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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 possib

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
        My mom retired a couple years ago from the hospital in town and gets a pension from that. I agree that people with pensions have a completely different outlook on money than those without. My dad was a member of the steelworker's union for 25 years and then they closed down the plant he worked at and moved the production line to Mexico. He got to train his replacements. Then he delivered propane for a couple years, and ended up getting a job at Cargill on a line that made eggs for McDonald's breakfast burritos and Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches. He worked there for 5 or 6 years, finally scored a nice job as the custodian at the rec center in town and planned to ride that out until retirement. Shortly after his 57th birthday he started acting funny and was diagnosed with Glioblastoma [1], probably better known as "that cancer John McCain had". Died a year and a half later. I don't think either or us is really adding much to the original conversation, but I am enjoying swapping stories nonetheless. Hopefully some of the bystanders are as well... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glioblastoma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glioblastoma
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]

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
        My mom retired a couple years ago from the hospital in town and gets a pension from that. I agree that people with pensions have a completely different outlook on money than those without. My dad was a member of the steelworker's union for 25 years and then they closed down the plant he worked at and moved the production line to Mexico. He got to train his replacements. Then he delivered propane for a couple years, and ended up getting a job at Cargill on a line that made eggs for McDonald's breakfast burritos and Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches. He worked there for 5 or 6 years, finally scored a nice job as the custodian at the rec center in town and planned to ride that out until retirement. Shortly after his 57th birthday he started acting funny and was diagnosed with Glioblastoma [1], probably better known as "that cancer John McCain had". Died a year and a half later. I don't think either or us is really adding much to the original conversation, but I am enjoying swapping stories nonetheless. Hopefully some of the bystanders are as well... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glioblastoma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glioblastoma

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]