What Software Engineers Earn Compared to the General Population • Hacker News Board

Re: What Software Engineers Earn Compared to the General Population

#111

Post by beachstartup » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 7:03 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #49

kspaans wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the grandparent is playing a little loose with terms. By "working class", I believe they mean both: have to exchange their labour for money, and low social class (less respect from peers, say at a dinner party). Though obviously some software engineers "cash out" and then don't _need_ to work anymore, and many doctors would quickly run out of money if they stopped working.

OK, they're wage earners, then, not working-class. I don't know that their social status is really that low though.

it has risen significantly in the last 5 years because of the pervasiveness of technology, but before that, it was rather low.

Re: What Software Engineers Earn Compared to the General Population

#112

Post by _yosefk » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 7:05 PM UTC

paulmd wrote: post #31

_yosefk wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Erm... How many people are fed by a combine harvester driver? How many babies and mothers are saved by the staff of a modern hospital, who drastically lower child mortality? If 10 future programmers are delivered by a single nurse, should she be paid 10x what a programmer makes? (Supply and demand I get, "force multiplier" I don't get.)

If a combine harvester allows a farmer to feed as many people as 100 farmers working by hand then they have a force multiplier of 100x. If you can train one nurse to deliver as many babies as 10 normal nurses then they have a force-multiplier of 10x. This doesn't necessarily translate into 10x or 100x the salary - farming is still an extremely capital-intensive business, probably moreso than it was pre-Green Revoluti…

I got that "force multiplier" had to do with productivity, but I didn't get how compensation is supposed to be set as a function of productivity (as opposed to supply and demand, and/or arbitrary rules), or even why it should be. Certainly (and thankfully, for those of us buying their food) a combine harvester driver does not get paid 100x the compensation of a farmer who harvested before combine harvesters were invented (of course the driver neither invented nor manufactured the combine harvester; well, a programmer neither invented nor made computers - or compilers, or most of the ideas they apply.)

I kind of believe, I think not controversially, that compensation results from supply, demand, and a bunch of more or less arbitrary rules which either affect supply & demand or directly affect the price (price controls, visa regimes, etc.) Productivity (value created) sets an upper bound for compensation (well, actually, it doesn't, perceived productivity does; and even that isn't true - building a barely working website for the government for several hundreds of millions of dollars is one of the countless counter-examples), but productivity certainly does not set a lower bound for compensation - competition does. How much labor you save is beside the point.

Re: What Software Engineers Earn Compared to the General Population

#113

Post by CM30 » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 7:24 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #27

glogla wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software engineers are like doctors or lawyers - long period of study on difficult (and in places where people pay for colleges expensive) schools, long hours, but good pay. So it makes sense to compare them with doctors and lawyers. Unlike doctors and lawyers, software engineers don't have any respect and are pretty much working class, but that's another story.

Software engineers are not "working class." Where did you get that idea?

Depends on the country. The average software engineer wage in the UK (about 56,000 a year), France (about the same) or Greece (25,000 a year) is probably rather solidly in the middle class, and at the lower end of it at that.

A software engineer/developer/programmer/whatever is paid about the same as your average office employee in much of Europe.

Re: What Software Engineers Earn Compared to the General Population

#114

Post by home_boi » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 7:27 PM UTC

hiram112 wrote: post #55

fecak wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doctors and lawyers require outside certification and extensive post-graduate education just to enter the industry . Comparing them to software engineers is not a useful comparison.

Doctors and lawyers have created their own barriers to entry via the AMA and Bar Association. Honestly, I don't think I've ever met a decent software engineer that wouldn't have the intelligence to make it through either medical or law school, should they apply themself. OTOH, I've met numerous doctors and lawyers that would never be able to handle the typical high-level math and CS courses a decent undergrad require…

Developers can retire by late 30's if the wages right now keep up with inflation. Using conservative Google compensation:

22 yrs: L3, $160k total comp

25 yrs: L4, $210k total comp

27 yrs: L5, $260k total comp

32 yrs: L6, $320k total comp

39 yrs: L6, $320k total comp

Averages:

22-25: $180k avg

25-27: $230k avg

27-32: $280k avg

32-39: $320k avg

3 * 180 + 2 * 230 + 5 * 280 + 7 * 320 = 4.64 mil

4.64 mil * 0.6 (taxes/FICA) = 2.784 mil

2.784 mil - ($30k living costs/yr) * 17 yrs = 2.274 mil

Enough to retire if you don't have a kid

Re: What Software Engineers Earn Compared to the General Population

#115

Post by emodendroket » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 7:43 PM UTC

vonmoltke wrote: post #104

emodendroket wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big gulf between wage earners and everyone else, but, as I said to the other guy, the professional class and manual laborers don't have identical interests (for instance, which group is more likely to support a free-trade agreement that will cause US factories to shutter but drive down the prices of consumer goods?).

Considering your setup, on what side do you think most software engineers would fall? The elites who have "made it" at Google and Facebook might be fine, but those factories employ tens of thousands of software engineers and programmers in addition to tens of thousands of skilled manufacturing workers. They both lose their jobs when those factories close. Engineering (all engineering, not just software engineering) i…

I'd say they fall pretty squarely into the professional-managerial class

Re: What Software Engineers Earn Compared to the General Population

#116

Post by jazzyk » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 7:52 PM UTC

kgwgk wrote: post #91

jazzyk wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We pay taxes in the US as well :-) Maybe a bit less than in Europe, but we get very little in return (no subsidized daycare, no 30 days of vacation, etc). US tax revenue is mostly spent on maintaining all the 170+ military bases around the world, aircraft carriers, nuclear weapons, etc.

What do you think is the relation between vacation days and taxes?

OK, you got me there - typed too fast. But, aside form taxes, if I wanted to take more time off, it only makes sense I should expect less pay, right?

Re: What Software Engineers Earn Compared to the General Population

#117

Post by ThomaszKrueger » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 8:09 PM UTC

The use of the term Engineer is very unfortunate. In many places (Texas and Florida come to mind) one cannot claim to be or perform the functions of Engineering without being properly licensed and member of a board of professional engineers.

Re: What Software Engineers Earn Compared to the General Population

#118

Post by graywh » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 8:10 PM UTC

retbull wrote: post #96

belorn wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To understand the significance, lets start by considering that the top 1% earn about 20% of the total income, and 60% of the lowest earners only have about 4.2% of the total income. If you remove both those extremes, then average and median becomes somewhat closer to each other.

If you removee the bottom 60% of people you aren't representing what is happening very well.

And removing the bottom 60% will most likely remove the median.

Re: What Software Engineers Earn Compared to the General Population

#119

Post by Grishnakh » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 8:19 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #99

Grishnakh wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the number of women interested in dating him, that's where. Women go gaga to date a doctor, but they're about as interested in a software engineer as they are a plumber.

I feel like there are some confounding factors here beyond just the work itself

I'm not debating the work and how it compares to other professions, or even how the pay compares, I'm just pointing out what I perceive to be society's perception of the prestige of the profession. Here in America, software does not have a lot of prestige, not compared to doctors and lawyers.

Lawyers don't even make that much money, and a lot of them drop out and change professions; we have a glut of lawyers. The ones at the top make a lot, but your rank-and-file ones don't, they probably do worse than your average software engineer. But it doesn't matter: society holds them and doctors in far higher esteem than engineers or programmers of any kind. It's a product of America's anti-intellectual tradition.

Now of course, there is a big factor of relativity involved: if a woman is a waitress or secretary or cashier, for instance, she'll probably be very interested in dating an engineer or programmer (doubly so if she's a single mom struggling to raise some kids). But if she's a lawyer or doctor or she has the traits necessary to attract a doctor, she won't be. If she's an engineer herself, she probably would be interested, but since she's such a minority in her field she'll also have her pick of male engineers and won't be single long.

Re: What Software Engineers Earn Compared to the General Population

#120

Post by AdamSC1 » Mon, Apr 11, 2016, 8:47 PM UTC

frogpelt wrote: post #18

Is it meaningful to compare the median annual income of software engineers to the average annual income of the general population? I'm legitimately curious, what is the statistical significance of an average versus a median?

It's statistics 101 to not compare median to average, simply because an average is more impacted by outlier values and so a member of the general population making $15m a year would lift the "average" income far more than it would lift the "median" income. The numbers set "1, 2, 3, 4, 1000" has an average of 202 but a median of 3, and 3 is clearly a better representation of those numbers as a group.

Also we've got multiple data sets at play and so we shouldn't be using a "ratio" but rather a z-score.

A z-score is a measure to normalize all the different distributions and see how many standard deviations away from the average each value is. It's the accepted practice for comparing across two different data sets.

Udacity covers it in their data science course: https://www.udacity.com/course/viewer#!/c-st095/l-81689336/m...