Do you make too much money?
Raymond Lewallen has a post on CodeBetter.com about how there is too much money to be made in software development and the general mediocrity of software developers these days.
For the most part I have to agree with him. Even though I am in a different community than him (be being in Java and he in the Microsoft camp), the same sentiment about mediocre and poor developers being the norm rather than the exception holds true. It is utterly amazing how many bad developers there are out there with very little to no problem solving abilities or outright horrible coding practices, and they get paid well.
Of course the real fault here lies in bad interviewing and hiring practices. The right pre-hire process could solve a lot of these problems. It won’t weed out everyone, but it would weed out the vast majority. The company I now work for has almost half the dev group interviewing a candidate at any given time. You don’t come in for a one or two hour interview. You come in all day long. The result? More than one set of eyes and ears listening to what they have to say over a wide variety of subjects. As a result of this the skill level is quite high.
What about salary?
Good developers should get paid well. Companies can rarely get by without good software these days and a handfull of good developers far outweighs a ton of poor developers. The problem is in judging how to pay these people. I remember some time ago reading on Joel on Software about how they structured their pay scale. Open and basically fixed. Everyone knew what everyone else made by their “ranking” or title.
Do I feel fairly compensated. I would have to say yes for the most part. Sure I would like more money, but who wouldn’t?
Do you feel like you make enough?
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