10 ms·
depressing, midwest software engineer here, 6 years experience 60k.
by gocards 13y ago
depressing, 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.
- cglace 13y agoInteresting, that number is about the same as it is here in Atlanta but the cost of living is drastically lower.
- encoderer 13y agoThe average salary for a software engineer in ATL is 110-140k? I talked to 2 companies in Atlanta in 2010ish (MailChimp and a smaller private company) and their salary ranges were well below that ($90-110k iirc). I'm surprised to hear it's so high!
- philsnow 13y agoNot to discourage you from the idea of moving to the bay area... but shit's crazy here if you have a family. If you buy into the idea that where (and with whom) your children go to school will heavily influence their success/happiness, you'll find yourself choosing between expensive-area public schools and expensive private schools. Most of the public schools in California are pretty crappy (and the bay area is no exception), and to get into the ones that are good (by some measure), you have to swallow either huge rent or a huge mortgage so you can live in their area. There are some good private schools, and you don't have to live in super-expensive areas to send your kids there, but aren't there excellent private schools outside the bay area / in lower cost-of-living areas ? For your particular situation, you may find that the math works out to stay in the midwest. Additionally, that's just the raw numbers; there are lots of "intangible" factors that favor the midwest over the bay area, especially if you have any kind of roots there.
- yen223 13y agoHah, be thankful you're in America. Third-world programmers get half that if they're good.
- mcyankee 13y agoI can only speak for a city called Rosario, in Argentina... it's actually a sixth of that: u$s10k
- Willyfrog 13y agoI'm a junior developer in Spain and it's 26k€, and I probably can't complain given the situation here.
- venomsnake 13y agoYeah same in Bulgaria. The salaries are low ...
- nandemo 13y agoEven in rest of the developed world the average programmer doesn't earn U$150k + bonus.
- myko 13y agoHave you job shopped much? I'm from the midwest as well and my first offer out of school was 65k, I hadn't done anything particularly crazy awesome to impress anyone either.
- meritt 13y agoMove to Kansas City. You can easily get 80-100k.
- gocards 13y agoProbably plan to, or St.Louis, or Chicago in the next half year or so
- meritt 13y agoNice. Chicago would easily be 100k+ but the COL is substantial there. KC is awesome yet extremely very affordable. STL maybe in the west burbs. Not the best city, especially for a family.
- gocards 13y agoGood synopsis, to be honest I'll probably go full-time freelance in one of those cities in the next year if life continues "as planned". Would love the flexibility to travel and be a dad first and also to work long hours when needed / excited about a project. Currently, if I take on a side-job a month (and I currently do that a few months of the year), I can fairly easily match my monthly salary with considerably less effort and work. Thanks everyone for the info/advice
- penfro 13y agoMove to Madison, WI. I'm at 105k and the market is pretty strong.
- famousactress 13y agoHave you applied for remote positions? I work remotely for a startup in SF and we're hiring :)
- zerr 13y agoGiven you know his current salary, would you offer 2-3x bump?
- TwelveFactor 13y agoI'm from the midwest with the same amount of experience. 85k here with a 10% yearly bonus. There's plenty of opportunities for a competitive salary in the midwest.
- caniszczyk 13y agoTotally agree, love the midwest and the south!
- dminor 13y agoJust post the typical cost of a 3 bedroom house in your area and watch the bay area folk get depressed.
- gocards 13y ago115k
- sliverstorm 13y agoThere was an article just recently, average SF house price just hit $1M
- omphalos 13y agoMedian is more informative than the mean with this sort of thing
- sliverstorm 13y agoThat was actually my mistake, sorry! It was in fact median, not mean. http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/2013/05/median-home-price-hits-1-million-in.html http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/201...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- signifiers 13y ago
- nilkn 13y agoThe midwest is incredibly cheap, but you're still underpaid there. I was paid a fair bit more than that fresh out of college in Texas (Houston). You can find $100k-$150k homes here.
- mcyankee 13y agoCheer up! It could be worse, how about u$s10k/yr, 20yr experience... an american software engineer working in the south, very south, so south it's spelled as Argentina! Have a nice day!!
- conanbatt 13y agoThats low for argentinas standards. Web is not huge here, but you can make well over that, even for local companies as MercadoLibre. I think it makes no sense to compare salaries on Startups to salaries on typical engineer work in argentina. 99% of the work here is third-hand, cost-effective contractor outsourcing.
- um304 13y agoIn my country, folks with 6 years of experience make around 12-16k. For us, freelancing pays manyfolds higher than regular jobs.
- encoderer 13y agoI was you! In 2008 I left, first for a startup in Florida (a random place to end up, but compared to Ohio where I was, Florida was a booming tech hub). That brought me a 25-30% raise. There for a few years, then to SF, which brought literally a 120% increase. Yes, housing is expensive here. Yes, everything else is expensive, too. But it's still easily worth it. Because a lot of the things we buy -- cars, computers, cell phone plans, a european vacation -- cost the same whether you make $60k in Ohio or 2-3x that in California. Also, while moving is never cheap, and I've never had a 100% all expenses paid including housing relo package, I have gotten the basics paid for, meaning full-service pack-and-move and other travel costs. Remember you can always move back. When I first left Ohio, I started thinking about it in June, sent my resume to a few places in July and August. Got a call back mid august, onsite interview early september, offer a week later, a start date 5 weeks forward from that.