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2018 UtahJS Pay, Education, Job-title Survey

mdjasper.github.io

11–20 of 77 posts

Re: 2018 UtahJS Pay, Education, Job-title Survey

#11
post #7

An interesting data point is that the highest salary ($206,000) also reports as"self-taught".

I noticed that as well. I have always thought there might be a correlation between self-taught and self selection for success in a topic.

Anecdotally, I was self-taught, and many of the highest performing engineers I know where also. Most of the average performing engineers I know were traditionally educated in CS.

Re: 2018 UtahJS Pay, Education, Job-title Survey

#12

I don't want to draw too many conclusions from this but I did find it interesting that men and women are paid similarly. There exists a large experience gap which skews total pay but for the most part it seems things are pretty equal.

I had to go back and look after looking at your comment. It does seem to track pretty consistently.

I've always speculated that a part of the pay gap might be explained by willingness to negotiate. I wonder if recruiters being more normal in this industry helps. In my own experience the recruiter I've worked with has helped a lot in salary negotiations.

Re: 2018 UtahJS Pay, Education, Job-title Survey

#13

I don't want to draw too many conclusions from this but I did find it interesting that men and women are paid similarly. There exists a large experience gap which skews total pay but for the most part it seems things are pretty equal.

Yeah I felt positive about this result as well!

I believe that pay discrimination does happen and I don't want to invalidate anyone experience if that has happened to them, but I've been pleased to work with very competent men and women over my career who I believe were all compensated fairly from my observations.

Re: 2018 UtahJS Pay, Education, Job-title Survey

#16
post #14

Why does salary and experience stop correlating after 9 years?

It's my intuition that salary increases with experience for that time until you have basically "capped out" what the market will pay for your skills. After 9 or 10 years, talent and skill are probably a more a factor than experience.

Another way of saying that would be the difference in pay between a 1 and 3 year developer would be pretty easy to explain on experience alone. But, the difference in pay between a 12 and 18 year developer would be more explained by their skills and specific experiences (not time).

Re: 2018 UtahJS Pay, Education, Job-title Survey

#17

Salaries in Utah are a lot healthier than I expected. Maybe moving away from SF wouldn't be as big of a salary cut as I thought...

Every time I've thought about moving away from Utah, I've found it almost impossible to find a place with a better salary/cost of living ratio.

There are a handful of things to not like about Utah, but in the software industry at least, it has been pretty good for the last decade.

Re: 2018 UtahJS Pay, Education, Job-title Survey

#18
post #14

Why does salary and experience stop correlating after 9 years?

It's my intuition that salary increases with experience for that time until you have basically "capped out" what the market will pay for your skills. After 9 or 10 years, talent and skill are probably a more a factor than experience. Another way of saying that would be the difference in pay between a 1 and 3 year developer would be pretty easy to explain on experience alone. But, the difference in pay between a 12 an…

Is there a hard ceiling for salaries for developers? Does one need to move into management/consulting/something in order for ones salary to keep increasing?

Lately I've been feeling like I've hit my ceiling and I need to start investigating where to go from here but that may just be my perception/pessimism.

Re: 2018 UtahJS Pay, Education, Job-title Survey

#19

Salaries in Utah are a lot healthier than I expected. Maybe moving away from SF wouldn't be as big of a salary cut as I thought...

I recently interviewed with a "large SF based social network" and their COL equivalent salary for what I make here in Salt Lake City would have been like taking a 50% pay cut!

Re: 2018 UtahJS Pay, Education, Job-title Survey

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's my intuition that salary increases with experience for that time until you have basically "capped out" what the market will pay for your skills. After 9 or 10 years, talent and skill are probably a more a factor than experience. Another way of saying that would be the difference in pay between a 1 and 3 year developer would be pretty easy to explain on experience alone. But, the difference in pay between a 12 an…

Is there a hard ceiling for salaries for developers? Does one need to move into management/consulting/something in order for ones salary to keep increasing? Lately I've been feeling like I've hit my ceiling and I need to start investigating where to go from here but that may just be my perception/pessimism.

>Is there a hard ceiling for salaries for developers?

Yeah I think there is a limit to what the market will pay for any particular skill, including developers. That limit will be constantly in flux year-to-year (see the 2017 results for comparison), and will vary from person-to-person though as skills, experience, etc. vary. Hard to quantify what that cap might be for any specific person, but looking at all the data in aggregate you can see that salary growth isn't linear with experience.

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