15 ms·

A note on programmer salaries

• sillysaurus3 9y ago
  I mean, it's pretty simple, but it took a long time to internalize: If you don't have anyone else making you an offer, then you're worth that amount. In this case, you were worth $42k and $56k respectively. If you'd shopped around, you'd have been worth more. But you didn't, so you weren't. That's not a bad thing, either. Security is nice, and interviews are a pain. But it really is that simple. If you don't like your current pay, don't bother with negotiating for a raise. That's how you keep getting paid the same amount plus inflation. Go to the market. That feeling you're talking about -- where the company rakes in millions and you're the reason why, yet you're paid table scraps -- it's because that's what you're worth. There's no greed. The company is just that valuable, and no one is making you a better offer, so that's how valuable you are. There's not much sense in comparing notes or seeing how much everybody else is making, except as a way to incentivize you to do something about it (leave). If you like your security, then enjoy it. If you like your money, go talk to companies. EDIT: Time to bust out one of the best comments of all time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2439478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2439478 Turns out he was a doormat in negotiating, though his salary history was cringeworthy. It pained everyone to hear it, considering how nice of a guy he was. In all honestly, $60K was a big step up for him. [...] He spent the next day in non-stop meetings with HR, his manager and the CTO. That Friday he simply handed in his badge without a word, walked out and never came back. Until 3 months later. As a consultant. At $175/hour. (The most-popular comment list is interesting in general: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page... Too bad when the scores were hidden, the list stopped working.)
  • paulcole 9y ago
    >If you don't have anyone else making you an offer, then you're worth that amount. If you have money saved you always have another offer. The biggest leverage you have as an employee is saying "no thanks" and leaving. As long as you're willing to do that you can demand whatever you want.
  • BurningFrog 9y ago
    > "that's what you're worth" Your argument is sound, but this is really unfortunate phrasing. It's actually what your work is worth. Not what you as a person is worth, and it's important to keep those things separate, both for sanity and rigor.
    • purple-again 9y ago
      Your value to society is the value of your work which in everyone else's context is your value. No one cares if your apartment is clean which is why no one pays you to clean your apartment.
      • jacalata 9y ago
        Ah, so Steve jobs was worth $1/year.
        • purple-again 9y ago
          Sigh. In what version of the world do you believe Steve Jobs ever went a year of making $1? Even if his tax return showed income of $1 for that year (it never did) the net worth of his assets increased significantly during the year and the value of that would be captured eventually.
          • jacalata 9y ago
            I don't, but people who believe one silly thing often believe others so I thought you might. Let's go with some other examples: open source software. Breastfeeding. Ooh, how about literally every person in America under 10 years old? They're all worthless and society wouldn't be negatively affected if they disappeared out of existence? After all, close enough to 0 of them are being paid by anyone.
          • AstralStorm 9y ago
            Her got paid by stock dividend. Had a pretty important share in Apple Inc.
        • 9y ago
  • plaguuuuuu 9y ago
    >If you'd shopped around, you'd have been worth more. But you didn't, so you weren't. Isn't that circular logic? By that logic, nothing can ever be undervalued, because its fair value is defined by how much it's sold for. If you want to go all supply-and-demand, an employee's value is still not what they request, it's what it would cost to replace them, on average
    • rubber_duck 9y ago
      You are correct - to the company he's worth the amount it would take to replace him. Plenty of people can negotiate to get closer to that so negotiating a raise isn't pointless - but lateral moves are often easier. Although you can be more valuable in a different company - for eg. if your current company isn't good at utilizing your specializations.
    • emsy 9y ago
      Not circular logic, it's excactly how it works. Someone offers you money for your time and if both parties find an agreement on how much that time is worth, they've determined a value that is acceptable for both parties. No one is forced to employ or be employed.
      • komali2 9y ago
        >no one is forced to be employed Er, can you clarify? If you don't work, you don't eat.
        • danielharrison 9y ago
          Like the thousands of unemployed people? Some haven't eaten for years. That's not what he means, just like that's not what you mean.
      • deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      • EGreg 9y ago
        "No one is forced to employ or be employed" Pretty sure most people who live paycheck to paycheck would disagree.
  • taeric 9y ago
    While this is a simplistic view that might help you feel good about taking advantage of someone, it is ridiculously easily abused. And, quite frankly, scares me if I think about it for too long. I don't want a society where there are people left behind simply because they did not make a job out of making more money. Nor do I want a society where services performed by folks leads to a massive wealth imbalance in workforces that don't have people specifically tasked with keeping this from happening. Especially with how anti union/similar setup current cultures are. And to be clear, I realize that that ship has somewhat sailed. Nobody was specifically tasked with making sure women/minorities were paid fairly. As a result, we have an obvious problem. One where the incentives have aligned such that many companies do not have an incentive to fix it. (There has to be a term for the occurrence where virtue signaling is high, but actual virtue is punished. Anyone know it?) That is, you are absolutely right in many senses. But I worry that as long as not all companies are paying more fair wages, than there is little incentive to be the one company paying fair wages. (There are incentives to pay above normal pay, but that can still be below fair. See again current women's pay gap.) So, can you reduce it down to folks are ultimately paid what they are worth. And if they simply shopped themselves around they could get more, but they didn't so they have accepted their low worth, so they are, ipso facto, worth less. Great. I just think we have plenty of evidence that shows that doesn't actually work.
    • meric 9y ago
      virtue signaling is high, but actual virtue is punished Hypocrisy?
      • taeric 9y ago
        I worded it wrong. I meant the incentives are high for the signaling, but actually inverted for the acts. My example was supposed to be that you are rewarded for looking fair, but it would actually be detrimental to be so. Deception and hypocrisy, I think, are related to this, but I feel they are a little different, too. Don't know if I can explain why. So perhaps I'm just wrong on that feeling?
    • acchow 9y ago
  • kartan 9y ago
    > If you don't have anyone else making you an offer, then you're worth that amount. You are confused about cost and value. I have seen a lot of people with high salaries that are more of a problem than a solution for the company. As an example, you can look at the executive that fired Salesforce red team at the DefCon. Companies and upper management are usually bad at evaluating the value of employees. In some cases even punishing good employees while rewarding more ass-kisser types. So you can be worth a lot, but be paid quite low. As cost and value are not always correlated, and rarely match each other. For the part of looking elsewhere for a better salary, I agree. The managers are doing a poor job and moving around is the only option. This is a huge cost to the companies that lose expertise and need to train new employees and show how much overpaid their managers are because pay and worth are not related, and this is big a problem. * https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/08/salesforce-fires-two-security-team-members-for-presenting-at-defcon/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/08/salesforce-fires-two...
  • tensor 9y ago
    Companies that hire consultants for tech are incompetent technically. That comment means little.
  • EGreg 9y ago
    If you don't have anyone else making you an offer, then you're worth that amount. That's how much that counterparty has offered. It may not necessarily be how much you're worth to that party, let alone some other party. They may be bluffing. They may not have enough money at the moment. And so on. If later on they get $10 million income and they can't continue without you, then even though they are still paying you $X you can easily find out you're worth more by threatening to leave. You're worth whatever it costs to replace you in the open market.
  • shmerl 9y ago
    > the reason why, yet you're paid table scraps -- it's because that's what you're worth. That doesn't make any sense and sounds like everyone is always paid fairly. That's far from true.
    • jstanley 9y ago
      If you think you're not being paid fairly, do something about it (e.g. demand more, or quit and do something else for money). If you can't get more, you're not being exploited. You're taking advantage of the best option available to you.
      • shmerl 9y ago
        I hope you recognize, that the statement that everyone is always paid fairly is false. Thinking otherwise borders on some kind of serious ethical blindness.
        • ingenuous2 9y ago
          Where did they make that statement? All I'm hearing GP say is if the only way to know your worth to the market is to test it. There is no other way to measure what your employment is worth.
          • shmerl 9y ago
            It was phrased that way above, read carefully. If all they meant was "if you aren't paid fairly, leave and find a better place", that's OK, but that's not how it was phrased (which was quite improper).
  • ralfd 9y ago
    > Coworker was building a new house, and when it came to the numbers it was let loose that it was going to cost about $700K. This didn't seem like much Not much? I hate you Silicon Valley!
  • akvadrako 9y ago
    It's not that simple, because the other option is don't work. If you value your time more than anyone is willing to pay, that means your value is greater than your highest offer.
• spraak 9y ago
  Taking advice from the article to share about salary: I have 2.5 years of software development experience but no formal education. I am paid 65k/yr but as a remote contractor, so I pay my own taxes and healthcare, which effectively makes my salary about 57k/yr. I'm considering looking for a new position. What is a reasonable salary to ask for? Edit: I live in California and prefer to continue working remotely
  • batman_symbol 9y ago
    I have the same experience. How do u swing a job like that/market yourself?
    • spraak 9y ago
      Well, there are a lot of remote job resources to find a company open to that. Specifically I found the position from the Hacker News Who's Hiring. I guess I did well enough with my intro letter and coding challenge to them for them to schedule an interview.
      • starbuxman 9y ago
        SkipTheDrive.com is a good resource for remote jobs.
  • eljimmy 9y ago
    Impossible to answer without context. Location? Specialization?
    • spraak 9y ago
      Thanks for asking. I live in southern California and do backend development, usually with Node and Go.
  • aerovistae 9y ago
    Out of school, my salary history went $67k for 6 months -> $82k for 7 month -> $90k for 18 months -> $110k (present). East coast of US. I took more than 6 months off between each job, so I've had a cumulative two years' vacation since graduation. Recommended. And if someone doesn't offer you the salary you want, say thank you but no thank you. As for convincing people, just be sure to have side projects and be sure you're able to talk in detail about anything you've worked on.
• denisehilton 9y ago
  The thing is most of the people in the tech industry are moving towards programming and app development. Looks like the programming sector will get saturated in the next few years. The average salaries are going to take a hit as well.
  • sk5t 9y ago
    An increase in the number of people attracted to programming jobs does not necessarily move the supply curve of people who are good at programming.
    • sidlls 9y ago
      On the other hand, the majority of stuff produced in this industry doesn't require a high degree of skill, nor does it seem very high quality. Frankly I'm amused that programmers are paid even as much as we are (which is still low compared to the value we deliver, even for relatively shabby uses).
    • cookiecaper 9y ago
      I have a friend who suggests the opposite of the grandparent's assertion. Since every new line of code represents technical debt that must be serviced, each new programmer generates a maintenance burden sufficient to occupy the time of 2 more programmers.
      • sidlls 9y ago
        This assumes companies value servicing tech debt.
        • cookiecaper 9y ago
          Like financial debt, technical debt can only be ignored for so long. Eventually, badly-serviced code gets mucked up to the point where changes are prohibitively difficult. The normal response I see to this is for companies to hire new talent to come in and write a parallel v2.0 while the old talent nurses v1.0. v2.0 takes 6-12 months to develop, and then it works OK for a while, but since management's refusal to prioritize technical quality is really the crux of the issue, v2.0 eventually grinds to a halt as well, and the cycle repeats for a v3.0. So they're still forced to hire to someone to help them resolve the friction caused by technical debt, and this method comes at a much greater cost than hiring someone competent and giving them the necessary resources/allowances (which, yes, includes an adequate number of programmers) in the first place. That allows the same codebase to remain maintainable (or even just salvageable) and be used long-term, without really having to rewrite the thing and throw all of the knowledge surrounding corner cases, etc., out the window for v+1.
• joeframbach 9y ago
  I felt the same way in 2007 when I was making $36k in my first job. My mind changed after I had competing offers and actually negotiated, and am making several multiples of that initial amount. Now I'm in the camp of "you get what you ask for".
• i_dont_know_ 9y ago
  The salaries are much lower compared to the large sales contracts because the company is compensating you for uncertainty. If you stick with a company, you're guaranteed whatever your salary is even if the company doesn't make any sales. If they're doing really well in terms of sales and contracts, then they pocket the difference, but if they're not, you pocket the loss. I personally agree with the author that it's worth getting paid for the uncertainty with your own company (in most cases the rewards outweigh the risk assuming you have enough to float on for a year or so while you're learning), but some people find that stressful and are willing to pay a pretty hefty premium for that certainty of a regular monthly check.
  • JoeAltmaier 9y ago
    Every contracting company I worked for, had me full-time on projects. If they didn't have work for everybody, they laid off. They covered their 'risk' that way. Its a hoax that they took 25% (or more) to cover 'risk. It was to cover their vacation home payments.
    • AstralStorm 9y ago
      They were covering the risk of default (Or rate adjustment) on their loans. Whether said loans were necessary is another matter.
• retube 9y ago
  > I could do this myself without him. It didn't feel right You may be about to learn a hard lesson. Anyone can do a job. Creating a job is hard. Good luck
  • drakonka 9y ago
    She is now doing just that. Check out some of her work, she has started a company creating a texture compressor and speaks/runs workshops pretty regularly. I am not a graphics programmer but find some of the material she shares really interesting.
• no_protocol 9y ago
  > My first job out of college I got paid $42,000. ... This was in 2013. Me too. I was able to get it from $41,000 to $42,000 by asking for more. I'm up to $48,000 now! Nice job.
• leeoniya 9y ago
  a good opportunity is to bring more value to the company than simply the code you write (easier to do in smaller companies with a shallow hierarchy). i recently switched out our payment processor after shopping around and reduced our transaction fees by $70k/yr into the foreseeable future. negotiations tend to go more smoothly afterwards.
  • joombaga 9y ago
    That's great! These are the kinds of things I tell juniors to put on their resume. There's big value in demonstrated cost-cutting ability.
• nardi 9y ago
  The mansplaining in this thread is off the scale
  • komali2 9y ago
    Can you elaborate?
    • purple-again 9y ago
      She/he/it/they can't reliably determine the gender of most of these posters. While statistically sure 80% are male there's a non 0% chance that the fates have aligned and only women happened to have clicked on and commented on this story so far. It's an annoying SJW tactic of trying to shut down any criticism of a position a women has tried to take. Never mind that most of us probably didn't even notice the article was written by a women because that's not something we care about or look for (I had to go back and check after seeing this comment).
  • fumigator 9y ago
    "The mansplaining in this thread is off the scale" OK, I assume you're of what used to known as the female gender and as such disqualified to comment on any male related issues. I shall be keeping an eye on you from now on. By any chance would the opposite of 'mansplaining' be bitchsplaining, I wonder :) mansplaining:: a term of abuse used in the lunatic fringe of third-wave feminism to shut down discourse.
    • dang 9y ago
      We've banned this account for personal attack, ideological boilerplate, and breaking the guideline against calling names in arguments. The parent comment wasn't substantive but that doesn't mean you can break the site rules like this.
      • johnvonneumann 9y ago
        Who did you ban? The first response or second one?
• retrac98 9y ago
  It seems like these kinds of salaries only really exist for full time employees in the US. As a software architect (engineer team size ~100) in the UK I was only making £65k. I could have shopped around and got more, much more if I went to London but still nothing like I read about in the US. I ended up leaving full time employment for contracting/consulting.
  • cjhanks 9y ago
    Those type of salaries only really exist in San Francisco bay. The marketplace is actually pretty competitive for such well paying jobs. But keep in mind - $100k SFBay is approximately $65k for most of the rest of the country. The US Dollar holds significantly different value in different parts of the country.
    • taway_1212 9y ago
      Not really, since, if you take a mortgage to buy a house in SF/SV, you may have as much discretionary income left as someone in say, Alabama, BUT you're slowly building a $1m+ asset (that you'll be able to sell once the mortgage is paid). So, $100k is only comparable to $65k in most of the rest of the country when you're renting.
      • mamon 9y ago
        Unless we have another housing bubble burst and your 1 million $ asset falls down to 400k
        • taway_1212 9y ago
          Arguably, you're still going to be better off when compared against $200k-$400k house in a "cheap" state.
  • otto_ortega 9y ago
    I completely agree... It is even worse if you live on latin america. The really sad part is when you take into consideration that programming and CS jobs in general are one of the jobs on which you can generate the same value being on-site or at the other end of the world. So in theory there is no reason why you couldn't do the same thing someone in the US is doing and get paid the same amount. Oh well, such is life...
• ddosasaurus 9y ago
  Short story: I started out very hard on myself and pushed myself 24/7 to be the best I can be. My first job was $65k/yr, raised to $75k/yr at the end of the first year. I had a strong suspicion I was worth more, but I took a strategic approach to finding out. A year later I took an offer at $140k/yr. A year and a half later I accepted $195k/yr ($165k base + $30k bonus). In my current state I'm stuck somewhere between wondering when this will end and yet knowing very concretely the tremendous amount of value I create at organizations (not just in engineering proper, but also team development, leadership, best practices, biz/ops, etc.). I'm optimistic I'll be able to keep this upward trajectory going, it just may not continue to be in the form of salary.
  • bousaid 9y ago
    Go work for Microsoft or Amazon?
• throwaway38743 9y ago
  This is how things are the world over. I once worked for a company which was happy to support a grad student in the US, but would not pay me a similar RA/tuition salary here. This, even if I had better results to show in a shorter period. Equity is alien, and generally connections/networking commands more salary than skills/knowledge. Really sad TBH.
  • spraak 9y ago
    Where is "here" for you?
• otto_ortega 9y ago
  Any advise on how to get a wage on the ranges mentioned on the article (or in the comments) while living OUTSIDE the USA? I live in Central America, but work for a Seattle based startup as a remote contractor and make $32K. Whenever I read about "common" salaries for programmers in the US an internal conflict unleashes on me. On one side what I make is on the middle-high range when compared to the local market, but it seems it is low when compared to US salaries. I often wonder if I'm fooling myself and the guys with those salaries in the US are actually more skilled than me and there is no point on comparing. For the record I have a bachelor degree on computer science (from a local university), was Cisco CCNA certified (expired already) and consider myself to be a fairly competent full stack programmer, in the sense that I can build a web application from zero and handle everything from setting up the server and designing the DB to developing the user interface (html, css) and programming the back-end (in PHP) I have recently reached the same conclusion that the person on the article, and I'm planning to launch a SaaS side project of my own and let the market decide the real value of my work...
  • komali2 9y ago
    If you can build and deploy a webapp from zero to nothing you could make 120k usd in San Francisco, cause that's what bootcamp grads are doing and pretty much the only thing they bring to the table is webapp skills. Visa and etc might make it harder for you, but if it were me I'd start browsing for remote positions at San Francisco companies.
    • purple-again 9y ago
      $120k is San Fran could easily be a worse quality of life than $40k in Central America (too broad to say for certain).
      • komali2 9y ago
        But 120k remote salary while living in central America is probably better than 40k local salary while living in central America ;)
      • 9y ago
• snowglobe789 9y ago
  And meanwhile I'm dreaming about making more than 500 euro/month working as a ASP.NET/C# dev
  • pvsukale3 9y ago
    Same here but with Ruby on Rails.
  • otto_ortega 9y ago
    I feel your pain...
  • yxhuvud 9y ago
    Eastern europe?
    • ManlyBread 9y ago
      In Eastern Europe he'd be severely underpaid unless he is an intern or has less than a year of experience, I have 1.5 years of experience and just landed a job where my net pay is more than 1k EUR - and I'm a fairly average programmer
• 1throwaway123 9y ago
  Salary progression for me First job (India) 2006 - ~$4,000 per year Second Job (India) 2008 - ~$10,000 per year Third job (US) 2010 - $105k Fourth Job (US) 2012 - >$150K Things have gone well since then too. The main thing that has kept things going up so far is really practicing before interviews to try and get better and never shying from looking for better opportunities. The company and I have a transactional relationship, not an emotional one.
  • anotheryou 9y ago
    how long did you stay at each job?
    • ARCarr 9y ago
      It has the dates right there...2 years each is looks like.
      • anotheryou 9y ago
        Must have been before my first covfefe or it got edited :) thanks
• nsxwolf 9y ago
  "Within a year, after leading several projects" What the hell? Is that a normal career progression for a junior developer straight out of college?
  • spery 9y ago
    It's not uncommon to let capable junior devs run a small project with someone more experienced having oversight.
  • gcb0 9y ago
    on fortune 500, you move teams often (managers and vp quit and new ones join in, there are layoffs, reorgs, etc) and the people above you give you work based on first impressions. they will need to have you in their org for some 4 years to learn something from your resume.
• kayoone 9y ago
  By looking at her Linkedin, it is easy to see what companies she is talking about, some big names up there. I think her viewpoint is a bit naive though. Of course a company will pay market rate in a european city if that is what it takes to be competitive. The fact that they pay their US employees more might create tensions inside the company but in the end is just down to the fact that the market there is completely different and that is what it takes to be competitive there. In the beginning of my career i also had similar thoughts like "Why does the company make so much money when i am doing all the work" but while running my own business later i realized that it is not as simple. The company has a whole lot of risk and work bringing in projects and keeping everything afloat, as a programmer i did not have to worry about anything of that and only later i realized how much value that has, especially in a region where programming and consulting gigs weren't really easy to get. Location really matters for programmer salaries. I went from a smaller european city where all there was for programmers were small software/marketing agencies to a european tech hub with a lot of startups and a booming market. My salary doubled just by changing location and living costs are still comparable and i finally feel i am getting paid what i am worth, which is still far from US standards though.
  • wyclif 9y ago
    Your point about companies absorbing and mitigating risk, and doing lots of risk assessment, is one of the biggest issues missing from her consideration. It's very simplistic to look at salaries from the standpoint of product delivery alone. One could argue that the larger the corporation, the more risk is diffused across the organisation. It's not simply about keeping the lights on at headquarters. It's also another reason why salaries are generally higher in the USA for the same programming job: pay is higher because risk is greater (stock market, investment, litigation, etc).
  • Swinx43 9y ago
    Out of interest which European tech hub did you move to? Berlin? I am currently looking at making a move and would love to hear some first hand experience of the tech hubs in Europe that people have moved to.
    • 9y ago
• devdad 9y ago
  > "That feeling that I am actually the one making this work, and I'm also perfectly capable of talking with people and selling it" The last part of this sentence is what is important. I'm a decent programmer, having built a few apps both for web and phones. My colleague is a better programmer. We're getting tons of work (by me selling) and outsourcing lots of it to other programmers we know, because they can't sell. Selling is hard, building trust is harder and doing so continuously is even harder. My point, although a bit drawn out, is: It doesn't matter how great you are as a developer if you can't sell. Running a business is another kind of hard than dealing with race conditions. You can probably learn how to do both.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• seedle12 9y ago
  I'm an Android dev w/ Angular 2 and web app dev skills in . the UK.. I'm not even remotely scratching the surface of what engineers are being paid in the US. I'm making the transition to contracting.. working 12 - 14 hours permanently for peanuts is ridiculous.
  • chuckit2 9y ago
    (Throw-away account) I have similar skills working in London for a "major search engine" (you've used it within the past 90 seconds I bet) - I guess I am one level below being considered "senior". £65K basic, about £15-20K annual bonus and roughly $40K in stock grants a year, so works out at about £100K a year when all is said and done (or about $130K) before taxes. Not sure how that compares to your pay, but I know that mine is lower than the people on my team doing the same job but based in SF or NYC - not by a huge amount, but certainly in the tens-of-thousands. I know deep down in my heart that I should go contracting to double my pay and get a much more flexible work-life balance, but I just cant yet bring myself to quit mainly out of pride and because I expect when it comes to contractor interviews people will just not understand why I quit "major search engine" (plus I'd be throwing away about a hundred grand in stock that hasn't vested yet). Golden handcuffs - first world problems suck.
    • dood 9y ago
      > people will just not understand why I quit "major search engine" Don't know how you got this idea. No-one will care.
      • chuckit2 9y ago
        You may be right. My fear is that people would assume I was sacked/forced-out for being crap though, since there is such a mystique around the company and people dream of getting a job there. Perhaps in a few more years things will tarnish a bit more.
        • dood 9y ago
          Nah, don't worry about it. If anything people will respect you for following your passions, but more likely they just won't care. Strong developers are rare, no-one will question how they arrived in their interview room, they'll just be glad you're there.
• cerealbad 9y ago
  if you are bad at negotiation you should hire someone to do it for you.
  • christophilus 9y ago
    That is an interesting idea. I haven't heard of anyone doing that in the tech world.
    • brepl 9y ago
      Good recruiters do this for you.
• ajdlinux 9y ago
  I'm a junior developer in a megacorp, where I sometimes think about how I'm not getting the salary I could be getting if I moved to SF, negotiated a bit harder, pushed for quicker promotions... But I'm not the lowest paid person in the office. Even the junior devs who started well after I did and haven't had as many raises aren't the lowest paid in the office. I'm fairly sure the lowest paid people in the office are the cleaning contractors who come in after hours, almost certainly with far less flexibility, worse working conditions and worse job security than the programmers whose mess they vacuum. Not that this stops me from pursuing career progression, but it'd be nice to see software developers show a bit of solidarity with people who aren't lucky enough to be able to work with tech and who live paycheque to paycheque, rather than discussing how they're going to negotiate their way up to being in the global 0.5%.
  • chris11 9y ago
    Developers are in a completely different situation than a lot of other people. The money we might get by aggressively negotiating would mean a lot more to other people. But refusing to negotiate or to that raise won't increase other people's salary. Having empathy with other people's situation doesn't require us to ignore our own higher salaries. Political action (whether company or government) or charitable contributions would be a lot more effective in improving peoples lives.
    • ajdlinux 9y ago
      So, how generous are programmers as a profession?
  • majewsky 9y ago
    > how they're going to negotiate their way up to being in the global 0.5% Reality check: Most of us are already in the top 0.5% of the global income distribution, even with a relatively meager salary like 30k or 40k. You can check for yourself at http://www.globalrichlist.com/ http://www.globalrichlist.com/
    • ajdlinux 9y ago
• vacri 9y ago
  > I couldn't shake that feeling I got from my first gig in programming. That feeling that I am actually the one making this work, and I'm also perfectly capable of talking with people and selling it-- and yet they make millions and I make a tiny fraction. So... do it. The author claims to be just as good at business and selling. So... do it. If you're sour about it and think you can do it, then do it. HN used to be a place where people understood that it took more to running a tech business than being a programmer. Pounding the pavement is hard. Getting clients is hard. Securing funding is hard. Legal work is hard. Securing staff is hard. Dealing with burn rate is hard. Finding market fit is hard. Complying with regulations is hard. If you can do all of this (I can't - I have no entrepreneurial bone in my body, and am a lifer salaryman), then do it. It's very satisfying even if you're not made filthy rich from it. But don't sit there as a salaried employee complaining that you should be given the lion's share because you do 'all the work'. Chances are, you're missing a hell of a lot that is being done. Thankfully the author is actually following up on this, but I see this kind of mentality a lot in our industry. Short form: if you think you can 'do all this' and you're sour about not getting enough money for your skills, then you only have one option towards satisfaction: do it.
• animex 9y ago
  I like her matter-of-fact "I'll just start a company and making millions of dollars instead!" If it were only that simple?
  • chrisco255 9y ago
    Well, she says if she falls on hard times, she'll just pick up contract work. There are plenty of gigs out there for talented devs.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• lordnacho 9y ago
  It's mostly a question of negotiating position. If you have some savings, you can take longer to search for a new job, or you can give yourself the upside option of starting a new business. If you're broke, you basically have to take whatever you can find before food runs out. At the moment, there's pressure on people's budgets coming from rent. Asset prices are inflated thanks to cheap money (in several places around the world), and that pushes up rents as well as mortgages. This adds to everyone's burn rate, and transfers both actual wealth but also opportunity people who owned homes before it all went crazy. (Another thing that ate up opportunity for the masses was that they didn't let the economy fail.) > "That feeling that I am actually the one making this work, and I'm also perfectly capable of talking with people and selling it" I've come to this conclusion as well. It's narrow minded, but I do tend to think that technologists are actually the only people making the world better. Organisers (leaders, management, bureaucrats, sales) have existed since the dawn of civilisation. What do they do? They use influence to manipulate some group of people to behave in some way that they like. Sometimes it works for everyone, sometimes it works just for them. But they've always been around, and we've never lacked for people who thought they were good leaders. Technologists, by contrast, make new things. That's in the word. And by making new things new ways of organising society arise, often benefitting a lot of people. What's interesting about our time is that there's a perception, pretty much unfounded, that technical people aren't social. And with that the idea that there are certain people (called BSers when they do it badly) who are naturally more social and thus better at handling relations such as sales. It is of course totally wrong; you can practice social skills as much as you can practice algorithms.
• thyselius 9y ago
  In your new company, do you/would you split the revenue evenly with devs you hire?
• bronz 9y ago
  i think programmers and a lot of other people get paid way too much. i used to wash dishes and the other guy who washed dishes, who worked right next to me, was an immigrant. he worked 12 hours a day every single solitary day. without him, the restaurant would grind to a halt. so, like stephanie, he was a huge part of all the money that was made. and yet, he gets paid less than minimum wage. he works harder than anyone else i have ever known and yet he gets paid a pittance. he make their business possible and yet he is paid a pittance. let me tell you that seeing programmers make 50k a year for basically no work compared to my friend, its amazing to me. and when i see white collar workers complain that they only make 100k, it makes me angry. the vast, vast majority of white collar workers are not worth anything close to what they are paid. i know a guy who works four hours a week and is paid more than 80k. four hours of typing per week. the level of privilege is astounding among programmers. so please dont complain.
  • vostok 9y ago
    I don't think you're actually arguing that programmers get paid too much. You are arguing that dishwashers get paid too little. Your argument is that dishwashers produce a lot of value and you're right about that. The restaurant is willing to pay probably as much as $50/hour for a dishwasher if not more. The problem is that people are willing to take the job at $15/hour so there's no incentive for the restaurant to pay more.
    • bronz 9y ago
      perhaps youre right
    • anotheryou 9y ago
      You just said it yourself: the market dictates the price and it is not tied to effort or anything just. People mostly get paid just the right ammount according to the market, but from any other percepective the numbers are pretty aribtrary and by no means justifiable. At most one could say that some people don't work hard on their carrees and e.g. try to make a living from beeing an artist (or in oter words: don't optimize for money). But this is not true for the dishwasher either.
• daxfohl 9y ago
  I made my best money about 5 years after graduating. Became a specialist at a very specific technology, got ~$150/hr for a little over a year. Of course Econ 101 kicked in and supply for that skill increased and so salary went down. Since then just trying to hang on. Consulting fees continually harder to justify vs low-bidders and contracts harder to come by. 15 years later gave that up for corporate. Not doing bad but also not making 300K/yr. Though I do have good benefits now. Anyway hopefully Stephanie does well.
• nachtigall 9y ago
  > And negotiate. Even better, negotiate collectively. It's easy to lay off one person but you cannot lay off a whole branch (or all employees ideally). I know I'm dreaming but there are decades if not centuries of experiences of worker struggles about better salaries or working condition. And well, there are just basics, to be learnt about. If you are on a one-by-one negotiating with your boss in private, then you are in an environment where you've already lost. It's no surprise that in all other industries salaries working conditions are negotiated (and fought for) collectively.
  • gcb0 9y ago
    ah yes. the great union collective fear that was masterly imbued in the mind of every middle class american. even down to the point of dictionaries now listing syndicate as organised crime. yes, there was some cases. but steve jobs also was convicted of organized crime literally on wages fixing and he never made it into a dictionary as a synonym to organized crime like they did to unions.
• ohthehugemanate 9y ago
  I am continually surprised that _anyone_ in tech signs employment contracts in Europe. If you're good, and know how to work well remotely, contract work at 130-150€/hr is plentiful. Working 32 (billable) hrs/wk with 6 weeks vacation - more or less what you'd do as an Employee - that's an income between 190-220k. But every employment contract I've heard of here (France and Germany) maxes out at 90-100k for even director level positions. I'm still shocked by it every time. Especially since the same person who makes you that offer will complain that it's so hard to find talent. What a surprise! Who would think, it's hard to hire people by offering less than half their market rate.
  • dmcampos 9y ago
    What I always find difficult is - as fresh graduate, where would I start? I have no experience (besides internships) and no connections.
  • malmsteen 9y ago
    >> If you're good, and know how to work well remotely, contract work at 130-150€/hr is plentiful What kind of work ? if you have a phd you can't have research work that way can you ?
  • Sholmesy 9y ago
    Hey there, Londoner here feeling quite constrained with salaries, curious where you find 130-150/hr remote gigs. Mostly through a personal network? Or a recruiter? Really curious.
    • Swinx43 9y ago
      Same here. I would love to find those remote gigs at that price. I am contracting in London in the data space and would jump at the opportunity to work remotely for that amount. There definitely is a very real salary ceiling in the tech world in London.
      • Sholmesy 9y ago
        How do you like contracting? I'm on salary at the moment, but it would take a lot for me to make anything near what the day rates for 3/6 month contracts are paying.
• suresh70 9y ago
  Large companies are like a big analog machines run largely by human power. The machine absorbs lot of power and produces large output. The large output shouldn't be compared to that of individual's share for helping run that machinery.
• kisstheblade 9y ago
  Yes well I don't know where these enormously successful companies are in europe with millions going to some non-deserving CEO. Sure there may be some that do reasonably well, but It is quite a cut throat industry. 100k+ salaries seem downright ridiculous from an european perspective. (When not talking about facebook, google and other wildly successfull companies mainly serving the ad industry)
• Traubenfuchs 9y ago
  European developers can only cry when they see numbers beyond 100k and even that is very, very unrealistic for seasoned senior devs in the "richer" european countries.
• kutkloon7 9y ago
  Salaries in the US seem really high compared to those in the Netherlands. I have 2 bachelor and 2 master degrees in STEM. I made €10/hour (about $12) giving private math and programming lessons, while I earn roughly €13/hour (about $15) at my entry level job (after tax deduction). I would expect my salary to grow at my current job. I also feel that I would have been hired at my current job if I just had my bachelor degree.
  • Bootvis 9y ago
    Going on only those credentials you should be able to get a better paid job, also in the Netherlands (I'm Dutch).
    • kutkloon7 9y ago
      Actually, all offers for entry level programming, devops, or IT consultant jobs were 2.5k at 40 hours/week. I have the feeling that a lot of them just hire anyone who graduated in a STEM field, either graduate or undergraduate. Now, I can probably make a more as a financial consultant, but I don't have an interest in this (and the thread is about programmer salaries).
    • TheArcane 9y ago
      What would good salaries be for an experienced resarch engineer in software doing specialized work in the Netherlands?
      • Bootvis 9y ago
        It depends but my ballpark estimate would be around 70k but it depends on many factors. I'd surprised if those skills go for less than 50k.
• alex_dax 9y ago
  My salary progression: First job, Ukraine C# Developer 6000$/year Second job, Ukraine C#/Java Developer 7200$/year Third job, Poland, Dynamics AX Developer 7200$/year, got raise to 13000$/year And now I'm moving to Germany as a Junior Dynamics AX Developer for 40 000$ + bonuses
• prodtorok 9y ago
  Where is a good site to calculate worth? I've been using Glassdoor, but this article and thread make me feel skeptical. I thought I've done well in my negotiating (in D.C.): 80k -> 90k (9m) -> 95k (12m) -> 105k base (1y7m, new job) -> present 2y2m later. I now feel as if Ive shorted myself. I guess I shouldn't compare to Glassdoor? My salary is above the median listed at Glassdoor. The article makes me feel under-valued. The numbers I see just seem crazy. At the same time, I know my talent is greater than that of most "seniors" I work with, have led teams, and my product engineering has been fast and "impressive". My boss assured me that Im on the fast track to promotion, but now I feel as if after 1y at my new company, I must request a significant raise, like 20%, or move on again.