5 ms·
Software engineer salary numbers in the US
- jawns 9y agoIn one of the infographics, high-heeled shoes represent women and mustaches represent men. Seems strange to choose two gender attributes that are so ... optional.
- leetcrew 9y agoseems like a poor choice to represent women with high-heels in an infographic about gender-based pay gaps.
- tomwinter 9y agoyou are right, I'll correct it and change it to universal gender symbols in a moment
- ttoinou 9y agoI thought it was very funny. It was like you HAD to include gender pay gap to be politically correct, so you included a little joke to compensate
- tomwinter 9y agoand it's corrected, thank you
- ttoinou 9y agoOr you could remove the gender gap section, I think it is pretty sexist to separate people into two groups based on their socially accepted biological birth sex
- ataturk 9y agoIt wasn't necessary to correct it. There is nothing bad about celebrating differences as well as similarities. And there is great debate about why there is a gender pay gap and it's not a settled issue by any means. I think most of you are too young to remember the ERA in the 1970s and why that failed. Women in tech are a great thing, but smart women don't have to go into tech and that's fine.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- badpun 9y agoHow many men were high heels and how many women have mustache? I don't think the infographics introduce confusion.
- jawns 9y agoI didn't say it introduces confusion. It's clear that the high-heeled shoes are meant to represent women and the mustache is meant to represent men. I merely noted that it seemed strange, because although both of those attributes are associated with a particular gender, in reality each represent only a minority of people. For instance, among my co-workers, only a minority of women regularly wear high-heeled shoes, and only a minority of men have mustaches. It would be similarly weird if women were represented by Virginia Slims cigarettes and men as Montecristo cigars. Yes, more women than men smoke Virginia Slims, and more men than women smoke Montecristos, so each is identifiable with a specific gender. But my point is, most people don't smoke!
- throwaway2016a 9y agoThat's not the point. No one was confused. Heels are a controversial thing in the work place. Some people see them as a symbol of oppression for women because they are uncomfortable and serve little purpose but to make women taller and their legs look longer (which to many people translates to sexier). On the flip side. In past history men have worn high heels too. And some feminists see them as a symbol of empowerment. There have been more than a few controversies over workplaces forcing woman to wear hears. Especially on jobs where they are on their feet all day like retail. In any case, not the best choice of a symbol.
- firebird84 9y agoThe contrast between colors in some of the national maps is really bad...I can't associate the colors with the data, especially for the lime green one.
- ObjectiveSub 9y agoIt's so strange seeing these numbers and thinking "Really, I thought we got paid more?" It's making me think that perhaps I'm in a bubble. Everyone I know around me (friends, coworkers, etc.) makes at least 200k combined income, with the average being in the high 200s. This is at FANG, mind you. Are the salaries outside of FANG really that much lower? Even in LA/SF? Can anyone comment on that?
- godelmachine 9y agoMay I ask what's FANG?
- spyspy 9y agoFacebook Amazon Netflix Google
- pmcollins 9y agoI had to google this: FANG == Facebook Amazon Netflix Google
- otoburb 9y agoI ran across BATFANG[1] recently in a conversation and while finding the term(s) equally confusing, at least it's slightly more inclusive. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/bats-vs-fangs-why-chinas-tech-has-extra-risk-1507870793 https://www.wsj.com/articles/bats-vs-fangs-why-chinas-tech-h...
- cimmanom 9y agoI don't know anyone making $200K outside a bank. Senior salaries in NYC (which is a high-price/high-salary city) tend to run around $150K, give or take 20% (for 10+ years of experience, not someone with 2.5 years experience and a "senior" title).
- monkeynotes 9y agoI assumed by `combined income` the commenter meant household combined - AKA two earners, I'm unclear on what the intention meaning is now.
- eganist 9y agoThe bay is greatly skewed down by the number of startups skipping on base and offering buckets of equity in exchange. More established companies offering less in equity but keen on retention are driving compensation battles resulting in medians closer to 250/y. But even then I'm shocked at some of the numbers. A median of 98 is poverty level in the city of San Francisco when you consider studios can go for 2500+/mo in the outskirts of the city. Shoot, after taxes as well as rent and before utilities and other costs of living, my napkin math suggests you'd be left with less than 24,000 a year. Doesn't matter how much equity you get, that's not liveable. Considering I'm also a hiring manager and have seen others' offer letters when negotiating (and have also seen some of the competitive research that goes into pricing our own roles), I'm also pretty convinced the dataset used here misrepresents reality.
- gambiting 9y agoI'm really curious, how is ~$2000/month not livable?
- jimktrains2 9y agohttps://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-rent-trends/ https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-san-francisco-ren... It claims a 1 bedroom is 3k. Living outside the city would be cheaper, but by over 2/3 cheaper?
- kamaal 9y ago>>Living outside the city In Bay Area's case. Living outside city means, going some where like 60 - 80 miles far in any direction.
- sjm-lbm 9y agoThe 2k/month in this example is after rent.
- jimktrains2 9y agoI missed that. Loan debt and utilities can cut into that a good bit, though I wouldn't expect that to be poverty level after rent is paid.
- thrownaway954 9y agodoesn't mention what programming languages they used for the data.
- tomwinter 9y agoa really good idea for the next infographic. If anybody can help with sources, I'll be happy to go through the data
- nyae 9y agoI just don't know if this data is accurate. The people around me all make around 150-200k, but this graphic makes that out to be exceedingly rare. Yet I know I could do a quick search and find plenty of opportunities in that range.
- leetcrew 9y agoit's hard to know how to interpret all this data when the sources report such different values. in particular, i really wonder what to make of the fact that the bureau of labor reports median pay that is significantly higher than most of the values for average pay reported by other sources. if this were actually true, it would indicate a very wacky pay distribution.
- kbutler 9y agoHere I am in the lovely state of JT.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- tacogordito 9y agoThese seem low. Glassdoor and other websites don't normally account for stock options and the massive stock appreciation that has been occurring.
- ryandrake 9y agoAren’t these sites powered by self reported data, which, I would imagine, skews high instead of low. As averages I totally believe them. Reading HN, you’d think everyone makes $300k but these comp packages are for outlier employees at super outlier companies. Find me a software developer at a small mom-n-pop company that makes that much. That company’s president doesn’t even make that much!
- throwaway2016a 9y agoThis graph is interesting for a few reasons: 1. The range is way off. The top of the range is $113k with someone with 15+ years experience making $101k? Where do those number come from? Salary.com has the median for a Software Engineer V where I am at $150k with 75th percentile of $170k and I'm in New Hampshire not SV (small suburban State north of Massachusetts / Boston)! 2. No Boston in the list of cities? 3. Using high heels as a symbol for woman. Really? Edit: Apparently they changed the graphic so #3 is no longer relevant. Except for the fact I think it is relevant that they chose that symbol in the first place.
- ttoinou 9y ago3. Using high heals as a symbol for woman. Really? Refresh, it has changed. And read the comments before :)
- throwaway2016a 9y agoI know I'm not the first one in this thread to notice that (I upvoted the other post that said something) but I opted to include all my thoughts in one message even though there is another thread for #3. I mean... technically I'm not the first one to make point #1 either in this thread. I think some duplication of thoughts is OK.
- ad-hominem 9y ago> Where do those number come from? Literally all of the data in this graph has a source. > Using high heals as a symbol for woman I don't see this, only the traditional male / female symbols. Maybe I missed it?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- JohnJamesRambo 9y agoI can't wait for my plumbing engineer to come fix my toilet.
- webrender 9y agoThese numbers seem low, based on both anecdotal evidence, and compared to Hired's 2018 tech salaries map: https://hired.com/state-of-salaries-2018 https://hired.com/state-of-salaries-2018
- swagtricker 9y agoThose number are way off for the greater Seattle area. $70k is what university students make their first year if they interview well and have had an internship/summer job before graduating. You factor in contracting rates for folks with 10+ years experience and principle salaries at Microsoft, Amazon and local Google/Facebook expansion offices and you start moving strongly into the $200k/year + stock & benefits neighborhood (assuming you can stomach the political bullshit, that is...).
- mathattack 9y ago“Given that compensation is the second biggest obstacle to attracting top talent, companies may need to be more flexible when it comes to negotiating pay. This means that candidates have gotten used to and are now more confident when negotiating pay. As an employer, you need to prepare a strategy of how you want to communicate during negotiations.” This will exacerbate gender differeneces rather than improve them. [0] It introduces bias and favors hiring people with more aggressive self images. [0] http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/do-women-avoid-salary-negotiations-evidence-large-scale-natural-field-experiment http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/do-women-avoid-salary-negotiation...
- Glyptodon 9y agoProbably goes to show that tech bubbles are real - perhaps for every developer/engineer working at big tech or in startups there are several working at SMBs or in other industries on unsexy line of business stuff for mediocre or low wages? I've certainly applied for jobs at a few non-tech places (or at least places were they don't identify themselves as tech even when it's pretty central) in non-coastal states and discovered that even asking for $80k or more can be asking for much more than current leads or senior devs/engineers are being paid. Has lead to some awkward phone interviews. At some of them there also seems to be a sort of naive thing going on where they don't feel comfortable paying developer "engineers" the same or more than their "real" (mechanical, civil, chemical, aerospace, etc.) engineers when they're hiring someone to "just" work on web-based line-of-business type stuff. (Somewhat related, I'm very very done with job ads/recruitments that don't somehow indicate competitive compensation up front. So many places sort of understand that they don't pay well, but feel like it's somehow justified because employees are supposed to put the business first or something stupid, and still seem to think they can find decent employees. Which, given that wages in many places don't seem like they've changed much over the last few years, they probably are at least finding minimum viable employees at their rates.)