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I don't feel underpaid, but I definitely feel like I've lost tons of ground in the last 2 years. The floor has risen big time. Entry level jobs are paying up

I don't feel underpaid, but I definitely feel like I've lost tons of ground in the last 2 years. The floor has risen big time. Entry level jobs are paying up to 60k these days, whereas they were closer to 30k a few years back. Good for them, seriously. But watching the floor rise closer to you is never a great feeling.

heromal 5y ago
Entry level jobs in NC start at 75k...you're way out of the loop. They haven't been 30k anywhere in far longer than "a few years back".
welder 5y ago
You should look into a remote job with a California tech company where entry level is 120k. [1] [1] Filter by "Location independent pay" https://himalayas.app/companies https://himalayas.app/companies
- silisili 5y ago
  To be clear, I do quite a bit better than that... I'm not complaining. But using 120k as an example...a person went from making 4x the typical full time salary to 2x the typical full time salary in a very short period.
  - Melting_Harps 5y ago
    > To be clear, I do quite a bit better than that... I'm not complaining. But using 120k as an example...a person went from making 4x the typical full time salary to 2x the typical full time salary in a very short period. This is what I will never understand about most established tech people, they see all the widespread misery and poverty in SV and they still have the capacity to feel sorry for themselves for not making X times more than 'that other guy.' It's always about what they don't have rather than see that they live in an insulated bubble existence that they could never really navigate if it weren't for that wealth disparity because they have such a narrow limited set of skills. aWant an experiment turn off the wifi, see how quickly these people lose their minds. I'm not mad at you for it, for all I know you are self-taught guy that beat out a bunch Stanford grads by grinding since HS and making it on your own, but it's this never-ending need to beat that guy. Its like that scene in American Psycho with those business cards, where for some odd reason people seem to have a need to over-embellish their existence's value with triviality that re-enforces the 'yeah, but I have more than that guy' narrative which is completely lost on me. I hate to tell you but you will never have more than a Bezos or a Musk, either. Not to mention the Nation-state level despots of the World who don't have their net-worth listed on the Forbes 500. Just enjoy what you have, while you have it, because I can assure those very same tech companies are pouring tons of money to render you obsolete as soon as possible.
    - jokethrowaway 5y ago
      The cost of everything else raised as well, so wealthy tech workers also lost purchasing power (especially after the last stock crash).
      - Melting_Harps 5y ago
        > I don't understand this opinion. Ok, let me spell it out: you're not special. Nothing about your profession makes you special, you are not somehow better than anyone because you can sit at a computer and write code. It's a skill, a very highly compensated one for now but an incredibly narrow one that happens to be useful a select few corps, sure, but so was were many other things. And if one thing that COVID has taught us is how incredibly unnecessary you are to maintaining civilization--unless you are some supply chain developer in which case you were doomed either way. No one was calling for the return for programmers like they were for even barbers or cooks, in fact people lauded the fact that FB went down. In short, you like being told you're special, it makes you feel good. But you are not. Wide spread misery isn't about equality, I can assure this isn't what I'm advocating here, it's about a self-awareness issue.
        commandlinefan 5y ago
        > you are not somehow better than anyone because you can sit at a computer and write code. You're right, any human being with a pulse can produce effective software with no training or education or experience or effort whatsoever, and nobody's better at it than anybody else, unlike every other single human endeavor.
        grog454 5y ago
        > And if one thing that COVID has taught us is how incredibly unnecessary you are to maintaining civilization--unless you are some supply chain developer Wait what? So you somehow realize that if you're a software engineer supporting some necessary field, you're necessary by extension, but apparently the only thing we needed during covid was a function supply chain. Impressive mental gymnastics. No one was calling for the "return" of programmers because (almost) no one interacts with them directly like they do their barber. Do you think their barbers decided during covid that they no longer needed to support credit card payments, an electronic scheduling system, etc?
  - quickthrower2 5y ago
    And that is not just keep up with jones syndrome: getting services done like building work, cleaning, etc. gets more expensive. I am all for equality of that nature if everyone is joining in!
    - eru 5y ago
      If only America's productive cities did not ban building more housing..
      - dimitrios1 5y ago
        If only Americans reignited their imagination and didn't just settle on having a few big cities in opposite corners of the country. America is huge. There's land everywhere. Start dreaming. China has 160 cities with 1+ million people. We have 10. Granted, there is a massive population difference, but we should most definitely have more than 10. There are major issues when you only have a few cities with the bulk of the opportunity and high salaries for given fields. It stymies growth for the rest of the country, and for all the people we claim to care about: the poor and uneducated. Greece has this issue with Athens being the only realistic metropolitan location. All the resources are there, and those left in the villages and small towns are finding it harder and harder to advance. If you aren't going to Athens (or immigrating to another country), you aren't succeeding. This is a big problem.
        deepsun 5y ago
        Well, compared to the rest of the world, I found US diversification much better than most of other countries, that have only one major city to where everything flows in.
        eru 5y ago
        The US is multi-centric. Similar to eg Germany, but different to UK or France.
        cwalv 5y ago
brabel 5y ago
That's a strange concern you seem to have... why does it bother you that fellow programmers are getting salaries close to yours? Do you think it would feel better if your salary could be 5x higher than theirs? Why? That will not actually affect you negatively in any way! Unless you're being actually underpaid compared to your peers with the same experience and skills, there's only good things about people with lower skills getting higher pay.
- alexchamberlain 5y ago
  If you're a senior delivering 10x the value of a grad, does it not feel fair to offer more than 2x the salary? I'm torn tbh - there are various ways that a salary can be set, including the value people are delivering, market forces and in reference to others in the career ladder. There's a balancing act to be had, but I can see where the GP is coming from.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > you're a senior delivering 10x the value of a grad Not arguing one way or another. But an alternate hypothesis would be this skill gap has closed. Education might be better. Or tooling may have improved such that the tangible benefit of experience has, for most current applications, depreciated. Assuming the reduced innovativeness of the average tech worker today versus ten years ago, the equation balances. Test might be measuring this skill gap in new industries (e.g. crypto) versus established ones (like adtech).
    - afpx 5y ago
      Even with the best education, tooling and copy-paste resources, it still takes at least 4-5 years to become competent. In my opinion, entry-level quality as consistently dropped over the last 20 years.
    - jokethrowaway 5y ago
      It's not, juniors are as bad as they were 2 years ago. Generally it's politically easier to nerf better paid employees than cheap ones. You can have the socialist argument of "hey senior engineer, take a salary cut / no raise for the common good, to avoid layoffs of junior engineers - which btw would be the first to go as they're not as productive as you are" and I've seen plenty of senior engineers accept that. Their livelihood are not as stake so they'll take one for the team, forgetting that it's a for profit company which can't find the money. In the above scenario, I refused and I wasn't fired - but I also started looking for a job and switched 2 weeks after the above episode happened.
b20000 5y ago
entry level jobs in software engineering at FAANG were over 120K about 10 years ago and that was already underpaid. California is a really expensive place to live long term and people generally do not do the math and do not account for child care, retirement, sickness or health issues or whatever. then there is the cost of (ongoing) education and issues of mental health in this industry. And those who think remote will be long term to their advantage are wrong. All that will happen is that these companies will find a way to pay you less. The solution is to organize. for those who will reply that people are making less in CA and also need to survive… i was in a black uber recently and the driver told me he was averaging 20K per month. not bad for driving a car with zero education or leetcode requirements.
- s5300 5y ago
  As somebody who looked into doing the highest echelons of Uber/Lyft in the most expensive parts of California - I do believe your driver was lying to you about $20k/mo. Would be glad to be proven wrong, but I’ve looked pretty deeply into it.
  - b20000 5y ago
    this is not uberX but uber black or SUV. i think he is doing a lot of airport trips which are going to be at least $50 without tips. but you are right, i have no way of verifying what he said.
- welder 5y ago
  Now that I think about it, you're right. The entry level in SF & Peninsula 10+ years ago was 120k (except startups). Entry level hasn't increased with cost of living so that 120k isn't the same as 10 years ago. Senior pay has increased a little at around 200k-300k. Depending on equity value that might be 300k-500k total comp.
  - b20000 5y ago
    based on levels.fyi senior comp should be somewhere around 800k TC which makes sense taking into account what living in metro areas in CA will cost taking everything into account long term. of course a large part of that is equity etc. 200k is still not very well paid taking into account many other ways you can make money and the crazy requirements put on engineers.

heromal 5y ago

Entry level jobs in NC start at 75k...you're way out of the loop. They haven't been 30k anywhere in far longer than "a few years back".

welder 5y ago

You should look into a remote job with a California tech company where entry level is 120k. [1] [1] Filter by "Location independent pay" https://himalayas.app/companies https://himalayas.app/companies

silisili 5y ago
To be clear, I do quite a bit better than that... I'm not complaining. But using 120k as an example...a person went from making 4x the typical full time salary to 2x the typical full time salary in a very short period.
- Melting_Harps 5y ago
  > To be clear, I do quite a bit better than that... I'm not complaining. But using 120k as an example...a person went from making 4x the typical full time salary to 2x the typical full time salary in a very short period. This is what I will never understand about most established tech people, they see all the widespread misery and poverty in SV and they still have the capacity to feel sorry for themselves for not making X times more than 'that other guy.' It's always about what they don't have rather than see that they live in an insulated bubble existence that they could never really navigate if it weren't for that wealth disparity because they have such a narrow limited set of skills. aWant an experiment turn off the wifi, see how quickly these people lose their minds. I'm not mad at you for it, for all I know you are self-taught guy that beat out a bunch Stanford grads by grinding since HS and making it on your own, but it's this never-ending need to beat that guy. Its like that scene in American Psycho with those business cards, where for some odd reason people seem to have a need to over-embellish their existence's value with triviality that re-enforces the 'yeah, but I have more than that guy' narrative which is completely lost on me. I hate to tell you but you will never have more than a Bezos or a Musk, either. Not to mention the Nation-state level despots of the World who don't have their net-worth listed on the Forbes 500. Just enjoy what you have, while you have it, because I can assure those very same tech companies are pouring tons of money to render you obsolete as soon as possible.
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    The cost of everything else raised as well, so wealthy tech workers also lost purchasing power (especially after the last stock crash).
    - Melting_Harps 5y ago
      > I don't understand this opinion. Ok, let me spell it out: you're not special. Nothing about your profession makes you special, you are not somehow better than anyone because you can sit at a computer and write code. It's a skill, a very highly compensated one for now but an incredibly narrow one that happens to be useful a select few corps, sure, but so was were many other things. And if one thing that COVID has taught us is how incredibly unnecessary you are to maintaining civilization--unless you are some supply chain developer in which case you were doomed either way. No one was calling for the return for programmers like they were for even barbers or cooks, in fact people lauded the fact that FB went down. In short, you like being told you're special, it makes you feel good. But you are not. Wide spread misery isn't about equality, I can assure this isn't what I'm advocating here, it's about a self-awareness issue.
      - commandlinefan 5y ago
        > you are not somehow better than anyone because you can sit at a computer and write code. You're right, any human being with a pulse can produce effective software with no training or education or experience or effort whatsoever, and nobody's better at it than anybody else, unlike every other single human endeavor.
      - grog454 5y ago
        > And if one thing that COVID has taught us is how incredibly unnecessary you are to maintaining civilization--unless you are some supply chain developer Wait what? So you somehow realize that if you're a software engineer supporting some necessary field, you're necessary by extension, but apparently the only thing we needed during covid was a function supply chain. Impressive mental gymnastics. No one was calling for the "return" of programmers because (almost) no one interacts with them directly like they do their barber. Do you think their barbers decided during covid that they no longer needed to support credit card payments, an electronic scheduling system, etc?
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  And that is not just keep up with jones syndrome: getting services done like building work, cleaning, etc. gets more expensive. I am all for equality of that nature if everyone is joining in!
  - eru 5y ago
    If only America's productive cities did not ban building more housing..
    - dimitrios1 5y ago
      If only Americans reignited their imagination and didn't just settle on having a few big cities in opposite corners of the country. America is huge. There's land everywhere. Start dreaming. China has 160 cities with 1+ million people. We have 10. Granted, there is a massive population difference, but we should most definitely have more than 10. There are major issues when you only have a few cities with the bulk of the opportunity and high salaries for given fields. It stymies growth for the rest of the country, and for all the people we claim to care about: the poor and uneducated. Greece has this issue with Athens being the only realistic metropolitan location. All the resources are there, and those left in the villages and small towns are finding it harder and harder to advance. If you aren't going to Athens (or immigrating to another country), you aren't succeeding. This is a big problem.
      - deepsun 5y ago
        Well, compared to the rest of the world, I found US diversification much better than most of other countries, that have only one major city to where everything flows in.
        eru 5y ago
        The US is multi-centric. Similar to eg Germany, but different to UK or France.
      - cwalv 5y ago

brabel 5y ago

That's a strange concern you seem to have... why does it bother you that fellow programmers are getting salaries close to yours? Do you think it would feel better if your salary could be 5x higher than theirs? Why? That will not actually affect you negatively in any way! Unless you're being actually underpaid compared to your peers with the same experience and skills, there's only good things about people with lower skills getting higher pay.

alexchamberlain 5y ago
If you're a senior delivering 10x the value of a grad, does it not feel fair to offer more than 2x the salary? I'm torn tbh - there are various ways that a salary can be set, including the value people are delivering, market forces and in reference to others in the career ladder. There's a balancing act to be had, but I can see where the GP is coming from.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > you're a senior delivering 10x the value of a grad Not arguing one way or another. But an alternate hypothesis would be this skill gap has closed. Education might be better. Or tooling may have improved such that the tangible benefit of experience has, for most current applications, depreciated. Assuming the reduced innovativeness of the average tech worker today versus ten years ago, the equation balances. Test might be measuring this skill gap in new industries (e.g. crypto) versus established ones (like adtech).
  - afpx 5y ago
    Even with the best education, tooling and copy-paste resources, it still takes at least 4-5 years to become competent. In my opinion, entry-level quality as consistently dropped over the last 20 years.
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    It's not, juniors are as bad as they were 2 years ago. Generally it's politically easier to nerf better paid employees than cheap ones. You can have the socialist argument of "hey senior engineer, take a salary cut / no raise for the common good, to avoid layoffs of junior engineers - which btw would be the first to go as they're not as productive as you are" and I've seen plenty of senior engineers accept that. Their livelihood are not as stake so they'll take one for the team, forgetting that it's a for profit company which can't find the money. In the above scenario, I refused and I wasn't fired - but I also started looking for a job and switched 2 weeks after the above episode happened.

b20000 5y ago

entry level jobs in software engineering at FAANG were over 120K about 10 years ago and that was already underpaid. California is a really expensive place to live long term and people generally do not do the math and do not account for child care, retirement, sickness or health issues or whatever. then there is the cost of (ongoing) education and issues of mental health in this industry. And those who think remote will be long term to their advantage are wrong. All that will happen is that these companies will find a way to pay you less. The solution is to organize. for those who will reply that people are making less in CA and also need to survive… i was in a black uber recently and the driver told me he was averaging 20K per month. not bad for driving a car with zero education or leetcode requirements.

s5300 5y ago
As somebody who looked into doing the highest echelons of Uber/Lyft in the most expensive parts of California - I do believe your driver was lying to you about $20k/mo. Would be glad to be proven wrong, but I’ve looked pretty deeply into it.
- b20000 5y ago
  this is not uberX but uber black or SUV. i think he is doing a lot of airport trips which are going to be at least $50 without tips. but you are right, i have no way of verifying what he said.
welder 5y ago
Now that I think about it, you're right. The entry level in SF & Peninsula 10+ years ago was 120k (except startups). Entry level hasn't increased with cost of living so that 120k isn't the same as 10 years ago. Senior pay has increased a little at around 200k-300k. Depending on equity value that might be 300k-500k total comp.
- b20000 5y ago
  based on levels.fyi senior comp should be somewhere around 800k TC which makes sense taking into account what living in metro areas in CA will cost taking everything into account long term. of course a large part of that is equity etc. 200k is still not very well paid taking into account many other ways you can make money and the crazy requirements put on engineers.