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Ask HN: Have tech salaries been stagnant for the past decade?

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Re: Ask HN: Have tech salaries been stagnant for the past decade?

#111

Post by IaacForHire »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #88
IaacForHire wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Sysadmin/DevOps engineer, I am expected to be an expert in some new paradigm every 2 years which I have done consistently for 25 years. Working hard and doing solid, consistent, useful work isn't enough to break through a salary ceiling. Not everybody is an influencer, an MIT grad or a genius.

I'd never say this on Reddit, Facebook, or LinkedIn, but you're hanging out in Programmer Heaven right now, for fun, in your spare time. ANYONE hanging out here CAN definitely make a fat living in the SF Bay Area. Go out there and get rich!!! The only things I want to see you complaining about are interview loops, followed by the fact that you can barely afford a house on your $300k/year total compensation

I wish I had your enthusiasm. I've been unemployed 90% of the time since Covid.

Ironically, I've given at least 5 people their start in this industry who are all now worth 8 figures. There are haves and there are have nots.

Re: Ask HN: Have tech salaries been stagnant for the past decade?

#112

Post by IaacForHire »

lrvick wrote: post #97
IaacForHire wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Sysadmin/DevOps engineer, I am expected to be an expert in some new paradigm every 2 years which I have done consistently for 25 years. Working hard and doing solid, consistent, useful work isn't enough to break through a salary ceiling. Not everybody is an influencer, an MIT grad or a genius.

I have a software engineering, sysadmin, and security background with 20 years of experience and I turn down opportunities of 250k+ frequently as I run my own company now which affords me more control of my time. I have no degree and am no influencer or genius. I just never stop learning so I can be the one bringing new ideas to the meeting. Your aversion to learning new things every 2 years sounds like a limiter. Ev…

"Your aversion to learning new things every 2 years sounds like a limiter. Even 2 years is too slow for this industry and probably why you feel capped. "

You failed to read my comment. I said I did it quite consistently.

You cannot become an expert in a new skillset every month.

Re: Ask HN: Have tech salaries been stagnant for the past decade?

#113

Post by finikytou »

walthamstow wrote: post #16
finikytou wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in pure Euro no they went up a bit but definitly lower than the cost of living increase. the problem is that in the past decade Europe welcomed Cyprus, Czech Republic,Estonia,Hungary,Latvia, Lithuania,Malta , Poland ,Slovakia,Slovenia,Bulgaria ,Romania, Croatia. Most of those countries were below living standards/salaries of western europe while having for some of them a very strong education system. Romania for inst…

All the countries you mention apart from Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia were admitted in 2004, which is nearly 20 years ago now.

it is europe. things go slow but once they are in motion... they first used those countries for lowering blue collar jobs (construction for instance) then white collar, the cloud/saas craze was an accelerator. the covid is one too.

Re: Ask HN: Have tech salaries been stagnant for the past decade?

#114

Post by IaacForHire »

bombcar wrote: post #68
swyx wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as in, all the non FAANG startup stock you earned became worthless? its actually kind of rare to have that high of a failure rate in startups, particularly by name brand VCs. feel like at worst you get a shitty acquihire but you at least get _something_ for your stock

The only acquihire I was remotely involved with resulted in stock worth something, but on the amounts of low thousands for the chief engineer. Many many many startups don’t even get that much. They fold entirely or get acquihired for “hey you still have a job”.

The best I ever did with a startup was in 2002 when everybody went under. I made about $200k in 10 months buying routers and switches from startups and selling them to VARs. I have a folder somewhere in storage with all of my stock certs. I framed the worthless one from Napster :)

Re: Ask HN: Have tech salaries been stagnant for the past decade?

#115

Post by varispeed »

Silhouette wrote: post #26
CommanderData wrote: post #9

European permanent salaries have been coming down. UK contractors take home less now than they did 5 years ago due to taxation changes (IR35). The tax changes have also made the market a bit strange where rates are still advertised at £500 a day even though, contractor takes home significantly less money. These have not gone up inline.

UK contractors take home less now than they did 5 years ago due to taxation changes (IR35). It's a bit more complicated than that. The tax rules themselves haven't actually changed. What did change was who was responsible for deciding whether an engagement was caught by IR35 or not and was also liable to pay for the big tax shortfall if they were later found to have made the wrong decision. It used to be the contract…

> For genuine contractors who are working with decent clients and obviously aren't disguised employees the rules haven't changed and neither have the tax obligations.

The problem is that whether someone is genuine or not is no longer relevant, because you may be genuine, but risk averse client says you are not and there is nothing you can do about it. Every single genuine contractor I know now works in-scope of IR35. They pay their business costs out of their deemed salary, which is insane.

> The solution is not to work with bad clients who try to dump their obligations on you!

That's not a solution if the pool of "good" clients is getting smaller and smaller. If you now have much longer downtime because it is much more difficult to find a "good" client - say when it used to take a couple of weeks or even days, now it takes months - it makes the business no longer viable.

Re: Ask HN: Have tech salaries been stagnant for the past decade?

#116

Post by finikytou »

yrgulation wrote: post #59
finikytou wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in pure Euro no they went up a bit but definitly lower than the cost of living increase. the problem is that in the past decade Europe welcomed Cyprus, Czech Republic,Estonia,Hungary,Latvia, Lithuania,Malta , Poland ,Slovakia,Slovenia,Bulgaria ,Romania, Croatia. Most of those countries were below living standards/salaries of western europe while having for some of them a very strong education system. Romania for inst…

Have you considered moving to those countries for better pay? It sad to hear pay is so bad in germany, probably getting quality education in romania or turkey might help? At the end of the day you are also free to move in to any of these countries.

you don't understand how economics work right? ask mexicans how happy they are to have high earning americans moving to mexico?

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-07-27/americ....

once you remove a country frontier, the market forces that are leashed to that country will be destroyed. radically transforming the country economy in ways that no one in this country but the 1% will benefit.

Re: Ask HN: Have tech salaries been stagnant for the past decade?

#117

Post by lrvick »

IaacForHire wrote: post #112
lrvick wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a software engineering, sysadmin, and security background with 20 years of experience and I turn down opportunities of 250k+ frequently as I run my own company now which affords me more control of my time. I have no degree and am no influencer or genius. I just never stop learning so I can be the one bringing new ideas to the meeting. Your aversion to learning new things every 2 years sounds like a limiter. Ev…

"Your aversion to learning new things every 2 years sounds like a limiter. Even 2 years is too slow for this industry and probably why you feel capped. " You failed to read my comment. I said I did it quite consistently. You cannot become an expert in a new skillset every month.

I read it. It just read to me like you do not like having to constantly learn new things.

I do not need to be an expert at something new every month. I just have to learn enough to unblock high-value efforts no one else wants to take on. The problems that come up more often I get better at solving faster over time.

Not all skills are even work related, but just challenging myself. Last month I learned to solve a Rubiks cube in spare time. I will not break any records and am not an expert, but I can solve it in a minute which is good enough. I move on to the next skill.

I am not an expert at anything, but I have spent months doing a bit of everything at one point or another. I tend to identify risks most others miss from having breadth-first experience in how entire stacks fit together from kernel system calls to network packets to end user frontend javascript.

I ended up pivoting to full time security engineering several years ago as a result.

Security is in a lot more demand than devops/sysadmin these days but all sysadmins have experience in security. Something to consider.

Re: Ask HN: Have tech salaries been stagnant for the past decade?

#118

Post by yuvadam »

Silhouette wrote: post #19

A good question to ask might be why salaries should go up significantly. We're lucky enough to work in a very well compensated industry but we're also in a kind of bubble where sometimes the economics are strange. In the good times when VCs are falling over themselves to fund anything that might be the next FAANG there is a huge amount of money pouring into the industry and a lot of hiring going on and none of that i…

US M2 money supply has grown 40% compared to pre-COVID, 220% in the last decade. If your salary hasn't matched that, you are literally earning less in real terms.

Re: Ask HN: Have tech salaries been stagnant for the past decade?

#119

Post by datacruncher01 »

US tech salaries are good for only one reason, the largest tech companies went the path of public stock valuations and paid employees with stock. If anything, it's an indicator of the vast difference in income for people who make a living with assets vs people who still need to trade their labor for a paycheck.

Tech salaries are going to be on a decline for a while with the Fed rate hike, like it or not, most tech companies are floating on VC money and that all depends on a stock market giving them high valuations. In situations we're in now, fundamentals start to matter and the phony valuations get corrected.

Re: Ask HN: Have tech salaries been stagnant for the past decade?

#120

Post by iLoveOncall »

IaacForHire wrote: post #111
Firmwarrior wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd never say this on Reddit, Facebook, or LinkedIn, but you're hanging out in Programmer Heaven right now, for fun, in your spare time. ANYONE hanging out here CAN definitely make a fat living in the SF Bay Area. Go out there and get rich!!! The only things I want to see you complaining about are interview loops, followed by the fact that you can barely afford a house on your $300k/year total compensation

I wish I had your enthusiasm. I've been unemployed 90% of the time since Covid. Ironically, I've given at least 5 people their start in this industry who are all now worth 8 figures. There are haves and there are have nots.

Seems like the "not with that attitude" comment was spot on.
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