Hacker News Reader

Working conditions are also a factor.

Good luck finding a SCIF that's as pleasant as a home office.

But yeah, salary is a big issue. Defense work (whether as a civil servant or a contractor) just doesn't pay as well as VC-backed software development.

Although in the current job market, I have to say that the median pay gap seems to be smaller.

View on HN

The question is, with the last decade of interest rate policy ending, will VC-backed SWE salaries ever come back? Similar to one not expecting to sub 3% mortgages to come back; it was a macro anomaly.

For sure, "make hay when the sun is shining". But the days of clearing $200k-$400k to build crud apps or other low value high comp engineering work might not be coming back. Conversely, this is an opportunity for higher value work to evangelize its value prop to high value talent (assuming the comp is commensurate with the work).

I don't have a crystal ball any more than anyone else, but people are still making those salaries. The layoffs barely got us back to 2019 employment levels.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com