How Much Money Do You Make Programming?
devcodehack.com
devcodehack.com
For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics thinks that "software developers" (which it has a fairly rigorous definition for) have a median salary nationwide of about $90k, which is rather north of self-reports on glassdoor. (And, incidentally, below prevailing salary offers for fresh graduates at AmaGooFaceSoft in 2013. That's news-you-can-use for some of you.)
However, if you take any of the numerous career paths which can quite easily result in you making doctor/lawyer/banker money, it is highly unlikely your business cards will still say Programmer on them, even if programming is a large portion of your day-to-day activities and value proposition. Take a quick gander at the HN leaderboard, for example: many of the people on it are well-compensated and program professionally, but comparatively few are of them (us?) are titled as programmers.
Relatedly, calling yourself a programmer is not necessarily a successful tactic if you want to make $PICK_A_SUCCESS_METRIC via doing programming. http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pro...
Also those Salary figures are low. The lowest I've seen for a junior engineer who can't negotiate in NYC or SF is 70-90k.
Its very very normal for a smart junior engineer with track record to get 110k even at relatively small orgs, I've seen this or higher in NYC or SF. (notice the emphasis on really smart)
really really good (and senior) engineers at organizations that have money / are somewhat large, are known to easily hit salaries of 300k-400k. I've heard of higher, but I'm just naming the range i've heard from people directly.
hrmm. Which rates bracket are you asking about?
Heres how I think about salaries: They have nothing to do with cost of living, but of value created/negotiated.
Also compensation can be dramatically influenced by the nature of the dev work and skills needed. Eg: are you doing the architecting for your work, how quickly could you onboard someone else to do the work instead, how broad and deep the needed expertise are, etc
Many tech operations "outsource" because they can't find good people who they are able to hire. This could be for one of several reasons! 1) they just cant find people locally 2) they dont have money 3) they cant find people locally and they dont have money.
without knowing more about what youre doing, its hard to answer informatively.
That's really high. I work in NYC and know of a small set who're hitting 175k-180k max (not me, I make less!), and those people are a rare bunch. I realize there are people who may be getting up to 300k, but that's probably the top 0.5%-1% percentile.
I've heard these urban legends of 200k+ in SF and NYC - are there people here on HN who make that much, even in SF or NYC?
110k-150k seems to be a realistic range for a pretty good software engineer in NYC.
When I say really really good, think "epic, world class level threat" amazing. :)
First, sources. Please.
Second, salaries are all over the map. Worse, the under-performers and insecure are always included in salary reports which makes it hard to know where you might stand against competent, self-assured peers.
Third, we need to stop worshiping $100k as any sort of meaningful milestone. Skilled tradesfolk can make that and more. "Six-figures" has had the same cultural cache my whole life. Meanwhile inflation (even w/ low rates) marches on, compounding. What was $100k in 1995 would have to be $150k today. Or 1985 to today, which would be over $210k. [1]
Also the languages changing fast thing isn't really correct, Java, C++, C#, Javascript, PHP have been around a long time and still going strong, you could do your entire career in one of these.