Average pay for a new Software Engineering BS grad is 80,000 USD? Microsoft was paying that in 2010. What are the above average companies paying and who are they?
I started at $60k for 30-35 hours a week at no-name company in PDX in 2006.. Cost of living is way less there than Redmond. I did a few phone interviews with MS back then, but they only wanted to start me at 68k or something like that. Though I'll admit having MS on my resume might have been better for my career in the long run, but I had a damn good time in Portland and I'm glad I got to live out most of my 20s with short working hours and a decent wad of cash in my pocket in a fun town.
Why so many?
Sounds like huge pain in the ass. I get irritated if interviews run more than 1 hour. If you want my time, pay me for it.
Agreed. They may be the top of the prestige ladder, but google and microsoft are both places where you'll be expected to put in long hours for average pay. Maybe the hours and hours of interviews is really just to determine who values their time the least?
I believe that it is very important to distinguish between computer scientists, software engineers, and programmers.
I know the difference between computer science and programming, and I mean no disrespect, but I do not know the difference between a programmer and a software engineer. If you are inclined to do so, please enlighten me.
I usually try to make it clear that I'm *not* an engineer, but I'll offer a devil's advocate POV: A programmer writes instructions for the computer to follow, where a software engineer might employ (and specify) design patterns and principles, test coverage, etc. In essence, a software engineer should be someone who employs techniques to at least attempt to qualify what will break, when, and under what conditions. That said, without a professional organization its silly to apply a guild name to your profession.
Your comment is based on your lack of understanding about how badly the dollar has devalued. $12/hour isn't a living wage in a lot of places.
It may not be a living wage, but it's almost twice what my wife makes at Target doing a fairly similar job. Everyone else's wages have been stagnant despite increasing cost of living (I make only about 15% more now than I did right out of college 7 years ago), so I don't see why retail would be an exception. Of course, if we didn't legitimize bribery in our government, maybe we'd have a minimum wage that you could actually live on, but that's a completely different topic.
The point of posting this isn't to actually recommend books for the poster's kids (okay, well, maybe to him it is), the main point is to spark discussion of your favorite sci-fi from childhood, with the thinly veiled excuse that some kid somewhere should be reading some old books that you liked as a kid.
Case in point: scientists mentioned above believe that not being able to test 9 discrete choices with only the capacity to test 6 discrete choices is somehow a failure. Sure, you could test a few choices and extrapolate what the results of the missing choices might be, but you can't conclusively determine something you haven't tested.
It's not obvious from the interface they give, but you can do it given a few (true) assumptions. The key thing is to note that you can do multiple experiments as long as the total is only 6 trays. The assumptions are that
1) There is only one optimum fertilizer value, and it's one of the testable values
2) If you're off by one, plants will grow better than if you're off by more than one.
Given this, you just test 2,4,6, and 8. If one seems best, test the values on either side of it and pick the best of the three. If two seem equally good, you know the answer is between the two (but test it anyway).
But unless you've shown that the growth to fertilizer function is continuous with a single maximum, you cannot make that assumption. You might guess that it's the case, and you'd probably be right, but you're also counting the right answer ("there is no way to conclusively show the optimum fertilization level given the constraints of the experiment") as a wrong answer. In essence, you're telling the kids that they were wrong for trying to apply rigor to their experiment.
It may be required to be a good scientist, but not to get a job as one.
Case in point: scientists mentioned above believe that not being able to test 9 discrete choices with only the capacity to test 6 discrete choices is somehow a failure. Sure, you could test a few choices and extrapolate what the results of the missing choices might be, but you can't conclusively determine something you haven't tested.
There are shortages in some areas of the country. For instance in Wisconsin there is a severe shortage of skilled Java developers. I know my company has been looking for 3-4 senior level Java developers and that is just the start. We have had to resort to interviewing people who are right out of college and having to accept it will take them 1-2 years to get "up to speed". I know a couple people we interviewed claimed to have all kinds of Java experience on their resume, but when interviewed they knew about as much as the kids right out of college or less. Right now we are having to use about 75 developers across 3 continents for a huge project we are working on. Why all over the globe. Simple we truly can't find skilled Java developers in the state. We are looking outside the state - but the company won't pay for relocation so that hurts trying to get people in from other states but many won't come to Wisconsin, or won't come if there is no relocation involved. I think if unemployed IT folks -REALLY- want a job - they need to start looking in places they may not have thought about before. Also make big pushes for telecommuting. I know our CIO came to the realization that telecommuting for some positions in IT is doable. So they are working out how they will handle it. They realize that not -all- developers -have- to be "on site". Heck they are using folks in India - so that proves it.
Have you thought about hiring outside the pool of people who have spent their career specializing in java? I work in a.net shop, but we often hire people with primarily java or c++ experience because it's much easier to get a good developer and have them learn the dev environment than it is to take someone who knows the dev environment and teach them to code.
Hm.. Well if you want to hire Americans and don't mind having them relocate from the midwest, I know a fair number of good devs here that might be willing to relocate if the pay is right and the working conditions are bearable. What skill sets are you looking for?
What kind of pay were you offering? That might be your problem. I know tons of talented American coders, but if you want to entice someone to fill a position, you have to make it worth leaving their current job (if they have one), or hiring a college grad at a decent wage.
Yeah, now if only programs like that actually existed. But as our Republican overlords are so quick to point out, that's Socialism(tm). And by Republican logic, since that's a socialist program, and nazis were socialists, that's a nazi program. You nazi.
Interesting, because I'd call it market manipulation. You're dumping an undervalued commodity into an otherwise closed system, driving down the prices of that commodity as a whole.
Yeah, it's an interesting phenomenon.. I remember one job I had where the owner (a limousine liberal type) was wetting her panties over our new Indian hire. She went on and on about how Indians are so much smarter and more cultured than Americans, and even made a few jabs at me during that time. So anyway, we give the guy a simple task -- update a report to round down the number of minutes billed to the customer. I didn't hear from him for 2 days, and he finally came to ask me how to round down to the integer value. Yeah, that'd be the 'floor' function, or just cast to an integer..
I'm sure there are plenty of smart Indians, but I don't think they're the ones coming over on the H1-B visas.
You know they could be bringing these people in because all the decent, diligent, intelligent and reliable local workers have jobs already and those without jobs are crap at what they do. Or am I mistaken and actually all Americans, even the thick and stupid ones, are better workers than highly-educated and motivated people from countries like India or from within the EU?
Just a thought.
This is anecdotal, but I've known plenty of excellent CS grads to have a hell of a time finding work after college. I was a bit more fortunate only because I had an internship (basically the same responsibilities as any other coder, but for minimum wage) for a couple years during college, but most people run into the catch-22 that, if you don't have 2 years dev job experience, you can't find a dev job. I've also come across a glut of H1-Bs that are rarely worth their salt. I've worked closely with 15 or so, and I can only think of one that was any good. I have, however, seen some excellent work from foreigners who came to the US for school, then got dev jobs afterward.
Anyway, my point here is that the existence of talented foreign workers does not change the fact that the H1-B workers are (usually) unqualified and that there are plenty of qualified Americans available for these tech jobs.
Most of the comp sci classes I took were filled to the gills
and guess what... 95% of you suck. "Comp sci classes I took" sounds like a real serious education.
I hire H-1Bs, I hire Americans. Whoever is best for the job.
And if 95% of the H1-Bs didn't suck, I wouldn't complain about the program. The stated case for H1-B is to allow highly skilled workers with skills not found in the US to enter and work here. The reality of the situation is that it's a program to drive down prices for tech workers by hiring mostly unskilled workers, all the while treating them as indentured servants.
Don't get me wrong here, I'm not necessarily blaming you (this is/., so comments come with a healthy dose of snark). Most manager have indirect control at best of their employees' pay. But the fact is that your employees are working long hours for little pay, and that's unsustainable. Comfort and stability might be keeping them there; hell, a few might even stay out of gratitude for the way you handled things in 2008. Eventually, though, they're going to realize they can make 20% more elsewhere and they'll leave. You can either start bumping salaries now, make arrangements to hire less-skilled peopled and make peace with the fact that all your experienced workers are leaving, or accept a lower profit margin and pay people what they deserve. It sounds like your business is on the road to ruin. I hope that's not the case, but having to make choices like this is a big red flag.
I agree with what you're saying but, as a manager, I have another issue that cannot be solved with completely transparent transactions (even if that was possible):
Salary rates are set by what the market will pay. When demand goes up, candidates know to ask for more. I'm desperate to hire now, which means either I ask my team to keep working 50/60 hr weeks, or I hire another person for (10-20%) more than what my current team (of equivalent experience) makes. Of course, I cannot simply raise everyone to this new level because I barely have the budget to hire this new person at a normal rate, much less this inflated rate. So, either I keep people in the dark and relatively happy, or I tell people what's up (they know anyway), and now they leave for greener pastures. Yes we can have talks about things that will happen "one day" but I can't promise anything I can't deliver, and right now I have no clue how the market will turn. Everyone wants to make more money when the market is great, no one wants to cut their paycheck when it dips.
With perfect information, I am at the mercy of the hiring market (bubble?), and my operating budget climbs while I don't necessarily get any more productivity (per person) with an increase salaries paid. Sure, I can look elsewhere to save money too, but I don't want to be the PHB that cuts the free coffee and tea so I can raise only one guy up to the market rate. Or do I?
So in other words, you've been underpaying your employees for years and now its coming back to bite you in the ass. I'd leave your team too.
Being a good teacher has little to do with subject matter. I have a friend who is brilliant in math and is consistently rated as a terrible teacher. Teaching is a skill that requires significant training. Think you're good at explaining some subject? Do you know how to adapt your explanation for a student with mild autism, or dyslexia, or ADHD, or fetal alcohol syndrome? Two or three kids like that in a classroom are not uncommon, and make effective teaching a challenge.
Well, I do pretty well teaching myself despite my (diagnosed, currently untreated) ADHD and my (suspected) dyslexia. And I'm making good progress teaching my son, who is mildly autistic. Can't say for fetal alcohol syndrome.
I never claimed that knowing the subject makes you a good teacher. The point is that knowing the subject should be a perquisite for teaching the subject. And since the intersection of the set { good at math } and the set { good at teaching } is pretty small and their value is pretty high, I think math teachers should be paid better than the people who are in the {good at teaching } set and not in the { good at math } set.
What's with everyone getting their panties in a wad over this? Some careers pay better than others, and some degree programs are harder than others. As I said before, there's nothing wrong with being a teacher -- they fill an important role in our society. But should elementary school teachers be paid more than engineers and software devs? If you say yes, then it should be clear why Americans aren't going the STEM route.
Why should software devs and engineers get paid more than elementary school teachers? You haven't supported your position any more than I've supported the converse.
Because software dev and engineering is hard? Puh-lease.
Besides, what a position pays should based on utility, not the effort of the person doing the job. It'd be pretty hard for me to dig out a pool in my backyard with a salad fork. Doesn't mean anyone should pay me to do it.
It seems the panty wads are on the folks balking at the salaries paid to teachers. What's the problem? Shouldn't someone be able to make a living acting as the steward for other people's children full time?
You do get that the whole point of having teachers is so that kids can grow up to be engineers, doctors, lawyers, etc., right? I've never claimed that teachers shouldn't make a good living. In fact, if you actually fucking read the thread, my only complaint is that elementary school teachers are getting paid more than college instructors and high school math teachers.
And as far as engineering being hard.. Well, yeah, it kinda is. You have to have a much more thorough education to be an engineer than an elementary school teacher. There are far fewer people who can do it, and without them our modern society pretty much falls apart. Also, engineers and software devs who suck at their jobs tend to get the boot.
I went through the public education system not too long ago, and all but a handful were people who couldn't do anything else, so they decided to teach. In fact, I'd say that most teachers hindered my education by insisting that I follow along with the class and making me put down whatever math, programming, philosophy, or fiction book I happened to be reading during their boring-ass lectures. Until my second year of college I never spent a moment outside of school to work on homework; I always did it the class period before it was due.
If Boulder, CO somehow has teachers worth 96k/year, then great for them. But I have to ask then why they think that high school math and college educators are less important than first grade teachers.
Most dev jobs require a CS degree, which is a lot harder to get than an education degree. As for things I don't really know much about, are you referring to teaching? Because I teach a 2 week class that all new hires have to pass, and it's not so hard if you know the material.
So you teach a 2 week class, to adults, who are paid to attend. And that somehow makes you an expert on teaching full time to adolescents?
The ignorance and arrogance is astounding.
What's with everyone getting their panties in a wad over this? Some careers pay better than others, and some degree programs are harder than others. As I said before, there's nothing wrong with being a teacher -- they fill an important role in our society. But should elementary school teachers be paid more than engineers and software devs? If you say yes, then it should be clear why Americans aren't going the STEM route.
Umm... there's more to teaching than simply knowing the material you're teaching. To use your example of 6th graders, I can't imagine its easy to keep a room of 30 6th graders quiet and behaved long enough to accomplish anything. Not to mention teaching the material in such a way that it sinks in for the bulk of them.
But you're assuming that the high school math teacher doesn't know how to teach and the elementary school teacher does. You have to know how to teach in order to teach math, the same as you have to know how to teach in order to teach elementary school. The difference is you have to know how to teach, you have to know how to do *math*. Most school teachers can't hang with the high school math. So, given that that the math teacher has a more rare skill set, in addition to the general skill set of all teachers, that said math teacher should make more than other teachers, not less?
I think you vastly underestimate what it takes to be a good teacher and have simultaneously identified what I would consider one of the most significant issues in public education. You assert that you "could easily teach any high school subject...". Do you have any training in teaching, or do you just assume anyone can make a good teacher? Sounds like the latter. And yet I suspect you probably could get and keep a job teaching and even attain tenure if you really wanted to, but that's more a function of poor management (or maybe misguided union protection, but I don't want to get into that discussion here) than how easy it is to be a teacher. I have school-age kids, so I know there are teachers who really should find a different line of work.
You indicate you are a developer, which means you probably have experience with at least a few managers. Have they all been exemplary (in which case consider yourself very lucky), or have you run into some, like I have, that you thought were entirely inadequate at their job? Just as not everyone is cut out to be a manager, not everyone can be a good teacher.
Oh, and the word you made up ("consumerate") would support my gut feel that you probably would not be the great and wondrous teacher you think you would be.
That was a typo, the word I was looking for was "commensurate". I do happen to teach software development classes at my work (we've had better luck finding smart developers and teaching them our toolset than it is to find people who know our toolset and hope they're good developers). My role also involves a lot of mentoring. And you're correct, being a good teacher is hard. But being a good teacher is not a requirement for being a public school teacher either. The public school system consists mostly of a "technician" level of understanding, at this point. Read from the book and teach the test. That's not as hard as developing software.
Maybe so, but how much does a dev job pay there? I'd imagine not much more than that.
What's the relevance? My point is, he is clearly exaggerating to support his argument. Why not use average pool boy salaries in Beverly Hills as an example of national pool boy salaries? Because it's a number that's too skewed by the localized wealth to have anything to do with the national average.
It's hugely relevant. A dev job in most parts of the country pays between 2 and 3 times as much as a teacher's starting salary. If teachers make the same as other professions that typically pay much better, then you can't chalk it up to being an affluent town with a high cost of living, as their relative standing has still improved. I actually don't take issue with the idea that teachers should be paid better. I just take issue with the fact that the difficulty of the subject taught is inversely proportional to the pay of the teacher, according to the data points available on that web site of teacher salaries.
For another, it requires more education and talent.
On the contrary, you need a college degree and state certification to teach in most places; not so for developing software.
I could easily teach any high school subject with the exception of biology and maybe chemistry, but most high school teachers would likely have no idea how to code.
Everyone feels it's easier to do things they don't really know much about than doing the things they have experience in.
Most dev jobs require a CS degree, which is a lot harder to get than an education degree. As for things I don't really know much about, are you referring to teaching? Because I teach a 2 week class that all new hires have to pass, and it's not so hard if you know the material. The most difficult part is preparing the lesson plans, which most public school teachers don't even have to do, as they work off a guide book.
Maybe so, but how much does a dev job pay there? I'd imagine not much more than that.
So? Should it? I'm a software developer but I don't see that what I do is any more valuable than what a teacher does.
--Jeremy
Well, for one being a developer is a lot less stable (unless you go public sector like I did, where the pay is miserable). For another, it requires more education and talent. I could easily teach any high school subject with the exception of biology and maybe chemistry, but most high school teachers would likely have no idea how to code. Not saying there's anything wrong with being a teacher, but teacher pay should be consumerate with the difficulty of the subject. I can't think of a single good reason that an elementary teacher (who really only requires a 6th grade education and a bit of patience) should make 20% more than a high school math teacher, who needs to know subjects like trig and calc well enough to teach them, and has to deal with obnoxious teenagers all day.
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Average pay for a new Software Engineering BS grad is 80,000 USD? Microsoft was paying that in 2010. What are the above average companies paying and who are they?
I started at $60k for 30-35 hours a week at no-name company in PDX in 2006.. Cost of living is way less there than Redmond. I did a few phone interviews with MS back then, but they only wanted to start me at 68k or something like that. Though I'll admit having MS on my resume might have been better for my career in the long run, but I had a damn good time in Portland and I'm glad I got to live out most of my 20s with short working hours and a decent wad of cash in my pocket in a fun town.
Why so many? Sounds like huge pain in the ass. I get irritated if interviews run more than 1 hour. If you want my time, pay me for it.
Agreed. They may be the top of the prestige ladder, but google and microsoft are both places where you'll be expected to put in long hours for average pay. Maybe the hours and hours of interviews is really just to determine who values their time the least?
I believe that it is very important to distinguish between computer scientists, software engineers, and programmers.
I know the difference between computer science and programming, and I mean no disrespect, but I do not know the difference between a programmer and a software engineer. If you are inclined to do so, please enlighten me.
I usually try to make it clear that I'm *not* an engineer, but I'll offer a devil's advocate POV: A programmer writes instructions for the computer to follow, where a software engineer might employ (and specify) design patterns and principles, test coverage, etc. In essence, a software engineer should be someone who employs techniques to at least attempt to qualify what will break, when, and under what conditions. That said, without a professional organization its silly to apply a guild name to your profession.
Your comment is based on your lack of understanding about how badly the dollar has devalued. $12/hour isn't a living wage in a lot of places.
It may not be a living wage, but it's almost twice what my wife makes at Target doing a fairly similar job. Everyone else's wages have been stagnant despite increasing cost of living (I make only about 15% more now than I did right out of college 7 years ago), so I don't see why retail would be an exception. Of course, if we didn't legitimize bribery in our government, maybe we'd have a minimum wage that you could actually live on, but that's a completely different topic.
The point of posting this isn't to actually recommend books for the poster's kids (okay, well, maybe to him it is), the main point is to spark discussion of your favorite sci-fi from childhood, with the thinly veiled excuse that some kid somewhere should be reading some old books that you liked as a kid.
It's not obvious from the interface they give, but you can do it given a few (true) assumptions. The key thing is to note that you can do multiple experiments as long as the total is only 6 trays. The assumptions are that 1) There is only one optimum fertilizer value, and it's one of the testable values 2) If you're off by one, plants will grow better than if you're off by more than one.
Given this, you just test 2,4,6, and 8. If one seems best, test the values on either side of it and pick the best of the three. If two seem equally good, you know the answer is between the two (but test it anyway).
But unless you've shown that the growth to fertilizer function is continuous with a single maximum, you cannot make that assumption. You might guess that it's the case, and you'd probably be right, but you're also counting the right answer ("there is no way to conclusively show the optimum fertilization level given the constraints of the experiment") as a wrong answer. In essence, you're telling the kids that they were wrong for trying to apply rigor to their experiment.
Reasoning is required to be a scientist.
It may be required to be a good scientist, but not to get a job as one.
Case in point: scientists mentioned above believe that not being able to test 9 discrete choices with only the capacity to test 6 discrete choices is somehow a failure. Sure, you could test a few choices and extrapolate what the results of the missing choices might be, but you can't conclusively determine something you haven't tested.
There are shortages in some areas of the country. For instance in Wisconsin there is a severe shortage of skilled Java developers. I know my company has been looking for 3-4 senior level Java developers and that is just the start. We have had to resort to interviewing people who are right out of college and having to accept it will take them 1-2 years to get "up to speed". I know a couple people we interviewed claimed to have all kinds of Java experience on their resume, but when interviewed they knew about as much as the kids right out of college or less. Right now we are having to use about 75 developers across 3 continents for a huge project we are working on. Why all over the globe. Simple we truly can't find skilled Java developers in the state. We are looking outside the state - but the company won't pay for relocation so that hurts trying to get people in from other states but many won't come to Wisconsin, or won't come if there is no relocation involved. I think if unemployed IT folks -REALLY- want a job - they need to start looking in places they may not have thought about before. Also make big pushes for telecommuting. I know our CIO came to the realization that telecommuting for some positions in IT is doable. So they are working out how they will handle it. They realize that not -all- developers -have- to be "on site". Heck they are using folks in India - so that proves it.
Have you thought about hiring outside the pool of people who have spent their career specializing in java? I work in a .net shop, but we often hire people with primarily java or c++ experience because it's much easier to get a good developer and have them learn the dev environment than it is to take someone who knows the dev environment and teach them to code.
Hm.. Well if you want to hire Americans and don't mind having them relocate from the midwest, I know a fair number of good devs here that might be willing to relocate if the pay is right and the working conditions are bearable. What skill sets are you looking for?
What kind of pay were you offering? That might be your problem. I know tons of talented American coders, but if you want to entice someone to fill a position, you have to make it worth leaving their current job (if they have one), or hiring a college grad at a decent wage.
Yeah, now if only programs like that actually existed. But as our Republican overlords are so quick to point out, that's Socialism(tm). And by Republican logic, since that's a socialist program, and nazis were socialists, that's a nazi program. You nazi.
Interesting, because I'd call it market manipulation. You're dumping an undervalued commodity into an otherwise closed system, driving down the prices of that commodity as a whole.
Yeah, it's an interesting phenomenon.. I remember one job I had where the owner (a limousine liberal type) was wetting her panties over our new Indian hire. She went on and on about how Indians are so much smarter and more cultured than Americans, and even made a few jabs at me during that time. So anyway, we give the guy a simple task -- update a report to round down the number of minutes billed to the customer. I didn't hear from him for 2 days, and he finally came to ask me how to round down to the integer value. Yeah, that'd be the 'floor' function, or just cast to an integer..
I'm sure there are plenty of smart Indians, but I don't think they're the ones coming over on the H1-B visas.
You know they could be bringing these people in because all the decent, diligent, intelligent and reliable local workers have jobs already and those without jobs are crap at what they do. Or am I mistaken and actually all Americans, even the thick and stupid ones, are better workers than highly-educated and motivated people from countries like India or from within the EU?
Just a thought.
This is anecdotal, but I've known plenty of excellent CS grads to have a hell of a time finding work after college. I was a bit more fortunate only because I had an internship (basically the same responsibilities as any other coder, but for minimum wage) for a couple years during college, but most people run into the catch-22 that, if you don't have 2 years dev job experience, you can't find a dev job. I've also come across a glut of H1-Bs that are rarely worth their salt. I've worked closely with 15 or so, and I can only think of one that was any good. I have, however, seen some excellent work from foreigners who came to the US for school, then got dev jobs afterward.
Anyway, my point here is that the existence of talented foreign workers does not change the fact that the H1-B workers are (usually) unqualified and that there are plenty of qualified Americans available for these tech jobs.
Most of the comp sci classes I took were filled to the gills
and guess what... 95% of you suck. "Comp sci classes I took" sounds like a real serious education.
I hire H-1Bs, I hire Americans. Whoever is best for the job.
And if 95% of the H1-Bs didn't suck, I wouldn't complain about the program. The stated case for H1-B is to allow highly skilled workers with skills not found in the US to enter and work here. The reality of the situation is that it's a program to drive down prices for tech workers by hiring mostly unskilled workers, all the while treating them as indentured servants.
Don't get me wrong here, I'm not necessarily blaming you (this is /., so comments come with a healthy dose of snark). Most manager have indirect control at best of their employees' pay. But the fact is that your employees are working long hours for little pay, and that's unsustainable. Comfort and stability might be keeping them there; hell, a few might even stay out of gratitude for the way you handled things in 2008. Eventually, though, they're going to realize they can make 20% more elsewhere and they'll leave. You can either start bumping salaries now, make arrangements to hire less-skilled peopled and make peace with the fact that all your experienced workers are leaving, or accept a lower profit margin and pay people what they deserve. It sounds like your business is on the road to ruin. I hope that's not the case, but having to make choices like this is a big red flag.
I agree with what you're saying but, as a manager, I have another issue that cannot be solved with completely transparent transactions (even if that was possible):
Salary rates are set by what the market will pay. When demand goes up, candidates know to ask for more. I'm desperate to hire now, which means either I ask my team to keep working 50/60 hr weeks, or I hire another person for (10-20%) more than what my current team (of equivalent experience) makes. Of course, I cannot simply raise everyone to this new level because I barely have the budget to hire this new person at a normal rate, much less this inflated rate. So, either I keep people in the dark and relatively happy, or I tell people what's up (they know anyway), and now they leave for greener pastures. Yes we can have talks about things that will happen "one day" but I can't promise anything I can't deliver, and right now I have no clue how the market will turn. Everyone wants to make more money when the market is great, no one wants to cut their paycheck when it dips.
With perfect information, I am at the mercy of the hiring market (bubble?), and my operating budget climbs while I don't necessarily get any more productivity (per person) with an increase salaries paid. Sure, I can look elsewhere to save money too, but I don't want to be the PHB that cuts the free coffee and tea so I can raise only one guy up to the market rate. Or do I?
So in other words, you've been underpaying your employees for years and now its coming back to bite you in the ass. I'd leave your team too.
Being a good teacher has little to do with subject matter. I have a friend who is brilliant in math and is consistently rated as a terrible teacher. Teaching is a skill that requires significant training. Think you're good at explaining some subject? Do you know how to adapt your explanation for a student with mild autism, or dyslexia, or ADHD, or fetal alcohol syndrome? Two or three kids like that in a classroom are not uncommon, and make effective teaching a challenge.
Well, I do pretty well teaching myself despite my (diagnosed, currently untreated) ADHD and my (suspected) dyslexia. And I'm making good progress teaching my son, who is mildly autistic. Can't say for fetal alcohol syndrome.
I never claimed that knowing the subject makes you a good teacher. The point is that knowing the subject should be a perquisite for teaching the subject. And since the intersection of the set { good at math } and the set { good at teaching } is pretty small and their value is pretty high, I think math teachers should be paid better than the people who are in the {good at teaching } set and not in the { good at math } set.
What's with everyone getting their panties in a wad over this? Some careers pay better than others, and some degree programs are harder than others. As I said before, there's nothing wrong with being a teacher -- they fill an important role in our society. But should elementary school teachers be paid more than engineers and software devs? If you say yes, then it should be clear why Americans aren't going the STEM route.
Why should software devs and engineers get paid more than elementary school teachers? You haven't supported your position any more than I've supported the converse.
Because software dev and engineering is hard? Puh-lease.
Besides, what a position pays should based on utility, not the effort of the person doing the job. It'd be pretty hard for me to dig out a pool in my backyard with a salad fork. Doesn't mean anyone should pay me to do it.
It seems the panty wads are on the folks balking at the salaries paid to teachers. What's the problem? Shouldn't someone be able to make a living acting as the steward for other people's children full time?
You do get that the whole point of having teachers is so that kids can grow up to be engineers, doctors, lawyers, etc., right? I've never claimed that teachers shouldn't make a good living. In fact, if you actually fucking read the thread, my only complaint is that elementary school teachers are getting paid more than college instructors and high school math teachers.
And as far as engineering being hard.. Well, yeah, it kinda is. You have to have a much more thorough education to be an engineer than an elementary school teacher. There are far fewer people who can do it, and without them our modern society pretty much falls apart. Also, engineers and software devs who suck at their jobs tend to get the boot.
I went through the public education system not too long ago, and all but a handful were people who couldn't do anything else, so they decided to teach. In fact, I'd say that most teachers hindered my education by insisting that I follow along with the class and making me put down whatever math, programming, philosophy, or fiction book I happened to be reading during their boring-ass lectures. Until my second year of college I never spent a moment outside of school to work on homework; I always did it the class period before it was due.
If Boulder, CO somehow has teachers worth 96k/year, then great for them. But I have to ask then why they think that high school math and college educators are less important than first grade teachers.
Most dev jobs require a CS degree, which is a lot harder to get than an education degree. As for things I don't really know much about, are you referring to teaching? Because I teach a 2 week class that all new hires have to pass, and it's not so hard if you know the material.
So you teach a 2 week class, to adults, who are paid to attend. And that somehow makes you an expert on teaching full time to adolescents?
The ignorance and arrogance is astounding.
What's with everyone getting their panties in a wad over this? Some careers pay better than others, and some degree programs are harder than others. As I said before, there's nothing wrong with being a teacher -- they fill an important role in our society. But should elementary school teachers be paid more than engineers and software devs? If you say yes, then it should be clear why Americans aren't going the STEM route.
Umm... there's more to teaching than simply knowing the material you're teaching. To use your example of 6th graders, I can't imagine its easy to keep a room of 30 6th graders quiet and behaved long enough to accomplish anything. Not to mention teaching the material in such a way that it sinks in for the bulk of them.
But you're assuming that the high school math teacher doesn't know how to teach and the elementary school teacher does. You have to know how to teach in order to teach math, the same as you have to know how to teach in order to teach elementary school. The difference is you have to know how to teach, you have to know how to do *math*. Most school teachers can't hang with the high school math. So, given that that the math teacher has a more rare skill set, in addition to the general skill set of all teachers, that said math teacher should make more than other teachers, not less?
I think you vastly underestimate what it takes to be a good teacher and have simultaneously identified what I would consider one of the most significant issues in public education. You assert that you "could easily teach any high school subject ...". Do you have any training in teaching, or do you just assume anyone can make a good teacher? Sounds like the latter. And yet I suspect you probably could get and keep a job teaching and even attain tenure if you really wanted to, but that's more a function of poor management (or maybe misguided union protection, but I don't want to get into that discussion here) than how easy it is to be a teacher. I have school-age kids, so I know there are teachers who really should find a different line of work.
You indicate you are a developer, which means you probably have experience with at least a few managers. Have they all been exemplary (in which case consider yourself very lucky), or have you run into some, like I have, that you thought were entirely inadequate at their job? Just as not everyone is cut out to be a manager, not everyone can be a good teacher.
Oh, and the word you made up ("consumerate") would support my gut feel that you probably would not be the great and wondrous teacher you think you would be.
That was a typo, the word I was looking for was "commensurate". I do happen to teach software development classes at my work (we've had better luck finding smart developers and teaching them our toolset than it is to find people who know our toolset and hope they're good developers). My role also involves a lot of mentoring. And you're correct, being a good teacher is hard. But being a good teacher is not a requirement for being a public school teacher either. The public school system consists mostly of a "technician" level of understanding, at this point. Read from the book and teach the test. That's not as hard as developing software.
Maybe so, but how much does a dev job pay there? I'd imagine not much more than that.
What's the relevance? My point is, he is clearly exaggerating to support his argument. Why not use average pool boy salaries in Beverly Hills as an example of national pool boy salaries? Because it's a number that's too skewed by the localized wealth to have anything to do with the national average.
It's hugely relevant. A dev job in most parts of the country pays between 2 and 3 times as much as a teacher's starting salary. If teachers make the same as other professions that typically pay much better, then you can't chalk it up to being an affluent town with a high cost of living, as their relative standing has still improved. I actually don't take issue with the idea that teachers should be paid better. I just take issue with the fact that the difficulty of the subject taught is inversely proportional to the pay of the teacher, according to the data points available on that web site of teacher salaries.
On the contrary, you need a college degree and state certification to teach in most places; not so for developing software.
Everyone feels it's easier to do things they don't really know much about than doing the things they have experience in.
Most dev jobs require a CS degree, which is a lot harder to get than an education degree. As for things I don't really know much about, are you referring to teaching? Because I teach a 2 week class that all new hires have to pass, and it's not so hard if you know the material. The most difficult part is preparing the lesson plans, which most public school teachers don't even have to do, as they work off a guide book.
Maybe so, but how much does a dev job pay there? I'd imagine not much more than that.
So? Should it? I'm a software developer but I don't see that what I do is any more valuable than what a teacher does.
--Jeremy
Well, for one being a developer is a lot less stable (unless you go public sector like I did, where the pay is miserable). For another, it requires more education and talent. I could easily teach any high school subject with the exception of biology and maybe chemistry, but most high school teachers would likely have no idea how to code. Not saying there's anything wrong with being a teacher, but teacher pay should be consumerate with the difficulty of the subject. I can't think of a single good reason that an elementary teacher (who really only requires a 6th grade education and a bit of patience) should make 20% more than a high school math teacher, who needs to know subjects like trig and calc well enough to teach them, and has to deal with obnoxious teenagers all day.