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Leaving immigration aside -- there are order-of-magnitude compensation differences even among white US-citizen programmers. I.e., some are paid 50k a year; some
by umanwizard 10y ago
Leaving immigration aside -- there are order-of-magnitude compensation differences even among white US-citizen programmers. I.e., some are paid 50k a year; some are paid 500k a year. How is it possible for someone to figure out what they're "worth" in this environment?
- empressplay 10y agoWork history, interviews, coding tests, side-projects...
- WalterBright 10y agoI'd hazard a guess that a computer professional who was unable to use google to determine a salary range for his education and experience is probably worth at the bottom. The ones I know at the top end (and the $500k figure is low) are well aware of the value they bring to a corporation, and price accordingly.
- WalterBright 10y agoFor example, suppose a corporation has a $100m server farm. If a programmer could make the server software run 1% faster, that's worth $1m to the corporation, and they'd likely be willing to bid $500k for such expertise.
- rmellow 10y agoYou're assuming they can't find anyone that will do it for less than 500k.
- sulam 10y agoAnyone spending $100M annually on servers is more than willing to spend $500K to someone who can speed it up by 1%. There aren't many of these companies!
- WalterBright 10y agoThere aren't many of those programmers, either. The low hanging optimization fruit has already been picked.
- umanwizard 10y agoMy point is "education and experience" probably under-specify how much you should be making. I have a bachelor's degree in mathematics and about four years' experience as a programmer. What's my compensation range?
- WalterBright 10y agoWhat you are worth is what people are willing to pay. You can find this out by googling salary ranges for your education and experience. If you believe you should be making more than those salary ranges, you'll need to make a convincing case to the employer that you can deliver that extra value.