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U.S. Software developer wages fall 2% as workforce expands

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Re: U.S. Software developer wages fall 2% as workforce expands

#51

Post by nandemo »

nknighthb wrote: post #46
nandemo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two related thoughts that always occur to me in these discussions: * Many (I wouldn't say most but at least a sizeable minority) American programmers and IT workers display reservations regarding the policy of issuing visas such as H1Bs for a large number of foreign workers, because it's perceived as unnecessary or perceived as catering purely to the interests of megacorps. I wonder, do those software developers else…

I think you're overly focused on global economics. H1B abuse presents local economic problems. Wages for programmers working in San Francisco are higher than wages for the same programmers in, say, Lexington, both are higher than China, and all are related to local cost of living. If a company abuses H1Bs to import cheap programmers from China to San Francisco and keep paying them Chinese rates, San Francisco program…

Outsourcing manufacturing also depresses local salaries. It's just that it's not very visible anymore. I think it's fair to assume that, out of all unemployed Americans, there are some who would happily take a factory job paying $X; but $X is too high compared to the equivalent Chinese worker salary.

I totally understand that some programmers feel more competition is not in their best interest. If they would just say they are protecting their turf, then I'd understand. Doctors and lawyers limit the number of licenses, certain trades restrict their jobs to unionized workers, etc.

I'm just wondering if their objections have other grounds, e.g. moral or public policy principles, and in that case whether those principles would apply to e.g. blue collar workers (or phone technical support, or farm workers etc), and whether they would be willing to pay more for US-made products in order to support American-based manufacturing.

> If a company abuses H1Bs to import cheap programmers from China to San Francisco and keep paying them Chinese rates,

I think you're resorting to unnecessary hyperbole here. There's public data on H1B salaries and they're far above median Chinese salaries.

In any case, my question above concedes the assumption that programmer salaries are depressed to some extent.

Re: U.S. Software developer wages fall 2% as workforce expands

#52

Post by guard-of-terra »

mrgordon wrote: post #32
guard-of-terra wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we take ruby, you still have to know ruby, rails, js, jquery, sql, quite a few libs, html, css, be familiar with ie/webkit/firefox, be aware of sql injection, xss, csrf and stuff. Do not forget http, rest, be able to understand caching, dns, proxying, load balancing. It's a lot of knowledge. In 2002 you could get away with a perl script! use CGI;

Yeah it is very difficult to find Rails developers who are on the market. Wages for Rails developers have certainly been going up in the Bay Area, even including the tons of junior hires, because no one can find senior talent. Maybe this isn't the case in the middle of the country where businesses don't realize that a 10x programmer is easily worth 2x the salary of a brand new programmer. Ruby may be easier to pick u…

Even 1x programmer still has to know a lot of topics or his products will be lacking.

Re: U.S. Software developer wages fall 2% as workforce expands

#53

Post by nandemo »

jlgreco wrote: post #40
nandemo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two related thoughts that always occur to me in these discussions: * Many (I wouldn't say most but at least a sizeable minority) American programmers and IT workers display reservations regarding the policy of issuing visas such as H1Bs for a large number of foreign workers, because it's perceived as unnecessary or perceived as catering purely to the interests of megacorps. I wonder, do those software developers else…

* It seems a lot of people on HN are favourable to policies allowing working from home. Most companies still don't have such policies, but I suspect that if telecommuting ever becomes commonplace (e.g. due to software development process or technological changes), it will depress salaries far more than the measly 60~80k H1Bs per year have ever done. For every H1B holder there are certainly many others who are skillfu…

Exactly. In fact, I was thinking not only of India and China, countries that are traditional sources of H1B programmers, but also Western Europe, Mexico, Brazil, etc.

Re: U.S. Software developer wages fall 2% as workforce expands

#54

Post by nknighthb »

nandemo wrote: post #51
nknighthb wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're overly focused on global economics. H1B abuse presents local economic problems. Wages for programmers working in San Francisco are higher than wages for the same programmers in, say, Lexington, both are higher than China, and all are related to local cost of living. If a company abuses H1Bs to import cheap programmers from China to San Francisco and keep paying them Chinese rates, San Francisco program…

Outsourcing manufacturing also depresses local salaries. It's just that it's not very visible anymore. I think it's fair to assume that, out of all unemployed Americans, there are some who would happily take a factory job paying $X; but $X is too high compared to the equivalent Chinese worker salary. I totally understand that some programmers feel more competition is not in their best interest. If they would just say…

> Outsourcing manufacturing also depresses local salaries.

No, it moves jobs, generally entire categories of jobs, to lower-cost areas. If someone wishes to continue working in that type of job, they must do it in a place with lower cost of living.

> I totally understand that some programmers feel more competition is not in their best interest.

That has nothing to do with anything I said, and in fact I pretty clearly articulated that such a view has nothing to do with the fear some people have of the H1B program.

> I think you're resorting to unnecessary hyperbole here.

I think you're reading things into my comment that are not there, because you wrongly assume I oppose H1B visas.

Re: U.S. Software developer wages fall 2% as workforce expands

#55

Post by TheCoelacanth »

mkumm wrote: post #37

I wonder how much of the $2k decrease could be contributed to geography? I think we are seeing more opportunities for technical jobs throughout the US, lowering the percentage of developers that need to be paid a Silicon Valley wage.

Yes, this could be an instance of Simpson's paradox. If more jobs were created in low paying areas, the salaries could rise in every single geographic area, but still decrease overall.

Re: U.S. Software developer wages fall 2% as workforce expands

#56

Post by zanny »

ababababa2 wrote: post #35
guard-of-terra wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's up with C++ in 2002 and today? If you knew C with classes in 2002 (MFC style) you were good, if you knew GoF patterns you were elite. Today you have to know STL, auto/smart/shared pointers, all kinds of right casts, you have to know boost (a huge code base) and on top of that you are expected to know C++0x (or how is it called?) with its lambdas, autos and stuff, while still understanding the whole "classic" C…

Your example is flawed. C++0x is easy to learn. For example, autos is just the ability to say "auto myFloat = 5.0;" and it will default to float. Lambdas in C++ is fairly easy. right casts? trivial [especially with auto]. Templates of templates of templates are easy as well. 64-bit? ARM? The whole point of C\C++ is to make yourself not assembly. You shouldn't worry about 64-bit vs 32-bit as long as you use proper thi…

This, my point was that you can use C++ make_shared (and eventually C++14 make_unique) instead of manual management, you can get away with a lot more reference passing instead of of raw pointer manipulation, the std now has an actual hashmap implementation now, auto and lambdas make things faster, etc.

Modern C++ vs second iteration standard C++ in the wild west days when I was first learning about it is an entirely different affair.

I also contest having to know boost - I work in some KDE projects and boost is only a dependency on around 1 in 4 that I have found. Though qt in many ways becomes the surrogate stack to learn.

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