6 ms·

There are a lot of experienced developers in the U.S. you can hire for 100k too, outside the large metropolitan areas.

scarface74 6y ago
I can’t think of a single great developer that you could hire in the US for $100K. The few jobs in non metropolitan areas for software developers are going to be WordPress Developers. Everyone else is going to at least leave for the closest metropolitan area.
- war1025 6y ago
  As someone in the Midwest, this seems pretty biased to me. I make right about $100k, which is pretty competitive for the area from what I can tell. It's possible I'm just getting completely fleeced, but I think that's unlikely. But then again, I guess you can just play the "No true Scotsman" game and argue that I don't count as a truly great developer.
  - emddudley 6y ago
    I am in a similar boat and all these rich developers in the SV web bubble fill me with self doubt.
    - scarface74 6y ago
      I’m not in Silicon Valley - I’m on the opposite coast. I’m not talking about the difference between small town and SV. I’m more referring to moving from SmallTown, Nebraska to Omaha Nebraska where experienced developers wouldn’t usually accept $100K. I moved from SmallTown southern United States four hours away to Metro City southern US for increased opportunities almost 25 years ago.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - war1025 6y ago
      I find it's better to just ignore it. But sometimes it does get hard. My friends make similar amounts of money as me, which is generally what I try to think about. Gotta be happy where you are. Otherwise I guess you could go join the rat race and make the big bucks.
      - scarface74 6y ago
        I’m all sorts of conflicted. Beginning of 2020, I was 45 years old making A little more than the average senior SaaS CRUD developer made locally because of $bad_career_decisions. It was about $50K -$80K less than a CS grad would make a couple of years out of school working for a FAANG or even a second tier software company on the west coast. Then Covid hit and the company I worked for had an across the board 10% pay cut. Just dumb luck and being at the right place at the right time - I happened to have a combination of skills that let me slide into a remote position as a cloud consultant for BigTech. Now I’m 46 working (virtuallly) along side 26 year olds making more than I do. Win??
        war1025 6y ago
        > Now I’m 46 working (virtuallly) along side 26 year olds making more than I do. Win?? I'm 31 making 3-4x what my father ever did. And I get to sit in an office instead of busting my ass doing repetitive labor on an assembly line day in day out. It's all about perspective I guess.
        scarface74 6y ago
        Well, even inflation adjusted I was making more than my parents did combined when they were 45. But, my mom retired from teaching after 30 years at 55 and my Dad retired from his factory job at 57. When they were 62, they were both getting pensions and social security checks. They’ve been married for 50+ years and retired for 20+ years. I won’t be retiring before 67... Again perspective...
        war1025 6y ago
  - scarface74 6y ago
    I worked at a company that was officially based in Nebraska because they received some type of grant for hiring locally. They expanded to my larger metropolitan area in the south east to find reasonably priced developers but a larger pool. That being said, I was speaking to my CTO about hiring and I asked him, why doesn’t he hire in the Nebraska office, it would be a lot cheaper. His reply was “not really”. I know in my metro area, salaries for your standard experienced software as a service CRUD developers (no insult intended - as a developer that’s what I am), were making between $125K-$155K pre-Covid. I can only assume they were making about the same in Kearney and Omaha Nebraska. Whether you agree with it or not (and I don’t), companies looking for great developers usually want them to be able to pass an algorithm style interview. Can you do it? Personally, I consider myself to be a pretty good enterprise developer/architect but I wouldn’t get past the first round of an algorithm heavy technical interview without lots of practice.
    - war1025 6y ago
      > Whether you agree with it or not (and I don’t), companies looking for great developers usually want them to be able to pass an algorithm style interview. Can you do it? Considering I tutored people in college that went on to work at the FAANGS of the world, I would guess so. But also I guess it doesn't terribly matter. I got off that treadmill a long time ago.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
e40 6y ago
Not my experience. 4 years ago I offered 3 people in the US a job. All declined it. They were looking north of $175k. All were in very low cost of living places. They would live like a king or queen on that salary there. I was offering $125k. It was a very quick conversation, too. Once they knew that, they bailed.
- sushshshsh 6y ago
  Hire me instead :) You just didn't poll the queue enough.
- cjbprime 6y ago
  Not sure exactly how to ask this, but since $125k is well above US market rate in low cost of living areas: have you considered the possibility that they asked for more because other aspects of the work seemed extremely unattractive?
  - e40 6y ago
    2 of the 3 were ready to accept the job. Salary was the only issue. The 3rd, I'm not sure of. The job was writing Lisp code, so you can gauge the unattractiveness of that yourself. (It's what they were looking for, they said.)
- User23 6y ago
  You should compensate employees based on the value their work provides you, not based on the particulars of their personal life. An engineer's frugality is not an excuse to lowball him or her.
cmrdporcupine 6y ago
$100k USD is $133k CAD and will get one some pretty decent talent in Canada -- especially outside of Toronto where rates are higher -- with the advantage of being in the same time zones, same linguistic-cultural nexus, and you won't have expensive American medical insurance benefits etc. Even better if you can offer annual bonuses and stock options.
0xy 6y ago
The US is the recipient of all of the world's top talent. Why would any extremely experienced developer willingly choose to earn 1/6th of the money in the Europe or less unless forced to? Of course, top talent does exist in Europe but there's way less than the US.
- kabes 6y ago
  I moved back to Europe from SV for a lesser paying job (not 1/6th though) because I thoroughly hated the bay area / US. I got a way better quality of life here (Belgium).
- fsloth 6y ago
  Because people like other things than just money? Once you have the safety network of a european state, have upper middle class income, there is very little to gain in quality of life by increase in pay.
- naavis 6y ago
  Because they want to live in Europe?
  - 0xy 6y ago
    My comment never suggested there are none who don't live there by choice. Of course, by choosing Europe, you surrender literally millions of dollars (in compounding retirement investments over decades). I specifically mean EU countries by the way, Switzerland and London are the only exceptions -- and even then the US is better.
    - dmitriid 6y ago
      > you surrender literally millions of dollars You don't. You spend those "millions" of dollars on ridiculously expensive medical care, on ridiculously expensive education, on car ownership, on... And in return you get worse infrastructure, worse medical care, worse ecology etc.
      - 6y ago

I can’t think of a single great developer that you could hire in the US for $100K. The few jobs in non metropolitan areas for software developers are going to be WordPress Developers. Everyone else is going to at least leave for the closest metropolitan area.

war1025 6y ago
As someone in the Midwest, this seems pretty biased to me. I make right about $100k, which is pretty competitive for the area from what I can tell. It's possible I'm just getting completely fleeced, but I think that's unlikely. But then again, I guess you can just play the "No true Scotsman" game and argue that I don't count as a truly great developer.
- emddudley 6y ago
  I am in a similar boat and all these rich developers in the SV web bubble fill me with self doubt.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    I’m not in Silicon Valley - I’m on the opposite coast. I’m not talking about the difference between small town and SV. I’m more referring to moving from SmallTown, Nebraska to Omaha Nebraska where experienced developers wouldn’t usually accept $100K. I moved from SmallTown southern United States four hours away to Metro City southern US for increased opportunities almost 25 years ago.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - war1025 6y ago
    I find it's better to just ignore it. But sometimes it does get hard. My friends make similar amounts of money as me, which is generally what I try to think about. Gotta be happy where you are. Otherwise I guess you could go join the rat race and make the big bucks.
    - scarface74 6y ago
      I’m all sorts of conflicted. Beginning of 2020, I was 45 years old making A little more than the average senior SaaS CRUD developer made locally because of $bad_career_decisions. It was about $50K -$80K less than a CS grad would make a couple of years out of school working for a FAANG or even a second tier software company on the west coast. Then Covid hit and the company I worked for had an across the board 10% pay cut. Just dumb luck and being at the right place at the right time - I happened to have a combination of skills that let me slide into a remote position as a cloud consultant for BigTech. Now I’m 46 working (virtuallly) along side 26 year olds making more than I do. Win??
      - war1025 6y ago
        > Now I’m 46 working (virtuallly) along side 26 year olds making more than I do. Win?? I'm 31 making 3-4x what my father ever did. And I get to sit in an office instead of busting my ass doing repetitive labor on an assembly line day in day out. It's all about perspective I guess.
        scarface74 6y ago
        Well, even inflation adjusted I was making more than my parents did combined when they were 45. But, my mom retired from teaching after 30 years at 55 and my Dad retired from his factory job at 57. When they were 62, they were both getting pensions and social security checks. They’ve been married for 50+ years and retired for 20+ years. I won’t be retiring before 67... Again perspective...
        war1025 6y ago
- scarface74 6y ago
  I worked at a company that was officially based in Nebraska because they received some type of grant for hiring locally. They expanded to my larger metropolitan area in the south east to find reasonably priced developers but a larger pool. That being said, I was speaking to my CTO about hiring and I asked him, why doesn’t he hire in the Nebraska office, it would be a lot cheaper. His reply was “not really”. I know in my metro area, salaries for your standard experienced software as a service CRUD developers (no insult intended - as a developer that’s what I am), were making between $125K-$155K pre-Covid. I can only assume they were making about the same in Kearney and Omaha Nebraska. Whether you agree with it or not (and I don’t), companies looking for great developers usually want them to be able to pass an algorithm style interview. Can you do it? Personally, I consider myself to be a pretty good enterprise developer/architect but I wouldn’t get past the first round of an algorithm heavy technical interview without lots of practice.
  - war1025 6y ago
    > Whether you agree with it or not (and I don’t), companies looking for great developers usually want them to be able to pass an algorithm style interview. Can you do it? Considering I tutored people in college that went on to work at the FAANGS of the world, I would guess so. But also I guess it doesn't terribly matter. I got off that treadmill a long time ago.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

e40 6y ago

Not my experience. 4 years ago I offered 3 people in the US a job. All declined it. They were looking north of $175k. All were in very low cost of living places. They would live like a king or queen on that salary there. I was offering $125k. It was a very quick conversation, too. Once they knew that, they bailed.

sushshshsh 6y ago
Hire me instead :) You just didn't poll the queue enough.
cjbprime 6y ago
Not sure exactly how to ask this, but since $125k is well above US market rate in low cost of living areas: have you considered the possibility that they asked for more because other aspects of the work seemed extremely unattractive?
- e40 6y ago
  2 of the 3 were ready to accept the job. Salary was the only issue. The 3rd, I'm not sure of. The job was writing Lisp code, so you can gauge the unattractiveness of that yourself. (It's what they were looking for, they said.)
User23 6y ago
You should compensate employees based on the value their work provides you, not based on the particulars of their personal life. An engineer's frugality is not an excuse to lowball him or her.

cmrdporcupine 6y ago

$100k USD is $133k CAD and will get one some pretty decent talent in Canada -- especially outside of Toronto where rates are higher -- with the advantage of being in the same time zones, same linguistic-cultural nexus, and you won't have expensive American medical insurance benefits etc. Even better if you can offer annual bonuses and stock options.

0xy 6y ago

The US is the recipient of all of the world's top talent. Why would any extremely experienced developer willingly choose to earn 1/6th of the money in the Europe or less unless forced to? Of course, top talent does exist in Europe but there's way less than the US.

kabes 6y ago
I moved back to Europe from SV for a lesser paying job (not 1/6th though) because I thoroughly hated the bay area / US. I got a way better quality of life here (Belgium).
fsloth 6y ago
Because people like other things than just money? Once you have the safety network of a european state, have upper middle class income, there is very little to gain in quality of life by increase in pay.
naavis 6y ago
Because they want to live in Europe?
- 0xy 6y ago
  My comment never suggested there are none who don't live there by choice. Of course, by choosing Europe, you surrender literally millions of dollars (in compounding retirement investments over decades). I specifically mean EU countries by the way, Switzerland and London are the only exceptions -- and even then the US is better.
  - dmitriid 6y ago
    > you surrender literally millions of dollars You don't. You spend those "millions" of dollars on ridiculously expensive medical care, on ridiculously expensive education, on car ownership, on... And in return you get worse infrastructure, worse medical care, worse ecology etc.
    - 6y ago