Are you an underpaid developer? | Hacker News Reader

Are you an underpaid developer?

blog.goodsense.io

5 pointssherm8n9 comments

I'm part of a project to try and solve this exact issue. How do you compare in the marketplace with your skills, salary, experience? We haven't launched yet but if you'd like to be in the beta testing group, that would be great.

http://engage.gild.com/

One thing the authors forgot to mention is that Freelance Developers are responsible for paying for their own benefits, unemployment insurance, social security and other taxes. So yes the folks at GoodSense are correct: you're probably going to make more $ each paycheck as a freelancer. But you will also be shelling out more $ for these taxes and benefits. At year end your income as a freelancer could be exactly the same as a full time employee. Good resource to learn the legal bits involved with freelancing is http://www.sba.gov/content/self-employed-independent-contrac...

You realize you have to pay for all that stuff as full time employee too right? Sure you might get free health insurance at a really good company. But most you have to pay a percentage of the premium. For freelancers, there are a lot of private health insurance plans they can sign up for that are comparable to the ones companies offer.

As a freelancer, you can also write off a lot of your expenses to reduce your taxable income. Bought a new Macbook Pro with retina display? Well, that's a business expense.

A lot of benefits at companies are just fluff to make you feel good about working there.

This made me cry a little inside. I make slightly less than a third monetary wise of the lowest Average Salary by Speciality with 4 1/2 years commercial dev. Most of the 'high' paying jobs in South Africa is around the $66K a year mark.

Is that decent living in South Africa though? The salaries referred to are in SF.

It really depends on the area. I would classify my current salary as low-end for middle class. For your (low-end) basics (travel, food, accommodation, health insurance) it's around $24K a year in the slightly more expensive areas. Gasoline costs typically offset accommodation costs - especially now that it's around $45 to fill a 35L/9.2 gallon car tank.

South Africa is pretty strange in the sense that certain areas have a huge effect on living costs - you might pay 10%+ less on groceries simply by driving to another suburb. Some cities (ex. Pretoria) are more prone to be targeted by the government for money making purposes - ex. increasing taxes in Pretoria to pay for new roads in Durban (600Km/~400 miles away).

I wouldn't worry too much. I'm not sure what demographics these figures are included, but these numbers are higher than anything I've seen in the real world.

That's the whole point. Employers don't want you to know about the real numbers. They want to pay you as little as possible. Even your manager doesn't make that much money. So they don't want their direct reports to have a higher salary. If you've ever asked for a raise you clearly see signs that they're trying to manage a budget.

Agreed with above. Salaries vary greatly by area. A dev in a non silicon valley type area could make 60% or less of these values. These look like inflated high cost area salaries. NYC, San Fran, Silicon Valley type areas.

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