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Comment by cccc4all | Hacker News Reader

$200/hour rate is median for developers with in demand skills. Many companies will gladly pay this and higher rates to fill positions with qualified candidates.

Software engineering and development field is extremely difficult. There are many opportunities in this field, because there are so few candidates that can do the work. HN is self selected group of people with experience in the field. But they are actually very few in number.

The average worker does not have in demand skills in tech sector.

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I think this is still an oversimplification of what's actually going on.

Its not so much that the skills themselves are in demand, its the enormous experience that someone who can command that kind of fee has. The skill set you're talking about can be learned probably in a year or two of 8-5, M-F self-guided learning from Udemy / Coursera / YouTube, but its the experience of using those skills to build something of value that is driving that hourly rate, not so much the skills themselves.

If you feel I'm missing something here, please go into more depth, because I find this all quite fascinating. :)

I think the part that you’re missing is that understanding programming language syntax and some algos/datastructures is just a tiny piece of what makes software engineering. Having those skills + the ability to convert them into useful software is what is rare/difficult.

Yeah, that's part of it that I was having trouble putting into words.

US salaries/rates are nuts.

$200/hr in the UK would put you in the top 1% of earners.

A 200USD/hr person would make before lunch, what I get paid in a month. This thread makes me want to kill myself.

People love bragging. Don't take it too seriously. Yes there are a bunch of these in certain places but certainly not everywhere.

The remote option has always been available for in demand tech people. Now it's available for most people in the tech field. So it's available "everywhere" people can do the work.

You're out of touch because this doesn't apply to the entirety of the US.

It's interesting that people think $200/hour rate, for in demand software engineer/developer, is out of touch.

That roughly equates to $400,000 a year. Which may seem like a lot, until people actually see what the market rates are in west coast tech hubs.

https://www.levels.fyi/

Also, Mark Zuckerberg is worth $100 Billion, for creating basically a CRUD app in php.

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