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Comment by Murkin | Hacker News Reader

The real reason programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity:

  They don't demand it.

I had the privilege of working with some extremely talented and productive people. Sadly, many of them were making market salary (or less). Contrary to popular belief, many companies are quite capable of noticing and trying to keep productive people. But rarely by throwing money at them.

Related anecdote: I have meet a few startups lately that started the conversation with:

"We are looking for extremely talented and productive people".

And finished with:

"Compensation ? Well, we checked online, the average pay for your experience is.."

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It's amazing how common that is.

"We want top people."

"We want to pay average."

If they can't pay more, try asking for a 4 day work week.

For smaller companies/startups I also prefer to receive fresh hardware (macbook,mini,etc.) at signing.

But I want to work more than that, and they want me to work more than that too. This is a win-win situation if the compensation is right.

Oh sure, I expect to work nearly all the time. I just want less time that I have to answer the phone. It is still win-win.

Try for something like Google's 20% time? You work for four days a week on what they say, then work the other day on whatever you want. Or three and two. It works out well for everyone if they want you to do interesting things, and if they don't you still get to do what you think is most important or fun some of the time.

That's what I do. I work at most 2 months a year. But draw salary for the rest of the year. The company doesn't mind too. They are happy to keep me on board as insurance against sinking projects.

If you are serious then can I be your apprentice? :)

Fresh hardware? Are you kidding? If you make a decent salary you can buy your own hardware whenever you feel like it. A $2K MacBook Pro is a drop in the bucket compared to paying a 6 digit salary.

Nah - I buy other stuff too, and go places.

For me, starting off with a brand new MBP with all the trimmings (incidentally, ~4-5K) translates directly into productivity.

Besides, if I was paying it'd probably be running Plan 9 and have an FPGA duct taped to the back...

If they pay you and let you buy the MacBook, it's after tax.

$3k is still a drop in the bucket

Great! e-mail me for my address..

In Australia at least, if you pay for hardware, software or education which you use directly for work purposes or for self-education directly related to your current occupation, it is tax-deductible.

Fresh hardware is a test. It should be a drop in the bucket and a no-brainer but its very often not. When it goes bad, its a huge red flag. If you get even the slightest bit of "well we can't really approve something like that without this or that managers sign-off and then the 30 day procurement process from an approved vendor..." head for the door.

I've seen companies burn 100 hours of $150/hour employee labor in order to save $50 on a mouse. You don't want to work there.

I worked for a very large enterprise software company for a while. They gave everyone their stock computers with stock keyboards and mice (the basic ones that came with the HP systems). I spent about a month trying to get them to buy me a new keyboard which I felt was necessary for ergonomics and because I had (informally) demonstrated a higher typing speed on it.

Eventually I just bought one for myself. It was $50. Managers made all sorts of excuses, then IT said they wouldn't buy non-standard hardware, and there were particularly a lot of excuses in the vein of, "but then we'd have to buy keyboards for everyone." That they wouldn't consider buying their $100k/yr employees a $50 keyboard every few years was just another symptom of their dysfunctional environment.

You were allowed to bring in your own hardware and use it. Lucky.

Hardware, and other expenses such as conference trips, is indeed a very small expense compared to salaries. It's a cheap way of showing employees that you care.

Just as a recent example, it took an email to my manager and 10 minutes later a keyboard for $150 was approved. Say it lasts for 5 years - the feeling of appreciation by easily getting what I need approved and bought is worth so much more, compared to what $150 spread out over 5 years of salary would buy them (disregarding that the raise would also cost a more considering taxes and such).

Good points all around.

I'd be interested to know going in what a startup's policy on conferences would be.

While I expect most trips to be ultimately grounded in business development (and with good reason), is the company purely focused on talking up a product, or will they accommodate my technical/social interests as well?

Giving a pitch can be fun, as long as I have Plenty of time to chat with other programmers, attend panels, learn something, etc.

It's just a negotiation tactic. Most HR people are playing a game that most applicants aren't prepared for and/or interested in. The offer, the dancing around, even the bit about looking for "top people". It's all just trying to dress up the game to their advantage [1].

[1] Your ability to negotiate effectively is helped/hampered by your knowledge of their field of candidates. Ergo, they inevitably say 'top people', to skew your perception of your competitors to their advantage.

Most HR people are playing a game that most applicants aren't prepared for and/or interested in.

Sure, but that's what makes them scum. It's bad-faith negotiating.

How is it bad faith? They are called HR, Human Resources, to any company who employs such a department you are indistinguishable from coal. The goal is to get the coal at the lowest price, if you have to buy it sodas and tell it what a wonderful employee it is to get it to accept low salaries then so be it.

What usually wakes HR up is a detailed spreadsheet of the value you add to the business and that you will be going elsewhere unless you are properly compensated, as well as when they bring other people into it saying "Ok, lets get them in here and get their salary up too" or "fire them if you need extra money, your lack of money to pay me is not my problem, this is a business, I am not your bank, if you need a loan call them."

Grow a pair and walk out on the spot, if you can't then save so next time you can. Thats how you negotiate by putting the business in a position where it is fucked if they don't do what you want, just like a business plays its min wage employees. Letting people put themselves into stupid positions is a two way street.

Human Resources, to any company who employs such a department you are indistinguishable from coal.

It's bad faith to contend that a programmer is nothing more than an inert substance. I'm not talking about emotions or morale or anything woo-woo like that, just that programmers do more than coal. You can't burn a person and get code as a result.

HR workers who follow your logic do a disservice to themselves and the company, because when a programmer is performing under expectations, HR is not going to say, "well, they're a piece of coal, what do you expect?"

No, programmers are only coal at the beginning, and then the script flips after they're hired. That's textbook bad faith, and "walking out on the spot" always involves having wasted time at least going through the interview process. Charming.

They are called HR, Human Resources, to any company who employs such a department you are indistinguishable from coal

Not disputing that but seriously: what sort of people call other people "resources"? Did they think that's who they were going to grow up to be, when they were kids?

They even know it's wrong because they don't call themselves "spreadsheet resources", they're "HR professionals".

I suspect, that programmers themselves do not know their productivity (because there is now objective metric), so how can they know what to demand?

I certainly do not know if i'm more productive than average or not :)

I think you get a good feel for it when you work with other programmers who have different productivity levels than you.

I worked at a large enterprise software company and it was actually fairly easy to tell. The reason is that management had implemented a Scrum system with two-week sprints. What this meant is that we planned out what we could do for the next two weeks on the first day of the sprint, including doing estimates of the tasks. Then at the end of the week we would look back and double check that we got everything done and try to figure out why we were off if were (but they never figured it out).

When doing group estimates, it's not hard to start to see who is struggling to finish their tasks at the end of the week and who is finishing with time to spare. You can also tell who is giving QA headaches with all their bugs and who is saving QA time. A lot of the people didn't realize they were doing it, but you could tell QA would base their estimates partially on who was going to be on the coding portion, and it was very easy to get a sense of who was able to get tasks done faster than you thought you would be able to and who was slower.

The worst was the programmers that needed the other programmers to help them out almost every sprint. Management liked it. They said it was a good sign because it showed what a team we were.

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