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A note on programmer salaries

stephaniehurlburt.com

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Re: A note on programmer salaries

#51

Post by komali2 »

curun1r wrote: post #33
spraak wrote: post #3

Taking advice from the article to share about salary: I have 2.5 years of software development experience but no formal education. I am paid 65k/yr but as a remote contractor, so I pay my own taxes and healthcare, which effectively makes my salary about 57k/yr. I'm considering looking for a new position. What is a reasonable salary to ask for? Edit: I live in California and prefer to continue working remotely

This may be unconventional advice, but with your level of experience, I say don't try to maximize compensation right now. Instead, look to find the best experience possible so you can have the best narrative possible when you've got 5-7 years experience. At your level, my guess is you'd top out at around $90k/yr if you bargained hard. Senior and Staff engineers can easily make twice that, especially when you find a s…

Curious why you think a 2 year software developer would top out at 90 in California. That's the lowest I've seen a bootcamp grad (no university computer science) get as their first engineering job.

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#52

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#53

Post by komali2 »

cookiecaper wrote: post #16
sk5t wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An increase in the number of people attracted to programming jobs does not necessarily move the supply curve of people who are good at programming.

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.

Hah I mean by that logic a code base for a company is an infinitely expensive debt.

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#54

Post by 1throwaway123 »

Salary progression for me

First job (India) 2006 - ~$4,000 per year

Second Job (India) 2008 - ~$10,000 per year

Third job (US) 2010 - $105k

Fourth Job (US) 2012 - >$150K

Things have gone well since then too. The main thing that has kept things going up so far is really practicing before interviews to try and get better and never shying from looking for better opportunities. The company and I have a transactional relationship, not an emotional one.

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#56

Post by Bahamut »

spraak wrote: post #3

Taking advice from the article to share about salary: I have 2.5 years of software development experience but no formal education. I am paid 65k/yr but as a remote contractor, so I pay my own taxes and healthcare, which effectively makes my salary about 57k/yr. I'm considering looking for a new position. What is a reasonable salary to ask for? Edit: I live in California and prefer to continue working remotely

I think it really depends on what is the quality of your experience (work and out of work), and where are you located.

To give some comparison, I started at $51k in DC. Stayed at that job for 10 months before I got poached by a startup that offered me $75k. Stayed at that job for 9 months before I got poached by a startup in the Bay Area & relocated to the Valley. I worked at that job for $110k for 3 months before switching to another startup for $140k after stuff soured at the prior company. After 9 months there & getting laid off, I landed a job at another startup for $160k. I stayed there almost 2 years and then got laid off, and now I am at Apple making a little over $200k total (effectively even more now since the stock has been doing pretty well, which bolsters my RSUs & stocks from the employee stock purchasing plan).

Those numbers are over a career of 4.5 years. I am very good at what I do, although still learning new things all the time, so it may be an unrealistic match, but I have heard of other developers doing even better than me $-wise (one former coworker on track to make over $300k this year with under 2 years of experience - he's shooting for $400k-$450k for the year I think, making more than almost all of the best developers I have ever worked with, but he is working lots of contract gigs simultaneously and outsourcing when necessary).

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#58

Post by otto_ortega »

curun1r wrote: post #33
spraak wrote: post #3

Taking advice from the article to share about salary: I have 2.5 years of software development experience but no formal education. I am paid 65k/yr but as a remote contractor, so I pay my own taxes and healthcare, which effectively makes my salary about 57k/yr. I'm considering looking for a new position. What is a reasonable salary to ask for? Edit: I live in California and prefer to continue working remotely

This may be unconventional advice, but with your level of experience, I say don't try to maximize compensation right now. Instead, look to find the best experience possible so you can have the best narrative possible when you've got 5-7 years experience. At your level, my guess is you'd top out at around $90k/yr if you bargained hard. Senior and Staff engineers can easily make twice that, especially when you find a s…

> people who have 15 years on paper but when you dig into it, it's the same one year of experience 15 times over.

How do you differentiate "great years of experience" from that by looking at a CV?

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#59

Post by komali2 »

purple-again wrote: post #50
komali2 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

But 120k remote salary while living in central America is probably better than 40k local salary while living in central America ;)

Re: A note on programmer salaries

#60

Post by kayoone »

By looking at her Linkedin, it is easy to see what companies she is talking about, some big names up there. I think her viewpoint is a bit naive though. Of course a company will pay market rate in a european city if that is what it takes to be competitive. The fact that they pay their US employees more might create tensions inside the company but in the end is just down to the fact that the market there is completely different and that is what it takes to be competitive there.

In the beginning of my career i also had similar thoughts like "Why does the company make so much money when i am doing all the work" but while running my own business later i realized that it is not as simple. The company has a whole lot of risk and work bringing in projects and keeping everything afloat, as a programmer i did not have to worry about anything of that and only later i realized how much value that has, especially in a region where programming and consulting gigs weren't really easy to get.

Location really matters for programmer salaries. I went from a smaller european city where all there was for programmers were small software/marketing agencies to a european tech hub with a lot of startups and a booming market. My salary doubled just by changing location and living costs are still comparable and i finally feel i am getting paid what i am worth, which is still far from US standards though.

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