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Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

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Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#131

Post by astrange »

indecisive_user wrote: post #5

>the average tech worker’s salary [will] reach $104,566 in the U.S. — a 6.9% increase since 2020, the report found. But inflation is over 11% since 2020. This isn't an increase. The average tech worker is making less than they were 2 years ago according to the Dice salary report. Why do tech workers feel underpaid? Many companies posted record growth and profits over the pandemic, but still give out paltry 3-5% raise…

> But inflation is over 11% since 2020. This isn't an increase. The average tech worker is making less than they were 2 years ago according to the Dice salary report.

Are you buying the average number of used cars and housing? I'm not. My expenses haven't gone up 10% in nominal dollars.

(Related anecdote: people tend to say the economy is bad if they heard it was bad on TV, even if they just got a new job and a raise.)

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#132

Post by refurb »

indecisive_user wrote: post #116
refurb wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope people realize that when monthly inflation numbers are released those are annualized . So the 8.5% inflation rate in March is actually 1.085^(1/12) = 0.7% for March, and 8.5% assuming that same rate lasted for 12 consecutive months. In 2021, the CPI-U was 4.7% for all of 2021 . https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/infl...

Ok, but the cumulative inflation rate since January 2020 is still around 11% $1 in January 2020 is worth $1.11 today https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1&year1=202001...

It is, but that's also over 2 years and 4 months, so an annualized inflation rate of ~4.6%, which my salary didn't keep up with, but only barely.

I don't disagree that inflation is overtaking wage increases, just that the magnitude isn't that large....yet.

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#133

Post by gambiting »

Thorrez wrote: post #124
gambiting wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In UK you always get a fixed rate for X number of years, then it automatically move to variable(but at that point you'd just remortgage again). Like we're on a 1.29% 5-year fixed mortgage, but the whole thing is 20 years long. But after 5 years we'll just remortgage again on new terms.

1.29%? That's really low. In the US, for 5/1-Year adjustable rate mortgage (which sounds the same as what you have), it was 2.37% at the lowest. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MORTGAGE5US

We also could have had 1.12% I think, if we increased our LVT to like 60%, but I didn't have the cash to do that at the time. It was in September 2021, so basically the historically lowest interest rates time in UK, ever - we were quite lucky to be remortgaging at that point. My sister is just getting a mortgage herself now and the lowest she can find is about 3% for 5-year fixed mortgage.

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#134

Post by gnfargbl »

AnotherAsprin wrote: post #61

Are six figure salaries an american thing? I see people saying "Entry level jobs are paying up to 60k" which is just crazy money! I have worked for the past 7 years as IT within the UK education sector and expect my salary to be lower than that of industry but I am not even making half that!

Yes, they are an American thing. These salaries (or a decent percentage of them) are open to you in the UK, but you'll need to work remotely, probably for a US-based company. This may mean contracting.

Because some component of tech work usually needs to be synchronous, I'd suggest picking a company where most of the people are on Eastern or Central time -- for me at least, MT and PT feel just that little bit too far. If you're a night owl, that might not matter to you.

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#135

Post by adhesive_wombat »

gambiting wrote: post #104
Thorrez wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What percent of people have fixed vs variable rate mortgages?

In UK you always get a fixed rate for X number of years, then it automatically move to variable(but at that point you'd just remortgage again). Like we're on a 1.29% 5-year fixed mortgage, but the whole thing is 20 years long. But after 5 years we'll just remortgage again on new terms.

Where it goes wrong is when you remortgage in a higher rate regime, and the bank won't give you a new fixed mortgage to cover your remaining capital. Now you're stuck on the "punishment" variable rate you get when you don't remortgage.

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#136

Post by Redoubts »

alexchamberlain wrote: post #46
brabel wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a strange concern you seem to have... why does it bother you that fellow programmers are getting salaries close to yours? Do you think it would feel better if your salary could be 5x higher than theirs? Why? That will not actually affect you negatively in any way! Unless you're being actually underpaid compared to your peers with the same experience and skills, there's only good things about people with lower…

If you're a senior delivering 10x the value of a grad, does it not feel fair to offer more than 2x the salary? I'm torn tbh - there are various ways that a salary can be set, including the value people are delivering, market forces and in reference to others in the career ladder. There's a balancing act to be had, but I can see where the GP is coming from.

> If you're a senior delivering 10x the value of a grad,

If you are, you’re not getting paltry 2-10% raises yoy.

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#137

Post by mattmanser »

_Wintermute wrote: post #99
Thorrez wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What percent of people have fixed vs variable rate mortgages?

In the UK even fixed rate mortgages are only fixed for the first couple of years, which wasn't so bad as rates were decreasing, but obviously things might change in the next couple of years.

You can get 5 year fixed, and some lenders have now brought out a lifetime fixed rate:

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2021/03/habito-to-lau...

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#138

Post by mellavora »

indecisive_user wrote: post #42
missedthecue wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Annual raises doesn't have anything to do with being over or underpaid, strictly speaking. To clearly illustrate my point here, if fortune 500 CEO pay is up less than 11% on avg since 2020, I don't think that's an argument they're underpaid.

I don't think that's a good analogy. The value of a CEO should be relatively well known before hiring into a company. CEOs are rare, and at the endgame of their career, so you're already pricing in the present and future value you think they will add to your company. CEOs generally can't job hop every couple years for a large double digit raise. Most good engineers(especially early in their career) will be an order o…

> I don't think that's a good analogy. The value of a CEO should be relatively well known before hiring into a company. CEOs are rare, and at the endgame of their career, so you're already pricing in the present and future value you think they will add to your company.

Some would say CEOs are paid to increase corporate profits, thus their value is their ability to raise corporate profits.

However, the Kalecki-Levy profit equation (an accounting identity which originated in 1908 and is still accepted as true) makes clear that in aggregate, corporate profits == government deficit.

Thus the single largest driver of corporate profits is not CEO activity, but government fiscal policy.

So CEOs are paid based on what the government does.

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#139

Post by mattmanser »

adhesive_wombat wrote: post #20
mattmanser wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in the UK at the moment you can get morgages for 5.25x salary, especially if you have a high income. I assume the US has roughly the same now. The old mortgage multiplers have gone for now.

5.25 joint salary, though, so that could be as high as 11.5 times one person's salary for one house if you're buying together (they may have a slightly different calculation when combining salary). And indeed my house, but not the mortgage, was well over 10 times my salary when I bought it. The mortgage was around 8 times my (entry level UK) salary, but about half that if you counted both of us. Which is one route to…

Technically, but that's moot as there's two incomes so not really what we're discussing. And the only way that happened is because your partner earns the same as you.

People used to be be able to easily afford houses on a single income. My old boss, for example, bought a house alone when he was 25 and rented out a room. And that was back when tech salaries were low, especially in the UK where it was viewed as a perfectly normal job and no better paid than, say, a teacher.

That's just not really possible these days, a 25-year old teacher could never buy a half decent 3 bed house alone.

Re: Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

#140

Post by throwawayo »

tjansen wrote: post #10

It also makes us Europeans feel underpaid :) I have 20 years of experience and don't even make six figures. $350000 base pay sounds like a different world.

Our CEO makes 120.000 € a year. Revenue about 2.000.000 € There are employees that make more than him, but no one is close to 200.000 €. Personal is our biggest expense.

I earn a decent living and can afford a house and two kids and a stay at home wife in Central Europe with 74.000 € (Project Manager / DevOp / Admin).

Cost of living must be insanely high in the U.S. For me, these numbers are so high - I can't imagen what someone would do with all this money.

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