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Comment by mamcx | Hacker News Reader

Well, the mytho that a developer get a lot of money only fly in USA, maybe?.

Outside it? Well, at least in latin america US 5000/Year is normal.

A lot of good developers I know are clearly below the hour rate one in USA get. We do it because we love to programming, but here is well know that is very hard to be "rich" as a developer.

In fact, that is why I quit my job then do my own projects, consulting and freelance: I still not get a lot of money -however, I charge more than a lot of my peers (us 30-40/h), but certainly can work with things I like more.

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I'm from Argentina, and used to work (a long time ago though) with developers from Venezuela an Brazil.

Not even an entry level developer makes U$d5000 a year, unless he is not working full time and even that would be stretching it. Entry level jobs in shitty places get you arround u$d7500/8000 a year. First job in a big company after you graduate gets you arround u$d11000/year, and with 2 or 3 years of experience you can get u$d15000/year easily if you are worth the investment. Upper tier jobs (manager, project leader or research for a big corporation, working remotely for someone in the US/Europe, consulting) start in u$d20000/year and can easily get to u$d30000/year.

That is using Argentina's and Venezuela's black market exchange rate, or Brazil's official one.

In Argentina even a PhD candidate gets more than u$d5000 a year from his publicly funded University. No idea about Brazil/Venezuela on this.

I have the stats from the Uruguayan Chamber of Software (CUTI), for the average salaries here in Uruguay (which is admittedly one of the better paying countries in South America) based on 330 companies (most are small, low-paying shops), and from my experience, they're what people are actually getting (in the IT industry, service companies pay more):

Monthly salary before taxes (take home pay is between 80% to 60% for the highest salaries)

Junior Dev (0 to 3 years): U$ 1000/month - U$ 12.000 year before taxes (but almost untaxed, maybe 10% in taxes)

Intermediate (3 to 7 years): U$ 1250/month - U$ 15.000 year before taxes

Senior (> 7 years or exceptional): U$ 1850/month - U$ 22.000 a year before taxes

Tech Lead/Super Senior: average U$ 2500/month (before taxes) so U$ 30.000 a year before taxes

Project Manager (Dev Lead or actual manager, not PM role): average U$ 2500/month (before taxes) so U$ 30.000 a year before taxes

Many of the better and smarter developers either open up their own consulting shops (making a lot more than those averages), or work remotely.

The best developers I know of make about U$ 40.000/year before taxes.

I'm currently stuck at the "senior" level, the thing is the cost of living isn't that much cheaper than in other countries so I really want to make more, so I must start working remotely if I want to break the salary barriers here.

You can get 40% taxes on high income? thats nuts.

The cost of living in SF is crazy, 40k in Argentina , in terms of nominal value, after taxes are probably around 32k/y, 2600 net dollars per month. Rent of a 1 bedroom place in a decent neightborgood=> 400 U$S a month. Grocieries, living costs, going out,etc,say..250 U$S? Lets make you a party animal and big spender at 400 U$S a month for that.

So after takes and expenses, 40k a year in argentina yields you 1800U$S a month.

In san francisco, a 1br for yourself is 2k a month at least. Work often provides food, but if it doesnt, at 10 dollars a meal avg you get 10 x 30 x 2 = 600U$S in food alone. Restaurants, shows, going out, drinks, add 200 U$S a month, if you go out weekly.

That ends up being about 2800 U$S per month only on rent+food. To be able to nominally save 1800U$S a month, you have to make 4600U$S pre-tax, which at 28% taxes, ends up being about 70k annual income.

The point of this exercise is to measure the impact of cost of living on salary: it definitely makes a dent(you need 30k a year more in San Francisco for the cost of living difference). However, its very easy to make 100k+ in the bay area working for a startup (and more if you work for facebook or google), which means you will always make way more money working in a startup in the us,than any income bracket in uruguay.

(assumption: cost of living in Uruguay ~= Argentina)

Cost of living in Uruguay is higher than in Argentina at the moment, mostly due to rent being close to twice as much.

I pay U$ 700 in rent+expenses and it's not uncommon in a "good" neighbourhood (I was paying close to U$ 1000 before, including very high apartment expenses, in one of the better neighbourhoods called Punta Carretas, think Palermo, before I had to downsize).

If you own your own home, living becomes much cheaper, but I don't :( and they're incredibly expensive right now (the housing bubble never burst here, though it has slowed down).

Food is more expensive here as well, but not as much as housing.

I pay U$ 700 for food and going out for 2 people (We do eat takeaway and go out a lot, so it's definitely not normal. But I get paid U$ 300 in meal vouchers which suck).

So I have U$ 400 for the rest (including gas, insurance, medicine, any extra expenses...), so I basically can't save (I could if I cut down on the eating and going out part).

"Real" salaries are higher I think, so it makes up for a bit of the difference between Uruguay and Argentina.

But still, I'll never be able to afford a house unless the housing bubble bursts or I start working abroad.

I'm including social security and healthcare in the "taxes" part (that's why I said take home pay could be 60%), I get deducted 17.5% of my nominal salary for social security, 20% for taxes, and 5% for healthcare. To make it worse, I actually get paid a part of the remainder in "meal vouchers" called Tickets Alimentación.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meal_voucher

I see, thanks for the data.

Rent in Argentina is crazy low in proportion to property pricing. As rent grows 20% year over year on contract, and inflation is higher, rent is lagging behind. I remember my absolute dollar value rent going down from 400U$S to 350U$S, in a 1 br 82m2-next to subway-first occupant appt.

Inflation really does a number on the economy.

And Im glad meal vouchers dissapeared in argentina, we had all sorts of them 8 years ago.

Regarding property prices in Uruguay, don't you have a reliable mortgage industry? Ours is ridiculously small, and inflation makes it risky and unreliable for both lenders and borrowers.

Thailand's pay scales are very similar. entry level devs from a CS degree can expect a minimum of 7500 usd/year at the sub 50 percentile.

Im not disputing your numbers with confidence, but some look a bit too high.

Which company pays 11000+ pesos a month for someone without work experience? The big guys, like Globant or IBM surely dont.

Making 15000 pesos a month is far from average for a programmer in buenos aires even with a few years of xp.

The parent comment talks about 11000 dollars per year. According to google that translates to less than 7500 Argentine pesos per month: https://www.google.com/#q=11000%2F12+usd+in+argentine+pesos

That is using the 'official' rate, which the rate the central bank forces(if you transfer money to argentina, the central bank will keep the dollars and give you pesos) you to sell your dollars to(about 8.05). But you cant buy dollars from the central bank, so you have to get them 'illegaly', which is between 11 and 12 pesos per dollar today.

Thats what the OP refers to with black market exchange.

Disclosure: I am also Argentinian

By "normal" I mean is not rare, not that everyone do this bad. The salary here in a decent company is between US 750 to US 2500/month, full time.

Take in account that the kind of developer that work for people in other countries is more likely to do better. But I know this from first hand, for the kind of market that IS NOT here on hackernews or places like that. Look weird, but a lot of developers are not big on be part of that internet thingy ie: A lot of developers not work for startup, neither consulting firms, neither big shops. Is very common to have <=3 developers even for companies/software you could call "big". But certainly, this is not visible, so is easy to overlook if you are not part of that...

Some of the devs that do well here are completely unaware that their US 80/h is just rare, and mainly, a fact of good luck, connections, be already from a semi-rich family, luck and more luck. Is hard to see the things outside our own circles if we haven't be part of them. I mean: Is very likely this is related to the previous socioeconomic level of the dev in question.

I know people from the high and the very low-end. I'm worked at both ie: I have earn less than US 5000/year and make for the company something like US >200.000 in 2 years as the solo developer!. Of curse, I learn this fact after that company crash, years after.

The thing is, the kind of well paying developer work is rare. Livable sometimes, and very bad more often that you expect, but the kind of developer-semi-millionaire? That is a myth here...

In Guatemala, $2000+/month for a good developer is "normal", if a bit low. Low end is around $1500 or so. $3-4K a month is not unheard of. It's one of the better paying jobs.

And the consulting firms don't magically charge less because they're in Central America. You can still get PWC to fill a room with $300+/hr people. That's not just technical people, but also project management, as you'd expect.

I have heard the same for Spain as well - I know a very good developer there who does not get anywhere near what even entry level developers get paid in the states.

Hell, even Britain - looking around at junior dev jobs at the moment, and the salaries are in the region of £25-30k (ie, $35-45k US).

Perfectly livable, of course, even in London (for comparison, the median wage is £20k, or $30k in 'real money') - but then I read stuff on here about people walking out of a bootcamp into a $80k job if they're in the States - and the tone of voice isn't the one I'd be adopting for that kind of money (UNIMAGINABLE RICHES!) but "you're getting ripped off because the boot camp boss has handed you off to one of his mates".

Of course, the 'social wage' is higher over here with universal healthcare and the like. But not that much higher.

EDIT: Sterling's strong at the moment, it turns out, so add $5k to all those dollar values. Looking at the history, it seems I took my stateside holiday at the pound's two year nadir. Just my luck!

I'm from the UK and I earned £13.5k as a junior (at a very large multinational company), I was 21 and just out of university. I only broke £25k when I hit 29 years old. I consider myself to be a good developer.

The salaries in the US seem 'pie in the sky' to me.

I have seen Navying jobs advertised for more than development ones in the UK ;-)

For those who haven't worked in civil engineering By Navey I mean ground workers.

All technical jobs in the UK are looked down on unfortunately.

Construction workers are making more than developers here in Uruguay at the moment, because their union is among the strongest in the country (while developers are not unionized).

But they'll all be out of work in the next economic downturn (on the other side, they didn't spend 3 to 8 years studying)

This was navvying not skilled tradesmen ie the ones that dug the ditches

I get it now... wow that is harsh.

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