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Why Coder Pay Isn't Proportional To Productivity
theodp writes "John D. Cook takes a stab at explaining why programmers are not paid in proportion to their productivity. The basic problem, Cook explains, is that extreme programmer productivity may not be obvious. A salesman who sells 10x as much as his peers will be noticed, and compensated accordingly. And if a bricklayer were 10x more productive than his peers, this would be obvious too (it doesn't happen). But the best programmers do not write 10x as many lines of code; nor do they work 10x as many hours. Programmers are most effective when they avoid writing code. An über-programmer, Cook explains, is likely to be someone who stares quietly into space and then says 'Hmm. I think I've seen something like this before.'"
Thanks for the recap of the summary.
The thanks never comes down to the programmers. When the product is completed, it's likely they'll be let go, since no more work needs to be done. The sales staff could continue selling it for years, and making a profit.
This is why I always leave lots of bugs in the code, and name the variables: a, aa, aAa, Aa, etc. They can never fire me.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
Yes, we all know about "Job Security". God I hate it when people who aren't me do it. They move on to a bigger and better job, but don't bother to fix the their code before escaping.
If managing were as easy as reading a guage that said "PRODUCTIVITY", you might as well get rid of the expensive managers and have a monkey read it.
Oh, so you've met my manager! (Hopefully he isn't reading this. If so, then, uh, lol j/k!)
I knew a couple folks in my small development shop (~20 people) who were always being rewarded because the informal metric was lines of output. I had to take over for one of the top performers after she left for vacation. Looking through her code, I discovered that the code was merely average, much like mine. I asked another top performer if I could look through his code because I wanted to better understand his interface. His was also mediocre code with roughly the same ratio of lines to output as my code was.
When the other top performer came back from vacation, I took the two of them into the break room and asked them why they are getting undue credit based on the "lines of output metric". They both chuckled and gave each other knowing glances before one of them said, "No, silly, it's how many lines of cocaine we bust out to the boss...see?" The woman pulled out a small bag of whitish powder, a razor blade, and a scratched-up mirror tile. The guy rolled up a 20 dollar bill, tight as a drum, and passed it to me. "Go! Go! Go!", they whispered as I bent down with the tooter in my nostril, snorting 3 medium-sized lines of sweet Columbian. I had felt a strong euphoria like 1,000 cups of coffee overwhelm my body. The guy giggled sheepishly in a high-pitched voice as he went back to work. The woman who was still with me chopped up 3 more gaggers and snorted them up before we fucked madly in the utility closet like wild beasts during the rut. Oh, what a day that was!
This is why I always leave lots of bugs in the code, and name the variables: a, aa, aAa, Aa, etc. They can never fire me.
Hey, Intron, good to hear from you again. Seriously, we are really sorry we never sent you your last check after we fired you (your code had a bug in it which corrupted our terminated employee database beyond repair so we didn't have your address anymore).
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
A programmers job is to take an idea and express it in a way a computer can understand
Half right. A programmer's job is to take an idea and express it in a way that both computers and humans can understand. If only a computer can understand it, you might be a Perl programmer.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
But then, I suppose I'm wasting my breath: who would ever want to sully political rhetoric with a modicum of rational thought when dealing with a nuanced issue?
Indeed, the lack of rational thought surrounding the issue is simply staggering. Wait, hold on... You're typing with your breath?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Don't you mean: 'Before never releasing them?' :D
Seems you're also a big Uncyclopedia contributer, too..
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/AAAAAAAAA!
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
The key is to grimace so they know you're working
Your keyboard from back in the day?
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Why do I rant on Joel?
Show us, on the doll, where Joel Spolsky touched you...
> Half right. A programmer's job is to take an idea and express it in a way that both computers and humans can understand. If only a computer can understand it, you might be a Haskell programmer.
There, fixed that for you.
That every sysadmin on the planet pretty can learn Perl means there must be humans in that group somewhere.
Now a language you have to be a mathematician to learn on the other hand... :)
"For you whippersnappers who never entered machine code with a keypad (not keyboard!) or switches, that means we rewrote it so that no machine instruction (one byte instructions) or data byte had "1110" as the lowest four bits. No that was programming."
That's insane. How is your UID not negative?
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.txt&topic=Software%20Design&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium
If someone working the line makes a mistake and gets fired, guess what he walks away with?
A patent leather shoe in his ass?
This topic is terrifying! Productivity only makes sense when you have a static goal, which is not the case in any working environment I've encountered. Instead, I've found that I'm paid for tolerance. When a manager asks me to deliver X, but a marketer suddenly promises Y, I get paid for not killing both of them. When my manager asks me to make 1 + 1 = 3, and a marketer promises a client that 1 + 1 = 6.255, I get paid for not going on a murderous rampage. Seriously - if it weren't for these wages - programmers would have a worse reputation than postal workers. We get paid to be driven crazy.
My grandfather, a former architect - when spotted apparently fast asleep on an armchair, had the perfect excuse. He hadn't been asleep, in fact he'd been thinking deeply.
I still miss the old sod.