario's I'd choose for the $2000 in most cases, unless the other cases are short-term assignments. I could do the $4000 job for perhaps 1 to 2 years, but you start playing with your health in all other cases if you do it for that long.

Now this only looked at the relationship of salary, time and stress, but I believe there are a few other variables as well, but it's a lot of typing ;-)

E.g. being able to do remote work wherever and work hours whenever, as long as you average 160 hours per month on a 3 month basis. That's completely different as well, I can imagine that you have people that take 1.5 months off and then sink in all their time in the other 1.5 months while being in Argentina, traveling with their SO.

$2000 a month? A week? A day?

You might as well replace the numbers with letters because discussing a time-for-money exchange while ignoring the time component is pretty worthless.

Yes, do that then. 2000 = x, 4000 = 2x, 6000 = 3x, 8000 = 4x

It doesn't work like that though. You can't ignore the diminishing value of money.

Until all of one's marginal income is at the highest marginal tax rate, the government has already done that calculation for you.

At least until then, marginal utility is essentially linear with marginal gross.

Not sold? Boom, imagine that your loved ones are suddenly ill.

Exactly, and the other thing I think is missing from the belief money is always more valuable than time is there is a scaling limit to money in most cases.

In your example you go from x to 4x but taking a developer in London with say a new-senior salary of 70k for a standard low-medium stress role, (with a few exceptions such as working in finance) you might get up to 100k by making a change, which is ~1.4x. But that extra 30k is taxed at 40% so isn't significantly more and is irrelevant against the actual cost of housing in London.

HN is always a SV bubble but by and large jobs that allow you to triple your income are vanishingly rare for the average developer, so given you're not going to change your situation entirely with an extra 16k why trade a known quantity for more stress, longer hours and a worse quality of life.

I'll add growth opportunities to that. When I've learned 80% of what I'm going in my current role, I'm itching to find new challenges. If I'm stuck in a position where I can't grow, it's gonna be hard to make to make a case that I deserve increased compensation.

This is 100% true, but also completely useless if your entire team is at the point where they have enough money for a few years. Even outside of FAANG, teams full of senior devs are often full of people who don't truly need the specific job they are in.

So if I don't need your job, you need to build a working environment where I want the job you are offering. The details of what that means will be different for each person, so managers need to talk to their people, and need to ask. There won't be one single thing to do to retain everyone - retention is a permanent ongoing negotiation.

I agree, but expand it to "compensation".

- match (or offer, if you don't) my 401k - increase health benefits - provide a learning benefit - no strings attached. It shouldn't matter if it "benefits the company" directly - flexible hours. (I prefer a 6-2 schedule. Why do I have to be in 9-5 just because that is what most do? - etc ..

Compensate an employee well, and they will see you care about them; not just their work.

The way this works in my experience is, I'm usually pretty happy where I am. Whenever recruiters or other opportunities find me, they usually fall short on comp, tech stack/maturity, culture/mission.

If not being paid above market value it takes away one of the big reasons to stay. And if caught at a low point it might be enough to open the door and look around.

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