Why do business analysts and PMs get higher salaries than programmers?

The top rated comment on this question asserts that the reason why programmers have lower salaries is because they are logical, intelligent individuals who refuse to play the politics game and thus are hated by executives. Not only it this incorrect (have you seen the politics in certain open source software projects ?) but it plays into a narrative that programmers want to believe: business people are corrupt and programmers are superior to them morally if not in compensation. You're doing yourself a disservice if you follow this line of thinking.<p>On the other hand, the top rated answer has a pretty elaborate and abstract theory about widgets and film makers. I make no assertion about the accuracy of this abstract theory, but I can summarize reality in a much simpler way: many programmers work in businesses where software is a cost center. If you want to make money as a programmer, you need to work at a company where software is a generator of profit and negotiate compensation aggressively after demonstrating your value.<p>The following is required reading if you'd like an algorithm for doing the above:<p>Don't Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice <a href="http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/" rel="nofollow">http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pro...</a><p>Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued <a href="http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/" rel="nofollow">http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/</a>

Long story short, PMs are closer to the money. When you're managing a project, you know you have a budget of X dollars to get it done. If you get it done in X-P dollars, you can take that to your boss and immediately show that you made, or saved, the company P dollars.<p>As a programmer or engineer, you may not even be directly aware of what the project's budget is, so it's harder for you to demonstrate how much value you're providing.

My PM is on vacation this week and I've had to partially fill in. I have been getting frantic urgent emails from roughly 7 am till 1 am. If this is what the guy puts up with, he deserves a couple bucks.

There is a great book called "Management by Baseball." The author of the book points out that baseball managers are typically former players, and they usually believe that the most important position on the team is whatever position they used to play. I doubt PMs regularly make more than engineers across all levels at all companies, but in general the outcry you are seeing about this isn't limited to engineers. In my experience, almost everybody at almost every company thinks the thing that they do is the most important.<p>I can tell you that I have worked in 4 major roles: - engineer - sales engineer - business development - CEO<p>In my experience, the pay is directly tied to the need of the position to manage uncertainty and ambiguity, and evaluate difficult risk/reward tradeoffs. As you move up the hierarchy, you do more of this.

There's a reason why we all aspire to be Rock Stars in our respective crafts and why the entrepreneur in us wants to hire the Rock Star.<p>Give me a business analyst who knows his marketplace inside and out. Who can break down the value proposition our business offers to 25 different demographics the same way John Madden breaks down a cover-two defense. Who can see where the market is going before the market knows its going there, and gets the team ready and motivated to get us there before any of our competition even realizes they're behind.<p>Give me a project manager who can see fires before they start; who can guide 30 people to do the work of 300 and can keep 300 people working efficiently toward the same goal. I want a project manager who craves efficiency in their process like an addict craves meth. Give me a project manager who obssessively clicks the refresh page on O'Reilly's website waiting for updates on books about continuous integration, issue tracking, and version control practices.<p>And give me a programmer who knows the entire stack like the back of their hand. Who can program Ruby, Python, Java, Haskell, Clojure, Objective-C, C++, C#, Go, Scala, and every kind of Javascript. Who understands what the different hardware constraints on a desktop application and a web application. Give me a programmer who writes elegant unit tests for all of his code, and evey algorithm is the minimum O. Give me a programmer who happily mentors every other developer in our shop and, like Michael Jordan, makes everyone else better.<p>Give me these three, and I'll change the world, and I'll pay each of them far more than my competition.

What companies are these people working for? The ones I've looked at and the ones my friends work at pay their programmers significantly more than PMs and BAs.

Aside: <i>Yet another</i> useful and thought provoking question and set of answers on SE shut down "because it's not a good fit for the format".

I'm a little surprised that the top answers on Stack Exchange accept the premise that analysts and PMs get paid higher salaries. That is certainly not the case at my company (mid sized tech startup), nor I would imagine at most other tech companies.

As a developer of 20 yrs I dispute the claim "Programming harder than project management". Pming is hard, stressful, and often thankless. And I've seen multitudes more good devs than good PM.<p>Finally, I'm not sure pms do get paid more.

This is a true statement for any industry with a highly skilled labor force, whether you write code, run excel models at a bank, or make jet engines.<p>From my observations/experiences, these three things are consistent (and it's mentioned throughout the thread):<p>1. Be closer to the money: There's a reason why sales people make more money than marketers. Look at Salesforce.com's operating statement and they spend &#62;3x more money on sales and marketing than R&#38;D.<p>2. Never be the best at making a widget or they'll have you make the widget forever: If you're the best at something highly technical, the management would be crazy to promote you to something more client facing or more managerial. There are some organizations that truly value technical skill on a meritocratic basis (think traders at a hedge fund or rockstar developers), but they are more rare.<p>3. If the boss/rest of the company doesn't know what you do, you won't be compensated for it: I wonder if the reason why Codacademy/Udacity is important is because it starts to teach non-technical people like me the value of good code. I have far more appreciation for my technical co-founder now that I've tried to code than I did before (and I thought I already had a lot).<p>In the end, my suggestion is to gain a broader set of skills that make you more marketable to your company or join a company that appreciates your ability.

This is a rerun on HN. It's also untrue - analysts and PMs don't typically make more than engineers, this is a bit of programmer urban legend. I actually took a paycut for my stint as a PM

I view the PM role akin the role a sweeper plays in curling. A good PM will clear the path for others on the team to do what they do best. Sometimes that's wrangling with devops so the developers can keep programming, or it's calling a meeting with stakeholders to brief them on potential issues before they get out of control.<p>A good PM is offensive, not reactive and thats why a lot of times it seems like they're just calling meetings. They're generally the only person that interacts with all the different teams (management, QA, dev, IT) and so they can see the upcoming roadblocks. IF they get those solved beforehand that's worth some $$$ :)

The easy answer is: because that is what the market dictates. Programming may be difficult, but I'd be willing to bet there are a lot more programmers out there than people willing to be a PM (and stick with it).

Why do you think BAs and PMs get paid more? Is there any evidence? Anywhere I've worked they are very comparable for experience levels or the programmers get paid more. I think this is an inferiority complex based on not feeling 'cool' like the business guys. Other business roles likes sales and management (both tech and biz) get more because they have more responsibilities.

This has been pointed out already in several comments, but it can never be stressed too much -- because programmers can't negotiate!<p>Want to get a higher salary? Do yourself and a broader programming community a service.<p>Learn to negotiate! Learn to negotiate! Learn to negotiate!

They get paid the same as junior programmers where I work. They are deemed as equal value to the company.<p>To be 100% honest a good developer should be able to take on all three roles. PM and BA are skills which should be built in as well along side other basics.

I believe its similar to what happens in other sectors: PMs have to deal with people, do lots and lots of schleps without the constant rewards of creating something, designing something beautiful or the serendipitous discovery of something remarkable. As a developer I m not jealous of their position, I know they get paid better for doing what i Don't want to do

The reason is just culture there is nothing else. When the major professions Lawyers, MBA's, Doctors, Engineers became part of the majority work force a culture emerged. Somehow the people who in aggregate create the most value in the working world as far as dollar is concerned started to under bid each other for competition, you look at any software/engineering contract there is always and under bidding war going on, always.<p>But with Doctors, MBA, Lawyers they are always looking to get the most personal financial benefit, and even put in laws and other policy to assure they will, hence the prestige. It has gotten to the point where engineers are seen as cogs as I can hire someone else to do the same thing, plus they are paid the least anyway so they are easy to replace.<p>I think it is just starting to change if you go in the tech/startup world you can make more money ,developers are paid even over $500k, the difference is the culture they value your work.

Programmer for Citigroup here, Computer Science and Financial Engineering major-<p>At citigroup, entry level programmers are paid just as much as entry level business analysts. In a large company, no one needs "great" programmers. They really jsut need capable programmers to get everything executed correctly in such thick beurocracy. The reality is that good MANAGERS are much harder to come by, so whenever anyone, business side or technical side, proves to be a good manager, they move up and get paid more. So it's not that the programmers are paid less, it's that they don't really look like programmers once the company wants then to manage programmers, which is much much more valuable.<p>Bottom line, being a "good programmer" won't get you paid more. Anywhere. Not even at google. Showing that you can make a company productive and be a good manager will always get you paid more, because those are fewer and far between.

As an employee working at a consulting firm, I understand the difference in a contract environment. Me, as a programmer, charge a client for my time. The most money I can possibly make is my charge rate times however many hours. But, I have a manager, they are in charge of several, perhaps 20 programmers, working on various tasks for various clients. In reality, my salary is only about 50% of what my company charges for my time. In this scheme, money goes towards overhead, and the rest to management, whom I do agree, do a good job keeping us programmers employed, and winning contracts to work on. could I do this all myself and charge more money, sure. But in a bigger consultancy, there is a great network effect, and more jobs to be done, thus I will less likely be out of work. Is it a pyramid scheme? yes. Do I hope to be on top at some point? yes.

They're not?<p>I've seen very few places where PMs and analysts even get on par with normal engineers (aka, non junior).

In my engineering group, we don't have project managers or analysts. We have product managers (who are responsible for much more than a project manager, and make more than the average PM, methinks). The lead engineer on each project does some PM-y tasks, but it's generally up to the product manager to produce the documentation/charts/spreadsheets.<p>In our operations group, there are PMs, but they are responsible for more than managing programmers on projects--they oversee the whole project, and must manage the resources from several sub-groups. Additionally, they are the first point of contact for the client. They are well-compensated, but they are also responsible for the whole of a client project.

Good business analysts and PM are more likely (maybe because of the situations they are involved in, or because of their training) to realize and explain what value they bring to the company.<p>For most "regular" programmers, it's not that clear :)

I think I may be due to supply and demand.<p>PM's tend to be local, which isolates them from outsourcing salary pressure (decreases supply). Programmers can be outsourced which exposes them to more salary pressure (increases supply).

In my opinion, it's because, outside a few rare companies, programmers are generally viewed as mental laborers: the digital, modern equivalent of blue collar workers.<p>Some comments above seem to rationalize this by saying that software development is viewed as a cost center. Perhaps that's part of it. But, there are many types of cost centers but which aren't viewed like programming.

It's simple, really. The core of society is composed of... You guessed it! Social shit!<p>So why do lawyers, politicians, lawmakers and managers get the most money even though they do nothing useful? Because we do not reward what we do not understand. Engineering, the sciences and the arts are esoteric enough that only a small collection of people 'get' them. Arguing a criminal case, promising to fix society for the billionth time, drawing up a law or telling people that they should do what you say because everyone says that you're the person to listen to is something that <i>everybody</i> can understand. Every person on this planet understands that a new law will affect them just as they appreciate that the country going in a different direction will do the same. In comparison, few people know what goes into making the world tick and how much of their lives are supported by IT infrastructure.<p>Ofcourse, everybody can understand cleaning, cooking and chopping wood too, so why do those professions pay so badly? This is where supply and demand come in - one needs higher education to perform bureaucratic functions; this is not so for cleaning and cooking. Since getting that education costs money, motivation and time, most people cannot afford it, hence it is in comparatively low supply and therefore more expensive.<p>In other words, it's a combination of how easy it is to understand and relate to the profession coupled with the barrier to entry.<p>In my not-so-humble opinion, the fact that we live in a society which values talking over walking is completely and utterly idiotic. We've all been had and we're having ourselves for doing so little about it. However, I feel no resentment towards people in these professions - the game is broken, the players are only doing what they can. The best we can do to fix this situation is to educate ourselves and each other. When the older generation dies out, the ideas in our heads will become the status quo.

Well, who should get paid more, the getaway driver, or the guy who orchestrated the bank robbery?

Any discussion on this topic always leaves me more confused than I was before reading it.

I'm a programmer and I think they are worth more too. It's a disaster when you have a bad business person and lose investors because there is no one to meet them, or it takes several months longer than expected to hire a desperately needed graphics designer, etc.. I've heard managers of mine mention getting 1400 emails a day, and I bet a lot of it is bitching they have to put up with about budgets and timelines, and business considerations - not fun coding stuff like I work with all day. You couldn't pay me to take a business job, but I acknowledge it is more essential to the actual business.

When I'm in the mood to wear my extra cynical hat I quite like the developers who think good business analysts and project managers don't add significant value.<p>Gives me a heck of a competitive advantage :-)

I think that people higher up the chain get more money because that's how ultimately they are given authority. If someone who earned 25% of what you did, continually told you to do something that you disagreed with, you would probably think 'why am I listening to this guy telling me what to do?' This organisation doesn't value you as much as me, therefore I think my opinion is worth more than yours. Therefore I'm not going to do what you say. Consequently you don't have that much authority.<p>Something like that.

We make money in technology by making computers do things for people. This means there are two, equally-important pieces: computers and people.<p>PMs and BAs are supposed to be able to both understand and bring these two elements together. Of course, whether it works that way in reality is another story.

I can always tell I'm in a room full of programmers when they say "coding" is the most important part of making software. Oh really? That's a bit like saying the person laying asphalt on the road is the most important part of making the road. Oh, hey, what about the Engineers who designed the roading material? The Planners who decided where the road should go. The Project Manager who actually gets people to do things, and stops management from changing their mind about where the road should go, and when it should be created.<p>Nope, just the guy physically laying the road.<p>I had a big debate with a programmer about why Business Analysts, Project Managers, and even Enterprise Architects get paid more than programmers. Programmers create something from nothing. Without them, there would be no software. And that's indeed correct. But has the problem of getting software working in large enterprise environments been down to a lack of technology?<p>Generally not. It's more down to those human factors like what are the requirements, who is the stakeholder, who has responsibility for this project, who's got the budget, what are we doing, when is this ready, why did we build this when we could have bought that, all of these soft skills, they're the reasons why software projects fail. Not the software (generally, don't find an edge case and be all Aha!).<p>That's why I'm working on becoming an Enterprise Architect. I can barely code, and I'm OK with that. Because I do know about the structure of the business, the canonical data model with an organisation, the high level enterprise applications that support that information, and the infrastructure that support the applications. Sure I'm not an expert in any one of those areas, but being knowledgeable combined with being able to talk to the CIO and the CEO with them understanding what I'm saying, that's a rare skill indeed.

This is a very general comment. Not all programmers and Analyst/PM are of same quality. Check niche area's - e.g. HFT programming, can PM/Analyst get close? No way.<p>A programmer who updates his skills frequently have a good chance of staying on top.

I think the fact that bad programmers can have such a negative impact has a lot to do with it.

Heh. Where I work business analysts and PMs make substantially less than the developers.

Because bullshit baffles brains

I used to be a programmer who transitioned into BA/PM role lately. I see and understand the pains of both sides. Sometimes, I want to switch into the technical/programmer mode where I want to solve/code the thing myself. The point is that these 3 roles even though not necessarily mutually exclusive, are very difficult to do at the same time especially in large corporate environments. At a startup, I am not sure if do need a separate BA/PM but when you have to deal with 100s of business users across multiple countries, get everyone to agree on scope/requirements, keep effective communication with all stakeholders etc. etc., you need people who can do all these. This is where a good BA/PM comes in. The value of a good BA/PM can never be undermined even though it can be argued that a developer usually fills these roles many times in certain circumstances. To summarize, a good BA/PM is not someone who only is good at business/domain knowledge or a set of tools, but is someone who can deal with people, glue teams together and is not afraid to wear many hats which could include cold calling team members, pestering business users to confirm things etc. etc.

I always laugh when people question why others make more than them. Standard salary for mid-level journalists is around $27k a year. Teachers are around $35k. I don't know about other careers, but there's always somebody making less than you.

From BA/PM perspective here are some possible reasons (with no disrespect to programmers):<p>1 BA/PM generally spend most of their time dealing with politics, governance and bureaucracy.<p>2 BA/PM spend a lot of time trying to elicit requirements and deal with scope creep.<p>3 BA/PM act as a conduit between parties and stakeholders who rarely agree. They attempt to gain compromise and keep the show on the road.<p>4 BA/PM take some risk and responsibility for things going wrong. And need to fix these things.<p>5 BA/PM act a managers, managing people, strategy, finances.<p>There are more but you get the context. There are lots of intangibles (or BS) needed to manage a project. You need someone to deal with it.<p>In certain industries BA/PM with a mixture of business, technology and BA/PM skills can demand more pay.<p>I was a doubter before but seeing the daily issues that come out on a challenging project, these BA/PM are probably underpaid.

Business analysts and PMs stay at corporations longer and build salary through promotions. Programmers leave every couple of years and build salary by going to more elite and richer corporations. So a new programmer may be working at a low programmer-pay corporation early at which PMs are paid more than programmers. Eventually programmers will end up at a place where they are paid more than PMs and BAs. Even the most die hard programmer-hating director or VP can't justify paying $150k for 'people skills'.

Writing software != Selling software

after almost 50 comments, I say let the developers, BAs,PM, QAs all win. After all, we all want to get the project out of the door, make some money on the way and go home.

Ours do not.

The assumption that PMs, or anyone else, get higher salaries is just wrong. Depending on the company, pay scales are all over the place. At the company I am at now, 'Engineers' (valley speak for programmer) have the highest pay scale, meaning an Engineer is paid more than any other role at the same career level.<p>Some businesses see programmers as replaceable cogs. Some don't. If you are a really good developer, and you want to be paid well, one sure fire way to do it is to physically move to an area where great developers are in short supply. Silicon Valley is the nexus of demand in the US, for programming talent.<p>If you do our engineering challenge at <a href="http://www.codeeval.com/public_sc/48/" rel="nofollow">http://www.codeeval.com/public_sc/48/</a> , we'll immediately get back to you. We are always looking for talented people, and working here is awesome.