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Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

I'm referring to wages, not rewards of being a founder. As for glassdoor.com, I don't think it's very accurate. I'm guessing "database engineer" == DBA.

$125k/year is what you would give to a decent coder with 3 years of experience. At Rethink, it looks like they want to pay him $80k/year. Some people will take the job just because the company and problem domain looks fun, but not everyone will.

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$125k/year is what you would give to a decent coder with 3 years of experience.

You're living in a dream world.

I'm just working for a company trying to hire. Competent people are hard to find (as rethinkdb noted, 95% of applicants == fail), and when you find them, you pay for them. They are worth it.

I realize that experiences vary, particularly if you are comparing different types of software development (e.g., shrinkwrap vs. departmental IT), but I have to say that $125K/year for 3 years of programming experience does not correspond to what I see being paid in the Seattle area. In fact, I recently had a conversation with a VP about whether $120K was too much for an experienced systems architect.

Please understand that I am not making any statement about whether talented programmers are worth $125K/year - I am simply reporting what I see on the ground.

I'm familiar with NYC, not Seattle. This is not particular to any type of development - at a startup in the publishing space, a hedge fund, a marketing company or big bank, these are low salaries for the caliber of developer rethink is trying to hire.

But it's important to note, I'm not talking about the average developer here. I'm talking about the top 5% who think "reverse a linked list" actually is a warmup question, and can maybe even explain how a binary tree speeds up finding ordered objects.

I just graduated from a decent CS program, but I find it hard to believe that most people applying for a programming job couldn't explain binary search trees or quickly think through how to reverse a linked list.

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