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Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid

275 points by rustoo 4y ago

nicksiscoe 4y ago
complains about six-figure pay while sitting at home at computer eating a snack while waiting for someone to review their pull request
- technovader 4y ago
  and then goes out to buy groceries for family that cost 50% more than a year ago. and then has to fill up on gas but decides to just walk
  - albertgoeswoof 4y ago
    if cheap gas is the reason you're driving instead of walking, gas is too cheap
    - calculatte 4y ago
      if expensive gas is the reason you're walking instead of driving, gas is too expensive
  - nicksiscoe 4y ago
    Your sentiment is not specific to the tech industry. Many who work in tech are quite blessed to have careers that, despite the supposed realities you mention, give them a quality of life others can only dream of.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  And said PR was probably adding new ad and tracking tech to make people's lives more miserable.
specialist 4y ago
What about simple profit sharing? Maybe I'm weird, comparing my compensation to my own company's execs, vs against industry averages.
alexfromapex 4y ago
This article is extremely accurate about fatigue from wrangling and prepping large amounts of data. One thing it oddly ignores is the YTD inflation rate of 8.5% but it acknowledges that salaries increased 6.9% since 2020.
flappyeagle 4y ago
There's this dynamic of pay tending to be pegged to your job title. An engineer is an engineer is an engineer. In SF bay area, entry level jobs at big tech are skewing high and experienced roles are skewing low. This doesn't come close to mapping to impact level usually and we just accept that because it's socially easy. I've worked at startups where there were clearly >10x impact differences between two engineers and at most there was a 2x salary difference. As a startup, it's basically not worth it to hire junior talent anymore because they are not close to being worth the cost in most cases.
- jcomis 4y ago
  This right here. It's frustrating when you learn that someone hired a couple months ago ("the hottest job market" tm) with 2 yoe makes marginally less than you at 10+ yoe, as an example. A higher performing Sr can expect maybe high single digit bumps yearly, but a job hopping Jr can double digit bump and make it to almost the same level in a couple years. While less important and more ego the same thing is happening to titles. It's just hard to get out of the headspace of feeling underpaid when you see that, especially when you are the one holding their hand and helping them gain experience. Totally get it's all "in your head" and we are all very fortunate or that I should just job hop along with them, but overall just hard to escape those thought patterns.
  - arcanus 4y ago
    This is known as wage compression. It is occurring (typical in hot job markets) and has many of the problems you noted. Good indicator of a distorted labor market.
tristor 4y ago
Article was unreadable on mobile due to huge white box for a small banner ad that followed scroll at the top with a second massive uncloseable ad at the bottom, forcing a clickthru if you tried to scroll. Site is cursed. That said, based on what’s been shared in the thread, I’ll just say two things: 1. $100k isn’t what it used to be. When I started my career a $100k base seemed great, JUST off inflation it’d need a $155k base today to have the same purchasing power. CPI inflation doesn’t fully account for how crazy localized housing is in tech hubs either. 2. As a percentage share of the value generated by each engineering headcount, our earnings have gone down as profits have gone up. The current reality is meaningfully less equitable than in the past, including in stock equity and share dilution. There’s a lot of hemming and hawing happening in the world because tech workers are relatively better off than other workers, but we still are objectively being harmed by inflation and widening inequality between workers and the executive/capitalist class. The fact we are scraping by does not discount the facts above.
jdlyga 4y ago
Don't forget that 100k in 2022 is equivalent to 75k 2010. That was considered to be a good salary for students fresh out of graduate school
Pmop 4y ago
Meanwhile I'm making ~1/10th of the average. Been applying but looks like companies are looking for folks with +4yr experience. US and UK companies are no go since most aren't hiring people located outside of the US, and the few that do, it's for 1/10th of the average pay again. Making +100k USD would be nice but I'm looking for 20k or maybe 30k, that would be way more than what I'm making currently. Can anyone share some tips? Should I just grind it out until I have enough yrs of experience to compete/be eligible for higher paying jobs?
- dijit 4y ago
  I think where you live (unfortunately) has a lot to do with what jobs are available. I had to move to Finland (from the UK) to get my first real job, and even when I returned to the UK I had to move to London to find another place that would take me. Now I have a few years under me and people seem to throw jobs at me. The trend has been for a while: "We don't hire juniors", which I think is extremely short-sighted. The problem is that when you're hiring juniors (or even interns) you have a responsibility for them; it's a bit like having children, you have a stranger that needs supervision, proper education and the company/environment needs to have a good structure. Companies are scared of a junior being trained (or, invested in) and then running away. Companies are even more scared of the fact that they don't have a good structure set up. So we have this sort of absence of new juniors. (also, and this is controversial, when hiring juniors there's a strong emphasis on hiring from minority backgrounds such as women, trans-folk, ethnicities other than white and neurodiversity). So, my "tip" is to move to where the jobs are. (rather: be very open to relocate)
tlogan 4y ago
The salaries definitely did not keep up with inflation so if techies were feeling underpaid in 2020 they are feeling even more underpaid in 2022… A little strange article… it seems like they assume people who read these articles do not know math.
Finnucane 4y ago
I'd guess a lot of people, regardless of industry, feel underpaid. Simply for the reason that they are. Growing inequality is real, over the last few decades an ever increasing portion of the productivity gain of the economy goes to a smaller portion of the people. We do the work, others get the profit.
- enduser 4y ago
  Everyone seems to want something other than what they already have, and most assume more is better.
  - Finnucane 4y ago
    Yes, but that's always true and the rising spread of inequality is a problem of the last few decades.
0daystock 4y ago
No mention of current market conditions, namely record inflation? I suspect that may have something to do with why many people - "technies" are no exception - feel underpaid (because they are relative to blown-up monetary supply).
UI_at_80x24 4y ago
I was recently laid off along with >30% of the company. I really liked the job, I had full autonomy to do whatever I wanted. Research new tech, optimize our existing infrastructure, etc. I was the sole SysAdmin and I ran the operations very well. The problem: Pay was stagnate. The pay was decent for my region, but a far cry from larger metro areas and others with my skills. So I started looking online and found a great opportunity. As a bonus: The pay is $50k+ MORE then what I was making before. And I still work from home. So, yes I did feel underpaid; now I don't.
- mgkimsal 4y ago
  Will you feel underpaid 6 months from now?
  - UI_at_80x24 4y ago
    No, this is a life changing opportunity for me. I'll make the most of it and when this contract ends, it sets a new bar for other opportunities.
cat_plus_plus 4y ago
So long as there is a labor shortage, workers will reasonably feel underpaid, knowing they have a better deal elsewhere. Just like in a recession people feel lucky to have a job. As for causes, US work visas have been cut while pandemic fueled increased demand for online services. And India/China still have not recovered from the pandemic to the same degree as US.
lkxijlewlf 4y ago
TL;DR High tech workers feel underpaid, so here's how to continue to underpay them and make them feel okay about it.
rob_c 4y ago
"six figure", "underpaid", "random.com", medium like article about having it difficult working out of hours... Dear author, imagine yourself in academia where this is a relaxing week but the pay is half. If you dislike your job leave, or, suck it up and build towards an early retirement. It's not a magical forumla...
dasil003 4y ago
It's subtle, but the headline feels a bit like low-key class warfare clickbait. No one feels underpaid because their salary is six figures, it's because of what they're paid relative to their peers and workload. The article actually covers this decently well, but the headlines makes it sound like techies are a bunch of entitled brats.
- sircastor 4y ago
  This is important. I feel it's especially true of folks outside of the Bay area, who hear of 400-600K compensation packages and wonder why they're being paid "so poorly" A personal anecdote: A (very much) junior colleague decided to move jobs and when I asked them they told me their new salary - $15k more than I was making (and I had 15 years of experience on them). This person is totally competent and I was delighted they were getting that salary, but I was annoyed that I was not when I had so much more experience.
  - artful-hacker 4y ago
    A personal anecdote: as soon as companies starting paying these salaries to remote workers, I found myself a company willing to pay me for my experience. Now I get to reap the benefits of lower cost of living, higher quality of life, and higher pay. I don't know how long this gravy train will last, but I suggest anyone with the experience to hop on get their ticket immediately.
  - Invictus0 4y ago
    Annoyed with who?
faangiq 4y ago
It’s because we generate millions in revenue per person and manage projects with enormous complexity that are not fungible. (Whereas most corporate functions just require a warm body.) We are vastly underpaid.
travisgriggs 4y ago
I don’t feel underpaid. But I do feel undervalued. I have bemusedly imagined a future discussion where when a prospective employer asks what salary I’m hoping to make I say the following: “We’ll, that’s an interesting question. I want you to pay me X or 1.2X. If you’ll point me towards value and let me contribute towards that, and act like you trust me and include me in decision making processes, in short some form of equanimity, I’ll do this job excitedly for X. But if you’re going to treat me like a horse, micromanage me, overprocess me, basically devalue me, then that is going to cost you an extra 20%.”
- mgkimsal 4y ago
  meh... they'll pay you X then bring you in to decision making meetings where decisions are already made, but you get to decide which hours of unpaid overtime you'll work to implement their decisions in the order they demand ("we've already approved this quarter's goals!"). But hey, you were involved in the decision making process, right? You and everyone else gets to decide which weekends you'll work, or which quality corners you'll cut, and which tests you'll skip, which documentation you'll avoid, which security steps you'll ignore, etc. Just don't bother the folks above you with any of those details.
omot 4y ago
I personally wish there is a healthier supply of modern housing in these attractive workplaces. Places like SF/NY/LA has atrocious rent and that’s okay if housing quality on average is okay but a lot of these buildings are 100+ years old, barely maintained or a new cash grab apartment complex that’s marketed as luxurious but look an inch deeper and you could tell these developers hardly spent time nor money knowing they get away with shoddy quality apartments. What’s the point of getting paid six figures when your office is higher quality and aesthetically pleasing than your own house. The solution to all of this is a simpler zoning law at the federal / state level that allows competent developers to win in all markets. City level zoning laws prohibits the best developer from scaling and artificially creates cost for developers that care. How come there isn’t a household name akin to Apple for apartment development? I want to be able to stick to one amazing developer for a consistent experience across multiple markets especially now that remote work is becoming a permanent option for multiple developers. I have a sibling that lives in Japan. They live 10 min away from downtown Osaka by train, their rent is $1100 a month, it’s not large but the apartment is extremely functional, space efficiently utilized for plenty of storage and rooms. There’s also a giant green park in the middle of the complex with a foot bath. They also talk about the developer and boasts about their brand. Their family makes 1/5 my salary but I still feel like they’re living the wealthier life. Please we could start in California: More housing supply, Let the best developer win and scale, normalize old building tear downs.
- thr0wawayf00 4y ago
  > How come there isn’t a household name akin to Apple for apartment development? Because real estate development is capital-intensive on a fairly unique scale and it's very easy even for good developers to go under. It also doesn't scale in the same way because builders are subject to all of the tax and regulatory implications of each market they're in. They go bankrupt all the time due to market forces outside of their control. Just look at the price of lumber over the last couple of years. Markets can move more quickly than builders can react because big projects can take years and building supplies can double in price in a matter of months. > I want to be able to stick to one amazing developer for a consistent experience across multiple markets especially now that remote work is becoming a permanent option for multiple developers. I don't how realistic a vision this is because it's not like developers that dominate a market are inherently incentivized to do good work. In fact, demand is so crazy for builders that getting good work done at all is becoming harder and harder.
lupire 4y ago
There is no "why" here. Just speculation by no-credibility "experts" and spamming arbitrary facts about what some jobs pay, and misreporting Amazon's base salary as total compensation.
hawthornio 4y ago
All workers in a capitalist economy are _always_ underpaid
soheil 4y ago
I have always wanted a job as a "Computer/mainframe programmer"
etempleton 4y ago
Maybe some feel underpaid because some of these companies work environments are terrible. Amazon’s dramatic increase in base pay is almost an acknowledgment that it is not a very nice place to work. People are generally willing to accept less pay for work/life balance, job security, and non-toxic work environements.
blahblarblar 4y ago
Tech work doesn’t feel like something you can have a life long career in. It’s stressful and there’s ageism. Tech workers are mentally amortizing their productive tech life-span over their whole life and then comp doesn’t look as high.
_vdpp 4y ago
Whenever I see salary discussions on HN I’m reminded of a saying about military medals: “There are some who deserved more that got less, and some who deserved less and got more.”
dathinab 4y ago
Because averages are misleading, inflation is high, but also do they? Most people I know might complain they get relatively less then before, but so does anyone who gets less then before. But I don't know (m?)any which feel they get too little if put in context of jobs outside of IT. Or at least where I live in the EU? Did the living cost in the US explode to a point where a 100k$ salary isn't enough to reasonable nicely rise a kid?
- RussianCow 4y ago
  > But I don't know (m?)any which feel they get too little if put in context of jobs outside of IT. I don't think the reference point is outside of the software industry; rather, it's other organizations that pay disproportionately well. When you hear of devs at large tech companies earning $400k+ salaries, it's hard not to feel underpaid if you're earning less than half that, even when your own salary is incredibly comfortable by most other measures. > Or at least where I live in the EU? Did the living cost in the US explode to a point where a 100k$ salary isn't enough to reasonable nicely rise a kid? Again, this is missing the point a little, but I will add that $100k won't get you very far in San Francisco.
DonnyV 4y ago
I believe software engineers should be getting residuals from the products they help build. Like the way writers and actors get residuals for shows and movies they have worked on and are not a part of anymore. The company that owns that show or movie is still making money from licensing that and the actors and writers helped make that happen. Same with developers. Long after you leave a company that software product you helped create is still making money for its owner. Yes the structure would have to be hashed out. Ground floor developers would get more than maintainers. After some time OG creators would get less and the revisionists would get more. But at least developers could live off that money to take sabbaticals and not get burned out.
- mdorazio 4y ago
  The challenge here is that once a show, movie, or piece of music is done, it’s done and can be syndicated out for decades. Software usually doesn’t work that way so you’d get into tricky situations like trying to license particular functions or code blocks, which would usually be trivial to rewrite to avoid paying royalties, etc.
- agseward 4y ago
  Isn't that exactly what RSUs are? They are a share of all the future profits of a company.
AzzieElbab 4y ago
Maybe tax brackets should be adjusted for inflation. Just a thought
kurupt213 4y ago
I would have never guessed the average tech worker salary was that low
michaelchisari 4y ago
A solid article, but it should have commented on single family home prices. If you use the 3x salary rule, a $120k a year techie couldn't afford the median home price in America ($374k). A software engineer in San Francisco would have to make $526k a year in cold hard cash to reasonably afford the median single family home ($1.58 million). Talking about six figure salaries as if they are unquestionably upper-middle class should take housing prices into account.
- dcolkitt 4y ago
  Why would a single person need to buy a 3 bedroom home (the median American home size)? A household with two $120k earners can very comfortably afford a $1 million home at current mortgage rates.
  - atwebb 4y ago
    Am I so out of touch that this sounds insane? Mortgages are leverage and that's a whole lot of it.
    - dcolkitt 4y ago
      Mortgages are leverage, but unlike traditional financial leverage not subject to margin calls. Normally high leverage is risky in trading, because small perturbations in price can force liquidations. However with a traditional mortgage, as long as you keep making payments you cannot be forced to sell. (In fact it's even better, you can always re-finance when rates improve, whereas the bank cannot raise rates on you when they worsen.) Therefore all you care about is the return to the asset over the long-run. And absent maybe a once-in-a-century depression, there's no way a single family home will decline in price over 20+ years.
      - jcadam 4y ago
        > And absent maybe a once-in-a-century depression Which is starting now - it's been almost 100 years since the last one.
indecisive_user 4y ago
>the average tech worker’s salary [will] reach $104,566 in the U.S. — a 6.9% increase since 2020, the report found. But inflation is over 11% since 2020. This isn't an increase. The average tech worker is making less than they were 2 years ago according to the Dice salary report. Why do tech workers feel underpaid? Many companies posted record growth and profits over the pandemic, but still give out paltry 3-5% raises every year. The cost savings of work from home must have been enormous for these companies, yet none of that savings or record profits trickled down to the people writing code. Meanwhile for those that have the time and willpower to grind leetcode, they know they can command a 20-40% raise every few years. It's not a secret that tech companies underpay their employees and bank on them being too complacent to go through the interview gauntlet yet again. Most devs will admit that they couldn't readily pass the interview at even their own company without many hours of studying and practicing algorithms.
- tomc1985 4y ago
  The money we make pales in comparison with the size of our contributions to the company. Especially so if you are in a value-adding position and not something like internal tooling. Management and executives are DEFINITELY underpaying us relative to what we bring to the table for them. Maybe that is one of the reason headcounts have ballooned and complexity has increased so much -- an attempt to minimize individual impact. (edit- NOT knocking internal tooling, it's just that it is traditionally considered a cost center)
  - jen20 4y ago
    What? Internal developer productivity tooling is one of the most important investments a company can make, especially at the scale phase. B tier companies give that work to juniors. A tier companies give that work to the most senior people they can find to do it.
    - jchanimal 4y ago
      Here here. I’m not a 10x developer but I run in those circles, and the best of the best are working to reduce friction for the rest of the team.
beowulfey 4y ago
As an academic post-doc, I still dream of even making a slightly higher five-figure salary.
Fezzik 4y ago
If true, noting that just shy of 50% of tech folk feel underpaid seems surprising… for how low the number is, not how high. Everyone I know (judges, attorneys, law clerks, doctors, administrative staff, teachers, baristas…) thinks that they are underpaid. The fact that less-than-half of tech workers feel underpaid seems like a great sign to me for the industry. I’d also be curious who the survey data was gathered from - the cited to studies are from a recruiting agency and have no source citations. Edit, to add: here’s a survey of 26,000 people indicating that almost everyone feels underpaid - https://www.payscale.com/research-and-insights/pay-satisfaction/ https://www.payscale.com/research-and-insights/pay-satisfact...
- Ekaros 4y ago
  50% sounds reasonable number. And probably good amount of that is actually underpaid. And I don't mean in way of people here talk, but in real way of earning sub middle class wage.
tjansen 4y ago
It also makes us Europeans feel underpaid :) I have 20 years of experience and don't even make six figures. $350000 base pay sounds like a different world.
- SilverBirch 4y ago
  My experience has been that there's this massive cliff - if you can get into a company that's got a strong US attitude towards Tech salaries you can 2-5x your salary. That basically means do the same job but work for either a FANG style company, or work in some parts of Finance (easy to do in London). Someone of my experience (10 years exp) working in an average software company in the UK is probably earning 50-70k. By moving into Finance I'm now doing the same job for closer to 400k,and I'm not paid incredibly well compared to my US counterparts. It's just absurd.
- dqpb 4y ago
  Why are European software engineers so underpaid?
  - dathinab 4y ago
    E.g. in Germany the side costs are much higher then in the US. E.g. the cost of paying 80k€ salary is much more then 80k€ for the company. But in the end the main reason is SV/FAANG.
    - tjansen 4y ago
      All these costs are capped and not that important for higher salaries. Health insurance is only paid for the first 58k. The state pension, unemployment insurance etc do not increase for salaries over 85k. I would expect a good benefits package in the US to be more expensive for the employer than the mandatory costs for German insurances.
- phendrenad2 4y ago
  Warning: Every European who comes here feels extremely poor also (and many move back to Europe), so perhaps you should take that into consideration.
kodah 4y ago
Honestly I've been asking for more pay to come into the office from companies I'm interviewing at because rent is skyrocketing and my competition when trying to buy a home even within an hour of most of these offices is on the order of $100k-$300k + appraisal. My rent should be 1/3 of what I take home.
uejfiweun 4y ago
Working in tech is not exactly easy, even if you love computers. You have to move to some awfully expensive part of the country and interact with some extremely thin skinned people all day, and spend hours upon hours examining minute details of systems supporting systems supporting systems that you never even knew existed.
- jason0597 4y ago
  > You have to move to some awfully expensive part of the country and interact with some extremely thin skinned people all day, and spend hours upon hours examining minute details of systems supporting systems supporting systems that you never even knew existed. Sounds a lot like engineering to be honest. Lots of travelling to facilities in the middle of nowhere, people that never click together, examining systems with no documentation that you never knew existed in the first place, etc. Which means that this is not a good explanation for the salary disparity between engineering and tech, as both fields deal with similar problems, yet one is paid substantially more.
  - dasil003 4y ago
    Isn't it obvious? Software scales globally with effectively zero margin, so if you combine this with network effects and blue ocean, unregulated markets in user data, that meant a massive high new ceiling for software engineers set by Google and Facebook.
- gorgoiler 4y ago
  Well said. Working in tech is like writing a book with 50 people instead of 1.
- Baeocystin 4y ago
  It's not that I dislike Jenga so much as I hadn't really expected it to be such a spot-on analogy of what tech work actually entails.
- kilroy123 4y ago
  Plus it's very competitive. You can't just sit around and rest on one's laurels. You have to constantly be learning and god help you when you need to interview and land a new job.
gorgoiler 4y ago
TLDR: average pay is now >$100k but staff shortages mean longer hours and extra work.
fxtentacle 4y ago
I wonder how much of the effect is average vs. median. If you have a team of 10 people and you give a big raise to one of them, then the average will go up. But 9 out of 10 people will feel underpaid, because you did not give them a raise like their 1 teammate.
- mywittyname 4y ago
  None. Most of these places are using sampled salary data.
nivenkos 4y ago
What a title. Americans are so, so lucky, and don't even recognise their privilege.
- globular-toast 4y ago
  It's partly the hedonic treadmill and partly that most of them are in a bubble. They only mix with people who earn as much as them or even more. It doesn't take long here on HN to see how out of touch some of them are with the wider world.
- passivate 4y ago
  With remote work and easier access to the global talent pool, these salaries are bound to normalize across the board. Enjoy the ride while you can, my friends! :)
  - wil421 4y ago
    People have been telling me IT was a bad field to go into since I was in high school in the early 2000s. India and outsourcing is going to take your job, don’t go into IT. Here I am years later in one of the best job markets for IT. IT related jobs are constantly in the top 3 for projected grown in the next decade or so. Yet, I still have to explain to older people who maybe worked in IT/Telecoms in the 90s that no India and the global market is not taking my job.
    - passivate 4y ago
      Actually, in-house IT is going away. I've seen many companies switching to a hybrid format with a skeleton IT crew and larger external managed service providers providing IT services. And many managed service providers do have a global teams. Can you link to the report about projected IT jobs growth?
      - wil421 4y ago
        Companies will always need a global presence especially the larger ones I’ve worked for. I’ve worked with people all over the world mostly the US, India, and EU/Europe. The idea that you shouldn’t get into IT in the US is silly. Companies need global workforces and most American companies aren’t going to outsource everything. I worked for MSPs and interviewed with many last year. Yes SAAS and hybrid outsourced infra to MSPs is common, especially in Europe. Article from Forbes specific to 2022 growth.[1] Healthcare and IT are usually the top 2 skilled worker areas with growth. I’ve seen Physician's Assistant and Software Engineer as the top 2 growth jobs for college grads. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2021/11/08/the-top-5-growing-career-fields-in-2022/?sh=19ac5dc646b3 https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2021/11/08/the-top-...
AnotherAsprin 4y ago
Are six figure salaries an american thing? I see people saying "Entry level jobs are paying up to 60k" which is just crazy money! I have worked for the past 7 years as IT within the UK education sector and expect my salary to be lower than that of industry but I am not even making half that!
- boc 4y ago
  It's the hedonic treadmill effect. People here in SF making $200K are looking around feeling like they are probably underpaid compared to friends at other companies. Also finance/law can pay a fuck-ton too, but you have to work crazy hours. Have a friend who just turned 29 pulling down $500K in PE, but works like 80-100 hour weeks. At some point that's just a bad use of your finite time. Have also had friends walk away with millions after an IPO. Not really sure if there's a larger point other than to say that there's always a tier of people above you making more money, so don't let it get you down.
- gbuk2013 4y ago
  “Working in IT” is pretty broad, but a senior JS dev in London can reasonably ask for 70-90k these days, sometimes more.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    90k is the top level, and doesn't go far especially in London.
- zece 4y ago
  Yes, outside London the six figure salaries only start appearing when you have a particularly senior role in a company that's flush with cash.
- gnfargbl 4y ago
  Yes, they are an American thing. These salaries (or a decent percentage of them) are open to you in the UK, but you'll need to work remotely, probably for a US-based company. This may mean contracting. Because some component of tech work usually needs to be synchronous, I'd suggest picking a company where most of the people are on Eastern or Central time -- for me at least, MT and PT feel just that little bit too far. If you're a night owl, that might not matter to you.
lawrenceyan 4y ago
The average cost of a home in the Bay Area is also somewhere between ~1.5 million dollars as well. So it’s effectively impossible to reasonably buy a home unless you have a salary >300k without going into massive debt.
- durandal1 4y ago
  Worse than that, property taxes and higher interest rates makes that 1.5M home at least 3x more expensive compared to the equivalent European house.
zece 4y ago
> Despite the average salary for tech workers breaking six figures in 2022, many IT and tech professionals still feel underpaid. > According to hiring experts, the most significant factor contributing to this feeling is likely the long and extra work hours of the existing IT staff, which makes them feel burdened. This is great point. I'm sure we all know someone in this field who has experienced burnout from their job, or indeed you may have experienced it yourself. In the end, by understaffing and piling on more and more work onto their tech workers, managers are stealing not just time from their employees, but their health too. I personally realized far too late in my career that I'd wasted vast amounts of time working late to meet arbitrary deadlines for projects that, in the end, didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. I wish I'd pushed back and just worked my contracted hours, to spend more time with the ones I love, doing things I enjoyed, rather than forcing myself to endure further work stress. That is much more important than getting extra money on top of a salary that is already well above the average earner, in my opinion. Though more and larger pay increases would have welcome too, of course.
tjpnz 4y ago
I'm in that group. Reading HN everyday (and not living in the Bay Area) probably doesn't help.
Krisjohn 4y ago
Every time a customer's big whatever grinds to a complete halt and they try to melt down my phone because I'm the only one that can dig them out of whatever hole they've put themselves in, I feel like I'm not paid enough.
mathverse 4y ago
We europeans are underpaid and taxed to death. The US could easily fill its worker shortage by offering easy visas for EU engineers. Many of us would like to move but it's a real PITA to apply to companies that are even willing to consider visa sponsorship. I actually have no idea why this is not the case already. It's basically 1st world to 1st world transition and the one losing would be EU.
- jason0597 4y ago
  > Many of us would like to move I for one wouldn't. I would never ever ever trade my walkable cities for the monstrosities that are car-centric North American cities.
- 22SAS 4y ago
  Why only offer easy visas for EU engineers? There are good engineers in all countries around the world, EU engineers are not some special breed of engineers.
- mjbeswick 4y ago
  It only seems like that but people in the US have to pay for things that Europeans take for granted. You might earn more, but most people would end up with less disposable income.
  - wil421 4y ago
    Paying $12k on the high end out of your non-taxed income for a family of 4 does not make up for a near 2x salary gap.
    - germinalphrase 4y ago
      No, but medical bills in the US can essentially be unbounded if insurance denies your claim. You pay 12k in insurance. That doesn’t mean you don’t pay anything beyond that number. People literally sock away millions of dollars for elderly care with the expectation that they won’t leave a dime to their kids.

275 points by rustoo 4y ago

complains about six-figure pay while sitting at home at computer eating a snack while waiting for someone to review their pull request

technovader 4y ago
and then goes out to buy groceries for family that cost 50% more than a year ago. and then has to fill up on gas but decides to just walk
- albertgoeswoof 4y ago
  if cheap gas is the reason you're driving instead of walking, gas is too cheap
  - calculatte 4y ago
    if expensive gas is the reason you're walking instead of driving, gas is too expensive
- nicksiscoe 4y ago
  Your sentiment is not specific to the tech industry. Many who work in tech are quite blessed to have careers that, despite the supposed realities you mention, give them a quality of life others can only dream of.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
And said PR was probably adding new ad and tracking tech to make people's lives more miserable.

specialist 4y ago

What about simple profit sharing? Maybe I'm weird, comparing my compensation to my own company's execs, vs against industry averages.

alexfromapex 4y ago

This article is extremely accurate about fatigue from wrangling and prepping large amounts of data. One thing it oddly ignores is the YTD inflation rate of 8.5% but it acknowledges that salaries increased 6.9% since 2020.

flappyeagle 4y ago

There's this dynamic of pay tending to be pegged to your job title. An engineer is an engineer is an engineer. In SF bay area, entry level jobs at big tech are skewing high and experienced roles are skewing low. This doesn't come close to mapping to impact level usually and we just accept that because it's socially easy. I've worked at startups where there were clearly >10x impact differences between two engineers and at most there was a 2x salary difference. As a startup, it's basically not worth it to hire junior talent anymore because they are not close to being worth the cost in most cases.

jcomis 4y ago
This right here. It's frustrating when you learn that someone hired a couple months ago ("the hottest job market" tm) with 2 yoe makes marginally less than you at 10+ yoe, as an example. A higher performing Sr can expect maybe high single digit bumps yearly, but a job hopping Jr can double digit bump and make it to almost the same level in a couple years. While less important and more ego the same thing is happening to titles. It's just hard to get out of the headspace of feeling underpaid when you see that, especially when you are the one holding their hand and helping them gain experience. Totally get it's all "in your head" and we are all very fortunate or that I should just job hop along with them, but overall just hard to escape those thought patterns.
- arcanus 4y ago
  This is known as wage compression. It is occurring (typical in hot job markets) and has many of the problems you noted. Good indicator of a distorted labor market.

tristor 4y ago

Article was unreadable on mobile due to huge white box for a small banner ad that followed scroll at the top with a second massive uncloseable ad at the bottom, forcing a clickthru if you tried to scroll. Site is cursed. That said, based on what’s been shared in the thread, I’ll just say two things: 1. $100k isn’t what it used to be. When I started my career a $100k base seemed great, JUST off inflation it’d need a $155k base today to have the same purchasing power. CPI inflation doesn’t fully account for how crazy localized housing is in tech hubs either. 2. As a percentage share of the value generated by each engineering headcount, our earnings have gone down as profits have gone up. The current reality is meaningfully less equitable than in the past, including in stock equity and share dilution. There’s a lot of hemming and hawing happening in the world because tech workers are relatively better off than other workers, but we still are objectively being harmed by inflation and widening inequality between workers and the executive/capitalist class. The fact we are scraping by does not discount the facts above.

jdlyga 4y ago

Don't forget that 100k in 2022 is equivalent to 75k 2010. That was considered to be a good salary for students fresh out of graduate school

Pmop 4y ago

Meanwhile I'm making ~1/10th of the average. Been applying but looks like companies are looking for folks with +4yr experience. US and UK companies are no go since most aren't hiring people located outside of the US, and the few that do, it's for 1/10th of the average pay again. Making +100k USD would be nice but I'm looking for 20k or maybe 30k, that would be way more than what I'm making currently. Can anyone share some tips? Should I just grind it out until I have enough yrs of experience to compete/be eligible for higher paying jobs?

dijit 4y ago
I think where you live (unfortunately) has a lot to do with what jobs are available. I had to move to Finland (from the UK) to get my first real job, and even when I returned to the UK I had to move to London to find another place that would take me. Now I have a few years under me and people seem to throw jobs at me. The trend has been for a while: "We don't hire juniors", which I think is extremely short-sighted. The problem is that when you're hiring juniors (or even interns) you have a responsibility for them; it's a bit like having children, you have a stranger that needs supervision, proper education and the company/environment needs to have a good structure. Companies are scared of a junior being trained (or, invested in) and then running away. Companies are even more scared of the fact that they don't have a good structure set up. So we have this sort of absence of new juniors. (also, and this is controversial, when hiring juniors there's a strong emphasis on hiring from minority backgrounds such as women, trans-folk, ethnicities other than white and neurodiversity). So, my "tip" is to move to where the jobs are. (rather: be very open to relocate)

tlogan 4y ago

The salaries definitely did not keep up with inflation so if techies were feeling underpaid in 2020 they are feeling even more underpaid in 2022… A little strange article… it seems like they assume people who read these articles do not know math.

Finnucane 4y ago

I'd guess a lot of people, regardless of industry, feel underpaid. Simply for the reason that they are. Growing inequality is real, over the last few decades an ever increasing portion of the productivity gain of the economy goes to a smaller portion of the people. We do the work, others get the profit.

enduser 4y ago
Everyone seems to want something other than what they already have, and most assume more is better.
- Finnucane 4y ago
  Yes, but that's always true and the rising spread of inequality is a problem of the last few decades.

0daystock 4y ago

No mention of current market conditions, namely record inflation? I suspect that may have something to do with why many people - "technies" are no exception - feel underpaid (because they are relative to blown-up monetary supply).

UI_at_80x24 4y ago

I was recently laid off along with >30% of the company. I really liked the job, I had full autonomy to do whatever I wanted. Research new tech, optimize our existing infrastructure, etc. I was the sole SysAdmin and I ran the operations very well. The problem: Pay was stagnate. The pay was decent for my region, but a far cry from larger metro areas and others with my skills. So I started looking online and found a great opportunity. As a bonus: The pay is $50k+ MORE then what I was making before. And I still work from home. So, yes I did feel underpaid; now I don't.

mgkimsal 4y ago
Will you feel underpaid 6 months from now?
- UI_at_80x24 4y ago
  No, this is a life changing opportunity for me. I'll make the most of it and when this contract ends, it sets a new bar for other opportunities.

cat_plus_plus 4y ago

So long as there is a labor shortage, workers will reasonably feel underpaid, knowing they have a better deal elsewhere. Just like in a recession people feel lucky to have a job. As for causes, US work visas have been cut while pandemic fueled increased demand for online services. And India/China still have not recovered from the pandemic to the same degree as US.

lkxijlewlf 4y ago

TL;DR High tech workers feel underpaid, so here's how to continue to underpay them and make them feel okay about it.

rob_c 4y ago

"six figure", "underpaid", "random.com", medium like article about having it difficult working out of hours... Dear author, imagine yourself in academia where this is a relaxing week but the pay is half. If you dislike your job leave, or, suck it up and build towards an early retirement. It's not a magical forumla...

dasil003 4y ago

It's subtle, but the headline feels a bit like low-key class warfare clickbait. No one feels underpaid because their salary is six figures, it's because of what they're paid relative to their peers and workload. The article actually covers this decently well, but the headlines makes it sound like techies are a bunch of entitled brats.

sircastor 4y ago
This is important. I feel it's especially true of folks outside of the Bay area, who hear of 400-600K compensation packages and wonder why they're being paid "so poorly" A personal anecdote: A (very much) junior colleague decided to move jobs and when I asked them they told me their new salary - $15k more than I was making (and I had 15 years of experience on them). This person is totally competent and I was delighted they were getting that salary, but I was annoyed that I was not when I had so much more experience.
- artful-hacker 4y ago
  A personal anecdote: as soon as companies starting paying these salaries to remote workers, I found myself a company willing to pay me for my experience. Now I get to reap the benefits of lower cost of living, higher quality of life, and higher pay. I don't know how long this gravy train will last, but I suggest anyone with the experience to hop on get their ticket immediately.
- Invictus0 4y ago
  Annoyed with who?

faangiq 4y ago

It’s because we generate millions in revenue per person and manage projects with enormous complexity that are not fungible. (Whereas most corporate functions just require a warm body.) We are vastly underpaid.

travisgriggs 4y ago

I don’t feel underpaid. But I do feel undervalued. I have bemusedly imagined a future discussion where when a prospective employer asks what salary I’m hoping to make I say the following: “We’ll, that’s an interesting question. I want you to pay me X or 1.2X. If you’ll point me towards value and let me contribute towards that, and act like you trust me and include me in decision making processes, in short some form of equanimity, I’ll do this job excitedly for X. But if you’re going to treat me like a horse, micromanage me, overprocess me, basically devalue me, then that is going to cost you an extra 20%.”

mgkimsal 4y ago
meh... they'll pay you X then bring you in to decision making meetings where decisions are already made, but you get to decide which hours of unpaid overtime you'll work to implement their decisions in the order they demand ("we've already approved this quarter's goals!"). But hey, you were involved in the decision making process, right? You and everyone else gets to decide which weekends you'll work, or which quality corners you'll cut, and which tests you'll skip, which documentation you'll avoid, which security steps you'll ignore, etc. Just don't bother the folks above you with any of those details.

omot 4y ago

I personally wish there is a healthier supply of modern housing in these attractive workplaces. Places like SF/NY/LA has atrocious rent and that’s okay if housing quality on average is okay but a lot of these buildings are 100+ years old, barely maintained or a new cash grab apartment complex that’s marketed as luxurious but look an inch deeper and you could tell these developers hardly spent time nor money knowing they get away with shoddy quality apartments. What’s the point of getting paid six figures when your office is higher quality and aesthetically pleasing than your own house. The solution to all of this is a simpler zoning law at the federal / state level that allows competent developers to win in all markets. City level zoning laws prohibits the best developer from scaling and artificially creates cost for developers that care. How come there isn’t a household name akin to Apple for apartment development? I want to be able to stick to one amazing developer for a consistent experience across multiple markets especially now that remote work is becoming a permanent option for multiple developers. I have a sibling that lives in Japan. They live 10 min away from downtown Osaka by train, their rent is $1100 a month, it’s not large but the apartment is extremely functional, space efficiently utilized for plenty of storage and rooms. There’s also a giant green park in the middle of the complex with a foot bath. They also talk about the developer and boasts about their brand. Their family makes 1/5 my salary but I still feel like they’re living the wealthier life. Please we could start in California: More housing supply, Let the best developer win and scale, normalize old building tear downs.

thr0wawayf00 4y ago
> How come there isn’t a household name akin to Apple for apartment development? Because real estate development is capital-intensive on a fairly unique scale and it's very easy even for good developers to go under. It also doesn't scale in the same way because builders are subject to all of the tax and regulatory implications of each market they're in. They go bankrupt all the time due to market forces outside of their control. Just look at the price of lumber over the last couple of years. Markets can move more quickly than builders can react because big projects can take years and building supplies can double in price in a matter of months. > I want to be able to stick to one amazing developer for a consistent experience across multiple markets especially now that remote work is becoming a permanent option for multiple developers. I don't how realistic a vision this is because it's not like developers that dominate a market are inherently incentivized to do good work. In fact, demand is so crazy for builders that getting good work done at all is becoming harder and harder.

lupire 4y ago

There is no "why" here. Just speculation by no-credibility "experts" and spamming arbitrary facts about what some jobs pay, and misreporting Amazon's base salary as total compensation.

hawthornio 4y ago

All workers in a capitalist economy are _always_ underpaid

soheil 4y ago

I have always wanted a job as a "Computer/mainframe programmer"

etempleton 4y ago

Maybe some feel underpaid because some of these companies work environments are terrible. Amazon’s dramatic increase in base pay is almost an acknowledgment that it is not a very nice place to work. People are generally willing to accept less pay for work/life balance, job security, and non-toxic work environements.

blahblarblar 4y ago

Tech work doesn’t feel like something you can have a life long career in. It’s stressful and there’s ageism. Tech workers are mentally amortizing their productive tech life-span over their whole life and then comp doesn’t look as high.

_vdpp 4y ago

Whenever I see salary discussions on HN I’m reminded of a saying about military medals: “There are some who deserved more that got less, and some who deserved less and got more.”

dathinab 4y ago

Because averages are misleading, inflation is high, but also do they? Most people I know might complain they get relatively less then before, but so does anyone who gets less then before. But I don't know (m?)any which feel they get too little if put in context of jobs outside of IT. Or at least where I live in the EU? Did the living cost in the US explode to a point where a 100k$ salary isn't enough to reasonable nicely rise a kid?

RussianCow 4y ago
> But I don't know (m?)any which feel they get too little if put in context of jobs outside of IT. I don't think the reference point is outside of the software industry; rather, it's other organizations that pay disproportionately well. When you hear of devs at large tech companies earning $400k+ salaries, it's hard not to feel underpaid if you're earning less than half that, even when your own salary is incredibly comfortable by most other measures. > Or at least where I live in the EU? Did the living cost in the US explode to a point where a 100k$ salary isn't enough to reasonable nicely rise a kid? Again, this is missing the point a little, but I will add that $100k won't get you very far in San Francisco.

DonnyV 4y ago

I believe software engineers should be getting residuals from the products they help build. Like the way writers and actors get residuals for shows and movies they have worked on and are not a part of anymore. The company that owns that show or movie is still making money from licensing that and the actors and writers helped make that happen. Same with developers. Long after you leave a company that software product you helped create is still making money for its owner. Yes the structure would have to be hashed out. Ground floor developers would get more than maintainers. After some time OG creators would get less and the revisionists would get more. But at least developers could live off that money to take sabbaticals and not get burned out.

mdorazio 4y ago
The challenge here is that once a show, movie, or piece of music is done, it’s done and can be syndicated out for decades. Software usually doesn’t work that way so you’d get into tricky situations like trying to license particular functions or code blocks, which would usually be trivial to rewrite to avoid paying royalties, etc.
agseward 4y ago
Isn't that exactly what RSUs are? They are a share of all the future profits of a company.

AzzieElbab 4y ago

Maybe tax brackets should be adjusted for inflation. Just a thought

kurupt213 4y ago

I would have never guessed the average tech worker salary was that low

michaelchisari 4y ago

A solid article, but it should have commented on single family home prices. If you use the 3x salary rule, a $120k a year techie couldn't afford the median home price in America ($374k). A software engineer in San Francisco would have to make $526k a year in cold hard cash to reasonably afford the median single family home ($1.58 million). Talking about six figure salaries as if they are unquestionably upper-middle class should take housing prices into account.

dcolkitt 4y ago
Why would a single person need to buy a 3 bedroom home (the median American home size)? A household with two $120k earners can very comfortably afford a $1 million home at current mortgage rates.
- atwebb 4y ago
  Am I so out of touch that this sounds insane? Mortgages are leverage and that's a whole lot of it.
  - dcolkitt 4y ago
    Mortgages are leverage, but unlike traditional financial leverage not subject to margin calls. Normally high leverage is risky in trading, because small perturbations in price can force liquidations. However with a traditional mortgage, as long as you keep making payments you cannot be forced to sell. (In fact it's even better, you can always re-finance when rates improve, whereas the bank cannot raise rates on you when they worsen.) Therefore all you care about is the return to the asset over the long-run. And absent maybe a once-in-a-century depression, there's no way a single family home will decline in price over 20+ years.
    - jcadam 4y ago
      > And absent maybe a once-in-a-century depression Which is starting now - it's been almost 100 years since the last one.

indecisive_user 4y ago

>the average tech worker’s salary [will] reach $104,566 in the U.S. — a 6.9% increase since 2020, the report found. But inflation is over 11% since 2020. This isn't an increase. The average tech worker is making less than they were 2 years ago according to the Dice salary report. Why do tech workers feel underpaid? Many companies posted record growth and profits over the pandemic, but still give out paltry 3-5% raises every year. The cost savings of work from home must have been enormous for these companies, yet none of that savings or record profits trickled down to the people writing code. Meanwhile for those that have the time and willpower to grind leetcode, they know they can command a 20-40% raise every few years. It's not a secret that tech companies underpay their employees and bank on them being too complacent to go through the interview gauntlet yet again. Most devs will admit that they couldn't readily pass the interview at even their own company without many hours of studying and practicing algorithms.

tomc1985 4y ago
The money we make pales in comparison with the size of our contributions to the company. Especially so if you are in a value-adding position and not something like internal tooling. Management and executives are DEFINITELY underpaying us relative to what we bring to the table for them. Maybe that is one of the reason headcounts have ballooned and complexity has increased so much -- an attempt to minimize individual impact. (edit- NOT knocking internal tooling, it's just that it is traditionally considered a cost center)
- jen20 4y ago
  What? Internal developer productivity tooling is one of the most important investments a company can make, especially at the scale phase. B tier companies give that work to juniors. A tier companies give that work to the most senior people they can find to do it.
  - jchanimal 4y ago
    Here here. I’m not a 10x developer but I run in those circles, and the best of the best are working to reduce friction for the rest of the team.

beowulfey 4y ago

As an academic post-doc, I still dream of even making a slightly higher five-figure salary.

Fezzik 4y ago

If true, noting that just shy of 50% of tech folk feel underpaid seems surprising… for how low the number is, not how high. Everyone I know (judges, attorneys, law clerks, doctors, administrative staff, teachers, baristas…) thinks that they are underpaid. The fact that less-than-half of tech workers feel underpaid seems like a great sign to me for the industry. I’d also be curious who the survey data was gathered from - the cited to studies are from a recruiting agency and have no source citations. Edit, to add: here’s a survey of 26,000 people indicating that almost everyone feels underpaid - https://www.payscale.com/research-and-insights/pay-satisfaction/ https://www.payscale.com/research-and-insights/pay-satisfact...

Ekaros 4y ago
50% sounds reasonable number. And probably good amount of that is actually underpaid. And I don't mean in way of people here talk, but in real way of earning sub middle class wage.

tjansen 4y ago

It also makes us Europeans feel underpaid :) I have 20 years of experience and don't even make six figures. $350000 base pay sounds like a different world.

SilverBirch 4y ago
My experience has been that there's this massive cliff - if you can get into a company that's got a strong US attitude towards Tech salaries you can 2-5x your salary. That basically means do the same job but work for either a FANG style company, or work in some parts of Finance (easy to do in London). Someone of my experience (10 years exp) working in an average software company in the UK is probably earning 50-70k. By moving into Finance I'm now doing the same job for closer to 400k,and I'm not paid incredibly well compared to my US counterparts. It's just absurd.
dqpb 4y ago
Why are European software engineers so underpaid?
- dathinab 4y ago
  E.g. in Germany the side costs are much higher then in the US. E.g. the cost of paying 80k€ salary is much more then 80k€ for the company. But in the end the main reason is SV/FAANG.
  - tjansen 4y ago
    All these costs are capped and not that important for higher salaries. Health insurance is only paid for the first 58k. The state pension, unemployment insurance etc do not increase for salaries over 85k. I would expect a good benefits package in the US to be more expensive for the employer than the mandatory costs for German insurances.
phendrenad2 4y ago
Warning: Every European who comes here feels extremely poor also (and many move back to Europe), so perhaps you should take that into consideration.

kodah 4y ago

Honestly I've been asking for more pay to come into the office from companies I'm interviewing at because rent is skyrocketing and my competition when trying to buy a home even within an hour of most of these offices is on the order of $100k-$300k + appraisal. My rent should be 1/3 of what I take home.

uejfiweun 4y ago

Working in tech is not exactly easy, even if you love computers. You have to move to some awfully expensive part of the country and interact with some extremely thin skinned people all day, and spend hours upon hours examining minute details of systems supporting systems supporting systems that you never even knew existed.

jason0597 4y ago
> You have to move to some awfully expensive part of the country and interact with some extremely thin skinned people all day, and spend hours upon hours examining minute details of systems supporting systems supporting systems that you never even knew existed. Sounds a lot like engineering to be honest. Lots of travelling to facilities in the middle of nowhere, people that never click together, examining systems with no documentation that you never knew existed in the first place, etc. Which means that this is not a good explanation for the salary disparity between engineering and tech, as both fields deal with similar problems, yet one is paid substantially more.
- dasil003 4y ago
  Isn't it obvious? Software scales globally with effectively zero margin, so if you combine this with network effects and blue ocean, unregulated markets in user data, that meant a massive high new ceiling for software engineers set by Google and Facebook.
gorgoiler 4y ago
Well said. Working in tech is like writing a book with 50 people instead of 1.
Baeocystin 4y ago
It's not that I dislike Jenga so much as I hadn't really expected it to be such a spot-on analogy of what tech work actually entails.
kilroy123 4y ago
Plus it's very competitive. You can't just sit around and rest on one's laurels. You have to constantly be learning and god help you when you need to interview and land a new job.

gorgoiler 4y ago

TLDR: average pay is now >$100k but staff shortages mean longer hours and extra work.

fxtentacle 4y ago

I wonder how much of the effect is average vs. median. If you have a team of 10 people and you give a big raise to one of them, then the average will go up. But 9 out of 10 people will feel underpaid, because you did not give them a raise like their 1 teammate.

mywittyname 4y ago
None. Most of these places are using sampled salary data.

nivenkos 4y ago

What a title. Americans are so, so lucky, and don't even recognise their privilege.

globular-toast 4y ago
It's partly the hedonic treadmill and partly that most of them are in a bubble. They only mix with people who earn as much as them or even more. It doesn't take long here on HN to see how out of touch some of them are with the wider world.
passivate 4y ago
With remote work and easier access to the global talent pool, these salaries are bound to normalize across the board. Enjoy the ride while you can, my friends! :)
- wil421 4y ago
  People have been telling me IT was a bad field to go into since I was in high school in the early 2000s. India and outsourcing is going to take your job, don’t go into IT. Here I am years later in one of the best job markets for IT. IT related jobs are constantly in the top 3 for projected grown in the next decade or so. Yet, I still have to explain to older people who maybe worked in IT/Telecoms in the 90s that no India and the global market is not taking my job.
  - passivate 4y ago
    Actually, in-house IT is going away. I've seen many companies switching to a hybrid format with a skeleton IT crew and larger external managed service providers providing IT services. And many managed service providers do have a global teams. Can you link to the report about projected IT jobs growth?
    - wil421 4y ago
      Companies will always need a global presence especially the larger ones I’ve worked for. I’ve worked with people all over the world mostly the US, India, and EU/Europe. The idea that you shouldn’t get into IT in the US is silly. Companies need global workforces and most American companies aren’t going to outsource everything. I worked for MSPs and interviewed with many last year. Yes SAAS and hybrid outsourced infra to MSPs is common, especially in Europe. Article from Forbes specific to 2022 growth.[1] Healthcare and IT are usually the top 2 skilled worker areas with growth. I’ve seen Physician's Assistant and Software Engineer as the top 2 growth jobs for college grads. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2021/11/08/the-top-5-growing-career-fields-in-2022/?sh=19ac5dc646b3 https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashleystahl/2021/11/08/the-top-...

AnotherAsprin 4y ago

Are six figure salaries an american thing? I see people saying "Entry level jobs are paying up to 60k" which is just crazy money! I have worked for the past 7 years as IT within the UK education sector and expect my salary to be lower than that of industry but I am not even making half that!

boc 4y ago
It's the hedonic treadmill effect. People here in SF making $200K are looking around feeling like they are probably underpaid compared to friends at other companies. Also finance/law can pay a fuck-ton too, but you have to work crazy hours. Have a friend who just turned 29 pulling down $500K in PE, but works like 80-100 hour weeks. At some point that's just a bad use of your finite time. Have also had friends walk away with millions after an IPO. Not really sure if there's a larger point other than to say that there's always a tier of people above you making more money, so don't let it get you down.
gbuk2013 4y ago
“Working in IT” is pretty broad, but a senior JS dev in London can reasonably ask for 70-90k these days, sometimes more.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  90k is the top level, and doesn't go far especially in London.
zece 4y ago
Yes, outside London the six figure salaries only start appearing when you have a particularly senior role in a company that's flush with cash.
gnfargbl 4y ago
Yes, they are an American thing. These salaries (or a decent percentage of them) are open to you in the UK, but you'll need to work remotely, probably for a US-based company. This may mean contracting. Because some component of tech work usually needs to be synchronous, I'd suggest picking a company where most of the people are on Eastern or Central time -- for me at least, MT and PT feel just that little bit too far. If you're a night owl, that might not matter to you.

lawrenceyan 4y ago

The average cost of a home in the Bay Area is also somewhere between ~1.5 million dollars as well. So it’s effectively impossible to reasonably buy a home unless you have a salary >300k without going into massive debt.

durandal1 4y ago
Worse than that, property taxes and higher interest rates makes that 1.5M home at least 3x more expensive compared to the equivalent European house.

zece 4y ago

> Despite the average salary for tech workers breaking six figures in 2022, many IT and tech professionals still feel underpaid. > According to hiring experts, the most significant factor contributing to this feeling is likely the long and extra work hours of the existing IT staff, which makes them feel burdened. This is great point. I'm sure we all know someone in this field who has experienced burnout from their job, or indeed you may have experienced it yourself. In the end, by understaffing and piling on more and more work onto their tech workers, managers are stealing not just time from their employees, but their health too. I personally realized far too late in my career that I'd wasted vast amounts of time working late to meet arbitrary deadlines for projects that, in the end, didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. I wish I'd pushed back and just worked my contracted hours, to spend more time with the ones I love, doing things I enjoyed, rather than forcing myself to endure further work stress. That is much more important than getting extra money on top of a salary that is already well above the average earner, in my opinion. Though more and larger pay increases would have welcome too, of course.

tjpnz 4y ago

I'm in that group. Reading HN everyday (and not living in the Bay Area) probably doesn't help.

Krisjohn 4y ago

Every time a customer's big whatever grinds to a complete halt and they try to melt down my phone because I'm the only one that can dig them out of whatever hole they've put themselves in, I feel like I'm not paid enough.

mathverse 4y ago

We europeans are underpaid and taxed to death. The US could easily fill its worker shortage by offering easy visas for EU engineers. Many of us would like to move but it's a real PITA to apply to companies that are even willing to consider visa sponsorship. I actually have no idea why this is not the case already. It's basically 1st world to 1st world transition and the one losing would be EU.

jason0597 4y ago
> Many of us would like to move I for one wouldn't. I would never ever ever trade my walkable cities for the monstrosities that are car-centric North American cities.
22SAS 4y ago
Why only offer easy visas for EU engineers? There are good engineers in all countries around the world, EU engineers are not some special breed of engineers.
mjbeswick 4y ago
It only seems like that but people in the US have to pay for things that Europeans take for granted. You might earn more, but most people would end up with less disposable income.
- wil421 4y ago
  Paying $12k on the high end out of your non-taxed income for a family of 4 does not make up for a near 2x salary gap.
  - germinalphrase 4y ago
    No, but medical bills in the US can essentially be unbounded if insurance denies your claim. You pay 12k in insurance. That doesn’t mean you don’t pay anything beyond that number. People literally sock away millions of dollars for elderly care with the expectation that they won’t leave a dime to their kids.