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The pay level still isn’t high enough. Minimum pay of about 170k in San Jose for a software engineer? That’s not a specialist, that’s average for a small start

The pay level still isn’t high enough. Minimum pay of about 170k in San Jose for a software engineer? That’s not a specialist, that’s average for a small startup.

carlmr 6y ago
It should be location based. 170k is an expert in many areas of the country. Maybe something like upper 2% of salaries in the county. A fixed number will never be appropriate for all the areas in the US, and a fixed number will always need to be adapted.
- brabel 6y ago
  According to this[1], with 140k you're in the top 5% Americans, so you're not far off... but regulating immigrant's salaries on a regional basis seems unfeasible, as they're free to move anywhere in the country AFAIK, just like any other US resident. [1] https://wallethacks.com/average-median-income-in-america/ https://wallethacks.com/average-median-income-in-america/
  - carlmr 6y ago
    I don't understand why that would make it infeasible. Whichever place they choose, they have to get a job that's actually highly paid for that area.
  - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
    Why is it unfeasible? Companies give cost of living raises - and pay cuts - depending on where someone lives in the US. If companies can figure this stuff out, why can't the government? Don't companies get their cost of living data from government agencies anyway?
    - bluGill 6y ago
      As someone who lives in a different state I object to someone who is otherwise equal in ability to me earning more for the same work (I have personal reasons to not want to move to CA). I understand why companies do it (only those who have a reason they need to stay in CA - why google doesn't move doesn't make sense), but I will object to my government encouraging the situation even more. My representative needs to be sensitive to that.
      - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
        This isn't something special to the US, though, and i'm pretty certain if it was changed so that folks in Indiana made the same money as California, folks in California would make worse wages. The truth is, though, that folks getting paid well in Indiana can generally live better on the lower wage simply because things are that much cheaper. Perhaps you wish to subsidize living in the more expensive areas and increase the safety net? Maybe you should place some pressure on companies to move headquarters into more affordable places. Lots of places have international airports, after all, so that shouldn't hinder folks much. Do you think your representatives gives two farts about what folks in a different part of the country are paid so long as folks in his or her district are living well enough? Or should folks in the area living well be enough of a concern? Do you have solutions for these things that are fair to the folks needing to live in the expensive areas (poor folks have little to no choice in the matter)?
- mavelikara 6y ago
  The high-paying locations are the ones where the experts congregate.
cookieswumchorr 6y ago
but your average small startup still needs to hire people somehow, right? Is there still free workforce on the Market?
- epicureanideal 6y ago
  I guess they should offer more than 0.0001%?
  - shajznnckfke 6y ago
    This is why I don’t work for a startup. However, I suspect the average candidate doesn’t understand the equity well enough to properly value it. Therefore it would be a waste to give away a bigger chunk of the cap table to those employees if it doesn’t save the company much cash on salaries or attract a lot more talent. Only for the subset of roles where you’re trying to hire people who understand how a company runs do you have to give a serious equity stake, because those are the people who know how to value it.
    - epicureanideal 6y ago
      It's more like, employees have lost their negotiating power, so they don't bother to negotiate it anymore, so there's no reason for them to understand how it works. If the labor pool shrinks a bit, their negotiating power will rise and this will solve itself.
      - shajznnckfke 6y ago
        I don’t think this fully explains the dynamics of the situation. Even if you can perform well enough in the interview process to get paid extremely well by big tech, you probably can’t get a comparable amount of equity from a startup. It’s not that the labor market doesn’t value your skills - startups just don’t pay market price.
        shagie 6y ago
tootahe45 6y ago
As a New Zealander, this level of pay just baffles me. Is the US the only place where SWE's get paid well compared to other professions?
- simonbarker87 6y ago
  Agreed, I'm in the UK, living in one of the more expensive regions outside London and I'd be considered to be doing pretty well if I hit £50K.
  - ErrantX 6y ago
    As a SE? That seem's off - market rate for most of the UK for 5+ years tenure engineer is around 50-60K. Graduate salaries are starting to push high 30's!
    - memsom 6y ago
      Agreed. I'm far south and therefore nowhere near London and this is what I'm seeing. If you are in specific fields, some companies are paying £70-80k+, but you need to have proven skills in the fields they are looking for. The other thing to take in to account with the US figures - taxation. I believe the US tax system taxes the individual directly, where as in the UK we are generally PAYE and taxed at the point we are paid our salary. Maybe someone in the US can confirm that?
      - foldr 6y ago
        >I believe the US tax system taxes the individual directly, where as in the UK we are generally PAYE and taxed at the point we are paid our salary. Maybe someone in the US can confirm that? I've lived in the US. Your taxes are withheld from your pay. Unlike in the UK, everyone has to fill in a tax return - even if all of their income comes from a regular job. You might be due a small refund or owe a small amount at the end of each tax year, but fundamentally you're taxed as you go throughout the year.
        6y ago
scrdhrt 6y ago
It's crazy how average pay differs from even expensive, technology and knowledge heavy parts of Europe. Where I live, Stockholm Sweden, this would be a very well paid person. Even more so for families, considering it's one income and not two for the household.
- kube-system 6y ago
  In 99% of the US by area, $170k would be a very good salary for a software engineer too. Silicon Valley is a statistical outlier compared to the US as a whole for salaries and for cost-of-living. Most of the software engineers in the US don’t work in a place with $170k salaries and $1m+ homes. For most of the US, salaries are 1/2 of that and homes are 1/4 of that.
  - nullsense 6y ago
    I remember slightly earlier on in my career as an intermediate level engineer earning $70k living in an area (not in US) where the median house price is $1m+ An extra $100k would have been really nice.
  - tracker1 6y ago
    That's a large reason of why I've stayed in the Phoenix area, though I think about leaving every single summer. The engineering pay is about 2/3 of SF area, give or take, but cost of houses are around 1/4 or so. It's rough thinking of a lateral move in salary, or not enough of a boost to overcome cost of living differences. Of course housing costs have gone up significantly relative to pay in the past decade, so who knows.
throwaway4good 6y ago
By international standards it is a very high salary.
- epicureanideal 6y ago
  Billions are in poverty or near-poverty internationally, so that's not the standard I want to set US wages to.
  - jlokier 6y ago
    True, but probably not billions in near-poverty as software engineers. The world standard for software engineers is probably an ok life. Point is, by international standards, USD $170k is a very high salary for software engineers too, even for a specialist.
    - nullsense 6y ago
      I know a guy who outsourced some stuff to a dev in Nepal. The guy was making 3x the average for his area. SWE is highly paid throughout the world, but I have noticed there are some geographic areas where it actually doesn't seem to command a higher salary than average.
      - JanisL 6y ago
        Salaries are driven by a lot of supply side dynamics, it's less about the overall economic output of the employee and more about the cost of replacing them.
varjag 6y ago
Point is it's not a sweatshop rate by any measure.

The pay level still isn’t high enough. Minimum pay of about 170k in San Jose for a software engineer? That’s not a specialist, that’s average for a small startup.

carlmr 6y ago

It should be location based. 170k is an expert in many areas of the country. Maybe something like upper 2% of salaries in the county. A fixed number will never be appropriate for all the areas in the US, and a fixed number will always need to be adapted.

brabel 6y ago
According to this[1], with 140k you're in the top 5% Americans, so you're not far off... but regulating immigrant's salaries on a regional basis seems unfeasible, as they're free to move anywhere in the country AFAIK, just like any other US resident. [1] https://wallethacks.com/average-median-income-in-america/ https://wallethacks.com/average-median-income-in-america/
- carlmr 6y ago
  I don't understand why that would make it infeasible. Whichever place they choose, they have to get a job that's actually highly paid for that area.
- Broken_Hippo 6y ago
  Why is it unfeasible? Companies give cost of living raises - and pay cuts - depending on where someone lives in the US. If companies can figure this stuff out, why can't the government? Don't companies get their cost of living data from government agencies anyway?
  - bluGill 6y ago
    As someone who lives in a different state I object to someone who is otherwise equal in ability to me earning more for the same work (I have personal reasons to not want to move to CA). I understand why companies do it (only those who have a reason they need to stay in CA - why google doesn't move doesn't make sense), but I will object to my government encouraging the situation even more. My representative needs to be sensitive to that.
    - Broken_Hippo 6y ago
      This isn't something special to the US, though, and i'm pretty certain if it was changed so that folks in Indiana made the same money as California, folks in California would make worse wages. The truth is, though, that folks getting paid well in Indiana can generally live better on the lower wage simply because things are that much cheaper. Perhaps you wish to subsidize living in the more expensive areas and increase the safety net? Maybe you should place some pressure on companies to move headquarters into more affordable places. Lots of places have international airports, after all, so that shouldn't hinder folks much. Do you think your representatives gives two farts about what folks in a different part of the country are paid so long as folks in his or her district are living well enough? Or should folks in the area living well be enough of a concern? Do you have solutions for these things that are fair to the folks needing to live in the expensive areas (poor folks have little to no choice in the matter)?
mavelikara 6y ago
The high-paying locations are the ones where the experts congregate.

cookieswumchorr 6y ago

but your average small startup still needs to hire people somehow, right? Is there still free workforce on the Market?

epicureanideal 6y ago
I guess they should offer more than 0.0001%?
- shajznnckfke 6y ago
  This is why I don’t work for a startup. However, I suspect the average candidate doesn’t understand the equity well enough to properly value it. Therefore it would be a waste to give away a bigger chunk of the cap table to those employees if it doesn’t save the company much cash on salaries or attract a lot more talent. Only for the subset of roles where you’re trying to hire people who understand how a company runs do you have to give a serious equity stake, because those are the people who know how to value it.
  - epicureanideal 6y ago
    It's more like, employees have lost their negotiating power, so they don't bother to negotiate it anymore, so there's no reason for them to understand how it works. If the labor pool shrinks a bit, their negotiating power will rise and this will solve itself.
    - shajznnckfke 6y ago
      I don’t think this fully explains the dynamics of the situation. Even if you can perform well enough in the interview process to get paid extremely well by big tech, you probably can’t get a comparable amount of equity from a startup. It’s not that the labor market doesn’t value your skills - startups just don’t pay market price.
      - shagie 6y ago

tootahe45 6y ago

As a New Zealander, this level of pay just baffles me. Is the US the only place where SWE's get paid well compared to other professions?

simonbarker87 6y ago
Agreed, I'm in the UK, living in one of the more expensive regions outside London and I'd be considered to be doing pretty well if I hit £50K.
- ErrantX 6y ago
  As a SE? That seem's off - market rate for most of the UK for 5+ years tenure engineer is around 50-60K. Graduate salaries are starting to push high 30's!
  - memsom 6y ago
    Agreed. I'm far south and therefore nowhere near London and this is what I'm seeing. If you are in specific fields, some companies are paying £70-80k+, but you need to have proven skills in the fields they are looking for. The other thing to take in to account with the US figures - taxation. I believe the US tax system taxes the individual directly, where as in the UK we are generally PAYE and taxed at the point we are paid our salary. Maybe someone in the US can confirm that?
    - foldr 6y ago
      >I believe the US tax system taxes the individual directly, where as in the UK we are generally PAYE and taxed at the point we are paid our salary. Maybe someone in the US can confirm that? I've lived in the US. Your taxes are withheld from your pay. Unlike in the UK, everyone has to fill in a tax return - even if all of their income comes from a regular job. You might be due a small refund or owe a small amount at the end of each tax year, but fundamentally you're taxed as you go throughout the year.
      - 6y ago

scrdhrt 6y ago

It's crazy how average pay differs from even expensive, technology and knowledge heavy parts of Europe. Where I live, Stockholm Sweden, this would be a very well paid person. Even more so for families, considering it's one income and not two for the household.

kube-system 6y ago
In 99% of the US by area, $170k would be a very good salary for a software engineer too. Silicon Valley is a statistical outlier compared to the US as a whole for salaries and for cost-of-living. Most of the software engineers in the US don’t work in a place with $170k salaries and $1m+ homes. For most of the US, salaries are 1/2 of that and homes are 1/4 of that.
- nullsense 6y ago
  I remember slightly earlier on in my career as an intermediate level engineer earning $70k living in an area (not in US) where the median house price is $1m+ An extra $100k would have been really nice.
- tracker1 6y ago
  That's a large reason of why I've stayed in the Phoenix area, though I think about leaving every single summer. The engineering pay is about 2/3 of SF area, give or take, but cost of houses are around 1/4 or so. It's rough thinking of a lateral move in salary, or not enough of a boost to overcome cost of living differences. Of course housing costs have gone up significantly relative to pay in the past decade, so who knows.

throwaway4good 6y ago

By international standards it is a very high salary.

epicureanideal 6y ago
Billions are in poverty or near-poverty internationally, so that's not the standard I want to set US wages to.
- jlokier 6y ago
  True, but probably not billions in near-poverty as software engineers. The world standard for software engineers is probably an ok life. Point is, by international standards, USD $170k is a very high salary for software engineers too, even for a specialist.
  - nullsense 6y ago
    I know a guy who outsourced some stuff to a dev in Nepal. The guy was making 3x the average for his area. SWE is highly paid throughout the world, but I have noticed there are some geographic areas where it actually doesn't seem to command a higher salary than average.
    - JanisL 6y ago
      Salaries are driven by a lot of supply side dynamics, it's less about the overall economic output of the employee and more about the cost of replacing them.

varjag 6y ago

Point is it's not a sweatshop rate by any measure.