Live data from Hacker News

2018 UtahJS Pay, Education, Job-title Survey

mdjasper.github.io

61–70 of 77 posts

Re: 2018 UtahJS Pay, Education, Job-title Survey

#61
post #8
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting to speak directly to someone taking a survey, thank you for posting. My question isn't about your surveys themselves, but rather if you have observed any bias in other surveys compared to your results. A pessimist might believe that most compensation surveys are used by peer HR departments to set compensation bands and, naturally, they have incentive to systematically report those surveys low. Then t…

That's a great question. I haven't directly seen any other surveys performed by "the other side" so to speak. But in looking at comparative data online ( https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/utah-computer-programmer-... for example), our dataset seems to show a more broad range of pay (both lower and higher). Anecdotally, I have been told by a couple former managers something along the lines of "the highest payed engin…

People don’t understand what they make and frequently report all sorts of wacky stuff.

I worked for an org that had a fixed pay scale and read some detailed survey data that included them. The top/bottom reports were bullshit.

People will report what they think their benefits are worth, won’t know their gross salary at all somehow, will deduct alimony, add 401k interest, miscategorize themselves (ie identify as an engineer but be a director), or just make shit up.

Surveys may target wrong. Someone who is supposed to be in Utah may be in SFO or NYC.

Re: 2018 UtahJS Pay, Education, Job-title Survey

#62
post #44
post #7

An interesting data point is that the highest salary ($206,000) also reports as"self-taught".

More interesting is that the “self-taught” group as a whole has the highest average salary of all the education levels. That is one of the two big surprises for me in this survey. The other is the leadership roles having a narrower range and lower top end than dev positions.

Personally I don't think that is at all surprising. A college education doesn't mean you know what you are doing. The self taught group learned by doing something. My guess is they had a problem to solve and found out to solve it. That's a better education than the towers of Hanoi, some useless sorting algorithm that will never be relevant or the misc crap that is taught in CS.

Re: 2018 UtahJS Pay, Education, Job-title Survey

#64
post #49

Salaries in Utah are a lot healthier than I expected. Maybe moving away from SF wouldn't be as big of a salary cut as I thought...

In my experience Northern Utah is good, Southern Utah is not very good

My thoughts on "good" vs "not very good":

I live in Saint George (very far Southern Utah). It's beautiful, the weather is great (if you like hot and dry), and Washington County is very small compared to Utah County and surrounding areas. Traffic is becoming something of a problem and the area is going to be under constant road construction for the next 20 years if growth continues.

There are very few software companies in the area: PrinterLogic, BusyBusy, Mango Voice, and perhaps a few others. If you do move to the area, make sure you have plenty of remote opportunities or are willing to commute to Las Vegas daily (about 90-ish minutes one way).

Re: 2018 UtahJS Pay, Education, Job-title Survey

#67
post #44
post #7

An interesting data point is that the highest salary ($206,000) also reports as"self-taught".

More interesting is that the “self-taught” group as a whole has the highest average salary of all the education levels. That is one of the two big surprises for me in this survey. The other is the leadership roles having a narrower range and lower top end than dev positions.

Also, the top earner, besides being self-taught only claims 5 years experience. I wonder what the story is.

Re: 2018 UtahJS Pay, Education, Job-title Survey

#68

Thanks for putting the survey together. Another interesting thing to note is that these developers are (at least by association?) javascript devs. In my experience, the backend developers playing with C#, Java, SQL are usually earning another 25-50% more than the javascript devs. Have others seen the same?

From what I've seen, backend devs are often making either the same or slightly less.

Also worth saying tho, that many companies view their devs as "full stack," that JS != frontend only anymore. Node backends are becoming very common.

Re: 2018 UtahJS Pay, Education, Job-title Survey

#69
post #7

An interesting data point is that the highest salary ($206,000) also reports as"self-taught".

FWIW I live in Utah, work remote, and am self taught (dropout from engineering program) and my base is higher than that. It's in the 240s.

I'm the first one to tell someone to go to school instead. It's not actually the fundamentals I missed out on, it was the network of peers in computer science as well as potential options in academia. It slowed my career growth down a bit. I'm not complaining though since I'm set to retire in my 30s and I wasn't forced to compromise on where I want to live (I really like snowboarding and mountain biking).

I like to think I took the scenic and unpaved route. Maybe harder overall, but it was a fun journey and I ended up in a good place.

Re: 2018 UtahJS Pay, Education, Job-title Survey

#70

I can't tell if this data means Utah got better at welcoming females to JS engineering or there's a point where they stop trying around five years. :) As a member of the JS community I hope it's the former. There's also someone killing it that's only been working in JS for three years.

Just by people I know on twitter, there's alot of great women from accounting and project management that have done bootcamps and made the switch recently.
Post reply on HN