Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A note on programmer salaries

stephaniehurlburt.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 230 posts

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#41

Post by kartan »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #2

I mean, it's pretty simple, but it took a long time to internalize: If you don't have anyone else making you an offer, then you're worth that amount. In this case, you were worth $42k and $56k respectively. If you'd shopped around, you'd have been worth more. But you didn't, so you weren't. That's not a bad thing, either. Security is nice, and interviews are a pain. But it really is that simple. If you don't like you…

> If you don't have anyone else making you an offer, then you're worth that amount.

You are confused about cost and value.

I have seen a lot of people with high salaries that are more of a problem than a solution for the company. As an example, you can look at the executive that fired Salesforce red team at the DefCon.

Companies and upper management are usually bad at evaluating the value of employees. In some cases even punishing good employees while rewarding more ass-kisser types.

So you can be worth a lot, but be paid quite low. As cost and value are not always correlated, and rarely match each other.

For the part of looking elsewhere for a better salary, I agree. The managers are doing a poor job and moving around is the only option. This is a huge cost to the companies that lose expertise and need to train new employees and show how much overpaid their managers are because pay and worth are not related, and this is big a problem.

* https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/08/salesforce-fires-two...

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#42

Post by cjhanks »

retrac98 wrote: post #24

It seems like these kinds of salaries only really exist for full time employees in the US. As a software architect (engineer team size ~100) in the UK I was only making £65k. I could have shopped around and got more, much more if I went to London but still nothing like I read about in the US. I ended up leaving full time employment for contracting/consulting.

Those type of salaries only really exist in San Francisco bay. The marketplace is actually pretty competitive for such well paying jobs. But keep in mind - $100k SFBay is approximately $65k for most of the rest of the country.

The US Dollar holds significantly different value in different parts of the country.

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#43

Post by joombaga »

leeoniya wrote: post #17

a good opportunity is to bring more value to the company than simply the code you write (easier to do in smaller companies with a shallow hierarchy). i recently switched out our payment processor after shopping around and reduced our transaction fees by $70k/yr into the foreseeable future. negotiations tend to go more smoothly afterwards.

That's great! These are the kinds of things I tell juniors to put on their resume. There's big value in demonstrated cost-cutting ability.

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#44

Post by otto_ortega »

retrac98 wrote: post #24

It seems like these kinds of salaries only really exist for full time employees in the US. As a software architect (engineer team size ~100) in the UK I was only making £65k. I could have shopped around and got more, much more if I went to London but still nothing like I read about in the US. I ended up leaving full time employment for contracting/consulting.

I completely agree... It is even worse if you live on latin america.

The really sad part is when you take into consideration that programming and CS jobs in general are one of the jobs on which you can generate the same value being on-site or at the other end of the world.

So in theory there is no reason why you couldn't do the same thing someone in the US is doing and get paid the same amount.

Oh well, such is life...

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#45

Post by komali2 »

emsy wrote: post #35
plaguuuuuu wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you'd shopped around, you'd have been worth more. But you didn't, so you weren't. Isn't that circular logic? By that logic, nothing can ever be undervalued, because its fair value is defined by how much it's sold for. If you want to go all supply-and-demand, an employee's value is still not what they request, it's what it would cost to replace them, on average

Not circular logic, it's excactly how it works. Someone offers you money for your time and if both parties find an agreement on how much that time is worth, they've determined a value that is acceptable for both parties. No one is forced to employ or be employed.

>no one is forced to be employed

Er, can you clarify? If you don't work, you don't eat.

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#46

Post by komali2 »

otto_ortega wrote: post #32

Any advise on how to get a wage on the ranges mentioned on the article (or in the comments) while living OUTSIDE the USA? I live in Central America, but work for a Seattle based startup as a remote contractor and make $32K. Whenever I read about "common" salaries for programmers in the US an internal conflict unleashes on me. On one side what I make is on the middle-high range when compared to the local market, but i…

If you can build and deploy a webapp from zero to nothing you could make 120k usd in San Francisco, cause that's what bootcamp grads are doing and pretty much the only thing they bring to the table is webapp skills.

Visa and etc might make it harder for you, but if it were me I'd start browsing for remote positions at San Francisco companies.

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#47

Post by purple-again »

otto_ortega wrote: post #32

Any advise on how to get a wage on the ranges mentioned on the article (or in the comments) while living OUTSIDE the USA? I live in Central America, but work for a Seattle based startup as a remote contractor and make $32K. Whenever I read about "common" salaries for programmers in the US an internal conflict unleashes on me. On one side what I make is on the middle-high range when compared to the local market, but i…

Is your cost of living even remotely comparable to those programmers living in the US? Keep in mind those big salaries tend to be in the highest cost of living areas of the US. Seniors (5-7 years) in say Raleigh are probably $70k to $100k.

Also remembered that you might only have the opportunity to work that job presicely because you are in a low cost of living area and can be offered a low wage while delivering acceptable work.

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#48

Post by cookiecaper »

taneq wrote: post #37
cookiecaper wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friend who suggests the opposite of the grandparent's assertion. Since every new line of code represents technical debt that must be serviced, each new programmer generates a maintenance burden sufficient to occupy the time of 2 more programmers.

Assuming programmers generate a net increase in lines of code. (When working on a mature codebase, I'd expect that the better the programmer, the more likely this number actually is to be negative .)

I agree that it is possible for programmers to have a net-negative impact on LOC, but I didn't really address that because I can't think of many realistic long-term employment solutions where that would be the normal expectation (driveby consulting gigs don't count).

Even if you walk in and are able to eliminate large quantities of cruft in your first, say, 3 months on the job, once you pare the core down and simplify, the company will continue to want new features and changes, which will typically necessitate some growth.

I think the best realistic option would be a relatively-modest gain in net lines over the course of a year, commensurate with the number of new features.

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#50

Post by purple-again »

komali2 wrote: post #46
otto_ortega wrote: post #32

Any advise on how to get a wage on the ranges mentioned on the article (or in the comments) while living OUTSIDE the USA? I live in Central America, but work for a Seattle based startup as a remote contractor and make $32K. Whenever I read about "common" salaries for programmers in the US an internal conflict unleashes on me. On one side what I make is on the middle-high range when compared to the local market, but i…

If you can build and deploy a webapp from zero to nothing you could make 120k usd in San Francisco, cause that's what bootcamp grads are doing and pretty much the only thing they bring to the table is webapp skills. Visa and etc might make it harder for you, but if it were me I'd start browsing for remote positions at San Francisco companies.

$120k is San Fran could easily be a worse quality of life than $40k in Central America (too broad to say for certain).
Post reply on HN