If you are hiring programmers, you should pay them $200/hr. This breaks through otherwise impenetrable psychological barriers, helps solve the agency problem, and ensures you are only hiring programmers when you really need them.Expectations$200/hr is an open declaration of your expectations. It states that you are expecting to hire both a professional and an expert in the field.As a programmer, I treat contracts that pay me $200/hr differently from jobs/contracts that pay me $65/hr equivalent salary in two key ways. First, I treat issues and requests with far greater urgency. I’ve been...

Imagine a man named Jim. He's applying for a job at Google. Jim knows that the odds are stacked against him. Google receives a million job applications a year. It's estimated that only about 1 in 130 applications results in a job. By comparison, about 1 in 14 high-school students applying to Harvard gets accepted.Jim's first interviewer is late and sweaty: He's biked to work. He starts with some polite questions about Jim's work history. Jim eagerly explains his short career. The interviewer doesn't look at him. He's tapping away at his laptop, taking notes. "The next question I'm going to ask...

Last week, I discovered The Rise of Developeronomics via Brad Feld. As long as I’ve lived, it has always been a great time to be a software developer. The economics keep getting better for us. My favorite quote:The one absolutely solid place to store your capital today — if you know how to do it –  is in software developers’ wallets. If the world survives looming financial apocalypse dangers at all, this is the one investment that will weather the storms. It doesn’t matter whether you are an individual or a corporation, or what corner of the world you in...

CS/EE UndergradsData: I received 140 responses which described 360 job offers. 95% of the job offers were primarily located in the Bay Area, 5% were from the Midwest and East Coast. 10% of the job offers were from start-ups.Salary offers ranged from $64,400 to $100,000. The average salary offer was $79,914. The median salary offer was $ 82,200.About 70% of students were offered stock options. About 80% of students were offered signing bonuses. And about 60% were offered relocation assistance and there were others who did not report the statistics since relocating did not apply to them. Relocat...

There’s never been a better time to be a developer, says The Kernel’s technical editor. But in exchange for all the resources laid out in front of you, what are you doing to give back? There’s never been a better time to be a developer. Thanks to an unprecedented range of open-source software, learning resources and useful web services at our disposal, we can learn new languages, get help, collaborate with others and, if our ideas win traction, there’s now a multitude of investors waiting in the wings to help us build companies around our pro...

This editorial was originally submitted to the Sydney Morning Herald in response to an editorial proclaiming that people wanting to become software engineers should not attend university and instead learn a current popular programming language.  Over the past few years I’ve developed software for large corporations, started the Vodafail campaign, co-founded Mijura and represented Australia in the global Robocup (humanoid robotic soccer) competition. I graduated from University of New South Wales School of Computer Science & Engineering this past year with a Software Engineering...

What makes a great software engineer and perhaps more importantly, what skills will most likely land you a sweet job?  Mixtent and KISSMetrics analyzed LinkedIn data and surveyed users on perceptions of candidate skill levels based on their profiles and purported skill sets.The key findings?Python engineers are perceived as better engineersEngineers with teamwork, dedication and a solid work ethic are perceived as better engineers.  Creativity and communication skills are less valued.Ruby engineers are viewed a good front-end, as well as back-end engineersHiring Managers â...

Why do so many bright and gifted kids think they don't like math? Experience and the reading of lots of research leads me to believe that boredom, under-instruction and poor instruction throughout elementary and middle school lie behind the problem.My best girlfriend since high school is a math teacher north of Philly. We've talked about this a lot. She and I are both aware that our own math instruction lacked a lot. As I give IQ tests, too, I see something that I thought many people would be interested to know. As those who have read the work of Benbow and Lubinksi, among others, know, math-r...