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Stack Overflow Salary Calculator

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Re: Stack Overflow Salary Calculator

#161

Post by KirinDave »

dmoy wrote: post #102
KirinDave wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a recipe to pay massive taxes though. If you have the cash you'd prefer to do an 83b election and pay the taxes when the stock is very cheap. It's also important to note that the clock for long term capital gains tax starts at the date of exercise, so you'd still need to exercise the options, which will cost money.

That's not how a stock grant works now if they're just straight up giving you the shares, not via options. It gets taxed as ordinary income as soon as it vests, nothing you can do about it.

Okay, but direct grants are a somewhat rare condition, no? Most folks here would be dealing with ISOs.

Re: Stack Overflow Salary Calculator

#162

Post by jotato »

seattle_spring wrote: post #81

Lol... My base salary at a startup is 50% more than the 75th percentile for Seattle. Also, coffeescript is listed as a distinct technology? Makes no sense to me.

Yup. These salaries seem low to me. I wonder if there was a dis-proportionate response to the surveys

Re: Stack Overflow Salary Calculator

#163

Post by gargarplex »

jordache wrote: post #156
gargarplex wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but only 1 in 3 Azure deployments are Linux, Linux support is recent, and BizSpark has been around since 2009. The fact is– if you dismiss the .NET startups you are certainly ignoring part of the picture.

It's not about Linux deployments. Our nodeJS and angular deployments in Azure's managed app services are hosted in IIS. If you are only counting the OS as an indication of .NET or no .NET, your numbers are severely inaccurate. I could count on a single hand the amount of job postings for 'startup/startup-ish' companies that had a .net stack. Edit: https://stackshare.io/application_and_data# ! Somewhat anecdotal but s…

The point about hosting node via IIS is interesting, but doesn't refute the point.

Stack Overflow (and all the Stack Exchange sites) is in .NET

There are currently 200+ angel list jobs that require .NET

The stackshare link is not helpful because stackshare is something popular in the HN community. .NET is an incredibly popular framework outside of the SF/HN bubble. Startups around the globe and in middle America use .NET all the time.

Re: Stack Overflow Salary Calculator

#164

Post by bradlys »

crispyambulance wrote: post #155
nnfy wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the point, I dont think, in my search example, a full stack developer with an MS and 5 years experience is going to be making ~90-127k 25th-75th percentile. Sounds like he'd be getting ripped off.

Well, it's a starting point. When coming up with a salary range for themselves, candidates have more homework to do than to simply punch a few numbers into a calculator. Any expectations of accuracy better than 10-15% are unrealistic. In many markets 100K+ is quite nice for an MS-degree'd 20-something with a few years of experience.

But the point here is that it's not an average over many markets, it's for each market and how off it is for each market. This is why in my post I said it's off for SF. It might be true for other regions but it's definitely far off for SF.

Re: Stack Overflow Salary Calculator

#165

Post by user5994461 »

KirinDave wrote: post #161
dmoy wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how a stock grant works now if they're just straight up giving you the shares, not via options. It gets taxed as ordinary income as soon as it vests, nothing you can do about it.

Okay, but direct grants are a somewhat rare condition, no? Most folks here would be dealing with ISOs.

No, ISO are terrible. Most folks would be dealing in RSU, and if they don't they are being taken advantage of.

Re: Stack Overflow Salary Calculator

#166

Post by user5994461 »

bostik wrote: post #63
joezydeco wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No embedded engineers. No graphics work. No UI work. No keywords for things like "microcontroller", or "driver", or "Linux".

And no security engineers either.

It's much rarer than development roles. Doubt that they have significant data.

Re: Stack Overflow Salary Calculator

#167

Post by _Tev »

tiggybear wrote: post #92
otakucode wrote: post #51

Biggest factor is where you live... because we all know that people are paid according to the value they create, and bits forged in places with high rent are inherently more valuable.

Actually we have known for a long time that most people's salaries are completely decoupled from the value they create. I've never seen anyone claim the opposite except for business owners and middle management. Everyone wages are more so tied to how much leverage they have. Increasing one's output has never been a great recipe for increasing compensation, however, increasing your leverage (get a new offer, get a gov…

When you say it like that you can naturally follow with "creating bigger value for the company increases your leverage", which seems to be trivially true.

You might question rate of leverage increase between your value / other factors, but ranting about "decoupling" seems simply wrong.

Re: Stack Overflow Salary Calculator

#168

Post by mahyarm »

afpx wrote: post #64
rb808 wrote: post #56

The Salary chart is interesting, both because of how US developers earn more than other Western countries, but mainly how a median developer with 20 years experience earns 60% more than a first job developer. I wonder how many other professions have that low a rate of pay increase - or maybe its just grads are overpaid, not sure.

Yeah, the numbers are weird. I'm in SF, full-stack, with 20+ years of experience (and leading several successful exits), but I can't seem to get a job making as much as a mid-career developer (according to that calculator). To be fair though, I don't have time or patience for long interview processes. But, on the other hand, a lot of times I get rejected just after the phone screen (with no feedback, of course).

I could coach you if you want, I'm also in SF. I do a lot of those interviews from the other side. You can get my contact info in my user info page.

Re: Stack Overflow Salary Calculator

#169

Post by toephu2 »

acchow wrote: post #129
toephu2 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are one datapoint. Again, take that survey with a grain of salt. Like someone mentioned above, if you want real data just go look at bls.gov or get a rough idea at h1bdata.info and search by city

h1b doesn't include equity which is almost half of most people's compensation in the big companies.

hence why I said rough idea.

Re: Stack Overflow Salary Calculator

#170

Post by tiggybear »

_Tev wrote: post #167
tiggybear wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually we have known for a long time that most people's salaries are completely decoupled from the value they create. I've never seen anyone claim the opposite except for business owners and middle management. Everyone wages are more so tied to how much leverage they have. Increasing one's output has never been a great recipe for increasing compensation, however, increasing your leverage (get a new offer, get a gov…

When you say it like that you can naturally follow with "creating bigger value for the company increases your leverage", which seems to be trivially true. You might question rate of leverage increase between your value / other factors, but ranting about "decoupling" seems simply wrong.

Besides my own personal observations, I have heard and read so many anecdotes of people who can't get a decent raise to save their life until they have a competing offer. All of a sudden the company is happy to give them an extra 20% despite the employee not increasing their output.

I see your point and while I think their is some merit to it, I think it boils down to, "If you were a boss, how would you calculate how much someone's salary should be?"

I think the answer will reveal that you look at the market for a general range and use information asymmetry to push an employee's salary down as far as you can get it. Except the work they will be doing is often not a 1:1 at any other company, a good number of people can output 5-10x as much work as the worst employee but salaries never range that much except for in sales, etc. etc. etc. There's no reasonably efficient way to calculate someone's true value to the company (at least without a team of people dedicated to studying the inner workings of the company and the economy at large), so we rely on proxy measurements like leverage.

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