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Comment by mikorym | Hacker News Reader

I am always surprised to hear how much programmers get paid in the US (third world disclaimer: It's a lot!).

> Average pay for manufacturing engineers is about $78k

This is more on par with pay for (top) programmers or engineers that I know of. In South Africa, actuaries get paid much more than programmers. From what I have seen on HN, US based programmers (in top-ish companies) get paid actuarial salaries. As a mathematician, I have a lot to say about actuaries, but alas, that is for another day.

Maybe someone more knowledgeable can clarify this. Median pay at tech companies is sometimes > $100k annually. In my view as a not-a-US-citizen, that is a lot of money.

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Bear in mind you might not have the same way to report salaries. In France, for instance, when employees report salary, they don't include the tax the company pays for them. AFAIK, in the US, salaries are reported including them. I still have a very hard time making apple to apple comparisons. If anyone has a good methodology, please ping

But this shouldn't make a difference relatively. In most of Europe (every country I know salary data of), manufacturing engineers tend to get paid at least the same if not more than programmers.

Yeah and there is also the ridiculous cost of living in a lot of the tech areas. A household earning $117k is on the poverty line in SF.

In SA salary before tax is used. So you lose from there between 20%–45%.

In the US, salaries are not usually described including tax, are they?

When someone in the US says they make $100,000 per year, that is usually exclusive of any tax paid by the company. It is also exclusive of other benefits paid, with health insurance commonly being $10-20k paid by the company, if provided. The employee is responsible for their own income tax.

There’s confusion because in the gig/entrepreneur/consultant world, people will say they “make” $200,000 in business income. But then they bear taxes and benefits out of that amount. So you may “make” more, but do worse than someone who is an employee of a bigger company. That is why it takes a substantial increase in income in the US to justify leaving a stable employer.

What is important is not how much you are paid. What is important is how much buying power you have with the salary you are paid (minus taxes) and how much your society gives you for free (education/health/...)

Until you go on holiday or buy online...

South African here. We tend to use products, integrate systems and do custom dev. There's really no reason to pay crazy salaries because "pretty good" is good enough.

When you're competing on the output of developers and the difference between first and second is Facebook and MySpace, get the best you can afford and pay them. You're spending VC money and need the best output as fast as you can get it. Good enough will kill you.

> We tend to use products, integrate systems and do custom dev.

As a young South African, this reality is something of a let down. In the US, it's like you have a country with (if you normalise to mean) 30 cities the size of JHB economically. The access to cutting edge tech jobs is just incomparable. The upside is that if you do break through, your relative success is greater. In the US, someone else is already trying your idea.

I am curious what you have to say about actuaries.

I think they are one trick ponies (evaluting risk in insurance, pensions and medical funds) that can't appreciate why 0^0 = 1, and if they do, would rather make money for the time it takes to explain.

But, to not sound like a completely grumpy cynic, I think they are intelligent and efficient; moreover, these days people have multiple jobs or facets and the critism is more towards the idea of an actuary than the individuals who are actuaries. I guess we are all in competition and actuaries and CAs are maybe just more honest about competing for one's income.

I am actually interested in actuarial research, FWIW.

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