The fact is that the IT sphere is simultaneously rapidly developing (still) and at the same time is full of many established stereotypes.
There are two main stereotypes:
- get a lot in IT (too much and for nothing)
- As soon as you learn key technologies, you will earn a lot (well, or receive).
In this part, we will talk about the formation of salaries (in fact, no) and stereotypes (yes). For example, Ruslan Karmanov writes a lot about the second topic - education, since he is a teacher with experience and this is understandable, I don’t agree with him in everything, but about it another time.
One of the most important stereotypes is the size of salaries. On the one hand, there are actually more salaries in IT than in related industries as a whole.
No one is surprised, for example, by the difference in the salaries of a gas station operator or an oil worker compared to the salaries of a teacher or saleswoman in a shoe store. In this case, the average person will say - it’s oil and in general they steal there - that’s why they can afford to pay such salaries. It’s really lucky for those who got there!
In the case of IT - the layman does not understand anything. Yes, what are these bespectacles doing there - they are sitting at the computer and reading VKontakte in a warm office. And they are paid such salaries for this? Here, in an ordinary person, the mode of pain below the back is turned on.
After all, if oil workers “steal”, then this is close and understandable to him. A person is sure - if he had seized upon such a position, he would not have blundered, he would have stolen so that whole cabinet-houses of ministers of some countries would cry. But in the IT sector this will not work out - it is understandable to the average person, even though it is not clear what they are doing at all. That is, a person realizes that he simply will not pull in the level of knowledge, and this is very unpleasant. It is to steal or to receive kickbacks - everyone thinks that he can, and to write the code, these are brains to dry and in general.
I don’t feel like writing banal things that you also need to be able to steal beautifully, but it is. In any field, for example, the repair of driveshafts, there are people who work a lot and silently and as a result they make good money, because their customers see the difference. In the IT field, with which people come into contact only on the other side of the monitor, this difference is blurred.
Yes, there is a layman, even customers hiring IT employees (both to themselves and offshore) pay money essentially for the logo. Of course there are scary and complicated interviews.
Typically, such interviews are conducted with people in key positions. With really big salaries. Well, or in our domestic companies, since there are 2 "programmers" responsible for the entire infrastructure of a holding, a fairly key position.
But recently, a trend has been clearly visible - to give all work to outsource (offshore). With this approach, the need to interview people in person disappears. They took a dozen Indians, counted on the heads and go! The project manager on behalf of the contractor becomes responsible. Accordingly, the management approach is applied - tight deadlines, do as you know how, but do it on time. We have deadlines here, and here you are climbing with your Best Practice and Reference Design. The result is sadly obvious, but we are not talking about that today.
And here Vasya comes into play.
Vasya tzh-u-mama-well done and budding student. He is well aware that he does not want to teach anything, but his mother’s salary does not allow him to buy an iPhone. For Vasya, the IT sphere does not look complicated, because he set up a grid for his mother at work and wrote configs for Counter Strike. That means who to be - no questions.
Moreover, he already has a successful friend - Petya. Petya works in a reputable IT company as a Junior L1 XML Config Support Engineer. Petya at all the cool events (events and events at the club at Ashot) invariably receives the attention of the female half. Petya often and for a long time talks about XML syntax and worries that JSON is more popular. Petya talks about YAML through gritted teeth (in fact, there are indents, and Petya can only Tabs).
On Petya’s advice, Vasily graduates from special assault courses at the IT Specialist! Training center and is immediately hired by the same organization where Petya works.
At first, Vasya sees only the good from excitement. He does not see how Petya and HR have divided the bonus for his “head” and even agrees to be on duty 24/7.
Vasya has a clear plan - to get a couple of stucco dollars by the end of the year. It doesn’t matter that now he is paid 300 Canadian dollars at the rate of the Central Bank on February 31. He knows what he can.
It takes a couple of years. The salary is the same. When Vasya begins to scandal and threaten to leave for competitors, he is added $ 50 and promised to make all new Junior specialists the boss.
And then they will pay him as a leader. May be. According to the results of the year. If there will be results.
A couple more years pass. After another Vasina hysteria, he is offered to pass certification. Since they simply can’t raise their salaries, but if he passes re-certification and becomes a Middle specialist, then there the salary fork is different, and in general.
In this certification, Vasya is smeared on the floor, walls and ceiling with questions of appearance - name an example of 4-Tier architecture. Well and smiling they suggest repeating in a year.
Vasya, realizing that they are right, nevertheless arranges another hysteria. True to Mom. Because, at work they said that if he would arrange tantrums there, he would be fined. From the salary.
Suddenly, his friend Petya, who is already working in another company, offers him to switch to them (Vasya, now I am a specialist in DSL languages ​​- come on, you don’t need a Tab at all!).
Vasya tenses up and teaches several pages of text (mainly the Agile manifest, as well as what exception handling and the address of Google’s headquarters are).
The interview proceeds in a very positive way for Vasya. Basically, he lies about what he knows and tells the stories he heard in the smoking room, about how a highly-loaded DHCP cluster hung up or how he was engaged in cost optimization by turning off the server every night through the graphical console.
After a couple of control questions, everyone in the room understands that Vasya is a moron (Except for Vasya). But the manager by the movement of the ear stops the technician who is trying to ask at least one question on Vasily’s resume. And here the main question is asked - what about the salary? Vasya honestly says that he actually gets 350 euros, and disagrees with less than 700. Since Vasya is worried, he does not notice what looks the manager and the second interlocutor look at. He is told that of course it costs more, but so far they can only offer him 500, but immediately to the position of Middle Junior Engineer. In order not to frighten off luck, Vasya promises to think, but calls back right from the subway and agrees.
Then, Vasya tells everyone how smart he is - at the expense of his knowledge, he took all the bends and raised his salary twice (to some, he says two and a half, who will check that?). Tempting prospects open up for Vasya - to sit another year in this company, then move on to an even bigger salary in a new office. Aw, well done, Vasya thinks. What a scheme I came up with!
Now let's look at the situation from the other side. There is a customer - a rich and large American high-tech office. The organization has a hard life, 10,000 shareholders and annual reporting. Therefore, just do not steal. And everyone wants to live. And the profitability of the goods also can not be optimized ad infinitum. The answer is very simple - you need to reduce costs. The customer reduces 300 developers and each creature in pairs. But he hires 50 people to outsource to various firms. With a budget of as much as 10 local developers. Then in the evening, a customer representative writes on the blog about the benefits of American democracy and goes to play golf with competitors.
This is where Vasya's future employer appears. The IT business is on the rise, and there are many small firms that compete not only for orders but also for workers in a very limited market. As you know, Vasya is rather an atypical case in IT, because you need to think there. But when a firm receives a bold contract (by local standards), the contractor has a dilemma.
We look at it through the eyes of the project manager, who (s) were put on this project to respond with his head and other parts of the body.
What is the most important thing in an IT project? If you say that to release a high-quality software product or to provide a service, then you are more naive than Vasya. The most important thing in the IT project Budget.
Imagine a project budget of $ 10,000. I note this is already "clean." The office is not a fool and has already taken away its 50-200% at the entrance. Profitability here is known in advance. The manager is confronted with the fact - we figured - you should be enough. Spin or not become a Senior Project Manager.
Don’t go to the grandmother, the largest salary is from the project manager. Yes, you still need a lead developer, but he doesn’t agree to work for free (and often gets more manager). Yes, I need a Business Analyst sensible, and a good QA engineer. 10-2-2-1-1 = 4. There are 4 thousand left. But. Firstly, the already categorized four people categorically refuse to cut the project “in one person”. The lead developer (aka lead) pronounces such words that the project manager heard only on student intrusions. The management goes there, and the manager threatens to complain.
In addition, the management tells the manager that it sold 10 people - places for his project. Since the customer is not a fool, and may suspect something was amiss if the project instead of 10 people sawed 4 people. And yet, the more people you sell, the more the rate, margin and just more money. So, one should not spoil the situation with Stakhanov's labor by other conditions.
Now the manager has $ 4,000 and he needs to find another 6 people. HR (HR) is involved and a series of interviews begins. With great difficulty, we manage to scrape together two more developers for 1 thousand each. Only these people are not sick of the lead developer (and the manager). There are 4 positions and 2 thousand left. And then Vasya comes. He already has some experience in IT. He knows English (mom hired a tutor) and will be able to entertain the customer at meetings with simple sentences in Present Simple.
It is not the first day that everyone who works on these same projects understands that in addition to complex mental work, you need to do a lot of routine - read all kinds of logs, do all kinds of migrations, and end up by teletype to sort out. The lead developer refuses to do this obscenities, ordinary developers at the sight of such tasks immediately get JO from competing companies. Therefore, in addition to Vasya, it is possible to find one more person and even one thousand remains for bonuses and caramels.
When the only QA engineer begins to complain about the download, Vasya and his companion talk about the wonderful Kanban process - according to which the whole team should rush and close tasks that are not closed as quickly as possible, regardless of what needs to be done there. If the task is done, but not tested, then Vasya should become a tester. If there is a bug in the code, Vasya should try to fix it (saying this, the manager bends his head, because a distinct “scream!” Is heard from the developers' pen).
Vasya wrote himself a new skill in his resume - “Organizing the team's work on Can Ban” (well, think of a typo). And the manager received thanks and a quarterly bonus from the management.
To summarize:
The myth of a large salary in IT exists due to a lack of understanding of the specifics of this area. The mythical Vasya also listen to these myths and begin to believe in them.
Work for a foreign customer, a rarity of specialists, a heavy load justify a higher salary.
If a rich budget contract has passed his brother-in-law and he takes you as his deputy with a salary of $ 5.000 and a 50% kickback, this does not mean that you can cope with the contract.
The second point - all the same, the existing Vasya is warming up this myth with their own stories about a 2-fold increase in salaries when switching to another job. And further on to Google. Here I think it’s obvious that twice as much as zero is always more than that, of course.
It also follows from the specifics voiced for those who work in IT that the more you know how and know, the less you like managers, because your salary spoils the whole picture and it is always very important to strike a balance between your own desires and the market.