We will never have enough software developers (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#551

Post by GFischer » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 3:19 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #289

automatic6131 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>doctor or lawyer only working 4 hours a day I'm absolutely sure that lawyers and doctors only work 20 hours a week.

Ha! My father is a doctor and in his 70s. He says he is retired because he only works 60 hours a week at the hospital emergency room. According to him, 60 hours a week is being retired since it is so few hours for a doctor.

My brother is a doctor, while he works insane hours, it seems there's a LOT of downtime between jobs, where he's technically "on the clock" but reads ebooks or watches series or socializes.

I technically work 12 hours as well as a developer, but actual work might be 6 hours or less, and it's way less stressful than a doctor.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#552

Post by GFischer » Fri, Jun 17, 2022, 3:26 PM UTC

_gabe_ wrote: post #410

abduhl wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

80k for 8 years of experience with a PE is a bit low. You should be cracking six figures by now if you’re structural and coming close if you’re actual (roadway) civil. Are you in materials testing? If so, obviously you should try to switch over to an inspection gig to get some of that sweet overtime. I was clearing something like 110k salary at similar experience back when I practiced and quite a bit more with my equ…

> most should not even be called engineers, they’re coders or developers and on the same level as a lab technician to me I'm a programmer and I 100% agree with this statement. I never tell anyone that I'm a software engineer even though that is my job title, I am a programmer. It annoys me to no end that we keep diluting language like this and devaluing the meaning of these terms. An engineer is held to a much higher…

In some countries, like mine (Uruguay), it's illegal to call yourself an engineer unless you are one, but the local university does hand software engineer titles.

I call myself a senior software developer (I'm not an engineer, I did went to university but didn't graduate from that career, switched to an Information Systems degree instead).

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#553

Post by comp_throw7 » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 2:02 AM UTC

bradlys wrote: post #485

comp_throw7 wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is kind of a meme. I'm not sure what you consider to be "surgeon money", but senior engineers at FAANG nowdays net ~450k/year (annualized). As a single person you can retire at 40 with ~5m in the bank by starting at FAANG at 22 and plateauing at senior (not staff) after 5-6 years. So you're hitting that 450k/year level at, like... 27? Earlier if you're working at a company like Facebook, which promotes aggressiv…

$450k/yr at FAANG for senior is definitely the very top of the band and to get there after 5 years is extremely optimistic. Again - if you're comparing Stanford graduates then maybe it's more common but for your average FAANG eng isn't making that in 5 years out of college especially with just 40-hr work weeks. Very few engineers are making that money even after transferring to another company. Maybe if you have some…

A few points:

- 450k is not, actually, top-of-band for senior engineers right now. There are some companies where that's approximately true (i.e. Google) and some where the number is much higher (Netflix goes without saying, Amazon routinely breaks 500k, Uber is hitting 480-500k, Cruise breaks 500k, Snapchat hits 550-600k at L5, etc).

- Well, since I'm looking at annualized compensation, I am considering stacked refreshers. I don't think job-hopping ~3 times is an enormous ask.

- I certainly wasn't assuming market-beating returns, or living on ramen. But I certainly wasn't running the numbers such that one would be spending the equivalent of one's safe withdrawal rate pre-FIRE. I live unconstrained by budget concerns and don't even come close to spending half that. At 450k pre-tax I was assuming one would be saving ~200k/year, with 7% returns.

- I was also not assuming that one was starting from 0 at 27, since it's not like pre-senior one would be making barely enough to live on. Having something in the neighborhood of 500-600k saved up by then is something like the default outcome, given a typical single person's lifestyle (absent extravagantly expensive hobbies).

- Ok, sure, this gets you to 4m, adjusted for inflation (oops). Guess you gotta hit that third decade (barely).

- You aren't limited to SV; many companies in that tier support remote work and those that don't have a bunch of hubs across the US.

I'm genuinely not sure why you think that 450k is an outlier level of compensation for senior FAANG/adjacent engineers. One possible source of confusion - if you're just looking at the "Average Total Compensation" levels lists for those companies, those numbers are very low. Filter by "New Offers Only", and then remember that those offers don't include refreshers (which, over the course of the first 4 years at a company, will add something like 360k = 90k/year, assuming totally average performance and no multipliers). It might be in the top 50th percentile, though even that may be pessimistic.

As for 200k/year being shit to live on... I assume you're talking about living in Silicon Valley, which, shrug? I don't live in Silicon Valley and before I decided to substantially change my career direction, I was on-track (and that despite not even hitting 6-figure comp until a few years into my career).