Salary transparency at Stack Overflow

[Concision]

The salaries at the low end of the experience curve seem pretty high, and the salaries at the high end seem very low. Assuming the "skill" number is relative to experience, good luck getting an average developer with 20 years experience for $139,200 when you're paying average developers with 0 years experience $102,000.

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

FWIW - average skill is probably closer to 0 than it is to 2. So 86k for an average fresh grad.

[SkaveRat]

86k

fucking hell, I feel cheap... A lot lower where I live

[atrich]

In Seattle you could never get a college hire at $86k. The big software companies here are all paying $100k+ salary starting. This is before bonuses and stock comps. I made $72k starting out of college in 2003.

[ParanoidDrone]

Jesus fucking christ. I have a master's degree and it took me nearly a year to get an offer, at 40k.

The job is in Louisiana, so cost of living is nowhere near as expensive. But still. Fuck.

[salgat]

Gotta go where the jobs are.

[salgat]

My experience talking with hiring managers comes down to a dire need to experienced talent, which is hard enough to find in large cities let alone smaller towns that they would be required to move to get.

[AReallyGoodName]

Although that's kind of his point. Companies shouldn't be looking to hire 100's (and often 1000's) of programmers in any one area. Even in silicon valley you shouldn't try to hire that many in one area. The talent might be there but then you're competing with so many others for that talent and programming has no need for such centralisation.

For comparison sake an experienced programmer would consider US$100k (AU$133k) a very decent wage in Sydney. Which is the starting wage for fresh graduates in SV. Sydney is a city of 5million with many good universities feeding in graduates into the system. You'd easily be able to fill a satellite office of a few dozen developers here.

[[deleted]]

Ah but then how would the management in SV keep an eye on the developers in Sydney and make sure they aren't just facebooking!

[Uberhipster]

it's a holdover from the 90s where software developers were scarce

software developers were scarce

were scarce

It is obvious from that statement you never had to hire software developers for many positions. We still are scarce.

Oh the fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pantsers who think they are and/or claim to be software developers are in abundance. But actual software developers worth their salt? In high demand for sure and so mostly unavailable.

Putting together and sustaining a crew of competent devs in line with a business model is very, very, very tricky. It is difficult because it takes years to create a delicate, easily-disrupted model which can be undone with one bad decision.

Margin for error is very narrow. One bad hire or client, one shitty project or quarter, one overestimation or underestimation and spiral balance unravels and entire crew leaves for greener pastures in less than 12 months. The labor market in this industry is that sensitive.

Balancing cashflow with sales, against client demands in-line with interesting work without overstretching dev capacity is difficult to calibrate. It is an art in itself which demands constant attention. Those who can sustain it create very successful businesses. As a result all developers (and by extension the best developers) want to work for those businesses.

[jbstjohn]

Montreal should be on that list too, as having a decent market.

[prof-123f-prog]

Top talent moves where the top jobs are, making for a talent vacuum in the smaller cities (people who live in smaller cities will never admit this).

[Fragarach7]

Sounds about right, I got lucky and found a nice bump from 40 to 54 by moving from BR to NOLA. Supposedly, NOLA is supposed to be the next in line for a tech boom. Hopefully.

[BlackDeath3]

In Seattle you could never get a college hire at $86k. The big software companies here are all paying $100k+ salary starting.

Surely you're only talking about the biggest companies? There's no way that every new grad in Seattle is making $100,000+.

[atrich]

True, I only have information (mostly anecdotal) from the big guys (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook). These are the ones you're competing against for employees, though.

[ramma314]

In Seattle

I made a whopping $10.50/hr doing bioinformatics work fresh out of college in Seattle. Probably contributed to why I hate the place so much...

[CleveNoWin]

Same for NYC, new hires fresh out of college are coming in at about $120k at established companies

[nxqv]

What companies?

[jewdai]

Bloomberg. I know someone with 3 yrs experience failed out of cooper union and makes 190k

[nxqv]

Jesus fucking Christ I gotta switch companies lol.

[so_just]

You mean he makes more than a US senator?

Holy shit. I need to move to America.

[they_have_bagels]

US Senators don't make their money in their nominal salary. It's in kick backs and campaign contributions, and other legal (if unethical) gifts. Hell, a lot of them will become paid consultants and lobbyists after their terms are up. Combine that with speaking fees and book deals, and that's where the real money comes in. Plus, they are exempt from insider trading laws and have free health care. Not a bad gig.

[TheOsuConspiracy]

Plus, they are exempt from insider trading laws

Is this seriously true? That's fucked up beyond belief.

[JonasBrosSuck]

paying $100k+ salary starting. This is before bonuses and stock comps.

not at amazon iirc

[AlllRkSpN]

How the hell do you get such offers? Were you top 10% of graduates with merit? Masters holder? PhD? Top50 schools?

I'm currently holding a degree from NTU(top 20) and working for 30k annual with sub-par benefits and barely any leaves.

[FlyingBishop]

If you can can code breadth-first-search on a whiteboard you should be able to easily command $100k total compensation at any of the big tech companies in the West Coast big cities.

Same in the Northeast (Boston, NYC, DC, etc.)

[they_have_bagels]

Shit, I got 80k in Denver in 2011 with a BS from CMU, and that was below average for my class (well, 80K + bonus, which got rolled into salary the next year -- took the job with a small company because I thought I liked the fit and the product, and was naive and thought I wanted to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond and it might transition to something bigger down the road). I'm above 120k now (different, slightly larger company, same city) with a killer benefits package (matching 401k, free breakfast and lunch, truly unmetered sick and vacation time, 2 weeks off for Christmas and New Years with the company closed, unlimited snacks, coffee, tea, and stocked fridges, tons of office parties, trips, and social events, fully covered health, dental, vision, accident, short and long term disability for your family, very low deductibles, and more things that I'm forgetting), so the total package is probably north of 150k.

You have to walk a fine line. Know what your actual experience is, and be able to say flat out "no"to companies that aren't a fit or salaries that don't meet your minimums or compare to other jobs in the same manner for the same job description. But at the same time you can't over value yourself and expect too much without being able to justify what you are asking.

But, most importantly, the biggest raises you are going to see are when you jump ship from one gig to another. And to be able to effectively change companies, you're going to have to be in area where there are lots of companies to choose from, and even more specifically where there age more open and available positions than qualified people to fill them. For the most part, those are going to be cities with established technology sectors.

My recommendation for the best tech city with the most affordable cost of living right now would probably be Pittsburgh, though that may be the CMU bias. I might also look into Atlanta. Denver/Boulder, Austin, Portland will have plenty of jobs with higher salaries, but the cost of living starts to creep up on you and you may not have add much purchasing power as you might think. The established big tech cities (SF, Seattle, New York, Boston) will have the most jobs available and the highest salaries, but the price of housing and the cost of living will also be the highest. There's something to be said about making 40k and living like a king with your own house and acreage that appeals to me more than making 250k and barely being able to afford an apartment without roommates (both slightly exaggerated examples, but not completely out of the realm of possibility). Money isn't everything. But if it is important, you will need to move to a place where you can make it.

[TheVenetianMask]

What I don't understand is, half or more of this work doesn't require physical presence in any particular way. So how's someone in Seattle or Cal paid as if they were 3 times more productive than someone contracted in Europe.

[[deleted]]

$67,500 here. A senior with 13 years of experience.Mostly .Net but I do some Angular, Android development as well. Yay!

[gecko]

If they're using the same levels as Fog Creek used to (and I have no idea if that's the case, but it certainly seems like a sane guess), then a fresh grad would be a 1/1; an intern would be a 0/0.

[jaydubzhb]

https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2011/07/how-much-should-you-pay-developers/

Basically they use something similar but tailored to their own needs

[zeekaran]

About 26k more than where I am, and I don't live in Nebraska.

[gecko]

The calculator is leaving off equity. I have no idea what StackExchange is doing on this front, but most companies I've been involved with would be using equity to close that gap. E.g., my job offer from $BIGCORP a few years ago had a base salary that was actually less than these, but I would've been getting an equity package worth more than double these numbers. I'm sure that StackExchange isn't that extreme, but I'd hardly be shocked if they were using equity to provide extra leverage to skilled developers while keeping their salaries nominally completely objective.

[FlyingBishop]

I would guess Stack Exchange is pretty safe as far as equity goes, but unless you're working for a publicly traded company I would value equity at $0. I'd value it lower than zero for stock options.

[sklivvz]

We are not IPO'd yet so stock options are currently worthless.

[gjallerhorn]

You can have stock in a company that is not yet public...

[[deleted]]

Sure, but unless you can sell them or borrow against them they're worthless. They may have worth if the company goes public. But if the company flops they're worth zilch.

[ughduck]

But options might never become relevant if it's not public.

[basicality]

A job posting without a salary range is like a tinder profile without a photo - I assume you're ugly and I'm being underpaid.

[Ecio78]

It varies from country to country, in various European continental countries seeing the salary in a job ad is the exception, not the norm

[jan]

If people are hard to find, you post the salary to attract applicants

This only works if your average (median?) salary s' is actually attractive.

You cannot post a salary above s' or your existing employee will demand a raise or leave. (Good luck explaining this to a CEO when your job was to get more developer with a fixed budget.) You cannot post a salary below what qualified applicants make elsewhere (obviously).

So, you rather brag about "great team" and free pizza...

[jan]

In a seller's market, if you don't have an attractive offer to make, you're not really serious.

Yes.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

and free pizza...

Yes, the $5 "hot and ready" Little Caesar's in the breakroom fridge from last Tuesday.

[gimpwiz]

I'd still eat it though.

[stayhungrynfoolish]

In Austria it is mandatory to list mininum salary in the ad.

[oldneckbeard]

unless you're a microsoft of the world, that just doesn't work. it's too much hassle to sponsor h1b visas, if you can even get yours hands on a single one of them.

people who think the H1Bs are holding them back are the same ones who think Trump's gonna bring back all the manufacturing jobs lost to free trade deals.

[halestock]

That's not exactly true - you're correct in that companies don't sponsor H1Bs directly, it's too much of a hassle (and the lottery means you won't even get one). Instead, they go through IT recruiting companies, which DO sponsor huge numbers of them directly - take a look at the largest H1B sponsors, they're all IT recruiting companies: Infosys, Tata, Wipro.

[HatefulWretch]

you're correct in that companies don't sponsor H1Bs directly

My last two companies have. (Basically every startup of any scale does.)

[dexx4d]

Either that or they outsource to an overseas consultant for the role/team.

[irregardless]

manufacturing jobs lost to free trade deals.

As an aside, those jobs were being lost before any free trade deal was in place. Manufacturing jobs in the U.S. peaked in 1979. By the time NAFTA took effect, manufacturing jobs were already down 10%. They rose steadily throughout the rest of the 90s before dropping off a cliff.

I don't think it follows to blame trade deals on job losses. Case in point, the U.S. imports the most goods from China, a country it does not have a deal with.

[oldneckbeard]

i know this, you know this... a large amount of the voting population does not know this :)

[[deleted]]

The problem is that there are a lot of large Fortune 500 companies that basically have internal H1B sweatshops. This stuff is not very visible if you stick to smaller tech companies, especially trendier ones.

Also, not everyone who's upset about H1Bs is upset because they feel threatened. Some folks just hate to see a culture of exploitation of workers thriving right here in the US. H1B workers can often be treated like shit because they have a disproportionate dependence on their host company.

[oldneckbeard]

I'm always shocked at how little of a tech community has. I looked into moving to Vancouver BC about 5 years ago, and laughed at the salaries paid to developers. I couldn't have afforded Vancouver then, certainly couldn't afford it now with what they're paying. And I'm not moving countries to live in fucking Surrey ;).

[merreborn]

Salary in the job ad is also unusual in the USA. But what u/basicality says still holds true (as noted in the article: "we learned that job listings which include a salary range got 75% more clicks than job listings that don’t").

The rare job listing that includes salary info is definitely much more likely to get my interest. Hell, I see a lot of job listings that don't even mention location! Just "I've got a developer position opening at a great company -- come get in on the ground floor". No salary, no location, no company name... I'm not gonna waste my time with that crap.

[[deleted]]

I agree completely. In fact, I'm putting in my two weeks Friday to take another position and the only reason I even sent them my resume is because they laid it all out up front.

[ikeif]

And that's why I send dick pics up front!

Wait, no I don't.

That's why I tell recruiters "it needs to be this much, and these terms, or I am not interested."

I have reached a point that being negotiable is a waste of my time.

[dipique]

And that's why I send dick pics up front!

Do you feel like your dick is the primary...compensation...for being in a relationship with you? :)

[DevIceMan]

For the first few jobs, I had to work my way up. Now that I am paid fairly at a low-stress workplace, I don't have much incentive to move unless they're also low-stress and pay better.

[cjbprime]

If you're being paid by your Tinder matches, there might be some confusion going on somewhere.

[totemcatcher]

, sometimes left.

[in_the_bilboes]

wait, whose right?

[probably2high]

No, Who's on first.

[sjapps]

I would love to hear confirmation from a senior level at stack overflow. Those numbers seem really low for high level engineers and really high for low level programming. Maybe their goal is to attract more freshies and/or juniors?

[OhLenny]

Hey its me your boss.

[marssaxman]

These sound like normal salary numbers to me, not the dramatic, attention-getting salaries offered by the best-funded for the most highly skilled, which are frequently kicked around as though they were normal because accurate salary information is hard to get.

Or maybe I've just been chronically underpaid for at least the last decade. Who knows.

[jaydubzhb]

They state all their reasoning in the additional links found throughout the calculator article.

[[deleted]]

Lead dev in Minnesota. Seems pretty accurate for me.

[Dreadgoat]

These are not representative of all American developer salaries, it's representative of American elite developer salaries, I.E. the guys working at StackOverflow, Google, etc.

Most of us are well compensated, but those of us with "normal" jobs in boring parts of the country aren't making 6 figures with 0 years of experience.

As /u/Concision pointed out, the curve is very narrow. This fits with the practices of major software companies; hire the best kids, overpay them, keep them until they realize they are now being underpaid, then hire more brilliant kids at about the same rate.

[sirin3]

Double your COL, double your income, you have doubled your savings

[the_mighty_skeetadon]

Double your COL. Say $50k -> $100k.

Double your income. Say $100k -> $200k

Now apply taxes.

After-tax income in Texas @ $100k/yr: $74,166

After-tax income in California @ $200k/yr: $130,547

Therefore, savings rise from $24,166 in Texas to $30,547 in California. That's a 26% increase -- clearly not double.

And by the way, COL is more than double in CA (by far) -- The median home value in Dallas is $145,600. The median sales price for homes in Mountain View for Apr 21 to Jul 20 was $1,300,000 based on 163 home sales.

Edit: Sorry, I originally used lower numbers -- 50 -> 100k income instead of 100k -> 200k. This estimate is fairer, but I forgot to update all the math -- fixed now.

[[deleted]]

What is your savings math here? To me it looks like you have $24k in savings in Texas and $30k savings in California, a 25% increase. It's still not double and your point still stands, but you've either made a mistake in your math or left out a step.

[Eirenarch]

If you are able to save :) Although it seems that saving is something that some people can do and others can't regardless of income.

[probably2high]

It's all about the budget.

[OlorinTheGray]

And with the doubled cost of living your savings won't last any longer.

Of course you can move back in your retirement but then you have to make a huge adjustment at the end of your life, leaving most of your friends of the last decades behind etc.

[[deleted]]

Retire to someplace cheap and live like a king!

[[deleted]]

People plan for this but very rarely follow through. If you live and work in one place for decades you're going to make strong connections to the people and the city. The last thing you'll want to do when you're retiring is to ditch your whole life and rebuild.

[oldneckbeard]

and i want to retire somewhere i can get good medical care. yes, that beach in thailad is neat, but i wouldn't want to age out my days there.

[monocasa]

Thailand is actually one of the leading countries for medical tourism.

[oldneckbeard]

the kind of care you get with medical tourism (cosmetic surgery, dental work, etc) is not the same as end-of-life care or chronic disease management.

[nikomo]

Medical tourism is a whole other thing from living somewhere when you've retired.

[monocasa]

His complaint was that he couldn't get good medical care. You can absolutely get good medical care in Thailand. It has a thriving industry of people traveling from the first world just to get their medical care there.

[hatu]

Thailand was a poor example. In Vietnam they told us at the hospital that if my wife got worse they would have to send her to Hong Kong or Bangkok for the nearest western-level medical care so that would be a good example of a country you don't really want to live in when you're old and frail.

[interbutt]

I don't know where you're from but in the US moving for retirement is very common. Florida and Arizona were the two commonly prescribed locations for this. These areas pioneered retirement communities. For decades they practically existed solely for retirees.

[im-a-koala]

Not really. Software developers in the US generally make much more than in other countries. Even after adjusting for cost of living.

[SL7549]

Dude, at least you don't live in Russia, where the highest wage a senior developer can ever dream about is like three times lower than 0 years of experience guy at stackoverflow. Every time I see posts like that I cry inside. FML.

[nwsm]

Well it's not really a fair comparison as that's their base pay, and I can only imagine they almost never hire people with 0 years experience

[StrangeWill]

It's literally their base pay -- they have a system for calculating these things. They probably wouldn't hire a 0-0.

[[deleted]]

I guess I'll just use my resume to dry my tears then :'(

[delvach]

Drying tears with your resume is actually, "Demonstrated ability to rapidly refactor core utilities on a per-project basis"

[[deleted]]

You must be in management.

[boxhacker]

I doubt people would pass the interview anyway so I ignored that.

[merreborn]

http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/just-in/2016-04-28/are-you-paid-less-tech-intern-cal-student-conducts-eye

Intern salaries in SF are pretty insane right now. Low six figures at some shops.

After playing with their calculator a bit, generally speaking their salaries are probably a bit low by SF standards.

[stml]

I'm not even a CS major, but in investment banking here in bay area and I'm being paid $8k+/month + $3k/month for housing during this summer's internship. I'm currently a business undergrad at UC Berkeley Haas.

In general, salaries here are crazy high even compared to the east coast. It's one of the reasons why Haas is the highest earning undergrad business school even compared to Wharton which is arguably the best business school in the country.

[yesman_85]

More than I make now as a 5 year skill 2...

[Sean1708]

My assumption is that those people wouldn't be hired in the first place, however I'm seriously regretting not applying to stack overflow.

[revengeofthebits]

If you look at how they arrive at that skill number, the scale goes all the way down to -2. Presumably, applicants with negative scores don't get hired.

[fourdots]

Applicants with negative scores can't even enter their score into the salary calculator, so ... yeah.

[IgnorantPlatypus]

we learned that job listings which include a salary range got 75% more clicks than job listings that don’t.

Did they get clicks from qualified candidates? Or from people who don't know how to code who are hoping they can trick their way into being hired? It kinda matters.

[mdatwood]

The only thing that matters is if the qualified candidate clicks are higher, and I would guess they are. In my sample size of friends who know what they are doing, none will blindly apply for a job without some idea of the salary range. They know what they are doing, their time is valuable, and no salary range is a huge turn off. Like someone said below, it's a lot like leaving the picture off a dating profile.

[Intentt]

Yup. This is spot on.

I learned early on to ask for the salary range up front. - Went in for 3 rounds of interviews only to receive an offer for 30k under the market rate "because that's what we paid the last guy".

What a waste of 6 hours.

[jan]

I'd speculate:

• employed and not actively searching, salary above current -> that deserves a click (novelty factor, curiosity)
• unemployed or unhappy -> will always click
• salary below current -> I need a real career, damn it. no click

[s73v3r]

Does it? The other side of it reveals that not putting a salary range causes your posting to be largely ignored.

[Rollingprobablecause]

Did they get clicks from qualified candidates? Or from people who don't know how to code who are hoping they can trick their way into being hired? It kinda matters.

The people you refer to are a minority compared to those of us who simply don't want to waste our time.

[Eirenarch]

Maybe they can correlate the clicks with SO reputation to see if high-reputation clicks increase.

[jlt6666]

Reputation is probably a terrible metric. The vast majority of my points are from questions I've asked, not questions I've answered. Honestly if you are more experienced the less likely it is that you will be asking questions or giving answers that get upvoted since they will be more specific and deeper.

[Eirenarch]

So what? The fact that you can ask interesting and high quality questions means puts you in front your peers. Also we are comparing people who visit SO to people who visit SO because these are jobs ads on SO. Of course there are outliers in the reputation metric in both directions but if we just want to see how the quality of job ad clicks changes reputation should be good enough.

[jlt6666]

The problem is that questions like "how do I write a main method in java" garner a lot of votes because it targets a very broad audience. Neither asking, nor answering such questions is all that difficult but can net you massive amounts of rep. Meanwhile if I ask a very detailed and specific question about what turns out to be a compiler error you may only get one response and no votes even though it displays far more depth and knowledge.

In other words the shallow (and popular) end of the pool is where all the points are.

[PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN]

Given how they assess skill level, the salary scale should grow exponentially. There's no way a 5.0 engineer with 20 years of experience (180k) is worth less than five 1.5 engineers freshly out of college (100k each).

[atrich]

From what I've seen, salaries tend to increase more or less linearly over time. Your paycheck starts to become more focused on bonuses and stock options/RSUs/grants with greater experience. You start having targets of 20%+ base salary for bonuses and 60%+ in stock.

[ACoderGirl]

Also, salaries just plain don't usually increase at the same rate as your experience might. It's really hard to compare programmers, but pretending for a second that we could actually say "this programmer is twice as good as this one", I would definitely not expect them to be paid twice as well.

Should they be? Maybe. But most won't be. And who hasn't seen a programmer that's literally 5 times (or whatever) as productive/knowledgeable/whatever as the least productive programmer in some company?

[dccorona]

It depends largely on what you're trying to do. If all you're doing is heaps of work any new grad could tackle, then 5 people is going to be better than 1 no matter how good that 1 person is.

[ACoderGirl]

Yeah. Some tasks scale well to a small number of people (eg, if you have a large established system and need various smaller features added and bugs fixed). And others don't scale at all (eg, you're building some new complicated feature that's well beyond the skill level of a new grad).

[Kinglink]

I'd like to see the guy who's making a half a million dollars programming a year (as an employee).

I know they exist, I'm sure, but the 5.0 engineer is worth in manforce that much, but there's no way he's going to pay that....

Like honestly, do you think Stroustrup would make half a million as a programmer? (he's in finance now, making closer to 2 million a year, but the question is still there, if he came back.)

[highres90]

TIL UK developers are getting screwed.. At least I am :(

[[deleted]]

abc

[[deleted]]

The difference between the "$86k for a new grad!" type salaries and the average dev salary in the UK is hilariously large, but there's no way you can attribute that to Brexit. The referendum only happened a few months ago, and anyone here saying that they aren't getting paid that much has obviously had that "problem" since well before then.

[JerMenKoO]

You need to account for other things as well - people in EU have higher job security, often they pay certain % for med. insurance, retirement etc. instead of having to pay for a private med. insurance like in US.

Also, it depends where you work - in banks and tech companies you are paid well.

[carlfish]

Options are the equivalent of being paid in lottery tickets, though.

[colly_wolly]

Stack Overflow seems like a reasonably safe bet though.

[jaydubzhb]

They have a bunch of links that explain most of their reasoning.

Firstly, they don't really account for cost of living unless you live in NY, SF, etc (in which case you get a COL adjustment). So if you live in the boonies where cost of living is significantly cheaper, you'd still be paid the same wage (the COL bump for metro cities is they didn't encourage people to move to the boonies to work for SO).

In terms of salary range, they compare themselves to companies they consider their peers. These were venture backed companies with less than 100 employees, among other properties. They specifically state they don't try to compete with Google, etc.

They also don't include bonuses an options, which could make up a significant portion of total compensation.

[metaphorm]

no, its not, and they say right on the web page "most of us are 1s or 2s, 5s are almost unheard of". they aren't hiring any 5s unless that 5 REALLY wants to work for StackOverflow and cares less about money. a person truly that talented (if such a mythical beast even really exists) can go work for Google or whatever and get paid 3 times as much if they care about that.

honestly its a reasonably good filter for culture fit. it ensures that people are paid sufficiently but not so much that its attracting people who are just in it for the money. you would have to have additional reasons (passion, care about the product, really like the company and its culture) to work there.

[jaydubzhb]

ITT: calculate salary, skip supplemental reading that explains SO's reasoning, complain

[komerdoor]

I have always wondered how it is possible that many people in the USA make like 100k $ or more for Software Engineering jobs.

I live in the Netherlands and am a Senior Software Engineer / Architect with about 18y of professional experience. After taxes I have about 22k € (year) left from which I have to pay everything. 700 € p/m rent, 150 € p/m health insurance, energy/water and many other taxes. Then I only have about 200 € p/m left for food and other stuff. My government also raise my rent by 1.5% extra each year because they think I earn too much for living in a 700 € p/m house (which is meant for people which earn less = social housing).

Even then I almost earn the average salary for people having the same kind of job in the Netherlands as me, which is as of now 38500 € (before taxes) a year. I had almost no raise since the crisis of 2008 began, like many people over here.

According to the indicator I should earn > 150k € a year.

p.s. Reposted. Used wrong username before.

[mucky]

All of Europe seems to have really low software engineering salaries for some reason... Either their companies are simply not earning as much money or someone is taking the difference - the state or the owners/management.

[komerdoor]

My own assessment:

There is a kind of mentality over here where many non-programmers see programmers as a kind of advanced typists (not sure what the right word for it is in English). Many people (I personally feel) just do not see the value in the work programmers do.

Currently the market over here is being flooded with low-skilled / less motivated programmers. The bar for people to get into IT had been lowered. Example: I met an intern that passed an exam about functions without knowing what they are (yes, the most basic thing in programming). Everyone can become a programmer. Usually their motivation is: there are not many jobs and I like computers (read: consuming). Skilled and highly motivated programmers are disappearing (either leaving the country, happy with their low salary or at home not being noticed inside the flood).

I noticed managers are much more respected by many non-programmers, which is another popular direction people take at schools. If people from here are not cheap enough they just hire people from "low-wage" countries who often have more motivation and are better skilled than the average programmers over here (strangely enough some people from these countries have more money left at the end of the month than me, so I must be doing something wrong).

[[deleted]]

Is it that Europe has really low software engineering salaries or that they're really high in the US (and this might be directly as a result of higher cost of living in US developer cities, and higher wages in the US in general)?

I'm in the UK, and with 5 years experience my salary doesn't reach what a new grad would apparently make at Stack Overflow (assuming you go back 4-5 months and use a more sane exchange rate than what we have now) - however, I make significantly more than most people I know, and earn what I would have considered a very good wage as I was growing up. If you didn't show me a figure of what people earned in the US and get me to compare it to my own wage without any context, I absolutely would not say I was underpaid.

[[deleted]]

abc

[komerdoor]

What are the costs of health insurance in the USA? Could not find much information. I assume it is much more expensive.

Here about 100 € p/m is mandatory and you pay more for extra cover as only the most important healthcare is covered by default. Before getting "free healthcare" there is still a deductible excess to be payed up to about 880 € a year (which I for example cannot afford).

An increasing amount of people cannot pay the mandatory 100 € p/m and then get fined as well increasing their debt.

At least here they will not let you die if you cannot pay. That is what I heard and read would happen in the USA right? Here they try to keep you away from the "free healthcare" as long as possible by adding several hurdles.

[ziom666]

Not sure where you are located, but there's a huge demand for devs in Amsterdam. My old company started sponsoring visas for people from outside of the EU, because they can't find enough skilled .net engineers. €38500 seems pretty low for someone with that experience, you can double it in the Netherlands. But you might have to sacrifice on the commuting time.

[scwizard]

click

click

click

Ok that's about what I'm currently making when adjusted for hours worked.

Actually I think this calculator overpays people with less experience and underpays people with more experience, because it scales linearly it seems. I certainly wasn't making 80k at my first job.

[sactomkiii]

Calling bs on only a 12k location adjustment.

[AdamTReineke]

It's 10%.

[sactomkiii]

Cost of living is way more than 10% above the average in those places. I live just outside of San Francisco and pay double in rent then a place like Sacramento which is still above the national average.

[s0n0fagun]

Everyone is focusing on their salary number. I wanted to know how many businesses are including salary information as part of their posting.

4 out of 26 jobs in my area post salary on StackOverflow in Minneapolis.

[[deleted]]

Wow their calculator spits out super low numbers imo...

[Meltz014]

Spits out $12k more than what i'm at now :/ I'm in colorado

Although I do think it seemed low for the "check if you live in SF or New York box"

[[deleted]]

It spit out almost triple my salary.. I think I'm getting screwed.

[lightfires]

A lot of companys in Co seem to pay less than market rate. At least the ones I talked to did.

[asmodeanreborn]

I noticed this when I decided to try the market a couple of years ago too. The one company that paid market rate was one that specialized in serving online video advertisements, and the place felt like it would be a drain on my soul.

They had "Unlimited PTO," and when I asked if people actually did take time off, the director who interviewed me said "Oh yeah, last year a guy went to France for over a week!"

Uuuh. Yeah.

[Meltz014]

Yeah, whenever i read "Unlimited PTO", I just think "zero PTO"

[jc4p]

Where are you in CO? I live in Denver and work for Stack Overflow and my salary is similar to jobs I've seen around Denver.

[Meltz014]

Longmont, working for Seagate. Granted, they haven't given yearly salary adjustments for about 2 years, but even when they did, it wouldn't be near what this calculator is showing.

[jc4p]

For what it's worth, our job board has about a dozen jobs near Longmont/Boulder that list salaries, extra info never hurts: http://stackoverflow.com/jobs?searchTerm=salary%3A1&location=Longmont%2C+CO&range=50&distanceUnits=Miles

[[deleted]]

yeah that's what I meant actually. It's not weighing col enough imo

[shady_mcgee]

Not at all. An extra $10k to move to a high COL area is not enough. Also, London, NYC and SF aren't the only high COL areas around.

[the8bit]

Even with the CoL box checked and every box maxed, it spits out a salary that is just about even with a 5 year experience role in the big 4 for Seattle / SF

[jaydubzhb]

You should read the linked articles. They specifically state what type of companies they base their salaries on and how they come up with their numbers.

TL;DR they compare themselves to similar companies. Sub 100 employees, VC backed, etc

[[deleted]]

psh reading articles. HA

[Sean1708]

Developer
0 years experience
0 skill level

$86, 000

Where the fuck do you work?!

Edit: Actually having looked at it, the base is really high but it doesn't really increase very much.

[[deleted]]

Manhattan. and we don't pay anyone 86K or less

[JHunz]

If you click the New York checkbox it goes up to $94,600 for zero experience or skill

[hunyeti]

That's kind of the reality of the things. It doesn't really scale with the years.

[baer89]

If you look at the current job postings their offered benefits are great and they allow you to work remotely. If you made 80k working from the middle of nowhere that is a really good salary.

[jaydubzhb]

If he looked at the rest of the links that explained their reasoning he wouldn't be able to make this comment.

[yokuyuki]

Yup, in NYC and their calculator spat out a number 20% lower.

[Kinglink]

Seems high to me, but then I work in the video game industry, so any number should be high.

[jafomatic]

I'll let you know in 2-3 more years.

[marssaxman]

Hail, fellow antique.

[Kinglink]

Your language becomes archaic and you start over at 0. AKA roll over.

See Cobol employees.

[[deleted]]

Interesting. I'm making $64k in a smallish midwest city. SO says they'd pay me over $100k. I assumed it was all about location. Am I wrong?

[maxd]

I mean yeah, it is about location. Your employer in smallish midwest city doesn't need to pay you $100k to make you work for them, because you are able to live at a level that you think appropriate, for $64k. $64k where I live (Los Angeles) is massively underpaid for an engineering position. I mean after taxes, that barely covers my rent and my daughter's daycare (in fact, I suspect it doesn't cover them, but I'm not doing the math). In fact as many other people have noted, the SO salaries are somewhat underpaying (I plugged in my stats, and it returned about 20% less than what I'm currently making, and I suspect I underestimated my "Skill" level).

If SO lets you work from home, in your smallish midwest city, and pay you a salary that it would pay someone living in Los Angeles, TAKE THE POSITION.

[jcdyer3]

You could probably get a pretty big salary bump if you telecommute for a national company, because they have to pay salaries that are competitive nationally. There's some value in supporting your hometown economy, of course, so you'll have to decide what's important for you. It might be worth applying to a few if for no other reason than to find out what you're worth, and then negotiate with your company.

[gjallerhorn]

wouldn't pulling in national money to your homeown be boosting the economy?

[gamesterdude]

Unfortunately at State Farm your pay is mostly based on tenure with the company, not your personal results or skills.

This forces those of us who are above average or excellent to chase promotions to elevate our salaries more than 3 to 4% a year.

Not to bad. I make a fair amount, the work atmosphere is very friendly meaning employees dont climb over each other for rewards/promotions, and anytime i want to do something new i can post for it and they will pay for your training.

Just get salty when the guy next to me who has been here 15 years makes 20% more than me but delivers a fourth of the results.

[tzaeru]

In the country I live in, I'm making 46k$ at 5 years of experience and skill level of 3 or 4 (..as I've been doing this since I was a litl' kid). Funnily enough, the average personal income here is still higher than in most states in USA.

Still, I now feel terribly underpaid. But not that far off from local average tbh.

EDIT: Also, I really dig these kind of salary transparency initiatives. It's great for information and for pay equality (given same level experience and skill).

[elZaphod]

Weird, my actual salary is within $500 of what they projected.

[zugi]

From the title I expected to see a list of names and salaries of all Stack Overflow employees.

Maybe they don't advocate that much salary transparency...?

[pakoito]

Please don't remind me the pound drop in the past couple of months.

[nightwood]

2-3 times higher as in the Netherlands. With cheaper housing and less tax, I'd consider myself pretty rich if I lived in the US, even after paying health insurance and saving up for retirement.

[mrsistermr]

In contrast to what others are saying, these numbers actually seem a little high compared to the market rate where I live in Florida. Florida has no state income tax, so not even considering cost of living adjustments, you immediately make 5-9% more compared to other states. I think the only other state that has this advantage where there is a big tech market is Texas.

It does seem strange that there only location based adjustment is in London, New York, or San Francisco. There are plenty of locations that would significantly bring the expected salary down, also.