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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?

#141

Post by thelastgallon »

People move when there is a better offer. Replacement hires come in at higher pay. Which means people who didn't move would also have pay raises (same role/level, pay parity). Some companies colluded to stop people from moving [1]. Only a small fraction may have moved, but it would have had cascading effects across the industry. FAANG people get paid a lot more, other companies have to keep up, they may not match adtech/SV pay, but have to be competitive. I'd say everyone in US is getting paid 50K - 100K less per year because of this. This may seem high, but factor in nearly 20 years of cumulative raises.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

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

#142

Post by IaacForHire »

Melchori wrote: post #103
IaacForHire wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oof, European salaries are absurdly low. When I first left the USA I was thinking "OK I'll get a nice job in Amsterdam or Denmark" .. Then I saw the cost of living and the low salaries, and waved away that dream.

Ah come on... You can get a good stable salary in Amsterdam and have a great life...

I'm not sure about great. If I had family beyond my wife, sure I think Western Europe would be incredible.

Since I don't, I choose to live in a poor country instead of a Western European country. Bought a flat for $100k, spend about $1k per month, and when I am able to find work I put 90% of it into savings.

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

#143

Post by doubtfuluser »

throw1234651234 wrote: post #128
lrvick wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Usually you have a cliff of 1 year, getting something like 25% of the shares then. Now include the fact that you got a signing bonus paid for the first 1 or two years, you can get a new signing bonus in a new company… I’ve seen people doing that. From a career progression I had the feeling they were slower and doing just the greedy optimization

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

#144

Post by thorin »

ivvve wrote: post #121
thorin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

They were mainly manual testers, which might tell you enough! I wouldn't be surprised if there was some Oracle database stuff given what we've discussed together in the past.

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

#145

Post by giantg2 »

pid-1 wrote: post #132
datacruncher01 wrote: post #119

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 co…

> Tech salaries are going to be on a decline for a while with the Fed rate hike Isn't that true for the whole economy?

In fact, were seeing the largest increases in pay over the past two years (and i think in real pay too), and they're forecasting that will continue this year as well. This is much more prominent in the lower paying jobs than in professional ones.

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

#146

Post by mellavora »

riyadparvez wrote: post #104
doubled112 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welders that can weld underwater are scarce and compensated accordingly. My understanding is that it's dangerous and few want to do it.

> My understanding is that it's dangerous and few want to do it. Yeah this is the part everyone is ignoring in the conversation. Many highly compensated physical labor jobs are highly compensated because of the associated risk. While being a developer (with exceptions) doesn't expose you to any physical risk.

I hurt my little pinky finger programming. RSI is a real thing.

but I don't think tech compensation is high because of risk of this type of injury.

vs underwater welding, where the types of possible injuries have greater impact on overall health.

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

#147

Post by yieldcrv »

There are tri-modal compensation bands in tech

midsize and non-tech companies are doing $50k-120k

VC backed startups and large non-tech companies are doing $80k-$170k

publicly traded big tech, tokenized crypto startups, and established crypto companies are doing $120-250k base salary plus another $200-400k in some form of non-cash but easily convertible to cash compensation for $400-$600k total annual compensation

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

#148

Post by yieldcrv »

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.

trimodal in tech

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

#149

Post by throwkaway »

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…

If you are a UK contractor doing remote work, you can avoid the IR35 issue by working for a clients outside of the UK. Also, if you can get US client you'll probably get paid more for doing the same thing as a UK client too.

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

#150

Post by IaacForHire »

oconnore wrote: post #130
IaacForHire wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was a small company, 8 people including an office admin and an intern.

I was simultaneously doing conference marketing and managing our infrastructure. Dad died, I told them I had to go, didn't communicate much, because my dad had died, and they thought it was inappropriate that I wasn't calling them while taking care of my mother.

I also found out later that a certain YCombinator partner found out that I had 2% of the company and suggested they fire me before I vest because it was an "obscene" amount of stock for a single employee to have, even if I was the 7th employee and took a 50% salary cut in exchange for that stock.

So yeah, there's more to the story.

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