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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

#511

Post by ska »

scarface74 wrote: post #479
friedman23 wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As far as $200K being high adjusted for COLA, in the burbs where I live. $330K gets you a house - brand new build in a top rated school system with five bedrooms, 3.5 baths, 3000 square feet with a yard, two car garage, and a separate nice size office. What does that get you in SV? Nobody actually plans on retiring in SF. When I'm done working here for 10 or 15 years I'll have enough to move and own a mansion in wha…

Speaking in general, not about me in particular... I'm going to give up 15 years of my life -- the time that most people spend getting married, having 2.5 kids, etc. to live in SV -- when I could spend those fifteen years living in the burbs in a big house with the white picket fence in almost any other major city in the US? Especially if you are a two parent household, the general MO is that the second smaller incom…

   when I could spend those fifteen years living in the burbs in a big house with the white picket fence in almost any other major city in the US?
Why would you speak "in general" about something so specific - this really isn't a goal for everyone. All the best for you making your own decisions of course. In my case I will make considerable tradeoffs to hopefully never live in a 'burb again.

It's also worth noting that cities aren't fungible.

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#512

Post by scarface74 »

friedman23 wrote: post #492
scarface74 wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking in general, not about me in particular... I'm going to give up 15 years of my life -- the time that most people spend getting married, having 2.5 kids, etc. to live in SV -- when I could spend those fifteen years living in the burbs in a big house with the white picket fence in almost any other major city in the US? Especially if you are a two parent household, the general MO is that the second smaller incom…

> I'm going to give up 15 years of my life -- the time that most people spend getting married, having 2.5 kids, etc. to live in SV -- when I could spend those fifteen years living in the burbs in a big house with the white picket fence in almost any other major city in the US? First of all I'm not "giving it up" and I have no desire for your lifestyle. It honestly sounds horrible. Enjoy your life.

I was hoping that the "2.5 kids" part would enforce that I'm not talking about me in particular since no one can have half a kid, but I was using the cliched "average number of kids per household".

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#513

Post by jlthornton »

Black Male here.

2014 - 58,000 -> 62000 Entry Level Dev at Fin Company X

2015 - 62000 -> 65000 Entry Level Dev at Fin Company X

2016 - 65000 -> 70000 Intermediate Dev at Fin Company X

2017 - 70000 -> 74000 Intermediate Dev at Fin Company X

2018 to mid 2018 74000 -> 84000 Intermediate Dev at Fin Company X

mid 2018 to end 2018 84000 -> 95000 Senior Engineer at Consulting Company X

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#514

Post by throwawayForMe2 »

Throw away ID and first post. Some perspective from an old timer. All in the NYC financial disctrict. While finishing my college BS degree I was working at a major bank doing data entry, at the end supervising a night time data entry crew. This bank ran an internal training program for programmers, I applied and and started programming full time for them.

- 1987-1992 43k-60k programmer Bank 1 (IBM mainframe, cobol, 370 assembler, IMS, CICS)

- 1992-1997 60k- 80k senior programmer Bank 2 (was actually lucky enough to work in Smalltalk for the first 5 years here)

- 1997-2017 80k-221k various titles Bank 2 - java and the internet killed smalltalk and the project we were working on, the technology group jumped on java and we had many years of work converting mainframe apps to java apps.

Played many roles from leading a small team all new to java including myself, up to architecting and building the shared components and shared architecture for 45 J2EE applications. Was let go after 24 years there in yet one more reorg/RIF 1 year after the last major mainframe app was migrated.

I am retired now, and feel lucky to have been able to have an interesting and challenging “normal” career with 2 large stable companies, with pensions, with matched 401k, etc.

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#516

Post by el_benhameen »

throwaway33441 wrote: post #508
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…

My path is one of the underappreciated hybrid: started in major metro (DC/NY/Boston) and moved to small town in the south after many years, finding good gigs offering remote work for DC-, NY-, and SF-based companies. Found a nice niche in security/ops/development in gov & healthcare tech. So, here goes: DB/Ops Engineering 1999: $60K base. Fresh out of masters program, large F50 DC gov tech firm (#1) 2001: $100K + $5K…

Thanks for sharing. After you (I assume) went remote while working for the same company, how did you go about getting new remote gigs at large tech companies? I’m remote now and would like to stay so, but I’m finding that companies that pay the sort of comp I’m looking for are often remote-averse.

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#518

Post by neogodless »

ergothus wrote: post #486

Dates and amounts from fallible memory, all in USA. Salary rates made a huge jump when I started changing jobs frequently (which is sad) as well as when I moved to Seattle (after an initial correction, as I came in very "underpaid"). '95-'99: $8/hr as Perl-based "webmaster" in Pennsylvania '99: $27.5k/year as Coldfusion dev (plus some very mild Oracle work) in Norfolk, VA (3 months at a startup) '00-'07: Perl Contrac…

Heh, someone a bit like me. My first job was "Assistant to Webmaster" or something like that. $9.05/hr. But I was writing ColdFusion there in no time. After 3 months, out of the blue, they gave me a raise to $13.05/hr. I thought I struck gold!

Seattle is looking good - how's the COL there in comparison?

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#519

Post by daneyh »

GlennS wrote: post #131
quickthrower2 wrote: post #11

Nice money at those big American companies. In Australia, you have to become a plumber to get to those levels :-)

If it makes you feel any better, Australian software salaries seem pretty high compared to most of the world. I more than doubled my salary moving from the UK (Bristol) to Australia (Sydney), while my living costs only went up a little higher.

I went from Australia (Sydney) to UK (London) and wondering how your costs only went up a 'little'?!

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#520

Post by jiveturkey »

Wow, talk about being underpaid. $220k for principal architect at $BOX? Note that he received stock options, not RSUs, so the value of equity was very very small (strike price is necessarily very close to IPO price that close to IPO). That's 30% less than a senior comp at FAANG, and $BOX may as well be FAANG for all the "enterprisey" things that would be in place at a company that size.

Principal anything should be in the $700k total comp range, if not more.

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