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Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

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Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#301

Post by Silhouette »

lhopki01 wrote: post #300
Silhouette wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was on 143k usd before I left London and now work remotely for about 188k usd for a UK company. This was was with stock options as well. As a salaried employee, that would be exceptionally high in almost any field. Obviously some such jobs exist, but unless you're a very senior figure in a relatively well-paid industry, you're an outlier at that compensation level.

I was a tech lead for a team in a startup but not particularly high. I know other people that were on similar salaries and I had friends who did the same thing as contractors that had much higher day rates.

I don't doubt you, but I suspect your startup was relatively well-funded and generous with its team. I know people who have earned that kind of money as well, but it's well outside the central part of the curve, even in tech and in London, for someone on salary. For independents with a good track record, sure, it's less unusual.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#302

Post by Silhouette »

ghaff wrote: post #296
Silhouette wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is management for if not to establish priorities according to the needs of the business and then determine an allocation of resources accordingly?

Companies are not exclusively top-down command economies. Or they shouldn't be.

I strongly disagree. Certainly management would normally be wise to hire good people and then listen to their advice and recommendations in a collaborative fashion, but ultimately it is management's responsibility to make these decisions and their subordinates' responsibility to execute management's plan.

There are several good reasons for this, not least that management is required to understand the bigger picture and how the activities under them fit into it, while in general subordinates are not.

Also, subordinates may have personal motivations that would conflict with the priorities of the business if everyone was free to do their own thing. A very common example is developers who come into a tech firm and want to use all the latest cool technologies because they're fun and look great on a resume, which is often not in the best interests of the business.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#303

Post by maest »

CalRobert wrote: post #221
loriverkutya wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure why you think this, tech salaries are not low compared to the London average.

But the London average is what's low.

Compared to what? Surely the average just _is_ and everything else gets measured against that.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#304

Post by christiansakai »

noelwelsh wrote: post #260
wallacoloo wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you’re saying that if GP fights for higher salary, that comes from the loss of someone already making less than him. Whereas many of us have the impression that higher salaries come at the loss of investors or shareholders, who are usually better off than yourself. Otherwise, who exactly are you shafting by asking for a higher salary?

I'm not talking about individuals asking for higher salary. I'm talking about societal inequality. You cannot have a large group of people earning a lot more than the median income without having a large group earning a lot less. European salaries are lower in part because Europe has less inequality than the US. It's a feature not a bug. That's the main point. On an individual level I'm all for people negotiating, an…

So it is zero sum? I don’t understand. Seems you are contradicting your own claims.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#305

Post by noelwelsh »

christiansakai wrote: post #304
noelwelsh wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about individuals asking for higher salary. I'm talking about societal inequality. You cannot have a large group of people earning a lot more than the median income without having a large group earning a lot less. European salaries are lower in part because Europe has less inequality than the US. It's a feature not a bug. That's the main point. On an individual level I'm all for people negotiating, an…

So it is zero sum? I don’t understand. Seems you are contradicting your own claims.

Zero sum means there is a fixed amount that is distributed between all participants.

Inequality means that the distribution over available resources is uneven. Inequality can occur in the presence of growth if the gains from growth are not distributed equitably. I.e. inequality does not imply zero sum.

To the extent that economics agree on anything they seem to agree that wage growth has stagnated since, roughly, the 1970s, inequality is rising, and gains from growth are disproportionately going to the richest.

Finally, the census measurements capture data at an instant in time. At any one instant there is a fixed amount of $s in the economy and it's a mathematical fact that comes from the definition of median that you cannot have samples (i.e. income) higher than the median without having samples lower than the median.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#306

Post by grumple »

unishark wrote: post #257
grumple wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Roughly $5k/year out of pocket That's for single young men. My mother pays > 1k per month for herself and my stepdad monthly. That's not unusual, and she has excellent insurance.

> That's for single young men. I'd say it's for any single employee (with the young being ripped off if they pay that much). But yes it generally doubles or more for spouse or family coverage.

Perhaps you don't find 1k+/month to be a lot, but I think it is. Keep in mind the median income in the nation, amongst working people, is only 31k/year. And that's before taxes, rent, etc. Sure, if you have two working, healthy adults in a household, they can swing 1k, but it's still a huge expense to the average family.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#307

Post by carterehsmith »

motohagiography wrote: post #295
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…

Negotiation is price discovery. It is literally the empirical process of discovering the clearing price of an agreement based on deductive reason instead of the blind-man's-bluff bullying of a haggle. People on the privileged end of a power imbalance always think they're being co-operative, because they necessarily know they have the power and choose whether or not to co-operate. Negotiation is the art of managing po…

I don't understand your point. You seem to be all about "price discovery", but if it goes the wrong way, ie you discover the price is below what you accept, it is "bullying".

Weird.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#308

Post by kragen »

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…

> There simply isn't enough money for everyone to be earning like this.

That's incoherent. Salaries are a flow, not a stock, and M2 is wildly variable anyway. Or do you just mean that if lower-earning people earned more, the median would be higher?

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#309

Post by kragen »

noelwelsh wrote: post #260
wallacoloo wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you’re saying that if GP fights for higher salary, that comes from the loss of someone already making less than him. Whereas many of us have the impression that higher salaries come at the loss of investors or shareholders, who are usually better off than yourself. Otherwise, who exactly are you shafting by asking for a higher salary?

I'm not talking about individuals asking for higher salary. I'm talking about societal inequality. You cannot have a large group of people earning a lot more than the median income without having a large group earning a lot less. European salaries are lower in part because Europe has less inequality than the US. It's a feature not a bug. That's the main point. On an individual level I'm all for people negotiating, an…

> You cannot have a large group of people earning a lot more than the median income without having a large group earning a lot less.

Actually you can; you can have a large group of people learning a lot more than the median income, arbitrarily more, counterbalanced by an equally large group of people earning barely less than the median income. This does in fact happen in practice and is precisely the reason the median income is so much lower than the per-capita GDP.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#310

Post by unishark »

grumple wrote: post #306
unishark wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's for single young men. I'd say it's for any single employee (with the young being ripped off if they pay that much). But yes it generally doubles or more for spouse or family coverage.

Perhaps you don't find 1k+/month to be a lot, but I think it is. Keep in mind the median income in the nation, amongst working people, is only 31k/year. And that's before taxes, rent, etc. Sure, if you have two working, healthy adults in a household, they can swing 1k, but it's still a huge expense to the average family.

> Keep in mind the median income in the nation, amongst working people, is only 31k/year.

I don't think this number is working people only, I think it is among everyone.

And who said $1k isn't a lot?

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