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Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

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Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#261

Post by [deleted] »

noelwelsh wrote: post #245
scarejunba wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You cannot have these high salaries without someone else getting shafted. There simply isn't enough money for everyone to be earning like this. Please substantiate your claim to this being zero sum. It does not seem self-evident.

I made no such claim. You're reading that into my words. If I have a data set from which I pick a value higher than the median there must be a value lower than the median ... otherwise the median would be higher. It's not a statement about economics but about math. I'm not saying there cannot be economic growth (though, generally, wage inequality is rising so most people aren't seeing the benefits of this).

[deleted]

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#262

Post by noelwelsh »

paxys wrote: post #255
noelwelsh wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US median family income was $60,336 in 2017, and $71,805 in California[1]. Junior developers in Silicon Valley have starting salaries around $110000, and I've heard for new college graduates getting up to $150K. I.e. twice median family income. You cannot have these high salaries without someone else getting shafted. There simply isn't enough money for everyone to be earning like this. Whether you consider inequality…

California is a big state. San Francisco median income is over $100,000, and you are still not going to be able to get your own apartment in that much. I'd argue that software developers are underpaid , considering large tech companies had been illegally colluding for years to restrict competition and keep wages low.

I agree, but I'd extend that to saying most people are underpaid. Increasing inequality shows this (unless you believe an unequal society is desirable). Software developers are underpaid less than most, though.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#264

Post by __s »

hypervis0r wrote: post #173
derangedHorse wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the opposite in my experience (at least outside of the bay area). All the engineers on my team seem to want to hire people who are like them, and are not incentivized to give minorities an easier time. The standards seem to be higher when the candidate isn't a white or Indian male.

Why would you give minorities an "easier" time? Why not the same as everyone else?

Affirmative Action

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#265

Post by laurencerowe »

RestlessMind wrote: post #226
uncletaco wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social security and Medicare are both social safety nets that one cannot take advantage of while they're working in most cases, and everything else you've mentioned either requires a person to be in extreme poverty or severely disabled. Meanwhile a healthy, young, gainfully employed person in France can take advantage of a wealth of social services and benefits. Mentioning them the way you have requires a very unchar…

> Meanwhile a healthy, young, gainfully employed person in France can take advantage of a wealth of social services and benefits. If they have such an amazing welfare system, then why are the French perennially rioting[1]? And why do so many recent French presidents have abysmal approval ratings[2]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unr... [2] Macron: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_p…

The French have a strong welfare system precisely because they are willing to take action and forcefully protest when it is threatened.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#266

Post by adventured »

noelwelsh wrote: post #233
tsycho wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Orthogonal to your anecdote, tech salaries in London are ridiculously low :(

US median family income was $60,336 in 2017, and $71,805 in California[1]. Junior developers in Silicon Valley have starting salaries around $110000, and I've heard for new college graduates getting up to $150K. I.e. twice median family income. You cannot have these high salaries without someone else getting shafted. There simply isn't enough money for everyone to be earning like this. Whether you consider inequality…

> US median family income was $60,336 in 2017

You're comparing full-time software development income versus the literal median income (which also includes people working few hours). That's your first mistake in the comparison. The median full-time individual income in the US is close to $50,000 now.

Junior developers in SV are getting $110k? The BLS numbers are such that the US median for all 1.4 million software developers is going to be close to that figure for 2020.

> You cannot have these high salaries without someone else getting shafted.

Yes you can. Wealth, incomes, productivity are not static/fixed, you can expand them rather than merely redistribute a fixed pot. As a recent example, if that wasn't true, modern China (specifically its incredible gains over the last 20-30 years) would have been impossible. Their $50-$60 trillion in new household wealth would have had to come entirely from the rest of the world's pockets (which didn't actually occur). Instead, it mostly derived from epic productivity gains.

Productivity is why US software developers can earn so much. Not because they're so much more productive in lines of code versus the rest of the world. Rather, because software developers at US tech companies produce very large economic outcomes on average. That is due to the way you can scale into the huge US economy ($22 trillion), and then push out globally; it adds up to extraordinary productivity of economic output per developer (Netflix is a good example of that in action: relatively tiny workforce, massive platform and sales, global projection; and that's why they can pay their engineers so much).

Further, the US has a very progressive income taxation system. People earning ~$110,000+ per year are carrying the tax load for the majority of the population. The US middle class has an extremely low tax burden compared to most other developed nations. High income persons paying higher taxes are what make that possible, and it produces one of the highest median after-tax income figures of any nation. That tax base pays for free healthcare for the bottom quarter of the population, among many other expensive social safety net systems.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#267

Post by JoshTriplett »

jedberg wrote: post #228
motohagiography wrote: post #158

Contrarian view: salary disclosure destroys value for people with negotiating skills, which are among the most valuable and useful skills of all. Disclosure advantages people who collude to apply political pressure (gang up) instead of appealing to principles or leveraging their skill and the value they bring. There is general social and economic harm to facilitating this behaviour. Disclosure lowers all boats in tha…

> for people with negotiating skills, which are among the most valuable and useful skills of all. You're confusing the skill of adversarial negotiation with cooperative negotiation. Cooperative negotiation is a critical business skill within the company. You are all on the same team and should have the same goals. Competitive negotiation is a good skill to have for some external negotiations. If anything, being good…

> In every org I've seen with open salaries, I've seen the opposite. That it raises all boats because everyone demands to get paid the same as the highest salary on the team.

That's not an ideal result either.

A better result would be that people get more comfortable with conversations about "here's why they make more than you, and here's what you could do to provide more value and earn more salary".

Someone shouldn't get paid more because they're a better negotiator. But they should get paid more if they provide more value.

I've heard a few stories from people at companies open about salaries that involve such conversations, but not nearly enough such stories.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#268

Post by jedberg »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #267
jedberg wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for people with negotiating skills, which are among the most valuable and useful skills of all. You're confusing the skill of adversarial negotiation with cooperative negotiation. Cooperative negotiation is a critical business skill within the company. You are all on the same team and should have the same goals. Competitive negotiation is a good skill to have for some external negotiations. If anything, being good…

> In every org I've seen with open salaries, I've seen the opposite. That it raises all boats because everyone demands to get paid the same as the highest salary on the team. That's not an ideal result either. A better result would be that people get more comfortable with conversations about "here's why they make more than you, and here's what you could do to provide more value and earn more salary". Someone shouldn'…

Yeah, that's the second part of the convo that I didn't mention. Step one, everyone demands to get paid as much as the highest salary, step two, we have a discussion about why that person makes more, step 3, sometimes they might get a small raise.

But the point is that it doesn't revert to the mean, but it reverts to the max.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#269

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

bootlooped wrote: post #232
halbritt wrote: post #157

In my experience https://www.levels.fyi provides much better information than random tweets. Not everyone works for a FAANG, but it's useful to know what their influence is in the market.

I wish there were just a little better filtering/sorting on their data. I want to know what people with my years of experience, in my metro area, in my specialization are making. You can kind of get some of that info, in certain forms. If their data (the data that is already publicly viewable on their website) were in a relational database I could write a query in about 60 seconds to pluck out what I want to know.

That level of breakdown would probably make deanonymization too easy.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#270

Post by scarface74 »

bootlooped wrote: post #256
scarface74 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I make more than they do and they think they should make the same amount, what’s to stop them from storming into the HR department and bringing my name up as a reason that they should make more? Even though it is illegal to fire someone for discussing salary, that and a nickel will buy me a piece of five cent candy. If they make more than I do, what am I going to do with that piece of information? I can’t very wel…

If you know what your coworkers make, you have a better idea what you can negotiate up to than if you didn't. That's true even if you can't go into a discussion and name names and dollar amounts that you know. If a coworker told me their compensation, I would not reveal that in a discussion about my own pay. I hope that the reverse is also true. I think it's a mature and cool-headed position to have. Not everybody is…

I can “hope” that my coworkers wouldn’t bring my name up. But I’m not putting my career in the hands of my coworkers.
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