21 ms·
Poll: Full-time software engineers in the Bay Area, what's your annual salary?
This poll is targeting current full-time software engineers and software developers in San Francisco and the Bay Area.
The previous polls seem to have topped out too low. So here we are again.
Specifically, base salary only. Pre-tax. No options, shares, bonuses, adjustments for inflation, or benefits.
(Don't forget to up-vote the poll to get more data.)
- z92 13y agoBad options. The choices should increase by a fixed percent over previous one, instead of a constant fixed amount. Who cares if someone gets 280k instead of 290k?
- hkmurakami 13y agoconstant delta would be useful when building a histogram, for instance.
- doktrin 13y agoI see this is getting downvoted, but the poll choices are in fact surprising. 2/3rds of the options are devoted to salaries between $150k - $300k.
- kanzure 13y ago> but the poll choices are in fact surprising. 2/3rds of the options are devoted to salaries between $150k - $300k. You've discovered my secret plot! I even included words to that effect in the description. The other polls literally top out at 150k. I didn't want that.
- wtvanhest 13y agoYou may improve the results if you started at $30k and went in increments of $10K. I doubt anyone is making $30k, but it is possible that people at the lowest level listed may not even click the arrow. If they feel like there are people coming in below where they are, they may be more likely to. If nothing else, it makes the distribution seem to make more sense.
- kanzure 13y agoOh crap, you're right. I like your idea much more than the lame increments I picked. Next time I'll use a logarithm or something.
- akkartik 13y agoNo, I like these options. You can extract the logarithm from these, but you can't go the other way around. To someone making 125k, it's more useful to know the distribution of the 25k above than to see them all in a single bucket.
- marblar 13y agoDon't use a logarithm. Most salaries are going to be the same order of magnitude.
- mc-lovin 13y agoLog base 10 would be a good compromise with the ridiculously vague "N figure salary" descriptions. Makes for much more accurate boasting: "they were offering me a 6.3 figure salary, but in the industry I'm in, it's no big deal"
- cgag 13y agoI do. Maybe one slot for something outrageous like 500k+ would be interesting, but I like that it's so granular personally.
- ctide 13y agoDo it on google docs, and include how much money your company has raised (0-5m, 5-15m, 15m+ is probably sufficient options) and roughly how much equity you have. In a vacuum, this number is meaningless. Comparing what someone makes at Google and what someone makes at a seed funded startup is silly.
- kanzure 13y ago> In a vacuum, this number is meaningless. Lucky for us, we're not in a vacuum. We're in a market.
- orangethirty 13y agoNeither. Just inside a bubble.
- alex_doom 13y agoAt least there's free soda. For now...
- graue 13y agoBut since most startups fail, won't the equity be worth little to nothing in the median case? Kind of like playing the lottery.
- ctide 13y agoThe equity isn't nearly as relevant as how much money the company is raised. It should be no shock to anyone that a job at Google / Facebook / etc. is going to pay significantly more than the equivalent job at a company with a year of runway.
- zerr 13y agoDoesn't stock affect the money you get from investments? Be it seed or later series.
- lefthander 13y agoIt seems silly to ignore stock and bonuses. My base salary is only ~$150k, but with stock and bonuses I'll make over $260k this year (Google). Would this compare with a job that also gives a $150k salary but nothing else?
- kanzure 13y agoI was trying to avoid people voting based on "fun bucks" from startups eager to promise you the world. Maybe in future polls it could say "liquid" compensation only, instead of base? Liquid assets would mean cash, or even shares traded on the open market. Thing is, other polls included non-base compensation, and the opposite argument gets brought up. But yeah, let's try liquid next time. Also: this is exactly the class of anecdote I was hoping to hear today. Thanks. Maybe I should go respond to that Google recruiter that keeps emailing me..
- gohrt 13y agoStartups have a well-documented value based on financing they have raised. They have x% stake, and some investors have paid y% for a z% stake. The mystery is simply in the volatility of future value. Second market tradable shares and public company shares are easily valued. Anything else has an average value of <$10K, based on a sampling of actual new-startup performance.
- covi 13y agoMind sharing some basic background info? Years of experience / education would help add context.
- lefthander 13y agoI don't want to share too much. A few years out of undergrad.
- ashray 13y agoCongrats! That sounds like a great compensation package. I'm just trying to understand though how does tax effect the overall amount that you eventually earn ? Does it come down by 35% or 40% or does it depend on when you decide to cash out your capital gains (for the stock part..) ?
- tokenadult 13y agoAs always, voluntary response data are worthless. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5538059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5538059 Good luck to all of you looking for higher salaries. I hope you gain the salary you desire, and more knowledge of statistics along the way.
- dxhdr 13y agoAgreed. Consider: those who don't read HN are probably worse engineers that earn lower salaries, on average.
- dustingetz 13y agosome of the best engineers i know don't read HN and they definitely make more money than me. They did read a lot of newsgroups in their twenties.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- radiusq 13y agoDo they work in the bay area?
- reeses 13y agoYeah, but back then, you could read all the newsgroups. You'd finish and there'd only be a couple posts that propagated to your UUCP node while you were reading.
- kanzure 13y agoAlso, you can still read those same newsgroups and those same messages. Might not seem as timely, but whatever.
- jethroalias97 13y agoAssuming you are using only "reads HN" as your a priori, all of us with below average pay should expect higher salaries. If you were to argue that those who read HN and also have high salaries are the only ones reporting however, then it would be fair to rap our knuckles with the stats 101 textbook.
- freework 13y agoThese results are odd. The three startups (two YC alums) I interviewed with in the Bay offered me ~60K each time, and wouldn't go any higher.
- acchow 13y agoThey don't have money to throw around. Probably would have given you meaningful (lifechanging?) equity tho.
- sbierwagen 13y ago"Lifechanging" only if you win the startup lottery. 95% of YC startups fail.
- reeses 13y agoThe statistics, it burnses, it burnses. Can we leave any percentages and probability out of this conversation? Think of the children!
- beambot 13y ago37 / 511 (7.25%) are worth greater than $40MM, and that doesn't take into account that many are too young to be decided yet [1]. Not sure if that confirms or refutes your comment (were you being cheeky?), but at least it's a source rather than a statistic without evidence. [1] http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/26/paul-graham-37-y-combinator-companies-have-valuations-of-or-sold-for-at-least-40m/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/26/paul-graham-37-y-combinator...
- codeonfire 13y ago0.05% of $40MM is $20k, which is not "Lifechanging".
- mattj 13y agoIf they can't afford to pay a market salary, you should be getting at least 0.5% (and probably more like 1%). Still not life changing at 40mm with no dilution (200-400k), but a little more meaningful.
- gocards 13y agodepressing, midwest software engineer here, 6 years experience 60k.
- codezero 13y agoI know there are probably a lot of factors, but why don't you move out to the bay area?
- gocards 13y agoBefore this thread I thought bay area might be 100k - 120k and cost of living / uprooting the family wasn't worth it. Also worried about the competitiveness of the market out there for software engineers.
- aashay 13y agoNot having to uproot the family is understandable, but if you're worried about the competitiveness of the market, know that there are a ton of jobs as well (ask anyone on HN about recruiter spam, which seems to serve as a proxy to this fact), which perhaps balances things. Six years of experience is non-trivial, I'm sure if you wanted to you could find something.
- cglace 13y agoWhat would be your guess for the average salary in the valley of someone with 6-8 years of experience?
- textminer 13y agoMy suggestion is to avoid telling a potential new employer what you make now. They'd then work hard to cap you at current + 30% instead of what a comparably-skilled peer might make.
- encoderer 13y agoTextminer is right, no need to mention your current wage. But honestly, it seriously depends on what technologies you have experience with. But to give you a number, you could very easily get $125k. I bet if you somehow got 100 offers, the vast majority of them would be normally distributed between $110 and $140k. Mitigating factors: 1. The universe of companies willing to fly-in a candidate and pay for relocation is smaller, so you have less bargaining power. I was able to secure a 20% raise the first time I changed jobs here -- a year after relocating. 2. If you have impressive skills in more lucrative technologies you can certainly make more.
- numbchuckskills 13y agoI'll save you some time: http://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software-engineer-salary-SRCH_IL.0,13_IM759_KO14,31.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software-eng...
- IgorPartola 13y agopg, please disable polls. They seem to give no useful info whatsoever, while taking up valuable front page real estate.
- d0m 13y agoDon't forget that HN users upvoted it.
- javert 13y agoIronically, the whole site is basically a poll. I'm not taking sides on enabling or disabling actual polls, though.
- IgorPartola 13y agoWell, it only takes 4 or so up votes before a story hits the front page. Then it is propelled near the top by the herd automatically. These polls are useless, and now the discussions around them (including our nice little thread here) are noise. They contribute nothing to the quality of the site.
- robryan 13y agoWithout being a company owner or manager with a list of what everyone is being paid how we can't really do much better than unscientific poles. Wouldn't glassdoor and similar essentially have the same issues?
- IgorPartola 13y agoI am not an expert on polling or collecting data like this so I cannot tell you. But that is irrelevant. My thesis is that these polls follow a 100% identical path: a badly conceived poll is posted, the top half of the comments debates how you cannot trust this poll or any online poll, the next quarter discusses the flaws with the actual poll setup, but circles back to how this is an online poll, and the last quarter is an assortment of comments about the actual topic. Nobody seems to learn anything useful in the process.
- markthien 13y ago1 million
- WinLinKiddie 13y agoNow with this salary statistics, if we can further get the technologies, the various participants are working in; it will be beneficial.
- Chronic24 13y agoI selected a random option.
- kanzure 13y ago> I selected a random option. Based on my data, you selected one of 100k-109k, 120k-129k, 130k-139k, 200k-209k.
- rexreed 13y agoThis needs cross-tabs with years of experience and/or position in the company for it to be useful to those seeking to understand their relative salary position.
- rgovind 13y agoI second this. I would appreciate if people with $130K+ tell more about their role.
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- andreer 13y agoBar graph of current data: http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~andreer/salary_bar_graph.png http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~andreer/salary_bar_graph.png
- kanzure 13y agoYour diligence is commendable. Here, have some snapshot data: http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/hacker-news/salary-poll/2013-05-31/ http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/hacker-news/salary-poll/2013-05-...
- pranavrc 13y agoHistogram so far: http://quickhist.onloop.net/%3C80k=37,80-89k=17,90-99k=38,100-109k=60,110-119k=40,120-129k=74,130-139k=49,140-149k=40,150-159k=33,160-169k=20,170-179k=11,180-189k=9,190-199k=6,200-209k=7,210-219k=5,220-229k=6,230-239k=4,240-249k=2,250-259k=5,260-269k=4,270-279k=4,280-289k=3,290-299k=3,%3E300k=25 http://quickhist.onloop.net/%3C80k=37,80-89k=17,90-99k=38,10...
- bicknergseng 13y agoFor everyone in the Bay Area and the rest of California, the minimum legal salary (with exceptions) for software developers is ~$81k. It is likely if you are being paid less for full time software development that you are not being paid enough. I'm not a lawyer, but googlefu: http://www.morganlewis.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/publication.detail/publicationID/3989632d-51ed-4da3-bed0-31703588790e http://www.morganlewis.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/publication....
- powera 13y agoThat's not quite what it means. That's the minimum salary to be an "exempt" software developer, which means that if you are paid less than that you have to get paid overtime.
- petercooper 13y agoSo it seems - http://www.dol.gov/elaws/faq/esa/flsa/011.htm http://www.dol.gov/elaws/faq/esa/flsa/011.htm - that if you're a software developer in California earning under $81k and you work more than 40 hours per week, those extra hours should be paid at a minimum of 150% your normal rate, if I'm to understand correctly. Or is it possible for an employment contract to specify a higher number of hours as the "standard" work week?
- bicknergseng 13y agoRight. I'd wager few fall into that category, and many fall into the 40+ a week category.
- eru 13y agoWow. Just when you think America is just like countries you know, something like this comes along.
- kyrra 13y agoIt's more California, they have some pretty interesting laws on their books.
- 13y ago
- michaelscaria 13y agoFrom what I've heard in other places, Google only gives about 150k to their developers, so how does one make it to the 300k level?
- georgemcbay 13y agoBasically you just go to the 300k option and click the up arrow to the left.
- acchow 13y agoYou are probably referring to new grads. With some golden handcuffs (say around 100 RSUs vesting each year), and the annual bonus of ~15%, many will top 200k.
- sliverstorm 13y agoSo seeing as this polls the whole SF Bay software engineering community of HN, young and old, and the distribution is centered around 120k-129k, can we finally put to rest the ever-perpetuated claim that the average CS grad can expect $150k+ in the Bay?
- curiousDog 13y agoThis is just the base pay though. Total pay could indeed exceed 150k
- scorpion032 13y agoThe net pay will be lesser considering the taxes.
- encoderer 13y agoYes, $150k is high. But I know my company has given several $100k offers to new grads.
- tempestn 13y agoEgad! No wonder so many Bay Area companies are going remote.
- beyondavatars 13y agoI was offered 80 right out of school. But I was also offered 50. It depends on what the company can afford to and if they are competitive. there are so many factors that play into salary determinations that I think people could lose sight of that by looking at this poll. To evaluate what you are worth this is a great calculator: http://www.jobsearchintelligence.com/NACE/salary-calculator-intro/ http://www.jobsearchintelligence.com/NACE/salary-calculator-... Uses government stats and asks you for all your information and then gives you averages and percentiles based on that. A much more accurate way of comparing or delving into your own worth to the industry.
- perlpimp 13y agoI find it confusing as looking at these salaries in pre-tax because for people in California they can roughly figure out what is the actual income. For others it is a mystery.
- davidjnelson 13y agosubtract roughly 40%
- tharshan09 13y agoHoly crap. I am student in the UK, recently did a internship at a fairly well known company. Got paid £16k for that year. If I were to get a full time job, it would be around ~30k a year. These figures are insane, people have told me in person this is what the figures are really like in SF but wow. I think applying for a couple of jobs in SF etc just for kicks will be one of goals when I finish uni. I know the term Web Developer has become a pretty broad term nowadays and maybe I am kidding myself when I think about a job at google or other SV or SF company, but what do they expect in terms of experience from a graduate? It would be great to talk to someone who has first hand experience with this, as mostly my knowledge is from reading blogs posts and such.
- rcush 13y agoGraduate software engineer jobs in the UK hit £30,000 at the very top end. From the experience of friends in the industry, £24,000-26,000 seems more realistic.
- vineel 13y agoIs this before or after taxes? Because American salaries are typically reported before taxes.
- tharshan09 13y agoYes before taxes. The 16k I reported was before. So I got roughly ~12k.
- objclxt 13y agoI wouldn't say 'very top end' - I've hired graduates for more than that. Not much more (£36k, I think, was the highest), but there's always flexibility.
- slevin8 13y agoI work as junior software engineer in central London and my salary is £26.000 before taxes. I think I am underpaid but there are a lot of benefits (gym, breakfast, friday lunch, office in Soho), so I can't complain.
- logotype 13y agoNot based in SV. 90k USD, based in Hong Kong.
- um304 13y agoHow is the living with 80k in SF? Is it difficult? Can a person do some savings? Can she afford a car?
- scorpion032 13y agoAn individual can lead a comfortable life. But you probably can't afford a family, says this answer on Quora: http://www.quora.com/Silicon-Valley/Whats-the-dark-side-of-Silicon-Valley/answer/Chris-Schrader http://www.quora.com/Silicon-Valley/Whats-the-dark-side-of-S...
- bubbleRefuge 13y agoThat Quora link asks for Facebook or Google+ authentication. After picking G+, Quora wanted the right to read my address book. Annoying.
- yekko 13y agoDo not move to SF without at least 120k. Thank me latter.
- nathan_f77 13y agoWhat about 110k and really good benefits?
- yekko 13y agoIf you are fresh out of college, go for it, get a couple of roommates. otherwise, no.
- smileysteve 13y agoLive in Oakland, have a roommate, cook at home often.
- Achshar 13y agoDamn. I live in India and would more than happily drop out of college for 80k/year. More like a dream to start with.
- sn0v 13y agoCorrelate the cost of living with the salary as well.
- VMG 13y agoLog scale please.
- vain 13y agor ]sa`a
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- the1 13y agohey, I click the up arrow and it disappeared. so I clicked all other up arrows. am i doing it right?
- kaushikt 13y agoThese are extremely awesome salaries. One might wonder if its enough. But i hear that the cost of living in the Bay area is crazily expensive as well.
- yekko 13y agoIn the last year or two, salary levels have gone up significantly, 160k is easily achievable now, with 180k/190k being a glass ceiling for devs, although that also seem to be breaking.
- dangrover 13y agoOkay, with so many making 300K, I'm calling shenanigans.
- 23david 13y agoYeah that seems fishy for non-manager positions even at large software companies. Maybe google pays that high? Or Netflix? Oracle?
- ThoseInternets 13y agoNeither do. I smell a lot of bullshit in this poll.
- encoderer 13y agoI disagree. I know several mid-level, middle-aged people making $150-200k. I think it would be hubris and foolish to imagine that a fair percentile -- 90th and above perhaps -- aren't doing considerably better than that. I've grown my own salary fantastically in the last 5 years (which represent the "5-10 years experience" point in my career). I've grown a full 300% from June, 2008, when you include liquid equity. This has been done by: 1. Growing my skillset, and repeatedly asking "what's the next most valuable skill I could pick up." 2. Making several big moves. 3. Having the guts to quote to prospective employers what used to seem like fantastically high numbers. 4. Always, always negotiating. I went back and forth 5 times my most recent position. I've accepted positions at as much as a full 25% higher than their initial offer. i'm approaching $200k and I have no reason to believe I've "maxed out." Of course one word of caution about the poll, even assuming total honesty, is that it certainly includes contractors (as many others here have mentioned). And if a contractor is billing himself at $150/hr that's $300k gross. Now if he was totally honest to the poll he'd deduct appropriate expenses that shave probably $50-100k of that in order to produce a figure truly comprable to what s/he'd be earning as a FT employee.
- msoad 13y agoI just created a chart based on this data http://jsbin.com/idifos/1
- medell 13y agoThanks!
- smartician 13y agoAny ideas why 110k-119k is underrepresented, compared to the brackets above and below?
- abalone 13y agoThis is meaningless if you exclude options.
- acchow 13y agoFor public companies, agreed. For pre-IPO companies, it's near-impossible to valuate options. Odd the poll excludes shares (RSUs) which, as far as the employee is concerned, is equivalent to cash.
- EGreg 13y agoSeems like the two modes are 110k and over 300k! Maybe the first are junior programmers... but seriously, over 300k?? Is that mostly in cash or dubious valuation of incentive stock options?
- aliston 13y agoWhat does it take to make 200k base as a software engineer? These numbers just don't seem to jive with what I've read else where -- according to glassdoor, for instance, last year the base salary at the top companies in the valley was around 110-120k. So, how is it that so many people are pulling down 200k, 300k base? Apparently I've been doing it wrong... http://www.glassdoor.com/blog/15-tech-companies-software-engineer-salary-revealed-glassdoor-report/ http://www.glassdoor.com/blog/15-tech-companies-software-eng...
- elq 13y agoPerhaps the glassdoor data is poor. Perhaps people are choosing their total compensation rather than base salary. Probably both.
- zwieback 13y agoMaybe half of them are untrue and the other half possess unusual skills or are the only people left with knowledge of some critical legacy system.
- zwieback 13y agoHey, I feel pretty good about my Oregon salary now!
- danny8000 13y agoFor context, the US national 2010 median pay for "Software Developers" was $90,530 per year according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, which I believe is data provided by employer surveys. http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Computer-and-Information-Technology/Software-developers.htm#tab-5 http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Computer-and-Information-Technology/S... Here is data for San Jose: http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ocs/sp/ncbl1627.txt http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ocs/sp/ncbl1627.txt Computer software engineers, applications, Level 12 $58.23 median pay per hour ( $121,118 per year)
- davidjnelson 13y agofeels like this started at and topped out too low too. would be nice to see as low as 30k and as high as 1M.
- olalonde 13y agoWhat? There are more people who make 300K+ then people who make less than 80K? And just a few days ago I read about a guy who slept in his car while doing his startup? Confusing...
- WestCoastJustin 13y ago./spark 89 60 81 127 86 150 113 73 60 42 24 14 12 21 12 10 10 10 8 7 10 12 10 90 ▅▃▄▆▄█▆▄▃▂▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▅ ^ 120k-129k [1] https://github.com/holman/spark https://github.com/holman/spark
- kanzure 13y agoHere's an animated version: http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/hacker-news/salary-poll/output.gif http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/hacker-news/salary-poll/output.g...
- wizardhat 13y agoGraph: Less than 80k.: ============================= - 90 points 80k-89k: =================== - 60 points 90k-99k: ========================== - 82 points 100k-109k: ========================================== - 131 points 110k-119k: ============================ - 87 points 120k-129k: ================================================== - 154 points 130k-139k: ===================================== - 115 points 140k-149k: ======================= - 73 points 150k-159k: =================== - 60 points 160k-169k: ============= - 42 points 170k-179k: ======= - 24 points 180k-189k: ==== - 14 points 190k-199k: === - 12 points 200k-209k: ====== - 21 points 210k-219k: === - 12 points 220k-229k: === - 10 points 230k-239k: === - 10 points 240k-249k: === - 10 points 250k-259k: == - 8 points 260k-269k: == - 7 points 270k-279k: === - 10 points 280k-289k: === - 12 points 290k-299k: === - 10 points At least 300k.: ============================= - 92 points
- frozenport 13y agoWhat do you do that makes "At least 300k."?
- davidjnelson 13y agoA chart of the data as of 9am Sunday June 2nd: http://www.chartgo.com/share.do?id=0b12509aaa http://www.chartgo.com/share.do?id=0b12509aaa ( y axis should have been labeled "respondents" not "salary" )
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- antirez 13y agoQuestion from an Italian guy, what you are able to do with 100k in the bay area? For instance: 1) Can you rent a good house. 2) Go out for dinner as many times you want. 3) Have somebody to clean your house. 4) Eat in an health way. 5) Still save some money. Or is this already too much for 100k, especially if you have a family? Because one sees this very high salaries but it's hard for outsiders to form an idea about the actual level of spending this makes you capable of.
- jbyers 13y agoIt depends on where in the Bay Area you want to live, what you consider a "good" house, and the size and makeup of your family, if you have one. A few bits of anecdotal evidence for San Francisco, 2013 prices that I've seen firsthand. In many desirable neighborhoods renting an entire house will start well above $5K/month. In those same neighborhoods a nice two bedroom apartment will be over $4K. Full-time child care for a toddler might at absolute minimum cost $1K/month (a licensed, shared private home) but much more likely will cost $2K or more (a day care center, if you can get into one, or a shared nanny). There are of course plenty of ways to live well within $100K / year here, but probably not with a family in a rented house in many San Francisco neighborhoods.
- antirez 13y agoIt's pretty counter intuitive that with an high salary and a family you can't still be enough "safe" about not abusing, but at least using money without too concerns. So I guess very high developers asking for > 100k/year working and living in the bay area are not greedy at all. Thanks for your and all the other replies.
- huherto 13y agoSix months ago I moved from Mexico to Mass. I was able to do 1,2,3,4,5. Now, I am making twice as much now but can only do 1,4 and I am trying to figure out 5. Of course there are other reasons why I moved, not everything is money.
- physcab 13y agoYou can live as comfortably as you want (I do) but the catch is that you'll probably have to be without children. Anecdotally, everyone I know with families tends to move outside of SF because for the price of a 2 br apartment, you can get a mortgage on a nice house. There are affordable areas to live ($800-$1200 / br) but you'll have to be quite patient in your search and be open about where you'd like to live.
- snambi 13y ago$./spark 96 66 91 149 98 166 120 82 65 45 27 18 12 21 12 11 10 10 8 7 11 13 103 ▄▃▄▇▅█▅▄▃▂▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▅ ^ 130-139K
- zobzu 13y agoAs a h1b in SF for more than a year and having had offers from all "top 10" sv companies that's what I noticed: - you do save money even at 100k/y and your quality of life is fine as a single man (i was making 45k EUR in europe, which is rather "low" anyways) - taxes are ~45% - some things are cheaper, some things are more expensive. don't get too sick, it'll ruin you, tho. Seriously. Don't. - i started at 110k for a niche job (which was already under the rate) and got a rise to match the market after a year (120k) - my US colleagues are paid 140 to 180k (its a niche job), none of them is exceptional, albeit they're all fine - i get about 1 offers a week (the first weeks its like 10 a week tho) on sites like linkedin once i changed my location, but the tone change when they realize you're on h1b - i can't be promoted easily, so US guys take the management positions now all that being said its still an awesome experience, the money is still very good. if i eat out every single day 'n stuff.. yeah i wont save much if anything, but i don't. i didn't in europe either, and i certainly eat out more here, just because I _can_.
- blklane 13y agoI created a graph to display the data that I pulled from the poll around 10pm EST on 6/2/13: http://glacial-island-9881.herokuapp.com/ http://glacial-island-9881.herokuapp.com/
- vietlq 13y agoWouldn't it better if salaries & years of experience paired? Salaries alone tell only part of the story. Even better, one can add technology stack to get more insight. Thanks.