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Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40

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Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40

#41

Post by ljm »

jerf wrote: post #30
scarface74 wrote: post #10

No this is not ageism. After a certain point, if you are an individual contributor, your value is not worth more than someone with less experience. A developer with 10 years of varied experience can usually do just as well as someone with 20 years of experience. I also believe that the idea of the 10x developer while not a myth, is so rare it’s not worth trying to find for most companies. I speak as someone in my mid…

"I also believe that the idea of the 10x developer while not a myth, is so rare it’s not worth trying to find for most companies" The problem with the 10x myth is that it assumes a single dimension of productivity, and that no-one is ever negative so there's some sort of sensible, positive "minimum" to talk about. Senior developer leads a team of three other medium-experience developer, and completes the project in s…

On that basis I’d consider the junior to actually be more senior, as understanding the need of the user and building that is vital to the role. A senior engineer who churns out code without taking that step to understand the domain and build the right thing is not, in my estimation, senior at all.

Bashing at something until it finally works is, to me, something we do as beginners when we’re still in the mindset of solving every problem with code.

Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40

#42

Post by cryofan »

boyadjian wrote: post #17

Ageism is the consequence of high birth rates. If many young people are available at low prices, why would you pay more for an older worker ? You can't have everything, have three children and then asking for a high salary. There are choices to be made in life.

but birth rates in West are low...but something else is high

Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40

#43

Post by cmiles74 »

40acres wrote: post #39

I work with a lot of folks over 40, the two things I've seen that make me doubt ageism studies -- especially in tech, is that older engineers on average seem less likely to consider new technologies, and older engineers are more concerned about day to day stability and are less risk averse to consider another job which may pay higher because they have kids in school, mortgage, etc.

I have to disagree with this assertion. While my information is anecdotal I can attest to its veracity (I am 45 years old).

Over the last two months I have been arguing in a professional manner for my company to move towards .Net Core and React (away from older Framework code and Angular 1.x) Arguably neither of these technologies is super new, but they seem to be new enough that I've been getting push back over various concerns (often over learning something new). I have to say, on the whole most of the push back is from younger developers, many of whom are in their mid-thirties.

My point being that I don't believe that age is necessarily the deciding factor. In my experience most developers tend to lose some of their interest in the field at some point in their career and other do not. Everyone seems to hit that point at a different age, some of them quite young and others quite old.

I'm definitely risk averse but not averse to new technologies. ;-)

Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40

#44

Post by badpun »

rpmcmurphy wrote: post #36

The bigger issue for us Olds is that we have serious financial and family responsibilities that make us highly undesirable employees in today's modern "I've got mine! Fuck you!" society. Imagine that you have a close family member with Stage 4 cancer. Who wants to have you on their team? Nobody, that's who. And you better be living in a jurisdiction with solid legal protections, or they will fire you in a hot second.…

Companies in general love people with obligations (kids, high mortgage etc.) because they're much more afraid of being fired, and thus are more obedient.

Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40

#45

Post by bduerst »

bcheung wrote: post #40

Based on the findings I think it is premature to say this is ageism. There are multiple other factors going on here: 1) As senior developers become more skilled there is a diminishing return in terms of compensation. This happens regardless of age. A developer with 40 years of experience is not really worth that much more than a developer with 30 years of experience. 2) As developers get nearer towards retirement the…

True, but it should be easy to control for this right? Check the progression in other skilled fields and cross reference into tech.

Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40

#46

Post by plutonorm »

ljm wrote: post #41
jerf wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I also believe that the idea of the 10x developer while not a myth, is so rare it’s not worth trying to find for most companies" The problem with the 10x myth is that it assumes a single dimension of productivity, and that no-one is ever negative so there's some sort of sensible, positive "minimum" to talk about. Senior developer leads a team of three other medium-experience developer, and completes the project in s…

On that basis I’d consider the junior to actually be more senior, as understanding the need of the user and building that is vital to the role. A senior engineer who churns out code without taking that step to understand the domain and build the right thing is not, in my estimation, senior at all. Bashing at something until it finally works is, to me, something we do as beginners when we’re still in the mindset of so…

In my experience in industry, the developers are seldom if ever allowed access to what the client actually wants. That's what the po or product manager/ba are for. This is the reason I have come to loathe software development.

Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40

#47

Post by plutonorm »

Grustaf wrote: post #20

1. There are diminishing returns to experience within software development, as you get more experience there are fewer and fewer companies that have any use for those extra years of experience. 2. The perceived value of that extra experience is even lower. How many recruiters or even engineering managers can honestly claim to be able to leverage the last 5 years of experience from someone with 20+ years? 3. In most i…

And even if they are, transition into management is much harder. In my experience in the UK, in London at small to medium companies, I've never seen a promotion to management and only once seen promotion to senior developer. Developers are not seen as management material - and breaking out of the that perception is incredibly difficult.

Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40

#48

Post by hinkley »

malvosenior wrote: post #4

> In Hired’s findings, tech pros were never offered more than $149,000 annually. I don't know where they are getting their data but that's a lot lower than good developers of all ages make. You can see on https://levels.fyi that large tech companies will pay senior developers 200-400k routinely. I don't necessarily doubt the analysis but the data is very incomplete if they didn't see a single offer over $150k.

Are you seeing over $150k anywhere other than SF?

Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40

#49

Post by hinkley »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #26
jknoepfler wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google&track=Software%20Engi... (the data in the actual link you're responding to, with actual level information) $120k/year is what I'd expect someone with 2-3 years experience to be making at Google as a base, with anywhere from $35k-$80k additional in signing bonus and stock offerings. "Senior Software Engineer" means different things at different companies, but to me it indicates s…

Despite what everyone would like to believe, FANG isn't the industry.

Nor is San Francisco. Which probably explains the downvotes.

Re: Earnings Ceiling for Tech Professionals over 40

#50

Post by jbay808 »

scarface74 wrote: post #33
jerf wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I also believe that the idea of the 10x developer while not a myth, is so rare it’s not worth trying to find for most companies" The problem with the 10x myth is that it assumes a single dimension of productivity, and that no-one is ever negative so there's some sort of sensible, positive "minimum" to talk about. Senior developer leads a team of three other medium-experience developer, and completes the project in s…

My statement was referring specifically to an "individual contributor" and I said as much in the original post. If you are a team lead, by definition you aren't just an "individual contributor" and you're also not the "10x developer". Your increased effectiveness is because you have a team under you and you are a "force multiplier". but "careful, paranoid engineering" does too. Almost by definition, your really junio…

I've worked with a 10x developer. He wasn't a team lead because he wasn't interested in being a team lead and also probably wouldn't have been nearly as good at it as the person who was.

But man, was he ever transformative. Not only in terms of handling the most technically challenging tasks and solving the black-magic challenges that nobody else wanted to touch, knowing the C standard like the back of his hand, and getting things done quickly to a high standard of quality. He also was a force multiplier, because he would help others debug their problems when they got stuck and get them back on their feet and productive again, give advice for how to best handle various edge cases, and designed and maintained our tooling. He was a mentor to junior members of the team, and the team lead would ask his input and advice for how long things might take, what risks he could see causing delays, etc.

You can't plan around having someone like that but they make a world of difference if you're lucky enough to work alongside one.

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