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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

#591

Post by tdelet »

mysalarythrow wrote: post #339

Male, went to a top 5 CS school, US west coast 2001: BigCo $76,000/year + $20,000 signing bonus (first job out of school) 2007: Freelancing between $100-$200/hr depending on project 2012: Startup #1 $180,000/year + $75,000 signing bonus + a bit of stock that's never been worth anything (but I exercised upon leaving and paid a lot of taxes on, so I'm net negative ~$300k) 2015: Startup #2 $240,000/year + lots of stock…

not a programmer, but product manager. I feel your pain on startup #1.

The startups are a crapshoot, they can be a great stepping stone, but assume the equity is worth zero. The right 'big company' is going to be more lucrative in most cases by a lot.

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#592

Post by braindouche »

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…

I'll go so far as to say here's my College Drop Out Self Taught In The Rust Belt Salary:

2006-2016: $25k-$45kyr, $40-$120 per hour. The first half I ran a very small agency that maxed out at 4 people and I wrote all the code, the latter half I was a PHP freelancer. Most expensive WordPress consultant in my city!

2016: $52k. Agency web dev. I've never hated a job more. Mostly wrote hacky jQuery and supported an awful laravel app the boss was enamored with.

2017: $65k. Front End Engineer. worked on converting a legacy SaaS product into Angular SPA. My boss begged me to ask for a raise (the recruiter screwed everybody), and then I got laid off two weeks later with like 25 other people. Loved that job, sad to lose it.

2018(current): $87k + bonuses. Senior Front End Developer. My job is to hack .net with javascript. I think the salary trend is moving nicely. I'm suddenly the richest person among all my friends and the third-highest earner in my extended family. (My family isn't even in the rust belt, they're from a much wealthier region in the country.)

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#593

Post by hoaw »

salburn008 wrote: post #578
hoaw wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think I'm underpaid, but not grossly so. I wouldn't necessarily call that underpaid. Being underpaid is when you have to choose between the present and the future. If you can both have good and sustainable living conditions, job security and pension with a decent margin you aren't generally underpaid as such. The exception being if your relative wage affects things worth caring about, like being valued by the peo…

I'd define being underpaid as leaving money on the table. Being comfortable is not related. You can be underpaid and still be comfortable.

If you aren't comfortable, they are underpaying you for the job they expect you to do. If you are comfortable, but leaving money on the table, you aren't getting all the value you produce.

You can call both of those being underpaid, but I would still argue that they are different. Most people need to be comfortable, while most people don't need to capture all the value they can. Staying at a company that pays you less can be perfectly reasonable.

The problem is of course that the market doesn't really guarantee being comfortable. A lot of people are being underpaid for being comfortable long term. But as I said leaving money on the table can be a problem in itself. If you do 90% of what produces value, but only get 50% of the value that isn't generally a good thing.

The danger of considering leaving money on the table as being underpaid is not seeing the value of things. Many people are saving money for some future event, not realizing what they are giving up, instead of integrating that thing into the present.

If you want to work on e.g. open source you don't save hundreds of thousands of dollars for the future. You get enough money that you can do it now. Whether that is having low living costs, extra vacation days, flexibility or room to risk changing jobs to open source companies. Otherwise chances are you just end up with a slightly bigger house.

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#594

Post by scarface74 »

sidlls wrote: post #580
scarface74 wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's low compared to FAANG, but it's much higher, even adjusting for COL, than most of the "perfectly normal" lower salaries in these comments. That's not good: those lower salaries should be considered abnormally low; mine should be considered on the high end of average These are the "average" salaries across the industry in different metro areas: https://www.matrixres.com/salary-surveys As far as $200K being high…

$330k gets you goody looks when considering a purchase of a home, or outright laughter. On the other hand your $330k home is not going to yield sufficient ROI to make up for the double (or more) savings and investment rate my salary affords me. I can save almost as as the $110k earner in the suburbs has as his disposable income, and I have access to a diversity of culture, well maintained parks, good (private) school…

Again speaking hypothetically, using the numbers I posted earlier for what an average experienced developer can make in most metro areas - around $130K and if you’re married to a college educated spouse (statistically that would be true because of assortive mating) making an average salary of around $50K. You could easily save $70K a year.

Do you think there are only parks, “diversity of culture”, and good schools on the west coast? If someone is living in a top rated school zone where the top 20% of earners live, do you really think that the school system wouldn’t be good?

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#595

Post by scarface74 »

ska wrote: post #511
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…

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…

Because the whole point is what the “average” developer is making across the country and not the outliers.

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#596

Post by akra »

thrmsforbfast wrote: post #548
EADGBE wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American here, I'm not convinced I shouldn't encourage my kids to get into the trades.

Do you have family or friends in the trades? I always get called elitist/out-of-touch when I point this out, but it's really true that most people working in trades do $50k with mediocre benefits. Everyone always lashes out at this with anecdata, but both the hard data from Labor and the 15+ datapoints I have personally all seem to agree that $60k is "really good", and that's with overtime. Statistically, for every w…

In Australia which this reply chain is about trades get paid exceptionally well if you have a successful business operation (not working for someone else). There's simply an oversupply of university graduates and a very liberal visa program for IT workers. Most tradies here have their own business so any income figures are highly misleading. As an example he may earn 65k on his tax retrun but his wife does the "accounts" (65k goes there too) + the cash jobs that they don't declare on tax. A good tradie can earn 150k easy and pay less tax than the average office worker due to clever business accounting. And there's always work; and none of those "horror" stories you hear about software interviews here on HN and other sites.

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#597

Post by ivalm »

ksec wrote: post #161

I wish we could offer prestige in these price / number comparison, not only in different currency, but also the tax rate and incentives. Example in US large part of your paid isn't really "Salary", but bonus package. And if we could at least includes median rent and price of a Big Mac. In location A where you earn 200K a year but requires you to paid 100K in tax, and spend 50K on rental, versus location B where you p…

At least in the US, the state tax is always relatively small (CA top marginal 13.3%, but effective CA tax will be more around 8-9%). Remember, if you make 200K, you pay as much tax on the first 100K as a person who makes only 100K, you pay more for the second 100K, but that's like icing on the cake.

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#598

Post by curtain_length »

New Zealand, mixture of salary and freelance, for domestic companies. Excludes employer superannuation contributions and non-cash compensation (not high).

The USD comparison is not very useful as NZDUSD has varied wildly in this time, betwen 0.4 and 1.0, currently 0.65.

I've never worked more than 40 hours a week on average as an employee, the $200k+ years are where I worked more hours as a contractor usually.

  2005	39k NZD		26k USD   
  2006	48k NZD		31k USD  
  2007	35k NZD		23k USD
  2008	61k NZD		40k USD
  2009	98k NZD		64k USD
  2010	144k NZD	93k USD
  2011	182k NZD	119k USD
  2012	206k NZD	134k USD
  2013	171k NZD	111k USD
  2014	196k NZD	127k USD
  2015	218k NZD	142k USD
  2016	173k NZD	112k USD
  2017	174k NZD	113k USD

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#599

Post by thrmsforbfast »

akra wrote: post #596
thrmsforbfast wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have family or friends in the trades? I always get called elitist/out-of-touch when I point this out, but it's really true that most people working in trades do $50k with mediocre benefits. Everyone always lashes out at this with anecdata, but both the hard data from Labor and the 15+ datapoints I have personally all seem to agree that $60k is "really good", and that's with overtime. Statistically, for every w…

In Australia which this reply chain is about trades get paid exceptionally well if you have a successful business operation (not working for someone else). There's simply an oversupply of university graduates and a very liberal visa program for IT workers. Most tradies here have their own business so any income figures are highly misleading. As an example he may earn 65k on his tax retrun but his wife does the "accou…

My comment was specific to the USA and maybe even certain parts of the USA.

> Most tradies here have their own business

Maybe this really is true in Australia. IDK. People say this a lot in the USA, but both statistics and personal anecdata indicate it's complete bullshit. Starting a business is hard. Getting the money to start up is hard. Handling cash flow is hard. Handling everything from deadbeat clients to litigious clients is hard.

> + the cash jobs that they don't declare on tax.

Software engineers can also make $$$ by committing tax fraud and other crimes.

Re: My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer

#600

Post by ivalm »

SimonPStevens wrote: post #390

I'm always shocked by the difference in pay in the tech industry between US and UK. For similar career path, my pay has consistently been significantly behind this based on a pure currency conversion. And also I'm sure our living expenses are higher. Most hardware I buy seems to be priced the same or very similar in $ and £ so effectively charging a premium to UK buyers. Am I comparing wrong, or are US tech works rea…

US tech workers in HCOL areas (esp Bay Area/Seattle/NYC) are very well paid.
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