7 ms·
Poll: What is your personal annual income?
- CrabDude 16y agoWhat's with the $100k - $250k category?? The lower 5 categories should be combined into 2, $60k- and $60k-$100k. And the 100-250k category should be split into 3.
- georgecmu 16y agoPersonal or household? Before or after taxes? Earned or total? Salary or Salary + Benefits? etc
- Dilpil 16y agoBefore taxes, no non monetary benefits. Not a perfect measurement, but it is the standard.
- narag 16y agoThe standard where? See "where you are" poll currently in the front page before answering. In Europe, social security (that includes healthcare) isn't even known by the employee. It's about 40% of the salary, so the cost could be 70 for the employer, the negotitated salary is 50 and the payroll is 37, because income tax is also reclaimed by the government in advance. So following the "standard" the example above would be 50, but how would it compare to the USA? (I'm guessing that was what you meant)
- gefh 16y agoI just told you who I work for in another poll, so I think I will avoid this one...
- solipsist 16y agoI was under the impression that your vote in a poll can't be backtracked to you. Perhaps, pg might be able to add some code that could do it, but I doubt the data would ever be leaked/released even if he did. Plus, you can always create another account for this purpose if you want to be safe.
- rdl 16y agoWow, these are some very badly selected buckets! Most US people with tech jobs are going to be in the 50-200 range. Unless you have some other reason for caring about these specific buckets, I'd go with: 0-25k (stipend, student, unemployed) 25-50k (part time, early career, or founder) 50-80k (junior person or early employee, maybe founder) 80-110k (most early/mid career individual contributors, non-technical managers) 110-150k (senior individual contributor or management) 150k+ (specialist, management in larger company, or successful founder in later stages)
- ajslater 16y agoI can't agree with rdl more. You should re-stage your poll.
- solipsist 16y agoIs there a way for me to do this now that votes have already come in?
- bgowttamen 16y ago0-25K, from a developing country like me, makes sense
- rdl 16y agoThe numbers I gave wouldn't necessarily even be valid in non-tech parts of the US, either.
- beza1e1 16y agoMaybe we should ask in stuff. What can you buy for one year's income (after taxes) in your region: A new laptop, a used car, a new car, a 1-room flat, a 3-room flat, a little house, or a big house with a swimming pool? Also, household income is easier. Without a wife I'd pay higher taxes.
- 16y ago
- patio11 16y agoAn embarrassing confession: I never know the final total until I do taxes. ("Oh, I spent how much on that hotel stay?", "200 hours of overtime pay in one month? Surely that is a mispr... I am so glad I quit.")
- ph0rque 16y agoWait, so in Japan, you got paid for overtime (at a higher rate than regular time, presumably) as a journeyman?
- patio11 16y agoYeah. This isn't universal, but my company was pretty reliable about paying for overtime: the first 30 minutes every day are free, after that it X + 25% until 9 PM, X + 50% until 1 AM, another 30 minutes free, and then X + 75%, where X was the base salary divided by the number of hours theoretically expected during a month. Don't get too excited on my behalf, though: base salaries for engineers in Japan are really, really low. The compensation package outlined on my job offer includes a line "overtime pay, calculated for company average in engineering track". Without that line, you might as well be working food service. (With that line... have I mentioned recently that I'm glad I quit?) Please shoot me if I ever again work for a company which has a defined bracket for overtime between 1:30 AM and "the start of business the following day".
- rdl 16y agoWow. For a lot of ops jobs, there is scheduled off-hours work (i.e. we need to upgrade servers when it won't affect customers) and unscheduled (oh shit, a redundant system wasn't). I generally find the best way to deal with this is flexible comp time, vs. cash, and making sure it doesn't become too much difficulty for ops people. For instance "oh, you got paged last night and worked really late? Come in (or call in) late tomorrow so we can have the post-incident meeting, and then take another day off later this week", but in general just using flexibility to figure out what people want (if someone had to come in and it ruined a dinner with SO, I'd probably encourage expensing a replacement date/meal; other people might prefer a comp day or a new 30" monitor. I'd personally want "actually fix whatever broke so I don't get paged for the same reason again..."; the most demoralizing ops calls are when the same thing happens over and over again and it still doesn't get fixed) There's also a great tradition from the military of the most senior people taking over junior jobs (gate security, food service) on major holidays, to give the other people a break. I actually like working xmas to new years, inclusive, because I end up getting a lot more work done in that week than in any other month.
- teuobk 16y agoA related question that I have is how much people's incomes vary from year to year. For example, the seven years since I finished undergrad have seen me be an engineer, a grad student, a (not yet very successful) entrepreneur, and a consultant. Quite a broad spectrum. Thus, the standard deviation of my annual gross income post-undergrad is about $41200. Are other people so variable?
- nostrademons 16y agoEasily. The standard deviation of the 5 tax years since I finished undergrad is roughly $63k. (My grade-point-standard-deviation of the 4 years in college was 1.6, BTW.)
- rdl 16y agoOver the past 12 years, I have always made <25k (sometimes negative...) or >200k per year. This is the maximally unfortunate tax strategy, too (being in the 150-350k range is the worst for individual taxes, but it is still obviously a good problem to have).
- earl 16y agoThose buckets are pretty broad. I mean, $100 - $250K: that takes you from doing ok in SF, in the land of $550K one bedroom apartments, to doing pretty damn well.
- ZachPruckowski 16y agoYeah. I mean, even on the low-end of it, my $45k salary is low but manageable in DC (it's starter salary), meager in NY/SF, but basically enough to raise a family in the other 95% of the country.
- rbranson 16y ago95% of the US? Maybe land area, but not population-wise. That's not very much in any metro over 1m population.
- icco 16y agoI'm pretty sure he means land, once you move away from large cities, prices drop like rocks. The house my grandma lived in Missouri sold for on par with three years worth of rent here in California.
- ZachPruckowski 16y agoNot all metros are NYC/DC/SF level cost though. Even among the 1m+ people metros, my $45k would buy a middle-class life in Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, and Dallas. Not a fabulous one, but I'd certainly have no issues living there as a bachelor. Probably harder to make ends meet as a family man, but most Dads don't have entry level positions. Maybe my wife would have to work part-time, but it wouldn't be unmanageable. And that's assuming I don't get another raise[1] in my life. My point is that in most of the country, anyone in the top 4 buckets (which is to say $50k+) is in pretty solid shape. [1] - By which I mean a performance or experience related raise, promotion, or new job. Obviously that would require small raises to keep up with inflation.
- 16y ago
- bnycum 16y agoThis is way too relative to your area. My salary falls lower than the current leader (100k-250k), but I also live in an area where the cost of living is below the US average. Some of you in the valley might laugh and wonder how you would eat at the end of the week with my salary, but I own(mortgage) a 1600 sq ft 3 bed/2 bath house with 1/4-1/2 acre of land plus 2 cars and manage to live a pretty good life. While I'd love to be in the valley where the action is, I'm pretty happy where I'm at.
- statictype 16y agoMind asking where you are?
- bnycum 16y agoShreveport, LA.
- silverlight 16y agoSame thing here. I looked for a job in NYC recently, and I would have had to make over twice what I make living in the Midwest, and on top of that my lifestyle still wouldn't have been the same (e.g. renting vs. owning, public transportation vs. personal transportation, sending kids to private vs. public school, etc.)
- solipsist 16y agoEveryone, I apologize for the broad and arbitrary buckets. While it still gives us a fair idea of HN's income distribution, it's not as good as it could have been. It's my fault that I didn't put enough thought when choosing the values, and now it's too late to change them. However, I will not be offended if someone wants to repeat this poll in a few weeks with better buckets (see rdl's comment); in fact, I recommend that someone do this. I will not do it myself as I already messed this one up, but it'd be great if someone else did.
- rdl 16y agoI think there's a lot of interest in both the quantifiable and the qualitative aspects of startup jobs here (this post, the where do you work posts, the salary service ackwire, ...). Aside from potential privacy/disclosure concerns, and trust/data quality, it would be really nice to have this data. There are salary surveys in the tech industry, but they are rarely specific to startups (keying it on stage of funding or employee number...), and the data does get stale fast. It would help employees, founders, and managers. I know pg posted about a couple YC funded companies doing employment related stuff. I know of one (which may or may not end up doing something in that space); it would be great if YC could become a resource for this kind of data. I think ~everyone would trust pg or YC if they attested to a specific service's privacy protections, and just getting a bunch of YC companies to contribute might be enough to bootstrap it.
- dangravell 16y agoMaybe we should wait to see the distribution in the results before deciding whether-the-buckets-look-right-or-not.
- trevelyan 16y agoSurprised there aren't more people reporting in at the lower ends. Either all you guys have funding and are paying yourselves handsomely or there are less founders here than expected. My own income is and has been negligible for a while as the company (and more importantly staff) need to come first.
- ZachPruckowski 16y agoThese sorts of polls probably attract people who rarely post. The sort of guy looking at this site and reading it and saying either "I wish I had their guts" or "I'm getting ready to take the plunge". They're probably guys with a few years of experience under their belts, so they're probably making more than entry-level pukes like me or founders living on Ramen. By which I mean that it's probably your second guess ("there's fewer founders than expected")
- brc 16y agoWow, look! A bell curve! Who knew?
- petervandijck 16y agoWe should have a cow bell curve meme with these polls. Man, I miss http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curry
- alnayyir 16y agoWhat if I'm a contractor and it's irregular?
- Jayasimhan 16y agothe numbers show how skewed HN reader population is from the rest of the world..
- robryan 16y agoGiven the HN community without seeing figures you would assume that there are a lot of students and early stage startups where people are getting by on very little mixed in with a lot doing tech jobs earning over $100k.
- ramidarigaz 16y agoStudent... Oddly enough, I can get by comfortably on 20k USD a year. It's not even an uncomfortable stretch.
- robinduckett 16y ago$21k full time developer. The UK sucks.
- phpnode 16y agoDo you mean £21k? because if you're really working for £13k in the UK as a developer then there's something seriously wrong..
- robin_reala 16y agoThe job market isn’t great at the moment and coming straight out of uni is a pain when you don’t have any decent experience. It was the same situation in 2003 when I left uni and I was very glad to get a first development role at £15.5k (after turning down a £12k offer).
- phpnode 16y agoWhereabouts in the UK are you? I'm in York and in 2003 entry level PHP programmers were on around £18k, IT support was around £14k. Neither has moved much in the last few years.
- robin_reala 16y agoThis was in London! Front-end web development if that makes any difference, though the company had a bunch of FTSE 100s as clients so it was a good ‘CV’ company. Only stayed 10 months: found the same job but paying £22.5k in Portsmouth.
- Swannie 16y agoRegardless of that, many mid-career, 5yr+ experienced friends of mine are in the 55 - 65K USD range. cry at rubbish rates of pay in the UK
- parbo 16y ago~$75k, but I'm in Sweden so there's plenty of money going directly from my employer to the government to cover pensions etc. It's really hard to compare salaries between countries. I suppose I also pay a lot more taxes on those $75k than you guys.
- stretchwithme 16y agoMay these categories should be logarithmic.
- xtho 16y agoYou should probably also have asked how many hours per week people work. There is little use in comparing people who work 20 hours per week with workaholics who do little else.
- ahoyhere 16y ago$100k to $250k seems like a needlessly large bracket!
- raghava 16y agoMine's < 15K USD; am a programmer in India, with one of the BigCos. Not an easy stretch though, sort of making ends meet.
- dedward 16y agoLet's add current total debt load in there as well for fun..