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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

#201

Post by lumost »

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…

you know, I'd be very curious what kinds of radical interview approaches teams have considered to break out of the LC mold. A little LC is useful in an interview situation, if an engineer can't do a simple 20-30 line coding problem or reason over the constraints/design space - then there is a good chance that they will need help with core coding in the day to day (which may not be a deal breaker in every employer).

A lot of LC tends to hit on "specialist in LC". We overweight this type of candidate in our interview processes, mainly as "specialist in LC" no longer translates to "highly interested in Comp Sci fundamentals" or "Algorithm expert" - many grind LC just to get a job and promptly forget the fundamentals.

A few interviews that I've seen gaining prominence.

- Code Review interviews. Give a sample code review, and have the candidate provide feedback. I'd love to see this extended with just having the candidate write code review comments in whatever code review tool the company uses - you could then discuss the code review afterwards. Clarify ahead of time the tool that will be used for code review.

- Debugging broken code. Let the candidate show off how they approach dealing with broken/buggy code, clarify ahead of time the language/environment for debugging.

- Build a service/program to a spec via take home. Does the candidate build the system properly? do they exceed expectations? skip requirements? test the code? work double time?

- Given a problem, build a working solution in your IDE of choice.

I'm not even convinced that 5 45 minute to 1 hour interview block is the right size. Why not do a 3 hour time block where the candidate has to build something, then review with them at the end? This is common in interviews with for MBA-type positions.

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

#202

Post by rjbwork »

throwawayo wrote: post #140
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…

Save/invest so that I can escape the rat race before I'm too hold to do anything I actually want to do with my time.

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

#203

Post by dekhn »

TimPC wrote: post #186
Melting_Harps wrote: post #81

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. 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 pro…

The house trance in SV is very disturbing to me. I saw a lot- and I mean a lot of people move in with their families from the midwest to work at FAAMG, and then bought a house in sunnyvale which they absolutely HATE. From the high prices to the schools filled with grinds, they just want to move back to the midwest and live near the rest of their families in a place where land is cheap and people don't try to compete so hard in high school. Perpetual misery.

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

#204

Post by lumost »

tomc1985 wrote: post #199
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…

The money we make pales in comparison with the size of our contributions to the company. Especially so if you are in a value-adding position and not something like internal tooling. Management and executives are DEFINITELY underpaying us relative to what we bring to the table for them. Maybe that is one of the reason headcounts have ballooned and complexity has increased so much -- an attempt to minimize individual i…

This strongly depends on the company. In high growth industries this is absolutely true, in low-growth industries/companies its somewhat debatable. I suspect that this is why software salaries were tightly correlated with tech growth for the last 3 decades. The 90s, and 2010s were great times to be a software engineer - but average salaries were more than cut in half during the oughts.

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

#205

Post by nicoburns »

emteycz wrote: post #196
nicoburns wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are the two feelings in conflict? I can be concerned for the people around me AND be concerned that I'm making less than X times more than the average. Because as a tech worker your salary is likely already well above the level that it would need to fall in order for us to achieve meaningful level of wealth equality (not complete equality, but equal-ish) > making everyone an equal millionaire will never work Ye…

> Because as a tech worker your salary is likely already well above the level that it would need to fall in order for us to achieve meaningful level of wealth equality (not complete equality, but equal-ish) Why would you want that??? I think it's awesome the common Joe can learn programming on the internet and earn huge bucks. Why cancel that of all things? And then, I don't think your suggestion for equality would w…

> If my work was significantly taxed above $100K, I'd stop earning more at that point because work is very stressful to me and I'm not going to do it if I don't get the benefit (now I earn slightly less than $100k, but also live and work in Europe). Everybody would lose - I'd pay less taxes overall.

Perfect. You get a less stressful life. And you working less creates job opportunities for others.

Other people win just by you (and other high earners) earning less. They don't have to earn more. Their money is worth more if there is less total money in circulation.

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

#206

Post by gorbachev »

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…

The overall economy inflation numbers are completely meaningless when cost of education, housing and healthcare has been skyrocketing for more than a decade, maybe even longer.

The average worker, especially those with families, have seen their costs inflate much, much higher than 11% per year for quite some time.

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

#207

Post by lmeyerov »

weatherlite wrote: post #168
Melting_Harps wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some doctors earn around one million USD a year in the U.S, that's money that makes insurance more expensive and unaffordable for everyone. You're seriously not comparing yourself to physicians in level of importance in Society, are you?! As I said, after COVID we got a real wake up call of who mattered, and Nurses and Physicians deserve every penny that they get, its the system that is broken: see Stanford nurse s…

> As I said, after COVID we got a real wake up call of who mattered, and Nurses and Physicians deserve every penny that they get I'm not saying they don't deserve to get paid well but some doctors earn 10-15 times as much as the nurses they work with, so its not all about "value to society", it's simple market forces. I used the word greed which is very negative but we can simply call it market forces. Also why do yo…

Useful to think through the numbers.

Few American dr's make $1M. Most of those that make many multiples more than nurses are specialists, and they are still much less than $1M. I do know ones that do better... Because they are involved in effectively second jobs around biotech startups, maybe clinical trials, vs the actual patient care. I've been curious on celebrity patients (who seem to be more about donations/endowments.) You can get $700k by being the only specialist in the middle of nowhere and working nonstop, but most prefer not to.

Instead, someone doing regular family medicine is more like $150-250k... Less than a US programmer with significantly less training & responsibilities. You don't get big RSU refreshers for saving lives.

But the interesting thing is comparing over time. Specialists not only likely took loans and no salary for the stressful years of college, med school, and then residency, but then did another 2-4 years of fellowship, and really good ones, another 4-7 years of underpaid phd. They are making up for 1-2 decades of being underpaid and even debt, beyond the daily stress. More fun? As all the pay comes deferred in big batches, it is also taxed at ~double the rate of everyone else. Triple hit for savings: they don't get the compounding investment bump of people who started to get paid 1-2 decades sooner. Insurance is high too - disability, liability, etc. that regular people don't pay.

After another decade or two it balances out and starts being more than others, and then they retire.

Grass is always greener :)

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

#208

Post by gmadsen »

Melting_Harps wrote: post #166
weatherlite wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 making X times more than 'that other guy.' As opposed to who exactly? The system is based on greed and maximizing profits/salaries/status/whatever. Are doctors/lawyers/financial people not behaving this way? Some doctors e…

> Some doctors earn around one million USD a year in the U.S, that's money that makes insurance more expensive and unaffordable for everyone. You're seriously not comparing yourself to physicians in level of importance in Society, are you?! As I said, after COVID we got a real wake up call of who mattered, and Nurses and Physicians deserve every penny that they get, its the system that is broken: see Stanford nurse s…

what a weird statement. Would doctors be as valuable without modern tech or medicine? I don't view any group as some sort of elite class, gracing the rest of us with their existence.

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

#209

Post by dimitrios1 »

eru wrote: post #103
quickthrower2 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that is not just keep up with jones syndrome: getting services done like building work, cleaning, etc. gets more expensive. I am all for equality of that nature if everyone is joining in!

If only America's productive cities did not ban building more housing..

If only Americans reignited their imagination and didn't just settle on having a few big cities in opposite corners of the country.

America is huge. There's land everywhere. Start dreaming. China has 160 cities with 1+ million people. We have 10. Granted, there is a massive population difference, but we should most definitely have more than 10.

There are major issues when you only have a few cities with the bulk of the opportunity and high salaries for given fields. It stymies growth for the rest of the country, and for all the people we claim to care about: the poor and uneducated.

Greece has this issue with Athens being the only realistic metropolitan location. All the resources are there, and those left in the villages and small towns are finding it harder and harder to advance. If you aren't going to Athens (or immigrating to another country), you aren't succeeding. This is a big problem.

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

#210

Post by tomc1985 »

lumost wrote: post #204
tomc1985 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The money we make pales in comparison with the size of our contributions to the company. Especially so if you are in a value-adding position and not something like internal tooling. Management and executives are DEFINITELY underpaying us relative to what we bring to the table for them. Maybe that is one of the reason headcounts have ballooned and complexity has increased so much -- an attempt to minimize individual i…

This strongly depends on the company. In high growth industries this is absolutely true, in low-growth industries/companies its somewhat debatable. I suspect that this is why software salaries were tightly correlated with tech growth for the last 3 decades. The 90s, and 2010s were great times to be a software engineer - but average salaries were more than cut in half during the oughts.

If you're doing tech stuff to replace some kind of human, manual labor then I think this applies regardless of your sector or growth rating. Tech enables companies to do more with less -- at lesat, that's the dream -- and I suspect that if the economics aren't favorable for tech they'd rather have cheap expendable labor.

We are the practitioners realizing that dream for our masters.

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