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Comment by pelasaco | Hacker News Reader

In Germany, all Craftsmen are just laughing. Tiler, Carpenter, electrician, etc.. all of them have enough to do, can choose their clients and their wages. I understand that HN always will tend to talk about CS, but Craftsmen are doing their 40k/year, easily. The Salary potential is just increasing.

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Not Germany, but similar situation in Belgium:

Skilled crafts here can generate a more money in the first 10-20 years of a career than what you make with a university degree desk job. One factor is that you can get into the labor force much earlier, don't neglect that 3-5 years head start when saving for your first house loan. After that, it depends if you're doing the extra hours, weekend and night shifts.

After that the masters degree jobs get the advantage. The craftsmen either they worked their way into a more supervising role or are not able or willing to do the lucrative labor hours.

The decline in crafts like baker or butcher is attributed to the long and weird hours, more than the pay. There are simply not enough to replace the

Your comment was cut off at the end, mate.

Right you are!

+ the aging work force.

Craftsmen who are willing to do a small job for me are so hard to find right now, they're busy enough NONE of them in my area need the business. Every quote I get is either overblown "to make it worth my time", or I simply get declined. Ontario, Canada.

That’s interesting- this is the third time I’ve heard this about Ontario in less than a week. Do you have any idea what’s driving this? Another person in the same boat believes that a lot of people are fixing up homes to sell while the market is hot. Another person believes that it’s a supply problem - trades people left Ontario for Alberta, lost their jobs there and can’t afford to move back.

Ontario and BC have extremely hot housing markets and the demand is off the charts - a lot of tilers and plumbers in BC get sucked into reno contracting companies and simply have enough work to keep them busy for years. I don't think there was an exodus to Alberta - tradesfolk bring in serious cash in Canada so they can definitely afford to live in hot areas... I'd be more curious if it was actually early retirement that was driving things with tradesfolk building up enough of a nest egg that they can afford to retire early.

In my experience, having been a homeowner in Alberta first, then Ontario second - it's similar to software development...

Most tradespeople prefer to work on new builds, large amounts of stable work, without the hastle of renovating existing structures and all of the hidden issues that are quickly exposed once the surface has been taken away. (So... technical debt...)

As a contract IT consultant - sure, sometimes I take small "side-hustle" contracts if I am not swamped by my primary gig - but, I couldn't pay all mortgage if I was reliant on just taking small/odd jobs. Same goes for tradespeople.

> lost their jobs there and can’t afford to move back.

This isn’t 1800. Moving back for a job is trivial when the alternative is being unemployed.

Not if you need to buy a car, relocate, or find some child care, for example. There are important upfront costs when your situation changes, and if you’re unemployed (i.e. with not necessarily that much money available) they can be a significant hurdle.

similar thing happens in Austin, TX area. It took me several months to find a general contractor to just give me an estimate for the repairs (and he charged quite a lot for just that)

Many trades are boom/bust cycle industries and it is in boom mode right now on top of inflated material prices. This is just the wrong time to need/want one.

I had to have my HVAC system repaired and I got to talking to the guy who was working on it and during the course of our conversation we started talking about pay... 100k-200k USD/yr he said wasn't unusual once you were done with school and got a little experience. I was floored, I called a family friend who does HVAC and he said that was about right. If I didn't love CS I'd be working in HVAC right now.

Median HVAC tech salary is $50k. Is it possible to make $200k or higher? Sure. But the HVAC people pulling down that comp are generally at that level primarily because of their business skills not their HVAC skills.

It’d be like saying you can make a million as a waiter or cook, because of a small business owner who opened a restaurant.

https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/What-Is-the-Average-HV...

Well, some of those destroy your body in 25 years (Roofer/back, Tiler/knees), as a Carpenter you have to work with toxic laquer without getting compensated for it like Painters do. If you don't have your own shop at 40 you are pretty much screwed.

In Australia craftsmen (called "tradies") are booking 18 months out, will only work on the things they want to (i.e. new builds, because they're easy/clean), and are easily making $100k - $150k a year.

Most of them still prefer to surf than work !

You have to wonder though, is this because of a genuine gap in the market where people are yet to realize there is money to be made, or is there something else that these stories are leaving out. Is everyone in the industry making this much money? If you joined the industry today, how long would it take to start making good money?

You have to do a 4 year apprenticeship, during which time you won't make great money.

Then you work for someone else and probably make $80k or $90k, then you start your own business.

In terms of supply/demand Australians are extremely house proud and spend an insane amount of money on renovations, upgrades, etc, so all the trades are always slammed. Have been for 20 years.

Right so it seems somewhat similar to the profits you can make programming. Doesn't seem like a crazy get rich quick scheme, just years of hard work paying off.

Pretty much. There's probably also an "in crowd" aspect to it as well. Everyone I know makes $100k+ as a dev here at least after a few years, but I've had Uber rides with older Indian dev drivers complaining that they can't find a job. I imagine anyone lumped into the whole "dodgy lebo/bogan/asian tradies" stereotype might struggle in a similar way.

And don’t forget the amount of money tradies can make “off the books”. Tradies do exist that make 80k officially and $300k unofficially.

In Germany there must be an undersupply of these laborers. Come to California and you will find electricians with years of experience, all sorts of craftsman, woodworkers, tilers, roofers, hvac specialists, approaching you with your three cans of paint and asking you for work in the home depot parking lot. Maybe that's just what happens though when you get your working experience in another country like Mexico or El Salvador and these trades in the U.S. are protected by a licensing process that doesn't care about relevant unlicensed experience.

> approaching you with your three cans of paint and asking you for work in the home depot parking lot. Maybe that's just what happens though

Where in live in the US, the housing market is exploding. It is impossible to find these workers, licensed or not.

I live where the median home is 900k and there is still no shortage of handymen and general contractor labor here if you are willing to pay for work under the table. It's an interesting dynamic.

It’s not an issue of how expensive houses is, it’s an issue of how many houses are being built. California has the slowest housing starts of any major state in the country. That same carpenter would have his pick of job sites in Florida.

The licensing process helps make sure that the electrician that has 10 years of experience in El Salvador understands American wiring codes and practices before he does something that'll burn your house down.

For sure there are common skills that all electricians share regardless of country, but there are still significant differences between countries, like in the UK ring circuits are common, but are against code in the USA.

licensing process that doesn't care about relevant unlicensed experience

The problem with unlicensed experience is that it provides no assurance of knowledge of code or safe wiring practice. Like when I found that my house had several MWBC's, but on one of them, the previous owner (or someone he hired) had replaced the tied-handle breakers with untied breakers, which leads to a very unsafe situation (another common mistake with MWBC's is moving breakers around and putting the hots on the same hot leg, which can lead to an overloaded neutral). Or worse, when I mapped out my outlets and found that the owner had put a 30A breaker on the 12 gauge wire leading to the garage outlets, presumably he was tripping the code compliant 20A breaker and "solved" that with a bigger breaker.

What is ironic about your examples is that you had all these problems with unlicensed work in a place where licensing is still required. So whats the point of the license even if so much work is done that isn't licensed? People who will cheap out will cheap out no matter what the laws say, and people who pay for good work will continue to pay for good work.

In my jurisdiction, minor electrical work can be done by the homeowner (as long as it's a single family home). I think technically even major electrical word can be done by the homeowner as long as it's inspected and signed off, though it's possible that the inspector will require electrician signoff first.

But if a guy who is a master electrician in El Salvador can sell himself as an electrician here, then a homeowner may trust him to do major electrical work "Permits? Naa, you don't need permits for this, that'll just make it more expensive. Trust me! I'm an Electrican and I've been doing this work for 20 years back home"

Good luck with the insurance claim after the house burns down.

>all sorts of craftsman, woodworkers, tilers, roofers, hvac specialists

He also does landscaping, tree removal, fence repair, house painting, trash hauling, electrical, plumbing and general dentistry (if you ask).

Comparing jobs solely based on income is a nonsense comparison.

The two class of jobs are so different. Scalability, physicality, career path, longevity etc all comes into picture.

The discussion has been going around in cycles for many years.

What I wanted to point was that talking about "employability", people don't have to go to a university to get a degree and then try to find a job. There are other great ways to make enough money to don't have to end on OnlyFans.

A lot of places around the world have been in lockdowns that have made manual labour difficult, while doing sex work from home has been made much easier.

You know Devs can relatively easily get around 250k in NY / SF right?

Trades are solid career choices but it's hard work and you expire at about the same rate as a software dev.

So sick of seeing these wildly inflated numbers, they increase after every post I'm sure. Most of us here who are software devs are not earning close to 150k, stop using a few SF salaries as the baseline for the rest of us. It is really annoying.

I don’t know the breakdown, but I’m a (remote) dev in Arkansas making right at $150k with ~10 years experience.

The numbers aren’t inflated, they’re just not equally distributed.

Is easily doable have 2 100k jobs without burnout. Do you really spend 8 hours coding each day?

Ok, so let's not use inflated Numbers for the trades either. According to the BLS, the median Software Developer makes $110k. The median carpenter makes $34k. There are also nearly 5x the number of Developer jobs then carpenters.

It's a similar story for other trades, machinist is $47k, welder is $44k, plumber is $56k, HVAC is $50k.

Then when we look at other technology jobs, PM, IT, etc, the story is similar to developers, high median salary with a multiple of jobs available over the trades.

I know that your talking about the US, but I assure you no Danish carpenters work for $34K, unless they are still in training. You can easily triple that $34K which places you nicely in the same area as a developer with 10 to 15 years of experience.

The SF saleries are inflated BS because they are insanely high even compared to one of the most expensive countries in the world.

Sorry, but without some sort of source, I am skeptical, but also acknowledge that different markets and economies will reward labor in different ways. So when it comes to the US this is a common talking point on the English speaking internet, "the trades pay well", "my buddy makes $150k a year as a carpenter, so you should think about becoming a carpenter too", etc. The fundamental problem is that while yes, there are people who make good money in the trades, on average, it simply isn't true, as opposed to being a software engineer, where the average employee is compensated quite well.

My sister has a trade and has talked about the salary distribution enough that I think it’s going to be very hard for anyone to ever agree on numbers.

She describes it as a bimodal distribution. One (smaller) group of people with trades are willing to work anywhere whenever. They work in fly-in camps with limited work seasons and practically unlimited overtime. Since there’s nothing else to do, they log enough hours to get into double and triple time. The other (larger) group goes home after work and their overtime is limited to nonexistent. The pay is so different between the two groups that if they’re analyzed together, the statistically typical tradesperson looks nothing like the typical tradesperson.

I actually wouldn't be surprised to find that most labor markets are bi-modal (but certainly not all). Which is why I used median wage and not average wage, because the median is very likely to grab the common tradespersons compensation experience whereas the average is likely to be skewed high by the upper distribution group.

Median Danish carpenter makes $63k/yr. Very few make over $75k

https://www.erieri.com/salary/job/carpenter/denmark

Yep officially. Unofficially they milk the black market.

Sfba is one of the most expensive areas. The 250k tc number is completely reasonable for sr level (~10yoe) engineers here especially if they changed jobs in the pst few years. If that’s your family’s single source of income you can barely afford a mortgage here.

The big upside of the trades is that after working for journeyman wages for a while, learning the job, and establishing a reputation, it becomes possible to own your own business, either by founding or buying out a retiring boomer, of which there are many. At that point your earning potential skyrockets into the millions.

The problem with this is the same as assuming that every developer is earning a GAFAM salary. It just isn't applicable to the average employee in the given profession. I'm also extremely skeptical that yearly profit potential is in the millions for trade businesses except in extremely rare cases.

It’s pretty easy to search business broker websites for $1 million and up EBITDA businesses. I can’t answer your question about prevalence from that since I don’t know on average what percentage are for sale.

I do know though that it’s pretty common for the seller to write the note financing the deal, especially when the buyer is a soon to be former employee. So financing is often within reach.

Another example is trucking. Plenty of trucking businesses were built by a lone operator rolling profits into more trucks and hiring drivers. Given the intense competition for CDL drivers today though it wouldn’t be my first pick.

If you start selling millions in contracts, then are really doing trades any more? You are a business manager and you need business management skills. Many people go into trades specifically to avoid that kind of life, they could have gotten a business degree instead if that is what they wanted.

> It's a similar story for other trades, machinist is $47k, welder is $44k, plumber is $56k, HVAC is $50k.

A good plumber in my area (Seattle) is pulling in $60/hr minimum, and that is after the employers cut.

A plumber with some seniority is going to be making over 100/hr.

An experienced electrician is also well over 100/hr.

Granted if self employed they all have a higher tax burden and pay their healthcare costs, and driving between sites is a pain, but 100/hr makes up for a lot of that.

The trades people I know are booked out months. The general handyman I use is only booked out 2-3 weeks, and he comes in at an affordable $60/hr!

Next time a plumber stops by to fix your water heater, have a chat with them. Some of the ones I've talked to live in very nice custom built luxury homes that they designed themselves.

It really puts in context how software development isn't a particularly good career, depressingly.

The money may be approximately comparable (outliers in both camps excepted) but all the trade people I know that have established themselves have very flexible work schedule. They have all the demand they can take so when they want to work 60 hours weeks they do. But since work is per job, when they want to work a few hours a week or take time off, that's also possible without repercussions.

Meanwhile in software land it's either great pay at 60+ hours a week, or nothing. Oh and "unlimited vacation" (aka don't dare take vacation ever).

Tradepeople also don't have standups or agile soulcrushing BS and their experience is respected.

Meanwhile in software land it's either great pay at 60+ hours a week, or nothing

This is just not true. There are loads of FAANG developers making well into 6 figures with 40 hour weeks.

> But since work is per job, when they want to work a few hours a week or take time off, that's also possible without repercussions.

I realize it's rather irrational but I personally don't think I could stomach the non-salaried lifestyle. A day of vacation is a day's wages lost. I'm sure it's something you learn to live with but I appreciate that the cost of taking time off is quite abstract for me.

Keep in mind that most trade work isn’t mentally stimulating. That may sound fine to you, but as someone who bounces back and forth between a job that is and isn’t - it can be rough in it’s own way.

It’s boring and you can practically feel your brain turn to slush.

I feel the same way - even a well paid but not mentally stimulating job would suck.

Getting challenges on the job is a requirement for a good job.

I've never worked 60 hours. I've managed 40h or under for 20+ years. I've worked two full time jobs and have done 60h for periods. I would not recommend it.

I feel like you may be suffering from the grass is greener on the other side.

First, work schedule. Keep in mind that, as another commenter pointed out, tradespeople often go through booms and busts, just like any other profession. The difference is that with tradespeople its a lot more obvious, since they still on a job for a few weeks, rather than a few years. On the boom, the tradespeople get a better deal out of it, because they get more work, whereas office workers of course only have the one job. In the busts, the office workers come out better, as the tradespeople have less work, whereas the office workers remain the same as they were in the boom.

Next, hours and vacation. I may be an outliner here, but my hours are the standard 9-5 and I get a fixed 30 days vacation a year, and flexible working (including working from home). As for unlimited vacation = no vacation, and 60+ hours is required, that seems more like a bad office culture/employer, no different than a tradesman would get a bad client. Again, its only more noticeable in office jobs because your there for a long time, whereas a bad client will only be a problem for a number of weeks (though potentially more if they hold off on paying). While we're at it, the same could be said of "their experience is respected". That's based on your employer, not your job.

Finally, standups, agile and office politics (assuming thats what you meant by BS). Its true, tradespeople don't need to suffer with that, but they do need to suffer through a hell of a lot of health and safety precautions and government red tape. Of course you can get some cowboys who don't bother with that, but that seems no different than the programming teams that don't do standups, agile or office politics (apart from the fact that one team is less likely to kill people). I would also mention the physical health issues that it can cause, but programmers get a similar thing through sitting for so long and you graciously didn't mention that.

I don't think being a tradey is a bad job, not at all. Its just not perfect, and like any job has its pros and cons. I too have fantasised about going into that line of work, but I imagine if I did, I'd end up fantasizing sitting in a comfy chair all day building software. As I said, the grass is always greener on the other side.

Sure but now you're talking about an above median plumber in an above median col area. A similarly above average software dev in Seattle is probably pulling in 250k/year all in.

You can get that as a new grad. Levels.fyi

The two major employers in Seattle (Amazon and Microsoft) aren't paying 250K to new grads. Their packages are closer to 175K starting.

Speaking of "250K" as a number, every single offer over 250K+ for someone with no experience, on levels.fyi, in seattle, was either for someone hired at L4 at Google or Facebook (usually this means a PhD hire), or a Facebook "rockstar" signing bonus, which I think levels.fyi mis-estimates (the "recurring" comp is lower than 250K, you get something like 120 base, 40 stock/yr, 100K signing (+ your normal annual bonus of ~15K). That's 200K/year over four years, not 250).

> Their packages are closer to 175K starting.

And last time I checked those packages had serious compensation cliffs after the first few years!

Software developer compensation is seriously bi-modal, most developers even in big cities are working at a fraction of FAANG pay, doing routine maintenance work.

Median Journeyman Plumber in Seattle earns $40/hr

https://www.indeed.com/career/journeyman-plumber/salaries/Se...

Ok but the person you are replying to literally just went with average to avoid rare geographic salaries.

Finally in seattle a top electrician makes 100/hr or ~200k/year. A top developer with similar years of experience makes $500k and never has to crawl around in your nasty attic and gets amazing healthcare and free food.

They are not inflated numbers they are what you can get working for a set of top companies with deep pockets competing over the same talent. It varies but 150k is entry level comp pretty much anywhere they hire in the United States [0].

It’s not “fair” but it’s worth your time to look into getting into the US tech sector. Your skills have the most market value their.

0 - http://levels.fyi

Not sure why you’re getting downvoted because this is accurate. If you are a low level dev at a big company in a major city you will get a salary of at least $100k, a bonus, and stock options. They easily combine to get you to $150k, and I’m talking entry level roles, it goes up considerably from there.

Well I'm obviously in the wrong market then! Down here in Oklahoma, I'm a Senior Software Engineer, and I'm only at $110k, plus around $10k in bonuses a year. There's very few opportunities for salary increases unless I start looking for remote work outside of the state or I opt to move into a management role.

Most senior salaries around here seem to be in the $95-120k range, so when I see similar numbers for "entry level" roles, it always perks me up a bit.

People make more in big cities, it’s actually been studied across the globe and the data is rather compelling.

Seriously consider remote then. You could easily pull in double that working remotely for a west coast tech company.

If you're in the US, don't be annoyed with these numbers; learn from them. If you get on LinkedIn and expect > $200k, you may be surprised by what you can achieve.

You should line up several interviews all in the same week and play the offers against one another. At least one should be over $150k, and possibly over $200k. That highest number then sets a floor that everyone else will need to rise to as you negotiate. Politely ignore claims that offers will explode; they won't. Add options/RSUs, and you may be shocked at the amount of compensation you can get.

You can actually do it.

Yeah, honestly if you're in SFBA/Seattle/NYC, this is not an unreasonable salary expectation for someone with a decade of experience. Especially if you're carefully selecting job opportunities that line up well with skill growth.

I make $200k as a mid-level and that’s considered low. I’m not in NYC.

Side note - fan of your username.

What languages do you use?

I only have 1 YOE and I'll say the numbers sound right. A friend with 2 YOE got 2 290K offers. Another friend/former co-worker with 8 YOE got a 400K+ offer.

These numbers are all for remote roles for SV-based companies. You can also check salary on levels.fyi.

You won't believe it, but 300K+ for new grads (undergrads) isn't even unheard of if you look at places like Citadel & Jane Street, tho of course the hiring bar is very high at these places.

People do that with every job it seems. Always somebody talking about random tradesmen making $100k+ but in the vast majority of cases they make nowhere near that.

Please stop implying that $150k+ salaries are reserved for FAANG tier companies and SF only. It might have been true 5-10 years ago (and even then, i am a bit skeptical of that lower boundary of 5 years), but it is far from the truth in 2021.

Literally interviewed with a small startup (around 20 people total headcount) less than a week ago. The offer was for a base salary of $180k+grand promises of equity given out that should grow 15x and make one rich, but whatever, because equity at this point is just imaginary monopoly money worth pretty much nothing right now, so lets omit that part completely. But even with that in mind, $180k of pure cash just from base salary is more than doable. And I am not even a senior level or anything like that. Technically the company is in NYC, but the position is fully remote, which makes it even more lucrative for people who want to live in cheap COL states (no salary adjustment, which works out great for this scenario).

This is very true, but you hear the same thing from craftsmen. Another commenter further up said that a HVAC repairmen told him that making $200k/year in that job was pretty average, and a reply to that pointed out the median was $50k/year.

Not saying I disagree, but yeh, its not unique to software dev it seems

Ok, but I'm not from NY/SF but I'm assuming based on the small amount of time that I spent there, that every thing is more expensive there, including housing and medical care... In Germany (Europe?) I would say that a Software Developer salary floats between 30k/y - 100k/y.

Yeah, it’s more expensive in the big cities, but if you by a house you tend to profit from that increase. It’s hard to see that when in the early stages of your career, but I’m glad I stuck it out and didn’t move to a low cost area.

Im in the late stages of my career and after owning my home for 15 years my mortgage is far less than rents in my area, my salary has gone up a ton over the years, and my house has appreciated a ton.

If you are a dev early in your career and in a big city, stick it out. Get into a big company that gives you stock options that are worth something, but a house when you can, and start working to max out your 401k. In all likelihood it will pay off in the long run. My old boss called it the “get rich slowly plan”. As a person that grew up really poor and has been in tech over 20 years, I can assure you it pays off.

I don’t know if the price increases will keep happening at the same historical rates. Although it isn’t out of the realm of possibility, I have a hard time believing that the houses in my neighborhood in 5-10 years will go from $2-3m to $4-6m.

Real estate is a tricky thing. I wouldn’t buy it for the sake of expecting it to go up in value. I’d buy it because you need housing.

Yes buy a house. If it goes up you are (potentially) rich, if it goes down, you have a house :)

It's not hard to believe. First, the big caveat, what I'm about to say ignores the possibility of huge catastrophe (environmental collapse, world war, meteor hits the earth) because if such a catastrophe happens, most of this won't matter a whole lot.

Barring catastrophe, it will almost certainly go up if your time horizon is longer than 10 years. If you are in a big city, the populations are growing faster than new housing is being built. On top of that, there is no space to build many new single family homes so those will go up even more if you own one instead of a condo or townhouse.

I bought my first house at the peak of the last bubble. Ten years later I sold it for more than I paid for it, and those last few years my mortgage was a fair bit lower than rents for a comparable place.

Most people simply haven't wrapped their head around exponential growth. Our economy grows exponentially, and our population has historically (there are signs this might be changing). Unfortunately, I think our environment can't sustain that, but as long as it does, things will go up if your time horizon is long enough.

Edit: also, I’m not suggesting that your home value will double in 10 years. Not sure where you got that idea. My point does not assume or require doubling in 10 years.

> I don’t know if the price increases will keep happening at the same historical rates.

Although you're not wrong, and crashes absolutely happen, I feel like I have been hearing that for at least 30 years now.

Just when it seems like things can't continue, the market always seems to find a way to support the higher prices.

For example: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/mortgages/what-is-the-40-year...

It's probably only a matter of time until the 40 is the new 30 year loan for everyone...

It's actually a more complex topic that it appears at first. Some things are much more expensive, but some are identical to everywhere else - eg:

- vacations

- cars

- all online purchases

- most hobbies

- etc...

When I moved to NY, I expected that my (much higher than before) salary would barely allow me to buy a car. Instead, I ended up with the best car I had ever owned up to that point, and went on craziest vacations. I also lived in the shittiest place ever before and after.

Google has an office in Frankfurt, and SWEs there get paid far more than 30k - 100k/yr. The comp delta between google SF SWE and google Frankfurt SWE is less than 30% (at same level obv).

I totally agree that the non-FAANG companies have terrible dev pay. But most of the FAANG companies have offices well beyond just SF/NYC, so the opportunities are definitely available.

And in Germany senior devs make 50-100k€. You can’t compare salaries without taking location into account.

40k in germany is not a good salary

Depends where you live, depends on your life style. It is however the average salary in Germany:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_...

https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/164047/umfrag...

https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/gehaelter-so-hoch-i...

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