As someone who hires programmers, I am much more interested in how many people make between 60-70, 70-85, and 85-100.
Beyond 150-200k range, most of the compensation tends to come from bonuses, stock, and options - which can vastly exceed base salary.
I'm rather certain that my employer rates me in at least what you describe as the "under 100k" range, but I earn 40k euros per year.
Do you guys all go on holidays to Latin America 3x per year? And have six broadscreen TVs? And villas with seaside views?
Or is a 1 liter bottle of coke just also 10$ in the US?
In other words, it's easy to come out of college with $50-100K in student loans. It's also easy to get a major injury without medical insurance, pay $10K out of pocket to rectify it, and rack up another $10-15K by living on credit for a year.
see this http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/7413/2008usincomedistribu...
I had to massage a whole bunch of numbers from bls.gov to get this histogram (huge list of annual income per county per occupation group), it's not exactly the kind of data they like to publish :)
Of course this is 2008, mostly before the recession. Would be interesting to see if they got new data and how it changed.
And this is for all occupation groups, computer programmers are of course on the higher end of this graph.
And yeah, depending on where you are in the US, things you'd expect to be cheap in the supermarkets here generally tend to be a bit more expensive. Also because they always list the prices excluding VAT [in most states]. If they list the prices correctly, or at all. And actually charge you the same amount at the checkout. Outside of supermarkets, prices seem reasonable, until you find you need to pay 15-20% in tips because waiting staff doesn't get minimum wage [in most states] and it's up to the customers to make sure they don't starve. So yeah, not very developed after all :-) [also: healthcare. unless you're rich you get none. half the people on the street walk around with visible ailments of some kind. but I'm getting OT]
A bottle of coke, however, is much, much cheaper than over here. Also, bigger.
groetjes
- ritz
In the US, these things are not mandatory. Good employers (like mine) are relatively generous, but not like what I've heard in Europe.
The raw anonymous results will be shared on HN in a few days w/analysis.
I "get" the feeling that programmers in Web technologies get paid less than people in hardware/appliance companies like Cisco, Juniper, NetApp etc.
Edit: Just noticed the Industry Option :)
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....
On the other hand, New York is more expensive than the Valley and salaries are, IIRC, even higher.
IMO, with lesser US taxes & cost of living the US software programmer makes atleast twice than that of his eurpoean counterpart!
A relative frequency density histogram
Still, as the company grows, there will be a need for more junior developers. In our market (Nashville, TN) many senior developers still make less than $100k while some make $60k fresh out of school. As I look at how the poll numbers play out, I suspect that is true for most markets and not just mine. That is why I say the range is too big.
Can somebody else make a poll with ranges 50-59,60-69,70-79,80-89,90-100?
My karma's too low :(