The association between skills listed in a worker's profile and hourly wages is accidental. The actual analysis we want to see should be project based, showing what projects (in which I would like to see technologies used as variables) command the highest hourly wages.
I would guess that most HN'ers do believe that using a better blub makes them more effective as hackers. What we don't see FTA is a link between USING the better blub and hourly wages.
Maybe Clojure developers are a subset of the top 5% of Java hackers. One possibility is they are then hired to work on projects using Java and that they might command higher hourly wages (being in the top 5% of Java hackers and assuming this is demonstrable to hiring orgs) rather than being especially valued for their Clojure skills.
And, make your chart x-axis start at 0 instead of 25. :) Tufte rules.
1) The data are what they are - these are the rates people are charging by listed skill. It would be very interesting to look at prices by actual completed projects, but that's just another approach one can take.
2) I make it very clear that there's an association, not a causal claim. I flag the fact, make a lame joke about it and put "might* in the title.
3) There's no Tufte rule about starting charts at 0 - you make choices that make it easier for people to make comparisons. Paul Krugman said it better than anyone on this topic: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/axes-of-evil/
"What we don't see FTA is a link between USING the better blub and hourly wages."
Neither the data nor the article make any connection between USING Clojure and hourly wages.
The connection is between LEARNING Clojure and high wages.
This is commonly known as the Python paradox, cited in the article. Learning currently esoteric languages signals a motivated self learner passionate about his craft. Listing Clojure in a job listing signals a company doing work that would be interesting to a motivated self learner passionate about her craft.
With a cap of $100/hr does the data really reflect "high-wage" skills? Lawyers start well above that and it's smack in the middle of a poll from a few years ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=553794.
That was my impression as well. The rates are from the lower end of the pool, people with general experience and no deep expertise.
I have worked off and on for many years as a contractor working on high-end database scalability and performance issues as well as parallel algorithm design. While the rates fluctuated with the market and how much I liked the project, I was always charging well above $100/hr even for terms that ran several months.
A lot of it has to do with who your customers are. If you are working on the design of a system that will be moving $250M per year if it performs correctly, spending an extra $100k to hire a deep expert in the design of such systems is below the noise floor. You might be a "database scalability consultant" but you are not fishing in the same pool as most of the people that claim similar labels for themselves.
My wife works at one of the largest law firms in the world, and trainees there makes about $10-$15/hour. On paper their salary is high, but the hourly rate is pushed far down because of ridiculously long hours. Their secretaries make as much or more than them.
Newly qualified lawyers there make $20/hour if they're lucky. This is in the UK, specifically in a London "magic circle" firm - one of the highest paying law firms in the UK. US firms in London pay up to about 1/3 more total yearly salary, commensurate with the same firms salary levels in the US, but also tends to expect even longer hours.
It's first quite a few years post qualification that their salaries get high enough that their hourly rates starts to become decent.
Average salary for a solicitor in the UK was around $37k/year a couple of years back, for longer than average hours, at a time when the national average salary in the uk was ca. $40k/year...
I'm sure there are lawyers who start out at high hourly rates from day one, but I'd be surprised if more than a tiny fraction starts out around the $100/hour rate.
Actual billed out rate from a major law firm, sure - my wife is billed out at around $300/hour as a trainee.
Point: if you want to make nice money on oDesk, offer a niche expertise. I started a small company doing node.js/mongodb/redis and I can pretty much ask what I want. There is no competition. On the other hand, when i'm short handed, it's impossible to find people with these skills on a non-beginner level who are not really insanely expensive, so it's not exactly a highly scalable business ;)
The article is only looking at the relationship in one direction. It's not entirely that learning clojure makes you money, it's that high level academic types that are predisposed to high wage jobs are more likely to know clojure. I would actually argue that this is the far more significant causation relationship. But what do I know - I don't know clojure. :)
There are many niche skill sets out there where the demand far exceeds the currently supply, and as such hourly rates from $100/hour (lower level) to $200+/hour (architect level) are quite common and you really can pick your job/location/work from home, etc... The trick is finding one, and learning it quickly/well.
I've often thought about grabbing a bunch of folks with a similar relevant skill set, investing 6-12 months in training them, and then running a hugely profitable consulting company for a while. The problem being it's hard to prevent people from hanging out for your 12 months of training, and then jumping ship to do their own thing afterward...
The kind of expertise that consistently commands the high rates requires a level of experience that cannot be developed through training. It requires in-field domain expertise developed over a few years. What you are talking about is what many consulting companies actually do, and it is one of the reasons that consulting companies have such a poor reputation for execution. Customers are paying for the expertise you will not pick up in training or by reading a book.
I ran a successful consulting business many years ago (and hated it). One of the things you learn is that you live and die by the quality of the people you can deploy because that goes straight to your reputation. In practice, consulting businesses are very difficult to scale. While you may start out high-end with a great reputation because you really know what you are doing, it is very difficult to bring in additional people with your level of skill because there is almost no overhead to them working independently. As a result, "scale up" often involves diluting the quality of your overall team to the point where the rates you can charge decline as well. Consequently, you either have to run a very small boutique consulting shop that can maintain its standards and billing rate or run a large generic shop that makes up for the lower billing rate in volume. For people that care about the quality of their work, the former is more rewarding but the economics work out such that you will make about as much money by going direct as a highly-paid contractor to another company.
I'd be really interested to read a list of these highly remunerative skillsets. Going to be taking some time off, and probably heading in a new direction when I start working again.
>The problem being it's hard to prevent people from hanging out for your 12 months of training, and then jumping ship to do their own thing afterward...
You'd be amazed at how much $240 a day is in developing countries. In some latin american countries $240 is the minimum wage for a month; earning $4800 per month is more than what a typical worker makes in an entire year.
$30/hour would make you part of the 1% in these countries.
On a completely unrelated note, I'm curious if anyone has tried odesk from a developer point of view? Freelance websites like elance seem to play host to a pretty poor type of client, so I've stayed away. Curious if odesk is any bettering that way?
Problem is, you're competing with people in places with a far lower cost of living - especially in "mainstream" technologies.
oDesk clients tend to be one of two types: Skilled project managers/architects/agencies looking for subcontractors, or businesses looking to save a buck by not hiring the former.
The first group are great, they know exactly what they want and will pay for quality. The latter are hell as they often have no idea how to communicate requirements, scope, process, etc and want everything cheap.
If you live in the first world and have the communication skills, the best place to find freelance development work (IME) is still community networking.
I tried it both ways; employer & developer; both work fine on oDesk. Much better than other sites I have tried.
Basic thing is ; don't go for mainstream. You cannot compete on price doing PHP or something like that. If you have something 'niche', you can pretty much ask what you want and get it.
I've tried a few Freelancer sites and found them to be a good way to find new clients but it's been worth being very selective about clients and never competing on price.
There are actually quite a few excellent clients out there on those sites but they actively won't talk to people who bid at the level of the bid-on-everything-then-outsource "suppliers" who plague freelancer markets.
So my anecdotal impression is that the most successful freelancers learn to get very picky about who they work with---they want to see a verified payment method (esp. if the client is proposing a fixed-price contract), a history of hires and successful projects at reasonable wages and a good job description.
Apologies if I'm missing this in the article, but it doesn't seem to take into account the level of demand for those skills. It's all very well having a skill that demands $50/hr, if openings for that skill only come up once in a blue moon.
You're right---there's nothing about the demand side yet. That's my next blog post. I'll show the earned wages by skill and some measures of demand & trade volume in different skills.
Judging by the number of people who contacted me about Python work when I accidentally implied I had Python experience, I'd say that's a pretty hot market right now. Certainly compared to PHP at least ;-)
I didn't RTFA yet but what I want to ask HN readers: what are some good niches in IT work that are proven to reap high wages in consulting?
If I'm going to be a highly paid consultant instead of an underpaid employee I have to do something more desirable/uncommon than .NET boilerplate coding...
This data only reflects the oDesk labor market (which is notoriously a race to the bottom). I would hesitate to draw any other conclusions. However, it would be interesting to see this data broken down by geographic region.
"High-wage skills on oDesk (or why you might want to learn Clojure if you're not a lawyer) "
Totally a link bait title. Clojure hasn't been around that long and therefore hasn't been in demand that long.
Heading off in any one particular direction based upon the way things appear to be now vs. what they will be long term wouldn't be what I would do. Do you think "clojure" is like "plastics". I don't think it is.
Also, as has happened with many career/skill (nursing at some point, law now) once the word gets out that something is in demand (because of supply and demand in balance) that changes as people are drawn by the chance to make money.
And clojure is a skill it's not a profession. That skill can quickly be replace by the next new thing.
I take "Amazon RDS" being in the top 6 as a sign that these numbers are pretty worthless - the whole point of RDS is that it's easier to set-up and administer than a do-it-yourself install.
Comparing MongoDB (in absolute bootom) to Redis (5th place) makes me think I've missed something?
Is Redis that hard to use or does the number of Redis users increase exponentially with a resulting lack of skills? (Or is the web site not a good salary predictor?)
MongoDB is a VC-backed technology, which has spurred its adoption at funded startups. Since they're funded, those startups can also afford to pay engineers more.
[+] [-] tom_b|14 years ago|reply
The association between skills listed in a worker's profile and hourly wages is accidental. The actual analysis we want to see should be project based, showing what projects (in which I would like to see technologies used as variables) command the highest hourly wages.
I would guess that most HN'ers do believe that using a better blub makes them more effective as hackers. What we don't see FTA is a link between USING the better blub and hourly wages.
Maybe Clojure developers are a subset of the top 5% of Java hackers. One possibility is they are then hired to work on projects using Java and that they might command higher hourly wages (being in the top 5% of Java hackers and assuming this is demonstrable to hiring orgs) rather than being especially valued for their Clojure skills.
And, make your chart x-axis start at 0 instead of 25. :) Tufte rules.
[+] [-] john_horton|14 years ago|reply
2) I make it very clear that there's an association, not a causal claim. I flag the fact, make a lame joke about it and put "might* in the title.
3) There's no Tufte rule about starting charts at 0 - you make choices that make it easier for people to make comparisons. Paul Krugman said it better than anyone on this topic: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/axes-of-evil/
[+] [-] jimbokun|14 years ago|reply
Neither the data nor the article make any connection between USING Clojure and hourly wages.
The connection is between LEARNING Clojure and high wages.
This is commonly known as the Python paradox, cited in the article. Learning currently esoteric languages signals a motivated self learner passionate about his craft. Listing Clojure in a job listing signals a company doing work that would be interesting to a motivated self learner passionate about her craft.
[+] [-] fshaun|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jandrewrogers|14 years ago|reply
I have worked off and on for many years as a contractor working on high-end database scalability and performance issues as well as parallel algorithm design. While the rates fluctuated with the market and how much I liked the project, I was always charging well above $100/hr even for terms that ran several months.
A lot of it has to do with who your customers are. If you are working on the design of a system that will be moving $250M per year if it performs correctly, spending an extra $100k to hire a deep expert in the design of such systems is below the noise floor. You might be a "database scalability consultant" but you are not fishing in the same pool as most of the people that claim similar labels for themselves.
[+] [-] vidarh|14 years ago|reply
Do they?
My wife works at one of the largest law firms in the world, and trainees there makes about $10-$15/hour. On paper their salary is high, but the hourly rate is pushed far down because of ridiculously long hours. Their secretaries make as much or more than them.
Newly qualified lawyers there make $20/hour if they're lucky. This is in the UK, specifically in a London "magic circle" firm - one of the highest paying law firms in the UK. US firms in London pay up to about 1/3 more total yearly salary, commensurate with the same firms salary levels in the US, but also tends to expect even longer hours.
It's first quite a few years post qualification that their salaries get high enough that their hourly rates starts to become decent.
Average salary for a solicitor in the UK was around $37k/year a couple of years back, for longer than average hours, at a time when the national average salary in the uk was ca. $40k/year...
I'm sure there are lawyers who start out at high hourly rates from day one, but I'd be surprised if more than a tiny fraction starts out around the $100/hour rate.
Actual billed out rate from a major law firm, sure - my wife is billed out at around $300/hour as a trainee.
[+] [-] tluyben2|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] balloot|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] modoc|14 years ago|reply
I've often thought about grabbing a bunch of folks with a similar relevant skill set, investing 6-12 months in training them, and then running a hugely profitable consulting company for a while. The problem being it's hard to prevent people from hanging out for your 12 months of training, and then jumping ship to do their own thing afterward...
[+] [-] jandrewrogers|14 years ago|reply
I ran a successful consulting business many years ago (and hated it). One of the things you learn is that you live and die by the quality of the people you can deploy because that goes straight to your reputation. In practice, consulting businesses are very difficult to scale. While you may start out high-end with a great reputation because you really know what you are doing, it is very difficult to bring in additional people with your level of skill because there is almost no overhead to them working independently. As a result, "scale up" often involves diluting the quality of your overall team to the point where the rates you can charge decline as well. Consequently, you either have to run a very small boutique consulting shop that can maintain its standards and billing rate or run a large generic shop that makes up for the lower billing rate in volume. For people that care about the quality of their work, the former is more rewarding but the economics work out such that you will make about as much money by going direct as a highly-paid contractor to another company.
[+] [-] Estragon|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jbjohns|14 years ago|reply
It's pretty easy actually: pay them well.
[+] [-] Zak|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fbuilesv|14 years ago|reply
$30/hour would make you part of the 1% in these countries.
[+] [-] jimbokun|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swalsh|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] garethsprice|14 years ago|reply
oDesk clients tend to be one of two types: Skilled project managers/architects/agencies looking for subcontractors, or businesses looking to save a buck by not hiring the former.
The first group are great, they know exactly what they want and will pay for quality. The latter are hell as they often have no idea how to communicate requirements, scope, process, etc and want everything cheap.
If you live in the first world and have the communication skills, the best place to find freelance development work (IME) is still community networking.
[+] [-] tluyben2|14 years ago|reply
Basic thing is ; don't go for mainstream. You cannot compete on price doing PHP or something like that. If you have something 'niche', you can pretty much ask what you want and get it.
[+] [-] talkingquickly|14 years ago|reply
There are actually quite a few excellent clients out there on those sites but they actively won't talk to people who bid at the level of the bid-on-everything-then-outsource "suppliers" who plague freelancer markets.
[+] [-] john_horton|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prof_hobart|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] john_horton|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mootothemax|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] itmag|14 years ago|reply
If I'm going to be a highly paid consultant instead of an underpaid employee I have to do something more desirable/uncommon than .NET boilerplate coding...
[+] [-] bostonvaulter2|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jnbiche|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] larrys|14 years ago|reply
Totally a link bait title. Clojure hasn't been around that long and therefore hasn't been in demand that long.
Heading off in any one particular direction based upon the way things appear to be now vs. what they will be long term wouldn't be what I would do. Do you think "clojure" is like "plastics". I don't think it is.
Also, as has happened with many career/skill (nursing at some point, law now) once the word gets out that something is in demand (because of supply and demand in balance) that changes as people are drawn by the chance to make money.
And clojure is a skill it's not a profession. That skill can quickly be replace by the next new thing.
[+] [-] ux-pro|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] klochner|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] berntb|14 years ago|reply
Is Redis that hard to use or does the number of Redis users increase exponentially with a resulting lack of skills? (Or is the web site not a good salary predictor?)
[+] [-] rythie|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cageface|14 years ago|reply
http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends
[+] [-] achompas|14 years ago|reply