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Tech salary insights from 1.2M foreign worker visas

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Re: Tech salary insights from 1.2M foreign worker visas

#21

Post by untog »

thejdude wrote: post #19
simonsarris wrote: post #15

Why are tech salaries so low? Especially from these companies with large profit margins and huge revenue per employee numbers. It seems like engineers have captured almost nothing of the fruit of their labors.

That's low to you? Wow. Just wow. Over here in Europe (or at least Germany) salaries are incredibly uniform (doesn't really matter if you suck or get as much done in a day as others in 1-2 weeks; if your bugs get constantly reopened or your code is rock-solid), and most people seem to get maybe 35-50k€ after graduation (diploma/master's degree).

Bear in mind that the US is severely out of whack in terms of work/life balance. It's one of the things I find most difficult about living here - when I first arrived I had 10 days vacation a year. I currently only have 15. And don't forget to factor in healthcare costs and the like.

Money certainly isn't everything.

Re: Tech salary insights from 1.2M foreign worker visas

#22

Post by suyash »

simonsarris wrote: post #15

Why are tech salaries so low? Especially from these companies with large profit margins and huge revenue per employee numbers. It seems like engineers have captured almost nothing of the fruit of their labors.

They are low because companies have kept them low (remember the whole conspiracy and law suit against bay area top employers) and individuals take what they get. Seriously compared to other areas and cost of living in the bay, they are really low for smart software engineers.

Re: Tech salary insights from 1.2M foreign worker visas

#24

Post by suyash »

wheaties wrote: post #17

One confounding factor not considered here is the number of "senior" engineers with less than 4yr work experience. Seriously, title inflation is just as rampant if not more in the tech sector than wage inflation. So how do you account for Senior Engineer vs here's a job we'll just add this nice title to.

I never clearly understood how many years of experience you need to become Sr. exactly, seems like everyone follows different rules.

Re: Tech salary insights from 1.2M foreign worker visas

#25

Post by Iftheshoefits »

thejdude wrote: post #19
simonsarris wrote: post #15

Why are tech salaries so low? Especially from these companies with large profit margins and huge revenue per employee numbers. It seems like engineers have captured almost nothing of the fruit of their labors.

That's low to you? Wow. Just wow. Over here in Europe (or at least Germany) salaries are incredibly uniform (doesn't really matter if you suck or get as much done in a day as others in 1-2 weeks; if your bugs get constantly reopened or your code is rock-solid), and most people seem to get maybe 35-50k€ after graduation (diploma/master's degree).

Here in the US we basically have little or no social safety net, and certainly few meaningful regulations and laws protecting labor. Our "wow just wow" salaries have less buying power than yours, because any difference in the margins is eaten up by having to use the additional salary for basic services you would be able to (mostly) take for granted as being government supplied (via taxation and other means).

Re: Tech salary insights from 1.2M foreign worker visas

#26

Post by ryanSrich »

thejdude wrote: post #19
simonsarris wrote: post #15

Why are tech salaries so low? Especially from these companies with large profit margins and huge revenue per employee numbers. It seems like engineers have captured almost nothing of the fruit of their labors.

That's low to you? Wow. Just wow. Over here in Europe (or at least Germany) salaries are incredibly uniform (doesn't really matter if you suck or get as much done in a day as others in 1-2 weeks; if your bugs get constantly reopened or your code is rock-solid), and most people seem to get maybe 35-50k€ after graduation (diploma/master's degree).

I'll reiterate OP and say that these seem low to me as well...and dare I say that I still think Software Developers are underpaid?!

These employees are bringing in billions of dollars for these companies and for them to still receive Think about this. You get into work at 8am and you leave work at 8pm. You manage a team of engineers that are literally building the foundation for the future of the company. Your entire life is dedicated to making this company money.

Do you still find those salaries low?

Re: Tech salary insights from 1.2M foreign worker visas

#27

Post by kevingao1 »

suyash wrote: post #24
wheaties wrote: post #17

One confounding factor not considered here is the number of "senior" engineers with less than 4yr work experience. Seriously, title inflation is just as rampant if not more in the tech sector than wage inflation. So how do you account for Senior Engineer vs here's a job we'll just add this nice title to.

I never clearly understood how many years of experience you need to become Sr. exactly, seems like everyone follows different rules.

agreed -- it varies significantly based on company culture, size

Re: Tech salary insights from 1.2M foreign worker visas

#28

Post by kevingao1 »

simonsarris wrote: post #15

Why are tech salaries so low? Especially from these companies with large profit margins and huge revenue per employee numbers. It seems like engineers have captured almost nothing of the fruit of their labors.

i agree, despite industry complaints about how "high" they are and how quickly they've risen; having been on multiple sides of this, i think the value that a good engineer adds is still not reflected in compensation, especially in smaller companies (eg, less than a few hundred people); it's part information asymmetry, part culture

Re: Tech salary insights from 1.2M foreign worker visas

#29

Post by cagriaksay »

We recently used salary prediction data to come up with salary charts and maps as well: https://salaryfairy.com/salary

One interesting finding was that not only SF salaries are much higher compared to rest of the US, but users from SF tend to over-estimate how much the rest of the country is making. You can see this effect in the third map at https://salaryfairy.com/blog/first-10k-users-salary-maps-and...

Re: Tech salary insights from 1.2M foreign worker visas

#30

Post by kevingao1 »

untog wrote: post #11

Most interesting takeaway for me is that salaries weren't significantly higher in SF in 2013. As someone living in NYC I always imagined moving to SF/Silicon Valley would give me a big pay bump. Also one thing to note here: these are 'Labor Condition Applications', not actual salaries. Often they are one and the same, but (for example) they do not include pay rises. I've ended up being paid more than every LCA I've h…

that's really interesting; there are so many caveats with the data that i almost thought it wasn't worth sharing, but we can let people draw conclusions themselves (and hopefully follow-up with other analyses, comments, etc)

if you don't mind, %-wise, how much more were you paid than your LCA? and do you think this is representative of others?

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