- $40K: 2010-2013, "DevOps" at small startup. No ownership/shares.
- $45-72K: 2014-Current, Programmer (various job titles) working for state's education department
Even management here only make $90K capping out around $115K~. But cost of living is low.
These threads never have people posting their boring salaries from low cost of living areas, I'm trying to buck that trend.
I hope this also shows that the best way to make money is by frequent job hopping.
My salary is about average for the area.
1995 - 2000 wanted to get out of the small town where I’m from and my best opportunity was based on an internship I had the year before as a computer operator. Soon they had a programming project and I was the only programmer they had. I was also in graduate school at the time - starting $10/hr - ending salaried at $35K.
2000 - 2007 Software Engineer mostly doing C/C++ — starting $52K ending $70K. The bonuses steadily were cut and the raises were abysmal
2008-2012 Software Engineer at a small company that went out of business. Mostly doing C# with a little C++. Starting $77K, Ending $84K
2012-2015 Senior Software (in reality a mid level .Net developer) - starting 90K, ending 93K
2015-2016 Full Stack Developer - mostly .Net with some Angular. Starting $115K - Ending $115K
2016-present “Architect” at a small company - starting 63hr (contract - I took it for the learning opportunity and there was a position that I was eyeing) - present $135K.
Next on my agenda is to be an overpriced “implementation consultant”/“Digital transformation consultant”, etc. after my youngest graduates in 3 years.
https://www.bestplaces.net/cost_of_living/city/pennsylvania/...
I started my career at $30,000 in Colorado Springs.
https://www.bestplaces.net/cost_of_living/city/colorado/colo...
Yep, reading that guy's salary history almost made me want to go jump off the roof, but I figure he lives in CA and probably went to an "upper-echelon" college. Here's mine, from somebody who went to a college that didn't make the US News top 100:
(Georgia)
- 1992: $25,000 (Internship), mostly Cobol
- 1995: Graduated with BSCS, no-name college, 3.5 GPA
(Illinois)
- 1995: $28,000 (got a raise to $35000, the only raise I've ever gotten without switching jobs), Cobol
- 1996: $40,000, C++
(North Texas)
- 1997: $50,000, C++
- 1998: $60,000, C++/Java
- 1999: $100,000, Java
- 2002: $100,000, Web programming/Java/Javascript ("lateral" job change, old company went out of business)
- 2008: Graduated MSCS, sort-of-name college, 3.9 GPA
- 2011: $120,000, Objective-C, iOS
- 2014: $120,000, Java/Javascript (another "lateral" change)
- 2018: $140,000, Java/JavascriptDB/Ops Engineering
1999: $60K base. Fresh out of masters program, large F50 DC gov tech firm (#1)
2001: $100K + $5K bonus. After building a successful practice area (still #1)
Independent Consulting, Security Ops & DB Architecture
2002-3: $150/hr, ~$200K/year. Small, rapid-growth Boston healthcare company (#2)
System/Security Architecture
2004-7: $150K base, $50K-$80K bonus. (full-time salaried at #2)
2008-12: $180K base, $10K bonus. Mid-sized DC gov tech firm (#3)
2012-14: $200K base, $20-40K bonus. Mid-sized DC gov tech firm (remote #4)
Security Architecture/Product Security
2015: $150K base, $20K bonus. Startup (NYC, remote #5)
2016 - 2018: $200K base, $20K bonus, $100K options. Large tech (SF, remote #6)
I know half a dozen co-workers (senior engineers or technical directors) whose net annual comp is also in the $300K range. It's not common, but if you're pulling <$100K with 6+ years experience in software or security engineering, you're getting screwed. (Throw away account, but happy to respond in thread; edited for formatting)
My salary's pretty much followed the same progression that other's have posted for outside of the high-cost-of-living hubs.
All figures W2 gross pay and 40 hour / week jobs (No on call, paid OT or I didn't play!)
1998-1999 $9/hr -> $13/hr
2000-2003 $27k -> $33k
2003-2006 $40k -> $50k
2006-2011 $55k -> $63k (nice job, raises not-so-much)
2012-2014 $75k, $72k, $80k (job hoppin' fool)
2014-2015 $88k -> $91k
2016-2017 $100k -> $103k
2017+ $160kStarted professional software dev in 2010 after freelancing for $45, raise/promotion to low $50's before getting a new job for $72, raise/promotion to high $70's before getting a new job for $98, promotion to $115 + 10% discretionary/performance bonus. All web development to start, last promotion put me in architecture/pseudo-management roles that includes more backend systems and integrations. Tech roles at my current job top out in the low to mid $130's + 10%, non-Exec management seems to be in the $125-185 range but obviously that info is pretty hard to get reliably. If you don't have any desires to be in management or architecture roles and you just want to be in your IDE coding all day, you can get to $90-100k reliably, and in this area that's enough to max out your 401k, a Roth IRA, and save.
I'd love to move to a city and get companies on my resume that people have heard of outside of a 30 mile radius, but SF/NYC are nonstarters as they'd be a 50%+ effective pay cut, and even the less mainstream ones like Chicago, Boston, Dallas, San Diego would be 30% or more.
2007: $35k (First job out of school. I didn't know to negotiate better. Also my favorite job I've had) 2008: $60k 2012-2015: $80-$115k 2016-2017: $117.5k 2018: $100k + quarterly bonus based on company profits
It's not crazy FAANG level income but the cost of living out here is low enough that I'm pretty sure I make out decently well in comparison.
2006-2016: $25k-$45kyr, $40-$120 per hour. The first half I ran a very small agency that maxed out at 4 people and I wrote all the code, the latter half I was a PHP freelancer. Most expensive WordPress consultant in my city!
2016: $52k. Agency web dev. I've never hated a job more. Mostly wrote hacky jQuery and supported an awful laravel app the boss was enamored with.
2017: $65k. Front End Engineer. worked on converting a legacy SaaS product into Angular SPA. My boss begged me to ask for a raise (the recruiter screwed everybody), and then I got laid off two weeks later with like 25 other people. Loved that job, sad to lose it.
2018(current): $87k + bonuses. Senior Front End Developer. My job is to hack .net with javascript. I think the salary trend is moving nicely. I'm suddenly the richest person among all my friends and the third-highest earner in my extended family. (My family isn't even in the rust belt, they're from a much wealthier region in the country.)
Currently working for 40 USD / hour for 32 hours a week, so that means around 65.000 USD per year. This year I started fully working remotely and decided to start a bit at the low end, earnings-wise. When working previously as a freelancer in The Netherlands my last rate was around 80 USD / hour.
I intend to raise my rate to at least 50 USD per hour in 2019 and perhaps working 5 days a week, which would mean earning around 100.000 USD per year.
2004-2006 $30k->54k, company went out of business, career path was help desk to infrastructure engineering
2006-2011 $40k->50k, 45 Days PTO, public sector, little room for advancement, rewarding work, great time off, education
2011-2018 $65k->95k + 12% bonus, 20 PTO days, infrastructure engineering, private sector. 80% remote.
2018 $145k, bonus up to 20%, IT Consultant, 20 PTO days, private sector. 100% remote, 30% travel.
Never had any job offer stock options.
But...and this more than makes up for it...my hours are capped at 35 a week. (I usually work between 30-35).
And I love it. The tradeoff has been completely worth it for me.
1) What you actually get
2) What you actually get + what you pay in taxes
3) What you actually get + what you pay in taxes + what your employer pays in taxes
Usually we talk about #2 when discussing salaries. So if somebody says they make 1000€/month, it generally means that they get 871€ every month in the bank, and their employer actually needs to pay 1338€ ever month in salary + taxes.
Can anyone shed some light on whether this is the same everywhere? Like if somebody in Silicon Valley says they make $200k/year, is that their "#2" number?
Edit:
Adding my own #2 history as well (software dev in Estonia), in case anybody is interested:
2015 - junior at employer A - 12 000€
2015 - mid-level at employer A - 21 204€
2016 - mid-level at employer B - 26 400€
2017 - senior at employer B - 30 000€
2017 - senior at employer C - 48 000€
2018 - senior at employer D - 58 500€
In my experience, it's very hard to get better salary without changing jobs all the time, so if you know of a company with good perks, it's better to change your job a bunch of times before ending up there (so you can start there with a relatively good salary) - at least, that's what I ended up doing.
I.e. their paycheck will show $16,666 per month at the top line, a bunch of state, federal, maybe local taxes, disability and social security (also basically taxes), etc. and then roughly $10,500 at the bottom line depending on your situation.\
Edit: sometimes people include stock in their pay. This can be perfectly reasonable (guaranteed grants in a publicly traded company) or complete BS (pretending your startup will sell for 1B+ even though you might as well just buy lottery tickets)
Startup in logistics 2018 6 months: 48k euros.
Previous: DBA in Portland Oregon in 2013 to 2017 - 60k to 70k then as an EDW dev 78k USD.
And I had the same experience: it's almost impossible to have salaries jump without changing jobs (and from a business perspective the reasons for that are quite obvious)
2001: BigCo $76,000/year + $20,000 signing bonus (first job out of school)
2007: Freelancing between $100-$200/hr depending on project
2012: Startup #1 $180,000/year + $75,000 signing bonus + a bit of stock that's never been worth anything (but I exercised upon leaving and paid a lot of taxes on, so I'm net negative ~$300k)
2015: Startup #2 $240,000/year + lots of stock that's never been worth anything
Some thoughts on equity and BigCos vs. Startups:
Before going to Startup #1 I rejected offer of ~$2MM RSUs at BigCo #2 (since split, now worth ~$15MM) and offer of ~$2MM RSU at BigCo #3 (now worth ~$10MM) in order to join what looked like a sure thing. Got another offer from BigCo #2 a few years later for ~$1MM RSUs (now worth $4MM).
My peers that went to BigCos have done far, far better than me financially. All are above $500k/year in total comp, and quite a few above $1MM/year due to FAANG stocks going up so much.
Startup compensation math just doesn't work when you're competing against the BigCos these days. Liquidity horizons are ~10 years for the few successes that work out, the equity portions are meager (esp after dilution). Even ignoring the risk of no liquidity event, you still come out behind what the big companies are paying these days.
I'll probably never join a startup again, but if I do, all salary assumptions assume an equity value of zero.
The startups are a crapshoot, they can be a great stepping stone, but assume the equity is worth zero. The right 'big company' is going to be more lucrative in most cases by a lot.
I don't know anyone that thinks they'll break even vs. FAANG, and that's even when counting stock options as cash (which 99% of people will rightly tell you to ignore).
Of course $208,000 is nothing to scoff at, and money is hardly the most important thing when it comes to life. Just interesting to see that a reasonably large Bay-area company would pay such a high-level engineer barely more than new grads can get.
In other countries like the UK, a principal architect is probably not getting half that.
I would guess from a quick google that an architect in the UK is on around £50k to £70k. Which is $63k to $90k.
I'm a senior software engineer with around 10years experience. I'm on £38k ($48k) plus a very small bonus, maybe £2 to £3k if I'm lucky.
Last job was a mid-level engineer on £28k. I've seen junior developers as low as £20k and senior engineers on as low as £35k.
I agree with your point though, no matter how bad it makes me feel :(
This could be a title for guy who decides whether to use React or Vue, webpack or whatever.
The Netherlands, 26yo male:
45k ($50k) as a technical trainee. It's €3200 ($3600) pre-tax a month and €2350 ($2670) after tax with %12,5 end of year bonus.
First job here, and this is already above modal for my country. I'm very happy with it, especially seeing I don't have a formal IT education I just thought myself through hobbies and messing around. Some salaries here are insane!
Of course my cost of living is lower but rent/mortgage has gone up _a lot_ in my country since the ECB started printing money. €1500 a month in or around Amsterdam for 2 people isn't weird anymore and there are practically no houses <€250k
2007: Junior developer $25k (no bonus)
2008: Project manager $50k (10% bonus)
2009: Project Manager $65k (10% bonus)
2011: Senior Project Manager $92 (10% bonus)
2011: Product Manager $97k (Some worthless options as it turns out, and an approximately 8% bonus)
2012: Founded my own startup / developer $28k that year
2013: Startup founder / CTO $65k
2014: Startup founder / CTO $150k
2015: Startup founder / CTO $150k
2016: Startup founder / CTO $250k + 10% bonus (acquired)
2017: Startup founder / CTO $250k + 10% bonus
2018: Startup founder / CTO $325k + $100k bonus + $100k stock
2018: I'm now taking a break from work.
2012: Graduated with CS degree from top 10 public school, 2.9 GPA
2013: Mid-sized co in Texas, Software engineer, $70k salary, $20k RSUs vesting over 4 years, ~5k/yr cash bonuses
2014: Same company, bump to $75k salary
2015: Same company, bump to $80k salary
Later 2015: Jumped to seeded startup in Texas, software engineer, $70k salary, 50-70 hours/wk, aspirational but worthless equity options
2017: Same company, bump to $90k, 60-80 hours/wk, VP title (though doing work of a CTO), aspirational but worthless equity bonuses.
2018: Same company, no salary change, could request higher salary but have not because I am using it to make myself to work smarter rather than harder. Earning equity bonuses upon achieving targets. Generally working fewer hours now and have hired in some help so while responsibilities and problems are harder, work weeks are not so long.
Expecting a salary increase to range of $110-130k within 12 months (else will quit and work on my own business ideas). I believe I could obtain a $130k salary elsewhere now but have not interviewed to to find out and am not inclined to.
2012 - small business owner - 60k AED / yr (no taxes) - built Wordpress websites in my spare time
2013 - technical cloud marketing intern - 60k / yr CAD - FAANGish company
2013 - contractor - 30k / yr CAD - Engineering consultancy
2014 - Software Dev Fullstack - 22k / yr CAD - early stage startup
2015 - Lead Software Dev Fullstack / Architect + DevOps - 55k / yr CAD - very early stage startup
2015 - Lead Software Dev Fullstack / Architect + DevOps - 60k / yr CAD - very early stage startup
2016 - Software Dev - 60k / yr CAD - medium stage startup
2016 - Techincal Consultant - 90k / yr CAD - small public company
2017 - Software Engineer + DevOps - 99k / yr CAD - medium public company
2018 - Senior Software Engineer + DevOps + SRE - 120k / yr CAD - medium public company2015 - Linux System Administrator - $65k - large company 2016 - DevOps Engineer - $79k - startup 2017 - DevOps Engineer - $95k - large company 2018 - Site Reliability Engineer - $115k - medium company
White male born in the '88 in Italy. I have a bachelor degree and working since 2008. Here in Italy is quite uncommon to have big jumps in salaries if you want to stay in the "Technical" position.
However it's quite common to have "food stamps" for lunch as benefit ( range between 5€ to 8€ )
2008 - 18000 €/year - Junior Software Developer - Consulting Firm A
2009 - 19000 €/year - Software Developer - Consulting Firm A
2010 - 20000 €/year - Software Developer - Consulting Firm A
2011 - 21000 €/year - Software Developer - Consulting Firm A
2012 - 23000 €/year - Senior Software Developer - Online booking startup (No stock options)
2013 - 25000 €/year - Senior Software Developer - Consulting Firm B
2014 - 25000 €/year - Senior Software Developer - Consulting Firm B
2015 - 28000 €/year - Technical Lead - Consulting Firm B
2016 - 30000 €/year - Technical Lead - Consulting Firm B
2017 - 32000 €/year - Technical Lead - Consulting Firm C
2018 - 32000 €/year - Technical Lead / Solution Architect / Whatever - Consulting Firm C
https://www.hays.it/cs/groups/hays_common/@it/@content/docum...
1999 - 12000 €/year - Junior sysadm @ ISP (startup)
2002 - 19000 €/year - Sysadmin @ large ISP
Then I had issues paying my bills and mortgage, so I moved to Ireland
2007 - 42000 €/year - Senior Sysadmin @ small R&D company
2008 - 45000 €/year - Network Engineer @ large multinational
2009 - 52000 €/year - Senior Sysadmin @ fintech company
2010 - 65000 €/year - Senior Sysadm @ US startup based in IE
2012 - 70000 €/year - Devops Engineer @ US startup based in IE
2015 - 80000 €/year - Technical Lead @ remote job
Now - 90000 €/year as TechOps Lead for another remote position.
If I where you I'd try at least ranking up your salary moving out of Italy, then with the connections you make you can easily double or triple your salary. JM2EC.
The only time I worked 40 hours was government...
I realize it could also be the nature of the application. Looks like the author is mainly on UI while my application, and at my previous company, processes time sensitive data 24x7.
I often times I did only UI work, or QA work to not have production calls.
However, I work remotely (I am not American) so I have that flexibility, and I also don't waste time commuting. To me, the extra hours in the chair are worth it.
Even a lot of unskilled jobs pay really well in Australia. I have a friend who works for Aldi in their distribution centre as a general worker, and he's on $35 per hour (only 6 hour shifts though, I think), plus when he's rostered on Sunday he goes up to $70 an hour.
Anecdotally, as a software developer in Melbourne for a small company, with 2 years experience, I'm on AU$75k + super, which is a pretty comfortable wage. Coming from NZ$42k (and only 3% super) back in New Zealand, it was certainly a nice payrise.
1. $110 CAD ($83 USD)/h
2. I set my own schedule, both weekly and time off (self-employed).
3. Zero stress: no one's ever stressed coming in, and I get to directly help people in pain. These people tend to be very neat and I have an hour to get to know them and the interesting lives they lead. It's very fulfilling.
Since starting my current practice in Vancouver six years ago I've made $300,000 CAD ($230,000 USD) total, working an average of 3.5 months/year (or, more accurately, averaging 8 months/year, 3.5 days/week). It's paid off my BSc student loan and covered an expensive MSc that I was able to finance while simultaneously completing it full-time in Europe for two years. I'm now able to turn my focus to helping my family get out of debt.
I should add that I've worked the same in Toronto, Nova Scotia, Montreal, and Yellowknife, and nowhere was it this good. I'm also quite good at what I do and am a real people person -- these are key. And a white male as well, but our clinic is made up primarily of ladies who make the same as me, just less in total as I work longer -- 8-10h compared to their 5-7h days.
I'm so happy this conversation was started. I wish I could have read this post before diving headlong into student loan debts the first decade of my adult life.
I more than doubled my salary moving from the UK (Bristol) to Australia (Sydney), while my living costs only went up a little higher.
From what I've seen I actually think we are lucky to have the highest dev salaries outside of the US. Which is kind of suprisingly in a way, because we don't have too many large internet companies headquartered here and the startup scene isn't huge.
Graduated college in 2007, Bachelor's in CS, hired to a QA team, ended up building a lot of internal web apps by myself from scratch that are used by a lot of teams. There aren't any other software companies anywhere near here, so switching companies frequently as others do to get raises isn't an easy option.
--------------
2007: $35,000
-- [incremental raises, working for the same team]
2016: $82,000
-- [Hired as a senior front-end web dev for a different team in 2016]
2017: $97,000
2018: $103,000
2013: intern at tiny startup A, $12/hr, no benefits. Paid for my own gas/food
2014: software eng intern at large corp A. $28/hr
2015: software eng intern at startup B. $40/hr
2016: software developer at corp C, $105k base, $20k signing, future equity (noted below)
2017 - entry software engineer at corp C. $115k base, $25k bonus, $70k equity (for 2016 and 2017). Total comp about $205k-ish
2018.a - entry software engineer at corp C. $125k base, $27k bonus, $80k equity. Total comp around $235k
2018.b - mid year promotion to software engineer (non-entry level). $141k base, likely equity bump. Total comp for 2018 projects to be about $240k.
Current corp doesn't negotiate, but has very solid equity.
2005 - $9/hour web dev intern
2007 - $14/hour part-time web developer and software engineer. (This was still in college.)
2010 - $60K/year software engineer.
2013 - $85K/year sr. software engineer (including bonuses).
2018 - $103K/year sr. software engineer (including bonuses).
I feel I've been somewhat underpaid compared to market averages, but I have reasonable money for now. Lived super-frugally in college and paid off student debts ~1 year after graduation. Never worked crazy overtime, although some jobs were pretty stressful due to sheer bad management. Had opportunities to become manager or architect, but don't want to move into a non-coding position.
1) Unpaid internship (3 months)
2) $10 an hour assistant marketing role (1.5 years)
3) $14 an hour marketing role (1.5 years)
4) $30 an hour marketing role (8 months)
5) $35 an hour marketing role (Much bigger budget, lots of opportunity to learn) (1.5 years)
6) $50 an hour (promotion from the above role, 2 years)
7) Became a consultant for $150-$300 an hour, current since May 2017.
So my path from unpaid to $300k+ per year took like 8 years.
2004-2008 - Programmer at Software Factory - U$ 10.000 / year
2008-2016 - Functional Analyst (developer really) at non-software company - U$ 30.000
2016-2018 - Programmer Analyst (still developer + pm) at U.S. company's outsourcing center - U$ 55.000
Also, over half my salary goes to taxes as I'm on the 2nd highest income bracket.
I'm hoping to get way more as a remote worker (and there are ways to get tax breaks that way).
2007 Startup A $80,000
2009 Startup A $90,000
2010 Startup B $100,000
2011 Startup C $100,000
2013 Startup C $130,000
2015 Startup C $150,000
2017 Startup D $160,000
Simple salad or a sandwich will cost you ~$15. Round-trip fare on BART - $11. So just to get to work and eat something over lunch will cost you over $600/m.
If you're offered a job here with relocation - negotiate! If possible - better reconsider. Have a family with kids? Simply forget it. Seriously, things getting awfully expensive here. Techies are moving to other states in numbers.
It's almost always better to get high pay in a high CoL area, than to get low pay in a low CoL area.
COLA calculators are pretty good at highlighting this. Last time I punched my numbers into one it looked as if I would have to just about double my salary to have the same QOL in Bay Area.
The one upside to Bay Area salary vs cost of living that is worth considering, especially earlier in your career, is that it significantly weakens the purchasing power of fixed cost loans like student loans and vehicles. It would probably make a lot more financial sense to take a mild hit in QOL and higher salary if one has a lot of student loans or wants a nicer car.
I know of one person who was fine after like a month (detected early) and someone who spent the better part of a year recovering, but nothing like this!
Hope the blog writer gets better soon.
1999: Intern developer at investment bank, £1500/month
2000: Java Developer at above, £40,000/year
2004: C++ Games Developer in Australia, AU$26,000/year
2006: C++ Games Developer in UK, £27,000/year
2007: C++ Senior Software Engineer in UK, £31,000/year + pension
2011: Java Developer in Netherlands, €44,000/year + pension
2012: C# Unity Developer in Netherlands, €31,800/year
2013: Contract Frontend Developer in NL, €50/hour
2015: Frontend Developer in NL, €50,000/year
2017: Contract Frontend Developer in NL, €75/hour
2018: Contract Frontend Developer in NL, similar to above
Fairly obvious here is that I a) like working in the games industry, b) the pay is much worse in the games industry, and c) that I never ended up staying for long in the games industry...
2009: £16k - Junior dev at games company (Scotland)
2010: £23k - Junior dev at web company (London)
2011: £26k - Dev at startup (London)
2014: £32k - Senior dev at same startup
2015: £350/day - Web freelancer (London)
2017: £220/day - Unity freelancer (London)
2018: £300/day - Unity freelancer (remote)
It definitely feels like you can do a lot better as a freelancer in the UK but it's more of a headache in terms of taxes pensions etc, and obviously less secure. And also yeah, games is badly paid compared to other areas.
I wish Nicholas health and happiness.
1990 - 7.50/hr software testing @ bigco1
1992 - $24/hr software testing @ bigco1
1994 - $40/hr developer @ bigco1
1996 - $54k developer @ bigco1
1997 - $58k developer @ bigco2, options-heavy comp (worth ~$400k over 9 years)
2006 - $120k developer @ startup1, options-heavy (worthless)
2008 - $120k developer @ startup2, options-heavy (worthless)
2016 - $290k developer @ bigco3
2017 - $360k developer @ bigco3
2018 - $405k developer @ bigco3
second verdict: perusing the timelines, I am old AF
edit: yes, I was born after you had many years of work experience :)
2012-2016 $105k-135k MSFT SDE-SDE2
2016-2017 $190k AMZN
2018 - trying to start up, $250
> Obama Executive Order Protects Employees of Federal Contractors to Discuss Wage and Compensation
Fortunately, both AMZN and MSFT are government contractors
2001 - 2003 Various intern-level roles in Kansas/Nebraska. ~8/hr.
2003 - 2005 Intern/Part time sole developer/IT at manufacturing company in central Kansas. ~$12/hr.
2005 Graduated with Bachelor's in Computer Systems.
2005 - 2007 Applications Developer (Programming, general IT, software project management) at same company above in central Kansas. Started at $42k, ended around 50k. 40hrs wk
2007 - 2010 IT Director at international school outside of America. 28k. Technical responsibilities about 30hrs/wk, other work at school (substituting, student activities, etc) ~20 more.
2010 - 2012 Network Admin / Developer, Omaha NE. (for MSP) 30k -> 35k 45+ hrs/wk
2012 - 2018 Mobile Software Developer, Omaha NE (ag-tech company) 45k -> 80k. 40hrs/wk.
2018 - present Senior Software Engineer 85k (in healthcare) 40hrs/wk.
I just assumed that everyone saves their digital paystubs and calculating precise salary at any point in ones career is trivial. I was surprised when OP was unsure of salary amounts or when precisely raises went into effect.
While I think this is cool from a career planning perspective, I don’t think it’s very useful from OP’s aim of correcting any biases on pay based on gender. But it doesn’t hurt and is helpful just to be aware of what’s possible.
It’s a bit odd that Forbes and Atlantic are used as sources of pretty definitive statements of existing biases and the ability of authors ability to negotiate based on status as a “white man.” (Personally, I think that confidence may be a bit misplaced :)
Mostly, I’m grateful for using ESLint and it’s cool to see the career described for people who develop oss projects in addition to work.
First off, not everyone gets digital paystubs. It depends on how the company manages payroll, and whether they keep it in-house or subcontract it.
Second, even if you do get a digital paystub, it is frequently a manual operation to download and save it outside of the payroll system. I personally have been bad about actually doing so.
2000: $55k, non-dev role, 50k-ish options, Florida company 2000: Same role as above, given $20k raise, +25k options two months in 2000: $75k, $10k signing bonus, 30k options, junior dev, Bay Area company 2001 (crash): $40k, university, research dev, Penn 2002-2005: Freelance $80/hr, Florida 2005-2007: Grad school, shit pay 2007-2010: Freelance, $100/hr, Florida 2010-2012: $68k, senior dev, Florida 2012-2014: $20k, 10% equity, head of engineering, "startup", Bay Area 2014-2015: $125k, 10% bonus, senior dev, Bay Area BigCo 2015-2016: $130k, 9% bonus, $20k RSU/3 year, same co and role as above 2016-2017: $144k, 10% bonus, $20k RSU, same co and role as above 2017-2018: $155k, 16% bonus, $20k RSU, same co, eng manager
I'm underpaid, conservatively, by at least $70k. Will probably fix that next year.
For me:
- 2010 Company A €37000 - Netherlands
- 2011 Freelance €21000 - Netherlands
- 2012 Company B €34000 - Netherlands
- 2013 Company C ¥2.5M (€19000) - Japan
- 2014 Company C ¥3.6M (€27000) - Japan
- 2016 Company D ¥5.0M (€38000) - Japan
- 2017 Company D ¥5.5M (€42000) - Japan
- 2018 Startup E ¥6.0M (€46000) - Japan
- 2018 Company F ¥8.0M (€61000) - Japan
All have been some form of engineering position. I’d love to break into the ridiculous compensations I see around here, but it seems the only way to get any form of raise is to move around a lot.
I’m fairly convinced this is because companies are unable to properly assess skill in an interview, so they use previous salary as a proxy to determine if a candidate might be worth it.
I’m getting to the age/place in life where I’d prefer to stay at the same place, so I’m hoping company F is willing to see the light in that regard.
I think people forget, but at the time it was a foregone conclusion that all programming jobs were going to go to India and you would be a fool to go into it. I was told as much by teachers before I left high school. I didn’t know anyone else getting into programming, I literally had college comp-sci classes where I was the only student.
After my 3 months probation they realized “he’s pretty good” and unexpectedly doubled that.
Worked my way up to lead developer by around 2009 at that job which basically doubled that again.
Pay growth since then has not been nearly as meteoric.
As someone who speaks at conferences regularly with a resume similar to his, I can tell you this probably not true. Tech conferences don't usually pay well if at all. Possibly for a keynote speaker but even then not much.
Most conferences I've spoken at don't even pay for you travel and hotel, never mind additional amounts on top of that. They expect your employer to pay for travel and hotel just as they would if you were a regular attendee.
I will say that 100% of conferences have had a free pass that gets you into all the talks and usually a catered lunch, snacks, and coffee in the "speaker lounge".
So she was basically getting paid by our employer to write books, which were her intellectual property, not our employers. Sweet gig.
Unless he's working for a javascript tool builder, why does his name add any extra value to the company?
2009 - 0 (moved and was living off savings, almost broke)
2010 - 150k (affiliate marketing, self, from home, 3 hours per day worked)
2011 - 24k (just a sliver of affiliate marketing, self, from home, not sure how many hours I worked)
2012 - 42k (SEO contract work, tiny company - part remote, 40 hours a week)
2013 - 42k (SEO contract work, tiny company - part remote, 40 hours a week)
2014 - 55k (marketing at small company - remote, 40 hours a week)
2015 - 75k + fully paid top tier health plan (marketing - large ecommerce company - remote, 40 hours a week)
2016 - 50k (freelance - from home, 20 hours a week)
2017 - 60k (freelance - from home, 20 hours a week)
2018 - Looks to be on track to 100k (consulting - from home, 5-8 hours a week)
For context, 2009 - 2015 I was living in a high cost of living location. Today I live in a very low cost of living location.
Date - Company ID | Starting Salary | Percentage Increase Role | Role
2005 - Company A | $20/hour | 100%! :) | Part Time Tester
2007 - Company B | $48,000 annual | 20.0% | Graduate Engineer
2009 - Company B | $65,000 annual | 25.0% | Engineer
2010 - Company B | $70,000 annual | 16.7% | Consulting Engineer
2011 - Company B | $78,000 annual | 11.5% | Consulting Engineer
2011 - Company C | $120,000 annual | $53.8% | Engineering Specialist
2012 - Company C | $125,000 annual | 4.2% | Team Lead
2013 - Company C | $128,000 annual | 4.5% | Team Lead
2014 - Company D | $210,000 annual | 64.0% | Solutions Architect
2015 - Company D | $225,000 annual | 7.1% | Solutions Architect
2016 - Company D | $195,000 annual | -1.3% | Solutions Architect
2017 - Company D | $205,000 annual | 5.1% | Solutions Architect
2018 - Company E | $150,000 annual + bonus | -26.8% | Management Position
edit: took out notes since it wasn't relevant and rearranged fields to look more uniform. If you have any questions, on each role, feel free to AMA.
2015: Software Engineer (Company A) 120k + 10k signing bonus + worthless options
2016: Senior Software Engineer (Startup B) 145k + worthless options
2016: Software Engineer (Startup C) 145k + worthless options
2017: Software Engineer (Startup C) 150k + worthless options
2018: Software Engineer (Company D) 150k + 20k signing bonus + 230k RSUs/4 years + 10% performance bonus
2004 - first job at non tech company - $37.5k
2005 - switched to web design company - $40k
2006 - same company, minor raise - $42k
2007 - same company, minor raise - $44k
2008 - switch company, "senior" dev - $70k
2009 - same company, performance raise - $75k
2010 - switch companies - same pay - $75k
2011 - major performance bonus - $90k
2012 - same company - raise - $95k
2013 - company acquihired by BigCo - raise + bonus = $115k
2014 - promo/performance bonus/stock/retention = $170k
2015 - promo/performance bonus/stock/retention = $195k
2016 - move to new job with old friends = $140k salary + bonus
2017 - same job, salary bump and bonus = $140k
2018 - same job, more salary but less bonus. Way less stress = $130k
In location A where you earn 200K a year but requires you to paid 100K in tax, and spend 50K on rental, versus location B where you paid 20K in tax and 20K in Rental, you actually earn a little more in the 100K package.
Tiny (5 person) Company
2008 - Graphic Design / Web Developer Intern (College) - $100 / week
2010 - "Senior" Web Developer - $15 / hr
Low-Mid (120 person) Company - Relocated To Hometown, Previous Employer Closed Business
2010 - Graphic Designer - $14.86 / hr
2013 - "Senior" Graphic Designer - $17.00 / hr
Mid (350+ person) Company
2014 - Graphic Designer / Web Developer - $46,000 / year + $8,000 bonuses
2015 - Graphic Designer / Web Developer - $50,000 / year + $8,000 bonuses
2016 - Software Developer - $70,000 / year + $10,000 bonuses
2017 - Software Developer (Remote) - $75,000 / year + $10,000 bonuses
2018 - Software Developer (Remote) - $78,000 / year + $10,000 bonuses
Year Starting $ Inflation Inflation adjusted to 2018
2000 $48,000 1.50 $67,500
2001 $62,500 1.44 $90,000
2001 $68,000? 1.44 $97,920
2003 ?
2005 $82,000? 1.32 $108,240
2006 $115,000 1.27 $146,050
2008 ?
2011 ?
2013 $175,000 1.10 $192,500
2014 $208,000 1.08 $237,600
* 2012 - $120,000
* 2014 - $140,000
* 2016 - $160,000
* 2017 - $200,000
* 2018 - $225,000
Embedded Firmware V&V:
2003: Software Engineer I. $62k/yr.
2004: Software Engineer II. $75k/yr.
2006: Sr. Software Engineer. $92k/yr.
2007-2010: ?
Rapid prototyping role in same company:
2011: Principal Software Engineer. $130k/year + 10%n bonus.
2012-2016: ?
Mostly a data science role. Company got bought by another large public company.
2017: Staff Software Engineer: $165k/year + 15% bonus + $10k/year RSUs w/ 3 year vest.
2018: Sr. Staff Software Engineer: $170k/year + 15% bonus + $10k/year RSUs w/ 3 year vest.
'95-'99: $8/hr as Perl-based "webmaster" in Pennsylvania
'99: $27.5k/year as Coldfusion dev (plus some very mild Oracle work) in Norfolk, VA (3 months at a startup)
'00-'07: Perl Contractor for state govt in Richmond, VA. Hourly, but worked out to $45k/yr, rising to roughly $70k/yr
'07-'12: Java FTE for state govt in Richmond, VA. Started at $81k/year, ended at $90k/yr
'12-'18: Moved to Seattle, WA as JS dev. Started at $90k/yr (+ $10k signing and ~$5k/yr bonus), ended at $187k/yr (+ signing RSU that is probably $30k/yr)
Seattle is looking good - how's the COL there in comparison?
Anyways here's mine (non-CS STEM degree in NYC):
- $70k - 5 months - Software engineer (full stack engineer, more backend) at small company. They offered $60k, I asked for $70k and they gave it.
- $100k + 20% bonus - 1.5 years - Software Engineer (full-stack engineer, more frontend) at mid-sized corporation. They asked me what salary I wanted, I said $100k and they gave it.
- $140k - 1 year - Senior Frontend Engineer at startup. Offered $120k, asked for $150k and got $140k.
- $150k + max 15% annual bonus + stock options - 1 year - Lead Engineer, this was a promotion so same company as the last.
My Learnings:
* There are companies that value their engineers and companies that don't (eg. my first company). If you're working for the latter, know sense in staying there long unless you don't mind making less than you would elsewhere. Recognize the company you're working for and the attitude they have towards their engineers (hint: if the president says "we're a sales-driven company" to you in the interview, the company probably views engineering as a cost center).
* Switching companies will almost always make you more money than you would if you stay at your existing company. The only exception might be if you're at a big high-paying tech company that values its engineers (eg. Google), but I never worked at those companies so can't comment.
* Negotiate that initial offer hard. I would've made substantially less at all of my jobs (especially the last one) had I not negotiated. At that point I knew that once I started working, it's very difficult and time consuming to get a raise because you have very little leverage once you start employment, and if you ask for a raise it's awkward and they'll think you're considering jumping ship. So make sure you're happy with your initial offer!
2012 - £28k - Software engineer (grad, Software house)
2013 - £35k - Software Engineer (startup)
2015 - £42k - Software Engineer (startup)
2016 - £60k - Software Engineer (startup)
2018 - $66k - Software Engineer. (startup; remote work) Paying around 20% in taxes, but I live in a very low cost area(Central Europe) and my gf has a flat. I have a good quality lifestyle. Unlimited holidays (usually 30 days a year), I work 35h a week, own a new mercedes and can save $25k a year.
2019 - $130k - Software Engineer. (large startup; remote work; 40h/week) (I haven't accepted the offer yet). I have reached the maximum salary that I could get if you normalise for purchasing parity. It's impossible for me to find another job which allow me to save up $70k/year working 40h/week in a low stress environment.
As a CS professor myself, it is great to know my students can go and be well paid after graduation!
June 2010 - Dec 2012: junior at company A. Started with €13 650, at age 18. By December 2012 this was €19 500
Dec 2012 - Oct 2015: intermediate at company B. Started with €25 805. By October 2015 this was €37 102.
Oct 2015 - present: Company C (GitLab). Started with €36 400 (for 4 days a week), for an intermediate position. Currently this is €58 630, for 5 days a week, for the staff engineer position.
Income taxes for me have always been between 30% and 35%, which today translates to receiving roughly €3000 in the bank every month. My monthly recurring costs (groceries, mortgage, etc) are around €1300 per month.
The best thing these salary comparisons are for are with reference to the same country/city; otherwise you have to account for thinks like healthcare costs, differences in rent, expected working hours, holiday time, etc etc.
I seriously doubt that 100k USD in the Bay Area is significantly better than 50-60k in Berlin.
To be fair that guy is like the 1% of IT in India, majority of Indians working in IT (most of them in IT outsourcing companies) dont make high salaries.
1) 2012-2014: Firmware engineer in Romania for Automotive sector $14K
Master's degree 2014
2) 2014 - 2016: Firmware engineer in Austria for Semiconductor sector $50K
3) 2016 - 2018: Firmware enginner in Austria for IoT in Retail electronics $59K
2010-2014 in college. Contract work for a startup, approx 50 dollars per hour.
2015 worked full time for the startup, 100k salary no stock.
2016 moved to SV for FAANG company 1, negotiated well, 220k total comp.
2017 stayed at company 1. Signing bonus was very large, so total comp dropped to 190k depsite raise.
2018 moved to FAANG company 2. Negotiated well, total comp 300k.
Roughly 45% increase per year. I think I was able to negotiate well in both my job changes because I was happy with my current job and not in need of a new one. So I was able to ask for my ideal compensation, and I was not afraid to walk away.
1995 - $10/hr web developer at NYC area digital agency, paid high school intern
1996 - $15/hr - raise
1997 - $20/hr - raise
1999 - $70k salary - web developer at NYC digital agency, sys admin
2001 - $110k salary - raise, promoted to VP engineering
-- in here started doing a lot of freelance work on the side, eventually doubling my income with salary + freelance work
2005 - $250k/yr+ in contract / consulting work - many clients
2006 - $325k/yr + $50k bonus + equity as CTO at startup
2007 - $340/yr + $75k bonus - raise
2008 - Exited above at buyout incl sale of equity
2008 - $200k/yr in contract / consulting work, 2 main clients - partial year
2009 - $350k/yr in contract / consulting work, 2 main clients
-- came to realize that all the hustle was not worth the dough and shifted to a balanced work/life --
2010 - $180k/yr salary, VP engineering at NY media company
2011 - $140k/yr salary + sick bonus and benefits at NY finance firm
2014 - $175k/yr salary + variable bonus, CTO remote work at a digital agency
2015 - $180k/yr - raise
Well, they just have to output about 2x more impact. In my experience, it is not very hard to be 2x more impactful than a junior engineer. This is not meant to be arrogant, just that it's very easy for a junior engineer to waste time on useless stuff. In some cases junior (or bad) engineers will be 10x or 50x slower than they should be. I've seen some really bad examples in my 10 year career.
For example at my last job, a team of 2 engineers was using the wrong tool for a task, and this resulted in them taking 5x longer to deliver a worse product than alternates. I was able to do the same thing as them, but deliver much faster and at lower cost.
In other cases, junior engineers will make poor decisions, or write bad code that needs to be refactored later. This can be simple things like thinking on the wrong layer of abstraction. Refactoring the bad code is effectively 10x slower than doing it right the first time.
In all, I think paying an extra $100k for a good engineer is a real bargain for companies, because the impact can be so huge. The real challenge is figuring out who is a legit senior engineer.
He writes performant React code for high-speed table rendering. I know another guy making about that much at FB as a new grad. He works on Messenger games.
New grads can get that kind of total comp at Facebook and Google these days. But experience engineers can get that at a lot of larger companies.
2014 - $50,000/year - Software Engineer - Company A
2015 - $72,000/year - Software Engineer - Company A (raise)
2016 - $80,000/year - Software Engineer - Company A (raise)
2016 - $88,000/year - Software Engineer II - Company B (new job; $5,000 signing bonus)
2017 - $92,000/year - Software Engineer II - Company B (raise)
2018 - $98,000/year - Software Engineer II - Company B (raise)
2018 - $110,000/year - Software Engineer III - Company B (promotion)
At Company B, I was offered various stock options and RSUs pre-exit. When the company was acquired in 2018, they became worth ~$9,600/year.
Additionally, Company B offered a bonus program worth approximately 10% of my salary each year.
2011 - $900 biweekly UX internship
2012 - $1200 biweekly web dev internship
2013 - $1700 biweekly web dev internship
2014 - $55k salary full time web developer
2015, 2016 - $65k full time web developer
2017 - $80k full time web developer (+ stock options)
2018 - raise at existing job to $84k
Principal anything should be in the $700k total comp range, if not more.
It really shows how much negotiation actually does matter.
- 1987-1992 43k-60k programmer Bank 1 (IBM mainframe, cobol, 370 assembler, IMS, CICS)
- 1992-1997 60k- 80k senior programmer Bank 2 (was actually lucky enough to work in Smalltalk for the first 5 years here)
- 1997-2017 80k-221k various titles Bank 2 - java and the internet killed smalltalk and the project we were working on, the technology group jumped on java and we had many years of work converting mainframe apps to java apps.
Played many roles from leading a small team all new to java including myself, up to architecting and building the shared components and shared architecture for 45 J2EE applications. Was let go after 24 years there in yet one more reorg/RIF 1 year after the last major mainframe app was migrated.
I am retired now, and feel lucky to have been able to have an interesting and challenging “normal” career with 2 large stable companies, with pensions, with matched 401k, etc.
2013-2014 ??? Literally pennies while doing odd jobs for random people on the internet.
2015-2016 $3600 Asp.net developer Working for a sub-sub-sub contractor on some government project. AFAIK, it has never been shipped to production.
2016-2017 $12000 Xamarin developer Small local company that went out of business due to Russian financial crisis [1]
2017-2018 $25000 .NET developer Large company(~600 franchise offices) focused on the local market
2018-now $36000 -> $32000 Full stack developer Large outsourcing company, US-based customer.
Salary has decreased since it's bound to RUB and the exchange rate fell by about 10%.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_financial_crisis_(2014...
Maybe I'd have better luck hiring someone full time for $50k, and just fill the pipeline? Would love any thoughts on best moves here.
Oh I just realized ycomb doesn't have plans capability. Could you PM me on Reddit where my username is homebrewingcoder .
Salary isn't just a function of [years of experience] * [COL]. The majority is not skilled enough in some trait to make it into the high paying jobs or companies. It might not feel like that on HN, but this is a very selected/biased group of people. Statistically speaking not only are 50% above the average, 50% are below. This is not only true for salary, but for everything including skill etc.
Let's not forget that FAANG also make ridiculous margins and can afford to pay that well and pick every employee from hundreds of applications. That's also impossible for most traditional companies. A lot of big companies run between 200k-300k$ revenue per employee and not 1million. It's impossible for them to pay these wages (especially as revenue does not equal money available for salaries).
Am I saying that skill and productivity are always in line with salary? No. But it doesn't help to tell everyone paid less they are underpaid. Maybe they just lack some kind of skill and even if it's just the ability to correctly market their value, solve coding challenges in interviews or network into better positions. They might never earn the high figures and it really doesn't help to make them feel bad about it (granted this comment also isn't cheerful, but it's aimed at the people calling "underpaid" all the time)
YOE -- Title/Role -- Employer Designation -- Salary in USD pre-tax
0 -- IT Contractor -- Various/Subbed -- $55000
2 -- IT Contractor -- Various/Subbed -- $190000
3 -- Help Desk Tech -- Employer A -- $24000
5 -- Systems Admin -- Employer B -- $64000
7 -- Operations Engineer -- Employer B -- $83000
9 -- Senior Operations Engineer -- Employer B -- $115000
11 -- Senior Operations Engineer -- Employer D -- $135000
13 -- Senior Operations Engineer -- Employer E -- $155000
14 -- Product Manager -- Employer F -- $124000
An ex-USSR white male moved to Prague, the Czech Republic a few years ago
7+ YOE as SWE
All numbers further are denominated in USD (they use Czech Crowns or CZK).
2018: $77k (current)
$40k/year is my take-home
$57k/year is what is negotiated and put in the contract as a monthly salary (some taxes are split between an employee and the employer)
$77k/year is a total cost for the employer (includes income taxes, social security and healthcare)
(EDIT: formatting)
- 2004-2006: $40-45k. Writing C in an embedded context (barcode scanners). Local company. - 2006-2011: $50k-70k. Writing C++ for device drivers and control panels. Japanese company, local subsidiary. - 2011-2012: $80k. C# and SQL Server for an FBA/eBay selling tool, local company. - 2012-2014: $130-145k. Working remotely for an SF company, writing C. Got some stock options which were worth 2 years of salary when the company was recently acquired. - 2014-2016: $125-130k. VC-funded all-remote startup which didn't really go anywhere. - 2016-present: $140k salary, yearly RSU grants worth about $50k at our current stock price. Public SF company.
None of these companies has required more than 40 hours of work each week, and starting in 2012 I've never had a vacation accrual or cap, and I usually take ~5 weeks off each year. I've been lucky.
- 2004-2006: $40-45k. Writing C in an embedded context (barcode scanners). Local company.
- 2006-2011: $50k-70k. Writing C++ for device drivers and control panels. Japanese company, local subsidiary.
- 2011-2012: $80k. C# and SQL Server for an FBA/eBay selling tool, local company.
- 2012-2014: $130-145k. Working remotely for an SF company, writing C. Got some stock options which were worth 2 years of salary when the company was recently acquired.
- 2014-2016: $125-130k. VC-funded all-remote startup which didn't really go anywhere.
- 2016-present: $140k salary, yearly RSU grants worth about $50k at our current stock price. Public SF company.
2003-2006 SysAdmin $30k in FL. (No certs) as an FTE.
2006-2012 Netadmin $35k in FL. (a+, net+, sec+) as an FTE.
2012 SysEng $85k in OR. (CEH v7) as contractor at Intel.
2013 Pentester $110k in OR. as contractor at Intel.
2014 Security Analyst $150k in OR. Contractor at local power company.
2015 Sr. Security Analyst $120k in OR as FTE at insurance company.
2016 SecEng $170k in OR as FTE at aws
2017 SecEng $210k in OR as FTE at aws. (OSCP)
2018 SecEng $245k in OR as FTE at aws.
2012-2013: RIM/Blackberry in Waterloo, Canada: CAD 70,000, no bonus or stock, 15 days of vacation or so, 40h per week, software developer
2014-2016: YourGolfTravel in London, UK: GBP 41,000 first year, GBP 43,000 second year, no bonus or stock, 20 days vacation or so, 40h per week, software developer
2016-2017: Green Chef in Mountain View, California: USD 125,000 first year, USD 135,000 when I got promoted to team lead in mid 2017, $8k worth of stock options (post round B I believe, ~0.04%), "unlimited vacation", really crap health insurance, 40h per week with some long days from being on-call with time-off-in-lieu given, software developer
2017-present: software developer & architect at TELUS digital in Toronto, Canada, for not less than I was paid in the US
Huh, it's good to know Telcos in Canada will pay Software People well.
I worked in Software for a wholly owned subsidiary of Bell and the IT staff were paid a tiny fraction of your US salary.
Germany, Hannover
Roughly two years out of university, but worked part time all the time and took a while to finish my master in CS. Lots of knowledge in ML and DL.
Pay is 53k for a position at the university and will be 56k with 38h weeks next year. (Don't ask me for the hours at the university, thinking about it will make me cry) And the regular 30 vacation days.
Roughly 2450 euro per month each. One with having 12.6 and the other 14 payments over the year
2014-2015: Consulting gig while in college, initial $10,000 bid. Signed Maintenence contract for $60/hr ~ $125,000 / year
Ended up with $34K total earned due to me studying as a full time student.
2015: First real job in SF California at startup. $110,000, $5K sign on.
2016: Promoted to $125,000
2018: Received offer for $180,000, counter offered to $180,000, took counter offer.
2009 - Developer - 40 000€ 2010 - IT-Consultant - 56 000€ 2014 - Developer - 61 000€ 2015 - Senior Tech Lead - 67 500€ 2017 - Senior Engineer - 72 300€ 2018 - Lead Developer - 80 400€
2012 - Junior web developer - 6k / Year Euro - Romania (small outsourcing company)
2013 - Junior web developer - 11k / Year Euro - Romania (same small outsourcing company)
2014 - Software Dev - 13K / Year Euro - Romania (bigger outsourcing company)
2015 - Senior Software Dev - 15K / Year Euro - Romania (outsourcing, the it dep of a german company)
2016 - Senior Software developer - 70k / Year Euro - Germany, Berlin, very early stage startup
2017 - Senior Software Engineer - 70K / Year Euro - Germany, Berlin, medium international fintech company
2018 - Senior Software Engineer - 65K / Year Euro - Germany, Berlin, medium german company 1999 $55k Developer for Internet consulting firm
$72k after promotion to Sr Developer
2000 $90k Lead developer at small SaaS startup in flyover country
$100k after promotion to Technical Architect
2002 laid off during dot-com bust
2003 $90k+$20k bonus Developer at Wall St. firm
2005 $110k+$20k bonus Developer at another Wall St. firm
2006 $120k+$40k bonus Developer at another Wall St. firm
2008 $90k Sr Developer at line-of-business software company in - 2013: $70000 + 3% bonus, freshly graduated with BS in CompSci, worked at big corporation in east coast
- 2014: $72000 + 3% bonus (something like 2-3% raise - got max bonus+raise due to performance), same company as above
- 2015: $74000 + 3% bonus (something like 2-3% raise - got max bonus+raise due to performance), same company as above
- 2016: $77000 + 3% bonus (something like 2-3% raise - got max bonus+raise due to performance), same company as above
- 2017: $80000 + 3% bonus (something like 2-3% raise - got max bonus+raise due to performance), same company as above
- 2017: $87000 + 0% bonus, moved to the midwest and worked at a startup, recruiter told me I'd get a bonus but turns out it's only for higher-ups or something (wasn't happy about this but still here)
- 2018: $90000 + 0% bonus (something like 3% raise), same company as above
Overall I don't know whether I should be happy with this. It's good pay and it's a medium COL in both places where I lived on east coast and in the midwest and I keep my expenses low, but I frequently read huge salaries on HackerNews, CSCareerQuestions and such. I am very effective in my QA manual and automation test duties and catch nearly everything no matter how obscure, so a lot of my colleagues value me. However, the frequent low raises and low salary jumps tell me maybe I should just stop QA altogether and do development instead which would be an easy transition because I mostly work in development side for my QA test suites.
In summary, 5 years of my career has netted me a total raise of 28.5% from $70k to $90k with no stock options or bonus or anything. Am I doing it wrong? I've also never directly asked for a raise - am I supposed to do this? I asked a few colleagues and they said they never asked for a raise and were just given what they're given. I do not know my colleague's salaries past what's posted on Glassdoor.
2008 first “real” .net developer job after being the internal guy at several jobs. -85k Left that in 2010 for an etrm startup(though it was 15 years in business at that time) - 100k plus 1000 options. After an acquisition I got about 1.25 per share and left in 2011. Did odd senior .net dev jobs for a year at ~115k no benefits In 2012 joined etrm consulting start up for 130k. Left at ~140k.
Joined larger consulting company in 2014 for 160k with ~10% bonus.
Left and did indie etrm consulting in 2016 and bill at 140-200 per hour depending on terms. Have consistently been about 85-90% utilized on average. I feel like I am nearing the limit of what a year of working a job can generate. If I want to increase my wealth it would be via equity in a business. That’s the next goal.
2008-1 Y0E-$12,000-Software Dev
2009-2 Y0E-$15,500-Software Dev
2010-3 Y0E-$17,000-Software Dev
2011-4 Y0E-$19,000-Software Dev
2012-5 Y0E-$23,000-Snr Software Dev
2013-6 Y0E-$27,500-Snr Software Dev
2014-7 Y0E-$31,000-Snr Software Dev
2015-8 Y0E-$34,000-Snr Software Dev
2016-9 Y0E-$43,000-Snr Software Dev
2017-10 Y0E-$54,000-Snr Software Dev
2018-11 Y0E-$63,500-Snr Software Dev
Average rent per year is about $8,500.
Average house cost is about $142,000 with interest rate of 10% pa.
Income tax rate is about 40%.
My biggest problem was working at the same company for about 9 years, cause after that my salary almost doubled. I'm seriously considering emigrating though, I'm working too hard and my savings are paltry.
Choose where you immigrate to carefully!
2015 - $40,000 USD - remote for a small company
2017 - $32,000 USD - on-site for a tiny company
2018 - $33,000 USD - remote for another small company
I was asked what my current salary is during one of my on-site interviews at FAANG. I had to put on a poker face and lie about it.
And you mentioned that you lied during the interview regarding your salary. In India, companies usually ask for 3 months salary slip as proof. Does it not happen in the country where you work?
Maybe. Where do you live?
Living in a small Canadian city makes it hard to gauge how much I should be making.. I haven't worked in 2yrs due to mental illnesses (mostly aspergers), I wouldn't know how to explain my situation at interviews either..
2002 - First job about 3000$ a year
2005 - Started freelaicing - about 8000$ a year
2018 - About 42000$ a year before taxes
I get paid in INR, even though I contract for a small company in the US, so the inflation eats away the growth - on the other hand, I work from home, and it takes maybe 3 to 4 hours a day (at most) to complete my tasks.
Some weeks go by with hardly anything to do but minor bug fixes and UI tweaks. Great employers, autonomy, interesting work.
In terms of purchasing power I feel very blessed that I make more than an average US citizen, while living in a country where things cost 1/5 compared to the US.
People of my caliber and experience make about 3 times more than me in regular 9 to 7 tech jobs. Very few remain "coders" after more than 10 years in the industry.
The USD comparison is not very useful as NZDUSD has varied wildly in this time, betwen 0.4 and 1.0, currently 0.65.
I've never worked more than 40 hours a week on average as an employee, the $200k+ years are where I worked more hours as a contractor usually.
2005 39k NZD 26k USD
2006 48k NZD 31k USD
2007 35k NZD 23k USD
2008 61k NZD 40k USD
2009 98k NZD 64k USD
2010 144k NZD 93k USD
2011 182k NZD 119k USD
2012 206k NZD 134k USD
2013 171k NZD 111k USD
2014 196k NZD 127k USD
2015 218k NZD 142k USD
2016 173k NZD 112k USD
2017 174k NZD 113k USDNot level - that's about geography and company and other factors. But in progression.
I have never asked for or recieved a pay rise, although I have been offered retention money.
That said, it might just be the industry, colleagues talked about similar numbers.
2008 - £24k - Junior Electronic Engineer (C++/embeded)- Large engineering corp (2 years)
2010 - £20k - Software Engineer (C#/embedded)- Small engineering firm (1 year)
2011 - Studied masters
2012 - £22k - Software engineer (C++/C#/web)- Small software product house (2 years)
2014 - £28k - Software Engineer (C++/embedded) - large aerospace company (6 months)
2015 - £25k - Freelancing - Android apps
2016 - £30k - Software Engineer - Data proccessing
2017 - £52k - Data Architect - Data proccessing
Is embedded development really that poorly paid? I'm quite interested in it myself, but not for that kind of money.
$62,000. Rarely more than 40 hours/week, never/rarely weekend/evening work, and generous PTO (5+ weeks of vacation + legal holiday + sick leave).
Previous work was 3 years as a student linux sysadmin working for a research department on campus, and then a contract position with them after I graduated for ~6 months before I found a permanent job.
US - Midwest. White. Male. Born in '92. Took me a while to get through college.
A developer, EU, central-europe country with a single room flat rent around 500$.
2011-2012 - 4k$/ year - QA engineer intern in fortune 500 corp (part-time) 2012-2014 - 10k$/year - QA engineer (part-time) 2014-2016 - 20k$/year - QA engineer 2016-2018 - 30k$/year - Senior QA engineer 2018- - 36k$/year - Backend engineer, 3 day weekends, but some on-call duty
I would like to figure out how to get to one of those 100k$/year jobs in reasonably close future :-) Not sure how would I justify that just now with my current skill-set (unless somebody really wanted somebody specialized on QA :)
98-05 - various internships over summers $10-$15/hrish
2005 - $56K, employee stock purchase plan worth maybe $5K
2007 - $0 (try to launch startup)
2008 - $80Kish, no stock (Senior Software Engineer)
2011 - $95Kish (ended just over $100K), worthless options (Software Engineer)
2013 - Moved To Bay Area, $110K, worthless options, tiny startup (Software Engineer), end at $120K as Lead Software Engineer
2014ish - $140K, probably worthless options, slightly larger startup (Senior Software Engineer)
2017-present $165K->$175K, definitely larger startup, actually worth something options (at least in the money, but pre-IPO so no immediate value). ( Senior Software Engineer)
1999 - $60k - Sr. Consultant
2000 - $85k, 5k options - Sr. Consultant - startup #1
2001 - $90k - Sr. Engineer
2002 - $95k, OTE $130k - Sales engineering
2005 - $110k, 10k options, OTE $200k - Sales engineering mgr - startup #2
2007 - $80k - own startup
2010 - $400k - acquisition, $200/hr consulting
2012 - $450k - $215/hr consulting
2015 - $500k - $225/hr consulting
2017 - $400k, $100k starting - eng leadership - bigco
2018 - $200k, $500k OTE, stock rsu - sales - bigco
Net - more salary growth in sales, also more risk. technical sales (sales engineering) roles are hot commodity if you can code and do devops. good intro to carrying a bag. consulting is a good option if you move from technical sales and have a good network.
I try not to work more than 40 hrs a week. Ironically people are more happy when I am working lesser cause it seems to ease everyone. I have been able to get offers as high as 350K for base salary but honestly they scare me.
- 1999: 32K, sysadmin, tiny ISP
- 2000: 48K, sysadmin, small telecom co
- 2002-2013: 65K->105K, sysadmin->developer, small telecom
- 2014-2018: 120K->140K, developer, medium sized co
This is all in Portland Oregon, and does not include bonus or stock numbers. Having recently been a manager for a while, I'm paid slightly higher than average for an experienced developer at my company. I'm in the process of looking for my next gig. Mostly because I'm bored, not because I'm looking for more money.
2006-2009 - small co - 40k -> 50k
2009 - took a year off to travel - 0k
2009-2011 - small co - 65k -> 80k
2011-2012 - stereotypical startup - 100k
2012 - Tried to start a software co - 0k
2013-2018 - non-unicorn medium co - 105k -> 175kHere is mine from an ops management perspective. Missouri.
$30K 88-89 - Progress database developer Insurance $50K 89-94 - Citi started as technical support ended up LAN Manager $60K 94-96 - Independent Consultant for PC sellers doing LAN/WAN installations $65K 96-97 - National reseller as Systems Engineer Manager $100K - 99-09 National telecom company as international call center technical manager $150K - 09 to current VP of IT for legal software company responsible for ops and development
- 2006: 36k€, Java/js dev in Luxembourg/banking
- 2007-2010: 35k€, Java dev in France, service company,
- 2011-2013: 70k$, Java dev in Australia
- 2014: Startup founder (France), 30k€
- 2015: Startup founder, 50k€,
- 2016: Startup founder, 60k€
- 2017: Startup founder, 70k€
I feel like a failure, compared to all my friends and people on HN who show high salaries for engineers, but I suppose we only see wages of the successful ones, and I reckon I’m super angry with life which is a vicious circle for employers.
2012-2016: Grad student $23k
2017: Data scientist $110k (very low COL)
2018: Data scientist $250k (very high COL)
Weirdly enough, I only save slightly more after all expenses at my new job than I did at my previous job because of tax and COL differences.
2009: $25k - Junior web developer at A - 40hr/wk
2010: $40k - Junior web developer at B - 40hr/wk
2011: $50k - Junior web developer at B - 40hr/wk
2012: $50k - Junior web developer at B - 40hr/wk
2013: $60k - Web developer at C - 40hr/wk
2014: $70k - Web developer at C - 40hr/wk
2015: $80k + $5k bonus - Lead web developer at C - 40-45hr/wk, on-call
2016: $90k + $10k bonus - Lead web developer at C - 40-45hr/wk, on-call
2017: $100k + $15k bonus - Lead web developer at C - 40-45hr/wk, on-call
2018: $110k + $15k bonus - Lead web developer at C - 40-45hr/wk, on-call
It does seem to me based on reading these topics that there's a set of developers that think anything above X is crazy, and a set of developers that think anything below X is crazy, and they don't really overlap.
That's the case across all disciplines/people, of course (I guess you'd call it... the class system?) but I think it's a lot less discrete.
Italy. I am 30 now.
2012 €500/mo, €1000/mo after 6 months "body rental"
2013 €25k + car associate consultant in IT company
2014 €30k + car consultant in same IT company
2015 €37k IT business analyst in large manufacturing company
2016 €40k same
2017 €42k same
2018 €42k same
2011-2014: $32,000. Montana Started as an internship, turned into a full time job with a $1/hour raise. More IT than software dev.
2014-2015: $48,000. Montana. Moved with a contract, last company went under.
2015: $70,000. Seattle. First "real" software job. Left 3 months later.
2015-2016: $85,000-$100,000. 20% bonus. Seattle. Series C startup.
2016-2017: $85,000. No bonus. Seattle. Seed funded startup. Took a pay cut because I thought they had something. They still might.
2017-2018: $120,000. 20% bonus. Seattle. Fortune 500. Great work/life balance.
(never worked anywhere that has paid a bonus)
2007 - 2008 - 38.5K - grad position, web dev 2009 - 2011 - 55K NZD - new job, web dev 2011 - £60K - web dev contracting in London 2012 - £84K - web dev contracting in London 2013 - 150-180K NZD - remote senior web dev contracting from NZ
Tax in the UK was somewhere between 20-30%. Tax in NZ works out ~30% roughly.
Cost of living in the UK was expensive. In comparison I own my own house in NZ and my mortgage repayments are less than we were paying in rent in the UK.
2013 - $82,000 - Software Engineer, Startup
2014 - $117,000 - Software Engineer, Startup
2015 - $144,000 - Software Engineer, Startup
2016 - $153,000 - Software Engineer, Bigco
2017 - $176,000 - Senior Software Engineer, Bigco
2018 - $187,000 - Senior Software Engineer, Bigco
2005-2007 - London, UK - Cofounder of consultancy - £40k base, £100-120k dividends 2007-2009 - San Francisco - Principal SDE @ FAANG - £90,000, £20,000 signing bonus 2009-2011 - London - Senior Engineering Manager @ FAANG - £100,000, £20,000 bonus 2011-2013 - London - Start-up co-founder - [It's complicated] about £70,000 all in yearly, exited and made up for shortfall 2013-Present - London - Partner @ Large Consultancy - £250,000 base, £200,000 bonus
01-03: McDonald's $11,000 - $31,000
04-10 USAF $38,000 for a while, then lower for a long time, ultimately $42,000 I think
10-13 Fortune 500 Gov Contracter, $60,000 - $65,000 (rent 800-900, then 30 yr mortgage + taxes $1500 for ~2000 sqft 10 acres)
13-15 Fortune 500 Gov Contractor, $66,000 - $69,000
in 14: Graduated with B.S. in C.S. from crappy military-heavy college
15-17 Same job, different contractor $69,000 - $72,000
17-18 Same job, different contractor $82,000
I work in IT, occasional programming duties. All jobs strictly limited to 40 hrs/week or 80 hrs/pay period. USAF was even 40 hrs.
2015 - mid-level at employer A - $80k
2016 - Sr Y at employer A - $95k
2017 - Sr Y at employer B - $105k
2018 - Sr Y at employer C - $130k base, $60k bonus plan, $100k RSU
2018 - Sr X at employer D - $190k base, 15% bonus plan, $100k RSU
- $56-70K USD - 2013-2015 - Software developer at a big corporation in the midwest.
- $90K USD - 2015 - Same company, new department. Unusually good pay for the area.
- $41-45K USD ($54-60K CAD) - 2016-current - Moved to Prince Edward Island, Canada (to marry my wife) and took a job as a software developer at one of the very few software companies here. The paycut was brutal, but all things considered, one of the best decisions I've ever made!
- $50k-$80k(?) - 2012-2014 - Mobile game company (gameplay\engine)
- $85k - 2014-2015 - AAA games company (gameplay\ai)
- $105k-$135k(?) - 2015-2017 - Technically a VR company (engine)
- $175k-$183k(?) + ~$95k yearly PSU + ~$60k other bonuses - 2017-2018 - Self Driving Car company
On the one hand I'm a huge outlier who got in something at the right time. On the other hand I'm really good at my job...but probably overpaid.
2010 - Junior software developer - $89000 ($10000 signing) 2011 - Software developer - $92000 2012 - Software developer - $95000 2013 - Software developer - $98000 2014 - Software developer - $104000 2015 - Software developer - $118000 2016 - Senior software developer - $128000 2017 - Senior software developer - $134000 2018 - Senior software developer - $138000
1998: $46K + 3K bonus
1999: $55K + 4K bonus
2000: $67K + 5K bonus
2001: $85K + 15K bonus (new job)
2002: $90K + 20K bonus
2003: $95K + 20K bonus
2004: $110K + 45K bonus (big jump when I threatened to quit)
2005: $115K + 65K bonus
2006: $115K + 65K bonus
2007: $150K + 50K bonus
2008: $150K + 50K bonus
2009: $150K + 50K bonus
2010: $150K + 75K bonus
2011: $50K (took an 18 mo sabbatical because I was burned the eff out)
2012: $100K (worked for only the last half of the year)
2013: $275K (consultant)
2014: $275K (consultant)
2015: $275K (consultant)
2016: $275K (consultant)
2017: $175K + 175K bonus
2018: $175K + ??? bonus
2011 - $ 12/hour - web dev intern - company 1
2012 - $45K/year - web developer - company 1
2012 - $55K/year - software engineer - company 2
2016 - $68K/year - software engineer - company 2
2016 - $80K/year - senior dev - company 3
2017 - $85K/year - senior dev - company 3
2018 - $110K/year - lead dev - company 4 (anticipated offer)
For similar career path, my pay has consistently been significantly behind this based on a pure currency conversion.
And also I'm sure our living expenses are higher. Most hardware I buy seems to be priced the same or very similar in $ and £ so effectively charging a premium to UK buyers.
Am I comparing wrong, or are US tech works really so well played?
Washington DC area:
2005-2009 - ~ $25K (grad school; part-time research assistant, code monkey, and sysadmin)
2010-2011 - 0 (bad things happened)
2012 - $56K (software developer, remote contractor for a Canadian company)
2013-2016 - $74-82K (software developer, contractor at a government facility)
2017 - $90K (software developer, contractor at a government facility)
NYC
2018 - $150K salary, $275K incl. stock and bonus (software engineer, FAANG)
1996: 28k
1998: 40k
2000: 65k
2003: 70k
2004: 72k
2009: Startup founder in San Francisco, 40k
2011: Startup founter same company: 85k
2014: Startup founder same company, 115k
2016: Freelancer, effectively 50k due to lack of contracts
2018: bbigco, 90k
Dunno what I'm doing wrong... I've got a few github/sf projects I started with 1000+ stars and over 10mb of open source code. I guess I suck at negotiation?
2007 bigco1 74000 base, $30000 stock [fired performance]
2010 startup 85000 base, 1000x stock
2011 fired for performance (company later went public, and stock was >$100 so that cost me 100k)
2015 govt 56000 after 4 years unemployed (basically drinking and getting high everyday on savings)
2018 bigco2 100000 (sober now)They suggested that she contact human rights organisations, so Julie rang up and left messages with several - but she never received a reply.
What is up with non-replies from organizations? She reaches out and nothing. It's not a Facebook Ad Request appeal (an aside, is crazy how non-responsive they can be and get away with it) it's human rights!
2016 - IT Support - 60000 AUD - Merit increase - 1200 AUD Profit share
2017 - Software Engineer - 65000 AUD - New role, New team same company - 1500 AUD Profit share
2018 - Software Engineer - 80000 AUD - Pay match job offer - 2500 AUD Profit share
Some rough numbers from Australia, these are all pre-tax which is roughly 3572$ + 33% of (Pay - 37000$)
all of these are in low cost southwest (not Phoenix, think mountains)
2011-2012 Intern test engineer at a small software shop, $15/hr
2013-2014 Full time test engineer at same small software shop. Starting $45k, ending $50k
2014-2018 Full time software engineer at a larger corporate place, starting 82k currently 105k
All of the above doing systems programming with c/c++ mostly and a drop of powershell and C#
2000-2002 - 25k hardware technician / repair
2003-2005 - 45k web developer
2006 70k - biometrics/vision developer
2007 - 100k - 'Enterprise' developer
2008 - 105k
2010 - 120k
2011 - 190k - F500 developer (base+bonus)
2012 - 200k
2013 - 215k
2014 - 220k
2015 - 225k
2016 - 160k - restart in another field (passion)
2017 - 180k - try yet another passion field
2018 - 280k - (base) returned to enterprise-y work
2014 - 58,000 -> 62000 Entry Level Dev at Fin Company X
2015 - 62000 -> 65000 Entry Level Dev at Fin Company X
2016 - 65000 -> 70000 Intermediate Dev at Fin Company X
2017 - 70000 -> 74000 Intermediate Dev at Fin Company X
2018 to mid 2018 74000 -> 84000 Intermediate Dev at Fin Company X
mid 2018 to end 2018 84000 -> 95000 Senior Engineer at Consulting Company X
2013, £20,000, Web Design studio in Oxford A
2014, £28,000, London startup B
2015, £35,000, London startup B
2016, £45,000, London startup B
2017, £55,000, London small software company C
2018, £60,000 + £15k bonus, London small software company C
Negotiation pending, I am hoping for £75,000 base next year at company C.
I work 7 hours a day.
Mix of promotions and job changes:
2009 $55k + worthless stock
2012 $80k + $10k or 15k signing
2013 $100k + $100k worthless stock
2014 $115k + $200k worthless stock
2015 $150k + $20k signing + $50-$100k stock
2017 $190k + $100k-$150k stock
2018 $260k + $200k-$300k stock
2009 - exploited minion for a US corp; £22k
2010 - junior at a SME; £30k. By the time I left I'd got to £40k
2014 - mid-level for a US corp: £45k. Up to £51k when I quit.
2018 - seniorish at another SME, £60k
All of the above are with 3-5% pension contributions + rubbish health care. I do a mixture of embedded, devops and back-end web.
2013-2015: 7.200€ - 9.600€ (Internship, never full time, around 30 hours per week. Company A)
2015 graduated on computer science
2015: 18.000€ (working on a research group on the university. Company B)
2016: 25.000€ - 29.000€ (My salary was increased on september. Company C)
2017: 29.000€ (Company C)
2018: 29.000€ (Company C)
I move to Germany on October:
2018: 70.000€ (Company D)
200k USD a year is just shocking to me living in Swedens 3rd largest city, ca. 300k inhabitants.
But I live well and I feel good from my work.
2004-2014 53K - 85K at the same company ( Had a shit ton of extracurricular pursuits.. didn't really focus on software engineer growth)
2015-2017 95K - 107K different company
2018 contracting 170K contractor at different company
2018 FTE 140K + bonus + benefits at different company
251k = 145k salary + 40k bonus (30 signing and 10 end of year) + 66k (RSU per year)
This was possible due to unique nature of the role, grad school and internship that got converted into a return offer.
2014-2016: Junior web developer. starting $1.2k (annual) ending $3.6k (annual)
2017-present: Software Engineer. starting $5k (annual), current $7k (annual)
Can someone explain to me is this based on technical merit or is it just networking/office politics/bullying/elbow tactics/ass kissing/luck?
At the end we compare numbers as life itself can´t be compared. Living in a certain town and certain country. Costs of living vary from country to region. I choose to freelance as it means more income and less social security. I´m not having paid vacations plus the bonuses of an employee.
I never worked more than 40 hours/week though. Not as a freelancer, not as an employee. This is not game development. Nonetheless I worked for a agency recently where the employees got jobs like: here are 30 layouts for a Magento shop (by a designer who neither knows responsive design nor shop systems) and the template needs to be done by the end of the week. I´m not making this up. Companies like this are not running sustainable and you IMHO you should get out there as quickly as possible.
I started developing ecommerce sites back in 2008. Worked for a specialised web agency (size: around 20 people) back then and got around 1600 Euros/month net, after taxes. I don´t remember the precise numbers any more.
I started freelancing in 2011 and got a higher income (not in the first year though). I served mainly small businesses. I still have the numbers. They are net, post taxes and health insurance already paid.
2011 15045 Euros 2012 34826 Euros 2013 28320 Euros 2014 46582 Euros
Decided to travel afterwards and give a regular job a try when I came back. Got a position as PHP / Web developer at a small agency (size: 10-15 people). Now relocated to the south of Germany. That would have been
2016 48000 Euros pre-tax or 25560 Euros net
Probably a small bonus added at the end of the year as well. I never found. I quit after a few months as I figured out that being employed is not my cup of tea. I earned about 30.800 Euros pre-tax. You can get some of your taxes back if you don´t work a full year as an employee.
Fast forward: back to freelancing again. Earning between 65 and 80 Euros per hour now, pre taxes Can´t say how much I will earn this year cause I didn´t work last year at all and only a few months this year. Which is sufficient to pay rent (and have enough time to witness the first months on earth of my son).
Developing applications with PHP and JavaScript frameworks. No more small customers, working on full-time project for a couple of months.
There have been studies posted at German portal heise.de in the last months claiming software freelancers in Germany make an average of 91 Euros/hour. I somehow doubt that. Or: depends who you ask and how big your sample is.
Not me and I´m fine with what I make. Demand for freelance developers is high right now, I get lots of requests. How about you guys? :)
Jun 2017 - Automated QA 22/hr
Feb 2018 - Junior Dev 50k / yr
Looking to make a move to Denver / San Diego. Anyone have an idea what compensation would look like for someone with 1.5 yr experience?
* Industrial Placement (1 year):Developer/Administrator £18,500
* First job after graduation (2 Years):PHP Developer £20,000
* Second job (3 1/2 years): Magento/PHP Developer £28,500
* Third (current - 10 months):PHP Developer £50,000
1999 $27,000 Tech Support at an ISP 40 hour week.
1999 $29,000 Tech Support at a different ISP 32 hour week (graveyard shift) then Linux Engineer. $20k Stock that I never took because dot.com :(
2000 $30,000 House Gamer at a net cafe (Oh god I miss those days). 40 hours a week graveyard shift.
2001-2 Unemployed, occasional work still at the $30k mark.
2003 $30,000 Tech Support at a hosting company, 40 hour week.
2005 $95,000 Tech Support at a global storage giant with 3% pay rises year on year until I left. 40 hour week, 1 weekend a month.
2009 $110,000 Team Lead at a small IT Managed Service Provider, 40-60 hours a week. Outages all the time.
2010 $115,000 Senior Backup Engineer at global MSP, 60 hour week with lots of weekend work and 2am calls.
2011 $120,000 Consultant at a small company, 5% pay rises every year. Didn't know how good it was until I let.
2014 $140,000 plus $45k commission Sales Engineer at a US based Startup. Varied hours lots of travel. Usually 40 hours a week. $40k USD stock options vested over 5 years, when I left I elected to not take them because of Australia's dumb tax laws that were changed a year later. Also the startup didn't look like it was going to IPO anytime soon (and still hasn't).
2016 $900/d ($240k/y) consultant (This was Melbourne based so I was paying $500/w in travel costs). 40 hours a week.
2016 $165,000 Software architect at a global MSP 40-50 hour weeks.
2017 $180,000 Director at a big Consulting firm. 60+ hours every single week.
2018 $210,000 Director at a smaller firm that treats people a lot better. 40 hour week with lots of flexibility.
Yes I've had jobs fall through because the number I asked was way higher than they were prepared to pay and they didn't see any point negotiating.
I don't change jobs for money. The only time I've ever done that was the move in 2005 because they almost tripled my salary overnight. I change jobs because I get bored and want a new challenge. I stayed in the 2005 job for 4 years not because of the pay, but because the sheer number of products and platforms available meant I was always challenged and learning.
I have a family situation that requires me to keep earning lots of money for a few more years as I support others. Once that passes I intend to cut back to 3 days per week work and complete a PHD or similar.
- $42k-55k: 2013-2015, Manual Testing@Big Consulting
- $70k-105k: 2015-2017, Lead QA Eng > Dev Team Mgr@Small Niche Consulting
- $110k: 2017-current, Software Eng@Startup
2017: 75k
2018: $45/hr (~93k. no benefits, but still on parent's healthcare)
'05-'07 - software engineer, midwest - $54k -> $68k
'08-'14 - software enginner, east coast non-profit - $70k -> $90k
'15-'17 - swe III, google - $200k -> $260k
- $65k Lead developer
- $125k Director of development
- $180k Product director
2002-2005: As a teenager, I've done odd jobs here and there, never adding up to more than a few thousand per year. Built some websites, set up some networks. Nothing serious.
2005: My first real job at a startup that sold whitelabel music stores to radio stations paid me $40k/year. No benefits, no bonuses, no equity.
2006: My second real job at the technology arm of a major sports league paid me $60k/year + benefits + a nominal annual bonus. There was a good pension plan too.
2009: After becoming a father, I begged for a pay increase to account for the costs of raising a kid in NYC. Got raised from $60k to $90k. Management called it a "salary correction".
2010: I left the sports league at $112k and joined a fintech startup where my salary went up to $120k.
2014: The fintech startup was amounting to nothing. My "very generous" option grants were turning out to be worth zero. There were occasional end-of-year cash bonuses that after taxes paid single-digit thousands. I left the company at a base salary of $140k and took three months off.
2014: Joined a major financial/media firm owned by a certain former NYC mayor. They paid me $150k in base salary, full benefits, and a promised annual bonus of $35k. I joined in September, so I got a teeny tiny prorated bonus for that year, but the following year I was forced to leave in December and wasn't paid the annual bonus.
2016: Joined a boring Canadian investment bank here in NYC at a base salary of $160k. No bonus, no equity. Terrible benefits. Stayed there for 4 months and didn't write a line of code for work because they didn't know what they wanted me to work on.
2016: Joined a startup that sold home security cameras. I ran a team of a dozen people there, and got paid $170k in base salary. Lots of equity was promised, but they never wrote my equity grant. Great benefits though. After a year at this company I had been forced to lay off some people from my team and had to help some others to find new jobs because they were worried about job security. The company was doing very poorly, so I left too because I have bills to pay.
2017: Joined a $20B hedge fund at base salary of $200k, promised annual bonus of $100k. After two months, the fund began a scary nosedive, and laid off myself and my boss and two other engineers.
2017: After a frantic job search I joined the adtech firm where I currently work. I get paid $180k in base salary, okay benefits, and an annual bonus of about $20k before taxes. I work mostly from home and really like it. I've been here for a year and don't plan to leave.
2003 - 0 YOE - 200000 INR ( 3000 USD) - Software Engineer - One of the very popular Indian IT firms
2005 - 2 YOE - 300000 INR ( 4000 USD) - Senior Engineer - Same as above
2007 - 4 YOE - 1000000 INR ( 14000 USD) - Software Engineer - A small American company with their office in India
2009 - 6 YOE - 1500000 INR ( 20000 USD) - Senior Engineer - Another small American company with their office in India
2011 - 8 YOE - 2000000 INR ( 28000 USD) - Principal Engineer - Same as above
2013 - 10 YOE - 3500000 INR ( 47000 USD) - Principal Engineer - A big American company with their office in India
2015 - 12 YOE - 7000000 INR ( 95000 USD) - Principal Engineer - A big American company with their office in India
2017 - 14 YOE - 9500000 INR (128000 USD) - Principal Engineer - Same as aboveWhat was the total compensation be like with these numbers?
I could understand that someone, who are writing, say, FoundationDB or some Scala for inhouse finance processing could get ~$200k, but my mind absolutely refuses to accept the fact that Javascript coding is being paid this way.
Yeah, MIT/Stanford/CMU degree pays back.
2011 - 20K USD
2012 - 20K USD
2014 - 20K USD (burned out working for the startup founder)
2015 - 50K USD (ranted at a club about my founder while drunk and another founder offered to pay double)
2016 - 150K USD (interviewed at established tech company)
2017 - 200K USD ( same company promoted me to project manager)
2018 - 500K USD (finally became executive)
1997 £18k First real web-dev work
1999 £60k Contract developer making the most of the dotcom boom
2000 £45k First attempt at running my own business (didn't go well)
2002 £28k Took a job that seemed stable and came with visa
2006 £40k Last permanent job
2008 £90k Working for myself part 2 - much improved
2014 £10k Had daughter - buttoned off work big time for a couple of years
2016 £50k Still doing my own gig, but better work-life balance
2018 £115k Working much harder than I’d planned. But enjoying it. Combo contract/own gigThe author brags that although he is currently out of work, as a white male he should have no problem finding work when he is ready (health-wise). I wonder if he is white enough and male enough to compensate for his horrible page presentation, which interestingly enough seems to be his profession.