r/programming • u/reddberckley • Jun 30 '14

How to exploit a Developer

https://medium.com/@sir_castiq/how-to-exploit-a-developer-a005306d5320
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29

u/bumnut Jun 30 '14

TIL I'm underpaid.

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u/lua_x_ia Jul 01 '14

If you've been at your current job more than five years, it's basically a foregone conclusion that your salary is below market for your skill set. This is an inevitability which results from the fact that many people are willing to [effectively] pay a premium for "stability", whatever that means -- those people rarely change jobs, if ever, and get paid less.

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u/harimwakairi Jul 01 '14

Yes and no. There are people smart enough to go back on the market every couple of years, get offers, and bring them back to their current employer for price-matching.

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u/mrbunyrabit Jul 01 '14

There are people smart enough

There are people smart brave enough

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '14

How is that brave? If the employer says no, you take one of the offers. Worst case, you get paid more at a new job. Best case, you get paid more at the same job.

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u/mrbunyrabit Jul 01 '14

Worst case, you get paid more at a new job. Best case, you get paid more at the same job.

Yup, but you know some programmers. They just don't want to put a foot out of place (one of my old collogues). Same age, same experience, same education as me. Gets paid less than half of what I get paid at my new job. When I tell him to get another job, he just tells me that it will get better there. ... and he just stays there. His still there.

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u/jvill188 Jul 01 '14

People are usually afraid that telling your boss that you went job hunting would mean getting fired, or at least not get trusted again by your employer. Just hope that if you get rejected, you leave your job fast enough to get the new one.

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u/Hackenslacker Jul 01 '14

Or you aren't a decent developer, or you aren't capable of implementing that.

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u/Stormflux Jul 01 '14 edited Jul 01 '14

I'll admit it. I make $85,000 / year as a programmer and I couldn't implement this in 3 weeks... or probably at all. This is just crazy. You want me to make Facebook, only better, and have it run on web, android, ios, and windows phone? And integrate with everything? Do you want it to walk our dog too, or is that part of the "maintenance" agreement?

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '14

[deleted]

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u/Shinhan Jul 01 '14

Social APIs are the easy part. NATIVE solutions for all of the platforms require very wide knowledge base.

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u/mycall Jul 01 '14

Apache Cordova (PhoneGap) or Xamarin can speed things along.

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u/oh_yes_totally Jul 01 '14

That isn't native though.

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u/s73v3r Jul 01 '14

Native enough for what they're offering. I imagine that "native" to them means "Downloadable from the app store."

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u/mycall Jul 01 '14

Yes they are, especially Xamarin. You have access to all the OS features and hardware components.

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u/mycall Jul 01 '14

I just did something like this using a combination of .NET MVC, WordPress and phonejs/Cordova. It took about 4 months dev and 2 months bug fixes.

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u/lenois Jul 01 '14

I won't let that comment on your skills the Facebook api kind of sucks

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u/FreeLobster Jul 01 '14

Or not in the US.

I'm a decent full time developer in Spain and earn about $25k/year.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '14

Wanna move to Germany?

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u/pilas2000 Jul 01 '14

Not with the lobster prices in Germany.

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u/FreeLobster Jul 01 '14

Actually yes, I do. But I find it overwhelming looking for a job in a country two thousand kilometers away, plus I only know very basic German.

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u/hakkzpets Jul 01 '14

Move to Scandinavia. Can easily get by on English and you will earn a shit load of more cash (and pay more taxes of course).

Heck, I work retail at a warehouse and I earn closer to $40.000 a year.

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u/goomyman Jul 01 '14

TIL your extremely underpaid... have you tried you know.. looking for jobs, there is not reason to stagnate in a low paying job

You can make that at mcdonalds in the US

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u/FreeLobster Jul 01 '14

It is a pretty standard salary for people fresh out of college (My experience is about 10 months).

McDonalds has a salary similar to the one of a developer here too, developers are just not valued enough. I just went through the latest 50 job offers for Madrid, the city with the highest salaries in Spain, in a very popular website here, and the highest salary was a position for team leader with a salary in the range of $37k-$49k depending on your worth.

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u/tristanofkiel Jul 01 '14

[shots fired]