2018 UtahJS Pay, Education, Job-title Survey
mdjasper.github.io
mdjasper.github.io
My question isn't about your surveys themselves, but rather if you have observed any bias in other surveys compared to your results.
A pessimist might believe that most compensation surveys are used by peer HR departments to set compensation bands and, naturally, they have incentive to systematically report those surveys low. Then they can point to these as "Market Rate" to cover their asses if challenged.
So is that intentional under-reporting happening, or do independent surveys mostly agree?
Anecdotally, I have been told by a couple former managers something along the lines of "the highest payed engineers in Utah are in the 120k range," which this survey shows is not the case.
> Anecdotally, I have been told by a couple former managers something along the lines of "the highest payed engineers in Utah are in the 120k range," which this survey shows is not the case.
I think part of the problem is that the range can be so huge. I've seen senior developer postings in the last year that range anywhere from $85k to $160k. I'm guessing a lot of managers have limited experience and knowledge about salaries outside of their company, rather than intentionally trying to downplay salaries.
I would personally guess that the 95% for senior/principal devs in Utah is in the $140-160k range. The only people I know above $200k would be people doing 1099 work and maybe some one-offs from stock options.
I worked for an org that had a fixed pay scale and read some detailed survey data that included them. The top/bottom reports were bullshit.
People will report what they think their benefits are worth, won’t know their gross salary at all somehow, will deduct alimony, add 401k interest or just make shit up.
I worked for an org that had a fixed pay scale and read some detailed survey data that included them. The top/bottom reports were bullshit.
People will report what they think their benefits are worth, won’t know their gross salary at all somehow, will deduct alimony, add 401k interest, miscategorize themselves (ie identify as an engineer but be a director), or just make shit up.
Surveys may target wrong. Someone who is supposed to be in Utah may be in SFO or NYC.
Small note: you have a typo, "long tale" should be "long tail".
My email is in my profile, get in touch.
I moved to Salt Lake City From NYC in January 2017.
There are a handful of things to not like about Utah, but in the software industry at least, it has been pretty good for the last decade.
Every time I've talked to devs who have moved from SF they universally tell me stories about:
1. Ridiculous cost of living
2. Horrific commutes
Which has soured me on the idea of ever moving there.
I live in Saint George (very far Southern Utah). It's beautiful, the weather is great (if you like hot and dry), and Washington County is very small compared to Utah County and surrounding areas. Traffic is becoming something of a problem and the area is going to be under constant road construction for the next 20 years if growth continues.
There are very few software companies in the area: PrinterLogic, BusyBusy, Mango Voice, and perhaps a few others. If you do move to the area, make sure you have plenty of remote opportunities or are willing to commute to Las Vegas daily (about 90-ish minutes one way).
Of course Capitol Reef, Zion, and a bunch of relatively small towns don't have good pay.
In 2015, I bought my unexceptional starter house for under $200k. (Fifteen minutes from Salt Lake city center, built 1970s, average condition, 2k sq ft, two car garage, 0.2 acre.)
Utah has always been big in tech (relatively to its size). Novell and WordPerfect were the homegrown giants of yesteryear. Now it's Pluralsight, Qualtrics, Instructure, Domo, and bunch of up and comers.
Lots of Utah companies have to reach outside the state for engineering muscle because the demand is so high.
Anecdotally, I was self-taught, and many of the highest performing engineers I know where also. Most of the average performing engineers I know were traditionally educated in CS.
I will say, where I am now (bay area FANG company) it is WAY more common to have traditional CS background and also be a high performer.
I attribute that to a biased selection in SV, and not an actual correlation of CS education to higher skill level.
There may be some correlation between "high performance" and "self-taught", since it takes a decent amount of motivation and talent to even get your first few jobs as someone without the educational background, but I don't know how long that is significant for.
I'm self-taught, and while it has worked out well for me so far, I do wish I'd gotten a CS degree. I've spent a ton of time studying stuff you'd learn in a CS degree, but I do feel like - especially for the first 5 years of my career - I made a lot of mistakes I probably wouldn't have, spent more time "inventing" things that had already been invented, and designed things in less optimal ways than I could have.
Plus, it took me about 10 years to understand just how fascinating and fun some of this stuff is. Although, who knows if I would have appreciated it in college?
I also sometimes wish I had gotten my degree for similar reasons, and still do plan to, though perhaps not in CS. Definitely math, and maybe something else. That isn't to say I wasn't boosted in my own ways, unencumbered by not trying to design things to fit a preconceived model, and learning what was practically useful. "Inventing" those things yourself can give you more insight and appreciation for the way they are or should be built. Unfortunately it seems to come full circle, and eventually you need those models and that less-practical knowledge.
I'm the first one to tell someone to go to school instead. It's not actually the fundamentals I missed out on, it was the network of peers in computer science as well as potential options in academia. It slowed my career growth down a bit. I'm not complaining though since I'm set to retire in my 30s and I wasn't forced to compromise on where I want to live (I really like snowboarding and mountain biking).
I like to think I took the scenic and unpaved route. Maybe harder overall, but it was a fun journey and I ended up in a good place.
In contrast, most CS grads can get a good job after a whiteboard session and a quiz.
I'm not saying that one is better than the other, but there's absolutely some self-selection going on among self-taught engineers.
I've always speculated that a part of the pay gap might be explained by willingness to negotiate. I wonder if recruiters being more normal in this industry helps. In my own experience the recruiter I've worked with has helped a lot in salary negotiations.
I believe that pay discrimination does happen and I don't want to invalidate anyone experience if that has happened to them, but I've been pleased to work with very competent men and women over my career who I believe were all compensated fairly from my observations.
Yes, internships.
1. Can accompany school or not.
2. Limited in scope.
3. Limited in compensation.
4. Varies widely in prior experience/schooling requirements. You can almost always find a something that fits. E.g., in software engineering it's not uncommon for sans-college paths to first involve QA/test work.
Also worth saying tho, that many companies view their devs as "full stack," that JS != frontend only anymore. Node backends are becoming very common.
There's also someone killing it that's only been working in JS for three years.
Another way of saying that would be the difference in pay between a 1 and 3 year developer would be pretty easy to explain on experience alone. But, the difference in pay between a 12 and 18 year developer would be more explained by their skills and specific experiences (not time).
Lately I've been feeling like I've hit my ceiling and I need to start investigating where to go from here but that may just be my perception/pessimism.
Yeah I think there is a limit to what the market will pay for any particular skill, including developers. That limit will be constantly in flux year-to-year (see the 2017 results for comparison), and will vary from person-to-person though as skills, experience, etc. vary. Hard to quantify what that cap might be for any specific person, but looking at all the data in aggregate you can see that salary growth isn't linear with experience.
I don't know that switching paths is always a good bet - on more than one occasion, I've made more than my boss - and often not by a little bit. Principal-level developers are often compensated at director or even low-level VP amounts. Of course, at this level, you're not heads-down coding all of the time, even if you aren't managing people.
Going into management and getting stuck as a mid-level dev manager is probably not going to net you as much compensation as improving your skillset as a developer will.
A few things to note:
* Salaries like that are basically only possible at large public, engineering-driven companies, or finance firms (possibly also high-end consultancies, but I have little knowledge there)
* As you get more senior, a larger and larger percent of your take-home pay will be in the form of stock and bonuses; base salary rises much more slowly
* At the highest levels, you're unlikely to be writing much code. Mostly you'll be leading projects, reviewing technical designs, working with execs, etc.
In Utah, where this survey was taken, I'd be willing to bet the number of people with developer-like titles consistently bringing home > $250k take-home probably is less than 0.1% of the dev population, whereas in a place like SF/Seattle/NYC, it is a lot more common.