Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

toolbox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 609 posts

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

#181

Post by gspr »

silisili wrote: post #18
dalyons wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What 1980s fantasy is this 3x rule? Median household incomes to home price ratios have risen to ~8x across the US as a whole , not just crazy house price areas like SF/NYC. Canada and Australia are far worse again, pushing 15x in some cities. 3x, if it ever was a rule, has been dead for a long long time.

There's no way in hell it's close to 8x. Just crunched the numbers, and an 8x mortgage would exceed my monthly take home. I felt pretty uncomfortable at 2.5x. I feel a lot of people are probably extending out to 4 or even 5, but 8 would be irresponsible and I doubt you could even find a lender for that.

I'm not saying it makes up for the difference in the arguments, but please note that people seem to be talking past each other in this thread by talking about home price to income ratios and mortgage to income ratios without making a distinction.

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

#182

Post by giantg2 »

rocketbop wrote: post #35
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…

> ...a 6.9% increase since 2020, the report found. But inflation is over 11% since 2020. This isn't an increase. The I have heard this point made a couple of times recently. Is there any reason why these two values should be the same? It is a point of concern for those on very low incomes who spent all their income and are not able to save anythiny, but if you are on a six figure income and only a portion of that inc…

"Is there any reason why these two values should be the same?"

Are you producing the same value for the company as you did last year? If inflation is higher, then you are receiving less value via your pay from producing the same or more value for the company.

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

#183

Post by giantg2 »

kilroy123 wrote: post #94
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…

I got ZERO raise this past year and boy let me tell you, it really pissed me off. I didn't feel I wasn't making enough until that happened.

I got a 1.5% raise. It's a 4.5% paycut after inflation.

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

#184

Post by nradov »

inertiatic wrote: post #159
Melting_Harps wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand this opinion. Ok, let me spell it out: you're not special. Nothing about your profession makes you special, you are not somehow better than anyone because you can sit at a computer and write code. It's a skill, a very highly compensated one for now but an incredibly narrow one that happens to be useful a select few corps, sure, but so was were many other things. And if one thing that COVID has ta…

>And if one thing that COVID has taught us is how incredibly unnecessary you are to maintaining civilization I don't think you understand how the world dealt with COVID. Governments needed software fast to deal with things like tracking the spread of the virus, ensuring people observe protocols (like in my country Greece where you had to go online or send a text to make sure that you're allowed to be outside during t…

It's horrifying that any software developer would participate in a scheme that required people to get permission to go outside. That was a fundamental violation of human rights that can't possibly be justified for any public health reasons. Developers need a better sense of ethics, and the courage to refuse such projects.

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

#185

Post by s5300 »

b20000 wrote: post #39
silisili wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't feel underpaid, but I definitely feel like I've lost tons of ground in the last 2 years. The floor has risen big time. Entry level jobs are paying up to 60k these days, whereas they were closer to 30k a few years back. Good for them, seriously. But watching the floor rise closer to you is never a great feeling.

entry level jobs in software engineering at FAANG were over 120K about 10 years ago and that was already underpaid. California is a really expensive place to live long term and people generally do not do the math and do not account for child care, retirement, sickness or health issues or whatever. then there is the cost of (ongoing) education and issues of mental health in this industry. And those who think remote wi…

As somebody who looked into doing the highest echelons of Uber/Lyft in the most expensive parts of California - I do believe your driver was lying to you about $20k/mo.

Would be glad to be proven wrong, but I’ve looked pretty deeply into it.

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

#186

Post by TimPC »

Melting_Harps wrote: post #81
silisili wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, I do quite a bit better than that... I'm not complaining. But using 120k as an example...a person went from making 4x the typical full time salary to 2x the typical full time salary in a very short period.

> To be clear, I do quite a bit better than that... I'm not complaining. But using 120k as an example...a person went from making 4x the typical full time salary to 2x the typical full time salary in a very short period. This is what I will never understand about most established tech people, they see all the widespread misery and poverty in SV and they still have the capacity to feel sorry for themselves for not mak…

People have expectations set by parents and society. Things like owning a house are socially expected and difficult in SV. It’s fairly natural to feel “sorry for yourself” when making good money if that good money either isn’t leading to a mortgage and a home or if that good money results in substantial challenges with said home and said mortgage.

Just because someone is more well off doesn’t mean they don’t have problems. It’s not enough to fix affordable housing and say job done if the housing market is completely broken solving the problem requires fixing housing for everyone including the well off.

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

#187

Post by adhesive_wombat »

mattmanser wrote: post #139
adhesive_wombat wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 perfe…

That what I mean. The "borrow 3-5ish times your household salary" hasn't changed that drastically (especially considering interest rates have been fairly low). What has changed is that the baseline is borrowing that multiple of two salaries to buy the same house.

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

#188

Post by refurb »

mjbeswick wrote: post #151
mathverse wrote: post #129

We europeans are underpaid and taxed to death. The US could easily fill its worker shortage by offering easy visas for EU engineers. Many of us would like to move but it's a real PITA to apply to companies that are even willing to consider visa sponsorship. I actually have no idea why this is not the case already. It's basically 1st world to 1st world transition and the one losing would be EU.

It only seems like that but people in the US have to pay for things that Europeans take for granted. You might earn more, but most people would end up with less disposable income.

For some jobs sure, but tech job? The delta is >$100,000USD/yr, which after tax might be $70,000 which pays for all that stuff you get for free or subsidized in Europe, plus some left over.

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

#189

Post by SilverBirch »

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.

My experience has been that there's this massive cliff - if you can get into a company that's got a strong US attitude towards Tech salaries you can 2-5x your salary. That basically means do the same job but work for either a FANG style company, or work in some parts of Finance (easy to do in London). Someone of my experience (10 years exp) working in an average software company in the UK is probably earning 50-70k. By moving into Finance I'm now doing the same job for closer to 400k,and I'm not paid incredibly well compared to my US counterparts. It's just absurd.

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

#190

Post by flappyeagle »

There's this dynamic of pay tending to be pegged to your job title. An engineer is an engineer is an engineer.

In SF bay area, entry level jobs at big tech are skewing high and experienced roles are skewing low. This doesn't come close to mapping to impact level usually and we just accept that because it's socially easy.

I've worked at startups where there were clearly >10x impact differences between two engineers and at most there was a 2x salary difference. As a startup, it's basically not worth it to hire junior talent anymore because they are not close to being worth the cost in most cases.

Post reply on HN