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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?

#201

Post by anon-midwest »

anon-ATL wrote: post #185

Anon account. I've seen salaries continue to climb. My base salary over the last 4 years: 2022: $165k 2021: $150k 2020: $145k 2019: $135k 20 years experience, non-FAANG, no college degree, LCOL town about 90 minutes outside of Atlanta. I've been remote for 10+ years and only apply to companies that know I'm not willing to go into the office. I changed jobs in 2019 and 2022. I do front end .net work.

Also anon account with some more data to add. From my perspective, US salaries have rapidly jumped in the past few years. My total comp increased significantly over the past few years at the same company, and then astronomically more once I bit the bullet and applied to new jobs.

- 2015: 85k in HCOL area

- 2018: 115k in LCOL area (remote)

- 2021: 180k in LCOL area (remote)

- 2022: 280k in LCOL area (remote, FAANG)

I work remotely from the US midwest with 7 YoE. I have several colleagues with fewer YoE making much more than me at both FAANG and pre-IPO startups, but in HCOL areas.

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

#202

Post by mmarq »

nly wrote: post #177
mmarq wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European salaries are still higher than they used to be last year. But they remain significantly lower than the Americans. In the UK, you could hire a decent senior for 80K in London, now it would cost 100-120K. I know a few decent devs whose base salary rose to ~200K, that was extremely rare in the UK and even in London. Also in Germany and Austria I see salaries rising. On UK contractors, the government closed a ta…

Graduates in London should be starting on £80K now. After putting some contributions away for retirement that "decent senior" on £80K might just about be able to buy a 1-2 bed flat in a soulless development in an "OK" part of London, but definitely not a family home. A graduate? Min 10% in to a pension (if aged 20), student loan, and they're only taking home £3.8K/mo. £2K/mo for rent is easily spent on a 1 bed furnis…

Yes, the cost of living is extremely high, and you haven't considered the cost of childcare, school and healthcare (the NHS has never been great, but it went AWOL since the lockdowns). In London either you make in excess of 150K or you’d be better off working as a janitor in a random continental European country. Add 50K for each dependant.

And I’m not sure it’s worth moving to London with a 200K salary if you don’t have 200K in your bank to pay for a deposit on a flat. I wouldn’t wish renting in the UK on my worst enemy.

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

#203

Post by jltsiren »

finikytou wrote: post #110
2rsf wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's quite grim to live in Western Europe on regular dev salary No it's not. We still earn above average and (very) generally life in Europe are not grim.

it is not grim but getting a family-home with a dev salary is out of the picture for many western europeans. it wasn't the case one generation ago. american dev can definitly afford a house even in HCOL cities. for a similar job at AWS or Google you getting 550k+ in NYC vs 200k in London or Paris. just looking at real estate (which is number 1 cost) it is worth moving to NYC. just to give you an idea: MIDTOWN next to…

London and Paris are expensive, but they are not the norm. Home ownership is still affordable to dual-income middle-class families in Western Europe, and there are plenty of nice cities to choose from.

In many larger cities, central locations are ridiculously expensive. Once you get further away from the center, prices drop quickly. Because the society is less car-centric, location has a bigger impact on home prices than in the US.

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

#204

Post by giantg2 »

andsoitis wrote: post #171
giantg2 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is toxic positivity. People can't just make as much as they want. There's always competition and other constraining factors. It's absolutely reasonable to say that you'll never make $220k (in 2022 $) as a dev when the median is $110k, regardless of one's attitude.

> It's absolutely reasonable to say that you'll never make $220k (in 2022 $) as a dev when the median is $110k, regardless of one's attitude. If one's primary objective is to maximize income/money/wealth, then you should be prepared to be more flexible with the kind of work you do. There are many careers that pay more than my chosen career, but I am not interested in that work. Hell, it even applies within an industr…

I don't see the part where all jobs are supposed to pay similarly. I think it's fair to bring up pay differences or that your employer is paying you less. That's how people become aware and get better comp. Staying quiet benefits the employer. Hell, it might even be a good reality check for some people on here who think there are enough high paying jobs for everyone (like all the kids thinking they'll be rockstars or play pro sports) that's not how stats, economics, and competitive markets work.

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

#205

Post by theknocker »

baron816 wrote: post #189
ny-anon wrote: post #167

Going anon for this I grew up poor, got in trouble with the law at 18 - but was coding since I was 9, now I have been writing software for 20+ years professionally, no degree, and have never been able to clear more than 250k - moved from coding to mgmt but still cant break 250. I looked at changing companies to a FAANG but haven’t been able to dedicate the massive amount of time needed to prep for the algo whiteboard…

Don’t study leetcode. If you want to work at FAANG, get some interviews with them. You may discover that you really didn’t need to spend days studying stuff that’s not relevant to your job. At the very least, you’ll get some interview practice and figure out what you do need to study. Those companies will let you interview again and again after a 6-12 month break. Also, companies like Stripe and Airbnb also pay compe…

No post body was provided.

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

#206

Post by twodave »

Once you get out of the big cities there is a big drop-off. The last 3 years have brought a bit of balance but the gap is still large. Where I live 200k is a CEO salary, and there’s a lot of resistance to going above that for other employees (even in $100MM+ companies with plenty of budget to burn). In places like where I live you basically need a side job to get to 250k. I do about 10 extra hours a week and it nets me a 30% increase on my regular salary + benefits. I wish my employer would notice this and just offer me a 30% raise for my undivided attention, but I’ll also do what I have to in order to maximize my income and they’ll just have to respect that :)

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

#207

Post by jollyllama »

giantg2 wrote: post #181
jollyllama wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. More precisely, construction worker pay has reached software developer pay, outside of the SV world.

I think that's only true for the skilled trades and not the laborers or apprentices.

You're correct. Only a small minority of those have reached parity. But the relative increase has been quite large, proportionally. And I would note that in aggregate even the lowest paid workers (seasonal labor) have seen increases in their pay and bargaining power. All part of the inflationary cycle, I suppose.

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

#208

Post by Silhouette »

varispeed wrote: post #67
Silhouette wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a lawyer but from my understanding the attack would be on general principles: contractual provisions can't override statute law in our system, any contract has to meet certain basic standards to be enforceable, and if a contract isn't genuinely negotiated but rather dictated by the more powerful party (aka contracts of adhesion or standard form contracts) any later decisions about interpretation are likely to…

This is not against the spirit of the law. The deemed employer is suppose to pay tax at source _on_behalf_ of deemed employee. So, if someone has been found to be in fact in scope of IR35 and now the Fee Payer has to pay the tax - this is the tax _on_behalf_ of the deemed employee. They can legally and ethically claim it back from the resource, because this is _their_ personal tax. The grey area could be the fine its…

Every one of those clauses that I've seen or heard about also tried to make the contractor liable for all of the employer obligations: Employer NI, Apprenticeship Levy if applicable, and usually some blanket term that covers any other expenses they incur dealing with it. That is most definitely not in the spirit of the law.

Paying the personal taxes is obviously a different matter. Even then it's usually the client side who are establishing the working arrangements and responsible for making the determination so I'm still not sure about the ethics of retrospectively hitting the contractor with a huge extra tax bill later if that determination is found to be wrong.

In many cases the contractor presumably wouldn't have taken the role in the first place if the client had got their side right so I feel like it should probably be the client's responsibility to insure against any later adverse decisions if they want to in this situation. You'll certainly find that when it's the other way around with a small business client any intermediaries will be quick to include an indemnity clause in their standard contract that leaves the contractor on the hook for all costs on both sides if they make the wrong determination.

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

#209

Post by roflyear »

omni wrote: post #199
ny-anon wrote: post #167

Going anon for this I grew up poor, got in trouble with the law at 18 - but was coding since I was 9, now I have been writing software for 20+ years professionally, no degree, and have never been able to clear more than 250k - moved from coding to mgmt but still cant break 250. I looked at changing companies to a FAANG but haven’t been able to dedicate the massive amount of time needed to prep for the algo whiteboard…

If you can't afford an apartment on 250K you need to take a serious look at your spending and figure out what you actually want to prioritize. Sure, you won't be picking up a $3M apartment overlooking Central Park, but toooooons of Brooklyn and Queens should be affordable to you with that level of income. I got a mortgage a few years ago when I was only pulling down $180K and I was approved for up to $1MM loan, most…

I agree... likely this person is paying something like $5k/m in rent and wonders why they have no money.

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

#210

Post by ajkjk »

jongjong wrote: post #173
ny-anon wrote: post #167

Going anon for this I grew up poor, got in trouble with the law at 18 - but was coding since I was 9, now I have been writing software for 20+ years professionally, no degree, and have never been able to clear more than 250k - moved from coding to mgmt but still cant break 250. I looked at changing companies to a FAANG but haven’t been able to dedicate the massive amount of time needed to prep for the algo whiteboard…

They probably have a rich, well connected daddy. For normal people, $250k is probably as high as you can possibly go. I also have experience with distributed systems, worked 80 hours a week for 10 years straight and built several popular open source projects and I can't get past $80k... Almost feels like a conspiracy against me at this stage but I suspect it just comes down to not having a rich daddy who is connected…

> Almost feels like a conspiracy against me at this stage but I suspect it just comes down to not having a rich daddy who is connected to politicians and corporate execs.

I don't know where you live but there is no way this is the case. 80k is less than starting salaries for new grads.

Maybe you meant 180k? In which case, that's still around the level for a second level employee at a big company (a few years of experience). Getting a job at FAANG or whatever else doesn't require special connections, just knowing how to interview and knowing how to be pleasant to work with. It doesn't require connections at all -- if anything it's one of the most democratic hiring processes of any field, where you can apply online and have a job a few months later on your merit alone without any networking being required.

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