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Comment by Nextgrid | Hacker News Reader

Salaried software dev work is a waste of time. The juice ain't worth the squeeze and even FAANG-level comp and work conditions aren't what they used to be (and those were basically unique to the US - in Europe they were never particularly life-changing).

Software dev as a tool in your toolbox to fix business problems is a superpower and will actually earn you decent money.

(also, if you use software on your own then it doesn't matter how good you are or whether you conform to any given day's "best practices". Your client pays to get their problem solved, they don't care if it's solved by duct-tape and hot glue)

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The average software dev working in a tier 2 city in the US with 5-7 years of experience is making twice the median household wage in the US and is probably making twice the local median wage.

When you move over to BigTech, you come out of school making over twice the median household wage and can easily make well over a quarter million a year in total comp within 3-5 years.

I get it. I have been working in cloud consulting for a little over 5 years now with three of those working (full time) at BigTech. Now I’m a staff architect at a 3rd party consulting company working very closely with sales as part of my job.

But to say that you can’t make money as a software dev in the US is not supported by facts.

And then let’s also not glamorize independent consultants. Most don’t make the eye popping salaries and working for a consulting company, money appears in my account whether I have a project or not on vacation or sick. I have a whole sales organization, legal, accounting, a large collection of people that the resourcing department that can pull in for larger projects to work under me etc behind me even though I’m the tip of spear.

Working in BigTech and/or some high paying consulting company puts you in the top 10-20% and may still be worth it.

But for the other bottom 80-90% outside of those industries SWE is essentially the modern version of an assembly line worker with way more stress, responsibilities and bullshit.

It’s unlikely our aspiring dev here is going to land a high-paying position right away. They’re gonna have to grind it out at one of those lower-paying companies first and build up their experience, and maybe after 5-7 years actually join one of those higher-paying jobs.

This assumes of course that those jobs still exist in that time and the pay situation hasn’t gotten worse. Turns out the world has built a very high tolerance for shitty, low-quality software, and both AI and outsourced workers can churn it out much cheaper than our upcoming dev can.

If the author here is considering investing 10 years of their life into a new career, I’d rather have them do so in something that has higher earning potential and resistance to outsourcing.

Even a regular enterprise dev in a tier 2 city makes $135K - $150K and that puts them in the top quintile of earners in the US.

https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/

As I said in another comment though, I’m 51 with 30 years of professional experience, 10 years before that as a hobbyist, a reputation, a network, a stint at BigTech, etc.

I tell anyone who wants to get into software development at even 30 as a junior that they would be better off in product management, sales, customer facing solution architecture, etc.

How to do that from ground zero? I have no idea.

> regular enterprise dev

Yesterday I came across some obscure project on Github that was opensourced by what looks like a large company selling "insights" and risk analysis data to the insurance sector. Out of curiosity I looked at their careers page and all the tech roles were either in Poland or India.

The scary thing is, we all know how "good" Indian outsourcing is... but Eastern European outsourcing is actually good from my experience, so I'm not even sure "regular enterprise dev" will remain competitive for long.

I can’t speak for Eastern European developers and I would be hesitant to hiring them without ever working with any that were not located locally in the US only because of time zones.

But I have found working with LatAm coworkers to be an amazing experience.

What I first found frustrating about Indian developers in India wasn’t that they weren’t necessarily bad developers, they were afraid to speak up or go outside the lines. I had to beg a few to give me honest critical feedback when I was an architect at startup when I realized they were following my in hindsight bad guidance and they knew better.

My current LatAm coworkers - even those who are a lot less senior than me will tell me (politely) when my shit stinks.

Waste of time you say? Were never life changing?

I'm curious to hear what's your definition of "life changing"?

Salaried tech compensation in Europe grew quite a lot over the last 10+ years. Still behind US, but no longer by as much as before.

Back in 2005, 2010, and even 2015 - companies were benchmarking salaries locally (and even down to that specific country). With FAANG opening up shops in EU, all other bigger tech companies started to benchmark compensation somewhat globally.

I know plenty of European software engineers that got a house with 30 years mortgage, and (with salary, RSUs and bonuses) paid it off in <10 years.

Granted, cost of real estate is now 3x compared to 10-15 years ago (other costs are also bigger, but not 3x). From what I've seen it's the same just about anywhere in Europe.

So if you just got a mortgage now, it will take longer.

But still - there's usually enough salary left (even after spending on traveling with 25+ vacation days) to put loads of money into rainy day funds, expensive hobbies, as well as investments/FIRE.

Most other sectors are not really close.

"even FAANG-level comp"

I am too dumb to get a FAANG job but it boggles my mind when people downplay the salary you make at FAANGs. It is more than life changing for anyone especially compared to rest of the options in software world. Am I taking crazy pills here ?

"too dumb to get a FAANG job"?

As a diagnosed ADHD person myself - I think you should spend time to get that ADHD diagnosis Even without meds, stuff like CBT helps.

Anyway - not sure if they are downplaying FAANG salary, or its more about the ROI (long hours, stress ...etc)?

I'm basically at European equivalent of FAANG, and I don't see myself doing US version even if it's double the money.

> Anyway - not sure if they are downplaying FAANG salary, or its more about the ROI (long hours, stress ...etc)?

The latter. I'm not saying FAANG salary is nothing (or that SWE salary is nothing). I'm arguing that the juice ain't worth the squeeze, FAANG or not (FAANG comes with extra challenges, but even the basic SWE job has a baseline level of unique challenges to deal with... the interviewing/hiring process being one of them for example).

Furthermore, the amount of juice appears to be decreasing every day with things like RTO, layoffs, beliefs in AI replacing everyone any day now, and the ever decreasing standard of software quality, meaning AI may actually replace a lot of us - not because it's any good at software, but because once you have a monopoly you have no reason to produce good software.

My wife is certain I have ADD if not ADHD (I don't even know the difference). What do you suggest I do ? Talk to my Primary Doc first ?

Is it life-changing if those jobs require you (or will soon require) to be in a high-cost of living area and that your landlord will end up pocketing a large chunk of your salary (or enjoy your long commute every day).

Not to mention a FAANG job isn't for everyone, and it's not really a matter of dumbness. You need to like dealing with the problems they usually deal with (heavy focus on distributed systems - ie. "just use Postgres" doesn't work at that scale), politics, working with other people who just optimized their interview process rather than the actual job, and so on. It has its downsides, for which the salary and perks needs to make up for.

The world is increasingly converging into a state where your absolute salary won't matter, as any increase will just make your landlord and/or the taxman richer, FAANG or not.

If salaried software dev work is not worth it, what other salaried career is?

One when your comp and/or bonuses better capture the value you create.

Just an example: sales roles generally have commission-based compensation that scales with the amount of effort you put in and actually rewards high-performers.

In comparison, the "reward" for effort in a salaried SWE job is more work and to get your token 5% raise early if you're really lucky. And that's after you go through the insane recruitment & interviewing processes.

The SWE salary income might sound high at first glance when you're young and fresh but tops out quickly (and of course that top end has been significantly eroded by inflation), much lower than other roles.

Where I live tech is one of the few careers which puts [senior] salaried devs in the top 1% of earners when I look at my income bracket in the annual county stats published by the Government. At a regional level it puts me in top 5%.

This of course all relative geographically but we're certainly very well compensated compared to other industries.

I think that salaried devs (and related tech folks) are in the top x% locally - basically everywhere.

There could be a big spread from smaller tech companies, and governments/police/military/etc that pay low even for tech positions.

So actually I would be really curious to meet/talk to someone that took a tech job in say police/military or such.

This is pure speculation, but I think there's probably a large variation in salaries in the 90/10 split of senior/staff+. The majority have decades of employment with the same employer rising up from junior/graduate level, whereas the others joined to bring "modern tech" experience with them to help execute a revamp.

Most devs are probably in the top 20-30% band making tech a relatively "normal" (but good) salary in the local region.

I could be entirely wrong though :)

Sales are great for the few top performers, lackluster to terrible for everyone else. Whereas software is good to great for anyone who manages to get employed.

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