Subj : Re: Software Job Market Myths
To   : comp.programming,comp.software-eng
From : JXStern
Date : Sat Jul 16 2005 08:20 pm

On Wed, 29 Jun 2005 17:27:44 GMT, "H. S. Lahman"
<h.lahman@verizon.net> wrote:
>> Misconceptions:
>> 
>> 1. Any good programmer requires $60,000 to $90,000 per year or more.
>> (Wrong. They may only require $40,000, or less, depending on the job. Entry
>> level programmers just out of college, many of whom are very capable, can be
>> hired for $30,000. It's not the 1990s anymore. There are many unemployed
>> engineers. The crazed demand for programmers is gone. Programmers require no
>> more pay than intelligent, educated, skilled workers in other professions.)
>
>It's not what the programmer requires.  It is what market determines to 
>be the value.  Different markets result in different valuations.
>
>It is also well established that there can be as much as an order of 
>magnitude difference in overall quality (in the general sense of 
>productivity, maintainability, etc. in addition to reliability) between 
>entry level developers and experienced stars.

I'm late to the thread, darn it.  I agree with most of what OP said,
and where I don't agree, I'm mostly in sympathy anyway, but on this
opening sentence, I wondered at the wording.  "... programmer requires
...."?  Requires?  I know OP meant something like, "How much employers
these days are required to pay to get a competent programmer" and/or
its converse, "... so this is what a programmer should say he/she
'requires' in salary", but he didn't say either of these, and maybe
that's not what he meant afterall, so for the record, I agree with
H.S. on both the points, that salaries are not set on who "requires",
but on what the market says, and/or on the *value* that the position
holds in the overall business plan, or on the *value* that a
particular person can deliver to the business.  Markets are blind to
local conditions, if a business is losing a million bucks a day, they
would be smart to pay any programmer who can fix the problem far above
market average rates!  Yet there are so many businesses who would
rather lose money than pay such value compensation to some technical
peon, ... but I digress.

The other factor, as H.S. says, is quality, and businesses in setting
their compensation rates have to consider if they want average
results, average speed of work, average defect densities, etc, cuz
that's what they're going to get for average compensation.  Now, there
are many difficulties in getting better results on any one of these
dimensions, much less all of them at once, but they still represent
variables that go into salaries that should be required by employers
or employees.  Again, the market these days tends to ignore these
quality issues, ... but these are topics for separate threads.

J.

.