Ask HN: Does the rest of the world realize just how much money SWEs can make? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Does the rest of the world realize just how much money SWEs can make?

41 pointsbaron816110 comments

I've seen some articles lately taking about how software engineers make upwards of $125K in the US. That's off by about an order of magnitude.

It's really not that uncommon to see software engineers in the US with 3-5 years of experience making >$300K--about what a doctor would make, except without having to go to school for 12 years to do so.

It's kind of unfathomable why someone might choose a career in investment banking, or management consulting, or any other engineering profession, which might require very long hours, extensive certifications, hostile work environments, etc. over a career as a software engineer or product manager. That is, unless they don't realize they can make at least as much or more in tech.

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No. People do not understand. I try to explain it all the time and can never seem to get it across.

I used to work at a company that had a hiring pipeline that took people with zero skills and trained them up to high paid tech workers in a few short years.

It haunts me I can't convince more people to pursue this path.

Where can I find such company?

Midsized (100 employees) local tech companies in not top 10 metro regions (not NYC, SF, Seattle, Boston, LA, etc).

Linode is an example.

Regarding top metro regions though you can get started without a CS degree and without a bootcamp in tech support and make your way toward programming. But companies in the top metro regions tend to require _some_ degree whereas companies in the lesser metros are more fine with just work experience (like retail at Best Buy), intelligence and enthusiasm.

Look for a technology focused company who's product definitely makes the world a worse place to live.

Great, keep on doing it until supply matches demand and you will be back at an average salary of 70k.

This is not a zero sum game, no need to pull the ladder up behind you.

You should learn basic economics before submitting such an asinine comment.

You can't do this here. We've banned the account. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Why is it not?

Because the more programmers you have the more software you need to write. As a tool vendor, our market is exploding. This was a market that was "problematic" just 10 years ago.

Methodologies and scale are growing which means more developers. Markets are expanding where "everything" is becoming software driven. Generally, give me more programmers and I'll give you more things that need programming. Our world has barely begun automation.

Not necessarily: maybe the faster you go, the sooner AIs will replace developers or low-code tools will get rid of juniors. Or maybe the market will physiologically contract because we though it would expand more than it will in reality. In all these three cases, and probably more that I can't imagine at the moment, the zero sum game would be real and would hit us hard.

People have been making these exact arguments for almost as long as professional programmer has been a thing you could be.

In an effort to overcome our subconscious loss aversion with data, we should back test these hypotheses. If you do that, you will see that every time someone has suggested a specific thing was going to result in fewer programmer jobs they have been quite wrong.

Now we need to weigh the very real negative of screwing over other people who would like to also earn a decent income against the total lack of evidence that this will be bad for existing programmers.

Do what your conscience tells you, I'm going to try and get other people to program.

How can I possibly have data regarding an hypothetical scenario? I was just affirming that many people could be skeptical of this "all aboard" imperative considering that bubbles might burst and the first ones to get hurt would probably be those who were convinced to get to code because "there's a lot of money to be made". Who knows, maybe it's even exactly this kind of "gold rush" mentality the mechanism that creates bubbles in the first place.

That said, why is it unethical not actively trying to persuade other people to program? There's a considerable spectrum between "hostile gatekeeping" and "evangelism". What about not discouraging nor encouraging anyone? How many doctors do you find "trying to get other people to medical profession"?

If you didn't understand my point about back-testing I'm not sure how much more clearly to put it but to say that you are very wrong in thinking this is a bubble. As was everyone else who has been saying it for the last roughly 30 years.

It is unethical, as I said in the post you originally replied to, to pull the ladder up after you. That is very clearly what was being suggested. I maintain that we should each do as our conscience guides.

In answer to the question about doctors, tons of them. I personally know several who go to school career days and job fairs and evangelize the medical profession. There are also many who volunteer with charities targeting underrepresented minority evangelism specifically. I have worked with many such charities in a limited capacity to help them make their technology work better. In my discussions with them, many doctors share my feeling that our positions are a great blessing and that being in this position gives us an obligation to help as many others as we can.

Finally, I'll say that in my opinion letting yourself off the hook because "nobody else does it either" is a pretty thin reed. If you don't want to help, that's your choice. I hope if you need help someday, others are more generous.

I am so non-techie it hurts, but I've come to realize that the only way I'm going to get my projects (100+) off the ground cost-effectively is if I do it <at least the basics> myself. How do you recommend I do this without using most low-code tools (I don't trust the premise) or tearing my hair out????

Any advice would be appreciated-

The problem is that for an average Joe on the street programming often equates to rocket science. I'm not trying to downplay the industry and say that the dev jobs are easy, but unless someone tries to really look into it, understand what it actually entails, they would think that it's extremely super complicated and is beyond their capabilities. In the past,I did offer quite a few colleagues a chance to learn with full support and very likely a job at the end with a substantial pay rise. Nobody ever took it.

You mention rocket science so I thought I would search:

Here is entry-level US: 31000-45000$ in VA [0]

Experience in orbit analysis and prediction Familiarity with a scripting language (i.e. Perl, Python)

Second one 55000-65000$ in CO[1]

work ethic (~60-70 hours/week)

Experience programming in C, C++, Fortran (lol), Python, MATLAB and/or UNIX or kernels

Am I missing something?

[0] https://www.simplyhired.com/job/2vDPHRlmzl3C2V4hIDXUDxGjiy3t...

[1] https://www.simplyhired.com/search?q=astrodynamics&l=&job=TC...

Yes, the history of rocket development and an appreciation of common expressions.

This is probably going to be peak HN comment, but - somehow I find rocket engines to be way simpler than a car or plane engine.

And then there's biological systems that are way more complex.

Outside certain very expensive places software developers typically don't make six figure yearly amounts. Good luck trying to make over 0.3M USD with 3-5 years of experience in Europe or Asia. Besides, not everyone can learn programming at a professional level, just like not everyone can learn how to be professional doctor, artist or manager.

Yes, the whole premise is very US-centric.

I'm not American, but I think it might be even more narrow than that. Is it reasonable to expect six figure developer salaries if one is from outside small number of states with a lot of tech industry? What if one lives in Alaska?

Seems like almost no SWE jobs in Alaska

https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer&r...

> Yes, the whole premise is very US-centric.

It's actually even more localized than that: the vast majority of places in the US don't pay that much. Silicon Valley, NYC, and some other metros will have higher ranges, of course, and BigCorps can afford to pay it. But if you live in the Midwest or program for a company whose business isn't software—which is likely a healthy minority of software positions, if not a majority—you generally won't make that much.

Was just going to say the same thing. ...I might have phrased it in a snarky way like "Do overpayed SWEs in the U.S. realize just how lucky they were for having come out of an American vagina?" It's a good thing I don't have to do that now.

300K salaries- yes, it's a US-only thing. However a lot of countries dev jobs are better paid than most. E.g in my own little country it's not unheard for seniors to make 5-7 times more than an average person in the country. That's still a huge difference.

It's really not US only phenomenon. The numbers are different in Europe but definitely higher than other professional jobs. Doctors earn more but software engineers usually earn at least x2 a country's average salary.

A lot of people don’t want to either. I do think most people will eventually learn some programming as part of their jobs, but I am a visual person who just gets depressed/confused when I tried to learn React and maybe make a career in it. I know i would be making more money, but I have a well paying career in the visual creative field now and I have no intention of learning any more coding than I already know. Maybe eventually I’ll make a Unity project using C#.

I mostly agree.

Let’s also consider cost of living here vs the US, and average pay. For example, I live in north Italy and i currently earn 60k euro yearly, which is 2.5x the average italian paycheck of 27k.

I also have a 10% bonus, which is something most companies outside of IT simply do not offer in Italy.

I think doctors average pay is around 60-70k for comparison with highly paying jobs…

Cost of living doesn't account for quality of living. Most of Europe live in small flats - a large detached house equals millionaire (heck everyone with property nowadays is a millionaire) level wealth.

Agree.

But again, depends on the area. An attic in Trento city center, in an historical building, completely renewed very recently? 400k

That gets you a very small flat in Milan, and not even near city center.

Same price gets you a big-ass detached house where I live (30 minutes drive from nearest city)

As for quality of living I don’t have much experience, I’ve been living for a while in Ireland and UK, but only few weeks at a time, so I don’t really have anything to contribute to that discussion tbh

> That's off by about an order of magnitude.

I think you don't understand what an order of magnitude means.

Maybe it's base two.

Listen here you little shit....

Ugh, I just laughed at loud with this exchange.

I do. There are software engineers out there making >$1 million/year TC. Very rare, but they exist.

‘Very rare’ is the key here.. your post seems to imply its very common

No, they’re right. A non-negligible amount of software engineers in the US make >$1.2M per year.

The majority of SWEs are not making 300k+. Can you? Sure, but 80% of people are making 125-200k in average COL areas.

I’m certainly not. I live in a high COL area, and the average developer makes 120k here. For a few years, it was above 150k, but it’s back down. For a reference, I know two teachers who make 90k and two management consultants who make 250k and two government contractors who make ~150-190k.

That seems high for an average COL area. Are there stats on this?

levels.fyi has ranges for metro areas and mostly aligns with what I said.

> levels.fyi has ranges for metro areas and mostly aligns with what I said.

Are those numbers staff-reported or business-reported? Do you know how they compare, for example, to studies that businesses do when deciding how to set their position stratification?

I guess I'm curious how the sites know whether or not they are actually getting a representative sample of salaries and ranges at companies.

It's not just the self-reporting that skews levels.fyi. It's mostly the fact that they focus on the biggest companies that pay the most. Definitely not a sample that's representative of the whole market but at least it shows what's possible.

Yeah, the OP is crazy. Levels.fyi data doesn’t back up the $300k claim unless they’re talking about total comp at L5 level. They must live in a serious reality bubble.

Perhaps it has to do with aptitude and education and experience. Not everyone can be a SWE just like not everyone can be an artist or an athlete.

Also..maybe it’s not always about the money. I also find it rather charming that you think a SWE would not have to deal with long hours or certifications or hostile work environment.

You think investment bankers aren’t doing it for the money?

I don’t know anyone who’s had to get any certifications to be a software engineer. I don’t even know what certifications would be useful. The other stuff might be debatable (Amazon does exist), but still easy to avoid (just don’t work for Amazon).

So you are saying if one had the choice between being a surgeon saving lives vs swe making easy money, its unfathomable to you if one chooses the former over the latter?

I am trying to understand.

That's not what I'm saying. I can imagine people having a passion for medicine. I can't imagine people having a passion for investment banking. But, I'm sure there are a lot of people who pursue medicine primarily because of the money. If surgeons made $120K max, there wouldn't be nearly as many people willing to go through 12 years of training to do it.

What I'm saying is that if more people knew that software engineers can make surgeon/investment banking money, many of them would choose software engineering instead of surgery/investment banking. My theory is that many people just aren't aware of it, and without that information, choose professions that they're less happy with.

wall street has a great demand for astrophysicists and mathematicians/physics PhDs. i doubt if a math or physics PhD would find SWE and project management as rewarding. i know at least one PhD(completed) and mechanical engineer who is farming with us. they are not working for agtech companies, but actually working hands-in-the-dirt farming. i guess my answer is..there are all kinds of people out there.

Investment banking is seen as a more prestigious job in some circles which can be more important than the money. Tech is still seen as a trade job to those same people. So even if you can make more money doing SWE those people would rather join the army and then go into banking because that's 'what they're meant to do'.

> Perhaps it has to do with aptitude and education and experience. Not everyone can be a SWE just like not everyone can be an artist or an athlete.

When I was in school I remember reading an article titled "Teach Yourself Programming in 10 Years"[0], and at the time I found it pretty funny. I was learning to write Java at a rate I'd never picked up anything else before, how could it possibly take 10 years to call yourself a programmer?

Nowadays, I've just about hit that 10 year mark and I feel like I have nothing to show for it. Some nights I lie awake staring at the ceiling, wondering if I've wasted my time learning something as vapid and meaningless as computer science. Time on this earth is so unbelievably valuable, throwing away even a minute of it makes you the envy of the dead. It's been a decade and I still feel funny calling myself a programmer.

What people compensate you for is wasted time. All those nights you decided to fiddle with NGINX instead of drinking with friends, the times you pushed away a loved one or a partner just to polish a commit before you pushed it, the years you wasted talking with people who will never see eye-to-eye with you but demand an argument nevertheless; as I get older and time starts slipping through my fingers like sand, I don't know if any amount of money could fill that void. The only thing I'm left with is a sort of unfulfilled sadness that makes me wish I spent more time with people, or cultivating my social garden, as it were. Instead I find myself past the point of no return on this track though, damned to walk the same path everyone before me did, and then some.

Not everyone can be an SWE because most people have self-respect.

[0] https://www.norvig.com/21-days.html

Your post echoes my sentiments one hundred percent as a mid-30s SWE. The only consolation for myself is...I literally don't know what else I would do other than software development. At least my schizoid personality is profitable...

It sure beats working at McDonald’s or the local insurance office though. Not all of us were born rich enough to not need a job.

I certainly did my time in food service, that's for sure.

So you think the medical doctor or investment banker don’t waste time and complain? Let me tell you one thing for sure: They would be baffled by our working conditions and not in a negative way….

I recognise a lot of what you say and empathise.

One of the reasons i chose comouter science was that it was an engineering discipline where I didn't have to wait for materials. I can dream something up and build it tonight. That also means you can progress as quickly as you choose. Perhaps at the cost of social relationships. And we often do that at a stage where we haven't learned the value of those relationships yet.

At least for me, what you describe comes out of an unhealthy level of perfectionism and expectations on myself. Expectations I'll never satisfy, hence unhealthy behaviour if I don't address my expectations. A therapist helped make those more recognisable for me. Consider it.

As long as you have balance in work and other activities, there is work in our field that you will be able to look back on and feel a sense of achievement. Look up civic technology. What tech offers is making things feasible and accessible where it wouldn't have been before. Things can be more efficient, like offering remote learning, data collection, analysis and data-driven decision making.

But you don't have to do civic tech to be proud of your work. What tech offers can benefit society in very many ways. It's even justifiable to work for a bank if it's a bank that doesn't exploit people. And as an employee you can help keep it that way.

So don't be too harsh on yourself. And you don't necessarily have to leave the industry to feel you've accomplished something.

No time spent in the past is wasted, it’s what got you here. If you’ve been at the same job for a while, switch it up. I was at a company for over 6 years and I felt a lot of what you’re saying. I’m at a new company, and my wife and I sold our house and moved across the country too. Saying my life is better now is the understatement of a century. It’s not too late to live the life you want. Just stop pushing people away. Stop doing the things you don’t want to be doing. If it’s software engineering isn’t right for you, then change that up too. You’ve only been working 10 years, but you’re talking like you’re at the tail end of a 45 year career. You could become a master in literally anything and still have more than 10 years to reap that. Get the courage to change the things you can.

> Some nights I lie awake staring at the ceiling, wondering if I've wasted my time learning something as vapid and meaningless as computer science.

The first instinct I had when reading this was to say that had I known that computer science and programming weren't the same thing, I might have done something different with my life.

But I'm really happy I did: CS introduced me to Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems and has helped me learn how to think about problems in a way that I don't know I would've gotten merely through programming. CS introduced me to Cantor's Diagonalization Argument, and that has been a subject I've thought about on and off for a little while. CS introduced me to the ideas of complexity and computability, both of which are somewhat philosophical disciplines, not merely tools for program analysis. I was probably predisposed to think about these things anyway, and it's not as though CS was the only way to learn--but it was a good way to eat, too. (I'm given to understand that pure philosophy tends to make it harder to pay the bills.)

> What people compensate you for is wasted time. All those nights you decided to fiddle with NGINX instead of drinking with friends, the times you pushed away a loved one or a partner just to polish a commit before you pushed it, the years you wasted talking with people who will never see eye-to-eye with you but demand an argument nevertheless;

Work is a per se good, but it isn't the ultimate good. It is dignified and dignifying, but debases us when work becomes a master rather than a servant. Work to live: this is good; live to work: this is bad.

I beg to differ. What most of us are doing really isn't that complicated. It's no harder than anything you have to study in the 8th grade. The primary reason coding is hard is because we make it that way to make ourselves appear clever and intelligent. If you eliminate all the OOP, metaprogramming, and CS mumbo jumbo, and impose some actual standards, it's really a lot of writing wrappers around databases. Once someone can confidently do that then the more unusual problems become more solvable anyway.

Yeah, if you're doing game engines, systems programming, ML and whatnot, it's a different story. The vast majority aren't doing that, and you don't need all those skills just to be a software engineer.

One might not become a great SWE that way, but must they be great? I've known far more mediocre SWEs than brilliant ones. Even the um... sorta awful ones manage to skate by pretty well.

I think you're out of touch with the shear amount of base knowledge you had to accumulate to get to the point where all this seems like 8th grader level. It _is_ simple in the end, most of the time, but it's a freaking mile high pile of simple concepts built on top of each other.

I could just as easily say that you believe that because you're in a bubble. Now I'm not arguing that per se, but rather that there's no way I can provide a counterargument. One could use your argument to suggest that any skill is hard because they are built on a massive pile of concepts, which isn't necessarily true or untrue being that it's a matter of degree.

Eliminate the concepts in the field of programming that aren't required for making a Turing-complete language, and what you are left with isn't that crazy complex. It then comes down more to practice, which most people don't want to do because they don't see the inherent value, don't have their own ideas, or assume they aren't smart enough.

I've seen enough people try to learn from scratch to know that it isn't as simple as it seems when we stand on our pile of background. It's not impossible knowledge to acquire, but to be an effective engineer, there's a ton of stuff you need to know. Maybe try to remember the first time you learned about trivial things like Git, UNIX pipes, closures, big-O complexity, hashing, graph theory, refactoring, MMUs and ADUs, TCP windows, IP, HTTP, MVC, design patterns, encoding formats, queuing theory... there's a ton of "simple" stuff to know, many of which takes a regular person a few concerted days to get comfortable with.

Yeah, that's nonsense, or at least it is if you're talking about a system of significant complexity. Some simple greenfield app with a couple KLoC might not be complex, but most systems are hundreds of thousands if not millions of lines of code. They probably use HTML, JavaScript, CSS, Sql queries, a dozen or more libraries (which are also complex) on top of the actual core code. Inconsistent patterns and legacy code are also present, and you need to have a decent understanding of whatever domain you're working in.

Just with that level of complexity, you need a unique attitude and problem solving ability that many people can't or haven't developed. You need to be willing to stare at a computer screen for hours, without quitting due to frustration or boredom.

Not everyone wishes to sit in front of a computer screen for sometimes 16 hours a day trying to work out why some race condition in a monolith application is affecting database performance and bringing the whole application to a grinding halt when someone click "upload report".

Also most Software Engineers outside of the US don't make that much money either. I've been working for about a decade and if I don't work as a consultant getting high five figures in the UK is difficult outside of London. The UK pays better than many other countries, but not nearly as well as the US.

That combined with working with people that are short-sighted, lazy or are unwilling to learn anything beyond basics leads to frustration, burn-out and depression when you want to produce something that is moderately decent.

Also the job has almost no prestige to it. Many people have no conception of it and even if they do it is usually a poor one thanks to decades of shoddy software (and the churn related to it) being pushed into their work and/or personal lives.

The crazy part i think is that this is the only profession where there's a high possibility of sucess for self taughts. I'm a 3YOE self taught SWE and I'm earning double the ammount a new grad doctor earns in my country only by self studying for 2 years for free.

And I'm currently receiving offers for double the salary for remote work with startups in the US.

What's even crazier is that i still have a great work life balance, work from home and the culture is ten times better than what I've seen on other industries in my country.

I can't think of an equivalent industry for self taughts or dropouts.

Lol, you must live in a small little world. Finance has been and still clears much more than software devs on average. Along with that, many other professions have way more longevity (you aren’t considered old at 35, you are considered young). It’s a dumb industry, it better pay somewhat okay.

It's unfathomable to most people. It's also invisible to most people.

I've thought about it quite a lot throughout my career. I'm an avid programmer, but have not held a programming job per se. In my view it's not a slam dunk that anybody can make it in programming. I work alongside programmers. I see what they do all day. To me, it's easy but boring. I follow HN. I think you either have to figure out a way to make it exciting for yourself, or have a personality that can tolerate sheer boredom without burning out quickly.

I can make programming exciting for myself when it's in the service of something else that I'm interested in (like math and physics), but not as an end unto itself.

I've explained it to my kids, and they can grasp what I'm talking about, but neither of them is motivated by it.

Without a credible prospect of becoming a programmer myself, it becomes basically invisible to me, like living in a poor country that borders on a rich country. Unless you can actually move across the border, there's no reason to fret about the disparity.

It's interesting to look at the same question from a cost perspective: How can you control the cost of programming? On a personal level, I use software, but it's all free. At my job, I'm self sufficient for the programming needed to support my own job, and the programming department is like that rich country across the border.

It does depend on where in the US you are or how your company handles remote compensation. Bay area, techtropolii, and other high tech areas might pay that but there are large parts of the US where a majority of SWEs make less than $100k. FAANG is a small part of the SWE jobs available in the US.

> It does depend on where in the US you are or how your company handles remote compensation.

Yes, if you go to work for Albertson’s instead of Google prepare to be surprised

But honestly that’s the point of the post. If you are a SWE in a low pay company realize that you can make $300k+ by switching companies

Can everyone earn that ? No Can you? Maybe

Sometimes that is enough - motivated individuals will use the information

, and so are doctors, and bankers, and some education administrators, and high-ranking public servants, and even some university professors,and the list goes on.

There is a multi-year process of training and selection. You need to take risks and invest and learn to bend your mind in certain ways. Some people cannot bear this, or just bored out of their minds and cannot continue and get back to living their "normal" lives with less risk of depression or mental breakdown.

Those who survive, make decent money, and some even more than decent money.

So what's wrong with this picture?

Largely depends on how old you are. Most younger people who aren't pursuing SWE still know how lucrative it is. Less so with older people.

As for why it is unfathomable why someone might choose another career: we don't realize the work SWEs do is not that easy. We are always surrounded by nerdy SWE types, so we don't realize how averse most people are to programming in general.

I have tried helping some friends get into tech by spoon-feeding them all I know about the industry, but they just don't want to code.

I sometimes wonder if it's a bubble. Those salaries only make sense because of the unfathomable profit these businesses make. What happens when they're broken up or regulated?

Standard Oil became more valuable after it got broken up (the resulting parts were worth more than the original whole). The Economist had an article about that if you want to read more on this story. And at least some of those famous tech companies are so obviously marvelously profitable businesses.

How profitable would they be if we, say, made it illegal to collect PII for marketing purposes?

Businesses are being told they need to become tech companies and so they spend all their extra cash on "digital transformation" and hiring people to think of things to develop or build the equivalent of WordPress using fifty micro services.

Save as you go so if (when?) it bursts you're okay :)

If you're outside of the US, it feels like you don't get a lot of the upside but you're still susceptible to downturns if/when they happen. It's not great.

It is absolutely a bubble. Many of these companies are practically printing money, which is great - until it eventually stops.

The current astronomical salaries are simply unsustainable, and there is no way that all of these companies are getting anywhere as much revenue out of their SWE's as they are putting into them.

> It's kind of unfathomable why someone might choose a career in investment banking, or management consulting, or any other engineering profession, which might require very long hours, extensive certifications, hostile work environments, etc. over a career as a software engineer or product manager. That is, unless they don't realize they can make at least as much or more in tech.

...or, they just don't want to be a software engineer or product manager?

Yep that was the sentence that raised my eyebrow. Is it so hard to imagine that someone might actually be interested and motivated by investment banking or whatever else?

In the US midatlantic - $125k is high avg for 3-5 SWE. It's gone up a little recently, but very little. Around me there are sales people and investment bankers with around the same or less experience than me and they are making much more money for about the same amount of work. If you want to make the $$$ outside of a few areas in the US, those are the things to get into.

I think this is the sum of a few factors.

1. you. you are likely successful and in a bubble near other successful people giving the perception of $300k being common. Let's be generous and say there are 1M SWEs in the USA, avg. salary is $150k and 1% of them make >$300k. That's 10k total people. It's hard to find concrete data, but it's also hard to imagine the proportions being more generous than that.

2. stocks. a large part of total comp -- up until recently they were at ATH's. This won't last forever.

3. recency bias. SWE is still a relatively young profession. I'm not convinced we'll be as hot or trendy or well payed 5-10 years from now as the labor supply grow and automation continues to take over.

Overall I'm not convinced this field is as solid of a bet as it once was -- at least relative to other fields.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0-SXS6zdEQ&t=9099s

A quick search says that netflix has ~9,400 developers, and they pay ~500k to start. Even if we say that half of their developers are international and not being paid that much, over half of your expected number is seen in one company.

levels.fyi shows that l4's on average at Google make ~270k and ~279k at Facebook.

Even if we say only half of employees at Google and Facebook are l4+, and half of those are in America that goes far far over 10k people . This doesn't talk about hedge funds, or even other tech companies.

I think we should expect that there are at least 100k developers in America making ~300k+

That said I think your premise of only 1M SWEs is off https://goremotely.net/blog/how-many-software-engineers-are-...

Haha wow I was way off, 4.4M is pretty mind boggling, exactly the data I was looking for thanks for sharing!

Though I still stand by the rest of what I said. And funny you should mention netflix after what happened to their stock last week :)

Oh my! I didn't know about their stock. I was thinking about working there and choosing to do 100% of compensation in stock... I guess if I were to do that, now is a good time

>stocks. a large part of total comp -- up until recently they were at ATH's. This won't last forever.

It's going to be interesting to see how people react to the total comp paycut that is likely to occur this year due to the stock markets.

Just in the US. The second place that pays swes good money is Europe… and in the majority of western european countries it’s not easy to earn more than 90K Eur gross per year. The average is probably around 60K, which is not bad but definitely far away from US salaries.

No, and some SWEs don't realize how much they are getting paid compared to other fields, and how extraordinary this all is. Compare your salaries to doctors/lawyers (the traditionally highest paid labor class) for some perspective.

US isn't the entire world. Yes, software engineers make a lot of money in the US but equally trained people make just as much money in the US. Why don't you examine how much your ophtalmologist makes without aging out at 28.

> It's really not that uncommon to see software engineers in the US with 3-5 years of experience making >$300K

This is really only the case at the top tech companies and you have to bust your ass to get in. Most software jobs are not that.

Yes, some of us do realize, that's why I, someone from a third world country (Madagascar), try do get in, hoping for better pay. Covid also changed the game rules and made working from home a real option, opening even more door to work from anywhere in the world. I'm a now learning form university courses that are open online, 2 from UC Berkeley and 1 from University of Helsinki. Anyone wanting to hire/train someone, we can chat about it.

Actually yes they do, there's even a funny term coming back in fashion on a few places like 4chan to express than when talking about people who live in the EU: Europoors

People have no idea, even in the Bay Area. I was recently hanging out with (non-tech) friends and one asked if I’d ever considered working at Facebook, I said morals aside the salary of X (based on info from friends interviewing) would be tempting and the room went silent. I did a lot of walking back and “well I don’t make that much, omg let’s talk about something else quick…” but at the end of the day it’s not far off.

Most software engineers don’t know how much software engineers can make. And I’m not not just talking about at big tech companies.

It’s a matter of finding the companies (and divisions within those companies) that have realized software is a money making system and are willing to put dollars into the machine. The industry is much less relevant than it was just 5 years ago.

It’s even worse when you throw remote job into the mix.

I am currently traveling the world and doing programming as a freelancer at the same time. My daily salary is 3 times the monthly salary of where I am currently living.

I have no idea how gouvernements are going to regulate this in the future but it’s insane.

> I have no idea how gouvernements are going to regulate this in the future but it’s insane.

Taxes?

Also, what’s do you think should be regulated ?

I’m stuck on about £30k in the UK. And that’s working for an agency

Laravel dev for 10 years...can you please direct me to the 200k figure income companies....

Where is malpractice insurance for software engineers.

I'm losing faith in the legal profession.

Lot of informational asymmetry, where people simply don’t know what compensation packages look like across tech even for non-tech roles. We’re trying to shed more light on this information with https://levels.fyi

Noticing a lot of career switches where people who started off in one career are now getting into tech by targeting different roles like Sales, Product Management, and Marketing. This is starting to become more commonplace and will be interesting to see how it continues to pan out. Generally it seems tech is still talent side constrained, and companies’ competitive advantage is to find new ways to up-skill and hire new talent from outside of the industry / college grads.

no company will pay you more than 200k in a city with low cost of living … But if we are talking california or new-york yes 300k+ is common

Yes. 300K where? 300K in LA? So, very roughly 150K in Dallas. Great. Not ridiculous. Also, if they get paid "magnitudes" more why do they stay and not just a couple years and set sail for the beaches?

The idea that the cost of living in major cities makes such a huge difference is practically a meme, at this point. 300k in LA gets you ~180k after taxes (unmarried, no deductions), compared to ~109k from 150k in Dallas. Let me reassure you that life in LA is not anywhere near 70k/year more expensive than life in Dallas, for the majority of plausible life circumstances. I live in LA and don't even come close to spending 70k/year (minus charitable donations, which are obviously location-agnostic), and I'm not exactly pinching pennies.

Obviously there are some pretty specific lifestyle choices which are much more expensive in places in LA (or SF, or NY, or whatever), like "buying a large house in a nice part of town", which, sure? You can always find some set of preferences that are expensive to satisfy. But most people are going to come out ahead taking the 300k in LA.

Some people do pack up and take off as soon as they hit their number. Some people enjoy what they do, and the money isn't really a motivating factor. I have some acquaintances in the Bay Area who are well into their 60s but continue working in tech despite being able to retire several times over because they like it. I plan on being financially independent by 40 but I don't expect that I'll spend my days sitting on the beach, just focusing more on things that I think are worthwhile.

you forget about the cost of real estate, cost of private education for kids if you have any etc.

As already mentioned, this math starts to break down if you have children. In NYC you basically have two options: move to a nice suburb, pay $30k+ per year in property taxes, and have excellent public schools, but you have to endure an hour and a half commute... each way. Or, you can stay in the city, pray like hell your kids can get accepted to a private school, and then prepare to pay per child.

If you don't have children though, the math is pretty clear. For a given 5 year period, your options are:

1) Live and work in the location of your choice for all 5 years

2) Work in NYC or SF for 2 years, then live in the location of your choice for the next 3 years without working a single day.

why public school in the city not good? not trolling I honestly dont know!

I have no idea, but one factor might be that the city schools have to serve literally everyone. The suburban schools only have to serve people who have lots of money and are motivated to spend it on their kids' education.

I live in Salt Lake City and make more than 300k

300K where?

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