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

321–330 of 345 posts

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

#321

Post by sdnas211 »

Silhouette wrote: post #311
varispeed wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

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. That is a silly situation I agree. But it's a situation that perpetuates in part because too many contractors tolerate it. If you read the stats published by some of the more open agencies the majority of contractors are still strongly preferring outside IR35 contracts and the…

> That is a silly situation I agree. But it's a situation that perpetuates in part because too many contractors tolerate it.

A sizeable proportion of contractors I used to work with simply removed themselves from the market when the changes were introduced. Many of them retired early, and one retrained as a plasterer.

I only tolerate it because I have a mortgage to pay. I'm not willing to take a 50% pay cut to go perm, or a ~20% pay cut for the few contracts outside IR35 that I'm offered. The rates on those used to be significantly higher than before the changes.

Speaking to a lot of recruiters over the last few years, we have noticed wage compression in the market. The bottom end has been brought up quite substantially, the top end has dropped.

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

#322

Post by partizanos »

savanaly wrote: post #197
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…

>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. That's a reason for first-generation employees to get paid highly, not a reason to continue to pay that highly to new employees joining today. The real determinants of tech company salaries are the same old boring ones that govern salaries in most lightly regulated industr…

Can you please define the difference between average and marginal productivity?

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

#323

Post by lrvick »

mxuribe wrote: post #310
lrvick wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never worked at FAANG and had no problem making 200k+ at several companies doing webdev, sysadmin, and security over the last decade. Same for most of my friends. Now I do independent consulting so I get to set my own pay and < 40 hours which is worth more to me than maximal income, but if you want to make 500k+ a year you totally can without working adtech or FAANG especially if you are independent with niche…

@lrvick My challenge with trying to leave my dayjob to do indie consulting has been finding my first, steady clients...at least enough to swap out for my dayjob. I have tried it the last few years as a side hustle, and while my tech and biz/ops skills are pretty good...my sales skills are not. Would you be willing to share how you got your clients, at least to the point of being able to live off of only your consulti…

Sure. Hit me up at @lrvick:matrix.org

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

#324

Post by lrvick »

vsareto wrote: post #231
lrvick wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I started off in the bay area as a webdev making low 6 figures, and do not know any webdevs in my circles here making less than that.

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

#325

Post by Firmwarrior »

IaacForHire wrote: post #122
iLoveOncall wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hey man, sorry people are crapping on you here. It's an unfair world full of selfish pricks and jerkoffs who'll screw you over given half a chance, while telling themselves they're making the world a better place in the process

BUT you have the technical skills to leverage yourself into a favored position, and I'm confident you can do so if you reset your outlook and your approach. Nobody's going to pay you $300k because you deserve $300k, they're going to pay it because they're making $1M in revenue.

Anyway, good luck out there

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

#326

Post by primeblue »

belmarca wrote: post #196
IaacForHire wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might slightly underestimate the sheer # of companies and tech jobs in the Bay Area? I think Hacker News is an echo chamber when it comes to this because there are so many "rockstar" type engineers here.

Probably. But there is worldwide demand for good developers, try looking into remote work. I've spoken with many people who have more than one "job", which amount to long, but not insane work weeks. One thing I think a lot of people underestimate is the sheer amount of _clueless_ (or almost clueless) software developers out there. There are a lot of young people with good intentions but very, very little "real" exper…

[dead]

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

#327

Post by primeblue »

mxuribe wrote: post #310
lrvick wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never worked at FAANG and had no problem making 200k+ at several companies doing webdev, sysadmin, and security over the last decade. Same for most of my friends. Now I do independent consulting so I get to set my own pay and < 40 hours which is worth more to me than maximal income, but if you want to make 500k+ a year you totally can without working adtech or FAANG especially if you are independent with niche…

@lrvick My challenge with trying to leave my dayjob to do indie consulting has been finding my first, steady clients...at least enough to swap out for my dayjob. I have tried it the last few years as a side hustle, and while my tech and biz/ops skills are pretty good...my sales skills are not. Would you be willing to share how you got your clients, at least to the point of being able to live off of only your consulti…

No post body was provided.

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

#328

Post by wikibob »

yieldcrv wrote: post #147

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

The only correct answer in this entire comment section.

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

#329

Post by MikeTheRocker »

b112 wrote: post #137
brandall10 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not arguing that 95% of companies don't. Just saying there are many outside the base FAANG camp that do... it's a much bigger ecosystem than one might expect at first blush. If you hang out on blind or get contacted by these companies over time it becomes evident.

What cracks me up, is how little a sub-200k salary is in SF. 100k less, in most other places on the planet, affords a much richer lifestyle. When I work in SV, I expect 2x the salary minimum, just due to the cost of living, and housing cost differences. Anything less than 300k? I'll make more working in Canada, at 150k.

This is just patently false. I live in SV and have pretty high living expenses, around $80-90k/year. If I were earning $300k, after 40% effective tax rate and CoL, I'd still save ~$100k. That's far more money in my pocket than the hypothetical Canadian employed me earning $150k, both nominally and especially so after the currency conversion.

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

#330

Post by toast0 »

dsr_ wrote: post #266
bottled_poe wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Another hard truth is that some jobs are more essential than others.

Sanitation. Childcare. Primary education. Fire departments. Groceries. If your city doesn't have those, it stops being a livable place pretty quickly.

Cost of housing goes down quite a bit too.
Post reply on HN