10 ms·
If there's a pronounced bimodal distribution, it seems like the biggest driver of it would be the lumping of various programmer specialties into one giant bucke
by jasode 10y ago
If there's a pronounced bimodal distribution, it seems like the biggest driver of it would be the lumping of various programmer specialties into one giant bucket. It seems like the 2 sub-buckets would be:
1) $100k or less: backoffice programmers where software itself is not the product sold. Also known as enterprisey/LOB/CRUD developers working outside Silicon Valley. (E.g. programmer working on mortgage servicing software for a bank in Kansas earning $80k salary.)
2) $150k or greater: programmers for a "tech" company in Silicon Valley. (e.g. the programmers at Apple/Facebook/Google earning $150k+)
If you combine those 2 groups nationwide, you'd end up with 2 humps in your graph.
- wodenokoto 10y agoCan't you arguably make similar groupings within lawyers?
- ghaff 10y agoI suspect even more so. Top school, law review, good federal clerkship, white shoe New York firm and everyone else. (Of course, that's a gross oversimplification. There are lots of lawyers with, e.g. solid in-house corporate counsel jobs. But the overall "commodity" market for lawyers isn't great these days.)
- warfangle 10y agoAnd there are many lawyers who work on social issues like tenant advocacy that make a whooole lot less than, say, an M&A lawyer.
- Amezarak 10y agoI really think it's location, location, location, not necessarily whether or not the software is the product. I've worked for consulting companies, product companies, and right now I work for a sort-of back-office organization. The best I've been able to do, despite several years of experience, good references, inside connections, a graduate degree, and being pretty (I think, anyway) personable is...75k. And I don't know anyone doing much better unless they moved to SV or NYC. My long-term plan is to see if somehow I can find the time to find a side-project or contribute to something open source, so my ability is out there and highly visible to anyone considering me, but that is going to be very difficult for where I am now. I'd love to make low six figures, it seems difficult to believe even in SV there are new grads making 150k, and it's frustrating to me because I know I perform at the level of people making that much money. EDIT: In case anyone was curious, new grads hired for development in my area of the US get paid from about 35-45k.
- NoGravitas 10y agoYour experience is consistent with mine.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- randomemployee 10y agoSlight counter, I'm working remotely (I live in small town in the Philadelphia suburbs) for a company with the US office outside of Boston, making 135k right now.
- Amezarak 10y agoCongratulations - that's my dream. :) Any tips on what to look for? I've interviewed with a few remote teams and they weren't able to give me anything close to that.
- morgante 10y agoTarget companies who are based in SF/NYC and are otherwise bought into the "expensive engineer" mindset (good signals: using modern tech, top-tier VC funding, etc.). Or just go the consulting route and earn even more.
- pmorici 10y ago$80k in Kansas City and $150k in San Francisco is exactly the same amount of money after accounting for differences in the cost of living. https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=$80000+salary+Kansas+City+to+San+Francisco https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=$80000+salary+Kansas+C...
- morgante 10y agoI hate these reductive COL adjustments. They're preposterous. Even if you assume that all your expenses are linearly multiplied (hint: Amazon costs the same no matter where you live), your savings are a lot more afterwards. If you were living on $40k/yr in Kansas City, you could move to SF and suddenly be saving $80k/yr. Would you really rather have $600k in Kansas City than $1 million in SF?
- alistproducer2 10y agoThis adjustment is on the extreme end to be sure. If you make 80K where I am and live in the square footage I do, a comparable place in SF is around 3K* more expensive per month. So there's a very real, ~36K negative adjustment to that 120K SF salary for me. *editted
- morgante 10y agoYou must have an insanely huge apartment for rent to increase by $4k/m by moving to SF. But even assuming that -36k adjustment, you're much better off making $150k in SF than $80k in Kansas City. Of course, you also have the option of downsizing into a smaller apartment. The amenities in a large city make it much easier to have a small apartment (for example, in NYC I drop off my laundry instead of washing it at home or hop around different coffee shops to work with a change of scenery). My quality of life is definitely higher in a small NYC apartment than a large Vermont house.
- alistproducer2 10y ago>You must have an insanely huge apartment for rent to increase by $4k/m I meant to type 3K/mo (which is where my 36K adjustment came from). And yes, I've actually looked up housing in the Yay when I was considering a prospect there. Honestly, at the tiime I was looking for 2 bedrooms so my 3K adjustment may actually be under because now I need 3 bedrooms. >Of course, you also have the option of downsizing into a smaller apartment. No I don't. I have a wife and 2 children who if I can afford to give them their own room, I will. That being said, I understand my calculations do not apply to everyone because we are not all at the same places in our lives (and may never be).
- morgante 10y agoIsn't that pretty much the O-ring model from the article? There are companies which value software engineering and those that don't. Eventually all the good developers migrate towards the former (where they are paid well) and the bad developers are stuck in the latter (where they are paid poorly). I definitely think the bimodal distribution is between firms, not within them. That being said, it's not as simple as geography or sector. There are plenty of remote gigs which will pay 6 figures, and there are plenty of non-tech companies which value software enough to pay $150k+. And there are, amazingly, some "tech" companies who still pay relatively poorly.
- Glyptodon 10y agoYou're the first person in this thread who I think has an ounce of reality about this situation. I looked at this article, saw the proposed income distribution, and immediately realized whoever was writing the article doesn't have any awareness of what things are like outside of the largest urban tech centers.
- collyw 10y agoI thought something similar, as the salaries are clearly based in the States.
- vonmoltke 10y agoWhere are programmers working for a "tech" company that is not in Silicon Valley?
- EduardoBautista 10y agoAmazon and Microsoft are two off the top of my head.
- cestith 10y agoIt depends on how you define "tech" I guess. There are lots of companies I'd call tech companies that are either headquartered elsewhere or have branch offices elsewhere that include programmers. Which of these don't have programming jobs at "tech" companies? Seattle (Microsoft and Amazon)? San Francisco isn't technically in the valley... Phoenix (GoDaddy)? Austin (Blizzard, a bunch of non-HQ offices like eBay, Google, Amazon, HP...)? San Antonio (Rackspace)? Armonk (IBM)? Malta, NY (Global Foundries)? Lockport, NY (Yahoo)? Amsterdam (Booking.com)? Houston (cPanel, Practice Insight, AlertLogic)? NYC (Fog Creek, regional offices for Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc)? Raleigh, NC (RedHat)? London (Canonical, Avanti Communications)? Portland (Puppet, some jobs for nVidia, Wacom, Mozilla...)? Boston / Cambridge ( Carbonite, Akamai, LogMeIn, Draft Kings, Wayfair, TripAdvisor ... with offices for Amazon, IBM, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Twitter, PayPal... )? Dallas / Fort Worth and their metro sprawl ( Texas Instruments, AT&T, MetroPCS, Ericsson, Intuit, Match.com, offices of ZTE, US headquarters of Blackberry ...)?
- vonmoltke 10y agoI think you and your siblings misunderstand. I meant, in the bimodal distribution of the post I was responding to, where do the programmers who work for these companies fall? I am one of them, after all.