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#jobs-discuss
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2022-03-26
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Gulli20:03:27

Looking at this, Clojure is paying big bucks. But when looking at job postings here and on LinkedIn, the advertised salaries are similar to Java. What am I missing? https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#top-paying-technologies-programming-scripting-and-markup-languages

p-himik20:03:37

One possible factor is that not all jobs are advertised. Another factor is that those that are advertised might specify lower compensation than the actual one (e.g. because the employee/contractor was able to negotiate). Yet another factor is that a lot of jobs don't specify compensation. It's basically missing data - you don't know the distribution of such jobs when it comes to Clojure vs Java, you don't know the salary ranges, so you can't judge at all.

p-himik20:03:31

Questionnaires are also invariably skewed. Hard to say how exactly, but the results 100% do not represent the reality.

eggsyntax21:03:26

The survey results match my anecdotal experience. But of course anecdotes aren’t worth much, so I tend to take the survey results at least a bit more seriously than anecdotal experience. I agree with @U2FRKM4TW also, that the salary distribution of job postings and the salary distribution of Clojure employees could be quite different.

clj.max21:03:57

Averages. There are probably 100,000s of thousands of very low-level Junior Java jobs out there that you're not even seeing. They drag average and median down.

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Intelo09:05:43

Why is Clojure paying big bucks in the first place?

Intelo09:05:21

Is that due to a) they produce more (High ROI) or b) they are hard to find (scarce resource; hence costly)?

Intelo09:05:30

Or any other reason

p-himik09:05:47

Keep in mind that we're talking about averages (or medians, doesn't matter much in this case) and not "everybody swims in money". With that being said, Clojure developers are usually senior ones. And those get paid more than junior or middle ones.

Intelo09:05:39

so the "usual" seniority is the reason of high paid jobs. That would be true for any old language then

Intelo09:05:27

so its not a) or b) ? (just talking generally)

p-himik09:05:22

I don't see how those two are related. Seniority isn't that strongly correlated with age. And it's definitely not a causative relationship - being old doesn't make someone a senior developer automatically. Also, on an anecdotal level of evidence, it seems to me that a decent amount of old and obscure languages get "fresh blood" by hiring students. E.g. plenty of institutes, at least in Russia, use FORTRAN. Plenty of old financial institutions hire university graduates and use COBOL internally. And so on.

Intelo09:05:30

"being old doesn't make someone a senior developer automatically." <-- absolutely you are correct. I meant skill seniority. usually comes with time but not always...

p-himik09:05:46

Right, that's why I said I don't see how a language being old is a factor here. :)

Intelo09:05:45

@U2FRKM4TW I assume that the language was assumed to be returning more on investment. return: productivity investment: time

Intelo09:05:04

thus making devs precious but its a long debate

clj.max14:05:57

Clojure is an old language? Isn't it from 2008 or something? 😄

p-himik14:05:20

I don't think that point was made in this thread at all. The initial thesis was basically "if senior developers are paid more, then working with an old language would pay more", with which I disagreed.

clj.max15:05:18

> so the "usual" seniority is the reason of high paid jobs. That would be true for any old language then

p-himik15:05:39

Yes, the second statement doesn't talk about Clojure at all. Just about "any old languages". Not sure what point you're trying to make.

Aleksander20:03:51

I’ve heard it to be attributed to Clojure developers being fairly experienced

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lsenjov08:03:01

I like to explain why clj's doing well is that it's filled with old grumpy programmers who see the same problems rich talks about, so it's fairly top heavy on the experience curve

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