11 ms·
My god this is just another universe to me. I've got 19 years on the clock doing stuff, right now extending the jenkins model to make a usable 2.0 pipeline, fo
by digitalsushi 9y ago
My god this is just another universe to me. I've got 19 years on the clock doing stuff, right now extending the jenkins model to make a usable 2.0 pipeline, for a fortune 50 hiding on the new hampshire seacoast, senior-straddling-principal level and just barely squeaking out a 6 figure salary. I know it all comes out in the wash, but it just blows my mind how different money is across the country. or, i am a country bumpkin with absolutely no idea what is really out there.
- mrweasel 9y agoIt really raises the question why anyone would put a software company in the Silicon Valley area. You could get cheaper and more experienced people pretty much anywhere in the world for at least 60 - 70% the price.
- Tade0 9y agoMy compensation is roughly 40% of the lower end of any of these charts, and that's considered "not bad" in my area. This makes me think: how valuable our work is really? Do I have a job only because I'm an inexpensive alternative to the devs from the US and western Europe?
- drspacemonkey 9y agoOnce you take the exchange rate into account, I'm below the 2nd percentile for a senior dev. And I make a great salary for the Vancouver area. I knew I could double my salary south of the border, but that hurts.
- sdesol 9y agoI've heard it's very difficult to get H1B visa's now a days, so Canadians looking to move to the states, might not be able to.
- noirknight 9y agoCanadians have a TN visa option which is much simpler to get than H1B. There is no quota limit.
- sdesol 9y agoBut software programmers don't qualify for TN visa. System analyst is the closes I think.
- borski 9y agoThey do under either Engineer or Computer Systems Analyst, depending on the case.
- nawgszy 9y agoThey do if they have a Software (or otherwise) Engineering degree, and getting in as a CSA just means you need to have 'microservices' and 'managerial' duties in your role
- JabavuAdams 9y agoWrong. You just need to phrase it the right way. The government bureaucracy considers programmers as typists, and systems analysts as programmers.
- sdesol 9y agoAnd if the border guard doesn't like the wording, they'll reject you at the border.
- sjg007 9y agoI don’t know.. Vancouver is a great place to live!
- sokoloff 9y agoWe have global SWE footprint and, as a hiring manager/executive, I can tell you that cost is a factor, but it's not the only one for us. If you can't do top work, I don't care how cheap you are. If you can, I don't need to chisel out the last penny that you're willing to take to show up to work.
- mrweasel 9y agoI make less than $100K and despite my 10+ years experience I'm by no means underpaid, and I'm in Denmark, a rather expensive country to live in.
- swat535 9y agoI also make less than $100k in Canada and I can live a comfortable life with no issues
- qaq 9y agoYou have to account for tax differences the numbers are pre-tax
- guyzero 9y agogiven that the biggest software companies of the last 20 years have mostly been in the Bay Area, maybe there's a flaw in your assumption that there are "more experienced people pretty much anywhere."
- Nuzzerino 9y agoI think that has more to do with the VC cartel than the amount of actual talent. Besides, the cost of living has heavily changed over the years, and the amount of feces and dirty needles on SF streets have increased rapidly lately. Talented people are more likely to realize this is a farce, and leave the area. The historical circumstances may not hold true anymore.
- Tade0 9y agoI think it says more about their top performers and business practices than the skills of the average developer employed by them.
- ng12 9y agoQuantity is the problem. I'm sure there are some blindingly talented developers in New Hampshire but there's probably only a few of them and they're more than likely gainfully employed by a company that appreciates their value. Hiring an engineer for 60% of the price doesn't help when you can only fill a third of your headcount.
- Nuzzerino 9y agoYou're more likely than not going to get an equally untalented developer in Silicon Valley, for the same reason. The talented ones are likely already gainfully employed. I would go out on a limb and say that there are more smooth talkers with silver tongues in Silicon Valley, who will talk their way through an interview and only provide the perception of talent. Still think it's wise to start a company there? It has nothing to do with the actual facts of the job market, and everything to do with the demands of the VC cartel.
- ng12 9y agoI've actually had the opposite experience: I've found way more silver-tounged developers outside of the Bay. It's hard to bullshit in SV because most worthwhile companies have at least a few people who have been around the block a few times. The smaller the market the easier it is to hype yourself up. I've even noticed it in NYC -- a lot of developers who are able to talk a big game because many of the finance/ad-tech firms are relatively easy to fool.
- DonHopkins 9y ago>It's hard to bullshit in SV... The how did people like Robert Scoble thrive for so long in Silicon Valley? I agree that New York in particular (and also London) is also full of silver tongued charlatans, and that has a lot to do with the culture and cocaine of finance/ad-tech firms.
- borski 9y agoStrawman. Robert Scoble never claimed to be an engineer.
- jldugger 9y agoOne potential explanation is that recruiting is waaay easier when there's three other software firms within a city block of your office to recruit talent from.
- lloyd-christmas 9y agoNot as easily. There is a reason all the banks are based in NYC. Recruitment and networking is as easy as walking across the street. The same holds for tech. Cost of hiring is extremely high no matter where you are, and it likely goes up even more when trying to recruit someone to move to the middle of the country. I mean no disrespect to middle america by that statement, I just mean that the probability of having to uproot is much higher when there are 2 companies in town vs. 200.
- lostboys67 9y agoAnd access to lots of capital
- ionforce 9y ago> You could get cheaper and more experienced people pretty much anywhere in the world for at least 60 - 70% the price. If this was true and the only thing that people wanted, then it would have been done already. But clearly that's not all there is.
- pcsanwald 9y agoin my experience, a couple reasons: 1. It's far easier to raise money from VCs if you are located in SV/SF vs anywhere else in the country. 2. Once you raise that money, the only thing you are going to spend it on is employees. Infrastructure costs, real estate costs, etc, are comparatively cheap. 3. People starting companies rarely look around and decide where they should strategically be located based on costs. A few do, including my last company which was located in baltimore, but not many. Most people want to start their companies where they already live, and have a network for hiring, etc. These 3 things, and probably others, lead to a significant amount of new companies getting started in SF/SV.
- nerfhammer 9y agotake cost of living esp. housing into account?
- shawndumas 9y agoif you are in a FAANG level company add another ~$100k for total comp (bonus, RSUs, ect). housing maybe high on the west coast; but not that high.
- Gargoyle 9y agoYeah. Housing is high. Crazy high, especially in San Francisco itself. But the pay far, far outweighs that factor.
- lghh 9y agoYeah, I'm a mid level developer and my salary isn't even on the chart! I feel like I make pretty good money and live pretty a pretty cushy life.
- zippergz 9y agoI encourage you to look for a job that pays you better. I promise, based on direct personal experience, that you do not need to work in SV to do a lot better than that with that amount of experience.
- jfornear 9y agoCOL multipliers for San Francisco are about 1.8x...
- seattle_spring 9y agoPeople that say it's 3x to 10x seem to think they deserve to live in the same 5,000 sq ft mansion that they have in nowhere, Indiana.
- closeparen 9y agoThen you are comparing lifestyles, not locations. You can live car-free with roommates in a rundown apartment in an unsexy neighborhood 60+ public-transit minutes from work in a major world city like Chicago for less than $1k/mo (including rent, food, transit fare, and basic entertainment). Nowhere, Indiana would be even less. Many, many young people exploit this fact to try and launch careers in un-lucrative fields like arts and academia.
- skgoa 9y agoAh, so cost of living comparisons shouldn't use the same lifestyle in both places, got it.
- otakucode 9y agoIt does not all come out in the wash. The things you build operate on a global stage, and produce value at an astronomical rate. The value of your work has no relationship whatever to your cost of living expenses, compensation is only pinned to that because if it were actually based on your productivity or the value of their work then when your value doubles you might ask for a 5% raise or something insane like that. It was decided early in the tech industries career that those improvements in value belong only to the executive class. Early wage-fixing, despite being prosecuted and convicted in court years later, set the stage for the whole industry across the world.
- jldugger 9y agoThink about it like this: those salaries are what it takes to recruit people like you into the worlds most expensive real estate market, in a high tax state. Like you say, it's often a wash after those factors.
- TimPC 9y agoThe salary is roughly a wash and then the RSU's and bonus are serious bank. I've saved more in 2.5 years in the Valley than in 33 years outside it, and my bank considered me good at saving and ahead of the game before I left for SV.
- cgh 9y agoThe key is to work remotely for a SV company but live in a cheap small town (this is a humblebrag). Higher salary, no Valley real estate madness, no freeway nightmares, placid country bumpkin existence preserved. I do have to bite the bullet and travel down to that blighted land a few times a year though.
- up_and_up 9y agoI would say work remotely for a company in an expensive place but live in a cheap small town. This has worked out very well for me and my family. All the companies I have worked for were remote-first etc so I never felt like a second class citizen.
- Taniwha 9y agoYup, works well for me too
- lj3 9y agoYes, but then you have to deal with the SV company. No amount of money is worth dealing with most of those companies.
- nnd 9y agoHow would you find a SV company open to remote workers? I haven't heard of any.
- cgh 9y agoBigger companies often have good remote work policies. On the downside, these companies are rarely cool by the usual HN metrics and aren't normally mentioned here except dismissively.
- mlevental 9y agoi don't understand why you wrote this if you understand that it "it all comes out in the wash". the cost of living adjustment is absolutely necessary here: http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/index.html http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/index.html 100k in manchester nh is ~150k in sf. maybe you're a little underperforming but who cares! or maybe you care and you should use this data to negotiate a raise :)
- htormey 9y agoWell you gotta factor in the cost of living. A 2 bedroom house in a decent area in SF is like 1.3 million. Having kids is also incredibly expensive so you really need to think about that when comparing salaries.
- megaman22 9y agoLiberty, I presume? What's it like working there? Looking around a little, there's a pretty significant differential, if you're willing to endure 128 and MA income tax, but I'm not sure it's totally worth it; that commute is miserable...
- sidlls 9y agoIt doesn't come out in the wash. It's much easier to max out the 401k when your salary is higher, and with the exception of housing specifically the cost of other things is on par with anywhere else I've lived (in the midwest). The commute (by train) is in fact less expensive than gas and maintenance on a car in many cases. If you double your housing cost, even moving from a mortgage to renting because you cannot afford to buy out here, you're still ahead in the valley. Of course, individual circumstances may alter the above, but generally it's true.
- aantix 9y agoAgree. Engineers outside the Valley often list the cost of living as a negative, but coupled with the insane amount of salary leverage (in part because of the COL), I never got financially ahead until I moved to the Bay Area. You're a King in SV as a software engineer.
- softawre 9y agoYou're a king? So you live in a mansion? I live in the midwest, wife doesn't work, 10 years experience - we live in a 4k sqft house in the best school district in the state about 25 minutes from the city. How much does that cost in SV?
- geggam 9y agoIn the city... 10k + a month in rent alone... 25 minutes out 5-6k a month in rent alone Keep in mind 25 minutes out can easily turn into 1 hour or more.
- _d8fd 9y agoIn SF, I have a 250 square feet studio with no kitchen & I pay $1550/month in a cheaper part of town (the Tenderloin).
- DerfNet 9y agodo you have to commute an hour a day? I'm not from silicon valley but priorities vary a lot from person to person. I value shortest possible commute time much higher than an extra ~2500 square feet I don't need.
- anonacct37 9y agoCheck out /r/cscareerquestions for their experienced dev salary https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/6yt8pl/official_salary_sharing_thread_for_experienced/ https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/6yt8pl/o... Personally I bring in around $400k/year working remotely in a low COL area. That being said if I was working on the local market I'd probably be making somewhere between $120k - $150k.
- bhollan 9y agoWhat on earth do you do for $400k/year? Make moon rockets in your garage or something?
- TheHegemon 9y agoWhat's funny is that if he did, that would be a low-demand expertise with a lot of willing suppliers so he probably would be making closer to $40k/year.
- sgs1370 9y agoNowadays, this might not be true. 10 years ago, I hired Oracle dbas (not many, mind you) at hourly wages of 300K+ (edit: yes, they worked 40hrs/wk at least)
- tigershark 9y agoYou can't possibly mean 300,000$ per hour with 300k+..
- skj 9y agoOP certainly means an hourly wage that added up to 300k per year.
- anonacct37 9y agoI wish. Sadly that's an example of a prestige job that wouldn't necessarily pay the max. If you're making $400k as an IC w-2 employee you are probably working for one of a few well known companies in a small number of industries like ecommerce, ad-tech, or fin-tech. Basically I make fastish web servers. Turns out when your company makes billions of dollars small efficiency gains pay off.
- SmellTheGlove 9y agoWe live in similar parts of the country and may have crossed paths at that Fortune 50 some years ago. There's a lot of security in your situation. Barely 6 figures, but unless you live in downtown Portsmouth or on Rye Beach, I bet you've made a nice dent in that mortgage. I know we have up here on the Maine coast, and I'm paying a 7% income tax that you aren't :) Plus, you're probably closer to being able to retire at a reasonable age than most! That said, I'm strongly leaning toward an offer to move us to the Bay Area. Where I'd say you might think about it are with a few points: First, there's just a ton of opportunity in a relatively small radius, and salary aside for just a second, that does mean there's a potential to move around a bit and level up. Second, tied to the first, there's a little less risk if you happen to get caught in layoffs or whatever else. Up here, how many big companies are there? Good chance you and I work for 50% of them. In the Bay Area, if one company gives its staff the finger, there are plenty of other doors. Last is going to be specific to your situation, but if your housing cost doubles and so does your salary (which is very possible in SF with two decades experience), you come out ahead. At the end of the day, though, if you have enough there comes a point where it's not worth chasing more just to have more. I'm not native to this area, but Northern New England (especially coastal) is an amazing and unique place to live. 10-15 years from now when my kid is grown up, this is where I want to be, even if I ultimately leave for a little while to provide a little more for my family.
- pcurve 9y agolittle bit less experience than you, but I'm a director at fortune 50 company in north east and I blown away by these numbers.
- psyc 9y agoI hear you. I also have exactly 19 years in this industry. I've had "senior" in my titles for most of that time, and I've never received an offer higher than $105k base, even in the Seattle area. I'd get more than that if I returned to Microsoft, but when I started there in '05 they offered $80k.
- monaghanboy 9y agoHow often did you switch jobs? At 3.5 years of experience in Seattle I was making in the $140-150K range base, and this is at a struggling startup with an non-viable business model. I'd think that if you stayed at mostly the same jobs, you can't expect to get meaningful salary increases. My own experience contradicts this though; got a 15K bump and 17K bump at my last two jobs respectively in a single promotion at each (both in Seattle).
- AFNobody 9y agoKeep in mind you are probably saving ~$30k/year in increased housing costs + tax on the income to pay that rent + the impact that has on all the usual pleasures (i.e. eating out).