For years, from one job in the bay area to the next I worked on products that never made any money and ended up being canceled. Even when I worked on a project that ended up making money I spent a year working on a version that was rebooted from scratch before customers ever saw it.
At a couple of startups that never took of afterward I could clearly see the impact that code I wrote was making on sales and value. It wasn't very much.
I'm not sure why people pay me so much, but I'm glad they do because I get to do what I love (programming, not not shipping), and I get to live off of that at the now rare and fading middle class standard of living.
On that existential tangent, there are times I find it comforting that fools pay me to write code they want written. It's like ghostwriting: it pays the bills. You write a biography for any idiot the way they want it. The 'authors' buy 300,000 copies of their own book through phantom distributors to prop it up to the NYT top 100 list, then they slap their name to it and you go home to your two cats and tell them we don't have to eat garbage tonight.
Other times I yearn working on a popular open-source program or a library or a tool so that I can slap my name to it and actually know what I'm working on, and get some recognition. Or even criticism, because meaningful feedback by peers who actually understand what you do is great.
It's a whole pile of depends. Particularly in your case it depends on what you love about programming.
The guy who rocks into a company, tells them they need to write everything in new-buzzword-framework and use bucket-with-holes-in-it-db is arguably creating negative value and if the world was fair, they'd be paying for the privilege to be there.
On the other hand, the guy who comes in and tries to deliver the product, makes resonably, albeit slightly boring, choices and focuses on creating the thing people want, but the product fails because of poor market fit, deserves to get paid. It's not their fault if business people haven't done their jobs.
Because it's one of the most obvious questions to ask about Silicon Valley? You have to pay a hefty premium for programmers that may leave at any time for a better offer.
The rest of the US is a cheaper, Western Europe is cheaper still, and by the time you look at Eastern Europe you'll see that not only can you find programmers that stay on longer, you can actually find experienced ones.
There are literally thousands of blog posts on why or why not Silicon Valley, and the cost of living and hiring are brought up every time.
It doesn't seem to be so common among marketing people, lawyers, or politicians - all of whom, in increasing order of severity, might benefit from more if it.
I was thinking about exactly this earlier today -- I'm almost suspicious about my level of compensation. I work for a reputable company doing straightforward development, but the stars aligned, so to speak, in the timing of my offer, and I'm probably making twice as much as the average programmer with my experience in my region. I'm good at stuff, but I'm not twice as valuable. I just wonder if this is going to last.
> I can't really find an explanation for it so far.
He basically hinted at that by saying: "because I get to do what I love (programming,...)"
I believe you and gp (lemevi) are talking from 2 different perspectives. Your perspective is more about "don't sell yourself short" or "don't devalue your skills".
The gp's perspective is more about the "mystery of the universe" as to why an enjoyable job could pay more than a boring one. It's a similar sentiment to the successful novelists, comedians, musicians saying, "I feel lucky that people pay me lots of money for doing what I love to do." (Yes, there are tons of programmers who suffer through boring CRUD coding and treat it as "just a job" but there are also many programmers who truly enjoy the activity.)
I experienced the gp's perspective in my first job out of highschool. I happened to be a decent typist so I got a job to transcribe audio to word processing documents. One day, the business owner was looking at his screen in frustration trying to make something work. I looked over his shoulder and saw things like "DO WHILE" and "DEFINE PROCEDURE" on the screen. I just looked at it and then had one of those Jurassic Park moments[1]. I said, "you need to set a variable here, and move that line there, etc etc." He was totally surprised and said he'd pay me double the hourly rate if I could fix the computer program. I couldn't believe it. I had programmed computers during middle school (age 11 to 13) and treated the whole coding activity as "playing with a toy". I stopped programming during high school and worked at a fast food joint for minimum wage. I had no idea that people paid money for programming. People will pay me more for typing "DO WHILE" than mopping floors and hauling out grease buckets?!? That's absurd!
Yes, on one level, one can do all sorts of economic analysis (supply-vs-demand, marginal utility, productivity multiplier of software) and conclude that it makes perfect sense that programmers are paid $X more than brick layers. However, even with that logical rationalization, there can still be this "mystery" of why a person typing on a keyboard in a pleasant air conditioned office makes more than a brick layer sweating in 100 degree heat. It seems unfair that a "game" from my childhood earns more than back-breaking labor.
I've heard it mostly from individuals of more humble backgrounds working on projects with little connection to the value they create. Many people are simply unequipped at seeing how they impact at scale. I've often found myself reminding people of the contributions they've made and even gone to lengths of calculating those contributions so I can show them that, if anything, they're vastly underpaid.
It's nice to see someone have such a nice experience with their employment history. I actually have the opposite experience.
tldr: I am happy you had such good luck; mine sucked.
Worked in Tech Support (for a tech-related company), made tools to make mine and colleagues' from the department job easier and faster. This caught some attention from the infrastructure department, which got me "promoted" to junior sys admin. Nearly everyone kept point out how useful I am[1]. Yay!
But it's not really that much of a yay. It's now expected of me to still do tech support, work on those tools, do sys-ops for some big/corporate/enterprise clients, be the "errand boy" for the other [senior] sys admins (ie, do stuff that's "below" them or that they don't know how to do)
It gets worse. I am the lowest paid employee in the company, too. I get paid less than our DNS admins, simply because they're there longer (there's this certain "culture" in the company which I'll get to in a bit) and they hardly do anything, because most of their job is automated (and more so since I made their job even easier). I wouldn't even mind doing all this, but then pay me for all the three jobs I do. The reason for my salary is "historic": Is started working as a student, and even though I did get a few raises since my initial salary, it's still the lowest one in the company because the "base" salary is still what my student one was. I get paid ~£450 while the next person with the lowest salary gets ~£600 which is an [also under-appreciated] girl from the DNS department. Everyone from the tech support had at least ~£700, while my two sys admin colleagues get ~£1100 + bonuses; oh and I don't get bonuses for the same shit that they do; they even make me do something and then get the bonus for what I did. Sometime in the past they agreed to track "overtime" (which also includes any really special stuff for the really big clients which are outside of the contract that we'd do) under one user on Harvest, and just split it between themselves. I was given access to the harvest account and I tracked my time on it because I was told to do that. But they'd still split the money in half? The fuck. When I asked about it because I was genuinely not sure if I was doing something wrong, the response I got is, and I quote--because the absurdity of that moment is etched into my mind--was, "but I have three kids and you don't." I was too shocked to say anything and just murmured something in agreement. The other admin hasn't got any kids. He doesn't even have pets.
Also, some of the longer-employed employees are trying to push this "we're a family" bullshit, when anyone who's not them is clearly not part of the family, which is clear from how they all interact. If anyone from one of the "newbs" tries to buddy up, all they get is attitude.
And can't look for another job, because I wouldn't be able to relocate due to certain life circumstances that tie me to this town (at least for now).
Typing this is just making me furious so I'll stop now. I'll just like to add that, I am not in need of money, because I come from what is considered a "middle class" (I hate the labels, but they get the point across here) background. However the unfairness is what really gets to me.
[1]: Maybe I'm retarded and they want to make me feel nice.
I also get furious reading this! My advice: Thank them for everything you've learned and explain that you are about too seek other ventures, but you really like working for them, and wish them the best. Then leave as fast as your contract lets you. Take out any semester if you have any left and go on a vacation.
When you have officially quit and your contract is off. You can get hired again and can negotiate a much better contract. Also look for other jobs! And write down everything you've accomplished and the value you add to the company.
And in the future, if you even smell bullshit and think something is unfair, you have to open your voice and argue! You also need to "ventilate" far more often, so that when you "ventilate" it will only be small issues instead of the "huge pile" you just dropped.
I do not think my story is terribly common, but I was in a similar situation about 11 years ago. Somebody noticed, and at some point I was simply given a ~20% raise. I didn't even ask.
Some companies cultivate a recognition of talent, and some don't. Some companies are simply small companies, and the culture reflects some of the idiosyncrasies of a family (for better and worse). Getting a promotion without a pay raise is certainly a mixed signal.
The one thing I'd suggest you look around for, is to understand the business cycle of the company you're working for. If most of the revenue is from contract sys-ops for enterprise clients, pay raises may simply lag based on the client business cycles.
If you can't leave, you have no leverage and rely on the benevolence of others (a trait which is exceedingly rare). I've been in the situation where I went from being the junior hire to the team lead, with only minor pay adjustments. All it took to fix that was to point out (nicely) that I expected to be paid what I was worth, and they had the choice to do so or to risk me walking out. Line up an alternative, then leverage that into a better situation. If you have no alternative, you're not underpaid, regardless of fairness.
I could leave, but I am not sure I want to. I like the people and some of them have become my good friends and the job was genuinely fun until I became a donkey.
I have enjoyed most of it, apart from the parts highlighted earlier which frustrate and upset me.
My alternative is to quit and sit at home. One of the reasons (I'm not sure how relevant it actually was) why I took the job was because my doctor said it'd help manage my depression, and it did, because it made me happy, and the atmosphere and coworkers were amazing.
Although, if by alternative you mean another job, I don't know if I'll be able find one close enough so I can still take care of my mum.
Underpaid isn't really the problem, it's just a symptom of this "broken" culture, where anyone new won't ever be as valuable as the new crew (regardless of their actual value or how much they contribute). And I feel part of my problem right now is that that I'm in the department with all the old employees.
You do "tech support" and are generally tech savvy? Try getting a job doing remote QA. There are online services for testing apps/software. I work for a company that employs such a service to test our stuff.
Now, your real goal, it sounds like, is not to leave your current job, it is to get paid better. You can't do that without mobility.
Or sell yourself to the manager. "This is what I did (proof that you're valuable) - if you assign me to this new thing (and pay me more, since it's harder), I'm going to create 2x the value that I'm creating right now."
Projects fail for all sort of business reasons that have nothing to do with programming. However, that doens't mean that projects never fail because technical folks are not aligned with the business interests.
Sure, if you're just a worker bee, you can be selfish and milk these poorly organised start-ups for all they're worth, but if you wanna step up into those senior roles and actually have a chance of making something of those options, you need to weed out folks who don't care about delivery.
I'm not saying the guy definitely doesn't deliver but there are a number of indicators that suggest that he's not actually suffering from imposter syndrome but is actually just self aware to the point that he knows the companies hiring him are not getting value for money.
Even if that is true, he himself can hardly be blamed for taking the money. Whilst I try to deliver value to my clients, I also bill them as much as I can get away with.
At a couple of startups that never took of afterward I could clearly see the impact that code I wrote was making on sales and value. It wasn't very much.
I'm not sure why people pay me so much, but I'm glad they do because I get to do what I love (programming, not not shipping), and I get to live off of that at the now rare and fading middle class standard of living.