Why Coder Pay Isn't Proportional To Productivity 597
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.'"
Re:As always, make yourself known (Score:2, Funny)
Thanks for the recap of the summary.
Re:As always, make yourself known (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:As always, make yourself known (Score:3, Funny)
Re:As always, make yourself known (Score:3, Funny)
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!)
Re:If something is hard to measure... (Score:5, Funny)
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!
Re:As always, make yourself known (Score:5, Funny)
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).
Re:As always, make yourself known (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:As always, make yourself known (Score:3, Funny)
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?
Re:As always, make yourself known (Score:1, Funny)
Don't you mean: 'Before never releasing them?' :D
Re:As always, make yourself known (Score:2, Funny)
Seems you're also a big Uncyclopedia contributer, too..
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/AAAAAAAAA [wikia.com]!
Re:I'm not "doing nothing", I'm thinking (Score:3, Funny)
Re:there are Programmers then here are PROGRAMMERS (Score:4, Funny)
Your keyboard [techeblog.com] from back in the day?
Re:Here we go again (Score:2, Funny)
Why do I rant on Joel?
Show us, on the doll, where Joel Spolsky touched you...
Re:As always, make yourself known (Score:3, Funny)
> 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... :)
Re:there are Programmers then here are PROGRAMMERS (Score:1, Funny)
"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?
-2000 lines of code (Score:2, Funny)
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.txt&topic=Software%20Design&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium [folklore.org]
Re:As always, make yourself known (Score:3, Funny)
If someone working the line makes a mistake and gets fired, guess what he walks away with?
A patent leather shoe in his ass?
Productivity does not apply here... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I'm not "doing nothing", I'm thinking (Score:1, Funny)
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.