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The median annual wage for software developers in the US is $120k and the 90th percentile is $168k. https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm https://www.b

The median annual wage for software developers in the US is $120k and the 90th percentile is $168k. https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm

justahuman74 4y ago
That surprising to me (perhaps due to bay area bubble), how do I hire people at that rate? Is it entirely about the location? Are the skill set expectations different?
- nostrademons 4y ago
  You can do a lot better than that internationally. When I was in the startup founder world my peers were paying their developers about $30K/year, and getting decent (but not great) talent in Thailand, Vietnam, India, Eastern Europe, etc. The downsides are that all your employees are a.) remote b.) not great English speakers and c.) generally mediocre developers, and this all has negative impact on developer velocity and the caliber of features you can ship. If you're chasing a niche this is often a great trade-off, because it can make your business profitable even at revenue levels that can't support a big-company product. If you're chasing the next big thing this is usually a stupid idea, because somebody's going to raise $50M, hire top-quality ex-FANGs at half a million each, put them in a room together, and win the market before you can ship your first couple features.
- closeparen 4y ago
  I think you will find a lot of these people doing embedded, desktop, or enterprise intranet stuff rather than slick web/mobile products or massively scalable backend APIs. Using dated and uncool stacks. Dated and uncool practices. Windows centric. Hiring more about years of experience with particular framework versions than LeetCode or system design interviews. Two perrenial favorite pieces on this website include Dark Matter Developers [0] and We Only Hire The Trendiest [1]. [0] https://www.hanselman.com/blog/dark-matter-developers-the-unseen-99 https://www.hanselman.com/blog/dark-matter-developers-the-un... [1] https://danluu.com/programmer-moneyball/ https://danluu.com/programmer-moneyball/
ithkuil 4y ago
GP said "senior", which can be interpreted either literally (as in the title "senior software engineer") or more broadly as software engineers with elevated seniority. Some data for "senior software engineer" in the US indicate: "The middle 57% of Senior Software Engineers makes between $117,200 and $203,000, with the top 86% making $375,000" https://www.comparably.com/salaries/salaries-for-senior-software-engineer https://www.comparably.com/salaries/salaries-for-senior-soft... "The middle 57% of Staff Software Engineers makes between $107,389 and $262,186, with the top 86% making $572,331." Since levels/titles are truly comparable across companies (nor across time), it's very hard to get a true sense of what those numbers even mean. But I think it's fair to say that you shouldn't expect a median nation-wide "software engineer" salary to match the expectations of the "right person you really want to hire for your position but you can't find".

The median annual wage for software developers in the US is $120k and the 90th percentile is $168k. https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm

justahuman74 4y ago

That surprising to me (perhaps due to bay area bubble), how do I hire people at that rate? Is it entirely about the location? Are the skill set expectations different?

nostrademons 4y ago
You can do a lot better than that internationally. When I was in the startup founder world my peers were paying their developers about $30K/year, and getting decent (but not great) talent in Thailand, Vietnam, India, Eastern Europe, etc. The downsides are that all your employees are a.) remote b.) not great English speakers and c.) generally mediocre developers, and this all has negative impact on developer velocity and the caliber of features you can ship. If you're chasing a niche this is often a great trade-off, because it can make your business profitable even at revenue levels that can't support a big-company product. If you're chasing the next big thing this is usually a stupid idea, because somebody's going to raise $50M, hire top-quality ex-FANGs at half a million each, put them in a room together, and win the market before you can ship your first couple features.
closeparen 4y ago
I think you will find a lot of these people doing embedded, desktop, or enterprise intranet stuff rather than slick web/mobile products or massively scalable backend APIs. Using dated and uncool stacks. Dated and uncool practices. Windows centric. Hiring more about years of experience with particular framework versions than LeetCode or system design interviews. Two perrenial favorite pieces on this website include Dark Matter Developers [0] and We Only Hire The Trendiest [1]. [0] https://www.hanselman.com/blog/dark-matter-developers-the-unseen-99 https://www.hanselman.com/blog/dark-matter-developers-the-un... [1] https://danluu.com/programmer-moneyball/ https://danluu.com/programmer-moneyball/

ithkuil 4y ago

GP said "senior", which can be interpreted either literally (as in the title "senior software engineer") or more broadly as software engineers with elevated seniority. Some data for "senior software engineer" in the US indicate: "The middle 57% of Senior Software Engineers makes between $117,200 and $203,000, with the top 86% making $375,000" https://www.comparably.com/salaries/salaries-for-senior-software-engineer https://www.comparably.com/salaries/salaries-for-senior-soft... "The middle 57% of Staff Software Engineers makes between $107,389 and $262,186, with the top 86% making $572,331." Since levels/titles are truly comparable across companies (nor across time), it's very hard to get a true sense of what those numbers even mean. But I think it's fair to say that you shouldn't expect a median nation-wide "software engineer" salary to match the expectations of the "right person you really want to hire for your position but you can't find".