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Is 400k/yr overpaid for a SWE?

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Re: Is 400k/yr overpaid for a SWE?

#41

Post by namaria »

radarsat1 wrote: post #30

I'm frankly super confused about salaries right now. Currently job hunting in Europe and the other day when a recruiter asked how much I was looking for I gave my current salary as a minimum of 65 euros/h and the recruiter kind of chuckled and told me that if I'm a good match I could ask for like 90. Okay, sounds great. So a few days later I was having an initial interview for a senior ML position and when asked how…

In my experience, a value per hour in Europe tends to imply contract/freelance arrangement, where you need to get a VAT number, liability insurance and have basically none of the labor rights regular employees have.

So I think the confusion is due to the fact that the interviewer interpreted as you expecting a full time regular employment contract, which gives you plenty of legal protection. In that case I have seen 45k/yr as typical for jr level developers, while 65k being an average and towards 80k for seniors.

Re: Is 400k/yr overpaid for a SWE?

#42

Post by wollsmoth »

radarsat1 wrote: post #30

I'm frankly super confused about salaries right now. Currently job hunting in Europe and the other day when a recruiter asked how much I was looking for I gave my current salary as a minimum of 65 euros/h and the recruiter kind of chuckled and told me that if I'm a good match I could ask for like 90. Okay, sounds great. So a few days later I was having an initial interview for a senior ML position and when asked how…

I don't have any number answers for you, but different companies set different budgets. They also have really different attrition numbers, but people who can get higher pay tend to not stick around too long at those lower jobs.

It's a wide range and it varies a lot, figure out what you want to be happy and try to find a company that can make it happen. This company might be used to skating by with cheaper engineers.

Re: Is 400k/yr overpaid for a SWE?

#43

Post by adventured »

EddieDante wrote: post #4

I wouldn't begrudge a SWE who makes $400K, especially if they live in California with their outrageous cost of living. Most workers in the US are woefully underpaid . Wage growth has been mostly stagnant since 1975 while productivity and profits trend ever upward. https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/

That document, as with every other claim about stagnant wages in the US since the 1970s, entirely (probably intentionally) fails to account for the massive demographic shift that has occurred since 1975.

The US middle class is not the same, 1975 vs 2022.

Show me the demographics of 1975 for the US middle class and lower middle class. Then show me the same demo for 2022.

Next show me the wealth and income figures for each demographic, 1975 vs 2022.

Hint: the US middle class is no longer entirely white; and the white people that used to dominate the US middle class have moved up. Meanwhile first and second generation Hispanic Americans have moved into the US middle class, coming from largely impoverished backgrounds and third world countries. Does that document account for any of that? Of course not.

You can trivially see this in the Fed's demographic data for wealth and income (white household income and wealth figures are well above the median figure for example; which was not true in 1975, back then they were close to one and the same), and by comparing present demographics vs past demographics.

Hispanics were 4-5% of the population in 1975.

If the white demographic moves up, and formerly poor Hispanics move into and take over the US middle class (which is exactly what's occurring), the document you linked to pretends nothing changed, there was no improvement. There was in fact vast improvement for the actual people in question.

Re: Is 400k/yr overpaid for a SWE?

#44

Post by lordgrenville »

radarsat1 wrote: post #30

I'm frankly super confused about salaries right now. Currently job hunting in Europe and the other day when a recruiter asked how much I was looking for I gave my current salary as a minimum of 65 euros/h and the recruiter kind of chuckled and told me that if I'm a good match I could ask for like 90. Okay, sounds great. So a few days later I was having an initial interview for a senior ML position and when asked how…

Totally agree that it's obnoxious to ask for a number first, but if you're going to do it makes sense to do it at the beginning. In your story, if they were reasonable they would have said, "we actually only pay around x, if that's not acceptable to you then let's not waste each other's time". That way they give you a chance to accept.

Re: Is 400k/yr overpaid for a SWE?

#45

Post by nickff »

IceMetalPunk wrote: post #20
noname120 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you heard about the Earn To Give movement? Plenty of people live under their means and dedicate their extra money to effective causes.

I hadn't heard of it, but skimming some quick reading about it, yeah, I definitely agree with it. It also led me to the term "effective altruism", which is something I've been advocating for pretty much my whole life, never knowing there was a phrase defined by it. So that's neat. I'm curious to know how what proportion of people around the world follow these principles; I can't find any definitive or combined data o…

>"... as though it's literally stupid to care about other people."

That's not what the quote means. It's generally understood to describe how young people are well-intentioned but naive, and that you come to understand your limitations and get wiser as you get older, which causes you to adopt more philosophically conservative views (see Leo Strauss for a good example).

Re: Is 400k/yr overpaid for a SWE?

#46

Post by poulsbohemian »

Once upon a time when I was a young pup, I was the sole engineer dedicated to a product with top line revenues of $60MM+/year. There were probably a dozen other engineers working on supporting and critical infrastructure that was used for that product.

I made $75,000 / year, in a major US tech hub.

So my point is - get it man. Enjoy the remote work and the big salaries and RSUs and all of it, because the generations that came before you worked darn hard to push so that you'd get all of this.

Re: Is 400k/yr overpaid for a SWE?

#48

Post by swatcoder »

No, in the pure market sense that enough businesses have decided to target the same pool of workers and can afford to pay them that much.

Yes, in the sense that most businesses can't justify that cost and that lots of SWE's make more than enough for their desired lifestyles at much lower TC.

But it's nothing new. 20-30 years ago, there was a comparable spread between SWE's who took jobs in finance companies vs the rest of us. A new top-school grad could get a job at Goldman Sachs out of college for 2-4x what someone working in most other software fields would earn because technical innovation in that space was intensely competitive and they desperately needed more hands on deck. Eventually, that divide largely evened out and the ostensibly "overpaid" sector moved to new technical frontiers.

Re: Is 400k/yr overpaid for a SWE?

#49

Post by user568439 »

radarsat1 wrote: post #30

I'm frankly super confused about salaries right now. Currently job hunting in Europe and the other day when a recruiter asked how much I was looking for I gave my current salary as a minimum of 65 euros/h and the recruiter kind of chuckled and told me that if I'm a good match I could ask for like 90. Okay, sounds great. So a few days later I was having an initial interview for a senior ML position and when asked how…

I think the recruiter meant 90€ as freelance and you asked 100k as permanent? In Europe de permanent contract includes a lot of benefits and a big risk for the company: holidays, unemployment coverage, sick coverage and normally other things like bonus, pension, phone and sometimes medical insurance and car (consultants).

For the rates I’ve seen first hand, 90€/hour of freelance corresponds to 70-80k hired salary

Re: Is 400k/yr overpaid for a SWE?

#50

Post by namaria »

passivate wrote: post #37
dakial1 wrote: post #31

Nobody is overpaid. Salaries, live everything else, follow a trend of Supply and Demand. Currently SWEs are on high demand pretty much everywhere in the world and salaries reflect that. What should we do? Educate/Train more SWEs!

Except CEOs, apparently they're always overpaid. ;)

If a existing and expanding systems doesn't seem to make sense, your understanding is more likely to be wrong then reality.
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