SV here as well, independent contractor. 190k a year, ~6 years of experience, was making ~120k 3 years ago, ~40k a year 4 years ago.
Contracts are remote, so I could leave but choose not to for various reasons.
Starting a product and services company soon for developers (the customers) based on the schleps I've encountered. Just need to wrap up the current contract...
As a contractor though, you kind of need to specify how many hours you work on average. I know some who make close to what you make but are killing themselves every week. Know plenty making much less, but work an easy 20hrs. Can you go into more detail on both your schedule and what tech you use? How you market yourself? 190 is quite a good number, so congratulations. Many of us could learn from you
I'm in a similar situation to yours with similar numbers now. Just curious, what technology are you using? I'm on Rails, outside the valley, but my clients are inside. Ironically enough, 2 years ago I was working for $500/week, and working twice as hard as I am now
There is no such thing as an underpaid developer. The key skill is in recognizing your value as measured by the market. And to find that out, you need to test the waters. If you aren't testing the waters, you aren't underpaid (because you've restricted your scope to just the current firm, and are getting the only market price available)
This is a real problem in finance, where a lot of people think they are worth more because they add a lot of value when in fact they only add value to the current firm. Put them elsewhere and they won't necessarily add any value.
If overvaluing is not only possible, but a problem in some industries, how is undervaluing not possible? By your statements I can overvalue myself but cannot undervalue myself for the same reason of not knowing my actual market value. I'm not trying to be nit picky, but I just don't understand.
It seems to me both are possible and become serious problems in all employee/employer relationships for a variety of reasons.
There's a lot more to a total comp package than just straight salary. I'm probably an outlier on HN as a .Net dev in finance in NYC. I was making ~250k as a freelancer but went perm. I now make ~200-220k after bonus but I now have a gold-plated health plan, 5 weeks vacation, a retirement plan and a training budget. It isn't always about straight up cash.
It's not about cash, but you sure do make a lot of it. I don't think this is necessarily an outlier. It's just that other developers don't know it's possible.
The problem with the US work culture vs somewhere like Europe is that talking about your salary is so taboo. And it shouldn't be. What's wrong with compensating people who are comparable in skills and execution fairly?
I'm depressed looking at those figures now. I'm not in the US, but still... As a developer who works both on backend and frontend, let alone sysadmin work, I'm not making 1/3 of that.
If you're making $100k in say, San Francisco, about half your paycheck is gone to federal, state, and local taxes, social security, retirement plan, etc. Say you're left with $4200/mo. Take a look at house prices and rents there. There goes half of that. Now half of what's left on food. Now you need transportation, clothes, a phone, insurance, etc.
Don't get me wrong, it's a pretty good life. And you can definitely spend a lot less money by having roommates or living in a dangerous neighborhood or eating only noodles. On the other hand, good luck raising a family. All in all, it's not nearly as much money as people imagine when they convert it to local currency and cost of living.
Mozilla hires remote developers from all over the world. Working remotely is "business as usual", not the exception, for most teams. Plus, Mozilla has offices in about a dozen cities in (I think) 9 countries.
I work at a company that pays more than 250k+ for developers in SV. I have been working in SV for more than a decade. 250K is the new 150k (I made 150k before the financial crisis). Google, Apple, Msft, Yahoo, FB and host of other big internet companies pay you 200-250k+ if you include salary+bonus+stockoptions(RSUs). I spent quite a bit of time interviewing in startups in New york and SV to explore if they pay better. The answer is a resounding no. Working for a startup as an engineer is a losing proposition. Unless you are doing something cutting edge, it is absloutely pointless working for a startup. End of the day you are parsing json/xml or reading/writing to a db/nosql. Might as well earn a big paycheck for doing that crap.
I live in Houston, so those numbers are all a little ridiculous here. But, outside of the city center, $200k gets here you a pretty nice house in a nice neighborhood. Hell, you can find decent ones for under $150k too if you look around.
Edit: Just did a home search (I just live in an apartment downtown right now) and actually it seems you can get a decent house for <=$100k here outside the city center.
Those figures seem a bit inflated. I'm in the Portland/Hillsboro Oregon area and I don't see that many breaking over 100k, unless it's as a contractor / temp and you're hourly. We have a pretty big IT ecosystem here and big players like Intel, Nike, and a ton of healthcare providers.
Then again our cost of living is quite a bit lower, so maybe it evens out pretty well in the end.
Still if you feel you're underpaid you need to do something about it. This is one of the rare industries where you can truly command more pay simply by improving your skills at home without a large monetary investment. So stop making excuses and change it!
Posting this on a throwaway account, but I would like some feedback. I'm currently making $60k in Boston as a front-end developer with just over a year of working experience. I've wondered for a while whether I'm underpaid, but I am getting a lot of experience, so I figure it evens out. I mostly wonder what I should ask for when I start my next job after I pass the hallowed "two years experience" mark, and whether I should ask for a raise now.
That sounds about right to me, or just barely on the low side of right.
Asking for a raise is something you can consider, but I'm not really going to say if it's a good or bad thing to do. If your job has changed and you've taken on more responsibility, that's a good way to stand up for yourself and ask for more money. On the other hand, doing it persistently might make your employers think you're unhappy and likely to jump ship. Then they'll be more interested in replacing you than developing you.
Anyway, in this industry you generally start earning more through changing jobs, not getting raises/promotions within a job. Ride your job while you learn, and see if you can get some more money out of them in the meantime. Once you've grown to the point you're ready for something new, then that's when you can really expect to try and make a play for something bigger.
At two years of experience & a new job, I'd probably try and get around $75k or so. Depends a bit on what sort of company you're working for (startups tend to pay less, for example) so at a larger company you might be able to swing something more like 80.
I'm 4 months into my first year out of school, and I'm making $75k same area. just for comparison. but my plan is to start a side project and eventually run my own business anyway.
Yes, you probably are underpaid, but not by the delta you'd assume based on the original post.
Both of the sources cited are talent agencies. Talent agencies make their fee based on the signing salary of their candidates. It's in their interest to drive the market value higher, even if with speculation.
On the other end, I'm on the hiring side, so it's obviously in my interest to try and keep those numbers down. I also know I can't hire if I can't pay a competitive salary (among other things), so I need to accept the data when it's there.
Both of these surveys [1][2] fail to provide any meaningful data to support their results and I'm struggling to rationalize how these can be accurate averages. I've been hired and hired others in Portland, Minneapolis, San Antonio and Chicago. From what we've hired at, what people have been hired away from us for, what friends are making, what friends at other companies are hiring at, I just don't buy it.
I get it. I'm making an argument that they don't provide data and I'm waging my argument on anecdotal evidence. I think these reports are useful for demonstrating where demand is, but I'd caution people from walking into their manager's office (or an interview) and citing this as supporting evidence.
...namely because these two reports are featured on a blog that "is teaching freelancers and consultants how to build a sustainable and high income business." Freelancers are taxed differently, pay their own benefits, and have a completely different set of expenses.
Portland, Minneapolis, San Antonio, and Chicago are all relatively low-wage cities for software developers. The averages are bumped upwards by all the folks working in Silicon Valley, NYC, and Boston.
There's lots of anecdotal evidence here in this thread that developers can command a high salary.
From the hiring side, of course I wouldn't want developers to know about this. If I've been given a certain hiring budget I have to convince devs that they aren't being underpaid.
One thing this forgets to mention is that you can't compare freelance and employee direct like that.
First you have to consider taxes, as a contractor they don't cover half your social security, so about 7%. Next you have to consider healthcare, varies but often 4% or more. Stock options and 401k can add 10% if you are at the right place. 3 weeks vacation is another 6%. So benefits are about 25% of your paycheck (this sounds low to me...)
Stability is a huge deal on both ends, knowing I don't have to pay you forever lets me pay you more and knowing you have a job to come back to means you will accept less. Assuming 10% each way you get to a 50% swing ignoring skills completely.
Given that he quotes developers getting 100% more as a huge deal, and half of that is just from freelancing, it isn't quite as a big deal as he makes it IMO.
I'm a bit higher than average for freelance hourly. I'm thinking about getting more into "charging by value" (as opposed to hourly) because I get a lot of resistance to raising my rate even as I get faster - but I'm not really certain how to do this since I tend to have long-term relationships with my clients and my work generally doesn't tend to have clear start/finish boundaries. Curious to hear if anyone has figured out a way around that.
I'm in southern Ontario. My experience: A few years mostly doing development on a LAMP stack and admin stuff on Linux/Windows systems along with some iOS dev thrown in there.
Salaried at $50k from my day job and doing some part-time work.I've yet to met anyone who has made over $70k/year here doing this kind of work. (at least, they won't say how much they've earned)
Although I agree somewhat, you're doing something wrong. I live there too, my starting salary right out of school with almost no "professional" programming experience was around 70k and it was with languages I had never touched - so don't over emphasis the language. I know plenty of people making close to 100k, those jobs may be limited but they are there for good programmers. There are a lot, and I mean a lot of shitty programming jobs in Ontario, mostly because programmers are hired by non tech firms that have some tech side to be code monkeys. I basically rejected a handful of lower salary jobs right out of schools or jobs where interviewers where asking extremely language specific questions (I had an interview where a guy kept asking me syntax based questions in JS, when I made it abundantly clear I did not know JS, and this went on for 45 mins of me guessing syntax...) until I found a job that had decent pay (a little under 70k - this was still depressing as most my friends had 95k+ salary in SF) and interesting work; but left a year later because the salary wasn't competitive with the rest of the world, bonuses were crap and there was little room for growth. The best advice I can give you is work on personal projects and don't use your co workers salary as bases of average range, because you will run into the situation where dev x whose been at the company for 30 years is only making 30k more and they use that as a basis to justify your salary. I know people that were working at my first job with almost 10 years more experience then me making 10-15k more then me, and there is a reason why they would have had a hard time getting jobs elsewhere; A lot of Canadian companies will have you sign contracts that anything you invent(which includes any personal projects) in your own time will belong to the company unless you get explicit permission from their over paranoid lawyers, this process takes about 2-3 weeks and most good hackers stop hacking and fall for daily routine work, 9-5. Although it protects the company for minor legalities it completely destroys the hacking culture (why do you think RIM failed to innovate?). So although they have thousands of hours worth of experience its in closed system, and redundant. Finally, be open to moving, 95% of my friends have taken jobs in SF or NY, because they got tired of bs like this.
tl;dr hack on your free time, be open to moving, be so good they can't ignore you.
And this is why I've expanded my horizons beyond Southern Ontario. Our cost of living may be lower, but it's not that much lower to justify this difference in salary.
I will agree with supersaiyan , you are doing something wrong. I live in same area and except junior developers I don't know anybody making 50k/year as developer. Change job.
Does "unemployed" qualify as "underpaid" ? I have to essentially work a few hours each day for free, just to not rust and to have some portfolio to show. If you let yourself be lax (i.e. don't work in the same hours you would if you were paid), it starts snowballing. Being unemployed and actively seeking a job is a tough job.
It's just human nature to want more, but look at the big picture. Are you happy with what you do? In the end that matters most. Chasing a higher $$ only leads to frustration, you'll never be happy cuz someone else is being paid more.
My salary is lower than many cited here, but I live in Northern MN, work from home (or where ever I want), get great benefits, work on projects that really matter to me. I see my family much more than the average worker bee out there. I get to work with new technologies and have a lot of autonomy and responsibility. Life is good, too good sometimes.
Being underpaid means you're getting less than average.. right?
So if everyone is "underpaid", actually.. they're not?
Being freelance is a pretty different thing. The take home money isn't that much different and you have to worry about a lot more things, including "will i get paid for stuff".
All these articles generally do is attempt to generate more inflation in salary. Yes SOME people do sometimes get outrageous salaries and are neither exceptional or influential individuals, but, that's not the norm, IMO.
Salaried positions do include benefits packages, and in the US, the health insurance can be expensive or impossible for certain people to get. That said, if you know of one of those $124 freelance jobs in LA...
A lot of startup give great stock options to their employees as well.. Salary is not only thing you look at, if you want salary go work for Google and waste your life doing one thing over and over again.
It's fairly unlikely the startup you're in is really going to explode. I mean sure it happens and if you're holding a big pile of options when you hit a billion dollar IPO, that is going to be a good day for you.
For most startups though, you get a fraction of a percent of a common or option pool which will perhaps accrue some value later on if the company doesn't fail utterly.
So before you count any options as money in the bank, you need to know a whole bunch of stuff (and I am totally an amateur at this but I've done startup rides once or twice. I am, shockingly, not filthy rich from my piles of options.)
1) What percent of what pool do you have options to?
The number of options you have is irrelevant, since the size of the pool is a number which is more-or-less randomly chosen when the company is founded. 5000 options sounds like a lot until you find out the option pool has 25 million shares and is 10% of the company.
2) The strike price of the option, that is what your option will cost to buy after it vests. Having 10,000 options to buy at $5/option is not really that great if they're only worth $3.
3) Remember your options can be diluted at basically any time. The company runs out of option pool and wants to grant some to new employees? That'll dilute your options. Or if the company raises more investment. Etc. The answer to point 1 and 2 is changing all the time (well, hopefully not that often!)
4) Since options are common stock, they're paid out last. Investors (usually) get preferred stock. So for example, investors hold $50 million worth of preferred stock and the company sells for $51 million. The investors take their cut first, and people holding common stock get paid out of the remaining $1 million.
Anyway, just a random option rant. Probably inaccurate in all sorts of ways. All that said, I do love doing the startup thing. It's just so much fun! I aim for that, rather than some possible future value my options my get me.
[+] [-] coolsunglasses|13 years ago|reply
Contracts are remote, so I could leave but choose not to for various reasons.
Starting a product and services company soon for developers (the customers) based on the schleps I've encountered. Just need to wrap up the current contract...
[+] [-] runT1ME|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hnwh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] nachteilig|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] niggler|13 years ago|reply
This is a real problem in finance, where a lot of people think they are worth more because they add a lot of value when in fact they only add value to the current firm. Put them elsewhere and they won't necessarily add any value.
[+] [-] kaeawc|13 years ago|reply
It seems to me both are possible and become serious problems in all employee/employer relationships for a variety of reasons.
[+] [-] Evbn|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hdub|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sherm8n|13 years ago|reply
The problem with the US work culture vs somewhere like Europe is that talking about your salary is so taboo. And it shouldn't be. What's wrong with compensating people who are comparable in skills and execution fairly?
[+] [-] zobzu|13 years ago|reply
/me goes sharpen his .NET and applies cough
[+] [-] hcarvalhoalves|13 years ago|reply
I should look into working with US contractors.
[+] [-] svachalek|13 years ago|reply
Don't get me wrong, it's a pretty good life. And you can definitely spend a lot less money by having roommates or living in a dangerous neighborhood or eating only noodles. On the other hand, good luck raising a family. All in all, it's not nearly as much money as people imagine when they convert it to local currency and cost of living.
[+] [-] cpeterso|13 years ago|reply
http://careers.mozilla.org/en-US/
[+] [-] joonix|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shorel|13 years ago|reply
We, who live in other countries, are cheap.
[+] [-] surinam|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nilkn|13 years ago|reply
Edit: Just did a home search (I just live in an apartment downtown right now) and actually it seems you can get a decent house for <=$100k here outside the city center.
[+] [-] JeremyMorgan|13 years ago|reply
Then again our cost of living is quite a bit lower, so maybe it evens out pretty well in the end.
Still if you feel you're underpaid you need to do something about it. This is one of the rare industries where you can truly command more pay simply by improving your skills at home without a large monetary investment. So stop making excuses and change it!
[+] [-] bostonthrowaway|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrdn|13 years ago|reply
Asking for a raise is something you can consider, but I'm not really going to say if it's a good or bad thing to do. If your job has changed and you've taken on more responsibility, that's a good way to stand up for yourself and ask for more money. On the other hand, doing it persistently might make your employers think you're unhappy and likely to jump ship. Then they'll be more interested in replacing you than developing you.
Anyway, in this industry you generally start earning more through changing jobs, not getting raises/promotions within a job. Ride your job while you learn, and see if you can get some more money out of them in the meantime. Once you've grown to the point you're ready for something new, then that's when you can really expect to try and make a play for something bigger.
At two years of experience & a new job, I'd probably try and get around $75k or so. Depends a bit on what sort of company you're working for (startups tend to pay less, for example) so at a larger company you might be able to swing something more like 80.
[+] [-] yekko|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dm9|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sherm8n|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] malbiniak|13 years ago|reply
Both of the sources cited are talent agencies. Talent agencies make their fee based on the signing salary of their candidates. It's in their interest to drive the market value higher, even if with speculation.
On the other end, I'm on the hiring side, so it's obviously in my interest to try and keep those numbers down. I also know I can't hire if I can't pay a competitive salary (among other things), so I need to accept the data when it's there.
Both of these surveys [1][2] fail to provide any meaningful data to support their results and I'm struggling to rationalize how these can be accurate averages. I've been hired and hired others in Portland, Minneapolis, San Antonio and Chicago. From what we've hired at, what people have been hired away from us for, what friends are making, what friends at other companies are hiring at, I just don't buy it.
I get it. I'm making an argument that they don't provide data and I'm waging my argument on anecdotal evidence. I think these reports are useful for demonstrating where demand is, but I'd caution people from walking into their manager's office (or an interview) and citing this as supporting evidence.
...namely because these two reports are featured on a blog that "is teaching freelancers and consultants how to build a sustainable and high income business." Freelancers are taxed differently, pay their own benefits, and have a completely different set of expenses.
[1] https://grouptalent.com/blog/how-much-developers-make-per-ci... [2] http://rivierapartners.com/2013/02/12/2012-engineering-salar...
[+] [-] nostrademons|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sherm8n|13 years ago|reply
From the hiring side, of course I wouldn't want developers to know about this. If I've been given a certain hiring budget I have to convince devs that they aren't being underpaid.
[+] [-] Guvante|13 years ago|reply
First you have to consider taxes, as a contractor they don't cover half your social security, so about 7%. Next you have to consider healthcare, varies but often 4% or more. Stock options and 401k can add 10% if you are at the right place. 3 weeks vacation is another 6%. So benefits are about 25% of your paycheck (this sounds low to me...)
Stability is a huge deal on both ends, knowing I don't have to pay you forever lets me pay you more and knowing you have a job to come back to means you will accept less. Assuming 10% each way you get to a 50% swing ignoring skills completely.
Given that he quotes developers getting 100% more as a huge deal, and half of that is just from freelancing, it isn't quite as a big deal as he makes it IMO.
[+] [-] seivan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Evbn|13 years ago|reply
Also, employers often pay office rent for employees. And freelancers spend unpaid time doing marketing/sales to get gigs.
[+] [-] yekko|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] positr0n|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ctide|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sherm8n|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tunesmith|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skylan_q|13 years ago|reply
Salaried at $50k from my day job and doing some part-time work.I've yet to met anyone who has made over $70k/year here doing this kind of work. (at least, they won't say how much they've earned)
[+] [-] supersaiyan|13 years ago|reply
tl;dr hack on your free time, be open to moving, be so good they can't ignore you.
[+] [-] HorizonXP|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cunac|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] b0rsuk|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nvoyageur|13 years ago|reply
My salary is lower than many cited here, but I live in Northern MN, work from home (or where ever I want), get great benefits, work on projects that really matter to me. I see my family much more than the average worker bee out there. I get to work with new technologies and have a lot of autonomy and responsibility. Life is good, too good sometimes.
[+] [-] zobzu|13 years ago|reply
So if everyone is "underpaid", actually.. they're not?
Being freelance is a pretty different thing. The take home money isn't that much different and you have to worry about a lot more things, including "will i get paid for stuff".
All these articles generally do is attempt to generate more inflation in salary. Yes SOME people do sometimes get outrageous salaries and are neither exceptional or influential individuals, but, that's not the norm, IMO.
[+] [-] subsystem|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] dabent|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] argimenes|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vishals|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrdn|13 years ago|reply
It's fairly unlikely the startup you're in is really going to explode. I mean sure it happens and if you're holding a big pile of options when you hit a billion dollar IPO, that is going to be a good day for you.
For most startups though, you get a fraction of a percent of a common or option pool which will perhaps accrue some value later on if the company doesn't fail utterly.
So before you count any options as money in the bank, you need to know a whole bunch of stuff (and I am totally an amateur at this but I've done startup rides once or twice. I am, shockingly, not filthy rich from my piles of options.)
1) What percent of what pool do you have options to? The number of options you have is irrelevant, since the size of the pool is a number which is more-or-less randomly chosen when the company is founded. 5000 options sounds like a lot until you find out the option pool has 25 million shares and is 10% of the company. 2) The strike price of the option, that is what your option will cost to buy after it vests. Having 10,000 options to buy at $5/option is not really that great if they're only worth $3.
3) Remember your options can be diluted at basically any time. The company runs out of option pool and wants to grant some to new employees? That'll dilute your options. Or if the company raises more investment. Etc. The answer to point 1 and 2 is changing all the time (well, hopefully not that often!)
4) Since options are common stock, they're paid out last. Investors (usually) get preferred stock. So for example, investors hold $50 million worth of preferred stock and the company sells for $51 million. The investors take their cut first, and people holding common stock get paid out of the remaining $1 million.
Anyway, just a random option rant. Probably inaccurate in all sorts of ways. All that said, I do love doing the startup thing. It's just so much fun! I aim for that, rather than some possible future value my options my get me.
[+] [-] ttrreeww|13 years ago|reply
Each hit will net you around 1 million in 4 years. Average it out, and you are looking at 1 million in 40 years.
You can make far more bonus money at a good software corp...
[+] [-] Evbn|13 years ago|reply