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My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

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Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#331

Post by dmarucco »

gettalo wrote: post #166
dmarucco wrote: post #120

This is certainly an intresting post and i likethe OP attitude. We should be totally transparent about our compensation as he did. Salary is just the result of a negotiation, nothing else, in the majority of cases it does not reflect anything more than your "perceived" value. White male born in the '88 in Italy. I have a bachelor degree and working since 2008. Here in Italy is quite uncommon to have big jumps in sala…

Isn't 32k a bit low for a laureato with 10year experience? https://www.hays.it/cs/groups/hays_common/@it/@content/docum...

Yes, you are right (Thank you for the link). As i was saying, salary is a strange combination of opportunity cost and perceived value. And it's always difficult to understand if they are exploiting you or it's only your fault because you fail to "sell" yourself...

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#332

Post by choot »

Mine:

2011 - 20K USD

2012 - 20K USD

2014 - 20K USD (burned out working for the startup founder)

2015 - 50K USD (ranted at a club about my founder while drunk and another founder offered to pay double)

2016 - 150K USD (interviewed at established tech company)

2017 - 200K USD ( same company promoted me to project manager)

2018 - 500K USD (finally became executive)

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#333

Post by kspaans »

I studied at UWaterloo and had many internships from 2007-2010 for which I forget the pay I was making, but I remember all of my full-time amounts (I started with around 2 years of work experience):

2012-2013: RIM/Blackberry in Waterloo, Canada: CAD 70,000, no bonus or stock, 15 days of vacation or so, 40h per week, software developer

2014-2016: YourGolfTravel in London, UK: GBP 41,000 first year, GBP 43,000 second year, no bonus or stock, 20 days vacation or so, 40h per week, software developer

2016-2017: Green Chef in Mountain View, California: USD 125,000 first year, USD 135,000 when I got promoted to team lead in mid 2017, $8k worth of stock options (post round B I believe, ~0.04%), "unlimited vacation", really crap health insurance, 40h per week with some long days from being on-call with time-off-in-lieu given, software developer

2017-present: software developer & architect at TELUS digital in Toronto, Canada, for not less than I was paid in the US

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#334

Post by russnewcomer »

Mostly middle of America here. Not a throwaway because I think that part of American culture is negative.

2001 - 2003 Various intern-level roles in Kansas/Nebraska. ~8/hr.

2003 - 2005 Intern/Part time sole developer/IT at manufacturing company in central Kansas. ~$12/hr.

2005 Graduated with Bachelor's in Computer Systems.

2005 - 2007 Applications Developer (Programming, general IT, software project management) at same company above in central Kansas. Started at $42k, ended around 50k. 40hrs wk

2007 - 2010 IT Director at international school outside of America. 28k. Technical responsibilities about 30hrs/wk, other work at school (substituting, student activities, etc) ~20 more.

2010 - 2012 Network Admin / Developer, Omaha NE. (for MSP) 30k -> 35k 45+ hrs/wk

2012 - 2018 Mobile Software Developer, Omaha NE (ag-tech company) 45k -> 80k. 40hrs/wk.

2018 - present Senior Software Engineer 85k (in healthcare) 40hrs/wk.

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#335

Post by nnnate »

Aeolun wrote: post #224

I’m a bit sad about seeing some of the numbers here, and happy about seeing some others to add some perspective. For me: - 2010 Company A €37000 - Netherlands - 2011 Freelance €21000 - Netherlands - 2012 Company B €34000 - Netherlands - 2013 Company C ¥2.5M (€19000) - Japan - 2014 Company C ¥3.6M (€27000) - Japan - 2016 Company D ¥5.0M (€38000) - Japan - 2017 Company D ¥5.5M (€42000) - Japan - 2018 Startup E ¥6.0M (€…

How was your transition into a Japanese work environment? Were the raises you got working at the same company asked for or just given by the company?

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#336

Post by ponyous »

skj wrote: post #280
ponyous wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like it's more important to change titles than company according to your history. To be honest I'm a bit offended you consider yourself senior with 2 years of experience.

The "senior" title is not about the length of your tenure. It's about your ability to independently solve difficult problems and provide leadership to those around you.

The word itself implies more experience than others. More experience is usually correlated to length of your tenure. But yes I agree, other qualities of senior developers include what you wrote.

Just being a devils advocate here: I was 14 leading the school programming club and I thought I solved really difficult issue setting up gentoo. Senior at 14?

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#337

Post by rbx800 »

Tehchops wrote: post #330
rbx800 wrote: post #315

I'm an extreme outlier. No degree. Started coding as a child. Dropped out of college. United States (not in SV). 2000-2002 - 25k hardware technician / repair 2003-2005 - 45k web developer 2006 70k - biometrics/vision developer 2007 - 100k - 'Enterprise' developer 2008 - 105k 2010 - 120k 2011 - 190k - F500 developer (base+bonus) 2012 - 200k 2013 - 215k 2014 - 220k 2015 - 225k 2016 - 160k - restart in another field (pa…

> 2018 - 280k Well done. When I hear "enterprise", I'm assuming C#/Java?

Thanks. Yes indeed, C# with a dash of cloud/big data.

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#338

Post by pc86 »

Someone1234 wrote: post #296

These threads always invite the outliers (i.e. those who want to humble brag). Here's mine outside Washington/California/Silicon Valley/NYC: - $40K: 2010-2013, "DevOps" at small startup. No ownership/shares. - $45-72K: 2014-Current, Programmer (various job titles) working for state's education department Even management here only make $90K capping out around $115K~. But cost of living is low. These threads never have…

Low cost of living checking in, primarily due to food and housing, which are ~50% and ~15-20% of the Bay Area respectively. A Started professional software dev in 2010 after freelancing for $45, raise/promotion to low $50's before getting a new job for $72, raise/promotion to high $70's before getting a new job for $98, promotion to $115 + 10% discretionary/performance bonus. All web development to start, last promotion put me in architecture/pseudo-management roles that includes more backend systems and integrations. Tech roles at my current job top out in the low to mid $130's + 10%, non-Exec management seems to be in the $125-185 range but obviously that info is pretty hard to get reliably. If you don't have any desires to be in management or architecture roles and you just want to be in your IDE coding all day, you can get to $90-100k reliably, and in this area that's enough to max out your 401k, a Roth IRA, and save.

I'd love to move to a city and get companies on my resume that people have heard of outside of a 30 mile radius, but SF/NYC are nonstarters as they'd be a 50%+ effective pay cut, and even the less mainstream ones like Chicago, Boston, Dallas, San Diego would be 30% or more.

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#339

Post by mysalarythrow »

Male, went to a top 5 CS school, US west coast

2001: BigCo $76,000/year + $20,000 signing bonus (first job out of school)

2007: Freelancing between $100-$200/hr depending on project

2012: Startup #1 $180,000/year + $75,000 signing bonus + a bit of stock that's never been worth anything (but I exercised upon leaving and paid a lot of taxes on, so I'm net negative ~$300k)

2015: Startup #2 $240,000/year + lots of stock that's never been worth anything

Some thoughts on equity and BigCos vs. Startups:

Before going to Startup #1 I rejected offer of ~$2MM RSUs at BigCo #2 (since split, now worth ~$15MM) and offer of ~$2MM RSU at BigCo #3 (now worth ~$10MM) in order to join what looked like a sure thing. Got another offer from BigCo #2 a few years later for ~$1MM RSUs (now worth $4MM).

My peers that went to BigCos have done far, far better than me financially. All are above $500k/year in total comp, and quite a few above $1MM/year due to FAANG stocks going up so much.

Startup compensation math just doesn't work when you're competing against the BigCos these days. Liquidity horizons are ~10 years for the few successes that work out, the equity portions are meager (esp after dilution). Even ignoring the risk of no liquidity event, you still come out behind what the big companies are paying these days.

I'll probably never join a startup again, but if I do, all salary assumptions assume an equity value of zero.

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#340

Post by theandrewbailey »

vonmoltke wrote: post #272
prepend wrote: post #23

I think this is really interesting and glad OP posted it as a reference. I just assumed that everyone saves their digital paystubs and calculating precise salary at any point in ones career is trivial. I was surprised when OP was unsure of salary amounts or when precisely raises went into effect. While I think this is cool from a career planning perspective, I don’t think it’s very useful from OP’s aim of correcting…

> I just assumed that everyone saves their digital paystubs and calculating precise salary at any point in ones career is trivial. First off, not everyone gets digital paystubs. It depends on how the company manages payroll, and whether they keep it in-house or subcontract it. Second, even if you do get a digital paystub, it is frequently a manual operation to download and save it outside of the payroll system. I per…

I don't keep paystubs, but I've kept every one of my IRS w-2 forms. It should be possible to pro-rate the total compensation from approximate hire/leave dates, if I need to.
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