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> 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.
> 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.
Googling "Senior Developer Salary" you'll see 120K +- 10K on average.
(the data in the actual link you're responding to, with actual level information)
$120k/year is what I'd expect someone with 2-3 years experience to be making at Google as a base, with anywhere from $35k-$80k additional in signing bonus and stock offerings. "Senior Software Engineer" means different things at different companies, but to me it indicates someone who is expected to lead IC for a team, who has at least 5-7 years of experience building software.
source: work at FANG company, have had exactly that offer with that experience level
> 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.
Honest 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 mea…
But another way to view this is through the lens of supply and demand. If there are over-supply of the roles that can only be filled by older workforce, then the pay will reflect that.
No 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…
No 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…
I think the number of years in your post is off a bit. In San Francisco, you become a senior engineer within 2 years, and after 5 years you're either expected to go into management, or retire to southeast Asia with your IPO money.
No 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…
I think the number of years in your post is off a bit. In San Francisco, you become a senior engineer within 2 years, and after 5 years you're either expected to go into management, or retire to southeast Asia with your IPO money.
You still have to improve your so-called "soft" skills, improving communication up and down the chain, and it does involve a reduction in actual coding time, but you end up more of a code manager than a person manager.
None of which says there isn't a struggle, but the world is very different than when I had a manager told me I could never expect a decent job if I stayed in coding.
> 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.
Those numbers are already pretty outrageous outside the US.
I'm approximately on par for my age cohort based on the article, and that's about 500% of the average yearly family income where I live.
2. The perceived value of that extra experience is even lower. How many recruiters or even engineering managers can honestly claim to be able to leverage the last 5 years of experience from someone with 20+ years?
3. In most industries your salary stagnates much earlier than that unless you transition to a management role, and I think it is safe to say that developers are much less keen on taking that step than say bankers.