12 ms·
I've been in the Kansas City developer market since 2002, and I can report that salaries for senior developers (java and .net) are going through the roof here.
by le-mark 10y ago
I've been in the Kansas City developer market since 2002, and I can report that salaries for senior developers (java and .net) are going through the roof here. 110k to 120k is becoming common. At a very non coastal cost of living.
It's a great time to be a developer in the midwest!
- jordache 10y agobut it's not only a salary to cost of living differential. some of these geographically uninspiring places will have to pay a premium to attract people, and compete with areas with greater potential for high quality of life.
- ajlburke 10y agoHave you BEEN to Kansas City? I got sent there for work meetings once and I have to admit I dreaded it - but it's got lots going for it, with lots of great cultural history (Jazz!) and some awesome food (BBQ!) and some really interesting places downtown. The people I met there were a whole lot more genuinely nice than most Bay Area folks, too. YMMV obviously, but if you dismiss most of the rest of the continent as "geographically uninspiring" you're going to miss out on a lot.
- jordache 10y agoMy bar is geographically compelling regions: West Coast to the Mountain West essentially
- ocb 10y agoShh, west coast people have a higher quality of life than you! They can drive to better-than-average hikes on weekends! That's such a huge part of their identities that nowhere else could possibly be bearable!
- jordache 10y agosome ppl's quality of life is defined by being able to buy a bigger mcmansion. Other people likes the ability to reconnect with nature. KS? sheesh.. no way man
- ocb 10y agoThe point I was trying to make is that your belief that access to the mountains is actually the most important thing for lots of people (especially the software developer type) is absurd. If you're living in a city, your day-to-day lifestyle is going to be pretty much the same anywhere in the US, or really anywhere in the developed world. Yes, that includes Kansas City.
- jessaustin 10y agoKansas City is not actually in Kansas. Kansas is the state named after its neighbor's second-best city.
- draw_down 10y agoYuck.
- epalmer 10y agoGood places to raise a family count for some of us. Having an easy commute does as well.
- nikdaheratik 10y agoThe only major downsides to that part of the country are January is really cold and August is really freakin' hot. Also, there's a tendency towards blandness and sprawl, but that's a problem everywhere.
- Kalium 10y agoYes, I have. I spent time living there. I like not having to own a car.
- rdtsc 10y ago> lot more genuinely nice than most Bay Area folks, too. I noticed that too. I miss that part of the Midwest as well. I am on the East coast now and here people are too aggressive and competitive, even without an obvious reason to be so. I mean they are still genuine, just genuine in their open hostility so to speak. They say these are just stereotypes and are not accurate, but I don't know, seem to jive pretty well to what I noticed.
- 20yrs_no_equity 10y agoWow, having been in Kansas City and the bay area recently, the bay area has a very low potential for high quality of life. Seattle has a very high potential, higher than Kansas City, but Kansas City beats the bay area. The bay area is way overcrowded, poor infrastructure, way, way too expensive, and if you want to get out of town for the weekend you fight traffic for 4 hours. I understand california dreaming... it's been the best marketed state for decades. But its' just a dream.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jackcosgrove 10y agoWhich is the more likely way to end up owning a house in the Bay Area? 1) Work in Silicon Valley. You earn 30% more but pay 200% more in rent. It takes you 10 years to save a $200k down payment, and in the meantime you have lost 100s of 1000s of dollars on rent. 2) Work in the Midwest. You earn less but pay a third for rent. It takes you 5 years to save a $200k down payment. You then lateral to SV. Ok, I'm biasing the question. But personally I'd prefer to delay gratification rather than delay homeownership.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- mahyarm 10y agoYour math is off. And you can do commute time subsitutes by living in the cheaper areas. You can save that down payment in 5 years probably. With higher incomes come higher saving margins.
- vonmoltke 10y agoThat is not what I have been seeing. My absolute living expenses would go up about as much as my absolute after-tax income, based on what I could actually get out there (i.e. not a plum Google senior engineering unicorn job).
- armenarmen 10y agonot having to pay california income tax is also a total plus
- runT1ME 10y agoIf you're living in Silicon Valley and only making 30% more you're doing it wrong. I'd guess you can make more than 100% more in SV if you're very talented. There's always the regression of the mean if you take everyone. But if you're a rock star, SV is the place to be, otherwise you're leaving a ton of money on the table.
- mklim 10y agoI'm saving much more month to month after moving out to SV than I was making in the Midwest, even though my rent doubled. My compensation is >2x what it was, and all my other expenses outside of rent stayed around the same (my auto insurance actually got cut in half). Granted I did get a job at Google, so the comp is very good.
- amyjess 10y agoDefine "geographically uninspiring". I find that Silicon Valley's proximity to mountains and bodies of water to be overly confining, and I place 90% of the blame for its housing prices on the Bay Area's geographical restraints. Great Plains cities don't have to worry about that because they can just sprawl outwards; geographically-restrained cities have to get expensive and/or get dense when there's a huge influx of population. Let's pop onto Google Maps and check out some of these cities at the same zoom level (caveat: I'm using a maximized Chrome window at 1080p, so if you're on anything else it might not display the area I intend): The Bay Area: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.6179156,-122.1933201,11z https://www.google.com/maps/@37.6179156,-122.1933201,11z -- notice how almost everything is developed in this narrow little strip around the bay. Only in San Jose do you see any real development inland, and it's honestly not that much compared to cities in other parts of the country. Really, even if you could sprawl more inland without hitting mountains, you'd still have massive bottlenecks commuting to anything in SF because it's on a peninsula. Kansas City: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1155568,-94.7391727,11z https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1155568,-94.7391727,11z -- it's spread out, and it's got more than enough room to grow outwards for quite a while. If it becomes a hub or something, it can just keep growing out to relieve the pressure. Columbus was the picture in the article: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9312081,-82.8231266,11z https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9312081,-82.8231266,11z -- not as big as KC yet, but check out that room to grow! The Twin Cities, mentioned as a former tech hub in another comment here: https://www.google.com/maps/@45.0593467,-93.2436588,11z https://www.google.com/maps/@45.0593467,-93.2436588,11z -- big and sprawly, the exurbs are just waiting to be filled in, and there's still plenty of room to grow beyond that Dallas, my own hometown: https://www.google.com/maps/@32.8116737,-96.9491413,11z https://www.google.com/maps/@32.8116737,-96.9491413,11z -- I can elaborate more since I've lived here for over 30 years. I chose this zoom level because it's the widest one that would fit the whole Dallas area. Built smack in the middle of a prairie, I have seen the suburbs continuously sprawl north and east, plus I've seen the formerly-empty suburbs in between Dallas and Fort Worth fill up like crazy. You can tell the age of certain parts of town because our freeways are built in rings, like a tree. When I was a kid, the two northernmost freeways (President George Bush Turnpike and Sam Rayburn Tollway) didn't exist. Half of Plano was farmland, and the suburbs to the north, east, and west of it weren't considered part of the contiguous metroplex. Now, we've filled in the gaps between Plano and Lewisville, built up Frisco and Allen, brought the contiguous metroplex all the way up to Propser and Wylie, and now we're working on bringing Celina in. Mark my words: in the next five years, they'll start upgrading US 380 to freeway status. And within a decade, the contigious metroplex will reach to Gunter and Van Alstyne. And development to the east will bring Royse City and Forney in as well. House prices are spiking now due to a bunch of companies moving their headquarters to the Dallas area, and creating massive demand out of nowhere, but once construction companies start reacting to that demand, we're going to see a massive explosion in house-building in the exurbs, and house prices will fall back to their old levels once new development is complete. Oh, and the concentric circles model we're using for our roads makes commuting much easier than something like SF where the bay gets in the way of going from one place to another. You can easily reach downtown from the exurbs (and it doesn't matter anyway because most of our tech industry is in the inner-ring suburbs, not downtown). So if I'm going to take geography into account when moving somewhere, I'm going to prioritize someplace built on a prairie, because that will give me low housing prices and low density.
- __derek__ 10y agoThose "geographically uninspiring" places happen to be home to the Great Lakes, the country's biggest rivers, mountains, incredible cave systems, and some of the best climbing in the country (seriously: look up the Red River Gorge, Horseshoe Canyon Ranch, or Spearfish Canyon).
- rpcope1 10y agoSpeaking of the Red River Gorge, it's a major shame that there isn't more tech work in central Kentucky than there is today, as that would certainly incentivize some of us to want to live there again.
- __derek__ 10y agoYou're right. It seems as though Chattanooga has been making noise in that vein.
- jackcosgrove 10y agoSenior devs are cracking $150k in Chicago, and it's even higher if you work for a financial firm.
- le-mark 10y agoWell, yeah I know some in KC making 150k+ w2 in health care here, 110-120 is what I percieve as being common here, from switching jobs a few months ago.
- jackcosgrove 10y agoGlassdoor says the average for a senior dev in KC is $93k. https://www.glassdoor.ca/Salaries/kansas-city-senior-software-engineer-salary-SRCH_IL.0,11_IM437_KO12,36.htm https://www.glassdoor.ca/Salaries/kansas-city-senior-softwar...
- maverick_iceman 10y agoAnecdata?
- ryandrake 10y agoAn average or median is usually a more helpful guide, rather than what the highest-paid developer is barely "cracking". According to Glassdoor and Payscale, the median/mean for software engineers in Chicago is around $75K: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/chicago-software-engineer-salary-SRCH_IL.0,7_IM167_KO8,25.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/chicago-software-engineer... http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Salary/6eca1ee4/Chicago-IL http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Sa... You see this on HN a lot, someone posts about some guy he knows who's brother's wife's roommate makes $300K at Google, therefore most software engineers in the Bay Area make lots of money. Really?
- jackcosgrove 10y agoSomeone who has the choice of working in Silicon Valley or elsewhere will probably be above average elsewhere. Senior software developer salaries in Chicago are 97k on average. https://www.glassdoor.ca/Salaries/chicago-senior-software-engineer-salary-SRCH_IL.0,7_IM167_KO8,32.htm https://www.glassdoor.ca/Salaries/chicago-senior-software-en...
- ryandrake 10y agoOpportunity risk. How many major software engineering companies are there in the area? If I lose my job in Silicon Valley, I'm in for maybe a 1-3 month job search among hundreds of companies out here. If I lose my job in Nowheresville, USA (I know this because I have lived there), I'm likely to be in for a 4+ month search and it's likely my next job will be out of the state.
- bluedino 10y ago>> If I lose my job in Nowheresville, USA It's easy to find another job, but it's doing some incredibly tedious and boring job for a manufacturing company or something like that.
- spo81rty 10y agoAs long as you are in a major city it isn't an issue at all. I would define a major city as any with a pro sports team.
- VLM 10y agoThis seems to be a VERY widely held belief but the numbers don't back it up. http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151132.htm http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151132.htm "Metropolitan areas with the highest employment level in this occupation:" There's only 40K jobs in SV, and if you go on HN reputation you'd think there's only like 3 jobs in all of Chicago, but the actual number is closer to 20K. As a practical matter it will not matter much if there are 40K jobs or 20K jobs in a legacy geographic location, because my first choice will always be remote anyway. Given that almost all jobs on a percentage basis are outside SV, by definition your best next job will almost certainly be out of state no matter where you live, in or out of CA.
- vonmoltke 10y agoIt's not just a matter of how many jobs there are, it is also a matter of how many employers there are and how flexible the employers are. An area with 20,000 jobs split between 400 employers may well be better for mobility than an area with 30,000 jobs split between 20. Similarly, an area where employers post laundry list job reqs and get picky about them is not going to be an easy area to switch jobs in, regardless of how many total jobs there are. Tens of thousands of tech job openings are controlled by companies who don't actually believe there is a talent shortage and will treat you accordingly.
- LargeCompanies 10y agoIn our industry the Skies the limit it seems if you know how to play the game, have a good amount of experience and currently employed.
- spo81rty 10y agoMy senior devs in KC all make about 110-120. I agree!
- maverick_iceman 10y ago110k to 120k for a senior dev is considered going through the roof?!
- rco8786 10y agoDo the cost of living comparison. 120k in KC is about equivalent to 225k in SF.
- hosh 10y agoSounds like it. I grew up in Columbus, OH. I was just graduating high school when dotcom bubble was frothing. I dreamed about going out to SV but didn't have the guts to. Thing is, when I moved out to Seattle, I fell in love with the West. I love the weather and people out here, whether in northern Arizon, or Washington State. I'm glad things are looking up at the midwest though.
- rdtsc 10y agoLived in OH as well for a long time. As they say, OH -- a good place to be from.