Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40
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Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40
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Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40
#2A similar discussion on ageism can be found at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20252097
Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40
#3Honest question: is this actually ageism or is it business cost-benefit analysis in action? You could argue that the benefit to the company of experience for a tech worker is only worth a maximum of X dollars. After that point, the company is better off hiring younger, cheaper employees with lower expectations than it is continuing to give raises, benefits, etc. to older workers.
I would expect a salary plateau to be a natural result of the above + supply and demand in the market. Maybe that’s what the term ageism has come to mean (not its original definition)?
Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40
#4> In Hired’s findings, tech pros were never offered more than $149,000 annually.
I don't know where they are getting their data but that's a lot lower than good developers of all ages make. You can see on https://levels.fyi that large tech companies will pay senior developers 200-400k routinely.
I don't necessarily doubt the analysis but the data is very incomplete if they didn't see a single offer over $150k.
Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40
#5Honest question: is this actually ageism or is it business cost-benefit analysis in action? You could argue that the benefit to the company of experience for a tech worker is only worth a maximum of X dollars. After that point, the company is better off hiring younger, cheaper employees with lower expectations than it is continuing to give raises, benefits, etc. to older workers. I would expect a salary plateau to be…
That's not an unreasonable view, but there's a big problem with how people measure the value of experience. The value of a younger programmer's work is relatively easy to measure. Not quite lines of code, but something reasonably close to it. As one's focus shifts - e.g. organizing, mentoring others, guiding technology choices, flagging code that works now but will break next year - those results become harder to measure. Just because it's harder to measure doesn't mean it's less, but that's a common kind of error. Under-valuing the contributions typical of older workers vs. those typical of younger workers is still ageism, but of a less conscious sort. As with most kinds of discrimination, people don't usually discriminate in a direct way. They do it with their assumptions, priorities, and assignment of value which just happen to produce disparate (but "rational") outcomes.
Note: I'm not saying that older workers (I'm 54) deserve everything they get. There definitely are and have always been some older laurel-sitters whose friends pay them more than they should, and I was acutely aware of that when I myself was younger. I'm just saying "but they don't give proportional value" is often less true than people think.
Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40
#6Honest question: is this actually ageism or is it business cost-benefit analysis in action? You could argue that the benefit to the company of experience for a tech worker is only worth a maximum of X dollars. After that point, the company is better off hiring younger, cheaper employees with lower expectations than it is continuing to give raises, benefits, etc. to older workers. I would expect a salary plateau to be…
Were this similarly true for management types I would be more likely to accept it, but the people with the cash pay themselves first.
Also, my generation was screwed out of future wages by offshoring and the incredible number of H1Bs that were brought in to accomplish that very thing: Kill our earning power.
ETA: Outside if SV, there's nobody I know making 200K as a developer. NO ONE. We're all fixed in that 130-150 range and there we will remain until we either start an S Corp to grab a few more pennies in front of the steamroller or we smarten up, get out of tech, and do something totally different in our lives.
Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40
#7> In Hired’s findings, tech pros were never offered more than $149,000 annually. I don't know where they are getting their data but that's a lot lower than good developers of all ages make. You can see on https://levels.fyi that large tech companies will pay senior developers 200-400k routinely. I don't necessarily doubt the analysis but the data is very incomplete if they didn't see a single offer over $150k.
What percent of people are employed by the large tech companies, and what percent are employed in the rest of the world?
Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40
#8Honest question: is this actually ageism or is it business cost-benefit analysis in action? You could argue that the benefit to the company of experience for a tech worker is only worth a maximum of X dollars. After that point, the company is better off hiring younger, cheaper employees with lower expectations than it is continuing to give raises, benefits, etc. to older workers. I would expect a salary plateau to be…
I would believe it if that would apply to other positions. Why is it the case for us but not regular businessmen, lawyers, etc?
Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40
#9Honest question: is this actually ageism or is it business cost-benefit analysis in action? You could argue that the benefit to the company of experience for a tech worker is only worth a maximum of X dollars. After that point, the company is better off hiring younger, cheaper employees with lower expectations than it is continuing to give raises, benefits, etc. to older workers. I would expect a salary plateau to be…
I would believe it if that would apply to other positions. Why is it the case for us but not regular businessmen, lawyers, etc?
Professional athletes?
Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40
#10No this is not ageism. After a certain point, if you are an individual contributor, your value is not worth more than someone with less experience.
A developer with 10 years of varied experience can usually do just as well as someone with 20 years of experience. I also believe that the idea of the 10x developer while not a myth, is so rare it’s not worth trying to find for most companies.
I speak as someone in my mid 40s who has been at this professionally for 20+ years [1].
I’m debating whether I want to take the next step of consulting or just stay in development. I see my salary hitting a ceiling in the next two or three years and I think I am okay with that.
[1] well for all intents and purposes maybe 12 years. I stagnated for a few years and became an “expert beginner”.