Ask HN: Are Programming Salaries Inaccurate?

We've all seen the big salaries job sites seem to tout around, but just how accurate are they? I've been talking with people who are full-time developers who barely made 20k a year at their job. In specific, I know a guy who works on huge projects with React and Redux etc who makes 15k a year. On the contrary, sites claim just knowing html, css, and some jquery can land you a job with $60k in the States. The guy I know is in Russia if that changes anything. Perhaps commenters could post what they do and how much they make? I believe we're being largely misrepresented in terms of pay.

$20k seems really low for most full time jobs in the United States. The average (median) job in the US pays around $30k. And software development jobs are above average jobs, so those numbers that you posted seem off.

After I came back from teaching English overseas, I was desperate for a job and applied across the boards of Craigslist. I got a bite on a programming job making $10 an hour. I was thrilled because someone actually considered me, a person with very little programming experience, for the job. I was just happy to take the job and get experience. Even with the $40,000 student loan debt I had. After my training period was over, my boss increased my pay to $12 an hour working in Visual Basic on auto-shop software.

I did this for a year and a half before I realized: I was being taken advantage of. And I get it: He took a chance on me, trained me, etc. I fixed tons of bugs in his system and improved his customer base by thousands. Aside from fixing bugs, they told me my job was to improve the user experience and user interface to make it more user-friendly. I did just that.

But at $12 an hour with $40k debt and bills to pay, where exactly was I going? It was corporate slavery -- which is all too common for most programmers. Coding monkeys. He was also an arrogant asshole.. one of those bosses who was a micromanager and would even make me email him our conversation that we had in meeting, and then he would critique our own meeting and my words as he wanted them. More time was wasted doing this than actually programming.

As much as I loved programming, I couldn't live on that salary, nor do anything or go anywhere with my life. He ended up offering me double my salary only when I had put in my 2 weeks. I really just had checked out and didn't want to be there, so trying to negotiate a salary would have come with too many strings. "I'm paying you do a job... why didn't you do it this way" etc. etc. Yeah, he was that type of person.

Luckily, I eventually got out of it... if you are interested in reading more about that: http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/the-opportunity/

Unless you work on the coasts, like Silicon Valley area or New York, I think programming jobs around the country are much less. When the market is saturated though and people are desperate for work, companies can take advantage of that.

20k a year sounds about right. I am in former ost block EU country, median pay would be ~10k, monthly rent ~300$.

I might know a few people around here that might make more than 100k as programmers but, they are either project leads with a lot of responsibility, or they own the business and have a few large US clients.

Of course, all of my US colleagues earn much more.

I know it doesn't feel like it, but wins all around. You had little experience and you got a job and experience. Your ex-boss needed to take advantage of someone at $12 an hour. Your new company needed someone experienced. You needed more pay and respect.

A more principled person might not have hired you at all and instead looked to hire someone with good experience at good rates, because they "want to do the right thing" and then you might not have gotten the experience you needed.

And good work getting out of there. I think in secret your ex-boss respects you for doing it. You say he says good things in front of people and bad things behind them, and at the end he said bad things in front of you, perhaps now behind your back he tells your ex-coworkers good things. :-)