<story><title>Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?</title><url>http://danluu.com/bimodal-compensation/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mafribe</author><text>I teach computer science at a well-known, large and mediocre university.&lt;p&gt;I see bimodal grade distributions all the time. The more technical a subject, the more bimodal the grades.&lt;p&gt;In fluff subjects like software engineering where grading relates to essay writing and group projects, grade distribution tends to be gaussian.
OTOH in technical subjects where I grade by automated test suits, basically students fail almost all tests or pass almost all tests.&lt;p&gt;These grade distributions have been constant, regardless of university, regardless of who teaches the course.&lt;p&gt;There really is a sharp threshold that separates those who get programming from those who don&amp;#x27;t. And those who get programming really are &lt;i&gt;a lot&lt;/i&gt; more productive than those who don&amp;#x27;t get it. Moreover, once you get it, learning further parts of CS (e.g. new algorithms, new programming languages, new OSes etc) is much easier then if you don&amp;#x27;t get it, and learning new things makes you even more powerful. The mastery of doing great things is joyful and makes you want to learn more. The frustration of failure drives you away from the subject.&lt;p&gt;I find it plausible that grade distributions turn into similar income distributions later in life.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Bartweiss</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve held this basic theory for a while, and it seems to explain a lot of things about the state of software engineering.&lt;p&gt;Most visibly, there&amp;#x27;s a wild disagreement about whether we have too many programmers, or not enough.  Big tech companies consistently say that they struggle to find programmers, while contrarians at places like &lt;i&gt;The Atlantic&lt;/i&gt; love writing pieces about how we&amp;#x27;re education way more programmers than we hire each year, and the bubble is going to burst.&lt;p&gt;The ultra-cynical take is that companies are trying to drive a crash to drop salaries.  It fits with the wage-fixing collusion, but doesn&amp;#x27;t really explain things like paying massive referral bonuses for new hires.&lt;p&gt;The more interesting take is that it&amp;#x27;s about this bimodal distribution.  &amp;quot;A degree in computer science&amp;quot; is a pretty amorphous thing, and thinkpiece writers who assume that every CS program produces employable CS-job-seekers aren&amp;#x27;t going to get decent data.&lt;p&gt;So I think the explanation might be that CS isn&amp;#x27;t harder than EE or chemical engineering, but rather less prescriptive.  There&amp;#x27;s a huge range of programs producing &amp;quot;CS degrees&amp;quot;, and jobs titled &amp;quot;software engineering&amp;quot;, and they&amp;#x27;re not really describing the same things.</text></comment>
<story><title>Is developer compensation becoming bimodal?</title><url>http://danluu.com/bimodal-compensation/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mafribe</author><text>I teach computer science at a well-known, large and mediocre university.&lt;p&gt;I see bimodal grade distributions all the time. The more technical a subject, the more bimodal the grades.&lt;p&gt;In fluff subjects like software engineering where grading relates to essay writing and group projects, grade distribution tends to be gaussian.
OTOH in technical subjects where I grade by automated test suits, basically students fail almost all tests or pass almost all tests.&lt;p&gt;These grade distributions have been constant, regardless of university, regardless of who teaches the course.&lt;p&gt;There really is a sharp threshold that separates those who get programming from those who don&amp;#x27;t. And those who get programming really are &lt;i&gt;a lot&lt;/i&gt; more productive than those who don&amp;#x27;t get it. Moreover, once you get it, learning further parts of CS (e.g. new algorithms, new programming languages, new OSes etc) is much easier then if you don&amp;#x27;t get it, and learning new things makes you even more powerful. The mastery of doing great things is joyful and makes you want to learn more. The frustration of failure drives you away from the subject.&lt;p&gt;I find it plausible that grade distributions turn into similar income distributions later in life.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>stdbrouw</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think the conclusion follows from the data. It&amp;#x27;s not implausible that in computer science you need to &amp;quot;get&amp;quot; a whole bunch of things before it clicks and you start being productive, and a bimodal distribution of grades would then be indicative only of people who are further along in the learning process vs. those that have not yet reached that critical point, rather than any huge difference in intrinsic ability. This is just speculation, of course, but so is any other explanation and I prefer giving people the benefit of the doubt.</text></comment>