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> The interview bar has gotten insanely high it seems. Software developers are starting to commonly earn doctor-like salaries. Doctors typically burn ~12-15 ye

> The interview bar has gotten insanely high it seems. Software developers are starting to commonly earn doctor-like salaries. Doctors typically burn ~12-15 years between school and residency before they start getting paid serious salaries. A top 20%-30% software developer can be earning $150k in their mid to late 20s, outside of the Bay Area. It's no surprise that the hurdles are going up for such high compensation. Software devs in the US as a mass employment field (1.5m people) are the best paid large group of people in world history. Combined wages (not total compensation, that's far higher) for the 1.5 million software devs in the US is in the neighborhood of $215 to $250 billion per year. It's doubtful anything like this concentration of huge globally important industry dominance + very high pay will ever been seen again anywhere else in the world, it's an outlier economically to put it mildly. Enjoy it while it lasts.

ditonal 5y ago
I agree to the extent that it might not last and "make hay while the sun shines." At the same time, I disagree it's that unprecedented. There's about as many lawyers as software developers and the compensation distribution is surprisingly similar (including some bimodal aspects). Yeah they put in 3 years and took some debt but it's not that significant big picture, many CS students get an MS. There's a lot of doctors in my family. It used to be a gold mine field and now it's much less so, as hospitals have a lot more power over the doctors than they used to. If you want a really good bang for your buck, look at salaries for nurses who get some specialization like CRNAs, who can make similar money to SWEs, with about 2 years extra school work. I mostly agree we're in a golden age of software engineering compensation and as I mentioned in my first post, these companies have a right to be picky. Still, to some extent I think engineers of all stripes were relatively underpaid relatively to some other white collar professions historically and its just been catching up a bit.

ditonal 5y ago

I agree to the extent that it might not last and "make hay while the sun shines." At the same time, I disagree it's that unprecedented. There's about as many lawyers as software developers and the compensation distribution is surprisingly similar (including some bimodal aspects). Yeah they put in 3 years and took some debt but it's not that significant big picture, many CS students get an MS. There's a lot of doctors in my family. It used to be a gold mine field and now it's much less so, as hospitals have a lot more power over the doctors than they used to. If you want a really good bang for your buck, look at salaries for nurses who get some specialization like CRNAs, who can make similar money to SWEs, with about 2 years extra school work. I mostly agree we're in a golden age of software engineering compensation and as I mentioned in my first post, these companies have a right to be picky. Still, to some extent I think engineers of all stripes were relatively underpaid relatively to some other white collar professions historically and its just been catching up a bit.