I think you have it exactly backwards. The best programmers I know seem to be indifferent to cash. They work on the most interesting project they can find that pays them enough to live. Hiring people like that is really tough.
> The best programmers I know seem to be indifferent to cash.
No, they do care about cash. How do I know?
>They work on the most interesting project they can find that pays them enough to live.
There. That's why. If they weren't making enough money to meet their needs, they'd be looking to trade up. Money isn't the only answer. Everyone likes to talk about how money isn't the solution. I'm pretty sure every one is making a bit more than minimum wage or aren't looking to get compensated in some other way in the future.
Yes, but offering more money to someone who feels like they already make enough is amazingly ineffective. My point is that, in my experience, great programmers place a much higher value on doing interesting work than they put on making more money.
> Yes, but offering more money to someone who feels like they already make enough is amazingly ineffective.
Which is completely besides the point. Listen, I understand that point of view. I agree with it. I live it.
> My point is that, in my experience, great programmers place a much higher value on doing interesting work than they put on making more money.
Only after they have enough money to not have to worry about it.
Offering programmers minimum wage isn't going to entice them from their 6-figure job, even if the work is challenging and fun. Most likely their 6-figure job is already exciting and fun enough.
I completely agree with you here. Lot of comments on this thread say "Money is not a good motivator" vs "Money is the only motivator". But as you said, things are somewhere in-between.
I'm interested to know who they are. I'm dead serious.
If "great programmers" work attitude is based on mood swing, business owner will be in danger hiring "great programmers". Cause what you just said boils down to human's mood to perform. "I'd like to do this because that's what I want to do now, I don't like to do X,Y,Z" where X,Y,Z are usually "testing, documentation, and mentoring".
There are three that come to mind right now, but I don't think it's appropriate for me to name them. Two of the three could literally double their salaries if they took crappier jobs, but they don't because they have great gigs and don't care much about making more money.
Getting people to perform always comes to getting them in the right mindset! The more complex and creative the task, the less money matters in doing that.
If your work is mind-crushingly boring and repetitive, you'll go to the highest bidder. (That seems to be pretty much how investment banking works). But if your work is something you love, involves intricate problem solving and creativity, it will take more money to pull you away from a good job.
And for some reason I don't know, most (but not all) the great programmers I've come across haven't been all that interested in money in general.
The sooner people stop equating money with compensation the better off we'll all be. Money is but one small piece of the the puzzle.
Also, I think you're right - it's not always best to hire a great programmer, regardless of cost. If you can't keep them interested and engaged in the right type of problem, they will underperform under the crushing boredom. Get the right person for the job.
Do people really throw around the words "easily get a high-paying job" that easy?
Anyone who wants to start their own startups and not making money is like having a business not turning profitable. Eventually they want the profit to be bigger than working as an employee.
If there are people who would want to work for free, or work for less money in return they get to do cool stuffs (but hear me: cool stuff including writing clean code base, writing proper documentation and writing unit-tests), let me know, I have several ideas that I'd pitch to them and let them run wild and add their own ideas... as long as I get some profits out of them...
If you've offered them more money to do a less interesting job, certainly. Also, good programmers are often quite loyal, and don't want to leave their team in the lurch. There are plenty of reasons why you failed to recruit said programmers. Given that I enjoy my job, and I'm paid "enough", why would I even bother looking at your offer? Offering me a shit-ton of money because "this job will require an elite programmer" will get my attention. Not offering me more money tells me that either a) the job is no more challenging than my current one or b) you're the usual manager who doesn't want to pay a programmer what he's worth.
I think the problem is we have people who equate money with not being an incentive assuming you are being paid enough. However, they leave out that last part. The reality is, that last part is missing from a lot of job offers. I usually find that condition to be critical.
I work in a pretty unsexy field (MySpace apps), and there's no amount of money I could pay to my researcher friends to drop their computer graphics projects and work for me instead.
I was advising a startup recently about what tech stack to use. Their default notion was PHP-centric. I pointed at the advantages of other languages/stacks. I said that while it's generally true you can get the job done in a variety of languages and tech mixes (anything that's Turing complete, eh?) it's still very important to pick the right mix, because it impacts other things. One of the things I mentioned was that it effects not just the quantity of folks you'll find on the market with that skill set, but also the quality and really the kind of person.
For example, if I had to wade through 100 random resumes from strangers for a dev job I had to hire for, I'd get very different kinds of people if it were for say a PHP stack versus if it were a Java stack or a Lisp stack. Very different folks, on average. To be more explicit, I'm confident there would be way more applicants if it were PHP, but way better applicants, on average, if it were Lisp. (I did not literally recommend they go with Lisp (dev scarcity factor still a bit too strong for my tastes right now, though Clojure may change that), but I will say that it was not PHP.)
Often the case is the hiring manager or firm not being upfront and the potential programmer running from the interview process due to that dishonest behavior
we tend to like upfront honesty and transparency because most of us are realists
I am such a person. However, since I have a wife, two kids, and I track cars, "enough to live" means a LOT more than the genius buying the latest killer card deck. Work hard, play hard. Costs money.
