11 ms·

I really detest when software engineer salaries are compared to the salaries of the general population (often to cite how our sector is "overpaid"). Usually la

I really detest when software engineer salaries are compared to the salaries of the general population (often to cite how our sector is "overpaid"). Usually lacking from such simple comparisons: 1. Discussion of how software engineers have to go to college for 4 to 6+ years, but the general population is weighted towards those far fewer years of schooling 2. Discussion of downtime -- the amount of time software engneers spend unemployed (due to economic cycle, startup bankruptcy, downsizing, etc.) compared to the general population (e.g., government workers for example have superb job security, often 100% lifetime job security.)

gkst 10y ago
Does it make any sense to you to compare a particular group to the general population then? I think it does, the insights you may draw from such a comparisons are obviously different than comparing two sub-groups, e.g. programmers vs. doctors for example. Also the article doesn't judge the differences of incomes, the "overpaid" is your interpretation.
distances 10y ago
Did you check the article, though? In quite many European countries the median software engineer earns less than the average salary. I wonder if they meant "median salary" instead, as median vs. median would seem a better comparison than median vs. average.
V-2 10y ago
A lot of software engineers are autodidacts and never graduated in IT. I didn't (I have an MA in politics, obviously irrelevant to my profession). In general unemployment in IT is very low, and there's always a shortage of programmers, so job security is clearly above average. (And government administrations have IT departments, too). It's supply vs. demand, that's all there is to it. I'm not buying any of the above as a justification for big salaries.
- ghaff 10y ago
  >It's supply vs. demand, that's all there is to it. Yup. There may be good demand because of force multiplier or return to capital or whatever. (Which are just ways of saying that the work translates into something people are willing to pay for.) And there may be (somewhat) limited supply because it's not something everyone wants to or can do, whether through formal education or otherwise. But, take either supply or demand away and the salaries commanded adjust accordingly. That I could spend 10 years becoming an expert on medieval German literature doesn't necessarily mean that I could command a high salary however rare that expertise.
- berntb 10y ago
  >> there's always a shortage of programmers Wow, people really have forgotten the IT-death. :-) There are cycles and bubbles here too. They just might not be in phase with the general economy. (And get off my lawn. :-) )
  - V-2 10y ago
    Yeah, well, "always" is an overstatement. Of course there are ups and downs. But it's a matter of proportions - this profession still has it easy. I can't recall a headline informing about massive layoffs of software devs :)
- mr_luc 10y ago
  Yeah -- "force multiplier," and talk of how programmers can obsolete other jobs, is at least partly an argument that programmers 'deserve' their salaries, because they make society permanently more efficient. That discussion feels imprecise, though. Are those really the reasons that programmer salaries are what they are? If there were 20x more programmers, would that change things? Worse, it makes me want to avoid that whole side of the discussion, because it also sounds like justifying an economic fact on moral grounds. Yes, supply and demand and perverse economic incentives sometimes result in high demand for things that aren't that beneficial to society as a whole. Personally, I happen to think that what programmers do is more beneficial to society than what Hedge Fund managers do. But I don't care to have a conversation about whether or not we 'deserve our rates.' It's what supply and demand dictates; that much is definitely true.
- Gratsby 10y ago
  While there is a segment of autodidacts, it's not like people can become expert software developers overnight. Software developers work longer hours. I've never been in an environment where developers hang their coats up at 5:00 and go on with their carefree lives. And while unemployment may be low in IT, developers do not enjoy job security.
  - V-2 10y ago
    > While there is a segment of autodidacts, it's not like people can become expert software developers overnight. Agreed. Plus, learning in this trade is a job never done. It's not like once you get a foot in the door (and land a job), you're set for life. > Software developers work longer hours. I can't speak for the US, but it doesn't seem to be the case in Europe. I live and work in Poland, I kind of know the job market in the UK and Germany. > And while unemployment may be low in IT, developers do not enjoy job security. Well, relative job security. Not neccessarily in terms of any single job being safe and granted, but there's a rather slim chance of getting stranded between jobs.
  - jacalata 10y ago
    Longer hours than who?
    - Gratsby 10y ago
      The general populace.
  - Gargoyle 10y ago
    > I've never been in an environment where developers hang their coats up at 5:00 and go on with their carefree lives. And I've always worked in environments where they do. Anecdata for the win?
    - kingnothing 10y ago
      Same here. I've always worked more or less 8 hour days with occasional exceptions for emergencies and crunch time to hit a deadline.
- michaelmrose 10y ago
  Why do such salaries need justification other than people are willing to pay them
  - TrickedOut 10y ago
    Because these conversations drive increased immigration quotas and increase of supply to "correct" the overly high salaries.
lordCarbonFiber 10y ago
I think the problem is further compounded by the fact that "software engineer" is woefully vague. Are we talking a highly educated Machine Learning specialist working at at top tier institution, or are we talking about the CRUD dev working for the local bank; or perhaps we're comparing generic IT that barely codes at all? The former might be underpaid, the latter maybe over paid, but they're all going to reported as "software engineer" and it really muddies the waters..
- altotrees 10y ago
  Exactly... a "Software Engineer" in my experience can run the gamut from someone with a CS PhD to someone with an Associate Degree to someone who is self-taught. Sometimes pay is correlated with education, sometimes with experience, sometimes both and I have seen cases where neither is really a factor as a company is just looking for a warm body to fill a dev role. Add to this the glut of contract positions in industry along with the wide range of pay there, and it becomes much harder to make an accurate assumption (at least for me in my head) of what software engineers should be making. Googling "Software Engineer Payscale: brings up pages listing, 73, 78, 83, and 92 thousand per year. And I am leaving those roles with sub-titles like senior and principal off the list. That said, this is a cool idea and undertaking, especially the country comparisons.
glogla 10y ago
Software engineers are like doctors or lawyers - long period of study on difficult (and in places where people pay for colleges expensive) schools, long hours, but good pay. So it makes sense to compare them with doctors and lawyers. Unlike doctors and lawyers, software engineers don't have any respect and are pretty much working class, but that's another story.
- nibs 10y ago
  Disagree. Status is attributed based on "How useful are you or can you be to me?". A doctor and lawyer could be very useful to me personally, selfishly. A software engineer tends to be very useful to capital (institutions, etc.) but not as useful to an individual personally. Facebook engineers have a lot of status - because people use Facebook personally all the time. A great engineer who programs stop lights, manufacturing PLCs, business application, etc. not so much. No selfish benefit = No love.
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    I don't think that's right. A plumber or home health aide is pretty useful too.
    - nibs 10y ago
      I think it depends on the circles you travel in - those are the professions the most practical/dependable people from my area went into, so from my perspective they do get status to a certain degree, at least from my friends. There will always be the illusory gap between blue vs. white collar workers.
      - emodendroket 10y ago
        Yes, but why should that be the case, is the question. I read an article I think was linked here arguing exactly the opposite -- that the less real utility a profession provided the higher the pay and the higher the esteem.
- 10y ago
yread 10y ago
> downtime -- the amount of time software engneers spend unemployed (due to economic cycle, startup bankruptcy, downsizing, etc.) funny but from my circle of friends I never heard of anyone being unemployed and looking for job for more than a month. I myself had exactly 0 time of looking for a job in 12 years of working. I'm in Europe, though, we're ridiculously underpaid compared to the US I think. Very few people earn more than 100K.
- bryanlarsen 10y ago
  12 years of working means you just missed the dot-com crash of 2000-2002.
  - TrickedOut 10y ago
    True, it also means he's too young to face age discrimination.
- jazzyk 10y ago
  Off topic, but I must: comparing salaries alone makes no sense. In Europe, you don't have to pay $250K/child for college education, you don't have to pay $20K/year/family in health insurance, etc.
  - lorenzhs 10y ago
    Well you need to consider purchasing power parity. In many European countries, these things are paid out of taxes (but also provided at a lower cost in total), so you can't just deduct/ignore them.
    - jazzyk 10y ago
      We pay taxes in the US as well :-) Maybe a bit less than in Europe, but we get very little in return (no subsidized daycare, no 30 days of vacation, etc). US tax revenue is mostly spent on maintaining all the 170+ military bases around the world, aircraft carriers, nuclear weapons, etc.
jazzyk 10y ago
Exactly. Software salaries should be compared to doctors', lawyers' and other professions', as software engineering is a profession. I bet you the comparisons would not look so good then.
- criddell 10y ago
  I'll accept that software engineering is a profession when software engineers accept the same level of responsibility for their work that doctors and lawyers do. When that happens, brace yourself for a never ending stream of malpractice suits.
  - jazzyk 10y ago
    There are lawsuits filed for delivering shoddy work, unmet deadlines/commitments. They are just less publicized, because human life is (usually) not at stake.
    - criddell 10y ago
      Those are contract lawsuits. Are there any jurisdictions where a Software Engineer can lose their license?
      - tamana 10y ago
        It's essentially impossible for a lawyer to lose their license.
        criddell 10y ago
        But they can. They can also have their license suspended. Software Engineer on the other hand, is just a label that doesn't mean anything. AFAIK, no jurisdictions license Software Engineers. Unlike law, there's no punishment for working as a software engineer (although there are some jurisdictions where the title "Engineer" is regulated).
DominikR 10y ago
It's about supply and demand. (not exclusively but still) How could it be enforced that software developers can only earn the median income of the general population? Passing new laws that set a limit? That would be completely crazy, you might as well just go and live in North Korea if you like that. Why shouldn't private companies have the right and the freedom to pay more out of their own pocket (not from government funds) for certain employees?
SilasX 10y ago
Also, software engineers are concentrated in high-CoL areas, which skews things.

gkst 10y ago

Does it make any sense to you to compare a particular group to the general population then? I think it does, the insights you may draw from such a comparisons are obviously different than comparing two sub-groups, e.g. programmers vs. doctors for example. Also the article doesn't judge the differences of incomes, the "overpaid" is your interpretation.

distances 10y ago

Did you check the article, though? In quite many European countries the median software engineer earns less than the average salary. I wonder if they meant "median salary" instead, as median vs. median would seem a better comparison than median vs. average.

V-2 10y ago

A lot of software engineers are autodidacts and never graduated in IT. I didn't (I have an MA in politics, obviously irrelevant to my profession). In general unemployment in IT is very low, and there's always a shortage of programmers, so job security is clearly above average. (And government administrations have IT departments, too). It's supply vs. demand, that's all there is to it. I'm not buying any of the above as a justification for big salaries.

ghaff 10y ago
>It's supply vs. demand, that's all there is to it. Yup. There may be good demand because of force multiplier or return to capital or whatever. (Which are just ways of saying that the work translates into something people are willing to pay for.) And there may be (somewhat) limited supply because it's not something everyone wants to or can do, whether through formal education or otherwise. But, take either supply or demand away and the salaries commanded adjust accordingly. That I could spend 10 years becoming an expert on medieval German literature doesn't necessarily mean that I could command a high salary however rare that expertise.
berntb 10y ago
>> there's always a shortage of programmers Wow, people really have forgotten the IT-death. :-) There are cycles and bubbles here too. They just might not be in phase with the general economy. (And get off my lawn. :-) )
- V-2 10y ago
  Yeah, well, "always" is an overstatement. Of course there are ups and downs. But it's a matter of proportions - this profession still has it easy. I can't recall a headline informing about massive layoffs of software devs :)
mr_luc 10y ago
Yeah -- "force multiplier," and talk of how programmers can obsolete other jobs, is at least partly an argument that programmers 'deserve' their salaries, because they make society permanently more efficient. That discussion feels imprecise, though. Are those really the reasons that programmer salaries are what they are? If there were 20x more programmers, would that change things? Worse, it makes me want to avoid that whole side of the discussion, because it also sounds like justifying an economic fact on moral grounds. Yes, supply and demand and perverse economic incentives sometimes result in high demand for things that aren't that beneficial to society as a whole. Personally, I happen to think that what programmers do is more beneficial to society than what Hedge Fund managers do. But I don't care to have a conversation about whether or not we 'deserve our rates.' It's what supply and demand dictates; that much is definitely true.
Gratsby 10y ago
While there is a segment of autodidacts, it's not like people can become expert software developers overnight. Software developers work longer hours. I've never been in an environment where developers hang their coats up at 5:00 and go on with their carefree lives. And while unemployment may be low in IT, developers do not enjoy job security.
- V-2 10y ago
  > While there is a segment of autodidacts, it's not like people can become expert software developers overnight. Agreed. Plus, learning in this trade is a job never done. It's not like once you get a foot in the door (and land a job), you're set for life. > Software developers work longer hours. I can't speak for the US, but it doesn't seem to be the case in Europe. I live and work in Poland, I kind of know the job market in the UK and Germany. > And while unemployment may be low in IT, developers do not enjoy job security. Well, relative job security. Not neccessarily in terms of any single job being safe and granted, but there's a rather slim chance of getting stranded between jobs.
- jacalata 10y ago
  Longer hours than who?
  - Gratsby 10y ago
    The general populace.
- Gargoyle 10y ago
  > I've never been in an environment where developers hang their coats up at 5:00 and go on with their carefree lives. And I've always worked in environments where they do. Anecdata for the win?
  - kingnothing 10y ago
    Same here. I've always worked more or less 8 hour days with occasional exceptions for emergencies and crunch time to hit a deadline.
michaelmrose 10y ago
Why do such salaries need justification other than people are willing to pay them
- TrickedOut 10y ago
  Because these conversations drive increased immigration quotas and increase of supply to "correct" the overly high salaries.

lordCarbonFiber 10y ago

I think the problem is further compounded by the fact that "software engineer" is woefully vague. Are we talking a highly educated Machine Learning specialist working at at top tier institution, or are we talking about the CRUD dev working for the local bank; or perhaps we're comparing generic IT that barely codes at all? The former might be underpaid, the latter maybe over paid, but they're all going to reported as "software engineer" and it really muddies the waters..

altotrees 10y ago
Exactly... a "Software Engineer" in my experience can run the gamut from someone with a CS PhD to someone with an Associate Degree to someone who is self-taught. Sometimes pay is correlated with education, sometimes with experience, sometimes both and I have seen cases where neither is really a factor as a company is just looking for a warm body to fill a dev role. Add to this the glut of contract positions in industry along with the wide range of pay there, and it becomes much harder to make an accurate assumption (at least for me in my head) of what software engineers should be making. Googling "Software Engineer Payscale: brings up pages listing, 73, 78, 83, and 92 thousand per year. And I am leaving those roles with sub-titles like senior and principal off the list. That said, this is a cool idea and undertaking, especially the country comparisons.

glogla 10y ago

Software engineers are like doctors or lawyers - long period of study on difficult (and in places where people pay for colleges expensive) schools, long hours, but good pay. So it makes sense to compare them with doctors and lawyers. Unlike doctors and lawyers, software engineers don't have any respect and are pretty much working class, but that's another story.

nibs 10y ago
Disagree. Status is attributed based on "How useful are you or can you be to me?". A doctor and lawyer could be very useful to me personally, selfishly. A software engineer tends to be very useful to capital (institutions, etc.) but not as useful to an individual personally. Facebook engineers have a lot of status - because people use Facebook personally all the time. A great engineer who programs stop lights, manufacturing PLCs, business application, etc. not so much. No selfish benefit = No love.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  I don't think that's right. A plumber or home health aide is pretty useful too.
  - nibs 10y ago
    I think it depends on the circles you travel in - those are the professions the most practical/dependable people from my area went into, so from my perspective they do get status to a certain degree, at least from my friends. There will always be the illusory gap between blue vs. white collar workers.
    - emodendroket 10y ago
      Yes, but why should that be the case, is the question. I read an article I think was linked here arguing exactly the opposite -- that the less real utility a profession provided the higher the pay and the higher the esteem.
10y ago

yread 10y ago

> downtime -- the amount of time software engneers spend unemployed (due to economic cycle, startup bankruptcy, downsizing, etc.) funny but from my circle of friends I never heard of anyone being unemployed and looking for job for more than a month. I myself had exactly 0 time of looking for a job in 12 years of working. I'm in Europe, though, we're ridiculously underpaid compared to the US I think. Very few people earn more than 100K.

bryanlarsen 10y ago
12 years of working means you just missed the dot-com crash of 2000-2002.
- TrickedOut 10y ago
  True, it also means he's too young to face age discrimination.
jazzyk 10y ago
Off topic, but I must: comparing salaries alone makes no sense. In Europe, you don't have to pay $250K/child for college education, you don't have to pay $20K/year/family in health insurance, etc.
- lorenzhs 10y ago
  Well you need to consider purchasing power parity. In many European countries, these things are paid out of taxes (but also provided at a lower cost in total), so you can't just deduct/ignore them.
  - jazzyk 10y ago
    We pay taxes in the US as well :-) Maybe a bit less than in Europe, but we get very little in return (no subsidized daycare, no 30 days of vacation, etc). US tax revenue is mostly spent on maintaining all the 170+ military bases around the world, aircraft carriers, nuclear weapons, etc.

jazzyk 10y ago

Exactly. Software salaries should be compared to doctors', lawyers' and other professions', as software engineering is a profession. I bet you the comparisons would not look so good then.

criddell 10y ago
I'll accept that software engineering is a profession when software engineers accept the same level of responsibility for their work that doctors and lawyers do. When that happens, brace yourself for a never ending stream of malpractice suits.
- jazzyk 10y ago
  There are lawsuits filed for delivering shoddy work, unmet deadlines/commitments. They are just less publicized, because human life is (usually) not at stake.
  - criddell 10y ago
    Those are contract lawsuits. Are there any jurisdictions where a Software Engineer can lose their license?
    - tamana 10y ago
      It's essentially impossible for a lawyer to lose their license.
      - criddell 10y ago
        But they can. They can also have their license suspended. Software Engineer on the other hand, is just a label that doesn't mean anything. AFAIK, no jurisdictions license Software Engineers. Unlike law, there's no punishment for working as a software engineer (although there are some jurisdictions where the title "Engineer" is regulated).

DominikR 10y ago

It's about supply and demand. (not exclusively but still) How could it be enforced that software developers can only earn the median income of the general population? Passing new laws that set a limit? That would be completely crazy, you might as well just go and live in North Korea if you like that. Why shouldn't private companies have the right and the freedom to pay more out of their own pocket (not from government funds) for certain employees?

SilasX 10y ago

Also, software engineers are concentrated in high-CoL areas, which skews things.