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The Programmer Salary Taboo

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Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#151

Post by rlpb »

Luyt wrote: post #138
nostromo wrote: post #55

Here's a trick I once heard to share salary with your coworkers without the uncomfortableness of finding out you are over or under-paid. Over beers with several of your coworkers, each write down your salary on a piece of paper and then mix them up. Randomly draw them out of a hat and then read them to each other. If you're all roughly peers, then you get all the benefit of knowing the salary range of the group, with…

Very nice idea, but wouldn't the handwriting give away who owns what? Maybe everyone should print their salary in Arial 12 Bold on a 1" by 2" piece of paper, so that there will be no clues to who made what note. OTOH, this might be a bit complicated in a pub setting ('over beers').

Time to knock up salaryshare.com?

(oh look, it's already registered)

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#152

Post by [deleted] »

wging wrote: post #94
MrFoof wrote: post #62

Salaries never stay secrets forever. Hiding them only delays the inevitable. Last year we were having a discussion at lunch. Coworker was building a new house, and when it came to the numbers it was let loose that it was going to cost about $700K. This didn't seem like much, except to a young guy that joined the previous year and had done nothing but kick ass and take names. The new guy was arguably the most talented…

$175/hour * 40 hours/week * 50 weeks/year = $350,000/year, for anyone else (like me) who can't immediately estimate equivalent yearly rates.

[deleted]

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#153

Post by ajg1977 »

brooksbp wrote: post #146
MrFoof wrote: post #62

Salaries never stay secrets forever. Hiding them only delays the inevitable. Last year we were having a discussion at lunch. Coworker was building a new house, and when it came to the numbers it was let loose that it was going to cost about $700K. This didn't seem like much, except to a young guy that joined the previous year and had done nothing but kick ass and take names. The new guy was arguably the most talented…

Can someone please shed some light on what would be a good strategy to follow if you were in his position talking to HR, manager, CTO? What's the best way to save yourself once you've realized you're worth nearly double, triple, or quad your current comp pkg?

Honestly, the best way to obtain your newly-discovered market worth is to leave and find another job. In almost every job your only chance of negotiating a competitive salary is before you start.

Sure, you can talk to HR and your manager and perhaps see some form of bump in salary, but if you're significantly underpaid then a) it's likely other people are too and they won't want to rock the boat, b) there's a decent chance you wouldn't leave anyway, and c) even if you do chances are they can fill your position for what they're paying you now.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#154

Post by Locke1689 »

michaelochurch wrote: post #77
teej wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cost of living adjustment is one of the easiest calculations to do. Is it as simple as this ( http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=cost+of+living+in+mount... ), or did I misunderstand your point? It doesn't seem that complicated to take a $100k salary point and normalize for cost of living.

Cost of living is very complicated. Most software engineers making $100,000 are young, single, don't have kids, and are comfortable with renting. Most software engineers making $200,000 are older and have kids, which means they need larger living spaces and have a strong preference for owning rather than renting. On this alone, you need different conversion factors. Also, the distance/price curve is different for dif…

Unless the salary is commensurate with increased value or output, I see no reason why older SDEs should make more than younger devs. To be clear, there is often great value in older SDEs, but "because they have kids and want a house" is not a reason to pay them more.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#155

Post by Retric »

bennysaurus wrote: post #148
techiferous wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But remember that there is non-billable work (accounting, etc.) and a 15.3% self-employment tax. And also remember that there are probably not 50 weeks of 40 hours/week at this company but rather short-term or part-time work. And you are paying for your own benefits. I've found a good (albeit a bit conservative) rule-of-thumb is to convert the hourly wage into the yearly salary. Working as a consultant for $175/hour…

Even using your conservative numbers, this guy is earning almost 3 times what he was previously, a fantastic effort and do envy him :-)

That's 3+ times what he was making while reducing his hours or 6+ times his salary if he is pulling overtime.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#156

Post by jurjenh »

slashcom wrote: post #100
wging wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$175/hour * 40 hours/week * 50 weeks/year = $350,000/year, for anyone else (like me) who can't immediately estimate equivalent yearly rates.

$x/hour * 40 hr/wk * 50 wk/yr = 2 n 1000 The general rule is always "times 2, add 3 zeros" to do it in your head.

That would never work. You'd find some garbage in the output, or even worse, get a core dump due to n being undefined. I think you mean 2x * 1000. .... or I've been refactoring my code for too long.

But yes, this is generally the rule I use as well, take the hourly rate and double it and add a K (eg $30/hr = $60K)

Doesn't include holidays, sick leave or efficiency trade-offs (billable time vs maintenance, research). Personally I use an estimate of about 75% efficiency to get a realistic answer, so then your formula becomes 3/4 * x * 1000

So at $175/hr I'd expect something like 130,000 annually. Given that its said he's quite frugal and doesn't mind hard work, it could well end up being around the 250-300K, but I'd expect he'd end up burning out after a year or 3.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#157

Post by jrockway »

benihana wrote: post #16
jrockway wrote: post #2

I've always wanted to write exactly this blog post. Keeping your salary confidential is great for big companies, but it benefits you in no way. You should be making what your coworkers make. If you make less, you're being fucked, plain and simple. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you can remedy the situation. Sadly, some people go their whole careers without doing so. FWIW, my first programming job only paid $…

>FWIW, my first programming job only paid $45,000 a year. What a ripoff. How is that a ripoff? That seems right at about average for starting salary programming.

If people are getting $100,000 right out of college, then $45,000 is not very good.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#158

Post by Nycto »

derwiki wrote: post #96
psadauskas wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep the offer at 100K. If he's no better than the others, you can find another one. If you keep missing out on hiring because other companies pay more, then you need to raise your standard salary, because all your other engineers will jump ship within a year or two.

But what if it had already cost $10k in resources to recruit him and get him this far? What if it costs $10k to find the next person who will accept $100k? Then it's a wash, and all you've done is lost time.

It's only a wash if your only gauge is money. If you hire him, you've potentially sacrificed moral. Sure, it isn't immediately meassurable in dollars, but it is still an important price to pay.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#159

Post by anon-e-moose »

krakensden wrote: post #144
Tangaroa wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to buy insurance for your IT job? Please describe. I've never heard of this before. Are there different standards for employee fault in different states? Are there any notable court cases? I did once work at a place where employees were financially liable for the cost to the company of any mistakes they made, but I assumed that was legally along the same lines as the company's policy of not sending employees…

He probably means health insurance.

Correct.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#160

Post by nopassrecover »

ratsbane wrote: post #117
techiferous wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But remember that there is non-billable work (accounting, etc.) and a 15.3% self-employment tax. And also remember that there are probably not 50 weeks of 40 hours/week at this company but rather short-term or part-time work. And you are paying for your own benefits. I've found a good (albeit a bit conservative) rule-of-thumb is to convert the hourly wage into the yearly salary. Working as a consultant for $175/hour…

A minor correction: it's not as bad as 15.3%. The self-employment tax is really just the company share of FICA withholding (6.2%) plus Medicare withholding (1.45%) If you're an employee you pay 6.2%+1.45%=7.65% and your employer pays the same. If someone else (employer) is not paying the 7.65% then you do. However, for 2011 the FICA rate for employees is 4.2% instead of 6.2%, so the self-employment tax remains effect…

As "bad" as 15%? Tax is at least 38% here in Au for that wage (was 60% not so long ago).
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