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~200K, inflation adjusted, is historically the salary of a competent senior software developer in the US. Give or take depending on location, so you can expect

~200K, inflation adjusted, is historically the salary of a competent senior software developer in the US. Give or take depending on location, so you can expect around this for remote (which doesn't suffer the same labor shortage pressure of some regions). A friend of mine told me he joined Microsoft right out of college in 1998 for 35K/year + 10% bonus. This is around 70K-80K today. As a Senior II Software Engineer at Microsoft in 2014, I made around 180K total comp, which is around 230K today. In the past 3-5 years we've seen incredibly distorted job markets. 500K is a salary you often see for CEOs and Directors of "normal companies". It's an incredible salary that puts you in the top 1% income in many states. I'm not saying software engineers don't deserve a lot of money, and by all means, let's try to get as much as we can, but I'm just saying that the past few years have been abnormal and we're seeing the correction now.

tayo42 3y ago
i mean the low paying jobs he refers to only pay like 100k, if your paying sr engineers and leads 100-150k you are being cheap when you consider how much value we provide. if you think engineers only provide maybe 200k dollars of value then sure pay 100k but i find that hard to believe
- glimshe 3y ago
  Also have in mind that there are "Seniors" and "Seniors". 200K is a normal salary for a true Senior in a company that is either tech-focused or very reliant on tech. Companies outside the tech hubs, or companies where custom tech only provides incremental value to their business, will certainly pay less, and salaries closer to 100K are actually not that uncommon. They often don't even have the ability to accurately evaluate the skill set of a Senior Software Engineer. So what you call Senior and what they call Senior isn't the same thing. I'm not saying that you should accept 100K, simply that the market is very diverse and we are past the excesses of the past.

tayo42 3y ago

i mean the low paying jobs he refers to only pay like 100k, if your paying sr engineers and leads 100-150k you are being cheap when you consider how much value we provide. if you think engineers only provide maybe 200k dollars of value then sure pay 100k but i find that hard to believe

glimshe 3y ago
Also have in mind that there are "Seniors" and "Seniors". 200K is a normal salary for a true Senior in a company that is either tech-focused or very reliant on tech. Companies outside the tech hubs, or companies where custom tech only provides incremental value to their business, will certainly pay less, and salaries closer to 100K are actually not that uncommon. They often don't even have the ability to accurately evaluate the skill set of a Senior Software Engineer. So what you call Senior and what they call Senior isn't the same thing. I'm not saying that you should accept 100K, simply that the market is very diverse and we are past the excesses of the past.