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Nit: I think you meant Fargo, ND rather than Fargo, SD. For local market rate, [1] seems to match anecdata with new grads being 50-70k. MSFT is largely respons

Nit: I think you meant Fargo, ND rather than Fargo, SD. For local market rate, [1] seems to match anecdata with new grads being 50-70k. MSFT is largely responsible for anything above that. [1] https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/software-engineer-i-salary/fargo-nd https://www.salary.com/research/salary/benchmark/software-en...

dcolkitt 5y ago
You can’t really just compare average salaries in different metros, because there’s major selection bias. The average engineer in South Dakota is not the same as one in San Francisco. Less talented workers tend to heavily flow towards low COL markets, because they’re less to achieve a high enough productivity differential to justify the high cost. This obviously isn’t true for every single case. But the typical engineer at a sleepy regional bank is nowhere near talented enough to make it at a fast-paced, hyper-growth venture backed startup.
- kasey_junk 5y ago
  Having worked in everything from backend systems for sleepy banks to hedge funds to the hottest pre-IPO valley darlings, anecdotally you are dead wrong. If there is any correlation at all it’s that the venture backed startups have a lower than average skill level.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    It is amazing that these lower than average skill level people make companies that earn the highest profits, and have the highest wages.
    - ajkjk 5y ago
      What's amazing about it? Perhaps they are trying a lot harder.
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Surely effort is a very big part of success, but I would attribute at least some of the magic that makes the tech companies hum to above average technical expertise.
    - asdff 5y ago
      Is that surprising? You can cook up an electron app after a few tutorials and two weeks time. All you have to do is sell a product, the product can be junk if you can convince your buyers otherwise. Charisma gets more funding than technical expertise, because consumers buy on charisma.
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Consumers are not buying iPhones because of charisma. They are not using Gmail because of charisma. Some VC pump and dump companies get by and make some headlines by being a fad electron app, but I am referring to those that stick around for years and develop products that require R&D. I have a hard time believing that people who work at companies that have transformed the way we live over the past few decades are "lower than average skill".
        asdff 5y ago
        Apple and google are not the vc backed startup companies the other commenter was talking about, though.
        kasey_junk 5y ago
        So, I wasn’t thinking Apple or Google when I wrote this because those are giant companies that hire globally. Most of Apples profit comes from products produced far from the valley. That said, I’ve worked with lots of veterans of Apple and Google and there quite literally is no correlation between having worked at those companies and being good. I believe that the current hiring environment in software is so broken that being hired by someone is effectively arbitrary. Similarly Microsoft and Amazon are not valley creations but are giant profitable companies that hire tech workers from a wide variety of regions. When you hire as much of the industry as those companies do its not at all surprising that the talent in them runs the gamut. They represent so much of the industry it would be near impossible not to have a big distribution of talent within them. But when you get into the rest of the ecosystem is when it gets pretty ugly pretty fast. So far as I can see the biggest correlative factor with engineers in the valley is a capacity to move there. That filter does not trend towards being good at the job. And I’ll stand by my anecdotal opinion. I think the more amazing thing that some firms are able to overcome this talent problem is that it took a global pandemic for the opinion it being an issue to change.
- EMM_386 5y ago
  > The average engineer in South Dakota is not the same as one in San Francisco. How do you know? I've worked with extremely talented engineers from all over the globe at this point, 20+ years in. Do you think all the engineers in San Francisco were born there? You would never guess where I'm living, and it's not San Francisco. I'd love to, but I'm waiting for tech to recede a bit and a sense of normalcy to return.

dcolkitt 5y ago

You can’t really just compare average salaries in different metros, because there’s major selection bias. The average engineer in South Dakota is not the same as one in San Francisco. Less talented workers tend to heavily flow towards low COL markets, because they’re less to achieve a high enough productivity differential to justify the high cost. This obviously isn’t true for every single case. But the typical engineer at a sleepy regional bank is nowhere near talented enough to make it at a fast-paced, hyper-growth venture backed startup.

kasey_junk 5y ago
Having worked in everything from backend systems for sleepy banks to hedge funds to the hottest pre-IPO valley darlings, anecdotally you are dead wrong. If there is any correlation at all it’s that the venture backed startups have a lower than average skill level.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  It is amazing that these lower than average skill level people make companies that earn the highest profits, and have the highest wages.
  - ajkjk 5y ago
    What's amazing about it? Perhaps they are trying a lot harder.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Surely effort is a very big part of success, but I would attribute at least some of the magic that makes the tech companies hum to above average technical expertise.
  - asdff 5y ago
    Is that surprising? You can cook up an electron app after a few tutorials and two weeks time. All you have to do is sell a product, the product can be junk if you can convince your buyers otherwise. Charisma gets more funding than technical expertise, because consumers buy on charisma.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Consumers are not buying iPhones because of charisma. They are not using Gmail because of charisma. Some VC pump and dump companies get by and make some headlines by being a fad electron app, but I am referring to those that stick around for years and develop products that require R&D. I have a hard time believing that people who work at companies that have transformed the way we live over the past few decades are "lower than average skill".
      - asdff 5y ago
        Apple and google are not the vc backed startup companies the other commenter was talking about, though.
      - kasey_junk 5y ago
        So, I wasn’t thinking Apple or Google when I wrote this because those are giant companies that hire globally. Most of Apples profit comes from products produced far from the valley. That said, I’ve worked with lots of veterans of Apple and Google and there quite literally is no correlation between having worked at those companies and being good. I believe that the current hiring environment in software is so broken that being hired by someone is effectively arbitrary. Similarly Microsoft and Amazon are not valley creations but are giant profitable companies that hire tech workers from a wide variety of regions. When you hire as much of the industry as those companies do its not at all surprising that the talent in them runs the gamut. They represent so much of the industry it would be near impossible not to have a big distribution of talent within them. But when you get into the rest of the ecosystem is when it gets pretty ugly pretty fast. So far as I can see the biggest correlative factor with engineers in the valley is a capacity to move there. That filter does not trend towards being good at the job. And I’ll stand by my anecdotal opinion. I think the more amazing thing that some firms are able to overcome this talent problem is that it took a global pandemic for the opinion it being an issue to change.
EMM_386 5y ago
> The average engineer in South Dakota is not the same as one in San Francisco. How do you know? I've worked with extremely talented engineers from all over the globe at this point, 20+ years in. Do you think all the engineers in San Francisco were born there? You would never guess where I'm living, and it's not San Francisco. I'd love to, but I'm waiting for tech to recede a bit and a sense of normalcy to return.