Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets • Hacker News Board

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#161

Post by angarg12 » Thu, Jan 04, 2024, 4:11 PM UTC

osigurdson wrote: post #128

As an aside, it seems that the $500K/year jobs have dried up - at least I don't see much of that on the "Who's hiring". Salary ranges seem to be more in the $100K - $200K range.

I'm in FAANG making close to that, and I have been testing the market for a few months. I found less than a handful of companies that could beat my current comp.

The vast majority of companies I've talked to seem to top around 250k even for Staff+ roles.

The author says that EU ain't no Silicon Valley, but 2024 sure ain't no 2022.

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#162

Post by nonameiguess » Thu, Jan 04, 2024, 4:12 PM UTC

michael_leachim wrote: post #60

mooreds wrote: post #3

In addition to knowing which bucket your salary comes from, I think it is also useful to know how your organization values building software. Because this affects your career just as much. * Is your company selling software development hours (consulting)? I'm this car you'll be valued for client relations skills and the ability to bang out acceptable software. * Is your company selling a software product (product com…

What category is Amazon? (the marketplace). It looks like a third category (company sells something else, but it has a software component supporting it). I am asking because I am working in a company with similar business model and I am trying to figure out what category does my work belong to. thank you. EDIT: fix msg

These categories are nowhere as cut and dry as HN seems to often think. Netflix is an even better example than Amazon. Infrastructure and delivery is certainly somewhat of a competitive advantage, but their product is not software at all. They're a media company, a production studio, a distributor. People like Shonda Rhimes are the true superstars and they get $500 million contracts that reflect that. It doesn't mean you can't have an extremely rewarding, well-compensated career as an engineer there, but you're still not Chris Hemsworth. You're not what their users really care about. Without content, there is nothing to sell, no matter how strong the software is.

Then you have something like a Raytheon. They're a far purer "technology" company than any FAANG other than Apple. Hardware and software is literally all they sell. No ads, no media, no communities. But very few of the products made there are owned by the company. They're made on behalf of third-party buyers, usually the US military, which puts you in category 3 according to this kind of breakdown, but that is extremely misleading. You're not a cost center. The pay tends to be lower compared to silicon valley standards because of government acquisition laws and the huge number of hiring constraints that have nothing to do with technical excellence, but you're still the primary value creator and the military program you're working for will treat you that way. This one is arguably even weirder because the actual "product" of the military is war and the superstars are the soldiers, pilots, line officers. Technology developers are always in a support role, but that isn't any different from working for Apple or Microsoft. Whoever is actually using those products isn't deriving value simply from using a computer. They're doing real world work with it and that work is what they really care about. Technology is always an enabler. Nonetheless, technology developers for the military make a lot more money and have far easier jobs than even a four-star general, so which role do you really want?

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#163

Post by jaymzcampbell » Thu, Jan 04, 2024, 4:16 PM UTC

mooreds wrote: post #27

jaymzcampbell wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP but I can believe it - where I work the main business is consultancy style work but to support that work there's custom generic software developed to sell/license to clients as part of a value add and there's dozens of internal tooling to support delivery teams. We have developers that will move between all 3 of those areas depending on their current allocation to client work.

Sounds awesome! Thanks for illuminating me. How are these different work streams prioritized? At first glance seems like the last category would suffer unless someone was "on the bench".

We have a process whereby people can request a change after a certain period (and team permitting) to allow people to rotate amongst different clients and different work streams. I think it's usually after 6 months on one particular thing you are eligible to request reassignment. Won't always be approved ofc.

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#164

Post by lstamour » Thu, Jan 04, 2024, 4:22 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #85

georgyo wrote: post #38

I don't understand our modern tech culture of saying maintenance is the last on the list; always getting chopped and cut; never getting a decent budget. In 20 years and several different companies I have always heard this but never agreed with it. Sure, the company wants new features to market, but the company also wants things to freaking work. During layoffs and hiring freezes I have seen SRE type orgs fair better…

It all depends on the structure of the organisation, and how well managed it is. Imagine an organisation where developers are adding features to the service, where each new feature uses $1000 of disk space and enables $10,000 of new sales. And imagine the sysadmins buy huge file servers, each new file server costs $500,000 In a highly bureaucratic organisation, the sysadmins will cross-charge the developers for disk…

… and somebody gets the bright idea to replace the sysadmins with “managed cloud” and S3 file storage, leaving the sticker price as a “digital transformation” cost until they can work out the cross-org billing using an app someone built in their spare time to read itemized bills and re-bill internal budget numbers for their fair share of resources?

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#165

Post by indymike » Thu, Jan 04, 2024, 4:24 PM UTC

There are actually four buckets:

1. Research and Development. Special tax treatment and tax credits usually apply to R&D.

2. Sales/Marketing - Pre-sale sales engineers, sometimes implementations

3. Maintenance. Developers that fix bugs and perform non-R&D work on code that usually isn’t eligible for special tax treatment or credits.

4. In hosted services/PaaS/SaaS, operations usually carry some level of swe salaries.

Understanding the tax implications of which budget and what work is being done is really important, and gets much more complex as you grow.

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#166

Post by michael_leachim » Thu, Jan 04, 2024, 4:26 PM UTC

nonameiguess wrote: post #162

michael_leachim wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What category is Amazon? (the marketplace). It looks like a third category (company sells something else, but it has a software component supporting it). I am asking because I am working in a company with similar business model and I am trying to figure out what category does my work belong to. thank you. EDIT: fix msg

These categories are nowhere as cut and dry as HN seems to often think. Netflix is an even better example than Amazon. Infrastructure and delivery is certainly somewhat of a competitive advantage, but their product is not software at all. They're a media company, a production studio, a distributor. People like Shonda Rhimes are the true superstars and they get $500 million contracts that reflect that. It doesn't mean…

100% second this, thank you

it is hard to say almost 99% product is not engineering but what it enables company to do. In a sense this division is psychological: either company cares about engineering and makes it a priority or it doesn't.

I think good proxy would be tooling which company uses, niche languages like Clojure/Erlang, open source activity, well known people in decision making positions rather than specific business type.

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#167

Post by irrational » Thu, Jan 04, 2024, 4:28 PM UTC

OJFord wrote: post #151

irrational wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is your company selling something else that has a software component or that software enables (pretty much every other company)? I'm not sure this is true? If my company sells food or clothing or shoes, they don't have a software component. I'm not sure what the breakdown is, but my gut feeling is "pretty much every other company" is wrong. I work for a company that makes clothing and shoes. We have an enormous tec…

> If my company sells food or clothing or shoes, they don't have a software component. E-commerce? I can't think of any chains without a website, or any large enough that 'company' seems apt that don't sell via it. > I work for a company that makes clothing and shoes. We have an enormous tech organization, but we aren't a consulting company, don't sell software, and don't put software into our products. Ok that's the…

I guess we are interpreting the third bullet point differently. I interpreted "Is your company selling something else that has a software component" as something like a car that has software built into it. And, I interpreted "or that software enables" as something like a board game that requires the use of a mobile app (like The Search for Planet X). In other words, the products are not useable without the software. Whereas, a t-shirt doesn't have a software component and isn't enabled by software (though, I could imagine a t-shirt with a QR code that is enabled by software, but that isn't the norm).

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#168

Post by jwineinger » Thu, Jan 04, 2024, 4:28 PM UTC

hackernoteng wrote: post #146

mooreds wrote: post #3

In addition to knowing which bucket your salary comes from, I think it is also useful to know how your organization values building software. Because this affects your career just as much. * Is your company selling software development hours (consulting)? I'm this car you'll be valued for client relations skills and the ability to bang out acceptable software. * Is your company selling a software product (product com…

My experiences: 1) programmer in IT department of major newspaper: disregarded as IT geek. very small salary. the worst office spaces. 2) senior engineer in software startup: rockstar treatment, stock options, all the things you would expect as office culture 3) senior consultant at IT consulting company: must basically be a sales guy who writes good PowerPoints. Maximize billable hours. What ever you do dont complet…

Agree with these. I was a dev at a retailer that did catalog/phone sales and was starting to use web. Small salary, small PTO, no benefits. Pay increased when the business had an existential crisis and came to rely much more heavily on tech. Next was software consulting company churning out sites designed by marketing agencies, billed to the 15 min. Small salary, small PTO, some benefits. Then I went into SaaS (startup, then a public company). Nice salary + stock, great PTO, great benefits.

Aside from the comp/PTO/benefits, I learned that consulting isn't for me. The client interactions felt... adversarial, where they were trying to get more work for less money, while we were doing the opposite. I did not like that constant tension in conversations.

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#169

Post by geodel » Thu, Jan 04, 2024, 4:30 PM UTC

vanderZwan wrote: post #110

nijave wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't "out source", they in-source by opening technology hubs in cheaper locations.

Again, I would like to see a source. I'm not saying you're wrong. Maybe you're talking about small banks in the US or something, of which I know basically nothing. I am thinking of examples like Nordea, the bank in the article I linked, which has a market share of around 20% in Sweden[0] and handles the government's bank accounts. Especially that last part makes me extremely skeptical that the Swedish government woul…

Well my brother worked in BNY Mellon India center. They have thousands of people and work core banking processing. BofA have their own India development center with thousands of employees. And this is outside of 10s of thousands outsourced to Tata, Infy etc.

You think core banking process like transfers/ trading is some kinda crown jewel. It may be in terms of messaging but most of core IT part is just a cost center.

Customer data and all need to be in their own secure data centers for legal reasons but all the processes can be designed, developed and executed from anywhere at lower cost.

Re: Software engineering salaries come from one of three budgets

#170

Post by ted6767 » Thu, Jan 04, 2024, 4:31 PM UTC

Closi wrote: post #111

jimbokun wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To simplify, you always always always want to be working in bullet point 2, if at all possible. In the other two, you are a cost to be minimized or eliminated. Only if you are working on one of the companies core products are you an asset bringing revenue into the company.

I disagree - It depends on your career aspirations, your skillset, the company, and the type of software you like making. If you are a great communicator and have a great ability to just 'get stuff done', you might be a superstar in 1 & 3, and you might find working in bullet point two highly frustrating. With number 2 you are more likely to be working on a tiny part of a larger application. My brother went from bash…

I would also add career longevity and security. I work at a number 3, I wrote and maintain all the logistics stuff. Every product they sell goes through my code to package parts, put it together and get it out the door. Average time working here is measured in decades not years. It would take a new person roughly a year to figure out what's going on. It's incredibly complicated cash cow that complies with a slew of national and international regulations related to health care. I know more than I ever want to about HIPAA, international equivalents and transportation of hazardous and infections goods.

I wouldn't mind switching to #1 and doubling my paycheck but for now I could float here until I die, and many do.