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Thats odd. I know loads of lawyers living in mansions while loads of “highly paid” developers live with housemates, or rent tiny homes. If anything, software de

• IaacForHire 4y ago
  I have a cousin who makes $220k as a crane operator at a port. I'll never make that much in my career.
  • yrgulation 4y ago
    A welder in london charges 700£ plus per day. A bit difficult to reach as a software engineer.
    • hashar 4y ago
      My place has a large shipyard and as story I got told is that good welder lands there with a private jet, do their welding then fly to the next place. I am guessing good welders have a niche market as well.
      • ethbr0 4y ago
        Great story, because it demonstrates what people often fail to think about in salary: your hypothetical maximum salary is bounded by the amount of value you add to the finished product. If you're a key component (welder) in a high priced product (ship), the builder can compensate you $$$$ and still win. So they do. You can temporarily have unreasonably high pay (higher than value added), but eventually the market will figure it out. The only way to make outsized returns your entire career is to find a supply-limited, high-value-add niche.
      • doubled112 4y ago
        Welders that can weld underwater are scarce and compensated accordingly. My understanding is that it's dangerous and few want to do it.
        • riyadparvez 4y ago
          > My understanding is that it's dangerous and few want to do it. Yeah this is the part everyone is ignoring in the conversation. Many highly compensated physical labor jobs are highly compensated because of the associated risk. While being a developer (with exceptions) doesn't expose you to any physical risk.
          • mellavora 4y ago
            I hurt my little pinky finger programming. RSI is a real thing. but I don't think tech compensation is high because of risk of this type of injury. vs underwater welding, where the types of possible injuries have greater impact on overall health.
    • nly 4y ago
      ~250 workdays a year = ~£175-180K/yr, which is fairly achievable in London for a SWE
    • revertmean 4y ago
      Email I got yesterday: DevOps Engineer City of London, London, £600 - £700/day EDIT: Sorry, you did say Software Developer. How about this? https://www.cv-library.co.uk/job/217407072/Senior-Front-End-Developer https://www.cv-library.co.uk/job/217407072/Senior-Front-End-... £650 - £750/day Remote
    • IaacForHire 4y ago
      Funny, this is my plan to get out of tech. I've been welding bicycle frames for five years (cumulative, over maybe a 10 year period). I'll probably leave tech for good at the end of the year and start a boutique bike frame company. EDIT: (clarified a timeframe)
      • potta_coffee 4y ago
        How can I learn this? It's a dream job for me. I tinker with bikes endlessly and I've lost all my hair in tech.
        • IaacForHire 4y ago
          I was first inspired by this video that a friend of a friend made for a boutique frame builder in California. http://soulcraftbikes.com http://soulcraftbikes.com A decade later I sold a company and spent 3 months in Portland at https://bikeschool.com/ https://bikeschool.com/. I took pretty much all of their classes. (Their wheel building seminar was fantastic, btw). Sadly they no longer teach welding, but the classes were fantastic. In each class you sized, laid out, machined and welded a bike. Started with lugged chromoly brazing, then chromoly fillet brazing, then chromoly tig, aluminum tin and finally titanium tig. Unfortunately there are no bike schools in the world which have as comprehensive as a program as bikeschool did. I think they lost most of their teachers during Covid. Hoping they recover. I ended up bringing 5 frames with me on the train home from PDX to Oakland. Over the next year I built another 15 frames for friends, then started a business building and selling custom, very durable bikes to overweight techies. It was great fun, we used to host weekend 25, 50 and 100 mile rides, nobody under 200lbs allowed. I lost $300 on every bike I made, but it was worth it. Check out Paul Brodie's videos on YouTube, I am hoping to do a master class with him next year. https://www.youtube.com/c/paulbrodie https://www.youtube.com/c/paulbrodie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2CnJ9lmlQo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2CnJ9lmlQo really shows the beauty of fillet welding. Also, I'm going to take a carbon fiber class here: https://www.framebuildingschool.com https://www.framebuildingschool.com Long story short: Go buy a couple of the cheapest throw-away bicycle frames you can. Get a brazing setup, then spend a few weeks cutting them up and learning how to join tubes solidly. Everything else is easy after that.
  • lrvick 4y ago
    Not with that attitude. If you are healthy, have people skills, and are capable of learning new things regularly then you can generally make as much as you want in this industry.
    • IaacForHire 4y ago
      As a Sysadmin/DevOps engineer, I am expected to be an expert in some new paradigm every 2 years which I have done consistently for 25 years. Working hard and doing solid, consistent, useful work isn't enough to break through a salary ceiling. Not everybody is an influencer, an MIT grad or a genius.
      • Firmwarrior 4y ago
        I'd never say this on Reddit, Facebook, or LinkedIn, but you're hanging out in Programmer Heaven right now, for fun, in your spare time. ANYONE hanging out here CAN definitely make a fat living in the SF Bay Area. Go out there and get rich!!! The only things I want to see you complaining about are interview loops, followed by the fact that you can barely afford a house on your $300k/year total compensation
        • IaacForHire 4y ago
          I wish I had your enthusiasm. I've been unemployed 90% of the time since Covid. Ironically, I've given at least 5 people their start in this industry who are all now worth 8 figures. There are haves and there are have nots.
          • iLoveOncall 4y ago
            Seems like the "not with that attitude" comment was spot on.
            • IaacForHire 4y ago
              Yes, you're right. After 25 years of mostly being treated like shit by start-ups with an average weekly work rate of 60 hours, my attitude is probably kind of bad. Do I really need to be a rockstar to get an inflationary raise every year? Take cost of living into account and we make about 40% less than we did 20 years ago.
  • lotsofpulp 4y ago
    What is the qualify of life at work like for a crane operator? Do their mistakes cost immediate loss of life, possibly even for themself? Do they work evenings, nights, and weekends? Can they work from home, or move to a new country at a whim?
    • giantg2 4y ago
      Do they have crushing expectations placed on them and are expected to be connected 24/7?
      • juve1996 4y ago
        The railroads in the US are close to striking because they only get 1 random day off per month. 353/365 days working. Yea, I'll take the occasional phone call at 1 AM for a production down over that.
        • giantg2 4y ago
          "Rail employees are provided with significant time off. Generally, train crew employees have over three to four weeks of paid vacation and over 10 personal leave days. Depending on craft and seniority, these numbers can extend to five weeks of vacation in addition to 14 paid holidays and/or paid leave days,” BNSF told CNBC. “The number of Personal Leave Days was increased by 25% this year which makes it easier for employees to take time off.”
          • juve1996 4y ago
            "A crucial issue in the dispute is a points-based attendance policy adopted by some of the largest carriers earlier this year. Those policies penalize workers, up to termination, for going to routine doctor’s visits or attending to family emergencies. Conductors and engineers say that they can be on call for 14 consecutive days without a break and that they do not receive a single sick day, paid or unpaid. “All we’re asking is folks to be able to go to routine doctor’s visits without pay, but they have refused to accept our proposals,” Dennis Pierce, president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) said before the deal was struck. “The average American would not know that we get fired for going to the doctor. This one thing has our members most enraged. We have guys who were punished for taking time off for a heart attack and covid. It’s inhumane.”" Yes go be that instead of a SWE.
  • tdumitrescu 4y ago
    From your other replies here you sound a bit burned out. 220 is easily within the reach of devops people in the modern software industry, and certainly not just at the big-name tech companies. But you do have to work for _some_ kind of decently-funded company if you want it as a salary rather than doing your own thing (consulting etc).
  • newaccount2021 4y ago
• marcinzm 4y ago
  Highly paid as a developer means you're making $400k+ with less than 10 years under your belt. Those people don't generally live with roommates unless they're aiming for aggressive FIRE.
  • yrgulation 4y ago
    One should factor in taxes, vesting times and what % is actually yours of those shares. Two websites i quickly used for calculating take home pay showed 8000-9000 usd per month. I may be wrong but it would seem like that’s rather low. I know people in east europe making almost that after tax on a way lower salary / daily rate.
    • marcinzm 4y ago
      The take home in California would be $20k+ per month. Income tax for a single person would be 40% and if married it'd be 32%. That's not counting any deductions you could do or $401k match. edit: The comp is also not counting stock appreciation which historically was a lot. If you joined Apple in 2019 with a $200k in annual RSUs over 4 years then this year you'd be making $800k from those RSUs. So likely over a million in total tax reportable income.
      • yrgulation 4y ago
        Interesting, thanks for the clarification. Not had but not as high as it sounds at first sight.
    • colinmhayes 4y ago
      You think taxes are 70-80%?
• lrvick 4y ago
  When I was 18 in rural America I had to do telemarketing and day labor in addition to webdev gigs to cover food and keep gas in the car I lived in. My income more than 10xed once I moved to Silicon Valley where my skills are in high demand. I do not think I know anyone technical making less than 6 figures here, with 200-600k being the norm for anyone with 10+ years of experience. In a post-covid world you can normally move anywhere you want and keep your pay after you build a good network and reputation.
  • vsareto 4y ago
    I feel like your definition and goalposts of "anyone who is technical" is probably incredibly high but you're trying to undersell it just to make a point. Is webdev somehow not technical?
    • lrvick 4y ago
      I started off in the bay area as a webdev making low 6 figures, and do not know any webdevs in my circles here making less than that.
  • yrgulation 4y ago
    Tech pay is indeed high but not that high and it has a hard ceiling. Thanks to tech i manage to live a pretty decent life style, compared to shop assistants, or say daily construction workers. But going higher means i have to change careers and potentially go into tech business (which is not really tech, but business). A chartered accountant or lawyer, let alone surgeon, would earn as much as i do a day per hour without really “solving problems” in a saturated market (i.e. those jobs dont open source their ip to the point where its worthless).
    • lotsofpulp 4y ago
      In the US, a surgeon would, but a “chartered” accountant or lawyer would have higher probabilities of not having as high of a pay to quality of life ratio. Even the surgeon would have gone through hell during their 20s and maybe even lower 30s (their best years as a human) to command the $500k+ per year.
• bradleyjg 4y ago
  What exactly is odd? It doesn’t seem like you are disagreeing that both professions are bimodal.
• jollyllama 4y ago
  Yep. More precisely, construction worker pay has reached software developer pay, outside of the SV world.
  • giantg2 4y ago
    I think that's only true for the skilled trades and not the laborers or apprentices.
    • jollyllama 4y ago
      You're correct. Only a small minority of those have reached parity. But the relative increase has been quite large, proportionally. And I would note that in aggregate even the lowest paid workers (seasonal labor) have seen increases in their pay and bargaining power. All part of the inflationary cycle, I suppose.
  • mywittyname 4y ago
    I'm not so sure of this. I have lots of trade friends/acquaintances/family members because my family runs a construction business. I know lots of people in the trades who are struggling and can't afford to own a house in the "cheap" midwest. Some are 30 and have been at it for several years and still live with their parents or shake up 6+ to a rented 3 bedroom. They are skilled too, mechanics, electricians, welders. The old dudes running the business make bank, for sure. But the people turning the wrenches are still getting the shaft.