Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 345 posts

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

#231

Post by vsareto »

lrvick wrote: post #65
yrgulation wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When I was 18 in rural America I had to do telemarketing and day labor in addition to webdev gigs to cover food and keep gas in the car I lived in. My income more than 10xed once I moved to Silicon Valley where my skills are in high demand. I do not think I know anyone technical making less than 6 figures here, with 200-600k being the norm for anyone with 10+ years of experience. In a post-covid world you can normall…

I feel like your definition and goalposts of "anyone who is technical" is probably incredibly high but you're trying to undersell it just to make a point. Is webdev somehow not technical?

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

#232

Post by runako »

20+ years in the industry, here's my quick take on your situation in the spirit of constructive feedback:

- You're far enough into your career that you will have to actively work on your career and/or self in order to achieve your next set of objectives. The early career momentum has worn off.

- You need to upgrade your resume. Pay someone a few hundred $ to help you with this. Resume writing does not appear to be a strength of yours, learn and improve.

- I hire contractors globally for myself and clients. Your resume is easily worth $125/hr on the contract market. If you're only getting $60-$80, there may be some other factors you are not disclosing here that are keeping your rate down. It would be worth engaging with those factors if you want to increate your compensation. Edit: look on a site like Upwork to see what people with your background are earning on the contract market.

- The emphasis on San Francisco compensation has obscured the fact that comp has been rising in the rest of the US. First, obviously West Coast companies are much more open to remote/satellite offices. For example, Microsoft and Google have engineering offices in Atlanta. You can see what folks are making by going to a site like levels.fyi and filtering for DevOps, 10-20 years experience and looking outside of California. (Nvidia @ $300k for Senior DevOps in Raleigh looks like a good cost-of-living vs comp.)

- If you look outside of pure tech companies, you will likely have to go into management to hit the high numbers. With your experience, if you are able/willing to lend and/or manage engineering teams, you should be able to get into the $250k range in most major US cities. Advantage to non-tech companies is they are more likely to have sane work-life balance.

- You may want to consider expanding your skills into a niche. For example, are you able to help companies build data pipelines for data engineering? Machine Learning? There are some fairly niche problems in that area; knowledge of any of those would help you differentiate yourself and drive higher pay.

Good luck!

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

#233

Post by andsoitis »

giantg2 wrote: post #215
andsoitis wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Last two years I agree, and fueled by a acceleration of business for tech companies. But continue this year? Who is forecasting that?

The Federal Reserve, among others. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/12/08/wages-202...

Thanks for the link; I can’t read the article because I’m not a WaPo subscriber (I’ll see if I can find a copy somehow).

Do you know whether the Fed forecasts that for software engineering jobs? I think that is what’s most relevant for a large number of folks in this thread.

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

#234

Post by MauranKilom »

ajkjk wrote: post #210
jongjong wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 exper…

Outside the US, 80k is a high salary. It matters a lot which country we are talking about for whether 80k with that experience is insanely low (USA) or insanely high (India). Take a look at the StackOverflow (self-reported) income statistics in various countries:

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#technology-wh... (compare Global vs United States)

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2021#salary-comp-t... (compare All Respondents vs United States)

https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/09/05/developer-salaries-in-...

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

#235

Post by embeng4096 »

Temporary_31337 wrote: post #172
Victerius wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A little mentioned dynamic is that tech salaries can't be too much out-of-sync with non-tech salaries, because overpriced housing bought up by SWEs making 300K+ eventually leads to non-SWEs demanding wage increases to keep up with rent payments and/or remain able to save for a downpayment on newly priced homes. In turn, the lower disposable income from workers being squeezed by housing costs is lowering growth and te…

Ah so you still believe in the trickle down economy. The problem with that is that anyone making 500k is not going to be able to spend fast enough to keep people around them equally wealthy and it gets worse the higher you go - you physically can’t spend 10M+ on groceries and haircuts near you so the higher proportion goes to financial instruments and assets which does not trickle down to neighbours

I think trickle down would actually go against GP's point. Their point seems to be that even as richer SWEs make more money, they price out middle class workers on housing -- then as workers pay more for housing, they have less money to buy things from the companies that pay the SWEs, with a result of putting downward pressure on SWE salaries.

Believing in trickle down would actually undermine GP's point. If trickle down was true, SWEs' spending would offset the housing cost increases caused by SWEs, so middle class workers would have more disposable income to buy things from companies that pay the SWEs -- and that would be the opposite of what GP is describing.

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

#236

Post by dustinmoris »

Test0129 wrote: post #226
socialismisok wrote: post #224

I know it's an unpopular opinion around here, but it's worth considering if forming tech unions could help. Tech companies are making huge profits per employee but holding wages down. We can build unions based on our democratic interests - what do we care about? Salary, benefits, paid oncall, IP restrictions, open source, etc. We don't have to sign up with one of the giant calcified corrupt US unions, there are plent…

Unions are popular in fields like construction, medicine, teaching, etc because of: 1. The field otherwise would be chronically underpaid 2. The field is dangerous, or has a history of encouraging dangerous behavior 3. The field makes moving between jobs quickly hard 4. The field is antiquated, and the union is essentially a protection racket for prior skilled workers (this is very common in "older" fields). Programm…

No post body was provided.

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

#237

Post by anon-ATL »

anon-midwest wrote: post #201
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…

My wife and I say to each other that this can't last forever and we say (half jokingly) that we're overpaid and hope no one realizes it too quickly. She's in the field (not a developer) and makes more than I do. Our plan is to keep at it as long as we can and get to a point were we are debt free (including the house) and then move to a LCOL area in another country when the salaries crash.

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

#238

Post by Test0129 »

ausbah wrote: post #230
Test0129 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions are popular in fields like construction, medicine, teaching, etc because of: 1. The field otherwise would be chronically underpaid 2. The field is dangerous, or has a history of encouraging dangerous behavior 3. The field makes moving between jobs quickly hard 4. The field is antiquated, and the union is essentially a protection racket for prior skilled workers (this is very common in "older" fields). Programm…

>Unions are popular in fields like construction, medicine, teaching, etc because of: 1. The field otherwise would be chronically underpaid what world are you living in where these are considered fairly compensated?

You have a very funny definition of "fairly compensated" because both construction and medicine are 6 figure fields after 10 years in most occupations. I have a friend who is a journeyman pipefitter making 60k for all of 2 years of experience. That is comically overpaid for YoE in a field that requires all of 1 year of on the job training you don't even pay for.

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

#239

Post by giantg2 »

juve1996 wrote: post #223
giantg2 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Rail employees are provided with significant time off. Generally, train crew employees have over three to four weeks of paid vacation and over 10 personal leave days. Depending on craft and seniority, these numbers can extend to five weeks of vacation in addition to 14 paid holidays and/or paid leave days,” BNSF told CNBC. “The number of Personal Leave Days was increased by 25% this year which makes it easier for em…

"A crucial issue in the dispute is a points-based attendance policy adopted by some of the largest carriers earlier this year. Those policies penalize workers, up to termination, for going to routine doctor’s visits or attending to family emergencies. Conductors and engineers say that they can be on call for 14 consecutive days without a break and that they do not receive a single sick day, paid or unpaid. “All we’re…

So how do they get around federal FMLA requirements to fire people over the medical time?

Sign me up! A friend of a friend was a diesel electric mechanic making $85k starting 14 years ago, and no college cost. It took me 8 or more years and a masters to hit that comp as a dev. My company manages some of the rail road 401ks and they are highly compensated. And they're unionized, unlike devs, which I see as a plus.

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

#240

Post by jaynetics »

giantg2 wrote: post #215
andsoitis wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Last two years I agree, and fueled by a acceleration of business for tech companies. But continue this year? Who is forecasting that?

The Federal Reserve, among others. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/12/08/wages-202...

without paywall: https://archive.ph/qqQMw (article is 9 months old, though)
Post reply on HN