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To be fair, I think even the senior levels aren't exactly well paid. According to https://taketheexit.de/ https://taketheexit.de/ 55% of developers feel heavil

To be fair, I think even the senior levels aren't exactly well paid. According to https://taketheexit.de/ https://taketheexit.de/ 55% of developers feel heavily underpaid and that's something I can believe easily.

toomanybeersies 9y ago
Everybody feels underpaid. You earn more money, then you spend more money, then you wish you had more money. I recently doubled my salary, and I still feel underpaid. In reality, I earn above median wage for my age and experience, and live a comfortable life. But we can always do with more cash.
- chrisper 9y ago
  There is a big difference between having no money and feeling underpaid.
- johnnyfaehell 9y ago
  There is a difference between wanting more cash and feeling underpaid. The fact the stat says only a percentage of people feel underpaid kinda rules out your statement that "Everybody feels underpaid".
rifung 9y ago
Sorry couldn't you elaborate on why you can believe it easily? I feel like people in tech are paid very well so this is a surprise to me. If anything I feel overpaid despite being paid much less than most of my peers
- johnnyfaehell 9y ago
  The average Developer/Engineer/etc works about 60 hours a week, they work on things that generate millions of dollars. They, for the most part, get paid less than the accountant does. I've literally made a company millions in profit, the entire IT department probably earned less than 10% of the amount of that profit amount. The ROI in IT is extremely high, yet you'll see salespeople whose ROI is much lower making a lot more money. A lot of people will say our salaries being below that of accountants, lawyers, etc is because our barrier of entry is much lower. I believe this not to be true, look at the average job board and you'll see a lot of companies who are literally only looking for seniors. Once you get in, you're fine, but getting in when you don't have the qualifications can be a lot harder. It seems like those industries have spent decades/centuries building prestige into their industries while IT seems to put up with an OK salary with lots of pressure and overtime. For the majority of skilled workers, IT workers are poorly paid. While we make more than the median salary, the amount of skill, effort, the time it takes to become good at the job is a lot higher than those making the median. You then have the culture of overtime. It's not uncommon to see PRs from people at 10 pm, be told you need to work the weekend, for projects that aren't fully defined and/or have months left to go in development. Overall, I feel that as an industry, we've massively undersold ourselves and made top-level execs not fully appreciate the value that we as an industry bring. Nevermind the average person, they completely don't value the industry what so ever. The amount of people who default on Web Agency bills who would never default on any other vendor bill is massive. People wanting an ecommerce website for a few hundred pounds.
  - rifung 9y ago
    > The average Developer/Engineer/etc works about 60 hours a week, they work on things that generate millions of dollars. Hardly anyone I know regularly works 60 hours a week.. Even if I generated a company millions of dollars, that doesn't give any indication of how much they should pay me because it doesn't count for much if a million other people can also generate them the same amount or more. If you feel like you should get paid more then perhaps you should consider switching to a job where you would get paid more? If there are no takers then presumably you don't offer something which is valuable enough that companies are willing to pay the amount you think they should. Of course, I suppose one of the big problems with programmers is that it's very difficult to measure job performance but either way, I have a very hard time complaining about my compensation.

toomanybeersies 9y ago

Everybody feels underpaid. You earn more money, then you spend more money, then you wish you had more money. I recently doubled my salary, and I still feel underpaid. In reality, I earn above median wage for my age and experience, and live a comfortable life. But we can always do with more cash.

chrisper 9y ago
There is a big difference between having no money and feeling underpaid.
johnnyfaehell 9y ago
There is a difference between wanting more cash and feeling underpaid. The fact the stat says only a percentage of people feel underpaid kinda rules out your statement that "Everybody feels underpaid".

rifung 9y ago

Sorry couldn't you elaborate on why you can believe it easily? I feel like people in tech are paid very well so this is a surprise to me. If anything I feel overpaid despite being paid much less than most of my peers

johnnyfaehell 9y ago
The average Developer/Engineer/etc works about 60 hours a week, they work on things that generate millions of dollars. They, for the most part, get paid less than the accountant does. I've literally made a company millions in profit, the entire IT department probably earned less than 10% of the amount of that profit amount. The ROI in IT is extremely high, yet you'll see salespeople whose ROI is much lower making a lot more money. A lot of people will say our salaries being below that of accountants, lawyers, etc is because our barrier of entry is much lower. I believe this not to be true, look at the average job board and you'll see a lot of companies who are literally only looking for seniors. Once you get in, you're fine, but getting in when you don't have the qualifications can be a lot harder. It seems like those industries have spent decades/centuries building prestige into their industries while IT seems to put up with an OK salary with lots of pressure and overtime. For the majority of skilled workers, IT workers are poorly paid. While we make more than the median salary, the amount of skill, effort, the time it takes to become good at the job is a lot higher than those making the median. You then have the culture of overtime. It's not uncommon to see PRs from people at 10 pm, be told you need to work the weekend, for projects that aren't fully defined and/or have months left to go in development. Overall, I feel that as an industry, we've massively undersold ourselves and made top-level execs not fully appreciate the value that we as an industry bring. Nevermind the average person, they completely don't value the industry what so ever. The amount of people who default on Web Agency bills who would never default on any other vendor bill is massive. People wanting an ecommerce website for a few hundred pounds.
- rifung 9y ago
  > The average Developer/Engineer/etc works about 60 hours a week, they work on things that generate millions of dollars. Hardly anyone I know regularly works 60 hours a week.. Even if I generated a company millions of dollars, that doesn't give any indication of how much they should pay me because it doesn't count for much if a million other people can also generate them the same amount or more. If you feel like you should get paid more then perhaps you should consider switching to a job where you would get paid more? If there are no takers then presumably you don't offer something which is valuable enough that companies are willing to pay the amount you think they should. Of course, I suppose one of the big problems with programmers is that it's very difficult to measure job performance but either way, I have a very hard time complaining about my compensation.