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Comment by stackbutterflow | Hacker News Reader

Starting a sub thread for underpaid developers. How do you feel reading about this "white hot market" on a regular basis while not experiencing it?

Be it because of geography, not having the right experience, or working on techs that don't pay well.

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Nothing, because at the end what matters is that I am happy. I am not a fan of pursuing the rat race of always more money. It will create a tunnel vision and, at the end, FOMO and stress.

I am also not in my 20s anymore where I would be willing to move across the Ocean for more money.

I'm myself quite tired of this money rat race. But recently i've been literally heart broken.

I work at a small company that tried to do build their own Cloud product, but wasn't very successful at promoting it. So now it outstaffing me to one big name company that was previously tried to adopt our solution but now is building they own. Which i quite dissatisfied with as i completely lack any sense of ownership working on it. So i started to look into job market.

So i found cscareerquestionsEU sub on reddit. And literally the first post i saw from a fresh graduate who got offer at Amazon(in Germany) with base more than my base and first year bonus more than mine. On top of that he got RSU. And i have 7YoE, contributed to big projects in K8s eco and gave talks at conferences. Seeing this just destroyed my whole motivation to do anything at my job.

There will always be people doing better than you. First rule of happiness is to stop comparing yourself to others all the time.

Dont be discouraged, just realize the two of you are optimizing for different things.

I know Google pays new grads ridiculously high salaries, especially if they have a ML specialization. That's just a thing with huge companies, they can afford it. You said your company is small, so what is the issue?

I wonder, how is that justified, to pay new grads more than some people with real life experience?

I think it's simply that they can afford it, and if they don't, their competitors will happily steal the best talent away with higher salaries.

I don't suppose the same situation exists within Google, although I've heard freshly graduated ML hires can get up to $500k, which sounds crazy until you realize China is paying twice as much.

Taking part in the "money rat race" isn't just about the Benjamins. It is about working for a company that explicitly values your contribution. That in itself helps with motivation.

> I am also not in my 20s anymore where I would be willing to move across the Ocean for more money.

I think you're missing a key point of a lot of the discussion here.

None of us are moving for jobs. We're working from home.

Tax and visa is not that simple as just staying at home...

fair. but a lot simpler than moving across the ocean.

I don't experience this "hot market". TC has barely increased for the 0-5 YoE crowd, employers still trying to drag people to the office, job offers are still massive wish lists with very little information. HR and hiring practices are still progressively adopting more American practices without the benefits they bring for the employees (more compensation, practices which benefit the employee directly, etc.)

Meanwhile CoL is increasing ever more (gas + housing), doubly so in the cities these employers eagerly move to trying to poach the local happy-go-lucky graduate with pizza fridays and a starting comp so low it makes you wonder if they enjoy living like a student for another 5 years.

It is quite annoying been working now for 16 years in the industry and seeing someone straight out of uni make more than me really rubs me the wrong way.

I suck at interviewing though (nervous) and in my area of the world I'm quite well paid.

Not to pick on you specifically, but I'm not sure why people accept that they suck at interviewing. It's an extraordinarily valuable skill that can be practiced. Say you spend 50 hours this year training on how to interview better and then search for a job next year. You could easily increase your salary by 20% and realistically 50% or more by going from a bad interviewee to a decent/good one. It's the single most valuable thing you could do this year.

Translating to raw numbers a US developer could effectively get "paid" like $1,000 an hour for doing training. Over your career that snowballs into an order of magnitude more.

They are referring to the coding portion most likely. You need much, much more than 50 hours to improve although you are right it can be practiced and is surely cost effective.

While you want to do your best, the key is to remember that the world is not going to come to an end if you fail that interview. For me, becoming too results oriented (am i going to get this job mindset) vs process oriented (how do I get better at interviewing and take each interview as a practice session) helped. Is it easy in practice? No, especially when you know you could double your comp in certain companies and you can feel your opportunity slipping away during a bad interview but the worst case is that you go back to your cushy job and your family still loves you.

I'm in my mid 20s and have been working for a small 5-person company since I started developing professionally 4 years ago. I know through my peers and offers I received that I could get at least twice as much compensation if I switch companies, and it doesn't bother me one bit.

At my current company I'm in touch with everything. From setting up servers, developing on every part of the stack, deploying and maintaining applications to working with clients on understanding their needs and business processes and then working out a solution for them. I get to argue about estimates and negotiate. I got to understand how manufacturing, sales, shipping, accounting, calculating employee payrolls and second incomes works. And as a bonus the people I work with are some of the best people I've ever met.

The amount of experience I'm getting here is definitely worth getting payed less.

I did something very similar at the start of my career. I stayed 2 years. The experience was invaluable. I got poached from the husband of one of our managers, oddly enough. The job I went to paid nearly double and still is one of the highlights, "big boys you've heard of" on my resume.

You definitely see the big picture when you're an internal part of most of it.

Would I take a 20% raise for a new job? I guess.

But.

But not if I'm going to hate the new job. Not if the people suck. Not if the company is hopelessly mired in bureaucratic process, not if they can't do continuous improvement and continuous delivery.

I would be looking for good experience with good engineering practices.

I would be looking for "autonomy, mastery, purpose" - look it up.

I would be looking for working for a company that builds something that I think the world is better off having.

In other words, I'm fortunate enough to be at a point where I can think of things besides only "need more money". If I'm in the market for "I can do better" then simply more cash is not the only factor for "better".

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