No industry has 0% unemployment. Most people would kill for the employability of the median software engineer.
Still, absolutely everything about this industry is inflated. Pepsi just bought Poppi for $1.5B. That’s a HUGE DEAL, but hardly worth mentioning when compared with the $70B that Microsoft spent on Activision-Blizzard.
Making $80k a year is a GREAT salary. That’s going to invoke a hearty yawn from many when comparing to dev salaries.
Hell, you don’t even need a degree to get in. Just the knowledge to back yourself up in an interview.
I’m old enough to remember the hiring frenzy of the dot-com bubble, as well as many smaller hiring frenzies since.
Having watched my parents claw their way to a very happy retirement, it’s insane how easy life is in this career field.
I bring great energy to my teams, but technically I’m not incredible. I’ve never been Big-N quality. Still, I’m going to retire earlier in my life than my dad, who (very regrettably) even got an infusion of life insurance cash via my mom’s passing. I’ll retire with more spending power too. I have one nice toy - a car I spent $45k on. Otherwise, I live a modest life on my income, but all of this is based on watching my parents’ spending habits and lifestyle, so it feels like a fair comparison to me at least.
This is an absolutely blessed field. Can’t imagine where I’d be if I’d been born even just a hundred years ago.
I'd like to draw a distinction here:
$80k is very good, by the standards of what most people can get.
$80k is middling-to-poor compared to how fast the cost of living is going up. Housing prices are skyrocketing, people have no savings, can't afford emergencies.
The economy is leaving people behind. In my area, SWE pay moves closer to "normal difficulty" every year, while everyone else moves to "hard".
So yeah, you may be loyal to the company, and you may show loyalty by coming to all the "mandatory fun" events as well as the "all hands meetings." But the reality is that they pay the minimum what they can get away with. And the more loyal you are, the more they can pay less.
If you think about it, on one hand it's a market based approach -- which is probably the right answer for management to do. On the other hand, if there's no incentive for you to go out of your way, you won't. Nor will you work harder if all you're going to get is a %2 pay raise, even though the last year you closed on average 3 tickets per work day.
The nation has like 4 million square miles - we can focus on more than 80 of them.