I don't understand people who say this. Have you ever tried to hire?
I'm 28yrs old and I make ~$400K/yr. That doesn't happen when there's some major abundance of talent sitting around.
I'm 28yrs old and I make ~$400K/yr. That doesn't happen when there's some major abundance of talent sitting around.
The rest of us do not make that and haven't seen much change in wages in the last 5-10 years. At most in the midwest I'd top out at $150k as a Senior dev and that's if I busted my ass. The exception is if I worked for FANG but just like me, 95% of devs couldn't pass a FANG interview even if they put in some real effort.
Personally my dream is to have a side-business anyway, so I put up with my $100k salary because it's low-stress and I have energy for my own projects. If there was a real shortage I would be paid more. But there isn't a shortage for average devs who get shit done. Google just wants the top 5%.
Google's hiring is like if Google visited a homeless dog shelter and said to the employee (Federal Gov) that there's not enough cute puppies. "We need to import some dogs from Asia. There's a cute-puppy shortage here, let's get some Visas for more dogs."
You're just f-ing picky Google. Those dogs in the shelter are good dogs.
Just to give some real numbers, the median household income in the US is $63,688. Unfortunately I couldn't find reliable numbers for dual income families in the US, but it appears to be over 60% (I saw numbers anywhere between 60-69%, but unfortunately no authoritative references).
Rough histogram of income distribution is:
10th percentile: < $15K
20th percentile: $15K <=> $25K
30th percentile: $25K <=> $35K
40th percentile: $35K <=> $50K
50th percentile: $50K <=> $65K
60th percentile: $65K <=> $80K
70th percentile: $80K <=> $130K
80th percentile: $130K <=> $160K
90th percentile: > $160K
I constructed this from a variety of different sources since I couldn't find anything that stated it explicitly. It is not entirely accurate, but it should give you a rough idea of the distribution. Would be nice if someone could find better data.
https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-household-income-percen...
I browse job ads on indeed frequently and see offerings in the $40-50K range for IT positions in the NYC area.
What do people think that offshore employees of an American IT company are paid? I haven't any definite figures for places I've worked, but I have gotten the impression from Indian job ads that $10K/year is in the ballpark. Why would a typical company pay more than five times that for US-based employees?
...and they don't have to represent more than a fraction of what's out there.
Also, "bog standard" is not something real Amurricans recognize.
As far “bog standard”, I’m referring to a CRUD developer doing “enterprise software” that may never see the light of day outside of the company or your yet another software as a service developer. They don’t spend all day worrying about “computer science” and algorithms and they don’t spend time worrying about the complexity of reversing a b-tree on a whiteboard.
Pay scale for programmers at large organizations I'm aware of starts around $55K and tops out around $100K. And non-profits or small businesses pay even less.
That’s clearly not the case in the US for any of the top markets even if you exclude the west coast and NYC. It’s easy to find average salaries in major US cities.
Why are companies willing to pay more? Because they have to to even get your bog standard CRUD developer. Outsourcing to other countries is either not an option or come with its own share of issues.
Whenever you think you know what the average is, you should ask yourself whether the population being averaged is remotely complete (or representative), and whether the data points are remotely trustworthy.
And what do you mean by "outsourcing to other countries is...not an option"? The largest and best known companies, including members of FAANG outsource work to lesser known US companies that use offshore labor. There are plenty of loopholes, even for things that you'd think would require US or EU citizens.
As a matter of fact, I do know firsthand about some jobs that are restricted to US citizens due to security requirements, so I have some specific data that points to those starting upwards of $80K. That makes me more confident that my estimate of the others is accurate.
I’m using readily accessible sites that have publicly available numbers.
Do the top 20 cities in the US have most of the developers, or an unbiased sample? If you haven't considered that, fine, but without some idea, I, again, don't feel motivated to question my opinion.