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Comment by everdrive | Hacker News Reader

I agree completely, but I always struggle with how to characterize this. Software engineers are generally pretty privileged, and even relatively mediocre ones can pretty easily break $100k per year. But, work in this field is incredibly unsatisfying and frustrating. For sure, none of us would drop what we're doing to go work in retail. It's not as if we're suffering in any strict sense; no one is really allowed to abuse us, our jobs aren't ruining our bodies compared to something like construction. But, many of us kind of hate it and only stay because of the money, and would work anywhere else if the other jobs paid well enough.

Now before you get out your tiny violin, I'm not saying other people don't have it worse, or that anyone should direct their sympathy towards us at all. I guess it feels more like a golden handcuffs situation.

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Software engineering can also be incredibly satisfying regardless of money. It depends on what you're working on and who you're working with. There's a great feeling when you get into flow while writing interesting software or tackling a puzzling problem.

I find it super satisfying, and would probably be some sort of computer programmer even if it paid a lot less and was generally looked down upon as mundane clerical work by most people. I am thankful to live in a time where it is a high paying job.

Yeah, where is all the hate coming from? Writing software is difficult, challenging and, at some level, fun.

Writing software underneath MBAs who are clueless about engineering, driven by sales and marketing teams who are clueless about engineering, constantly "sprinting" to get stuff out the door...

There's a lot of stuff in the industry to suck any joy out of writing software

True, all the crap that we have to deal with does make you question why you're doing it - thought of another one, often, you're working on some very small piece of a feature you don't care about, working for months on end.

Still, for me, at some level always enjoy the act of building something that needs to function in the demanding environment of the digital world (especially, high-volume applications). Yeah, it requires you to use your experience and training to solve difficult problems and produce a real result. For me at least, this typically enough to keep me going:)

> many of us kind of hate it and only stay because of the money, and would work anywhere else if the other jobs paid well enough.

I think you just described most people who aren't SE's. The only difference is that they can't land better paying jobs.

In America. If you work in other markets the salary is much lower. The only engineers I know who make above 100k euro are either lead or founder level.

100k USD is about 90k EUR (and 77k GBP), which you may say doesn't change your point materially, but I'm not splitting hairs, that's more than a 10% difference.

I think people often put the goalposts further away than they truly are by comparing numbers cross-currency directly like this or just round numbers in general.

FWIW that 10% almost entirely comes from the current economic shock. At the beginning of 2025 1 USD was about 1 Euro.

It is possibly to earn over £100k as a software engineer employee in the UK, however those tend to be very specialised fields. (Not all of them are finance related).

I do recall a software manager (OK apples to oranges) grumbling about 10 years ago about him exceeding that level, and having to play games to avoid being bit by the tax impact which cuts in between £100k and £125k.

That said, I do know engineers who indicate they earn in excess of £100k, and they're not lead nor founder level - just experienced in the appropriate area.

Contracting will do it. (Caveats apply - understand IR35, keep 6+ months of money in the bank, be able to temporarily relocate, YMMV)

> no one is really allowed to abuse us, our jobs aren't ruining our bodies

Are you sure?

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