What's more important: programmers who are really good, really productive and consistently turn out high-quality code that helps the business? Or software managers, whose technical skills are not at issue, and whose job is to hire and manage programmers? Or, if they're really important, they hire managers of managers. Based on where most put their money, it's the managers we value most.
If you want things to get better in software, you may want to consider rewarding the people who actually, you know, do the work.
Management bias
Who's in charge of your organization? Let me guess ... a manager. Am I right? So when it comes down to the important things, who do you think gets valued the most highly ... other mangers, perhaps?
Most organizations have a pay scale that rises with increasing "responsibility," i.e., how "high" you are in the management hierarchy. I use quotes here because I'm deeply cynical about those things. Since when do the top people truly take responsibility for things, instead of blaming some poor underling? And height in the hierarchy implies goodness and value.
Look at this fascinating list of the best-paying jobs:
This list is clearly incomplete because it doesn't have things like CEO on it. But still, you'll notice that the people at the very top are individual contributors, doctors and lawyers. Right behind them are a couple kinds of technology managers. Then a "strategy manager." What about the next one, Software Architect? Sadly, in most organizations, the person with that title may not manage many people, but is considered way too "important" to actually write code, you know, like the peons do. Then we've got our first actual value-producing job category, an engineer! Not software, though. Of the last four jobs listed, three are explicitly management, and the fourth, "solutions architect," is a person who wouldn't be caught dead lowering himself to writing code.
It doesn't have to be this way
Many interesting organizations don't work this way. One example I've explored in detail is baseball, where the players are valued most highly, and where the vast majority of the managers were themselves excellent players, usually for many years.
In more detail, here are some of most highly paid managers:
Here are some of the most highly paid players:
Notice a difference in pay scale? Baseball has clearly decided that while managers are important, it's the players who win games. What an idea!
Conclusion
If what you think your organization really needs is lots of managing, and you figure the software will somehow get itself written, then you should pay your people like everyone else seems to. But if you actually need high-quality software that works and meets your needs, you may want to consider a different strategy.
p.s.: If you want to learn more about software people, see my book on the subject.
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