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The Programmer Salary Taboo

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Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#191

Post by nvarsj »

potatolicious wrote: post #181
anon-e-moose wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct.

You're going to have to tell us more about your situation - where are you, what sort of company is it, and what is your general experience in software?

I'm not the OP, but I have had some experience with this when looking for my last job. I made the mistake of posting my resume on a popular tech job site, and the vast majority of contacts were from shady recruiters trying to get me to work 2 hours away in a "contract to hire" position where I would have to pay my own insurance. Making less than I was currently making, still employed at the time.

Perhaps this is similar to the OP. It was a complete ripoff - I think they were trying to take advantage of the massive layoffs going on in the tech industry in my area. The arrogance of these guys was unbelievable.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#192

Post by zenocon »

r00fus wrote: post #125
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…

Keep in mind that there are many tax tricks you can play here too, like paying yourself dividends and writing off a lot of expenses (speak to an accountant before doing so). Also the overhead of running a corporation (including lawyer, accountant, payroll, and general insurance) is not much if you're making over $100/hr. It is certainly less than 26.7% (ie, $75 of every $175 minus 15.3%) worth. Most of these costs ar…

my wife is a cpa/cfp, and this is how i set up my company. i write off most stuff (car, office supplies, computer equip, internet, phone, etc), and pay out yearly dividends on top of a base salary. for a one-man corporation, the overhead can be really minimal. if you can get health benefits from your spouse and keep nearly 40 hrs week in billable hours, you'll never look back.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#193

Post by danenania »

michaelochurch wrote: post #115
gyardley wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will they be paid a fraction of their salary if the company performs poorly? The biggest rewards go to the biggest risk-takers.

I can see the point you're trying to make, but humanistically and morally speaking, this isn't true. A person with $10 million who puts $3 million into a business isn't taking that much of a risk. There's some risk there and, yes, it should be rewarded. But a person with no net worth is taking a huge risk every time he takes a new job: career risk. This dynamic exists in startups as well. The people who are taking th…

This sort of misses the point. Maybe it's true that the employee is taking relatively more risk based on his life situation, but that doesn't matter. What matters is the business needs $3 million. The only way it can get that is by promising a sufficient return to whoever is willing to risk that much. What the amount means to the investor personally is irrelevant. The reality is there are a lot more people willing to risk their time (take a job) than $3 million, therefore the $3 million has a higher price attached. From the perspective of someone investing $3 million, seeking the best possible return the market will provide is no different than a programmer seeking the best possible wage the market will provide.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#194

Post by lutorm »

Locke1689 wrote: post #154
michaelochurch wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He wasn't saying that, he was saying that their cost of living was different.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#195

Post by nvarsj »

tzs wrote: post #36

Wait...Google starts at $100k/year for people fresh out of college with an undergraduate degree? So what do they go up to for people with experience?

I think the best, non-hearsay source for this is anonymous data at glassdoor.com. Google has quite a lot of data there as well (over 500 reports from San Jose/Mountain View).

http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Software-Engineer-San...

533 Salaries - Mean is 107,174, with a range of [70, 133]. Median is about 100K.

Bonuses are underreported in comparison. But of 24 reports, the bonus is 18K on average.

This includes experienced engineers as well. So I think the original link's claim of 100K starting salary is probably an over-estimate.

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#196

Post by jurjenh »

rapind wrote: post #170
jurjenh wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).…

For 75% efficiency I assume you mean 3/4 * 2 * $175 * 1000 = $262,500 / year. 3/4 on it's own is less than %40 efficiency. I.e. Taking half the year off. You also just stated the same thing slashcom did while meaning to correct him?

yes, quite right... maybe I should go and lie down somewhere...

But hey, at 75% efficiency at a half year's work at that rate I could probably afford it...

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#197

Post by techiferous »

barrkel wrote: post #186
watchandwait wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And on top of that the state income taxes in most states, and sales taxes that usually approach 8 or 9%, and property taxes on real estate (and autos where I live). Also if you manage to save anything after all that, you can look forward to paying dividend or capital gains taxes (a form of double taxation). It is a myth that America is a low tax nation.

Most other countries have twice that sales tax, as well as having all those other taxes. The best rough estimate of taxation burden might be proportion of government spending of GDP, which IIRC is about 35% for US, and is lower than eg most European countries.

Government spending as a percentage of GDP per country

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending#Government_...

Re: The Programmer Salary Taboo

#198

Post by danenania »

swombat wrote: post #92
Tycho wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm... when I graduate I'd definitely take a £18000 p/a job. I mean it seems at this age getting your foot in the door, getting started and putting some 'commercial experience' on your CV is far more important than the actual salary. On the other hand, if I could make a living doing freelance web development, then I could build that up until I have an income that employers would need to match (rather than just throw…

Tip: When asked about my salary expectations for my first job, I said "£20-24k". I got £22k. Many of the other people who started alongside said lower figures - and that's what they got. Don't quote something way out of the range of the company you want to work for, but don't undersell yourself either. You'll probably get what you asked for... £15-25k is dirt cheap anyway, for any large corporation, but that £10k mak…

I think freelancing is a quicker way to get established and reach a high value if you can swing the social and project management aspects. Especially early on, your value increases enormously with each deliverable product you produce. Freelancing allows you to build a portfolio quickly, and you'll be able to point others to jobs you've completed. Successful jobs also inevitably lead to referrals and you can raise your rate on every new contract as your portfolio improves and you become more valuable.

Working for a salary, you can easily get stuck on projects that aren't portfolio-worthy, don't teach you anything that useful, and which you only have a small hand in anyway. And naturally it's comparatively much harder to get pay increases. One solid project that impresses people can take you from charging $50 to $100 an hour as a freelancer overnight. Try convincing your boss to double your salary after 3 months just because you've been shipping good code.

As for breaking in, talk to as many people as you can. Go to meetups, talks, events, whatever is happening, in both the programming AND (very importantly) business/entrepreneurship categories. Just chat and share ideas. If you're confident and you've got brains, people will recognize it, and you'll soon need to beat offers away with a stick. The first gig is the hardest to get because you have nothing to point to in your portfolio. Do this one for free if you have to, or build things on your own. Whatever it takes to get something finished that you can use to prove your competence.

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