16 ms·
Stack Overflow Salary Calculator
- staticelf 9y agoMy country isn't supported :( Also a lot of technologies seems to be missing, like .NET.
- mfoy_ 9y agoYeah, they also didn't include a lot of proprietary platforms. For example if you have 5+ years of customizing and implementing a specific enterprise platform you're probably highly in demand, but it's hard to approach that from a "developer salary" point of view.
- gshakir 9y agoI saw .NET-Core and C#
- maaark 9y agoYeah, apparently I'm underpaid by half...
- gshakir 9y agoHow do you figure that? If you are in the 50th percentile?
- shawabawa3 9y ago50th percentile i guess is the "fair" wage I'm ~30% lower than the 25th percentile... :/
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- thurn 9y agoAs usual, failing to take into account equity and bonuses makes this less useful. Salary is <= 50% of the story for most senior roles.
- vonmoltke 9y agoI think "most" is too strong a statement.
- nerdponx 9y agoThat info isn't usually posted on job boards.
- KirinDave 9y agoI'm sorry, but I think this is much better for not including funny money from startups that give private equity grants, at least I in the lower bands of the range. I know people for whom half their pay is equity and they can't even afford to take the options. And for many places I've been, the stock was never sellable outside of shady private stock trading groups that your board may or may not let you sell to.
- dmoy 9y agoI agree that you probably shouldn't include stock that can't be sold. There's gotta be a middle ground though, because if you're at a big established tech company with a senior-ish role, your comp is like nearing or exceeding 50% bonus&stock, which you can liquidate on the spot and turn into actual cash. So if you take someone whose base salary is 180k at whatever big tech, you're missing the part where they actually make >300k/yr in cash.
- KirinDave 9y agoIt's only cash if the company find a way to make it real, though. I certainly never made 150kyr,in stock. How would you even exercise that and then handle the taxes? I guess if you have a retention salary?
- vasco 9y agoWhat a missed opportunity to gather data on all the countries they don't support yet by at least allowing you to see how you are vs the supported countries and using the data to start supporting more.
- joshschreuder 9y agoThere is a bit on the side to add your own salary which shows countries unsupported by the main search https://i.imgur.com/Hb9sMig.png https://i.imgur.com/Hb9sMig.png
- ineptech 9y agoI thought of myself as somewhat overpaid, but the 50th percentile for my job/location/experience was $5k off from my actual salary. Now I want to check out the listings. Part of the point, perhaps?
- floatrock 9y ago> Part of the point, perhaps? Of course it is. Glassdoor, Indeed, Angelist... all those have these salary calculators to attract inventory (your eyeballs, my eyeballs) that they then turn around and sell as product on their job listing boards.
- seattle_spring 9y agoExcept these estimates seem laughably low.
- majewsky 9y agoI, too, was surprised to hit the 50th percentile nearly exactly. Then I remembered that I should account for working only 70% part-time. :) That put me in the 75th percentile.
- freeplatform 9y agoBut where in the form do I put in the fact that I use spaces instead of tabs, to let them know that I should be making more?
- frozenport 9y agoLocation
- majewsky 9y agoLocation: "San\tFrancisco" ;)
- lin_lin 9y agoNot really an exhaustive list of positions... Anyways the figures for my area are well off and I suspect London-tainted.
- jedberg 9y agoI'm surprised they don't have a box at the bottom, after you get your results, that says, "How did we do? What is your current salary?"
- cshenoy 9y agoThere's a box above the graph that asks: "Is this accurate? Please help us improve the Salary Calculator by adding your salary"
- jedberg 9y agoYours must be different than mine: https://imgur.com/a/xCsE9 https://imgur.com/a/xCsE9
- smurfysmurf 9y agoDirectly to the right of where your screenshot is.
- jedberg 9y agoNot for me: https://imgur.com/a/agXEb https://imgur.com/a/agXEb
- cableshaft 9y agoSeems broader than I expected. Entered several different roles, technology, etc in the calculator and got pretty much identical results. I am in Chicago though, that might have something to do with it.
- sharpercoder 9y agoThat was terrible UX. After searching for the link (why not place it at the top?) which can be done easier and clearer. I filled everything in, then it turned out the location was not supported. So I took the bigger city in the area. Then I got the message > We don't support this location. Select a location from the dropdown menu. There is no dropdown menu. I then hovered over the I icon, to only then learn my country is not supported.
- Kiro 9y agoSame thing happened to me. Seems like a really big oversight.
- russelh15 9y agoSame thing happened with me, then I saw the error: "You have exceeded your daily request quota for this API. For more information on usage limits and the Google Maps Javascript API services please see: https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/usage" https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/...
- reificator 9y agoAh, they're still using the dev key for Google Maps eh?
- alexandercrohde 9y agoMeh, garbage. I always see these things that are significantly off, by like $60,000 or more. You're not asking the important questions that relate to earnings: - Were you born in America or has your employer held your pay down because you have a green card? - How many times have you changed jobs (each time probably leads to a $15k bump or more!) What garbage. If you're going to do an analysis like this try to teach us something interesting by looking at numerous factors (race, sex, age, major, do you have a github, public speaking skill, number of raises asked for, etc)
- nerdponx 9y agoI'm so sorry that someone created a free tool to explore an interesting and unique data set using basic summary statistics. Shame you had to waste your time looking at that kind of garbage. Of course you make good points about salary. But this is just using data from the SO jobs board. What do you expect?
- _RPM 9y agoCan confirm the 15K pay bump. I just did it.
- slavapestov 9y ago> - Were you born in America or has your employer held your pay down because you have a green card? This might be true for H1-B holders, but a green card gives you the same freedom to leave and join employers as a citizen. > - How many times have you changed jobs (each time probably leads to a $15k bump or more!) I don't know about what goes on in the startup world, but at the big-name tech companies you typically get a stock grant vesting over four years every year, meaning your compensation will not top out until at least four years into the job, so switching jobs frequently can actually dramatically cut your compensation, by a factor of two or more.
- SCdF 9y agoUpon using the calculator, the Location won't fill in properly. Looking at the console: > You have exceeded your daily request quota for this API. For more information on usage limits and the Google Maps Javascript API services please see… Wow, either the calculator is incredibly popular, or someone didn't change their api key from their dev one…
- hackermailman 9y agoThe meager wages for full stack and backend developer are correct for where I live (Vancouver, CA) except the lowest tier is not low enough. It would be nice to see the raw data too so I can run my own stats on them. Give this calculator a public API
- tmaly 9y agoI have used indeed.com/salary just to get a ballpark idea
- Jeremy1026 9y agoAccording to this I'm making about 15% under the 50th percentile. Time to go ask for a raise?
- markwaldron 9y agoThis "calculator" really makes me appreciate the higher salaries in NYC compared to other places. Yes, the cost of living is higher, but if you are willing to commute 30ish minutes a day from outside of Manhattan, you can avoid a lot of the cost.
- EnderMB 9y agoI'm in the UK, but I've always thought of moving to NYC one day (despite the man in government at the mo). Is it really only a 30 minute commute into Manhattan?! I live in Bristol, and at times I've had an hour commute by bus. I always assumed that Americans spent longer on commute in the larger cities.
- lbotos 9y agoCurrently in Brooklyn, NY, it's 30 min to lower manhattan on this side. On the NJ side, it's probably about the same from Hoboken/Jersey City.
- YesThatTom2 9y agoNJ can be 30-120 minutes depending on many factors. From my house in NJ to the office is 90 minutes including a 15 minute walk to the train station. Last Monday there was a delay on the NJ train and the subway so it was 2 hours door-to-door. That's why I work remotely 2-3 days a week. PS. I work at stackoverflow.com
- PeterFBell 9y agoBut Brooklyn hardly avoids the additional costs of NYC. That said, if you find a 4 bedroom on 1/4 acre of land somewhere near a subway for under $300k, let me know and I'll move back :)
- itschekkers 9y agoeven in Greenpoint/Williamsburg/Bed-Stuy/Hoboken you're still paying 1500 a month to share with a few roommates though.
- bradlys 9y agoSeems inaccurate for SF. It was saying that half of devs were making less than $90k for 3 years of experience. I find that hard to believe. Yes, maybe that's the listings but I think it's insane to think you get paid that when almost every company here past seed stage will pay $100k+ for any new dev.
- KirinDave 9y agoIt seems like they're (wisely) not including anything but base slaary in this? I definitely know young devs at Uber who were in the 90-110 range on base salary and then a ton of stock. It's the height of stupid but they're young so...
- Bahamut 9y agoMaybe inaccurate for the Bay Area in general. It said $146k or so was 75th percentile in the South Bay for 5 years of experience, but I am at the second to lowest level of software engineer at my company (which is one of the biggest tech employers in the area) and my base is $160k.
- bradlys 9y agoYou're at a big tech company. The salaries at FB, Google, LinkedIn, Apple, etc. all tend to be much bigger than at non-big-tech.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- KirinDave 9y agoThe 5 supported tags thing in their form leads me to believe I am undervalued. Cuz uh, I checked 13 things conseratively that I'd feel comfortable talking about in an interview.
- runT1ME 9y agoWhy does SO seem to completely omit "backend engineers". I don't work on web stuff, I write network applications/cloud services. There are a lot of folks similar doing that at amazom, google, etc. Does this seem like a huge oversight to anyone else?
- idiot900 9y agoIs that similar to "Backend Developer" in the dropdown list?
- bhhaskin 9y agoBackend Developers are usually working on backend of web apps. DevOps would be closer, but still not quite right.
- joezydeco 9y agoNo embedded engineers. No graphics work. No UI work. No keywords for things like "microcontroller", or "driver", or "Linux".
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- bostik 9y agoAnd no security engineers either.
- user5994461 9y agoIt's much rarer than development roles. Doubt that they have significant data.
- infinitone 9y agoYeah, i was confused too. Most engineers are actually backend: building APIs, distributed systems, large data compute... i would think these are the things people are doing when using 'high-demand technologies' such as AWS.
- cooervo 9y agoThe salary stated is at least -10,000€ below what I get paid and my coworkers.
- user5994461 9y agoWould be nice to display the UK numbers in GBP and the European countries in EUR. The numbers in dollars are meaningless.
- otakucode 9y agoBiggest factor is where you live... because we all know that people are paid according to the value they create, and bits forged in places with high rent are inherently more valuable.
- ng12 9y agoIt's the market at work, and roughly the way it's always been. It's easier to pay a developer more to live in NYC than move your finance shop elsewhere.
- pascalxus 9y agoApparently, it's more profitable to pay developers nearly twice as much, than it is for a VC or CEO to take a airplane flight a few times a year.
- TheHegemon 9y agoIt seems like even though being able to work remotely has improved. That improvement does not beat the cost/value of working in-person.
- olympus 9y agoOr it's theoretically worth twice as much to locate your company near the big tech companies. Can you really not entice people to move out to another city? Say Kansas City, which is quite pleasant. If they moved to K.C., a company could afford to pay devs the same salary as in San Fran, pay for devs to fly to a couple conferences each year, and give a bigger holiday bonus-- and they'd still come out ahead with the tax burden, office rent, support staff, etc. So is a hotshot dev from San Fran really refusing to move to K.C. for the same salary? They must know that their disposable income would double if they moved. I've been to both cities, and San Fran isn't that much better.
- gleenn 9y agoI think the problem is that most people don't get offered the same in cheaper areas, that money gets absorbed by the company. Even if you argue that the actual take-home is cheaper, people aren't as good at evaluating those things, and SF etc sound like more fun. I say this as a dev in SF. I frequently skim different locations in the US and abroad and SF usually is highest paying.
- tclancy 9y agoOne thing I was confused by: if I check the box that I work remotely, do I put in where I work from or where my company is based?
- ryanx435 9y agoCompany.
- Xcelerate 9y agoData science is less than devops on average? That doesn't sound right...
- nerdponx 9y agoMany/most of the "data science" posts on StackOverflow are actually "data engineer" or "machine learning engineer" positions.
- rb808 9y agoThe Salary chart is interesting, both because of how US developers earn more than other Western countries, but mainly how a median developer with 20 years experience earns 60% more than a first job developer. I wonder how many other professions have that low a rate of pay increase - or maybe its just grads are overpaid, not sure.
- timClicks 9y agoI certainly haven't reached 20 years of developer experience, but I wonder if many (most?) individuals with that level of experience will move up the hierarchy rather than staying focused on software. Those managerial or client-oriented/sales/"solutions architect" roles pay more.
- afpx 9y agoYeah, the numbers are weird. I'm in SF, full-stack, with 20+ years of experience (and leading several successful exits), but I can't seem to get a job making as much as a mid-career developer (according to that calculator). To be fair though, I don't have time or patience for long interview processes. But, on the other hand, a lot of times I get rejected just after the phone screen (with no feedback, of course).
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mahyarm 9y agoI could coach you if you want, I'm also in SF. I do a lot of those interviews from the other side. You can get my contact info in my user info page.
- acchow 9y agoI think a developer after 3-5 years experience actually makes more than double a new grad.
- fatnoah 9y agoI think some of this is just compression over time. I'm at exactly 20 years experience, and I currently make 500% what I made in my first year. That's more of a statement about salaries in 1997 than salaries now, though. I think the low-end has moved dramatically upwards, while the top-end hasn't increased as quickly.
- ksec 9y agoI am guessing salary are yearly total? Lots places uses salary as a monthly unit.
- seattle_spring 9y agoNot in the US they don't.
- EpicEng 9y agoApparently the only types of developers are front end, back end, 'full stack', mobile, desktop, and game. I don't fit any of those. And only three locations available in the US? How is this useful? I suppose this tool is awesome if you're a web or mobile dev in Seattle, SF, or NY.
- catacombs 9y ago>Apparently the only types of developers are front end, back end, 'full stack', mobile, desktop, and game. I don't fit any of those. Do you build houses then? ;)
- personjerry 9y agoProduction, Site Reliability, Machine Learning and AI, Security, Network, as some other examples of software developers.
- MikeTheGreat 9y agoGenuine question: what does a Production Software Developer do?
- celim307 9y agoIn my last teams it was a lot of infrastructure. Deployment, disaster recovery, failover, provisioning, build processes, maybe even building the testing pipeline, etc. Can't speak for other companies
- vr3690 9y agoMaybe most of those roles can be lumped under devops. They probably don't have enough data to for ml/ai
- verall 9y agoSystems? Embedded, drivers, OS, microcontroller, etc. Is it that rare to be a "close to the metal" developer? Or is that where people draw the line between developer and "engineer"?
- seattle_spring 9y agoLol... My base salary at a startup is 50% more than the 75th percentile for Seattle. Also, coffeescript is listed as a distinct technology? Makes no sense to me.
- sumitgt 9y agoYeah, also machine learning cannot be added in the skills section. Not sure what happened here. Stack Overflow generally puts out better analysis and posts.
- majewsky 9y ago> Not sure what happened here. Stack Overflow generally puts out better analysis and posts. My guess is that they don't have enough data for niche topics like ML. (ML is still pretty niche in terms of headcount compared to, say, webdev.) The tags that they offer are probably those where they have reasonably many data points to actually get something resembling a distribution.
- EpicEng 9y agoTheir data comes from their dev survey. Not scientific and biased toward to the typical SO crowd.
- jotato 9y agoYup. These salaries seem low to me. I wonder if there was a dis-proportionate response to the surveys
- nartz 9y agoFor some reason the form lets you have 'negative' years of experience - is that a thing?
- dotancohen 9y agoI suspect that I've got about negative three years of experience in Java 9, and a good negative five years of experience in C2022. To be honest, though, I don't expect to ever have positive years' experience in Perl 7.
- pascalxus 9y agoAnyways, it's a good example of how to do inbound marketing. It certainly worked on me!
- wainstead 9y agoBeware: the Stack Overflow Developer Survey is not a scientific survey. Participants are self-selected, not randomly sampled. For true random sampling of the software developers in the United States, use the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who employ real statisticians: https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#15-0000 https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#15-0000 You can also break them down by U.S. state: https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oessrcst.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oessrcst.htm And by MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area): https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oessrcma.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oessrcma.htm
- jonshariat 9y agoAs an interaction/ux/product designer, I always find it odd that government forms never have a relevant job role in any of its data. They lump us in with graphic design. :/
- toephu2 9y agoWhy do you find it odd? A "a interaction/ux/product designer" did not really exist 10 years ago or wasn't very popular. Do you think the government moves at the pace of a Silicon Valley startup updating job titles every year?
- ahh 9y agoI don't think the Stack Overflow data is fantastic, but I'm not clear that the BLS stats are any better for the fancy credentials of their collectors. In either case, the problem is coming up with a reasonably accurate reference class. At least in my case, I'm not well represented by the BLS breakdowns (which underestimate what I can expect to get by a factor of about four.) The Stack Overflow approach, using industry-specific features (developer-friendly keywords/job titles/languages) is definitely smarter, though still wildly insufficient. (It's only off by a factor of about three.)
- itsmemattchung 9y agoApparently, knowing assembly decreases your salary: https://imgur.com/a/8c9fL https://imgur.com/a/8c9fL
- smt88 9y agoI'm going to bet that "knowing Assembly" is (in this case) a proxy for age. Older devs are more likely to know it, and older devs face enormous amounts of discrimination.
- maruhan2 9y agoDevOps is the highest?! Whaaaa. Can someone explain why DevOps is the most paid?
- Arcsech 9y agoHigher pay in exchange for being on-call, I'd guess.
- kalal 9y agoData scientist scores top in the chart. Funny to find later on that the author calls her self data scientist as well. To me this is little off putting. It is like a doctor claiming that doctors are the most healthy people. Which might be true, but strange, don't you feel? ;)
- sabujp 9y agoHow much do programmers, devops, etc make in China? I've always wondered, because I think that's where everything is headed in terms of wage parity.
- symlinkk 9y agoWow apparently i’m underpaid. I make $63k as a full stack .NET web developer in Knoxville, Tennessee. I have always dreamed of moving to Seattle and joining a startup. How can I make that dream a reality? I’ve tried applying to a bunch of places and got nothing but rejections.
- jordache 9y agostartups generally do not use .NET
- symlinkk 9y agowhat should I learn then?
- whitef0x 9y agoRuby, Golang, Serverside JS (aka NodeJS) or Python would be a start
- romanovcode 9y agoStartups do not use Ruby anymore as well.
- jordache 9y agoif you want to continue down the full stack path.. Learn JS really well. Then pick up node and a front end framework..
- gargarplex 9y agoFalse. Maybe YCombinator/Hacker News startups rarely use .NET, but have you heard of Microsoft's BizSpark program? .NET is really popular with startups internationally as well as in middle USA.
- jordache 9y agoAzure works with plenty of open source technologies. Just because a stack is hosted in Azure, doesn't mean it's inherently a .NET stack
- bad_login 9y agoIf i am not mistaken the salaries given for the US is what the company actually pays, but the salaries given for France it's not what the company pays. We (the french) discuss our salaries in 'brut' (gross) and are never aware of what we actually cost. The company will pays something (close) up to 42% more of this gross value. So i suspect the difference between US salaries and French (and probably german, uk) is unfair.