Ask HN: How do SMBs afford such expensive software engineers in the US? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How do SMBs afford such expensive software engineers in the US?

#31

Post by phone8675309 » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 2:18 PM UTC

Youden wrote: post #24

Fundamentally, software engineers aren't a commodity. They're not all created equal and they have their own desires and preferences which factor in to what they choose to do. The FAANGs in the US will hire basically anybody, provided that person passes their interview process and is willing to physically relocate to one of their offices, which are usually located in major cities that have high costs of living (e.g. B…

> But there are many, many competent people in the US who aren't willing to move to one of these major cities, who can't pass the FAANG hiring bar, or don't want to.

The flip-side to this is that, if you're in the middle of nowhere (and demand on-prem), it's harder to attract junior developers for the things that they typically cut their teeth on to move up. This often makes maintenance activities, smaller design and development work, and adding a few extra coders to a project more expensive than they otherwise would be because senior talent is more expensive.

Re: Ask HN: How do SMBs afford such expensive software engineers in the US?

#32

Post by phone8675309 » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 2:21 PM UTC

mooreds wrote: post #5

I have worked for a few of these. Some things they do: * have smaller staffs * hire younger/entry/intern level staff * outsource to cheap freelancers * outsource to agencies (onshore, nearshore, offshore) * buy saas solutions and glue things together with tools like Zapier * use no-code tools like Excel rather than building software * skimp on software process (no staging, no version control, etc) If the average is 1…

I can echo most of these. The small business I started my career with had a small staff, hired me directly out of college (I started there two weeks after I had my degree), moved all of their infrastructure into the cloud so they could scale on demand, did a lot of work with Excel, didn't use version control until they got bit my a major outage due to the owner developing in production and not having a backup, and finally implemented a staging process for changes after that.

This was all before the rise of SAAS, but I can imagine they're using more of that now.

Re: Ask HN: How do SMBs afford such expensive software engineers in the US?

#33

Post by fuzzy2 » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

serial_dev wrote: post #21

throwaway6734 wrote: post #17

>Software engineers in all other major countries earns about $30K - $60K on average. These countries include: Japan, China, Australia, Germany, Canada. How are salaries so low there? How do they plan on having competitive tech markets?

These numbers don't seem to be correct. I have around 5 years experience, living in Munich, immigrant, and I earn around 95K (USD). There is no indication that my salary is significantly above average amongst software developers with similar experience. Not a FAANG company, and I earned this money both at a startup and both at an established German company.

Munich is very expensive so you get appropriate money. Rural areas pull down the average a lot.

As a software engineer (not architect, senior, team lead or whatever) your salary is at the very top.

Re: Ask HN: How do SMBs afford such expensive software engineers in the US?

#34

Post by phone8675309 » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

b112 wrote: post #13

I can't imagine any software dev, working for 30k in Canada. That's close to minimum wage in most provinces, even poverty level in many cities.

It beats shoveling shit in Saskatchewan or dealing with any customer in a retail shop (remember those?).

Re: Ask HN: How do SMBs afford such expensive software engineers in the US?

#35

Post by Popegaf » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 2:26 PM UTC

Does anybody have stats on the average or media profit for SMBs with software developers per country? I'm willing to bet the differences across countries have something to do with that.

Most other countries (and economic unions like the EU) don't have a homogeneous market, which is mostly due to language and history, as well as infrastructure. Companies in the US can optimally target ~300M clients in the US alone with a digital, English offering. that number just rises if you're willing to go to other English-speaking countries. If you were to compare that to a company in say Poland, Thailand or Argentina, either your product won't reach most people because the infrastructure simply isn't there, and the market can be quite small too.

Some countries are also notoriously difficult to start a business in due to worker's rights or burdensome procedures.

Other regions in the world couldn't do/haven't done enough to provide a stable, slightly homogeneous market, due to old rivalries, foreign influences (Afghanistan, Venezuela, Chile, Egypt, Jordan, Kenya, Iran, Iraq, etc.) or just straight up negligence and arrogance.

Re: Ask HN: How do SMBs afford such expensive software engineers in the US?

#36

Post by IkmoIkmo » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 2:29 PM UTC

gifwithaj wrote: post #23

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #15

A few thoughts: 1) SMBs don't necessarily hire that many software engineers. Hell, even tons of large companies barely do. I work at a multinational (100 countries) which mostly buys off the shelf software, and uses basic tools like Excel to run a ridiculous amount of internal business processes. 2) Non-software companies tend to hire software companies, not software engineers. Due to the economies of scale that come…

The anti-American scree at the end here is hilariously inaccurate. The "inequality" has a kernel of truth- but that's why having a high salary in the US is amazing. I'm an average developer at an unglamorous company you've never heard of. I have unlimited vacation and lots of company holidays. Parental leave is full pay for 5 or 6 months, my monthly healthcare costs are the same as a single hour of wage if I was paid…

The final bit of my post wasn't talking about software developers, but simply about the differences in income between the US and EU in general, and how they don't translate into as large differences in quality of life. It's quite obvious that software developers get way better deals in the US and tons of perks, no need to add your personal story because besides it being merely an anecdote, it completely misses the point you're responding to.

Re: Ask HN: How do SMBs afford such expensive software engineers in the US?

#37

Post by 55555 » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 2:35 PM UTC

> However, if we looked up average household income, these countries aren't too different from the US. And I don't believe American coders are twice the better than coders in the other countries.

This isn't very relevant. The USA is a much larger market. It's a little bit richer than most european countries, but the total number of customers to sell to is 4-8X larger, and you can also sell to much of the rest of the world when your product is in English.

The engineers who work for non-FAANG are not a part of those high salaries. The average is not a useful number, as many are either well below it or a well above it.

But yes, in short, it's hard to hire US engineers due to them being so well-paid. This is why SMBs offshore their engineers from the rest of the world.

Re: Ask HN: How do SMBs afford such expensive software engineers in the US?

#38

Post by dave_sullivan » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 2:39 PM UTC

A lot of reasons, although a big one is probably the difference in profit margins between a FAANG and most of the rest of the economy. FAANGs have more money and a respect for the value good software engineers represent, so they pay more.

Re: Ask HN: How do SMBs afford such expensive software engineers in the US?

#39

Post by flowerlad » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 2:40 PM UTC

> And I don't believe American coders are twice the better than coders in the other countries.

Maybe not twice as better, but they are definitely better. How can they not be? America has been the immigration destination of choice, of the top coders from around the world for 3 decades.

Re: Ask HN: How do SMBs afford such expensive software engineers in the US?

#40

Post by clipradiowallet » Sun, Jul 04, 2021, 2:43 PM UTC

I've contracted and consulted for several SMB's in the past, and none of them had software engineers on staff. They would get software built/maintained via an agency that used contractors, or less often, by managing their own contractors without an agency's help.

Several SMB's had employees that had a job title unrelated to SWE, but still did lots of SWE tasks. Often these would be one individual maintaining an intranet portal, or some UI program for data entry that sales staff used.