Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets • Hacker News Board

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#51

Post by j7ake » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:47 PM UTC

lazyasciiart wrote: post #45

tnolet wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but it’s kinda besides the point. Using Twitter for this makes it global by default.

It's not beside the point when the point is "he was trying to make non-americans feel bad".

Indeed the original tweet could have been more US-centric than I originally read (the replies came from all over the world, I pointed out Nigeria because there was one reply from there)

My main point wasn’t that he was trying to make non Americans bad but rather I don’t believe his premise that he was disclosing his salary information for a greater good of helping minorities and disadvantaged people.

Again I support disclosing salary openly but disguising it as an act of social good sounds distasteful to me.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#52

Post by dijit » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:47 PM UTC

tchaffee wrote: post #22

When I started my career in software engineering, I increased my salary 300% in one year as a result of ignoring taboos and talking to peers about what they were earning. Anecdote yes, but perhaps useful to some who look at these numbers and wonder if they could earn more. Chances are you could. The taboo around talking about salaries is to the benefit of companies and who do actually have that information already. N…

When I was a junior sysadmin in London I earned 26k;

If not for a senior engineer talking openly about salary I would not have had the guts to ask for a significant increase. At the time the very senior people in the company were earning 75-85k, and the mid-levels between 32-45k.

I was fortunate enough to be taught very well, I became senior in that company in a very short amount of time, but I never got the raise that the seniors got, but when I was looking at other companies, I knew what I was "worth" realistically. I'm eternally thankful for the internal culture at that company during that time, because I would not have had nearly the amount of confidence necessary to ask for such a (seemingly) large amount of money.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#53

Post by iso1210 » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:48 PM UTC

theredlion wrote: post #43

j7ake wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are black and female software engineers in USA right now the demographic that really needs helping? Im not American, so I probably need clarification, but what is their current situation compared to white males in the same position at a company?

That's an interesting question. I'm personally aware of several large companies in my area which, due to diversity pressure, blatantly discriminate in favor of minorities and women. The performance required from a white man in an interview for the same job is higher. That is to say that a white man will be openly discarded in favor of a minority/woman with a similar background when applying for the same job. This is…

My company did a pan-company investigation into how much people were being paid, and found that in every job title Women were being paid on average 30% less then men.

With that in hand it's clear that it makes more sense to employ women.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#54

Post by theredlion » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:49 PM UTC

senordevnyc wrote: post #49

theredlion wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting question. I'm personally aware of several large companies in my area which, due to diversity pressure, blatantly discriminate in favor of minorities and women. The performance required from a white man in an interview for the same job is higher. That is to say that a white man will be openly discarded in favor of a minority/woman with a similar background when applying for the same job. This is…

Do you have any evidence for this? Have you seen data covering hiring evals for many different candidates? Or is this just your own bias telling a story based on anecdotes and rumors? I’m not saying this never happens, but it’s much easier to tell yourself that the reason you didn’t get a job was because of some unfair factor beyond your control than to admit maybe you just failed to meet the bar.

I know a lot of people. This is based on conversations with those involved in the hiring process at various companies. They are proud of it and see it as not only a plus, but a social benefit, which causes people to be very boastfully vocal in social situations

Very strange time we live in.

I do agree with your second paragraph, but this isn't regarding anything that has happened to me personally

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#55

Post by senordevnyc » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:49 PM UTC

pansa2 wrote: post #47

senordevnyc wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s really not that bad. I just took a job in NYC at Square making $420k my first year (though stock price increase is already pushing that closer to $500k) and my rent is $4300 for a 2 bedroom in a doorman building in manhattan. It’s expensive, but only about 10% of my gross income. Once you include my wife’s income, it’s even less of a big deal (and she makes under six figures). You might consider CA a hellscape f…

> higher than anywhere else in the country. Anywhere else in the world . For example, in London you’d probably pay at least 50% of your current rent, but only receive 25% of your current salary.

I tend to think that’s true, but I can’t say for sure. I do think someone working remotely while living in an ultra-low CoL place like Vietnam might come out ahead, but that has serious downsides as well, particularly if you ever want to move back to a developed country. You’ll have lived well in Vietnam but you won’t have built much wealth compared to your SF/NYC/Seattle peers.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#56

Post by awinder » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:50 PM UTC

I’d be really curious to peer into the financial literacy across the wide range of salaries in here. I have no idea where my experience falls, but I feel like I goofed up for the first several years of my career and slowly built up better habits and understanding. “Luckily” I wasn’t making 6 figures 3 years in so the bad habits were only so relatively bad ;-).

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#57

Post by theredlion » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:52 PM UTC

iso1210 wrote: post #53

theredlion wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an interesting question. I'm personally aware of several large companies in my area which, due to diversity pressure, blatantly discriminate in favor of minorities and women. The performance required from a white man in an interview for the same job is higher. That is to say that a white man will be openly discarded in favor of a minority/woman with a similar background when applying for the same job. This is…

My company did a pan-company investigation into how much people were being paid, and found that in every job title Women were being paid on average 30% less then men. With that in hand it's clear that it makes more sense to employ women.

Unless your company is blatantly paying women less, which is wrong, then there are more factors involved than simply sex and pay grade.

Your second paragraph is completely logically disconnected from your first

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#58

Post by elric » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:54 PM UTC

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see much value to this "spreadsheet"? The data is unstructured, a cursory glance shows some very questionable outliers, and the number of emojis doesn't really inspire confidence.

What is the purpose of this list? Bragging rights? In which case, fine. But if it's anything else, the approach will need to be drastically refined. Collecting salary information on Twitter doesn't seem like a terribly reliable starting point. And it's impossible to compare, for instance, a US salary with a UK salary without a hell of a lot of context. 100K != 100K, even after currency conversion.

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#59

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:54 PM UTC

dzdt wrote: post #21

One of the main ways that employers keep salaries down is information asymmetry. A large business knows with certainty what salary their employees accept, and will have high quality statistical reports on what their competitors pay. Individuals especially near the start of their careers have much less information on what salary corporations may pay. The corporations use this information advantage to help in salary ne…

[deleted]

Re: Developer salary spreadsheet compiled from tweets

#60

Post by adventured » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 1:57 PM UTC

grumple wrote: post #17

Bogdanp wrote: post #3

I know these people willingly shared this information in public, but, for whatever reason, this compilation makes me uncomfortable. EDIT to clarify: what makes me uncomfortable about this is not the broad range of salaries. I don't find that surprising at all. It's gathering all this information together and associating it with people's names (and complete bios!) that bothers me. Some of them may find they want to de…

It includes people from all over the world. US skilled salaries are usually 2x+ (not just for tech, but also things like healthcare) salaries in Europe. Remember they have social safety nets and lower costs for things like education and healthcare, we do not. Also this list has a very small sample size, and very few people from big tech, otherwise the pay would skew significantly higher.

The lower cost for healthcare gap is about $5,000 to $6,000 per person in other developed nations vs the US.

It doesn't come close to offsetting the far higher US skilled salaries figures compared to Europe.

When US university costs were far lower circa year 2000, that also didn't imply a narrower gap with Europe on skilled salaries. University costs are a phenomenon caused by the US Government destructively backing ever higher education loan increases, causing a spiral of fees by universities. It wasn't caused by higher US wages (which have existed for a very long time).

That is better explained by a simple fact: the US has far higher economic output per capita than Europe.

Before this decade is out, the US will double the GDP per capita of France, Japan, UK. Unless they all snap out of stagnation soon. It's not that the US is growing super fast, it's that most developed countries haven't been growing much at all for the last ~12-13 years.