4 ms·

Salaries for software engineers have stagnated

6 points by map222 6y ago

WheelsAtLarge 6y ago
And they will start to drop. It's a demand and supply issue. As salaries go up, more people go into the field. As more people go into the field, salaries begin to drop.
- map222 6y ago
  That's part of why I was looking into this, is I wanted to understand how things might change in the future. I have no special insight on what will happen, but there still seems to be a lack of Senior Data Scientists. Of course, that might change in a few years as people get more experience.
bleah1000 6y ago
The problem is how you calculate the increase in salaries. For example, how is the salary of different people going up or down. Is the salary right out of college going up? Are only senior engineer salaries stagnate? I think you really need to look at total compensation to see if that is stagnating, and that can be harder to track. There is a huge part of many companies compensation that includes stock in one form or another (options, stock grants, espp, even 401K match). I think due to the pandemic, that total compensation is likely to go down this year for most people (stock component is worth less), so you can't probably track for this year. You could still try and look at previous years though.
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  > I think you really need to look at total compensation to see if that is stagnating, and that can be harder to track. IMO that's the point. Informational symmetry between people in the same org, or people in different orgs, means it is easier for people to jump ship or push for raises. Informational asymmetry benefits employers, as they can obfuscate total comp and find ways to offer workers less.
- map222 6y ago
  Hi, I totally get your points. All of the numbers reported in the tweet are total compensation (TC). Obviously there are some problems with TC in that it depends on stock appreciation, and how people report it, but that is the best I could do with the data available. I also tried to address the different levels by including coefficients for levels in the regression. So if you look at the table at the end, you can see senior engineers made more than SWE 2s. I thought of including interaction terms, but I don't think I had enough data to get reasonable estimates for that, and it would be harder to interpret.

6 points by map222 6y ago

And they will start to drop. It's a demand and supply issue. As salaries go up, more people go into the field. As more people go into the field, salaries begin to drop.

map222 6y ago
That's part of why I was looking into this, is I wanted to understand how things might change in the future. I have no special insight on what will happen, but there still seems to be a lack of Senior Data Scientists. Of course, that might change in a few years as people get more experience.

bleah1000 6y ago

The problem is how you calculate the increase in salaries. For example, how is the salary of different people going up or down. Is the salary right out of college going up? Are only senior engineer salaries stagnate? I think you really need to look at total compensation to see if that is stagnating, and that can be harder to track. There is a huge part of many companies compensation that includes stock in one form or another (options, stock grants, espp, even 401K match). I think due to the pandemic, that total compensation is likely to go down this year for most people (stock component is worth less), so you can't probably track for this year. You could still try and look at previous years though.

blaser-waffle 6y ago
> I think you really need to look at total compensation to see if that is stagnating, and that can be harder to track. IMO that's the point. Informational symmetry between people in the same org, or people in different orgs, means it is easier for people to jump ship or push for raises. Informational asymmetry benefits employers, as they can obfuscate total comp and find ways to offer workers less.
map222 6y ago
Hi, I totally get your points. All of the numbers reported in the tweet are total compensation (TC). Obviously there are some problems with TC in that it depends on stock appreciation, and how people report it, but that is the best I could do with the data available. I also tried to address the different levels by including coefficients for levels in the regression. So if you look at the table at the end, you can see senior engineers made more than SWE 2s. I thought of including interaction terms, but I don't think I had enough data to get reasonable estimates for that, and it would be harder to interpret.