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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> > They're not saving 25% on payroll taxes, benefits, workers comp, PTO, training time and management overhead. In fact, more people working fewer hours increases most of these costs."

> Payroll taxes: OF COURSE they're saving the same amount on taxes!

No, they aren't, in the US.

> It's a % of what they pay you.

Not a flat percentage; the social security portion of payroll tax has an income cap (the smaller Medicare portion does not), which is less than what most programmers make, so payroll taxes do not go down proportional to income for workers who are above the cap to start with.

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Are you being serious? The cap is $118,500, you think most programmers make more than $118,500 per year?

A lot more than you'd think, after a few years of experience. 130k with benefits is par for the course in St.Louis for a full benefits senior programmer. Contracting, you can get way more: I reached the cap in August last year.

In the Bay Area, if you don't make that kind of money, you better be living in company housing, or you will have trouble renting a closet by yourself.

So yes, enough programmers make more than 120k for the payroll tax to be the same regardless.

In the bay area one can easily live on $100k a year. So long as they're willing to have a housemate (share a 2 bd room with someone else). Clearly not possible on a single income family, but either 1) Single person sharing a 2bd room place with someone els or 2) a dual income home renting a 2bd room place for their approximate 1 child.

I see too many bay area people thinking that ubers and expensive meals out are the "bare minimum".

I don't see how someone can rationalize that someone making $100k should have to have roommates.

I am not saying they need more money, but I don't understand how we have gotten to the point of chiding people making six-figures like they work at McDonalds and want a BMW.

Its simple. Prices are insane. So we expect people to do sane things, like live with other people.

Much of the rest of the world does it, no reason North Americans cant.

In the bay area, I'd expect median to be somewhat higher than that. Which is obviously not the entire world or country, but is where a lot of the focus of this forum is.

Let me Google that for you. In the Bay Area, the average salary for a software engineer is $103K [1] - $110K [2], so below the cap.

1: http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Sa...

2: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software-en...

The median salary for all "Computer and Mathematical Occupations" for San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara for 2015 was $128,850, for Software Developers the medians were $147,220 (Applications -- there were 42,650 of these) and $142,950 (Systems Software -- there were 27,260). Of the programming-related occupations, Computer Programmers and Web Developers were lower than the cap, but very small numbers of people (6,510 @ $93,940 and 2,930 @ $107,500, respectively.) From 2015 BLS data, which is more comprehensive and representative than whatever payscale and glassdoor are using. [0]

San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward is a little lower, but both kinds of Software Developers still average over $120K. [1]

[0] http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41940.htm#15-0000

[1] http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41860.htm#15-0000

Those use self-reported data which is unreliable and only San Francisco, which is only a small portion of the Bay Area.

Using BLS data, which should be more reliable, for the San Francisco[1] and San Jose[2] metro areas, the average weighted by number of people in the job of annual mean wages for the job categories of "Computer Programmer", "Software Developer, Applications", "Software Developer, Systems" and "Web Developer" is $129,730.54.

[1] http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41860.htm#15-0000 [2] http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41940.htm#15-0000

Thanks to you and dragonwriter for the links.. informative. So let's compromise on "It's right around the cap" :) Interesting that self-reported data is actually lower than the BLS figures--I'd have guessed it would be the opposite. A lot of people here like to humblebrag about how they "only" make $150K and how their stock options make their taxes so painful.

> A lot of people here like to humblebrag about how they "only" make $150K and how their stock options make their taxes so painful.

To be fair, as well as regional there is also industry variation, and a lot of people here work in the "Other Information Services" sector -- most online services would seem to be in that category -- which is (at least nationally) significantly above average pay for programming occupations. If that industry-based trend is also true for the region, then $150K for a developer could well be a below-median salary for region/occupation/industry combination.

I looked at the Glassdoor data as well. Remember that they're looking narrowly at job titles. If you add "senior software engineers," their average is around $118k. If you add "software architects," their average is around $140k. And so forth.

So if we're not talking about people with the job title "software engineer," but instead talking about people who are software engineers, including people who have a more advanced title, the average salary moves up.

> The cap is $118,500, you think most programmers make more than $118,500 per year?

On review of the data, no; I was actually thinking more narrowly of software developers rather than broadly to all programmers, and even then its a little high (though the median salary for application developers (Software Developers, Applications) in the Information sector is close to the cap. [0]

Still, a substantial minority of programmers (broadly speaking) will be making above the cap, so reducing programmer salary in exchange for reduced hours will reduce payroll taxes by a substantially lower percentage than the percentage reduction in salary.

I would hope that they do, if they have any experience and are actually good. I don't have that many years of experience, and am working for a rinky-dink small ISV well outside any kind of tech hub, and I'm not far off from that.

In California? I'd hope that a typical developer makes around that much.

If they are any good at all, yes.

That's not even close to true. The west coast is not the entire industry, no matter how much it likes to think it is.

It always makes me sad to see this same argument happen in every thread mentioning salary. Nobody ever wants to believe that their profession actually pays as much as it does.

Yes, you can certainly find a company to pay you less than $100,000 to program computers for a living. That's not in dispute. But know that you (meaning you as well as anybody else anywhere in the US or the English speaking world) can also find a remote gig paying more than that.

Good developers are very valuable. Even in the sticks. Please don't sell yourself short.

It always makes me sad to see this same argument happen in every thread mentioning remote work.

Exactly HOW does one get $100,000 working remotely? When no-one's ever heard of you?

People should add a footnote when saying things like this.

"Yeah just get a six figures remote job......... if you have tons of experience/large network/expert on a niche/top open source projects".

While I usually appreciate this kind of talk, it's irrelevant here. How much a theoretical developer could make has no bearing on the median developer salary right now, which is solidly below 118k.

Ha. That's a good one.

Employers appear to want you to be in at least a somewhat similar time zone as their core team and have some prior experience working remotely.

Take this hypothetical person living in the sticks. 3.5 years of experience doing local development. No prior remote experience -> not given the time of day by remote shops -> can't get remote experience.

As I said, it makes me sad. Because you're wrong. You've internalized this as though it were a fact, so you don't even try. And the only one it hurts is you.

You're assuming every developer is a "good" developer. The top 10% could probably find remote work, but the rest of us are stuck with what we can get. I've been trying to go that route for 3 years now and I'm at the point where I have to get a 'real job' to make ends meet.

Nowhere did I say I don't try. I do try. And in the rare instance that I receive a response, what does it say? Exactly what I said in my post.

> The west coast is not the entire industry, no matter how much it likes to think it is.

True, though many people live on the coast specifically because of its tech industry. Sweeping that away is no better than pretending that it's the only game in town.

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