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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?

#121

Post by ivvve »

thorin wrote: post #21
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.

Ironically, the long time contractors who work at Inland Revenue (tax office) in Telford (possibly though another company) have largely been deemed outside IR35 with a special exception from HM Gov, as otherwise it would be difficult to source contractors! I have a number of ex colleagues who've been in and out of there over the years.

What's the stack at Inland Revenue? Must be something pretty old school...

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

#122

Post by IaacForHire »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #120
IaacForHire wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, you're right. After 25 years of mostly being treated like shit by start-ups with an average weekly work rate of 60 hours, my attitude is probably kind of bad.

Do I really need to be a rockstar to get an inflationary raise every year?

Take cost of living into account and we make about 40% less than we did 20 years ago.

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

#123

Post by helen___keller »

I would assume pay at a fixed level doesn’t go up that fast. For an individual though you are gaining experience and should be able to use that to leverage at least small raises, big ones if you’re moving up in seniority

In 7 years out of university I went (some raises, some job hops) 80 to 85 to 97 to 130 to 165 to 300

I dont think the market is much more lucrative, but there’s a very big difference between junior engineer at small tech and senior engineer at big tech

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

#124

Post by bradleyjg »

yrgulation wrote: post #42
bradleyjg wrote: post #37

Tech, like law, is a bimodal market. If you think of it as a single bell curve your intuitions will be all wrong. The good news is that unlike law it’s possible to jump into the better paying market even if you didn’t go to the “right” school.

Thats odd. I know loads of lawyers living in mansions while loads of “highly paid” developers live with housemates, or rent tiny homes. If anything, software development pay has reached construction worker pay. At least we dont have to sit out in the cold.

What exactly is odd? It doesn’t seem like you are disagreeing that both professions are bimodal.

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

#126

Post by Silhouette »

varispeed wrote: post #84
Silhouette wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of people working as contractors or freelancers in the UK who are without sin in this respect. Not everyone - or even most people - working independently is trying to evade tax. In fact financially most people would be better off as employees now if you directly compare salary with contract rates as if they meant the same thing. The big advantages of contracting and freelancing are about flexibility…

Independent contractors where not doing anything different than larger agencies. Same service, just with more attractive pricing. The difference between a small business and agency is that agency can actually afford to properly avoid paying tax. The taxes have been changed anyway, so the mythical small salary + dividend, does not offer meaningful advantage any more when it comes to tax. The real problem is that IR35…

Some "contractors" were definitely disguised employees so I have some limited sympathy with the original intent behind IR35. But the baby was thrown out with the bath water and then they knocked down the bathroom and half of the house for good measure. As you say that has had a devastating effect on the independent and entrepreneurial sectors in several industries including tech.

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

#127

Post by lofatdairy »

marcinzm wrote: post #54
bradleyjg wrote: post #37

Tech, like law, is a bimodal market. If you think of it as a single bell curve your intuitions will be all wrong. The good news is that unlike law it’s possible to jump into the better paying market even if you didn’t go to the “right” school.

In my experience it's almost tri-modal even without location being taken into account. Non-tech will pay low rates like the OP is seeing. Startups that care about talent will pay 10-50% more without counting equity. Large tech and late stage startups will pay 50-400% more if you count the RSUs (liquid for large tech). The issue right now is that many companies are having hiring slowdowns and the VC market is cold so…

Took a while to find someone say this. Yeah this sounds about the case from what I've seen. Factor in significant growth in talent pools (college engineering programs are often minting 20-30% of their students as CS majors not counting math, physics, ee grads etc) and it seems to explain a bit of the stagnation in the SWE job market.

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

#128

Post by throw1234651234 »

lrvick wrote: post #106
yrgulation wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech pay is indeed high but not that high and it has a hard ceiling. Thanks to tech i manage to live a pretty decent life style, compared to shop assistants, or say daily construction workers. But going higher means i have to change careers and potentially go into tech business (which is not really tech, but business). A chartered accountant or lawyer, let alone surgeon, would earn as much as i do a day per hour with…

I have never hit a ceiling and most of my friends have not either. My income has increased significantly every year of my 20+ year career. There -are- ceilings within a given company though, which is why job changes every 1-2 years are pretty normal. Always another company willing to pay 30% more to gain niche experience you have that is stalling progress for them. When you do finally max out what any one company wil…

How do you jump jobs every 2 years if your shares don't vest for 4?

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

#130

Post by oconnore »

IaacForHire wrote: post #63
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

Personally I've only ever gotten close to making $$ off of stock once, but got fired 2 weeks before my first vesting period because I took 2 weeks off after my father's death. Every other start-up I've worked for either went under, never exited or had an exit only the founders profited from. This is probably true for 99% of all start-ups.

> fired 2 weeks before my first vesting period because I took 2 weeks off after my father's death

That seems quite implausible. Not that the managers there weren’t jerks, or that this didn’t contribute to the conflict, but there seems to be a lack of reflection on this story because there is almost certainly more to it than that.

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