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It Pays to Know Ruby: New York City’s Top Tech Jobs (and Their Average Salary)

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Re: It Pays to Know Ruby: New York City’s Top Tech Jobs (and Their Average Salary)

#61

Post by mattdeboard »

itmag wrote: post #60

Holy fuck you Americans are well paid... 80k is a very respectable salary here in Sweden. Hell, I know plenty of programmer working for 40k a year. In the US it seems like the norm for recompense is 100k+. What gives?

I'm an American, in America. 80k is a very respectable salary here in America too, and I know programmers working for 40k a year.

The United States is a very large, very socioeconomically diverse country. It is after all, iirc, at least as large as all of Europe. So no, not all American devs are paid that way.

Re: It Pays to Know Ruby: New York City’s Top Tech Jobs (and Their Average Salary)

#62

Post by aplusbi »

droithomme wrote: post #4

For those of you who live in New York City, what sort of standard of living do these salaries represent? Would one be comfortably be able to lease a 3 bedroom apartment within walking distance of work, in a neighborhood with good schools?

I lived comfortably in a two bedroom in Brooklyn (with a roommate) near a good elementary school on 42k/year. I had a 30 minute commute.

Re: It Pays to Know Ruby: New York City’s Top Tech Jobs (and Their Average Salary)

#63

Post by jasonwocky »

rada wrote: post #51
droithomme wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks very much for all the replies. So 3 bedrooms basically doesn't even exist, but 1 and 2 is available. No answers on the school issues. Is it uncommon then for developers living in New York City to have children? If you have kids, they all go in a single bedroom it seems and there's no room for a home office since there's no third bedroom. If one is single I can see how it all works, but for those of us with kid…

School situation in NYC is quite complicated. Several things to consider: 1. Private schools cost around $30k a year. However, this price deferential vis-à-vis free public schools is built into property prices so that you are not really "saving" $30k if you live in a magnet school district. This is further complicated by... 2. The vast divide between have's and have-not's and the socialist city rules that attempt to…

> It's common to pay around $1,500 per month in condo/coop fees on top of your mortgage, and that's for a 1-bedroom.

Maybe in Manhattan, I suppose. That's a pretty broad brush for the rest of NYC. I pay less than $700 in co-op maintenance for my 2-bedroom in Brooklyn.

For the uninitiated, those fees go towards property taxes (which co-op owners don't otherwise pay), some utilities, things like elevator maintenance, groundskeeping, doorman, building superintendent, etc. If the building has an outstanding mortgage that has to be paid down, that comes out of there as well.

Re: It Pays to Know Ruby: New York City’s Top Tech Jobs (and Their Average Salary)

#64

Post by vic_nyc »

droithomme wrote: post #16
droithomme wrote: post #4

For those of you who live in New York City, what sort of standard of living do these salaries represent? Would one be comfortably be able to lease a 3 bedroom apartment within walking distance of work, in a neighborhood with good schools?

Thanks very much for all the replies. So 3 bedrooms basically doesn't even exist, but 1 and 2 is available. No answers on the school issues. Is it uncommon then for developers living in New York City to have children? If you have kids, they all go in a single bedroom it seems and there's no room for a home office since there's no third bedroom. If one is single I can see how it all works, but for those of us with kid…

Living in NYC with children and we have a very comfortable lifestyle. We live in Astoria, Queens, which is just a short (25mins) subway ride to where I work in midtown. I don't believe anyone in their right mind, in our profession, will be living in Manhattan with children. (certainly no technologist that I know of, and I have met dozens throughout the years). But the big advantage is that, as others mentioned, you can live nearby in Queens or Brooklyn, (or NJ/Long Island) and be within a very short commute to work. Rents will be a lot cheaper - we pay 1,600$/mth for a large two bedroom which is actually an entire floor of a house. I have to admit we were lucky there - but there are enough options if you do a proper search.

There are a lot of tech events in the city, and a lot of other kinds of events and conferences. But the biggest draw factor for me when moving to NYC was the sheer number of companies that are packed together in a relatively small space. This is truly heaven for a technologist who is consulting, because you will have business constantly - especially if you are on top of your game; I can attest that you can make and save a lot of money like that. There are a lot of full-time jobs as well, some which pay well and are 9-5, others that require more hours and pay a lot, particularly in the finance sector. Be careful with startups that require a lot of hours and don't pay particularly well though - you won't get a good deal by working for one in NYC, due to how they compare to all other options I mentioned.

Finally, the other cool thing here if you are looking to start your own company, is that you can meet people to partner with - again due to the large number of people within the area.

Re: It Pays to Know Ruby: New York City’s Top Tech Jobs (and Their Average Salary)

#65

Post by jimbobimbo »

thetrendycyborg wrote: post #17

These numbers seem low. But as for cost of living, don't live in New York itself. The longer your commute, the more you save. Time is the trade-off, of course. If you get some partial work-from-home, you're golden. I have a fairly nice sized (1200 square foot) apartment within 30 minutes by bus and train from work.

I ran some numbers to compare my current perks (NJ, less than 10 minutes drive, lunch at home) vs possible offer in NYC (about an hour of train and subway combined) and figured I'd need to ask 10k more to just to have same amount of money left after expenses for commute and lunching out. And I'm already making more that Ruby people from the OP list.

Re: It Pays to Know Ruby: New York City’s Top Tech Jobs (and Their Average Salary)

#66

Post by draegtun »

elb0w wrote: post #31

This obviously doesn't include the financial industry. I know for a fact the average salary range is higher than this. In some of the medium sized firms, not even the large ones. Not to mention Perl is still a highly valued language in this industry which wasn't even included here. I assume this sample is based on start ups only?

re: sample - Looking at CyberCoders job postings for New York right now it only shows 252 job posts in total so the sample is very small.

And you can slice and dice this kind of data in so many ways you can end of with many different types of results from it :)

Searching on CyberCoders for PHP, Python, Ruby & Perl at moment (in NY) returns these numbers of job posts...

  PHP      48
  Python   33
  Ruby     27
  Perl     13
However if we then break this down into clearly defined posts for a PHP developer, Python developer, etc we get...

  PHP      9
  Python   8
  Ruby     9   (3 Ruby, 6 RoR)
  Perl     1
And the average salary range given for these developer posts are...

  PHP      $80k - $121k
  Python   $93k - $128k
  Ruby     $83k - $128k
  Perl     $80k - $110k
As with quoted figures everywhere please take these with a large pinch of salt :)

Re: It Pays to Know Ruby: New York City’s Top Tech Jobs (and Their Average Salary)

#67

Post by infinite8s »

Woost wrote: post #50
droithomme wrote: post #4

For those of you who live in New York City, what sort of standard of living do these salaries represent? Would one be comfortably be able to lease a 3 bedroom apartment within walking distance of work, in a neighborhood with good schools?

I noticed a bunch of people doing the math on a 100k/year salary for a 3br. Presumably, if you need a 3br it's because you have kids and need to give them each their own room. Is everyone assuming the other partner won't help with anything financially? You can come pretty close to the 4-5k/month number for a 3br if your SO/partner is also making ~100k/year. If you're single with kids, or trying to have 1 stay at home…

If you both are working and you have young children (pre-school age) you will take another $25k hit for childcare.

Re: It Pays to Know Ruby: New York City’s Top Tech Jobs (and Their Average Salary)

#68

Post by infinite8s »

bproper wrote: post #13
hogu wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rented a nice 1 bdroom within walking distance from work for 3000$ yea ouch. I now rent a nice but tiny 550 sqft 1bdroom for 1900$ 3 bdroom apts are extremely expensive. however the trains are really good, so "walking distance" isn't that important

Yeah - you can get a nice size 2 bedroom in Brooklyn for $2500 a month and be 20 minutes from work by train.

What parts of brooklyn? And 20 minutes to downtown or midtown?
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