4 ms·

IDK, I'm calling horse on that. I'm a self taught developer who have roughly 1 year exp. and moved to Tennessee(40th poorest state in the union, ultra low cost

IDK, I'm calling horse on that. I'm a self taught developer who have roughly 1 year exp. and moved to Tennessee(40th poorest state in the union, ultra low cost of living) for a software gig last year. I'm black, 30 year old male, and have a resume with more job/career hopping than a con-artist. I'm not really that great at programming(got fired after 6 months!).....first offer(I took it) was low ball....at 55k!! Next job I took over paid me and offered $92k with zero negotiation to lower it: All within one year. I've worked prior tech jobs offering $25k-40k and they were usually some unholy mash up of lite programming and I.T. help desk/system admin roles. From talking to companies, the non-sexy locations have to pay up the ass and fly in talent for open source. The .Net guys around me make bank too. If you have several years of programming experience and can only get $75k, I wonder if you program in VB or some obscure academic language....I usually have to argue with recruiters to lower their pay requests per hour...in the south.

Amezarak 10y ago
I mostly have done enterprisey stuff, webdev and desktop, so C#, Python, Java, C++, Javascript, and then a long tail of other stuff. Really good at SQL. No IT stuff. I can't explain the .NET world, but I think what could hurt me with open-source type companies is my lack of a Github. Nothing I've done for work has been public, my personal projects are nothing I'd be willing to share and, quite simply, the very last thing I want to do when I get home at the end of a ten-hour day is program, especially when I have many, many other things that need to be done - around the house, with the family, etc. Like I said, my plan is to somehow find the time and contribute, so there's something out there, but it's going to be rough and take a while. But if that's what I've gotta do, that's what I've gotta do. Overall, I think the biggest factor is my unwillingness to move. I do live in a very poor state. I am very confident that if I went elsewhere I could make a lot more. There are maybe a dozen and a half employers here. Generally the rule seems to be the commercial companies pay nothing, and the government contractors pay by what you can negotiate plus years of seniority. Maybe I should go the recruiter route - I never have. That's one reason I posted, to see what other experiences are. Thank you.

Amezarak 10y ago

I mostly have done enterprisey stuff, webdev and desktop, so C#, Python, Java, C++, Javascript, and then a long tail of other stuff. Really good at SQL. No IT stuff. I can't explain the .NET world, but I think what could hurt me with open-source type companies is my lack of a Github. Nothing I've done for work has been public, my personal projects are nothing I'd be willing to share and, quite simply, the very last thing I want to do when I get home at the end of a ten-hour day is program, especially when I have many, many other things that need to be done - around the house, with the family, etc. Like I said, my plan is to somehow find the time and contribute, so there's something out there, but it's going to be rough and take a while. But if that's what I've gotta do, that's what I've gotta do. Overall, I think the biggest factor is my unwillingness to move. I do live in a very poor state. I am very confident that if I went elsewhere I could make a lot more. There are maybe a dozen and a half employers here. Generally the rule seems to be the commercial companies pay nothing, and the government contractors pay by what you can negotiate plus years of seniority. Maybe I should go the recruiter route - I never have. That's one reason I posted, to see what other experiences are. Thank you.