11 ms·

Tech salary insights from 1.2M foreign worker visas

125 points by kevingao1 12y ago

runako 12y ago
According to the data here, salaries for "Senior software engineer" in both SF and NYC are lagging rental inflation over the last 5 years. Does this jibe with reality? Is the data bad, or are engineers losing ground?
- kelukelugames 12y ago
  To be honest the numbers sound low. This could be because visa holders don't have a lot of leverage when negotiating. I have seen much higher paystubs and offer letters for the listed companies in Seattle. And I imagine the valley and NYC pays more than Seattle despite some companies claiming they don't change pay based on location.
  - fooaway 12y ago
    Low? They seem high! Is this total comp or just base?
    - potatolicious 12y ago
      These numbers seem low for just base. $120K in NYC for a senior engineer is low - anecdotally I see it more at $150-170K nowadays. I don't think there's a good reason why a capable, senior engineer would entertain a total comp under $200K these days in NYC - and I know many companies here that play with these numbers. I think the fact that these are labor cert numbers definitely skews the data downwards.
      - ryandrake 12y ago
        You know, whenever we get one of these salary articles on HN, there's always one or two people chiming in with vague anecdotes like "That seems really low! Most engineers I know are making $200K+!" or "Company X pays engineers $250K LOL" despite the fact that most responses (backed up by averages from anonymously-reported salaries like Glassdoor) seem to agree that $90-$140K is about average in SF and NYC. Not that I don't believe you, but I'd love to, one day, actually see a real, specific engineering job posting with a published (or unpublished) base salary offering over $200K. Just one.
        kelukelugames 12y ago
        Yeah, it's tough. Especially since everyone inflates their earnings. But this is what I surmised after researching and interviewing at a dozen companies: I compared my offers with friends and concluded a mid level (non-senior, not college hire) dev should make at least 135k for base salary and enough stocks and bonuses to surpass 200k per year. This is for Seattle as of spring 2014. However I followed my heart and accepted a slightly lower offer to join a start up. Caveat: never believe any compensation numbers you read online or hear in person. People brag and exaggerate. Engineers lie to recruiters, recruiters lie to engineers, recruiters lie to other recruiters, and engineers lie to each other. I only believe numbers when I 1) see an offer letter, 2) see a pay stub, or 3) hear multiple people with the same job title tell me identical numbers.
- seiji 12y ago
  My rent is going up by 10% next month at lease renewal time. My yearly review/raise increase was ~1%.
  - Domenic_S 12y ago
    You have to consider housing cost as a % of your salary, not as a % of itself. For example, say your rent is $1000 and your salary is $100k. A 10% increase of rent is $100; a 1% salary increase is $1000. Net gain $900.
    - seiji 12y ago
      Excellent point except for the math mistake! A 10% rent increase in $1000/month rent make the new rent $1100/month, so your total additional cost is $1200/year, not $100/year! Then, on top of all that, your salary increase is taxable. A $1,000 salary increase will only get you about an extra $600 per year. So, you're certainly not coming out ahead. My actual numbers are a $300/month rent increase (which totals $3,600 more per year for the same space and the same services) combined with a less than $3,000 pre-tax raise for the year. Also see any generic michaelochurch rant about how landlords try to capture all economic gains (and they require "proof of income" so they know how much you _could_ afford if you really had to).
      - S4M 12y ago
        Slightly OT, but I am wondering what would happen if the landlords were tax at 100% (or even more) on the rent they perceive. I have this weird dream where it wouldn't be profitable to speculate on real estate, and real estate would become a commodity just like cars.
      - Domenic_S 12y ago
        Meh, land is an asset, and they aren't making any more of it. A reasonable person would expect use cost to increase over time, especially in high-population centers like SF and NYC where the game is basically "is someone else as qualified as you willing to pay me more?" -- which is, incidentally, the same game we play with our salaries. That's why fixed-rate mortgages are so great. Your housing payment is guaranteed not to rise! (taxes notwithstanding)
- michaelochurch 12y ago
  Is the data bad, or are engineers losing ground? Everyone is losing ground. Engineers are just less fucked than most of the Former Middle Class. The Satanic Trinity of housing, healthcare, and education is going up faster than pay for pretty much everyone except corporate upper management. I don't think the data's bad. Not even close. Those numbers seem about accurate for starting salaries.
- sratner 12y ago
  The prevailing wage data does not necessarily reflect what people are actually paid. It is the minimum required salary for the company to be able to apply for a labour certification on behalf of a foreign worker. It is obviously in the company's interest to commit to the lowest salary the DOL will let them get away with for a given level of worker. There is another potential effect: as part of the labour certification process, the company is required to post up the applications of all foreigners it is hiring in a "prominent location" for around two weeks, to make sure all other employees are aware of it. It can be rather awkward to post up an LCA with a number on it that is significantly higher than what others in the company are getting. My experience has been that many people are paid significantly more than the prevailing wage on the application. As mentioned, this is also just the base rate, without bonuses or equity. I would say this analysis is useful for drawing comparisons between companies and observing trends, but less useful for the absolute numbers.
- bubbleRefuge 12y ago
  Got a 17% rent bump on peninsula. Seems rents are in fact rising faster than salaries for tech workers and for non-tech workers this kind of inflation must be unimaginable!
- endtime 12y ago
  At least if you work for Google (as I do), comp growth seems to stay ahead of costs if your lifestyle doesn't change too much. But if you want to get married and have a kid (and live in a two-bedroom apartment) it starts feeling pretty expensive pretty fast. And housing costs are nuts in NYC (on top of the raw numbers, which might be comparable to SF at the low end, the market is obfuscated by slimy agents and a cheap apartment in NYC can be of shockingly poor quality).
namenotrequired 12y ago
> Marketing Director — $400,700 > Director of Marketing — $385,000 Are these different roles now?
- dpritchett 12y ago
  There are actual reported data points underlying this. Likely they are just two similar jobs (maybe even the same one in different time frames) that were reported differently.
  - spacehome 12y ago
    Could just be measurement error, too.
  - kevingao1 12y ago
    agreed -- there's no uniformity in how companies fill out these apps; for example, as I briefly mentioned in the post but didn't look far into, even the company name "Google" was typed in 3 or 4 ways
dalek2point3 12y ago
" salary data from more than 1.2 million work visa applications the US Department of Labor has received between 2009 and 2013." this seems like a treasure trove. any links to the raw data?
- dpritchett 12y ago
  http://www.flcdatacenter.com/caseh1b.aspx http://www.flcdatacenter.com/caseh1b.aspx
- sratner 12y ago
  A bunch of data here, and not just for H-1Bs: http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/performancedata.cfm#dis http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/performancedata.cfm#d... [edit: for a searchable interface to this data, as well as complete approved applications, check out http://dolstats.com/ http://dolstats.com/]
untog 12y ago
Most interesting takeaway for me is that salaries weren't significantly higher in SF in 2013. As someone living in NYC I always imagined moving to SF/Silicon Valley would give me a big pay bump. Also one thing to note here: these are 'Labor Condition Applications', not actual salaries. Often they are one and the same, but (for example) they do not include pay rises. I've ended up being paid more than every LCA I've had since I've been in the US.
- kevingao1 12y ago
  that's really interesting; there are so many caveats with the data that i almost thought it wasn't worth sharing, but we can let people draw conclusions themselves (and hopefully follow-up with other analyses, comments, etc) if you don't mind, %-wise, how much more were you paid than your LCA? and do you think this is representative of others?
- bduerst 12y ago
  This is biased data. As someone who has mined the LCA data applications, I can say you're absolutely right. These are H1B labor applications, and salaries are carefully calculated to be a certain margin over the average salaries for the same SOC jobs for employed citizens in the region. These SOC classifications can be nebulous and thus not reflective of the true market - e.g. "PROGRAMMER" could be anything from data entry to senior software engineer. This means that the salaries are calculated and set for a successful LCA approval, NOT the market rate.
michaelochurch 12y ago
We're not in a salary bubble. If anything, it's the opposite. I've analyzed the hell out of this "salary bubble" issue (or non-issue, because there is no such thing) at length. http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/05/24/whats-a-mid-career-software-engineer-actually-worth-try-779000-per-year-as-a-lower-bound/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/05/24/whats-a-mid-c... http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/software-engineer-salaries-arent-inflated-at-least-not-for-the-99/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/software-engi...
- FD3SA 12y ago
  This man speaks the truth. Michael has elucidated the the nature of employee/employer relations in tech with surgical precision. Highly recommended. Particularly, this article [1] about the perceived status of engineers vs. managers solidified my suspicions about the status hierarchies inherent to the industry. 1. http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/how-the-other-half-works-an-adventure-in-the-low-status-of-software-engineers/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/how-the-other...
- nostrademons 12y ago
  Your first article is based on faulty economics. When productivity increases are shared across an industry, nobody in the industry benefits. Instead, the benefits accrue to the customers and complements of the industry. There's a long historical precedent for that - productivity improvements in textile manufacturing destroyed the textile industry, productivity improvements in farming destroyed the small farmer, productivity improvements in fishing destroyed the individual fisherman. Applied to software, the reason engineers aren't capturing most of that value is because all engineers are getting more productive. The benefit is accruing instead to those who employ engineers and those who use & purchase software. The exceptions are those fields where there are still significant barriers to entry and effective techniques are not widespread - isn't this why you want to become a data scientist? I might buy that we're not in a salary bubble, but not for the reasons you propose. Rather, I'd say that the existence of a thriving market for startup founders is a market inefficiency. When engineers top out at $200K at a corporate job (and they don't always...I know some engineers with multi-million-$ stock grants) but can quit their job and instantly get millions in seed funding, that indicates that salaries should rise and seed funding availability should fall to bring those options back to equilibrium.
captainaj 12y ago
Engineers are just middle class who didn't get screwed. The real bubble is in the medical industry and Wall Street and it's not gonna pop any time soon.
- kissickas 12y ago
  Some would say that the medical industry isn't seeing a bubble, as much of the inflation in prices and salaries is going straight to the insurance companies - so the real bubble is in Wall Street and Wall Street.
  - captainaj 12y ago
    Yes the cost of health care is extremely inflated. However, it is not just insurance companies who benefit from this trend. Doctors' base salary is 189k while investment bank associates (2 years experience) get paid around that with salary and bonus. Most of the doctors I know are millionaires.
  - autokad 12y ago
    If the argument that medical spending cannot continue to keep rising at present rates, then I would argue its a bubble. I also do not believe 'going straight to insurance companies'. Their profit margins are usually around 5% (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=UNH+Key+Statistics http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=UNH+Key+Statistics)
  - stephencanon 12y ago
    s/insurance companies/private hospitals and specialists willing to engage in questionable billing practices/
simonsarris 12y ago
Why are tech salaries so low? Especially from these companies with large profit margins and huge revenue per employee numbers. It seems like engineers have captured almost nothing of the fruit of their labors.
- thejdude 12y ago
  That's low to you? Wow. Just wow. Over here in Europe (or at least Germany) salaries are incredibly uniform (doesn't really matter if you suck or get as much done in a day as others in 1-2 weeks; if your bugs get constantly reopened or your code is rock-solid), and most people seem to get maybe 35-50k€ after graduation (diploma/master's degree).
  - untog 12y ago
    Bear in mind that the US is severely out of whack in terms of work/life balance. It's one of the things I find most difficult about living here - when I first arrived I had 10 days vacation a year. I currently only have 15. And don't forget to factor in healthcare costs and the like. Money certainly isn't everything.
    - thejdude 12y ago
      Yes, but healthcare is a few 100 bucks a month, which we pay too, only for us it's mandatory by government. Vacation sounds like a real problem, but it seems like you could circumvent that by going freelance and just taking off x days a year between projects.
      - untog 12y ago
        Well, on a visa you certainly can't.
      - pessimizer 12y ago
        Germany and the US do not pay the same amount for health care (regardless of who is responsible for actually sending the check.) http://www.statista.com/statistics/215502/per-capita-health-care-spending-in-us-canada-and-germany/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/215502/per-capita-health-...
wheaties 12y ago
One confounding factor not considered here is the number of "senior" engineers with less than 4yr work experience. Seriously, title inflation is just as rampant if not more in the tech sector than wage inflation. So how do you account for Senior Engineer vs here's a job we'll just add this nice title to.
- suyash 12y ago
  I never clearly understood how many years of experience you need to become Sr. exactly, seems like everyone follows different rules.
  - kevingao1 12y ago
    agreed -- it varies significantly based on company culture, size
  - tromobne8vb 12y ago
    It is completely arbitrary. At our company the entry level developer is "Senior <language> Developer". It is literally the lowest developer title you can have.
  - kin 12y ago
    It's all over the place. A college dropout who starts a start-up as CTO then fails within the year will apply as a senior. But, it's one of those things where I don't judge a book by its cover in either direction. After talking to the person in the right context there's a certain confidence and deep level of understanding that I expect from senior engineers and it never reflects their years of experience.
    - serve_yay 12y ago
      Yep, I agree with all of that. A lack of a cut-and-dried definition in terms of years or other objective measurements makes it hard to compile data, but that is exactly how I think of a senior developer.
- spacehome 12y ago
zx33 12y ago
Here is some detailed analysis on H1b visa app (it does not seem to be current year) http://www.infocaptor.com/dashboard/what-will-america-pay-to-h1b-job-candidates http://www.infocaptor.com/dashboard/what-will-america-pay-to...
smrtinsert 12y ago
If Yahoos engineering salaries are so great, why do we never hear about them? How's their worklife balance?
- kevingao1 12y ago
  one piece which i tried to mention here is that salar.ly and LCA don't incorporate equity, incentive bonuses, and other pieces of compensation; this is just the base salary submitted in the application. for example ex-Google friend immediately felt like Google was too low, since a significant % of their comp is tied to incentive bonuses; and for startups, you'd have to consider the dollar value of equity
- shawndumas 12y ago
  As a Yahoo I'd have to say that I am loving it over here... (obviously this is purely anecdotal).
cagriaksay 12y ago
We recently used salary prediction data to come up with salary charts and maps as well: https://salaryfairy.com/salary https://salaryfairy.com/salary One interesting finding was that not only SF salaries are much higher compared to rest of the US, but users from SF tend to over-estimate how much the rest of the country is making. You can see this effect in the third map at https://salaryfairy.com/blog/first-10k-users-salary-maps-and-charts https://salaryfairy.com/blog/first-10k-users-salary-maps-and...
- madcaptenor 12y ago
  For what it's worth, I work for a company that has offices in both Atlanta (which is probably a relatively low-wage market) and San Francisco. I was given a choice between the two offices (I lived in SF at the time of the offer but was looking to move) and was offered X in Atlanta or about 1.2X in SF. (I took Atlanta, by the way. The cost of living difference is much larger than 20%.)
  - cagriaksay 12y ago
    No kidding! I just checked Atlanta vs SF cost of living out of curiosity. SF cost of living is almost twice and rent cost is almost triple. Crazy!
    - madcaptenor 12y ago
      When I was thinking of moving and looking into what the tech scene was like in Atlanta, I found this post on "startups for grownups": http://academicvc.com/2013/07/05/startups-for-grownups/ http://academicvc.com/2013/07/05/startups-for-grownups/ .
ErikRogneby 12y ago
It looks like Microsoft is the only product company in the top 10 for VISAs. All of the rest are essentially work for hire (and offshore) dev/consulting companies. http://www.salar.ly/statistics http://www.salar.ly/statistics
agilecoder 12y ago
As I've commented on other stories like this... The biggest thing to know about these data from the US Department of Labor (DOL) is that they DO NOT reflect visas granted. They reflect Labor Condition Applications (LCAs) granted. denied, etc. This is only one part of the application for a visa, and every year the DOL certifies far more LCAs than there are available visas. It is impossible to tell from the LCA data what companies actually followed through with the rest of the process and fees and were able to sponsor a foreign worker before the visa cap was hit each year. That information would come from US Citizenship and Immigration Service, and as far as I can find they do not release that information.
bfrog 12y ago
Salary bubble? More like a Salary deficit compared to the cost of living increases. Housing, Health, and Education have all nearly doubled in the last 15 years. My wages certainly didn't double.
kuni-toko-tachi 12y ago
Salary work is a dead end path. The only way to capture your economic value is to put it on the market as a business. I've taken too long to learn this. At a certain point you say to yourself that making the same thing week after week is foolish and you throw yourself into the fire to make it on your own.
kgabis 12y ago
How hard is it to get a job in the US for an EU citizen? I've heard that one could wait for up to 2 years for a visa, so most small/middle-sized companies just don't bother and hire only US-based developers. Is it any easier for people with degrees in compsci?

125 points by kevingao1 12y ago

According to the data here, salaries for "Senior software engineer" in both SF and NYC are lagging rental inflation over the last 5 years. Does this jibe with reality? Is the data bad, or are engineers losing ground?

kelukelugames 12y ago
To be honest the numbers sound low. This could be because visa holders don't have a lot of leverage when negotiating. I have seen much higher paystubs and offer letters for the listed companies in Seattle. And I imagine the valley and NYC pays more than Seattle despite some companies claiming they don't change pay based on location.
- fooaway 12y ago
  Low? They seem high! Is this total comp or just base?
  - potatolicious 12y ago
    These numbers seem low for just base. $120K in NYC for a senior engineer is low - anecdotally I see it more at $150-170K nowadays. I don't think there's a good reason why a capable, senior engineer would entertain a total comp under $200K these days in NYC - and I know many companies here that play with these numbers. I think the fact that these are labor cert numbers definitely skews the data downwards.
    - ryandrake 12y ago
      You know, whenever we get one of these salary articles on HN, there's always one or two people chiming in with vague anecdotes like "That seems really low! Most engineers I know are making $200K+!" or "Company X pays engineers $250K LOL" despite the fact that most responses (backed up by averages from anonymously-reported salaries like Glassdoor) seem to agree that $90-$140K is about average in SF and NYC. Not that I don't believe you, but I'd love to, one day, actually see a real, specific engineering job posting with a published (or unpublished) base salary offering over $200K. Just one.
      - kelukelugames 12y ago
        Yeah, it's tough. Especially since everyone inflates their earnings. But this is what I surmised after researching and interviewing at a dozen companies: I compared my offers with friends and concluded a mid level (non-senior, not college hire) dev should make at least 135k for base salary and enough stocks and bonuses to surpass 200k per year. This is for Seattle as of spring 2014. However I followed my heart and accepted a slightly lower offer to join a start up. Caveat: never believe any compensation numbers you read online or hear in person. People brag and exaggerate. Engineers lie to recruiters, recruiters lie to engineers, recruiters lie to other recruiters, and engineers lie to each other. I only believe numbers when I 1) see an offer letter, 2) see a pay stub, or 3) hear multiple people with the same job title tell me identical numbers.
seiji 12y ago
My rent is going up by 10% next month at lease renewal time. My yearly review/raise increase was ~1%.
- Domenic_S 12y ago
  You have to consider housing cost as a % of your salary, not as a % of itself. For example, say your rent is $1000 and your salary is $100k. A 10% increase of rent is $100; a 1% salary increase is $1000. Net gain $900.
  - seiji 12y ago
    Excellent point except for the math mistake! A 10% rent increase in $1000/month rent make the new rent $1100/month, so your total additional cost is $1200/year, not $100/year! Then, on top of all that, your salary increase is taxable. A $1,000 salary increase will only get you about an extra $600 per year. So, you're certainly not coming out ahead. My actual numbers are a $300/month rent increase (which totals $3,600 more per year for the same space and the same services) combined with a less than $3,000 pre-tax raise for the year. Also see any generic michaelochurch rant about how landlords try to capture all economic gains (and they require "proof of income" so they know how much you _could_ afford if you really had to).
    - S4M 12y ago
      Slightly OT, but I am wondering what would happen if the landlords were tax at 100% (or even more) on the rent they perceive. I have this weird dream where it wouldn't be profitable to speculate on real estate, and real estate would become a commodity just like cars.
    - Domenic_S 12y ago
      Meh, land is an asset, and they aren't making any more of it. A reasonable person would expect use cost to increase over time, especially in high-population centers like SF and NYC where the game is basically "is someone else as qualified as you willing to pay me more?" -- which is, incidentally, the same game we play with our salaries. That's why fixed-rate mortgages are so great. Your housing payment is guaranteed not to rise! (taxes notwithstanding)
michaelochurch 12y ago
Is the data bad, or are engineers losing ground? Everyone is losing ground. Engineers are just less fucked than most of the Former Middle Class. The Satanic Trinity of housing, healthcare, and education is going up faster than pay for pretty much everyone except corporate upper management. I don't think the data's bad. Not even close. Those numbers seem about accurate for starting salaries.
sratner 12y ago
The prevailing wage data does not necessarily reflect what people are actually paid. It is the minimum required salary for the company to be able to apply for a labour certification on behalf of a foreign worker. It is obviously in the company's interest to commit to the lowest salary the DOL will let them get away with for a given level of worker. There is another potential effect: as part of the labour certification process, the company is required to post up the applications of all foreigners it is hiring in a "prominent location" for around two weeks, to make sure all other employees are aware of it. It can be rather awkward to post up an LCA with a number on it that is significantly higher than what others in the company are getting. My experience has been that many people are paid significantly more than the prevailing wage on the application. As mentioned, this is also just the base rate, without bonuses or equity. I would say this analysis is useful for drawing comparisons between companies and observing trends, but less useful for the absolute numbers.
bubbleRefuge 12y ago
Got a 17% rent bump on peninsula. Seems rents are in fact rising faster than salaries for tech workers and for non-tech workers this kind of inflation must be unimaginable!
endtime 12y ago
At least if you work for Google (as I do), comp growth seems to stay ahead of costs if your lifestyle doesn't change too much. But if you want to get married and have a kid (and live in a two-bedroom apartment) it starts feeling pretty expensive pretty fast. And housing costs are nuts in NYC (on top of the raw numbers, which might be comparable to SF at the low end, the market is obfuscated by slimy agents and a cheap apartment in NYC can be of shockingly poor quality).

namenotrequired 12y ago

> Marketing Director — $400,700 > Director of Marketing — $385,000 Are these different roles now?

dpritchett 12y ago
There are actual reported data points underlying this. Likely they are just two similar jobs (maybe even the same one in different time frames) that were reported differently.
- spacehome 12y ago
  Could just be measurement error, too.
- kevingao1 12y ago
  agreed -- there's no uniformity in how companies fill out these apps; for example, as I briefly mentioned in the post but didn't look far into, even the company name "Google" was typed in 3 or 4 ways

dalek2point3 12y ago

" salary data from more than 1.2 million work visa applications the US Department of Labor has received between 2009 and 2013." this seems like a treasure trove. any links to the raw data?

dpritchett 12y ago
http://www.flcdatacenter.com/caseh1b.aspx http://www.flcdatacenter.com/caseh1b.aspx
sratner 12y ago
A bunch of data here, and not just for H-1Bs: http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/performancedata.cfm#dis http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/performancedata.cfm#d... [edit: for a searchable interface to this data, as well as complete approved applications, check out http://dolstats.com/ http://dolstats.com/]

untog 12y ago

Most interesting takeaway for me is that salaries weren't significantly higher in SF in 2013. As someone living in NYC I always imagined moving to SF/Silicon Valley would give me a big pay bump. Also one thing to note here: these are 'Labor Condition Applications', not actual salaries. Often they are one and the same, but (for example) they do not include pay rises. I've ended up being paid more than every LCA I've had since I've been in the US.

kevingao1 12y ago
that's really interesting; there are so many caveats with the data that i almost thought it wasn't worth sharing, but we can let people draw conclusions themselves (and hopefully follow-up with other analyses, comments, etc) if you don't mind, %-wise, how much more were you paid than your LCA? and do you think this is representative of others?
bduerst 12y ago
This is biased data. As someone who has mined the LCA data applications, I can say you're absolutely right. These are H1B labor applications, and salaries are carefully calculated to be a certain margin over the average salaries for the same SOC jobs for employed citizens in the region. These SOC classifications can be nebulous and thus not reflective of the true market - e.g. "PROGRAMMER" could be anything from data entry to senior software engineer. This means that the salaries are calculated and set for a successful LCA approval, NOT the market rate.

michaelochurch 12y ago

We're not in a salary bubble. If anything, it's the opposite. I've analyzed the hell out of this "salary bubble" issue (or non-issue, because there is no such thing) at length. http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/05/24/whats-a-mid-career-software-engineer-actually-worth-try-779000-per-year-as-a-lower-bound/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/05/24/whats-a-mid-c... http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/software-engineer-salaries-arent-inflated-at-least-not-for-the-99/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/11/03/software-engi...

FD3SA 12y ago
This man speaks the truth. Michael has elucidated the the nature of employee/employer relations in tech with surgical precision. Highly recommended. Particularly, this article [1] about the perceived status of engineers vs. managers solidified my suspicions about the status hierarchies inherent to the industry. 1. http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/how-the-other-half-works-an-adventure-in-the-low-status-of-software-engineers/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/how-the-other...
nostrademons 12y ago
Your first article is based on faulty economics. When productivity increases are shared across an industry, nobody in the industry benefits. Instead, the benefits accrue to the customers and complements of the industry. There's a long historical precedent for that - productivity improvements in textile manufacturing destroyed the textile industry, productivity improvements in farming destroyed the small farmer, productivity improvements in fishing destroyed the individual fisherman. Applied to software, the reason engineers aren't capturing most of that value is because all engineers are getting more productive. The benefit is accruing instead to those who employ engineers and those who use & purchase software. The exceptions are those fields where there are still significant barriers to entry and effective techniques are not widespread - isn't this why you want to become a data scientist? I might buy that we're not in a salary bubble, but not for the reasons you propose. Rather, I'd say that the existence of a thriving market for startup founders is a market inefficiency. When engineers top out at $200K at a corporate job (and they don't always...I know some engineers with multi-million-$ stock grants) but can quit their job and instantly get millions in seed funding, that indicates that salaries should rise and seed funding availability should fall to bring those options back to equilibrium.

captainaj 12y ago

Engineers are just middle class who didn't get screwed. The real bubble is in the medical industry and Wall Street and it's not gonna pop any time soon.

kissickas 12y ago
Some would say that the medical industry isn't seeing a bubble, as much of the inflation in prices and salaries is going straight to the insurance companies - so the real bubble is in Wall Street and Wall Street.
- captainaj 12y ago
  Yes the cost of health care is extremely inflated. However, it is not just insurance companies who benefit from this trend. Doctors' base salary is 189k while investment bank associates (2 years experience) get paid around that with salary and bonus. Most of the doctors I know are millionaires.
- autokad 12y ago
  If the argument that medical spending cannot continue to keep rising at present rates, then I would argue its a bubble. I also do not believe 'going straight to insurance companies'. Their profit margins are usually around 5% (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=UNH+Key+Statistics http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=UNH+Key+Statistics)
- stephencanon 12y ago
  s/insurance companies/private hospitals and specialists willing to engage in questionable billing practices/

simonsarris 12y ago

Why are tech salaries so low? Especially from these companies with large profit margins and huge revenue per employee numbers. It seems like engineers have captured almost nothing of the fruit of their labors.

thejdude 12y ago
That's low to you? Wow. Just wow. Over here in Europe (or at least Germany) salaries are incredibly uniform (doesn't really matter if you suck or get as much done in a day as others in 1-2 weeks; if your bugs get constantly reopened or your code is rock-solid), and most people seem to get maybe 35-50k€ after graduation (diploma/master's degree).
- untog 12y ago
  Bear in mind that the US is severely out of whack in terms of work/life balance. It's one of the things I find most difficult about living here - when I first arrived I had 10 days vacation a year. I currently only have 15. And don't forget to factor in healthcare costs and the like. Money certainly isn't everything.
  - thejdude 12y ago
    Yes, but healthcare is a few 100 bucks a month, which we pay too, only for us it's mandatory by government. Vacation sounds like a real problem, but it seems like you could circumvent that by going freelance and just taking off x days a year between projects.
    - untog 12y ago
      Well, on a visa you certainly can't.
    - pessimizer 12y ago
      Germany and the US do not pay the same amount for health care (regardless of who is responsible for actually sending the check.) http://www.statista.com/statistics/215502/per-capita-health-care-spending-in-us-canada-and-germany/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/215502/per-capita-health-...

wheaties 12y ago

One confounding factor not considered here is the number of "senior" engineers with less than 4yr work experience. Seriously, title inflation is just as rampant if not more in the tech sector than wage inflation. So how do you account for Senior Engineer vs here's a job we'll just add this nice title to.

suyash 12y ago
I never clearly understood how many years of experience you need to become Sr. exactly, seems like everyone follows different rules.
- kevingao1 12y ago
  agreed -- it varies significantly based on company culture, size
- tromobne8vb 12y ago
  It is completely arbitrary. At our company the entry level developer is "Senior <language> Developer". It is literally the lowest developer title you can have.
- kin 12y ago
  It's all over the place. A college dropout who starts a start-up as CTO then fails within the year will apply as a senior. But, it's one of those things where I don't judge a book by its cover in either direction. After talking to the person in the right context there's a certain confidence and deep level of understanding that I expect from senior engineers and it never reflects their years of experience.
  - serve_yay 12y ago
    Yep, I agree with all of that. A lack of a cut-and-dried definition in terms of years or other objective measurements makes it hard to compile data, but that is exactly how I think of a senior developer.
spacehome 12y ago

zx33 12y ago

Here is some detailed analysis on H1b visa app (it does not seem to be current year) http://www.infocaptor.com/dashboard/what-will-america-pay-to-h1b-job-candidates http://www.infocaptor.com/dashboard/what-will-america-pay-to...

smrtinsert 12y ago

If Yahoos engineering salaries are so great, why do we never hear about them? How's their worklife balance?

kevingao1 12y ago
one piece which i tried to mention here is that salar.ly and LCA don't incorporate equity, incentive bonuses, and other pieces of compensation; this is just the base salary submitted in the application. for example ex-Google friend immediately felt like Google was too low, since a significant % of their comp is tied to incentive bonuses; and for startups, you'd have to consider the dollar value of equity
shawndumas 12y ago
As a Yahoo I'd have to say that I am loving it over here... (obviously this is purely anecdotal).

cagriaksay 12y ago

We recently used salary prediction data to come up with salary charts and maps as well: https://salaryfairy.com/salary https://salaryfairy.com/salary One interesting finding was that not only SF salaries are much higher compared to rest of the US, but users from SF tend to over-estimate how much the rest of the country is making. You can see this effect in the third map at https://salaryfairy.com/blog/first-10k-users-salary-maps-and-charts https://salaryfairy.com/blog/first-10k-users-salary-maps-and...

madcaptenor 12y ago
For what it's worth, I work for a company that has offices in both Atlanta (which is probably a relatively low-wage market) and San Francisco. I was given a choice between the two offices (I lived in SF at the time of the offer but was looking to move) and was offered X in Atlanta or about 1.2X in SF. (I took Atlanta, by the way. The cost of living difference is much larger than 20%.)
- cagriaksay 12y ago
  No kidding! I just checked Atlanta vs SF cost of living out of curiosity. SF cost of living is almost twice and rent cost is almost triple. Crazy!
  - madcaptenor 12y ago
    When I was thinking of moving and looking into what the tech scene was like in Atlanta, I found this post on "startups for grownups": http://academicvc.com/2013/07/05/startups-for-grownups/ http://academicvc.com/2013/07/05/startups-for-grownups/ .

ErikRogneby 12y ago

It looks like Microsoft is the only product company in the top 10 for VISAs. All of the rest are essentially work for hire (and offshore) dev/consulting companies. http://www.salar.ly/statistics http://www.salar.ly/statistics

agilecoder 12y ago

As I've commented on other stories like this... The biggest thing to know about these data from the US Department of Labor (DOL) is that they DO NOT reflect visas granted. They reflect Labor Condition Applications (LCAs) granted. denied, etc. This is only one part of the application for a visa, and every year the DOL certifies far more LCAs than there are available visas. It is impossible to tell from the LCA data what companies actually followed through with the rest of the process and fees and were able to sponsor a foreign worker before the visa cap was hit each year. That information would come from US Citizenship and Immigration Service, and as far as I can find they do not release that information.

bfrog 12y ago

Salary bubble? More like a Salary deficit compared to the cost of living increases. Housing, Health, and Education have all nearly doubled in the last 15 years. My wages certainly didn't double.

kuni-toko-tachi 12y ago

Salary work is a dead end path. The only way to capture your economic value is to put it on the market as a business. I've taken too long to learn this. At a certain point you say to yourself that making the same thing week after week is foolish and you throw yourself into the fire to make it on your own.

kgabis 12y ago

How hard is it to get a job in the US for an EU citizen? I've heard that one could wait for up to 2 years for a visa, so most small/middle-sized companies just don't bother and hire only US-based developers. Is it any easier for people with degrees in compsci?