A note on programmer salaries
stephaniehurlburt.com
stephaniehurlburt.com
In the beginning of my career i also had similar thoughts like "Why does the company make so much money when i am doing all the work" but while running my own business later i realized that it is not as simple. The company has a whole lot of risk and work bringing in projects and keeping everything afloat, as a programmer i did not have to worry about anything of that and only later i realized how much value that has, especially in a region where programming and consulting gigs weren't really easy to get.
Location really matters for programmer salaries. I went from a smaller european city where all there was for programmers were small software/marketing agencies to a european tech hub with a lot of startups and a booming market. My salary doubled just by changing location and living costs are still comparable and i finally feel i am getting paid what i am worth, which is still far from US standards though.
One could argue that the larger the corporation, the more risk is diffused across the organisation. It's not simply about keeping the lights on at headquarters.
It's also another reason why salaries are generally higher in the USA for the same programming job: pay is higher because risk is greater (stock market, investment, litigation, etc).
You can live for fairly cheap but eventually you'll get tired of graffiti, vagrants, and all night techno parties.
Unless you're into all of that and don't have any debts. Because you'll earn as a high level developer about 2.5-3k per month net.
And it was ok-ish safe (in 2013, not sure about now)
Bring on top of that the Germany tax rates and you will quickly be taking less home than in say the UK.
Rents are also not as low as it previously was. It has steadily been rising and buying a place is also out of the question now given how the property market has performed in Berlin.
Don't get me wrong, I love Germany and have personal connections to it but one needs to take everything into account when you make a move to a new city.
But for most people, those that are relocating for a job, healthcare doesn't cost much.
Beside that healthcare is almost free. You may need to pay for some "comfort medicine" (view by the state me or less randomly) and you pay 1€ per visit to a doctor.
The serious stuff is free (actually the more serious, the more free), dental is covered by the outer insurance (the debs depends on your contact), same for glasses.
So France is good when it comes to serious illnesses, gets expensive when having children (plenty of non reinbursed sprays for nose and throat) or when you have serious dental work, especially implants.
The main reason why this works is that Berlin is still really cheap compared to London but even compared to Hamburg or Munich. Rents are getting up though, still the amount of great food and entertainment for relatively cheap makes it easy to live with that salary.
I read an article from Buffer where they equaled 60k in Berlin to about 120k in SF or NY. I also think salaries in London are not substantially higher, while the city is so much more expensive.
I am still looking to go contracting at some point to make more money to raise a family, but for now while sharing an apartment with my girlfriend, it's decent money. Most of Berlin's working population gets far lower wages anyway, even in startups outside of development so for me as someone without an degree (yet), it always feels weird to earn substantially more than people that have a Masters in Business/Marketing.
Btw, why do you find London much expensive? I mean, you can rent (or mortgage) a decent apartment in the nice district for ~600 GBP per month. And the food, goods, appliances, etc... is similar, or cheaper. And most importantly - people speak English! :) The language factor was a revelation for me, after spending some time on the mainland Europe.
If you commute by long distance rail for at least an hour, an hour and a half maybe, to some small town way outside of London maybe you'll find something at that cost – but surely not in London proper.
My rents over the years in London where, per month, in order of when I lived there:
- apartment hotel studio in Limehouse: ~£2000-2500 - room in shared flat in Queensway: £1000 - 1-bed in Canary Wharf: ~£1650 (moved after a year because they wanted to back my rent by about 20%) - studio in Angel: ~£1200 - basement studio in Highbury&Islington: ~£1350
The studio in Angel was unbelievably cheap for a brand new building in a nice neighborhood. I was the first tenant. It had one of those beds you flip down from the wall kind of thing. Sounds off putting but it was actually a really smart feature, made the place feel like a 1-bed.
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/map.html?locatio...
Also note a lot of these would be likely £600+ since this doesn't show additional fees (estate agent, taxes etc.)
Now, this may seem like an abundance of results – but a number of these listings are actually house shares, parking lots, garages etc. Maybe you'd be ok with sharing a house (I wouldn't) but I'm sure we can all agree living in parking space is out of the question.
So maybe it's doable, but I think it'd be really hard work trying to find a place that's not kept together with shoe string and duct tape, while being in a decent area with a decent commute.
https://www.brent.gov.uk/media/169942/Local-Housing-Allowanc...
Had two friends living and working there, both left because they were spending 1000+ GBP to share houses or flats (both are married) with some other couples or people just so they could keep their commute under 30-40 minutes.
Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands also speak very good English and it's a quite nice experience to have the chance to learn a new language.
From my experience that is definitely not possible.
For £600 you can get a small room in a flatshare. Maybe a tiny studio or nice room really far from the centre. But a decent apartment in a nice district? Double that number and start from there... more realistic is 3x or 4x.
I would be very interested to hear your view on how the contracting market is in Berlin.
Here's an example (data scientist, but still counts in my book): https://stackoverflow.com/jobs/148268/senior-data-scientist-...
I know there are also offices of Google, Facebook, AirBnB, Pinterest in Berlin, although I'm not sure which of those have developers.
Some years ago I remember stories about assasinations, guns & stuff.
Past that it's normally Berlin, Paris or Barcelona?
In this case, you were worth $42k and $56k respectively. If you'd shopped around, you'd have been worth more. But you didn't, so you weren't.
That's not a bad thing, either. Security is nice, and interviews are a pain. But it really is that simple.
If you don't like your current pay, don't bother with negotiating for a raise. That's how you keep getting paid the same amount plus inflation. Go to the market.
That feeling you're talking about -- where the company rakes in millions and you're the reason why, yet you're paid table scraps -- it's because that's what you're worth. There's no greed. The company is just that valuable, and no one is making you a better offer, so that's how valuable you are.
There's not much sense in comparing notes or seeing how much everybody else is making, except as a way to incentivize you to do something about it (leave). If you like your security, then enjoy it. If you like your money, go talk to companies.
EDIT: Time to bust out one of the best comments of all time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2439478
Turns out he was a doormat in negotiating, though his salary history was cringeworthy. It pained everyone to hear it, considering how nice of a guy he was. In all honestly, $60K was a big step up for him. [...] He spent the next day in non-stop meetings with HR, his manager and the CTO. That Friday he simply handed in his badge without a word, walked out and never came back. Until 3 months later. As a consultant. At $175/hour.
(The most-popular comment list is interesting in general: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page... Too bad when the scores were hidden, the list stopped working.)
I don't want a society where there are people left behind simply because they did not make a job out of making more money. Nor do I want a society where services performed by folks leads to a massive wealth imbalance in workforces that don't have people specifically tasked with keeping this from happening. Especially with how anti union/similar setup current cultures are.
And to be clear, I realize that that ship has somewhat sailed. Nobody was specifically tasked with making sure women/minorities were paid fairly. As a result, we have an obvious problem. One where the incentives have aligned such that many companies do not have an incentive to fix it. (There has to be a term for the occurrence where virtue signaling is high, but actual virtue is punished. Anyone know it?)
That is, you are absolutely right in many senses. But I worry that as long as not all companies are paying more fair wages, than there is little incentive to be the one company paying fair wages. (There are incentives to pay above normal pay, but that can still be below fair. See again current women's pay gap.)
So, can you reduce it down to folks are ultimately paid what they are worth. And if they simply shopped themselves around they could get more, but they didn't so they have accepted their low worth, so they are, ipso facto, worth less. Great. I just think we have plenty of evidence that shows that doesn't actually work.
At an individual level, it is good actionable advice. At a societal level, it really is just victim blaming. And it is hard to day where the line is between those views.
What sick thought crept its way into our collective consciousness that has made us glorify being a victim above all else. We have been fooled into holding up literally the opposite of success as the highest virtue.
That is, my question is what sick thought made it acceptable to take repression and holding down of full segments of a population under the guise of them individually not standing up for themselves acceptable?
Seriously, the evidence is quite clear that this attitude is complete nonsense and only works for people that have certain advantages already. I get that you feel you have worked hard for your position. So have I. I also get that I was additionally lucky that I was able to reap the rewards of my hard work. Many aren't. And to be ok with that is a truly disgusting collective consciousness problem.
Ahem... citation needed
For this attitude to be accurate, the problem is simply that women and minorities are not educating themselves and/or are not "shopping themselves around." If you want me to cite studies showing that specifically is false, quite frankly I don't have time to dig around for that. You could find studies showing it is true.
You need to study more.
Then compare the cost saving, and time spent on the above, to the marginal cost of your free time. Have you saved anything?
However, careers are what sort of determine how much our time is worth...so it generally ALWAYS makes sense to shop for multiple job offers.
Hypocrisy?
My example was supposed to be that you are rewarded for looking fair, but it would actually be detrimental to be so.
Deception and hypocrisy, I think, are related to this, but I feel they are a little different, too. Don't know if I can explain why. So perhaps I'm just wrong on that feeling?
If both parties sign an agreement with complete agency, who is getting abused? How can it be "unfair" if you both parties freely agreed to the exchange?
(inb4 "What happened to your fuck-you money?" As if it's always the employee saying "fuck you".)
You are confused about cost and value.
I have seen a lot of people with high salaries that are more of a problem than a solution for the company. As an example, you can look at the executive that fired Salesforce red team at the DefCon.
Companies and upper management are usually bad at evaluating the value of employees. In some cases even punishing good employees while rewarding more ass-kisser types.
So you can be worth a lot, but be paid quite low. As cost and value are not always correlated, and rarely match each other.
For the part of looking elsewhere for a better salary, I agree. The managers are doing a poor job and moving around is the only option. This is a huge cost to the companies that lose expertise and need to train new employees and show how much overpaid their managers are because pay and worth are not related, and this is big a problem.
* https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/08/salesforce-fires-two...
Isn't that circular logic? By that logic, nothing can ever be undervalued, because its fair value is defined by how much it's sold for.
If you want to go all supply-and-demand, an employee's value is still not what they request, it's what it would cost to replace them, on average
Pretty sure most people who live paycheck to paycheck would disagree.
Er, can you clarify? If you don't work, you don't eat.
That's not what he means, just like that's not what you mean.
Plenty of people can negotiate to get closer to that so negotiating a raise isn't pointless - but lateral moves are often easier.
Although you can be more valuable in a different company - for eg. if your current company isn't good at utilizing your specializations.
Your argument is sound, but this is really unfortunate phrasing.
It's actually what your work is worth. Not what you as a person is worth, and it's important to keep those things separate, both for sanity and rigor.
No one cares if your apartment is clean which is why no one pays you to clean your apartment.
it has value to society, massive value. If no-one does it, society collapses pretty quickly.
But we don't pay people (women, mostly) to do it.
But certainly you must interact with people outside of your job?
That's how much that counterparty has offered. It may not necessarily be how much you're worth to that party, let alone some other party.
They may be bluffing. They may not have enough money at the moment. And so on.
If later on they get $10 million income and they can't continue without you, then even though they are still paying you $X you can easily find out you're worth more by threatening to leave.
You're worth whatever it costs to replace you in the open market.
If you have money saved you always have another offer. The biggest leverage you have as an employee is saying "no thanks" and leaving. As long as you're willing to do that you can demand whatever you want.
That doesn't make any sense and sounds like everyone is always paid fairly. That's far from true.
If you can't get more, you're not being exploited. You're taking advantage of the best option available to you.
Not much? I hate you Silicon Valley!
I live in Central America, but work for a Seattle based startup as a remote contractor and make $32K.
Whenever I read about "common" salaries for programmers in the US an internal conflict unleashes on me.
On one side what I make is on the middle-high range when compared to the local market, but it seems it is low when compared to US salaries.
I often wonder if I'm fooling myself and the guys with those salaries in the US are actually more skilled than me and there is no point on comparing.
For the record I have a bachelor degree on computer science (from a local university), was Cisco CCNA certified (expired already) and consider myself to be a fairly competent full stack programmer, in the sense that I can build a web application from zero and handle everything from setting up the server and designing the DB to developing the user interface (html, css) and programming the back-end (in PHP)
I have recently reached the same conclusion that the person on the article, and I'm planning to launch a SaaS side project of my own and let the market decide the real value of my work...
Even people who are generally logical will be resistant to paying a good south american developer as much as a mediocre developer who is also remote but in Seattle.
Even though I'm from SF this is strangely something I've thought about a lot. What I would do in your shoes: (1) create a nice portfolio of all your work (omit the Cisco CCNA stuff, if you are looking for work as a web developer that is actually a red flag, just put your web work and claim to have done anything you can reasonably defend in an interview), talk in aspirational language about your passion for the craft of software development and always point out every way in which you were involved in collaboration with designs are in business concerns and how that informed your more technical work because your real passion is for creating useful products that people love, not just banging out code (2) write some blog posts occasionally about functional programming and how to write better tests, (3) instead of saying you are from Central America say you are "currently enjoying living in Costa Rica (a US friendly timezone)" or just completely omit where you are and simply say you are in EST, who cares beyond that??(4) explain that you are an expert in "remote collaboration" (5) humans are experts at sniffing out non-native language speakers. Find a US Native copywriter and have them polish all your copy and pay a designer buddy to make your site look cool and modern, (6) post your resume on Hired, etc (7) ask for $175/hr but expect to accept $150 or so.
This all depends on how good you really are of course. Another US bias (possibly valid) is that php developers are paid less. Bone up on Elixir/Phoenix or another hot language/framework + react native, do a cool side project even if it is quite small.
IMO if you did all that you'd have plenty of work at high US rates. (just for comparison, $32K/yr is about $16/hr, you can definitely get up to > $100 or $150/hr)
All that investment and the resultant relationships have real value so step 2 of course is to hire a couple of your buddies who are also good at slightly better than local market rates...
Visa and etc might make it harder for you, but if it were me I'd start browsing for remote positions at San Francisco companies.
That's not a great QOL. For comparison, I ran the Mexico City / SF cost of living on Numbeo[0]. $38k in Mexico City would need to be $140k in SF for comparable quality of life.
(side note -- this COL calculator is super neat! anyone have any evidence of the accuracy?)
[0] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
a while ago, this and other sites said I needed 120k in LA and 140k in SF to maintain my south america 40k.
turns out I moved making more than the SF salary in LA. and it still falls short on what I have money to do on short trips and night life.
I guess it is acurate if you dont go out every friday and saturday and never, ever leave the city for the longer holidays.
this is the dumbest thing i've heard today. Stop exaggerating.
Also remembered that you might only have the opportunity to work that job presicely because you are in a low cost of living area and can be offered a low wage while delivering acceptable work.
And I also understand that a big part of the reason why I was offered that position was because of the savings the company was going to get by hiring me, although it was not the only reason because I landed the job after completing a freelance gig which results were judged to be "great"
I'm not complaining about my salary just trying to figure out ways to pursue personal growth.
The last part of this sentence is what is important. I'm a decent programmer, having built a few apps both for web and phones. My colleague is a better programmer. We're getting tons of work (by me selling) and outsourcing lots of it to other programmers we know, because they can't sell. Selling is hard, building trust is harder and doing so continuously is even harder.
My point, although a bit drawn out, is: It doesn't matter how great you are as a developer if you can't sell. Running a business is another kind of hard than dealing with race conditions. You can probably learn how to do both.
I'm still shocked by it every time. Especially since the same person who makes you that offer will complain that it's so hard to find talent. What a surprise! Who would think, it's hard to hire people by offering less than half their market rate.
What kind of work ? if you have a phd you can't have research work that way can you ?
Londoner here feeling quite constrained with salaries, curious where you find 130-150/hr remote gigs. Mostly through a personal network? Or a recruiter? Really curious.
My guess is it is mostly unusual situations which can't be easily explained or replicated.
There definitely is a very real salary ceiling in the tech world in London.
I'm on salary at the moment, but it would take a lot for me to make anything near what the day rates for 3/6 month contracts are paying.
One thing to remember though is that those day rates do get taxed pretty much the same as a permanent job if you pay all your earnings out to yourself. The tax laws have closed a lot of the loop holes.
I would be very happy to discuss contracting further if you were interested. Drop me an email if you want.
Try using stack overflows job search tools, set to remote.
Try angel.co, be upfront about wanting remote.
If you are working on B2B contract, making 750 euros per day you'll quickly accumulate savings, and having 100-200k euro in your bank account allows you to not be worried about where to find your next contract.
Also, if you are running business in Europe you are still paying social security fees for yourself, so you still get that "free" healthcare, pension, and even sick leave coverage.
As per mortgage, you still can have it (although with all your savings you'll probably never need it), provided that you run your business for at least a year and have regular cash flow.
The one disadvantage is that leadership roles and promotions are usually reserved for permanent employees, although some companies employ team leads or PMs on B2B contracts as well.
I have no experience (besides internships) and no connections.
First job (India) 2006 - ~$4,000 per year
Second Job (India) 2008 - ~$10,000 per year
Third job (US) 2010 - $105k
Fourth Job (US) 2012 - >$150K
Things have gone well since then too. The main thing that has kept things going up so far is really practicing before interviews to try and get better and never shying from looking for better opportunities. The company and I have a transactional relationship, not an emotional one.
But I'm not the lowest paid person in the office. Even the junior devs who started well after I did and haven't had as many raises aren't the lowest paid in the office.
I'm fairly sure the lowest paid people in the office are the cleaning contractors who come in after hours, almost certainly with far less flexibility, worse working conditions and worse job security than the programmers whose mess they vacuum.
Not that this stops me from pursuing career progression, but it'd be nice to see software developers show a bit of solidarity with people who aren't lucky enough to be able to work with tech and who live paycheque to paycheque, rather than discussing how they're going to negotiate their way up to being in the global 0.5%.
Reality check: Most of us are already in the top 0.5% of the global income distribution, even with a relatively meager salary like 30k or 40k. You can check for yourself at http://www.globalrichlist.com/
Maybe add another zero in there...
If you stick with a company, you're guaranteed whatever your salary is even if the company doesn't make any sales. If they're doing really well in terms of sales and contracts, then they pocket the difference, but if they're not, you pocket the loss.
I personally agree with the author that it's worth getting paid for the uncertainty with your own company (in most cases the rewards outweigh the risk assuming you have enough to float on for a year or so while you're learning), but some people find that stressful and are willing to pay a pretty hefty premium for that certainty of a regular monthly check.
I ended up leaving full time employment for contracting/consulting.
The US Dollar holds significantly different value in different parts of the country.
The really sad part is when you take into consideration that programming and CS jobs in general are one of the jobs on which you can generate the same value being on-site or at the other end of the world.
So in theory there is no reason why you couldn't do the same thing someone in the US is doing and get paid the same amount.
Oh well, such is life...
This is one of those things that seems like it should be true in principle, but doesn't seem to be true in practice. I don't believe my employer is generous. I'm certain if they could generate the same value for a significantly lower cost they would.
Yet I always try to see through different angles. Are there any drawbacks of being a contractor, in comparison to full time employee?
Drawbacks are:
- Lack of job security
- Loneliness (always an outsider)
- More responsibilities (pension, taxes, vat returns, chasing invoices, legal etc.) It all gets pretty draining
- No sick pay
- Contract writing/negotiation
- You often end up working longer hours to get things done and keep people happy
- Getting a mortgage or loan in the UK is generally more difficult if self employed, even if you're making bank.
The other thing I'd add is that to be a good contractor/consultant you need to have a well rounded skillset that extends far beyond the technical. The ability to make any sort of impact at a larger business where management are too fond of meetings, marketing are completely change-averse and engineering just want to see you fail has very little to do with your ability to engineer software. You need to get decisions made, win confidence and support and integrate with teams very quickly - it can take you away from doing what you love sometimes.
Basically, I'm glad to have the money right now but I'm not sure i'll do this forever. The comfort/security of normal employment is sorely tempting.
I get bored of a single place after about 6 months so the constant change of contracting keeps me interested, it also means i pickup new skills and experience quite often.
I dont suffer from the feeling of lack of job security, permies can get fired if they're useless or no longer needed just like contractors can. Plus, i've never not been able to get work. I also dont suffer from lonliness, i have a community of techys i'm close with and speak to every day on slack. The taxes and various other things are a pain but i get someone else to do most of that, no sick pay isnt great, but i'm rarely sick and earn enough to offset that. The contract negotiation with recruiters i absolutely loathe. I dont tend to work longer hours than permies, i dont feel the pressure like them to stay longer than is required by my contract. The mortgage thing is something i want to start looking into soon, there are contractor friendly mortgage providers so hopefully wont be an issue.
Everything else you say is right though, however, i've absolutely no yearning for a permie job, its just not me, i dont like working for other people, which is why i take on more than just contracting and i have employees too.
Even better, negotiate collectively. It's easy to lay off one person but you cannot lay off a whole branch (or all employees ideally).
I know I'm dreaming but there are decades if not centuries of experiences of worker struggles about better salaries or working condition. And well, there are just basics, to be learnt about. If you are on a one-by-one negotiating with your boss in private, then you are in an environment where you've already lost.
It's no surprise that in all other industries salaries working conditions are negotiated (and fought for) collectively.
even down to the point of dictionaries now listing syndicate as organised crime. yes, there was some cases. but steve jobs also was convicted of organized crime literally on wages fixing and he never made it into a dictionary as a synonym to organized crime like they did to unions.
You are arguing that dishwashers get paid too little. Your argument is that dishwashers produce a lot of value and you're right about that. The restaurant is willing to pay probably as much as $50/hour for a dishwasher if not more. The problem is that people are willing to take the job at $15/hour so there's no incentive for the restaurant to pay more.
People mostly get paid just the right ammount according to the market, but from any other percepective the numbers are pretty aribtrary and by no means justifiable. At most one could say that some people don't work hard on their carrees and e.g. try to make a living from beeing an artist (or in oter words: don't optimize for money). But this is not true for the dishwasher either.
One guy which I knew, a movie FX guy (Maya, After Effects, ...) moved to London and washed dishes for a few months before getting a gig in his field.
And I've met quite a few more people in London doing very low paid jobs.
They are paid so low because you can easily find someone willing to do it for even less.
I'm not saying that this is fair, it's just how it is.
Basic income, which is inevitable, will fix most of this, as in nobody will need to work just to make a living.
I have 2.5 years of software development experience but no formal education. I am paid 65k/yr but as a remote contractor, so I pay my own taxes and healthcare, which effectively makes my salary about 57k/yr. I'm considering looking for a new position. What is a reasonable salary to ask for?
Edit: I live in California and prefer to continue working remotely
As a hiring manager, I've interviewed people who have 5 great years of experience who I'm very comfortable hiring into those senior roles. And I've also interviewed people who have 15 years on paper but when you dig into it, it's the same one year of experience 15 times over. They're an easy pass from a hiring standpoint. Not everyone looks at candidates the way that I do, but it's still extremely common for some people to move up much faster than others. Anything you can do to be one of the group that moves up quickly will make you more money in the long run.
Things you can be looking for right now instead of money:
- Try to find a team where you're the weakest member. It may be scary, but you learn from working with talented engineers and if you're the strongest member of the team, you'll stagnate.
- If you've got more than 18 months in a position and you feel you're not learning something important, jump to a new position. Diversity of experience is usually better than a single, longer experience even if it's good experience.
- As much as it gets trashed around here, chase the latest buzzword technologies. The more technologies you can prove you know, the more you can prove your ability to learn and the more money you're likely to get offered.
- A chance to take on responsibility beyond your years. If someone is willing to offer you a senior title with senior responsibilities but only pay you a junior salary, that's worth something. The next time you jump, you'll be able to jump into a senior-paid role.
The advice changes once you get through your rapid advancement years, but for someone just starting out, I think the above is pretty solid. Focus on growing yourself...the money will follow.
How do you differentiate "great years of experience" from that by looking at a CV?
To give some comparison, I started at $51k in DC. Stayed at that job for 10 months before I got poached by a startup that offered me $75k. Stayed at that job for 9 months before I got poached by a startup in the Bay Area & relocated to the Valley. I worked at that job for $110k for 3 months before switching to another startup for $140k after stuff soured at the prior company. After 9 months there & getting laid off, I landed a job at another startup for $160k. I stayed there almost 2 years and then got laid off, and now I am at Apple making a little over $200k total (effectively even more now since the stock has been doing pretty well, which bolsters my RSUs & stocks from the employee stock purchasing plan).
Those numbers are over a career of 4.5 years. I am very good at what I do, although still learning new things all the time, so it may be an unrealistic match, but I have heard of other developers doing even better than me $-wise (one former coworker on track to make over $300k this year with under 2 years of experience - he's shooting for $400k-$450k for the year I think, making more than almost all of the best developers I have ever worked with, but he is working lots of contract gigs simultaneously and outsourcing when necessary).
And if someone doesn't offer you the salary you want, say thank you but no thank you. As for convincing people, just be sure to have side projects and be sure you're able to talk in detail about anything you've worked on.
If you have some savings, you can take longer to search for a new job, or you can give yourself the upside option of starting a new business. If you're broke, you basically have to take whatever you can find before food runs out.
At the moment, there's pressure on people's budgets coming from rent. Asset prices are inflated thanks to cheap money (in several places around the world), and that pushes up rents as well as mortgages. This adds to everyone's burn rate, and transfers both actual wealth but also opportunity people who owned homes before it all went crazy.
(Another thing that ate up opportunity for the masses was that they didn't let the economy fail.)
> "That feeling that I am actually the one making this work, and I'm also perfectly capable of talking with people and selling it"
I've come to this conclusion as well. It's narrow minded, but I do tend to think that technologists are actually the only people making the world better.
Organisers (leaders, management, bureaucrats, sales) have existed since the dawn of civilisation. What do they do? They use influence to manipulate some group of people to behave in some way that they like. Sometimes it works for everyone, sometimes it works just for them. But they've always been around, and we've never lacked for people who thought they were good leaders.
Technologists, by contrast, make new things. That's in the word. And by making new things new ways of organising society arise, often benefitting a lot of people.
What's interesting about our time is that there's a perception, pretty much unfounded, that technical people aren't social. And with that the idea that there are certain people (called BSers when they do it badly) who are naturally more social and thus better at handling relations such as sales. It is of course totally wrong; you can practice social skills as much as you can practice algorithms.
I thought I've done well in my negotiating (in D.C.): 80k -> 90k (9m) -> 95k (12m) -> 105k base (1y7m, new job) -> present 2y2m later.
I now feel as if Ive shorted myself. I guess I shouldn't compare to Glassdoor? My salary is above the median listed at Glassdoor. The article makes me feel under-valued. The numbers I see just seem crazy. At the same time, I know my talent is greater than that of most "seniors" I work with, have led teams, and my product engineering has been fast and "impressive".
My boss assured me that Im on the fast track to promotion, but now I feel as if after 1y at my new company, I must request a significant raise, like 20%, or move on again.
First job, Ukraine C# Developer 6000$/year
Second job, Ukraine C#/Java Developer 7200$/year
Third job, Poland, Dynamics AX Developer 7200$/year, got raise to 13000$/year
And now I'm moving to Germany as a Junior Dynamics AX Developer for 40 000$ + bonuses
Me too. I was able to get it from $41,000 to $42,000 by asking for more. I'm up to $48,000 now! Nice job.
What the hell? Is that a normal career progression for a junior developer straight out of college?
I once worked for a company which was happy to support a grad student in the US, but would not pay me a similar RA/tuition salary here. This, even if I had better results to show in a shorter period.
Equity is alien, and generally connections/networking commands more salary than skills/knowledge. Really sad TBH.
I have similar skills working in London for a "major search engine" (you've used it within the past 90 seconds I bet) - I guess I am one level below being considered "senior".
£65K basic, about £15-20K annual bonus and roughly $40K in stock grants a year, so works out at about £100K a year when all is said and done (or about $130K) before taxes.
Not sure how that compares to your pay, but I know that mine is lower than the people on my team doing the same job but based in SF or NYC - not by a huge amount, but certainly in the tens-of-thousands.
I know deep down in my heart that I should go contracting to double my pay and get a much more flexible work-life balance, but I just cant yet bring myself to quit mainly out of pride and because I expect when it comes to contractor interviews people will just not understand why I quit "major search engine" (plus I'd be throwing away about a hundred grand in stock that hasn't vested yet).
Golden handcuffs - first world problems suck.
Don't know how you got this idea. No-one will care.
My fear is that people would assume I was sacked/forced-out for being crap though, since there is such a mystique around the company and people dream of getting a job there. Perhaps in a few more years things will tarnish a bit more.
Sorry to disappoint but you don't have golden handcuffs. Not at all.
You may be about to learn a hard lesson. Anyone can do a job. Creating a job is hard.
Good luck
So... do it. The author claims to be just as good at business and selling. So... do it. If you're sour about it and think you can do it, then do it.
HN used to be a place where people understood that it took more to running a tech business than being a programmer. Pounding the pavement is hard. Getting clients is hard. Securing funding is hard. Legal work is hard. Securing staff is hard. Dealing with burn rate is hard. Finding market fit is hard. Complying with regulations is hard.
If you can do all of this (I can't - I have no entrepreneurial bone in my body, and am a lifer salaryman), then do it. It's very satisfying even if you're not made filthy rich from it. But don't sit there as a salaried employee complaining that you should be given the lion's share because you do 'all the work'. Chances are, you're missing a hell of a lot that is being done.
Thankfully the author is actually following up on this, but I see this kind of mentality a lot in our industry.
Short form: if you think you can 'do all this' and you're sour about not getting enough money for your skills, then you only have one option towards satisfaction: do it.
I would expect my salary to grow at my current job. I also feel that I would have been hired at my current job if I just had my bachelor degree.
Now, I can probably make a more as a financial consultant, but I don't have an interest in this (and the thread is about programmer salaries).
Even if you walk in and are able to eliminate large quantities of cruft in your first, say, 3 months on the job, once you pare the core down and simplify, the company will continue to want new features and changes, which will typically necessitate some growth.
I think the best realistic option would be a relatively-modest gain in net lines over the course of a year, commensurate with the number of new features.
The normal response I see to this is for companies to hire new talent to come in and write a parallel v2.0 while the old talent nurses v1.0. v2.0 takes 6-12 months to develop, and then it works OK for a while, but since management's refusal to prioritize technical quality is really the crux of the issue, v2.0 eventually grinds to a halt as well, and the cycle repeats for a v3.0.
So they're still forced to hire to someone to help them resolve the friction caused by technical debt, and this method comes at a much greater cost than hiring someone competent and giving them the necessary resources/allowances (which, yes, includes an adequate number of programmers) in the first place. That allows the same codebase to remain maintainable (or even just salvageable) and be used long-term, without really having to rewrite the thing and throw all of the knowledge surrounding corner cases, etc., out the window for v+1.