Hacker News Reader

Comment by html5web | Hacker News Reader

I'm NYC based Front-End Web developer and I'm earning $20 an hour, do you think it's time to move to another company?

Dear god, yes. Realistically you'd be compensated at almost double that at even the smallest seed-stage startup out west, and I know that by and large the rate difference between SF and NY isn't significant.

Assuming this isn't a joke, get out now.

To piggyback off your comment, I'm a backend developer (primarily Python/Django) with 1.5 yrs experience making 60k/yr in NYC.I feel that I might be underpaid and plan on asking for a raise but I'm not sure what salary range I should price myself in. Any NYC devs here able to give me some feedback?

It really depends on your abilities (I largely don't care about years of experience). Do you have a github?

Assuming that you're not exceptionally good, at 1.5years I'd still put you in the junior category with around $80-90k/yr.

I do have a github. I've got a few repos on there, all of varying scope and quality. It'd be cool if you could check it out here and let me know what you think: https://github.com/philangist

I'd say you're probably looking at around $90k.

Is that contracting or working full time as an employee? I have a data point for the latter:

Front-End Dev, Canada (AB), $30/hour pre tax

Considering that NYC has a lot more opportunity I would say you could make more. Robert Half* has some useful IT salary guides for US & Canada.

* http://www.roberthalf.com/technology/it-salary-center

I'm full-time employee at Advertising agency, I work for company clients like: Oracle, Lufthansa, DIRECTV, Kaplan and North Shore LIJ.

If you have at least a year of experience, I would put yourself back out on the market. That's junior-level pay (which is what I make!)

That's not even half of "junior-level pay" in a top-20 city, let alone NYC.

But are the junior developers of the same quality in NYC as the rest of the country?

If so, why are they paying 80k to people who basically only knew some syntax?

FWIW, I made nearly $50 an hour as an intern while still in school.

Because it's a market (not trying to be snarky, just succinct).

You should probably be making around 100k

Just curious where you got that number if you don't know OP's experience or skillset.

I don't disagree with your general point, but I would also point out that the OP mentioned that he works at an advertising agency. A lot of these places tend to not really understand or value the skills and experience of technical people. A programmer is a programmer. So salary ends up being based more on negotiating skills. The difference between two years of experience or ten years of experience just doesn't matter that much.

That's an excellent point. I definitely wasn't challenging the validity of the number, I just wanted to know how it was reached so I could figure out how to value myself as an employee.

From experience: I have a large-ish group of friends who started work in NYC over the past year at various start-ups, big-name companies, etc., and not one of them started at less than 90k (base) as developers, unless they were getting unusual amounts of equity. If you work for a bank, you should be making 130k+, because your hours suck and their brands are so bad right now, so good devs don't want to work for them (but often will if the offer is right).

Jesus, I'm making 30k less than the minimum. Although looking at your profile you're an employee at Facebook, so it's possible your circle of friends are much more competent that the average coder on the street.

Yes, any decent Front-End dev can pull much more than that, do you have a portfolio?

My personal portfolios: http://avaz.me/ http://codepen.io/samarkandiy

https://avaz.me

$20/hr is intern pay!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com