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My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

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Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#421

Post by azhenley »

jobigoud wrote: post #415
azhenley wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being Lead Developer in a one person team definitely sounds reasonable. You are still the lead dev on the project and have to take on all the responsiblities (even more so than if the team was bigger?).

> You are still the lead dev on the project and have to take on all the responsiblities Except the responsibility of leading other people , on a resume this title would imply you gained that experience while in fact you didn't.

I've never interpreted it as meaning leading people but rather leading the development of a project (or some portion of it). In fact, at IBM, I saw teams have multiple lead devs.

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#422

Post by throw20181031 »

Saint Petersburg, Russia.

  2013-2014     ???                                       Literally pennies while doing odd jobs for random people on the internet.
  2015-2016     $3600             Asp.net developer       Working for a sub-sub-sub contractor on some government project. AFAIK, it has never been shipped to production.
  2016-2017     $12000            Xamarin developer       Small local company that went out of business due to Russian financial crisis [1]
  2017-2018     $25000            .NET developer          Large company(~600 franchise offices) focused on the local market
  2018-now      $36000 -> $32000  Full stack developer    Large outsourcing company, US-based customer.
                                                          Salary has decreased since it's bound to RUB and the exchange rate fell by about 10%.
Income tax is flat 13%, most likely I'll get it fully refunded for this year.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_financial_crisis_(2014...

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#423

Post by roel_v »

CalRobert wrote: post #156
sures wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hours of work per week varies. Some weeks it is 5-10 hours per week. Some weeks it is 30-40 hours per week. Sometimes I had to stretch to work for 10 hours at a time. Such days are rare but they happen sometimes. This pattern has been like this in all my jobs from the beginning (2003). The days off per year in my current job is just like any other company in India. Apart from 104 weekends and 10 government holida…

" Some weeks it is 5-10 hours per week" That's a pretty important data point! There are exceptions but I'd say very, very few people doing 200k+ in SV are working less than 40 hours per week, much less ever working 10 hours per week.

There's 'working' and 'being at work'...

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#424

Post by INTPenis »

Salary isn't everything. I'm more interested in your monthly expenses, your vacation days, your parental leave options and flexible work hours.

200k USD a year is just shocking to me living in Swedens 3rd largest city, ca. 300k inhabitants.

But I live well and I feel good from my work.

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#425

Post by milliondollar »

eximius wrote: post #358
nathancanine wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a thought. I'm interested in picking up some contracting work again and my recurring work rate is $50/hr. I'm a senior developer who currently does Sysadmin, dbadmin, and leads development and architecture of our start up's software. Oh I just realized ycomb doesn't have plans capability. Could you PM me on Reddit where my username is homebrewingcoder .

You should probably quadruple that rate, my friend. Contracting should not be at the same rate as salaried.

Yes, totally agree. You need to smooth your earnings and account for downtime.

But in seeing all these $50/60K salaries on here, I guess what I'm wondering is I'd happily pay a fixed retainer of say $25K a year for 10-15 hours of work per week. I don't have enough work to keep a $60K a year developer busy, but I could keep a part of one busy all year and make a commitment to pay at least $X / year.

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#427

Post by iopuy »

woogiewonka wrote: post #362
leesec wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa, Can I ask what made you switch from that sick-looking 2010 gig?

Well, in 2010 I was doing affiliate marketing via Facebook & Adwords. FB made some changes during that time that made it impossible for me to continue. I ran with Adwords for a while but then Google killed of the niche too. This is basically what happens when you trust your livelihood in the hands of other companies that can turn it all off in a second. The income that year was split in half between me and my partner…

thanks for sharing this. i thoroughly enjoy reading the progression of salaries over time of others in the tech world. cheers

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#428

Post by lkbm »

varjag wrote: post #405
fileeditview wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty sensible to assume that housing is one of the most important aspects of cost of living contrary to a Macbook. Also the parent was stating "for example" which implies there are other factors.

Housing is also a lot more variable than a Macbook. Even within the same country, it can easily differ 3-4x depending on the region. There's a reason it's not counted when calculating consumer price indexes or GDP PPP figures. For Estonia above, the cost of most everything else than local produce is comparable to the Western Europe or the States. Clothing, petrol, consumer electronics, foreign vacations are not any c…

> Even within the same country, it can easily differ 3-4x depending on the region.

Rent varies 3x between my house to the apartments next door. (Also varies 2-3x within the apartment complex.) I could buy a new Macbook Pro each month, or move next door -- comes out about the same cost.

Cost of Living is weird.

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#429

Post by ddevault »

Someone1234 wrote: post #296

These threads always invite the outliers (i.e. those who want to humble brag). Here's mine outside Washington/California/Silicon Valley/NYC: - $40K: 2010-2013, "DevOps" at small startup. No ownership/shares. - $45-72K: 2014-Current, Programmer (various job titles) working for state's education department Even management here only make $90K capping out around $115K~. But cost of living is low. These threads never have…

I think I'm underpaid, but not grossly so. I earn $115,000/yr with 8 years of professional experience in Philadelphia. I have equity currently valued at ~$5,000. I also make an additional ~$10,000/yr in donations to my open source projects and an additional ~$5,000/yr through the occasional side gig.

https://www.bestplaces.net/cost_of_living/city/pennsylvania/...

I started my career at $30,000 in Colorado Springs.

https://www.bestplaces.net/cost_of_living/city/colorado/colo...

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#430

Post by lolsal »

qubax wrote: post #327
gigatexal wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2018 - Salary for me an expat in Germany at a fintech startup: 53k Euros a year. No signing bonus. No options. Experience: 5 years as a DBA the rest a sad self taught programmer with 6 months of prior startup experience shipping microservices in C# and Python. Startup in logistics 2018 6 months: 48k euros. Previous: DBA in Portland Oregon in 2013 to 2017 - 60k to 70k then as an EDW dev 78k USD.

Jesus that's horrible. I made much more than that straight out of college. But it was in NYC where cost of living is high and taxes destroy you. The saddest part is that your salary didn't increase much in 5 years? Going from $60k to $70k to 53k euros over 5 years is pretty much tracking inflation. Over 5 years, my salary increased by more than double your entire salary. You should ask for a raise from time to time o…

It's also possible that salary is not a main motivation for the parent comment author. Jobs come with non-monetary perks, and sometimes people just do a job to pay the bills. Not everyone is hustling for maximum salary.
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