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Comment by derrekl | Hacker News Reader

The problem is squashed salaries. I’ll have junior devs or people straight out of code school asking for 75-80% the salary of a solid senior dev. If I have to make a bet on who will be easier to manage and get productive 4 seniors vs 5 juniors for the same total expenditure I’ll choose the seniors every time. Even at 2 to 1 I’m taking seniors. Maybe around 3 or 4 to 1 juniors might look better. But that means junior starting salaries around 50k which no one is taking. Salary range is too squashed in the industy.

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I've noticed this too. There are only a few rational explanations

1. Senior devs aren't paid enough for the value they bring to the company (or conversely, junior devs are paid too much for that value)

2. Investing in junior devs gives a good enough ROI that it's worth overpaying them for a few years. That is, after e.g. three years, enough junior devs have stuck around that they've accumulated enough org-specific knowledge and general tech competency to justify their initially high salaries

3. Senior devs aren't actually that much more productive than junior devs, they just think they are. They also may be averse to doing productive-but-boring work that feels "beneath" them.

4. New devs are valued for more than just their direct contributions to the software project's code base. For example, they may be valued for their ability to bring fresh perspectives, or for their proximity to formal education and thus their tendency to be knowledgable of relatively cutting-edge tech. I think universities lag behind the vanguard trendsetters by at least 5 years, but there are certainly software companies that are stuck 20 or more years in the past

5. The job market for developers is irrational with respect to experience and reasoning about it is as worthwhile as reasoning about the true value of Bitcoin.

I think it's a mixture between 1 and 2, with a little bit of each other explanation too. Worth noting is that senior developers at the big tech companies (AmaGooFaceAppleSoft) get paid a lot more than senior devs at most other tech companies, but most of that compensation is in stock. Full monetary comp (not counting benefits and perks) for a fresh grad might be about $150k/year, but senior developers with >5 years experience are making closer to $250k/year or more

I think it's 2. I don't see why senior dev salaries should go any higher. At that point it would be easier to open office overseas even for smaller shops.

>I don't see why senior dev salaries should go any higher

Because they're vastly underpaid compared to the value they produce.

>At that point it would be easier to open office overseas even for smaller shops.

Which means you're getting junior devs, at best. The entire concept of outsourcing hangs on the idea that the people being outsourced to will behave exactly the opposite of those doing the outsourcing, i.e. not really caring about money. Well they do care: when they get senior they leave and go somewhere they can earn western money.

> Well they do care: when they get senior they leave and go somewhere they can earn western money.

It seems like the offshore contracting companies have a better grasp on how to maintain tech workers than the companies that hired them do. I've noticed my contracting counterparts get regular performance reviews, decent raises, and title changes actually open up doors for them.

I get my regular 2% a annual bump and any title change has no impact on my actual work.

World doesn't work like that. You are not paid by the value you create, but by supply/demand for the position. The economics of the product only dictate whether something will be done or not.

And your second statement is not true. You simply get cheaper workforce in other countries. Even on senior levels.

>You are not paid by the value you create, but by supply/demand for the position.

The labor market isn't the greatest place to talk about market forces. Companies do everything they legally (and illegally to an extent) can to ensure that it's not an efficient market. Further, companies have all the power in the relationship: most of us must have work but a company doesn't absolutely have to hire someone. I saw a 4-person startup on this site say they'd been looking for a "rockstar" for 2 years to expand their company. They were willing and able to wait 2 years for a highly skilled person willing to take a low enough salary. Not many people can wait 2 years to get a job.

To see what a real labor market would look like, you need to address the power balance. So I think sports teams are a better representation because they have unions to address this issue. And they do capture more of the value they produce (not all of it, obviously).

>And your second statement is not true. You simply get cheaper workforce in other countries. Even on senior levels.

Oh, I had assumed you meant the typical outsourcing locations. If you mean places like Europe, yes you can get good senior people for lower rates there. But it's a percentage lower, not X times lower, you can't get a truly senior level person on e.g. 7k/yr. I'm sure there's someone somewhere that has, but they'd have done better to buy a lottery ticket with that luck.

This is good comment, and I wish I had seen it when it was made. The labor market is strange; it actually must be messed up, for profitable ventures to pan out in the software development space (if developers were paid directly according to their contributions, capital would not invest in developer-oriented businesses).

The counterpoint is that you get what you pay for. If you wait 2 years for a rockstar to take a shit salary (and let's be real, someone numerate enough to be a rockstar won't take a bad deal) you also are pricing into your organization that it's not worth it to acquire a rockstar for anything less.

I would bet heavily on 5. Not exactly on the hiring being irrational, but on companies doing crazy things that destroy the productivity of their senior people.

Just look at how many people are complaining here about open plan offices, agile time slots, heavyweight meetings, and inability to do what they do best.

I think #2 is just dead wrong. The easiest way to change your status - whether that's income or losing your junior title - is to move jobs. I think the real reason we see so few junior devs now is they just aren't good for the companies paying them. Why invest in a junior developer when almost certainly they will (and should!) leave your company to get more money and different experiences.

reevaluate what they're being paid and promote them from junior to senior and pay them.

0. Junior devs are hired on current median salary trends, while senior coast from the ones they started with years before.

I think the gig economy has helped #1 considerably.

In the UK, at least, a lot of developers reach a point where their pay is limited to what a company is willing to pay them for a full-time role. When you get to this point, you have a choice: stick to the full-time market, or go into contracting. From a money and freedom perspective, it's almost a no-brainer. A competent senior developer might make £45-50k, whereas a contractor will earn considerably more if they find consistent work. If they're not lucky enough to find back-to-back contracts they get a lot of extra free time to build their skills even further, or to diversify their offering.

We've recently started hiring for a junior front-end position and we've stumbled upon code bootcamps graduates asking for 120k with one or two demo projects on their github. NYC Area, which I find absurd.

Unsure if it's the mentors at those schools that are telling their students to ask for that much or the students themselves think that companies that want to hire juniors usually have that deep of a pocket.

Are these just basic junior devs, or are they specialists in another field with multiple advanced degrees from top tier schools ($$$) and professional experience in that other field? (law, medicine, the arts) and (Yale, Princeton, Juilliard) If so, I'd say they are well worth $120,000, probably have a giant body of work in another field, and are motivated to make back their investment in a mountain of education that has led them over and over again to unemployment or low wage work. If not, my guess is that the math of buying so much schooling over so many years (even mid-tier) and then having to buy tuition at a coding school because the competition is so tight they have no time to waste teaching themselves just doesn't work out, especially when they have to pay $2000 a month in rent plus a 5 month security deposit in NYC, just to attend the "free", "scholarship-supported",or "tuition deferred" bootcamp, that is, if they are new to the city. If they are already New Yorkers, they are probably about to be evicted due to non-payment of same. No one is really talking openly about this with respect to this group of people; the affected must hide their ivy league scholarship homelessness at all costs if they want to ever get a job. It leads to a whole new breed of homeless: living as a homeless person/person-on-the-brink-of-homelessness, well educated, loans to pay, healthcare to pay because they aren't young anymore and really have to get root canals and cancer screenings, middle class props, lunches, and clothes to pay for so they can "pass" as middle class at interviews. It is not sustainable. This wave of unemployed people is exceptionally educated and professionally seasoned (in other fields) in a way that most in previous waves of new job seekers didn't have to be. And on top of all of this, they aren't good at the business of being poor-- they don't know how to get support because they were raised to behave like the middle class. Their families don't understand why they can't get jobs. I remember how little a junior dev had to know just 8 years ago in order to get work. The bootcamps aren't being honest about the lack of interest in bootcamp grads. The online programs aren't getting completed by students. Just a year ago on HN, very few would even recognize the lack of interest in junior devs. Now, we can't ignore it anymore. The tech ecosystem is unhealthy and dishonest with itself about its addictions to certain cultures and practices. It needs to take responsibility for educating newcomers (of all ages and backgrounds) because it is responsible for the fact that these highly skilled people are now useless in this increasingly tech-based society. Mentoring should be a natural part of prepping the soil. It should not matter if devs stay at the company that mentored them. The only reason this is a problem right now is because tech behaves like warring nations not like collaborating artists.

You might be having a bit of grass is greener syndrome. I graduated in 2012, so a bit after that 8 year ago mark, but after over a year of the traditional "apply and interview with big tech companies all over the country" and nobody wanting to take on verbatim junior devs (at least not at my skill level at the time) I just pivoted into free software for two years and consulting for small businesses the last three.

There has never been a point in time where corporations were willing to hire on the inexperienced cart blanche to train them. It has always been a problem that nobody wants to foot the proverbial bill of Jimmys first real dev team. It is only getting worse now as more and more people enter the industry but major giants are slowing down their rampant horizontal department growth that gave a large chunk of juniors a path to classical employment in the nulls.

Yes,perhaps it depends a lot who and where and the year it started to turn. Around 8 years ago, NYC was more open. The free and easy "hey, apply in whatever language you know, we will pay you while you learn ours", etc...this whole notion of "language agnostic" that applies to truly accomplished coders but not juniors. Not really open, just a lot more than it is now. 10 years ago, it was easy to get a junior dev job with basic coding skills. I graduated "several" years before you, friend, so I'll keep that actual number vague ;) I just think it is important that we notice what's happening and notice that they/we can't afford to work for free/very little for may years-- eventually, one can't afford to front anymore, and the bills are coming due, at least here in NYC. We are seeing it in salary demands, lowered enrollment in dev programs, new additions to the severely impoverished (PHD grads who live in their car and take interviews from there). It is important to be truthful about the economy and the state of tech within it and supportive of those who are going through this, and to understand what they are now up against. Because of course mainstream media and similar would have us believe that there really is a giant "skills gap"in tech. I don't think anyone can claim that so vaguely any longer. When "they" suffer, it just means "we" will suffer soon enough.

I've seen this attitude also, and it completely turned me off from interviewing bootcamp graduates. I'm sure there are great bootcamp people out there, but a 12 week course + a demo is basically an intern in my book.

We've been getting something similar - data analysts with solely Excel and SQL experience who've been in the industry for < 6 months, looking for $120k starting salaries as data scientists in non-SF/NYC/Seattle locales. I'm sure they're not that interested in the position and just fishing to see if some company will pick them up (and maybe some will, but there's not even close to a shortage of analysts/data scientists to command that type of salary for that experience).

I'd argue that it's absurd that we still think 120k is a lot of money when we look around at how expensive things like property are.

My father, with a modest education and a modest first job, was able to get married, raise a child and buy a house near London well before he was 30.

Property in that area is now worth hundreds of thousands and would require a six-figure salary (supposedly a lot of money!!) to be able to qualify for a mortgage to buy.

This. Its not that junior devs are overpaid, its that almost every single salaried job is underpaid for the amount of revenue they produce.

If you work for a company and produce a million in value every year and they pay you 100k for it, you are basically accepting that the company was 90% of the reason you made any value at all. For almost every single developer that is not true. On average you could probably make the exact same amount on contract / as a consultant. The fact the business is making fortunes off your work is just exploitative.

This also applies to way more industries than just software, its just most apparent in software because of how many ludicrous buckets of money big tech players are taking home each year while still paying their dev teams only 6 figures.

Your worth to a corporation is the amount of revenue you produce for their bottom line (or how much loss you offset). If you are making them way more money than they are paying you you are being taken advantage of, whether that be at 30k a year or 300k a year.

Absolutely. 100. Do you have any revolutionizing ideas about how to change this for the better? I think you could start a movement right here.

Well for starters, losing the mentalities "well if I got paid x when I was a junior, then this junior should also be paid x" and "if I'm a senior earning a, this junior should not be earning more than b" when you reach leadership positions will help.

Having profit-sharing schemes when you run your own business are also helpful. Another alternative would be reserving a sizeable proportion (like 20%) of your company's shares strictly for employee ownership.

Absolutely this. Income is not zero sum. Someone else fighting to earn more should be incentive for you to do the same, not villainize them as "greedy".

You cannot be greedy in salary negotiations. A company will not keep you on staff if you demand to be paid more than you are worth. If someone can get paid more by fighting for that raise you should be there supporting them 110% and fighting your own battles to be paid justly for your productiveness.

And you cannot feel guilty about the millions who struggle on substantially lower incomes. It is a problem way larger than an individual that only a small fraction of the working class produces trillions in revenue while the rest make close to parity with their productive yields at fractions of what the top end make. That being said, its not something to ignore, but at that scale its social and political. You have to fight the fights in the arenas they are suited for. Avoiding your own right to the fruit of your labor because your labor produces substantially more revenue than someone elses contributes to holding everyone back when competing for just wages.

hello, recent bootcamp grad in nyc here. pple are asking that much because other companies are offering that much. I'm sympathetic to the cost perspective for employers, but that is actually the price that many companies are willing to pay (source: got multiple >120k offers myself)

This is the exact same argument I made the last time we hired. If for another 20% I can get a more proven senior dev, that's the decision I will make every time.

>But that means junior starting salaries around 50k which no one is taking.

Where are these $50k/yr junior positions?

I finished undergrad at a time when $60k/yr was a safe starting point for negotiation but recent searches only show me $15.50/hr at best for a junior. I acknowledge the tenuous distinction, if any, between "junior" and "entry-level" may be a factor for the disparity here.

is 50k really such a bad starting salary or is there such a big difference between US and EU?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but when talking US salaries you have to compare it to EU salary before any taxes, deductions, or insurance.

There are 2 differences: first, US devs are paid substantially more. Second, their stated salaries is closer to what their employer spends than our salaries. Our employers pay various taxes before giving us our stated salary, they have private insurances. This is a gross oversimplification, but that's the idea. Third, the cost of living is often higher in the US.

To really compare salaries, you need to count what the employer actually pays, and factor in the various costs of living (taxes, insurance, home, food, transportation…).

In white collar jobs like software people don't usually have private health insurance (in the US). Employers cover that cost on top of your salary - 90%-100% of cost is typical in the industry, though it depends a biton whether it's just for you / your family.

Depends what caliber person you want. Highly educated, motivated, top 10%, maybe even 20% should be able to earn almost $100k upon earning a Masters, maybe even engineering/science degree. In the bigger cities in the US, I would expect most technical/finance/medical professionals to be making six figures easily by the time they are mid to upper 20s.

I clearly live on the wrong continent.

If you are living somewhere with 2k a month rent, then yes, $50k a year is awful and nigh unlivable.

You should not be in a position where you are working professionally and full time where you have to worry about having enough money each month to survive.

The cost of living is out of control and nobody wants to acknowledge that should reflect rising salaries. It is why there was so much momentum around a $15 minimum wage two years ago.

The economy has not stagnated or contracted. Markets are larger than ever. Corporations are profitable as always and are somehow finding billions to buy each other out rather than pay their employees a respectable wage.

If the momentum and progress of the 50s and 60s held to today the mean salary should be in the $150k a year range, not $50k. The average person is way too complacent to the march of inflation and growth of the economy to think that since $50k was a lot in 1978 that it should still be sufficient in 2018.

To be fair, in the 50s and 60s a lot of the jobs were more engineering than technical, and the US had the advantage of being one of the few nations whose industrial capacity wasn't damaged by World War II. Now, software developers of similar skills in the US and India are paid massively different rates, simply because of cost of living. All the "missed gains" the US has is because money is being funneled to other countries who are starting to produce wares (both soft and hard) that compete with what the US basically had a monopoly on.

> The cost of living is out of control and nobody wants to acknowledge that should reflect rising salaries.

Alternatively, we could look into reducing cost of living. US is dealing with a legacy system in the form of suburban sprawl that makes housing far more expensive than it has to be because the demand by the biggest generation far outstrips supply (simply due to area constraints and ridiculous zoning policies).

A small dilapidated house built in the 1950s with lead paint and asbestos should not cost $400,000.

Unfortunately, that is politically untenable right out of the gate.

12 years ago I started out of college at $75k. Starting salaries are much higher now if you live in a major tech area (100k+ for SF Bay or new york city).

Well, 50k might be a lot or really low depending on the area and CoL there.

And don't forget that a lot of interns make twice that...

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