11 ms·

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 cap

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-...
      - thejdude 12y ago
        Not on average, but it's ~15% of your salary in Germany, so a high-income person pays a lot (it's capped at a certain level though).
  - barrkel 12y ago
    10 days vacation was one of the biggest reasons I didn't move to the US when I got my H-1B visa. Company policy was that vacation was a reward for tenure, rather than a negotiable component of compensation. Best they could do was offer 20 days for the first year, and only the first year. It was an asinine policy if you ask me. An immigrant is exactly the type of person who would want to take a holiday back home to see friends and family. To make the cost and hassle of two long flights worth it, it would have to be two weeks at least. And that would leave 0 days left for the rest of the year.
    - untog 12y ago
      Agreed, I spend most of my vacation days visiting family back home - it's been a long time since I've had an actual holiday, lying on a beach in the sun.
  - alkonaut 12y ago
    Yeah, that IS crazy. How come companies don't offer holdays as comp? Here (Sweden) having an extra week holiday (6 rather than 5 weeks) is a common comp. Why aren't companies competing with that in the US? If I was offered $150k with 10-15 days holiday and 50hr work weeks (expected), I'd immediately start bargaining for 25-30 paid days off, and make sure I wouldn't be expected to work more than 40h/w. Is that uncommon in the US? Or is it common to take unpaid days off, which you can afford given the high salaries?
    - untog 12y ago
      I suspect that, particularly in the startup arena, time is more valuable than money. VCs are throwing cash at you, but they want you to launch yesterday.
      - alkonaut 12y ago
        Sure, and I realize good developers are hard to find, but unless you are looking for the 23year old "ninja" type developers who like doing all nighters, would you not need to care about work/life balance of employees too? Startups that need to launch yesterday I realize often have young employees without family, but these are large corps like Oracle/Yahoo/Google, these have to employ quite a lot of engineers in their 30s, 40s and 50s? Like I said, I'd be willing to accept a substantially lower pay for a good holiday (5-6 weeks), and a good work/life balance otherwise, like good processes that ensure there's no regular "crunch time".
        nerfhammer 12y ago
        It's not part of the culture. People sometimes quietly grouse about the lack of vacation time or the number of hours but no one is willing to publicly do anything about it for whatever cultural reason.
        alkonaut 12y ago
        So in this culture, is it common to do a few years of high-income work with 12hr days and high compensation, and then you get a "quieter" job somewhere else when you need a job that allows you to pick the kids up at 4.30pm? Or how does it work? Obviously children aren't unheard of in Silicon Valley, and as far as I understand it's a pretty progressive part of the US, so I assume that families have two careers to worry about? Something doesn't add up if long days are norm.
  - monort 12y ago
    Does it means, that you can't get unpaid vacation days too? If you can get additional unpaid 15 days leave, then it's just 6% less salary per year.
- Iftheshoefits 12y ago
  Here in the US we basically have little or no social safety net, and certainly few meaningful regulations and laws protecting labor. Our "wow just wow" salaries have less buying power than yours, because any difference in the margins is eaten up by having to use the additional salary for basic services you would be able to (mostly) take for granted as being government supplied (via taxation and other means).
  - thejdude 12y ago
    I'm not too sure about that. Yes, if you compare the average American to the average European, you make more and have to pay for more things, so it more or less evens out. But developer salaries - definitely not.
    - Iftheshoefits 12y ago
      No, it doesn't really even out at all. There are several factors you're neglecting to consider here. The salaries listed here are in our highest cost of living areas. The vast majority of developers aren't earning anywhere near these wages. Most are in the $50,000-$90,000 range (not too far off of your EUR$35k - $50k figures). Second, I think you're discounting far too heavily how much extra the average American has to contribute on his own for his own health and retirement. One might consider the 15%-20% one should take out of his pre-tax salary for savings to be an implicit tax we have to pay. The federal marginal rate for an individual earning $130k/yr is around 30% (for the sake of argument--it's actually a bit higher). In SF and NY, the state taxes wll boost that 8%-10% (or more). So the base tax rate is already around 40%. Couple that with this implicit tax, and Americans are paying a "tax" that is about what Europeans pay. Except we get a lot less for it by a long, long way. And, actually, since it's infreqent to earn that much money as a software developer without having a college degree, there is the additional factor of the cost of our education. Most people can't afford the 15%-20% hit to their pay because of the high cost of everything else, so the 'add-on' cost that hits them in retirement is even worse.
      - thejdude 12y ago
        Well, a 50k salary will net you <30k€ in Germany (but more if you have kids). You probably should also save a bit for retirement, since you won't get much from the state (today's retired receive much more than they paid into the fund, but current generations will receive much less). Oh, and we have a 19% sales tax over here (7% on groceries, and food is actually very good and cheap in Germany, at least in stores). I'm surprised by the (low) 50-90k salaries you mention. I've always read much higher numbers. Probably due to the bias on blogs/news sites to West Coast companies.
- ryanSrich 12y ago
  I'll reiterate OP and say that these seem low to me as well...and dare I say that I still think Software Developers are underpaid?! These employees are bringing in billions of dollars for these companies and for them to still receive < $200k per year is appalling. Think about this. You get into work at 8am and you leave work at 8pm. You manage a team of engineers that are literally building the foundation for the future of the company. Your entire life is dedicated to making this company money. Do you still find those salaries low?
  - thejdude 12y ago
    Depends. Maybe you should get a bonus if your work really has such an impact. And if you talk managing a team, that's not a developer position, that's a lead position (to me anyway).
  - nilkn 12y ago
    > Think about this. You get into work at 8am and you leave work at 8pm. You manage a team of engineers that are literally building the foundation for the future of the company. Your entire life is dedicated to making this company money. Do you really think this is truly representative of what the typical programmer is doing day-by-day? Many will get in at 10am, leave at 4:30pm, manage nobody, and work on somewhat important projects that nevertheless are not even remotely the foundation for the entire company or the company's future. The people who actually worked on the foundations of these companies are already multi-millionaires. The people spearheading huge projects at the highest level are also almost certainly making far more than $200k/year.
  - alkonaut 12y ago
    > You get into work at 8am and you leave work at 8pm To be comparable, a salary number should reflect a full time work week, and be for a position which TWO people can hold, full time, while still having time to pick up kids. Obviously if I worked 12h days I'd be supporting my partner who could NOT have the same full time job. Not sure what these figures represent, I thought they were regular day-jobs, which you could hold while still having a meaningful work/life balance? > These employees are bringing in billions of dollars for these companies and for them to still receive < $200k per year is appalling. The same can be said for employees of any large corporation. Sure you may be more or less replaceable, but still: the dollars brought in are return on risk by investors. It's no more appalling than fast food workers being paid peanuts in fast food chains that make a billion.
- wyuenho 12y ago
  Hey ah guys. Most devs in HK earn < 30k USD a year. China is half that, Taiwan is even worse. When you factor in how freaking expensive everything is in HK, especially real estate, HK devs in general are basically slave labors.
  - ryanSrich 12y ago
    In the U.S. a Software Development(dev, designer, etc.) job is a middle class role. What is a developer in china? Lower class? What is a middleman class job then? EDIT: Should probably define middleman class then...I guess I'd have to say, being able to purchase a house, pay off student debt in less than 10 years, afford to have children, buy a car, go to events and maintain a relatively comfortable lifestyle.
    - wyuenho 12y ago
      Software dev is definitely a middle class job in China, but in HK, it's only considered marginally better than clerical work. Labor in Greater China for any job other than the most exploitative ones (finance, sales, insurance, legal, upper management) are treated like dirt in general. Don't even get me started on the hours and the lack of benefits and incentives.
      - ryanSrich 12y ago
        I find that odd. The jobs you mentioned (finance, sales, insurance, legal, upper management), with the exception being upper management, will most likely net you less than what a developer makes here in the U.S. I should mention that those salaries are much more variable than developer salaries. It's not uncommon to find an insurance salesmen make less than $50k per year, but it also wouldn't be uncommon to find one that makes well over $150k. It's really hard to see the future of the middle-class here in the U.S. I can't name five jobs that are a ticket to a comfortable lifestyle, whereas 20 years ago you could fire off 20 or so jobs.
        thejdude 12y ago
- victorantos 12y ago
  I partially disagree. I know people, IT contractors(.NET) that got 490 euro/day in Germany
  - thejdude 12y ago
    Ok, but salaries are much lower than contractor rates, probably half.
  - bowlofpetunias 12y ago
    That's also quite low. (When I did contractor work (PHP) in the Netherlands almost a decade ago I already charged 500 euro/day, and up to 80 euro/hour for certain gigs.) And none of that really amounts to much if you subtract the taxes, overhead and most of all the time spent between gigs. If you do well you can make out considerably better than on a salary, but still, 490 per day for a .NET engineer (biggest shortage there is in IT in Europe) contractor is on the low end.
- bowlofpetunias 12y ago
  35-50k€ is low, even for Western European standards. You cannot compare it to US salaries given the enormous differences in social structure when it comes to healthcare etcetera. But still: tech salaries in Europe are low, and are being systematically depressed. The influx of relatively cheap engineers from Eastern EU countries is one influence, but not even such a big one, since most of them pretty quickly catch up (the tech culture means they're not easily isolated and exploited like other migrant workers). The biggest depressing influence is simply social status: despite the scarcity, despite the value they add, there is an enormous resistance against awarding higher salaries to "nerds". Now that I operate at management level, I experience this first hand. Everything adds up: our budget, the economics, the scarcity. We should easily be able to offer 30% higher salaries and still make out just fine, and it's the only way to compete with a handful of enlightened companies that pay well and the lure of self-employment (the only other way for engineers to break through the salary ceiling). Nothing stands in the way of paying engineers better, except social status: paying a software engineer the same as (or more than) a manager is unthinkable. Despite the fact that those managers are less scarce, less skilled and add less value.
  - thejdude 12y ago
    Plus, most software engineers I work with every day are hardly nerds. Maybe 1/3 of them are, the rest are just wearing suits without ties but are very professional at their job and attitude. The "nerd" idea is a myth, a prejudice I myself had back in college. But it's not the reality. Most engineers are very very boring family men, not the enthusiastic hipster type in funky colored pants.
- CalRobert 12y ago
  You might want to consider Ireland or the UK if your spoken English is as good as your written English. Salaries aren't quite bay area, but they're better than what you describe, especially for a master's!. With 20 days of vacation a year and people who don't take it for granted you'll spend all weekend working I have no intention to return to the US.
  - negamax 12y ago
    Ireland has nightmarish 52% tax! For tech salaries this number hits pretty early.
  - BugBrother 12y ago
    Just one question: How is the weather? :-) That said, I've been to Ireland lots of times for vacation. (I should go check the job sites.)
suyash 12y ago
They are low because companies have kept them low (remember the whole conspiracy and law suit against bay area top employers) and individuals take what they get. Seriously compared to other areas and cost of living in the bay, they are really low for smart software engineers.
kevingao1 12y ago
i agree, despite industry complaints about how "high" they are and how quickly they've risen; having been on multiple sides of this, i think the value that a good engineer adds is still not reflected in compensation, especially in smaller companies (eg, less than a few hundred people); it's part information asymmetry, part culture
blue11 12y ago
The salaries aren't low. The data capture mostly the lower end of the distribution. Keep in mind that the data are from H1-B visa applications, so these are relatively low level positions. There are lots of recent graduates (foreign students who studied in US universities) starting in their first full time jobs. There are also more experienced engineers hired directly from abroad, but they are somewhat of an unknown quantity and there is a higher risk premium, so their salaries are also a little on the lower side. After a few of years on the job their salaries will be higher, but by that time they will also get green cards, so they won't show up in these statistics anymore. Also, stock is not included in the data.
- yid 12y ago
  > Also, stock is not included in the data. This is the big one. None of those numbers include equity, which can often be 40% or more of total compensation for engineers.
- GreenGiant 12y ago
  >"The salaries aren't low. The data capture mostly the lower end of the distribution. Keep in mind that the data are from H1-B visa applications, so these are relatively low level positions. There are lots of recent graduates (foreign students who studied in US universities) starting in their first full time jobs." Well the table with Senior Software Engineers certainly aren't recent grads (at least not in the places I have worked). I disagree, the salaries ARE low. Why do you think US companies want more migrant tech workers? They pay them less, they are stuck with the company, and they work harder for various reasons (less social life, distractions, have something to prove, failure would mean disgrace back home, work ethic, ETC). The farce that businesses want to import workers because there is a shortage of local ones has been marketed and propagated by corporations for their own financial gain.
acchow 12y ago
For many of these bay area engineers, the compensation in equity is more than their salary.
- Iftheshoefits 12y ago
  Equity "compensation" is only compensation if the equity is actually worth something. At most big companies equity compensation is worth something but generally not even close to 100% of base salary (or even close to it). At (most) startups the equity is a joke that the owners and employees delude themselves into thinking is not one.
mvgoogler 12y ago
FWIW, I think this only shows data for base salaries. My total comp is almost 2x my base salary. I believe that's pretty typical at Google.
- turnip1979 12y ago
  You consistently get paid a 100% bonus every year at Google?
  - mvgoogler 12y ago
    My total comp - including salary, bonuses and equity is regularly almost 2x my base salary.
nostrademons 12y ago
Value capture is related to competition, not productivity. You capture value when there are few other alternatives in your space, and so your counterparties have to pay your price or go without. If engineers aren't capturing much value, it's because they're fungible, and there are many other people on the market who can do the same thing. Engineers that do have very specialized skills - say, compiler design experts or people with deep expertise in transaction algorithms or high-ranking engineers on Google's search team - can frequently make into the millions in stock grants.
- djb_hackernews 12y ago
  If engineers are fungible, and there are many other people on the market who can do the same thing, then why have a guest worker program like H1B?
  - davidw 12y ago
    > If engineers are fungible, and there are many other people on the market who can do the same thing, then why have a guest worker program like H1B? If you think it through, one reason is pretty obvious: jobs can also go to those people in wherever they happen to be born, in many cases. Letting them come to your country makes things better for everyone. Remember, the labor market is not a zero-sum game, a "lump of labor": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
  - HarryHirsch 12y ago
    To keep down wages, why else? If you have the choice between an American, who can leave for a better-paid opportunity whenever he likes, and a foreigner, who is chained to his job because of the green card process, who would you hire? There is the additional twist that an immigrant foreigner who got their degree abroad won't nearly be as encumbered by student loans as someone with a domestic degree and won't negotiate quite as hard for a higher salary.
cylinder 12y ago
That's what I was thinking. $120,000/yr in SF or really anywhere in California is firmly middle class if you're trying to raise a family.
- GreenGiant 12y ago
  I can't agree with the "anywhere in California" part. Cost of living ranges dramatically across the state. There are plenty of communities in CA where land and housing is still relatively cheap (especially in Nor Cal). These aren't necessarily in or neighboring larger cities, but nonetheless, they do exist.
- chiph 12y ago
  Related story: The American Middle Class Hasn’t Gotten A Raise In 15 Years: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-american-middle-class-hasnt-gotten-a-raise-in-15-years/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-american-middle-clas...
- Domenic_S 12y ago
  Depends.. $120k per person or $60k each?

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-...
    - thejdude 12y ago
      Not on average, but it's ~15% of your salary in Germany, so a high-income person pays a lot (it's capped at a certain level though).
- barrkel 12y ago
  10 days vacation was one of the biggest reasons I didn't move to the US when I got my H-1B visa. Company policy was that vacation was a reward for tenure, rather than a negotiable component of compensation. Best they could do was offer 20 days for the first year, and only the first year. It was an asinine policy if you ask me. An immigrant is exactly the type of person who would want to take a holiday back home to see friends and family. To make the cost and hassle of two long flights worth it, it would have to be two weeks at least. And that would leave 0 days left for the rest of the year.
  - untog 12y ago
    Agreed, I spend most of my vacation days visiting family back home - it's been a long time since I've had an actual holiday, lying on a beach in the sun.
- alkonaut 12y ago
  Yeah, that IS crazy. How come companies don't offer holdays as comp? Here (Sweden) having an extra week holiday (6 rather than 5 weeks) is a common comp. Why aren't companies competing with that in the US? If I was offered $150k with 10-15 days holiday and 50hr work weeks (expected), I'd immediately start bargaining for 25-30 paid days off, and make sure I wouldn't be expected to work more than 40h/w. Is that uncommon in the US? Or is it common to take unpaid days off, which you can afford given the high salaries?
  - untog 12y ago
    I suspect that, particularly in the startup arena, time is more valuable than money. VCs are throwing cash at you, but they want you to launch yesterday.
    - alkonaut 12y ago
      Sure, and I realize good developers are hard to find, but unless you are looking for the 23year old "ninja" type developers who like doing all nighters, would you not need to care about work/life balance of employees too? Startups that need to launch yesterday I realize often have young employees without family, but these are large corps like Oracle/Yahoo/Google, these have to employ quite a lot of engineers in their 30s, 40s and 50s? Like I said, I'd be willing to accept a substantially lower pay for a good holiday (5-6 weeks), and a good work/life balance otherwise, like good processes that ensure there's no regular "crunch time".
      - nerfhammer 12y ago
        It's not part of the culture. People sometimes quietly grouse about the lack of vacation time or the number of hours but no one is willing to publicly do anything about it for whatever cultural reason.
        alkonaut 12y ago
        So in this culture, is it common to do a few years of high-income work with 12hr days and high compensation, and then you get a "quieter" job somewhere else when you need a job that allows you to pick the kids up at 4.30pm? Or how does it work? Obviously children aren't unheard of in Silicon Valley, and as far as I understand it's a pretty progressive part of the US, so I assume that families have two careers to worry about? Something doesn't add up if long days are norm.
- monort 12y ago
  Does it means, that you can't get unpaid vacation days too? If you can get additional unpaid 15 days leave, then it's just 6% less salary per year.
Iftheshoefits 12y ago
Here in the US we basically have little or no social safety net, and certainly few meaningful regulations and laws protecting labor. Our "wow just wow" salaries have less buying power than yours, because any difference in the margins is eaten up by having to use the additional salary for basic services you would be able to (mostly) take for granted as being government supplied (via taxation and other means).
- thejdude 12y ago
  I'm not too sure about that. Yes, if you compare the average American to the average European, you make more and have to pay for more things, so it more or less evens out. But developer salaries - definitely not.
  - Iftheshoefits 12y ago
    No, it doesn't really even out at all. There are several factors you're neglecting to consider here. The salaries listed here are in our highest cost of living areas. The vast majority of developers aren't earning anywhere near these wages. Most are in the $50,000-$90,000 range (not too far off of your EUR$35k - $50k figures). Second, I think you're discounting far too heavily how much extra the average American has to contribute on his own for his own health and retirement. One might consider the 15%-20% one should take out of his pre-tax salary for savings to be an implicit tax we have to pay. The federal marginal rate for an individual earning $130k/yr is around 30% (for the sake of argument--it's actually a bit higher). In SF and NY, the state taxes wll boost that 8%-10% (or more). So the base tax rate is already around 40%. Couple that with this implicit tax, and Americans are paying a "tax" that is about what Europeans pay. Except we get a lot less for it by a long, long way. And, actually, since it's infreqent to earn that much money as a software developer without having a college degree, there is the additional factor of the cost of our education. Most people can't afford the 15%-20% hit to their pay because of the high cost of everything else, so the 'add-on' cost that hits them in retirement is even worse.
    - thejdude 12y ago
      Well, a 50k salary will net you <30k€ in Germany (but more if you have kids). You probably should also save a bit for retirement, since you won't get much from the state (today's retired receive much more than they paid into the fund, but current generations will receive much less). Oh, and we have a 19% sales tax over here (7% on groceries, and food is actually very good and cheap in Germany, at least in stores). I'm surprised by the (low) 50-90k salaries you mention. I've always read much higher numbers. Probably due to the bias on blogs/news sites to West Coast companies.
ryanSrich 12y ago
I'll reiterate OP and say that these seem low to me as well...and dare I say that I still think Software Developers are underpaid?! These employees are bringing in billions of dollars for these companies and for them to still receive < $200k per year is appalling. Think about this. You get into work at 8am and you leave work at 8pm. You manage a team of engineers that are literally building the foundation for the future of the company. Your entire life is dedicated to making this company money. Do you still find those salaries low?
- thejdude 12y ago
  Depends. Maybe you should get a bonus if your work really has such an impact. And if you talk managing a team, that's not a developer position, that's a lead position (to me anyway).
- nilkn 12y ago
  > Think about this. You get into work at 8am and you leave work at 8pm. You manage a team of engineers that are literally building the foundation for the future of the company. Your entire life is dedicated to making this company money. Do you really think this is truly representative of what the typical programmer is doing day-by-day? Many will get in at 10am, leave at 4:30pm, manage nobody, and work on somewhat important projects that nevertheless are not even remotely the foundation for the entire company or the company's future. The people who actually worked on the foundations of these companies are already multi-millionaires. The people spearheading huge projects at the highest level are also almost certainly making far more than $200k/year.
- alkonaut 12y ago
  > You get into work at 8am and you leave work at 8pm To be comparable, a salary number should reflect a full time work week, and be for a position which TWO people can hold, full time, while still having time to pick up kids. Obviously if I worked 12h days I'd be supporting my partner who could NOT have the same full time job. Not sure what these figures represent, I thought they were regular day-jobs, which you could hold while still having a meaningful work/life balance? > These employees are bringing in billions of dollars for these companies and for them to still receive < $200k per year is appalling. The same can be said for employees of any large corporation. Sure you may be more or less replaceable, but still: the dollars brought in are return on risk by investors. It's no more appalling than fast food workers being paid peanuts in fast food chains that make a billion.
wyuenho 12y ago
Hey ah guys. Most devs in HK earn < 30k USD a year. China is half that, Taiwan is even worse. When you factor in how freaking expensive everything is in HK, especially real estate, HK devs in general are basically slave labors.
- ryanSrich 12y ago
  In the U.S. a Software Development(dev, designer, etc.) job is a middle class role. What is a developer in china? Lower class? What is a middleman class job then? EDIT: Should probably define middleman class then...I guess I'd have to say, being able to purchase a house, pay off student debt in less than 10 years, afford to have children, buy a car, go to events and maintain a relatively comfortable lifestyle.
  - wyuenho 12y ago
    Software dev is definitely a middle class job in China, but in HK, it's only considered marginally better than clerical work. Labor in Greater China for any job other than the most exploitative ones (finance, sales, insurance, legal, upper management) are treated like dirt in general. Don't even get me started on the hours and the lack of benefits and incentives.
    - ryanSrich 12y ago
      I find that odd. The jobs you mentioned (finance, sales, insurance, legal, upper management), with the exception being upper management, will most likely net you less than what a developer makes here in the U.S. I should mention that those salaries are much more variable than developer salaries. It's not uncommon to find an insurance salesmen make less than $50k per year, but it also wouldn't be uncommon to find one that makes well over $150k. It's really hard to see the future of the middle-class here in the U.S. I can't name five jobs that are a ticket to a comfortable lifestyle, whereas 20 years ago you could fire off 20 or so jobs.
      - thejdude 12y ago
victorantos 12y ago
I partially disagree. I know people, IT contractors(.NET) that got 490 euro/day in Germany
- thejdude 12y ago
  Ok, but salaries are much lower than contractor rates, probably half.
- bowlofpetunias 12y ago
  That's also quite low. (When I did contractor work (PHP) in the Netherlands almost a decade ago I already charged 500 euro/day, and up to 80 euro/hour for certain gigs.) And none of that really amounts to much if you subtract the taxes, overhead and most of all the time spent between gigs. If you do well you can make out considerably better than on a salary, but still, 490 per day for a .NET engineer (biggest shortage there is in IT in Europe) contractor is on the low end.
bowlofpetunias 12y ago
35-50k€ is low, even for Western European standards. You cannot compare it to US salaries given the enormous differences in social structure when it comes to healthcare etcetera. But still: tech salaries in Europe are low, and are being systematically depressed. The influx of relatively cheap engineers from Eastern EU countries is one influence, but not even such a big one, since most of them pretty quickly catch up (the tech culture means they're not easily isolated and exploited like other migrant workers). The biggest depressing influence is simply social status: despite the scarcity, despite the value they add, there is an enormous resistance against awarding higher salaries to "nerds". Now that I operate at management level, I experience this first hand. Everything adds up: our budget, the economics, the scarcity. We should easily be able to offer 30% higher salaries and still make out just fine, and it's the only way to compete with a handful of enlightened companies that pay well and the lure of self-employment (the only other way for engineers to break through the salary ceiling). Nothing stands in the way of paying engineers better, except social status: paying a software engineer the same as (or more than) a manager is unthinkable. Despite the fact that those managers are less scarce, less skilled and add less value.
- thejdude 12y ago
  Plus, most software engineers I work with every day are hardly nerds. Maybe 1/3 of them are, the rest are just wearing suits without ties but are very professional at their job and attitude. The "nerd" idea is a myth, a prejudice I myself had back in college. But it's not the reality. Most engineers are very very boring family men, not the enthusiastic hipster type in funky colored pants.
CalRobert 12y ago
You might want to consider Ireland or the UK if your spoken English is as good as your written English. Salaries aren't quite bay area, but they're better than what you describe, especially for a master's!. With 20 days of vacation a year and people who don't take it for granted you'll spend all weekend working I have no intention to return to the US.
- negamax 12y ago
  Ireland has nightmarish 52% tax! For tech salaries this number hits pretty early.
- BugBrother 12y ago
  Just one question: How is the weather? :-) That said, I've been to Ireland lots of times for vacation. (I should go check the job sites.)

suyash 12y ago

They are low because companies have kept them low (remember the whole conspiracy and law suit against bay area top employers) and individuals take what they get. Seriously compared to other areas and cost of living in the bay, they are really low for smart software engineers.

kevingao1 12y ago

i agree, despite industry complaints about how "high" they are and how quickly they've risen; having been on multiple sides of this, i think the value that a good engineer adds is still not reflected in compensation, especially in smaller companies (eg, less than a few hundred people); it's part information asymmetry, part culture

blue11 12y ago

The salaries aren't low. The data capture mostly the lower end of the distribution. Keep in mind that the data are from H1-B visa applications, so these are relatively low level positions. There are lots of recent graduates (foreign students who studied in US universities) starting in their first full time jobs. There are also more experienced engineers hired directly from abroad, but they are somewhat of an unknown quantity and there is a higher risk premium, so their salaries are also a little on the lower side. After a few of years on the job their salaries will be higher, but by that time they will also get green cards, so they won't show up in these statistics anymore. Also, stock is not included in the data.

yid 12y ago
> Also, stock is not included in the data. This is the big one. None of those numbers include equity, which can often be 40% or more of total compensation for engineers.
GreenGiant 12y ago
>"The salaries aren't low. The data capture mostly the lower end of the distribution. Keep in mind that the data are from H1-B visa applications, so these are relatively low level positions. There are lots of recent graduates (foreign students who studied in US universities) starting in their first full time jobs." Well the table with Senior Software Engineers certainly aren't recent grads (at least not in the places I have worked). I disagree, the salaries ARE low. Why do you think US companies want more migrant tech workers? They pay them less, they are stuck with the company, and they work harder for various reasons (less social life, distractions, have something to prove, failure would mean disgrace back home, work ethic, ETC). The farce that businesses want to import workers because there is a shortage of local ones has been marketed and propagated by corporations for their own financial gain.

acchow 12y ago

For many of these bay area engineers, the compensation in equity is more than their salary.

Iftheshoefits 12y ago
Equity "compensation" is only compensation if the equity is actually worth something. At most big companies equity compensation is worth something but generally not even close to 100% of base salary (or even close to it). At (most) startups the equity is a joke that the owners and employees delude themselves into thinking is not one.

mvgoogler 12y ago

FWIW, I think this only shows data for base salaries. My total comp is almost 2x my base salary. I believe that's pretty typical at Google.

turnip1979 12y ago
You consistently get paid a 100% bonus every year at Google?
- mvgoogler 12y ago
  My total comp - including salary, bonuses and equity is regularly almost 2x my base salary.

nostrademons 12y ago

Value capture is related to competition, not productivity. You capture value when there are few other alternatives in your space, and so your counterparties have to pay your price or go without. If engineers aren't capturing much value, it's because they're fungible, and there are many other people on the market who can do the same thing. Engineers that do have very specialized skills - say, compiler design experts or people with deep expertise in transaction algorithms or high-ranking engineers on Google's search team - can frequently make into the millions in stock grants.

djb_hackernews 12y ago
If engineers are fungible, and there are many other people on the market who can do the same thing, then why have a guest worker program like H1B?
- davidw 12y ago
  > If engineers are fungible, and there are many other people on the market who can do the same thing, then why have a guest worker program like H1B? If you think it through, one reason is pretty obvious: jobs can also go to those people in wherever they happen to be born, in many cases. Letting them come to your country makes things better for everyone. Remember, the labor market is not a zero-sum game, a "lump of labor": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
- HarryHirsch 12y ago
  To keep down wages, why else? If you have the choice between an American, who can leave for a better-paid opportunity whenever he likes, and a foreigner, who is chained to his job because of the green card process, who would you hire? There is the additional twist that an immigrant foreigner who got their degree abroad won't nearly be as encumbered by student loans as someone with a domestic degree and won't negotiate quite as hard for a higher salary.

cylinder 12y ago

That's what I was thinking. $120,000/yr in SF or really anywhere in California is firmly middle class if you're trying to raise a family.

GreenGiant 12y ago
I can't agree with the "anywhere in California" part. Cost of living ranges dramatically across the state. There are plenty of communities in CA where land and housing is still relatively cheap (especially in Nor Cal). These aren't necessarily in or neighboring larger cities, but nonetheless, they do exist.
chiph 12y ago
Related story: The American Middle Class Hasn’t Gotten A Raise In 15 Years: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-american-middle-class-hasnt-gotten-a-raise-in-15-years/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-american-middle-clas...
Domenic_S 12y ago
Depends.. $120k per person or $60k each?