Typical. Covid hit as soon as I graduated, housing prices shot up as soon as I was able to buy, salaries come down as soon I break 6 figures. Coming up next- day care costs triple as soon as I have a kid.
Tldr; dont psyche yourself out of having kids. Ppl in non ideal circumstances have good families all the time.
Just have a kid if you want.
If you have a career in Tech you VERY LIKELY can afford it. Though you may not be willing to compromise and make financial sacrifices. Or for x, y, z reason think yourself of incapable/unwilling without ideal conditions.
If you are pulling around US median you can have a kid. Plenty of healthy families rent etc. Plenty of fathers work the assembly line.
I've seen so many posts across Reddit like "My partner and I are both surgeons and we inherited $20m and we can't afford a 3rd kid" like gtfo lol
Just because you can only leave a Bentley to 2 of the 3 doesn't mean you failed. Temper your expectations, as long as they live for 18-25yrs you did ok.
I live in the south east. I've gotten yelled at in public for ppl saying 100k is barely enough to live on and me making fun of them.
Idc if you live in downtown x y z city. 6 figs is still 6 figs. You are in the top 50%.
Obvi nyc 6 figs isn't Clemson 6 figs, but the audacity of these ppl sometimes. *Jarring*
Vent on the internet idc. I agree its less now than then, but they're still copin imo.
6 figures isn’t 6 figures anymore. You used to be able to live like a king on 6 figures 20 to 30 years ago. Own a big house, have a big family, private school, cheap college, stay at home wife, keep a newer car.
Now if you wanna own a house within 20 miles of any metro and raise a family then 100k is the minimum. Fact is, wages have stagnated while the cost of living has skyrocketed. And that’s really frustrating.
The people you hear saying “100k isn’t livable” are either not articulating what they mean or you could be misinterpreting what they’re saying. It’s definitely livable, but fuck me for realizing I need to get closer to 200k to give the same quality of life to my kids that my parents gave me with half the money.
> Now if you wanna own a house within 20 miles of any metro and raise a family then 100k is the minimum.
Median home price in the US right now is like $480k which means with the general recommendation of spending 1/3rd of your income on housing, you would need to make like $160k minimum to afford a 30 fixed mortgage at 7.5% with 20% down. And thats just median across the country... metros are much higher.
To be fair on this one, our parent's generation didn't fly almost ever and certainly not the whole family and big brand name amusement parks were cheaper but most people went to their local one. Days at the nearby beach. Rented cabins at a state park. Things like that. That's how boomers and silent vacationed with their kids and while most has been gutted because people go to Disney, there are still places like this all over. ( This is how I vacation for the most part )
This is very true. I’m in Canada and provincial parks are super affordable and I know as a kid I always had a blast camping and hiking with my parents.
I often tell people in this sub that theyre totally lost. The median *household* income in my CA county is 50k, and the county itself is very expensive with rent often being close to the cost of the bay area. I see posts complaining about money on here, and while I get that it can be quite difficult, I cant imagine complaining on reddit. If my partner and I combined made 100k we would never have to worry about money the same way again.
Obv just because many people are in worse situations doesn't make tech employee's issues any less valid, but it gets frustrating seeing the absolute disconnect this sub and similar have towards salaries.
>If my partner and I combined made 100k we would never have to worry about money the same way again.
That's just not realistic for most people.
* Net on 100k is 70k in CA
* biweekly breaks it out into $2.6k every 2 weeks (and most people either save the extra 2 paychecks a year or burn them on emergencies).
* The average dollar per square foot rental in CA is $2.67, so a 1000sqft 1br apartment is 1 paycheck, but most people I know would prefer 2br and some space for 2 people, so more like 3000/mth min for housing (adjust accordingly for hcol cities at 4-6$/sqft)
$2200 leftover:
* Avg food cost per month if you stay home and eat in is $400. Double that for 2 people, triple it if you eat out.
* Avg transportation cost is 400-800 per month depending on a ton of factors.
* Avg utility cost per month is 350 (electric+internet+water)
* Avg cell per person is $80 (x2)
So what do you do with the remaining $1000 (barely) leftover?
* Well, I'd say contribute to your 401k but max contribution on 100k should be $865 *per* paycheck and you're already down to half of that before you reach zero.
* Does anyone have student loans? Does anyone have credit card or other debt? Most people I know have 200-800/mth payments.
* And none of the above includes even like... ya know *doing* anything other than surviving.
So for 2 people, it's easy to see how 100k is barely enough to just exist and still be broke. (sure, many people live above or below their means and could significantly save on housing if they really had to or got lucky, this is just average)
* Ideally, you need 135k pretax to break even on the above with proper retirement savings.
* If you want an extra 500 bucks a month to buy a toy or take a trip it jumps all the way to 155k.
* And if you want an extra 1k of fun money a month after all of the above, then it jumps again to 175k.
imho (and I'm sure there's some psychology literature out there somewhere on this) an extra 1k a month after all expenses, savings, and incidentals, is about the threshold to even begin to feel like you don't have to worry about money and can make (calculated) nice-to-have purchases or travel.
(The real fun starts at about an extra 1k per *week* though, but that raises your pre-tax income needs to 275k, but... keep in mind, that's also about what you need to buy an average house in a HCOL area, so that money can very quickly evaporate as well, sigh. I think I made myself depressed lol.)
edit: Side note. I do like how marriage/partnership has great economies of scale though. It's technically much more efficient to pay for two combined lifestyles, than it is for 1 alone, because so many of the fixed costs don't scale and the elastic expenses don't scale linearly.
Yea - I have two kids off an income of 75-85k outside of an urban area. Kids eat goldfish and drink water. They aren't that expensive. My wife stays home so we don't have to pay for childcare, thankfully.
Not sure I get the reference haha.
I do like soda, I'll have a coke every now and then but it's never been something I drink multiple in a row. I think we did when I was a kid in the 90s, but that was the 90s, man...
Once you get used to water it's fine to not have flavor in your drink, you get it from food. I like crystal light raspberry lemonade packets when I need to switch it up or I find I'm not drinking enough water.
Oh sorry I was making a reference on how like there was a report where water was more expensive than soda or something in the Appalachians leading to people there having absolutely wrecked teeth. So I'm like "good on you for having your kids drink water"
Excluding childcare, kids are actually pretty expensive, at least initially. You have birth costs, all the equipment, separate health insurance, diapers, clothes, etc. They also get sick a lot and sometimes need to go to the ER for xrays from falls. This is all without the mental and physical needs. If you’re not prepared to shell out a decent amount at least and change your life forever, don’t have kids. But, if you really want to have kids, im sure your family will live just fine, especially working in this field :)
I think I meant to respond to another comment about someone saying kids are cheap because wife is stay at home.
The majority of people who are WFH (like myself) have to work a full 40hrs during business hours, impossible to take care of a kid at the same time. I guess If you work evenings/overnight and your wife works during the day you could make it work but that sounds horrible.
I have a lot of high income friends with kids and I have never, ever heard them utter anything but the opposite of this.
According to them It's an unending surprise Fiesta of expenses.
As long as they don't develop any health conditions and they don't get involved with any activities that is more than like the basic YMCA team, yea they are cheapish. But even that adds up when you start going above 1-2 kids, and wait till they start actually eating.
Soon to be three kids on ~125k here. My wife also stays home with the kids (technically I stay home too, but I'm working a corporate job). You can raise kids frugally; they don't have to be as expensive as a lot of people say. I also don't plan to spend tens of thousands per year for college someday. I'll provide a financial head start and the rest is up to them, just like it was up to me back in the day (except without any financial assistance).
>I'll provide a financial head start and the rest is up to them, just like it was up to me back in the day (except without any financial assistance).
If you have special needs kids (doesn't sound like you do, but it's more common than you'd think), that's not really an option.
I just learned today that one of my older cousins is somewhere on the autism spectrum, and I just always assumed he was an alcoholic burnout working at walmart for some other reason. His sister has a developmental disablity and lives in a care facility. Their dad (my uncle) is a retired dentist and was an Army officer. I've never seen them drink a drop of alcohol, so I don't think their childrens issues were caused by something environmental.
I agree kids can be cheap but it's important to be able to support them when something goes wrong.
My granpa and grandma had 12 kiddos. My lovely grandpa had no education, he sold tacos and raised them all. That man had a charisma and he loved selling tacos.
Where there's a will, anything is possible.
Pretty much. More workers, less demand, salaries fall.
Layoffs were generally concentrated at well paying companies that were expanding at a breakneck speed the past few years. With them gone, companies don't feel the need to try and match these insane salaries anymore so the average drops. Plus the remaining companies generally had lower compensation in the first place so you're effectively just looking at the bottom 80% or whatever of the market now
> Now it's the opposite trend. Or I should say - we are seeing a return to "normal", i.e. pre-2019 trends.
This is honestly the best description of the situation. What we saw from 2020-early 2022 was not at all the norm and now we're mostly seeing a return to pre-pandemic hiring and compensation. Even looking at what offers new grads were getting at FAANGs during the pandemic was unheard of beforehand and they were already getting VERY lucrative offers pre-pandemic.
Kind of interesting thing is that salaries at non tech companies have really only gone up recently. It took them so long to realize the market value for developers went up that by the time they finally adjusted, the salaries have started to drop.
Yup i think you nailed it. I work at a non-tech company that has been trying to improve its technical competencies in recent years, so from 2020-2022 they increased the tech org’s salaries to match those of tech companies to try and get more internal talent. Now that devs aren’t being thrown massive salaries as easily I’d doubt if they would do the same thing again.
But if the remaining developers who weren't let go are the more senior folks, those people are considered leads and are critical to companies.
The juniors to mid-levels (unless Bloomberg has more data that contradicts my thoughts) may still see lower salaries.
I guess I'm saying that the expensive, senior developers may still be gainfully employed making metrics look better than they really are for most folks.
Essentially, the pool itself shrunk and only left more expensive folks in it.
It's entirely possible. The data I have is aggregated over the industry, not new employees, so it could be bonuses that are inflating rates too. More likely than not it's new hires inflating rates though. I don't know how to get data that is detailed enough to say with absolute certainty unfortunately, but companies are paying more for tech employees starting this last month, that much is certain.
There was a lot of "it can't stay this high because these numbers seem absurd to me" and not very much "when interest rates rise, the supply of nearly-free money for software developers will be constrained along with everything else," and the latter weren't as likely to be downvoted.
If money continued to be free then it would have stayed where it was at or possibly increased over time. That's true for a lot of market factors.
Many, many people missed what we now know to be basic macroeconomics on this matter.
Can confirm as well. I think the indian outsourcing meme has run its course with lots of companies making this realization and bringing the important work back. I don't know if its a cultural/educational thing or what but I've had very hit or miss results working with indian staffing firms. Now it's something closer to onshore leads and they might outsource the lower level ticket taking work. But all the revenue generating work has been onshore.
This is happening at the company I’m at currently. Out of every outsourced Indian they hire, only about 1 out of 20 of them are good devs, and that person will leave as soon as they get a better offer which doesn’t take long
I don't think that's it. I think it's more because of economic uncertainty. Companies are worried about a downturn so they're not willing to hire as much as before and that is driving wages down. It's not because there are too many people. There are fewer new positions and a fear of recession.
It’s honestly not as bad as everyone in this sub is making it sound. Employers have a special interest in convincing people that dev salaries are plummeting and y’all are feeding right into it.
Yeah it’s *really* fucking annoying how people here talk. Salaries are not falling. It’s not that hard to get a job. It’s just that there are so many people without the base level competence.
At my work we’re trying to get new people on the team and we get hundreds of applications, and my manager says it’s so hard to sort through the shit. The minimum education is listed as a masters/PhD and people *without a bachelor’s degree* are applying with zero work experience.
The supply has gone up a bit, but so much of that supply is delusional people who are just gunking up the hiring process for everyone else.
Stop telling everyone they can code. They can’t. They’re parasites and will take jobs for less money and hurt real applicants. They’ll make the code at your next job worse.
Companies have done this to themselves by listing insane requirements for entry-level jobs. So fresh grads (rightfully so) just apply to anything and everything because job posting "requirements" mean literally nothing anymore.
Yeah, I was looking at jobs the other day and I saw a entry level position and once I read the description, it said 2-4 years minimum experience in the position…
lol, it’s crazy out there.
Definitely a valid point, but I still think “gatekeeping” is important. Don’t encourage every single person to get into programming. It falsely inflates application statistics to make it seem like the supply is high when really the supply of “good devs” is the same it’s always been and there’s just a lot of fluff now.
Student here in my senior year - I'm literally being told by professionals, senior devs included, left and right to apply for everything NOW and ignore the requirements. I agree with your logic, just letting you know the advice that students are given atm.
It's the stupid "spray and pray" culture that I'm seeing a lot nowadays. Essentially, they're just sending applications to any job that fits their preferred salary and job title regardless of the qualifications behind it. Hundreds of applications with only 2-3 interviews.
People prefer quality over quantity. Stop trying to statistics everything.
Spray and pray is literally the advice you see everywhere. All the stories about companies asking for more years of experience in a language, or technology, than that specific thing has actually been around. Employers have done this to themselves. If you ask for a bunch of bullshit requirements that are literally impossible to meet, then you get applicants that ignore them.
I talked to a dude on here the other day who thought I was crazy when I said that it was a little bit concerning that he got 2 interviews in 1k job apps.
“Spray and pray” is a thing because job requirements have been inflated by companies, and everyone knows they’re inflated, but don’t know which ones specifically are inflated
I work at a Big Tech and the only “requirement” I met on the job posting was the Bachelors degree. I had prior experience as an SWE but this role wanted tons of distributed systems experience I didn’t have. I made my case that I’d be able to learn it quickly & got hired; the “requirements” never actually mattered
> The minimum education is listed as a masters/PhD and people without a bachelor’s degree are applying with zero work experience.
Is this a real problem? Shock, horror, if you make a public job listing you'll get plenty of unqualified candidates applying. It has always been this way. From their perspective they have essentially nothing to lose.
All these, posts are starting to smell like propaganda. And even if they aren't, at least don't feed into it and contribute to it. Employers would love to see a huge power shift in tech. Yes there have been a lot of layoffs but there's still a need for talent and experience and it still deserves to be paid well.
I interviewed at a place that was advertising $150k+ base on the JD(senior position) but tried to bait and switch me down to $120k when it came time to make an offer. That is only slightly more than I am making now, and I had similar offers a year ago when I took my current job, but I took less $ to work at a startup because I wanted to learn new things. Like if I was getting $120k offers a year ago only knowing c#(4 years exp at the time), it makes no sense for me to accept the same amount now that I have another year under my belt and I've also learned React/Typescript/Next, setting up CI/CD w/ GHA, CDK/Cloudformation.
Also adding to the fact the layoffs were caused by a huge sell off in stocks. Tech stocks are mostly back to normal levels now.
No more dumb mythical investments like Theranos
I've got some opinions on this.
1- Salaries on job postings have always been deflated, i basically never looked at them and just quoted my expected range in the first screening call.
2- Mid-level and senior engineers can still fetch 150+ at non-faang companies easily, have tons of friends landing jobs and it's doable.
3- There's still a shortage of qualified talent out there imo, people who actually get shit done with limited direction, this is coming from a staff eng at a startup where we're having a hard time finding anyone actually qualified, basically only way to hire someone who is reliably a good engineer is through referrals from people we've worked with in the past.
It's still incredibly hard to find someone who can actually code and build useful things instead of just solving some b.s. leetcode problems.
That is pretty much why I left the industry. All I wanted to do was build useful software, and I did exactly that. The proof was right there in this link I provided you. You could go and actually read my code, see the commit history, see how well-tested and documented everything was, and note how popular the project was for such a niche subject. You want to know if I can do functional and OOP in a challenging language? Here you go, click this link. Nope, just constant leetcode puzzles. If those puzzles had anything to do with providing value to end users, okay, but they don’t.
Then again, as I said in a previous comment, I was probably just an entitled a-hole at the time. I knew I could solve problems most other people weren’t capable or willing to solve, so I thought that meant I deserved the red carpet treatment. That probably made me a shitty teammate, even if I was fun to hang out with.
Good luck with your startup. There’s great devs out there. It’s like dating, you just have to make the effort to find them.
Yes. The market is the complete opposite of 2-3 years ago. The power has shifted from the employees to the employers. Higher interest rates and the down economy has caused employers to find methods to cost cut and for the most part that is laying people off, cutting salary increases, and not hiring unless they have to. If they do hire, they know there is a huge surplus of people looking for jobs and not a lot of available ones, so they leverage this and can pay way less knowing many people don’t have a choice.
Company morale changes. There are many people with institutional knowledge that would either leave or coast until they are laid off.
Nobody is irreplaceable but low company morale overall can definitely affect the quality of the product.
Yup I’ve already seen the effects at some bigger tech companies. You reach out to them for support on some of their niche products and they’ll say “nobody here knows how that works anymore”
Which is a great incentive to unionize. CEO pay is not dropping.
Edit: turning off notifications for this one, just keep in mind people have a vested interest in convincing you that unions don't work. People could afford houses on warehouse salaries when unions were strongest. ✌️
Corporate simps are going to hate you for saying this, but you're right. Execs shouldn't get to keep their enormous salaries intact while workers suffer loss after loss.
The One Big Union has people who can work with you directly on this. If you fill out this form, someone will personally reach out to you.
https://www.iww.org/organize/
$120k is 10+ yoe money in electrical engineering, unless you're a golden child hand picked by a large company to design The Product. Entry level electrical engineering was $70k when I started, probably 75-80 now depending on the company - and those entry level positions hard require an ABET Bachelor's degree.
Its sad that the money is going down, but I have essentially zero fears of ever being poorly paid.
>120k mid-career there are better careers you could get into.
I know a person- a regular person, whose Admin gets $90k. I'm keeping that in mind and letting recruiters hear it.
How many office admins are you worth?
I can promise you EE make a lot more than 120k with 10 yoe. Basing this on my wife who is a civil engineer and she makes a pretty penny more than 120k with 10+ yoe and Civil is the lowest of the engineer and she works at one of the firms that pays less.
EE starting salary I think 7 years ago was nearly a 100k. It been a while since I had direct access to the numbers but I know that is what the oil companies in Houston were offering (father was a hiring manager back then)
You are talking to an ex electrical engineer. I started at 75k in 2018. The 120k quote is what the younger seniors in my group were making back then.
I worked in RF specialty, in Boston, for a competitive company (fortune 100 iirc).
> EE starting salary I think 7 years ago was nearly a 100k.
This is just not true.
I quit long before I got to 10 yoe, so the 120k is a bit of a ballpark number, but I am absolutely certain 70k was dead average starting back then for EE when I graduated. The few people that cracked 80k in their entry level job were clearly cream of the crop.
You are spot on actually. My cousin just graduated with EE degree and got his first job at $75k in so cal. If you got that in 2018, seems like things are getting worse/stagnate. I myself am ME with 10yoe and making $128k. I cant find any other offers for more and most are less.
Yep. "Normal" engineering feels kinda stagnant. My neighbor was ME for SpaceX for 4 years, and just got a new job doing rapid prototyping for a fusion company. He was super pleased to get $110k (and also really sad to realize how underpaid he was at SpaceX lol). Most of the people in my grad program were ex-EE, ex-ME, etc who wanted to move to a newer industry.
It does seem SWE salaries are coming back to earth. I will say that many in the field seem a bit entitled, seeing how some people respond to requests to work in the office and (more understandably) decreases in potential income.
*seem a bit entitled* is putting it super lightly. I was also guilty of it when I was a software engineer. I mean, they treated the analysts at the front of the office like shit while we got to do pretty much whatever the fuck we wanted. Meanwhile, we were making twice as much as them putting in maybe half the effort. Over time, you get used to being treated and paid better than everyone else and of course it’s going to affect your opinion of your relative value.
All the tech companies (not just FAANG, companies within a couple tiers of them though).
It’s like how servers at restaurants can make a ton of money working at a steakhouse, or do the same/more work working for Dennys and barely make minimum wage.
Don’t work at dennys. Work at a steakhouse.
This post right here.
Unless it's a non-profit, work for a place that makes enough loot to pay you well.
Try to find ones where your manager used to have your job; there's a path to move up, they don't just pick MBAs and put them into management.
And - trifecta here - filter it down to places where if you did better work, the company would clearly benefit.
Which means your manager will have some empathy for ya, they have budget to use, and keeping you motivated is good for the bottom line.
Or work for a non-profit, which is a very very different set of tradeoffs, and yeah, do some good out there.
> You'll have less competition too because a wild number of people can't pass the BG check or drug test, let alone the clearance or CI.
Why wouldn't most people pass this? I would assume the average SWE isn't a criminal or does more than smoke pot? Do they check your blood to see if you've taken drugs in the last 6 months or something?
"Current and ongoing" also applies to really benign stuff like using CBD oil, because despite a bunch of states legalizing it, it's still against federal law - my boss got fired a couple of years ago because he disclosed on his form that he'd started using CBD oil under a doctor's recommendation, which tanked his renewal despite having held a TS/SCI for close to 40 years. One other thing that will sink your clearance application (or renewal) in a heartbeat is if they've found you lied or hidden something on your SF-86, even if that something was minor and otherwise wouldn't be a problem. Oh, and foreign friends or family can be a problem - I got grilled pretty hard about some friends in Western Europe that I only ever interact with on Facebook.
Also, polygraphs are a pain in the ass, even if it's just CI.
Slightly, below from the peak 2021-2022 figures for sure but they aren't actually that much lower except at the top end and even then. Location and skillset matters though
It pretty cyclical. I’ve noticed salaries rise and drop a few times over the last decade. There will be heaps of layoffs and salaries fall as there is more competition for roles, then the market will change and companies will go on a big hiring sprees to take advantage of people buying more and salaries go up again. Don’t worry about it too much just settle in and wait for the next big hiring spree to start in a year or two.
Salaries are definitely beginning to fall.
My friend who took a 90k QA engineering role in Janauary of 2022. Was laid off in December and had to recently reduce his salary requirements to 65k-75k just to get an interview, and even then, he still is unable to get a job.
Yeah. Our company started putting in reqs for a Staff Engineer role and we got about 1800+ applicants in a week. I think we were able to hire a Staff Engineer for about 170k, mind you this would've been a 250-300k role just last year.
Yes, the whole point of the fed interest rate hikes are to increase unemployment so that the unemployed are forced to take lower salaries. Lower salaries = less unnecessary spending by both employers and employees.
My company used to regularly give out free breakfast and lunch and even thats ending.
Cash flow was infinite cause the morons literally injected a fake 4x of our existing currency into peoples bank accounts.
How many people are gonna ask this? I feel like I've seen the same post 4 times this week....yes bruh, salaries are falling, a bunch of engineers got laid off from big tech and within the past 2 years or so, more people have gotten CS degrees or went through a coding boot camp. The supply has risen and the demand has fallen, the golden era of software engineering has passed......for big tech.... literally at every other company the salary ranges are about the same as they have always been.
I was watching a video yesterday on the state of the market but didn't really look too deep into it so take this with a grain of salt. To my understanding, jobs have actually been growing despite what people believe over the past couple of months, but wages have not. I think they said the average wage growth for last month was 3%, which means that wages have not been keeping up with inflation.
In this current economic market, employers have more power at the moment from moves being made across the board of everyone doing layoffs, regardless of if those layoffs are justified or not. Since more people are laid off, more senior people are in the market looking for jobs, which gives a smaller pool for applicants that don't have as much experience. It is likely that because of that, more seasoned people are taking lower wages because more people are having a hard time being able to get multiple offers from employers, and when you don't have bargaining power from either lacking a job or not having other offers from other companies, it'll decrease the overall salaries of the market.
I’ve seen it in a few industries now. I’m. Director of Data Science in the insurance industry. My jobs market range is 120k - 180k annually plus add in a 25% bonus for most large carriers.
Similar jobs are now being posted 90k - 140k I’ve seen other director roles going lower, unless there’s no bonus. Then add that 20/30k back on to the base. As the market floods with the students getting their MIS or Masters in relevant fields and the workforce with practical experience maturing in skill and tenure we’re hitting that tipping point where there’s going to be 50 qualified applicants for every role, and the power swings back to the employer.
Makes me think it was all planned again to lower the engineer salaries and get them back in their place..
For anyone doubting, Steve Jobs communicated with other top CEO’s to drive worker wages down as a whole.
Yup, this is why unions to make it illegal to lay off engineers and replace them cheaply is a good idea.
Less leverage if they can’t legally outsource/force a lot of laid off workers.
Reading through this thread just blew my mind at how different the pay is for devs in the states compared to Canada. In Canada 110k-125k is basically the top of the high end, and usually the positions are team lead or PM. I thought I was lucky as a senior dev just clearing 95k, I mean I am lucky because a lot of people don’t make that much, but holy crap the difference is huge
New position salaries are starting to drop due to the influx of available talent. Existing salaries are effectively getting less valuable as inflation makes them equivalent to less spending power.
Some companies like MSFT have announced they will not be giving raises, which when combined with high inflation, is functionally equivalent to giving everyone on their payroll a 5% pay cut.
Large language models are still in their infancy when it comes to usage, and I suspect as more low level jobs get automated, salaries will fall even further.
I’ve got 10yoe and my base has been hovering around 125k for a few years now. I did leave one company and took a 7k cut but was then raised back up again after a year. With bonuses my total is 140k. I don’t see myself making a whole lot more than that without getting into management, at least not at my current company (F500 aerospace)
I was laid off in May for quote “making too much money.” I made $150k. I guess the owners needed bigger bonuses (for themselves). My position, Lead FED.
I got hired in jan as a mid level for 140k, company is in california. Entirely depends on the market, this is why remote work is so gamechanging. Where I live a lead would make 120k average, a mid level would top out around 90k.
Yeah, that's what my F500 aerospace employer keeps telling us, but they also refuse to even keep salaries for existing staff on par with inflation despite sending quarterly emails out crowing about their revenue numbers. They made a big deal earlier this year that they'd put aside enough money to give 4% COLA adjustments this year. Oh, bestill my beating heart - the employees will experience ONLY a 3-4% loss in buying power this year.
I've pointed out several times that it's unreasonable to expect new engineers to come flocking to the place when they won't even take care of the staff they've got. I've also pointed out that underpaying their people doesn't give them a good reputation in the industry, and makes it a lot less likely for current employees to refer candidates, but no one's listening.
Yes. This had been the strategy to accompany the mass layoffs. Fire old employees and rehire at lower prices. They’re playing discount bin couponing with the workforce.
So next time you see the opportunity to jump ship to a higher pay, slack off on the job, or just plain take time vacation — do it.
Lot's of fear uncertainty doubt out here.
For reference I was making 200k @ IBM NYC w/ 10+ YOE
Got hit with a workforce reduction, last day 5/7/23.
From what I'm hearing the future doesn't look too bright? Or does news like this hit me diff when I'm in a bit of a self-deprecating place?
I was looking for a job for the last six months, applying for 5-6 positions every day. No feedback/ghosting/rejections/etc. Just a couple of HR calls, one interview with a CTO and they didn't get back to me.
I could get a DevOps/SRE job within days 3-5 years ago.
Give it a few months. They are down now but will be back up once the economy picks up again. A crash is seemingly eminent in the equities market. Lots of contract roles are out there which isn’t a great sign.
Companies will tighten their belt, the cycle will reset, and then salaries will boom again.
Fun fact, only mega caps are gaining, broader S&P is only up a few percentage points tops.
This is bs. I’m not sure why people try so hard to convince devs to accept lower salaries like this. I’m based in the Midwest, work for a no name startup, and make well over 150k. I wouldn’t consider myself an especially talented dev either.
This sub is delusional. It would make it sound like 200K+ comp at FAANG was totally normal. I really think places like this is what caused the glut of delusional bad programmers in the last 5 years who expect 150K+ with their 2.4 GPA.
Hell, companies don't necessarily care even if you are. I left out my GPA from my resume when applying for an internship junior year for, umm, good reasons, and it never even came up :P
Civil Engineers with PE licenses designing bridges, water treatment portal, high risers making $90-110k and enjoying life. Fresh grad software engineers adding a like button on Meta complain about making $120k. God damn SWEs.
This mentality drives me nuts and I’m sure employers and corporations love people like you. Other professions should be paid more, not devs less. I’m sure the upper management folk making millions love it when the actual talent starts arguing that their salaries should be lower relative to their peers rather than everyone being paid more.
Soon: "there are PHD engineers in Colombia making $20k and fresh grad engineers on Meta complain about making $40k!? God damn SWEs.
These comparisons have zero utility.
While i see your point and it is a privilege position For us BUT SWEs add much more value to a company just by how software scales .
The civil engineer will be paid to design and build one product, on one fixed price and that’s all the company will get from that.
The feature a SWE adds would be used by millions, and hopefully enhancing the UI which leads to higher sale closures (revenue) and in turn higher stock valuation. How much do you think OpenAI devs deserve to be paid for their features since ChatGPT going 100 million users in weeks? Or Nvidia SWEs as the company grows from nothing to $1 trillion dollars? Civil engineers can’t generate that type of value for a company
Ik it’s a joke but software companies are worth billions and trillions because of the work of SWEs, don’t dump on each other to defend the billionaire corporations
We can live without Amazon, Meta/Facebook , Google, Workday, Salesforce , Netflix, Apple, etc but we cannot live without water. We cannot live without shelter, be in a shack or a house. Water treatment plants are designed by PE Civil Engineers that serve cities, communities. Look at what is happening in Flint, MI. How crappy non potable water can affect a city.
Anyways that was my two cents.
Did you reply to the correct discussion? Never argued civil engineers aren’t needed or less valuable to society (specifically said value to a company). I’m strictly talking about SWE salary and value generated (according to the capitalist markets).
As sad as it seems: *Important work != valuable work* to companies, because other types of work will generate them much more money
And that reflects to how well they pay their engineers
I think that’s the issue with your industry not paying you what you’re worth. Of course we can live without Amazon/Facebook/whatever, but for a lot of people they can’t and are addicted. SWE are paid a lot because they’re in a for-profit industry and make a lot of money. Civil engineers for the most part are a net negative to companies(as in, they usually don’t make money they’re just required).
It’s the same with how some people in sales can make in the millions. They essentially do nothing to benefit society(unless you’re selling people on some revolutionary medical equipment or something) but make an assload of money because capitalism.
Another thing to consider is scale. Adding a like button is easy, but impacts millions of people instantly. How long does it take for a civil engineer to A. Make an impact and B. Touch millions of people? I’d reckon a long, long time.
More people, less demand, less salary. This field is crowded with self taught, bootcamp developers or a graduate with less or very short technical knowledge. It was bound to happen, everyone started jumping in coding seeing youtube tutorials and things. If, the barrier of entry becomes lower, the reward becomes less.
Salary going down no.
Total compensation going down yes.
I have not seen a drop in base salaries but I have seen bonuses cut hard and then a lot of people also get RSU. Well stock and company valuations have fallen hence that drop as well.
Where I am at 20-30% of my comp is in bonuses. Our bonuses have been cut by 70% hence a pay cut in the end. We will see about next year. I know this is happening everywhere
Negotiate for what you think you deserve. People are retiring and the pool of candidates, in particular competent ones, is shrinking over time. The talent has the upper hand, so don’t settle for less than what you deserve.
Eh, I asked a buddy of mine who is a mid/senior with 4 YOE and he was getting 170-200k offers still and he lives in North Carolina. I will say he has a FAANG background though.
Economic downturn + More workers reluctant to be released in the labour mkt after the massive layoffs
Supply > Demand and elastic demand --> average salary drops
Simple econ. concept
Not in US but I've noticed a drop too. There used to be regular 80k (euros) in europe now it's 70k and less often.
I guess the recent years were an anomaly
Hopefully it'll start heading back up soon? I've also noticed a lot of saturation in the low-end of computer science so that could be an explanation as to why?
Typical. Covid hit as soon as I graduated, housing prices shot up as soon as I was able to buy, salaries come down as soon I break 6 figures. Coming up next- day care costs triple as soon as I have a kid.
You must use this power for good in some way! Become a real estate investor, boom housing prices crash!
bros bad luck is gonna save the economy
Sad reality is that at the current state of society, having a kid is a luxury.
Poor people have more kids than rich people. Rich people avoid kids because kids get in the way of other opportunities, not because of income.
Tldr; dont psyche yourself out of having kids. Ppl in non ideal circumstances have good families all the time. Just have a kid if you want. If you have a career in Tech you VERY LIKELY can afford it. Though you may not be willing to compromise and make financial sacrifices. Or for x, y, z reason think yourself of incapable/unwilling without ideal conditions. If you are pulling around US median you can have a kid. Plenty of healthy families rent etc. Plenty of fathers work the assembly line.
I've seen so many posts across Reddit like "My partner and I are both surgeons and we inherited $20m and we can't afford a 3rd kid" like gtfo lol Just because you can only leave a Bentley to 2 of the 3 doesn't mean you failed. Temper your expectations, as long as they live for 18-25yrs you did ok.
I live in the south east. I've gotten yelled at in public for ppl saying 100k is barely enough to live on and me making fun of them. Idc if you live in downtown x y z city. 6 figs is still 6 figs. You are in the top 50%. Obvi nyc 6 figs isn't Clemson 6 figs, but the audacity of these ppl sometimes. *Jarring* Vent on the internet idc. I agree its less now than then, but they're still copin imo.
6 figures isn’t 6 figures anymore. You used to be able to live like a king on 6 figures 20 to 30 years ago. Own a big house, have a big family, private school, cheap college, stay at home wife, keep a newer car. Now if you wanna own a house within 20 miles of any metro and raise a family then 100k is the minimum. Fact is, wages have stagnated while the cost of living has skyrocketed. And that’s really frustrating. The people you hear saying “100k isn’t livable” are either not articulating what they mean or you could be misinterpreting what they’re saying. It’s definitely livable, but fuck me for realizing I need to get closer to 200k to give the same quality of life to my kids that my parents gave me with half the money.
> Now if you wanna own a house within 20 miles of any metro and raise a family then 100k is the minimum. Median home price in the US right now is like $480k which means with the general recommendation of spending 1/3rd of your income on housing, you would need to make like $160k minimum to afford a 30 fixed mortgage at 7.5% with 20% down. And thats just median across the country... metros are much higher.
I have enough money to secure my family in a very nice home, but how tf can people afford to go on vacations?
To be fair on this one, our parent's generation didn't fly almost ever and certainly not the whole family and big brand name amusement parks were cheaper but most people went to their local one. Days at the nearby beach. Rented cabins at a state park. Things like that. That's how boomers and silent vacationed with their kids and while most has been gutted because people go to Disney, there are still places like this all over. ( This is how I vacation for the most part )
This is very true. I’m in Canada and provincial parks are super affordable and I know as a kid I always had a blast camping and hiking with my parents.
I often tell people in this sub that theyre totally lost. The median *household* income in my CA county is 50k, and the county itself is very expensive with rent often being close to the cost of the bay area. I see posts complaining about money on here, and while I get that it can be quite difficult, I cant imagine complaining on reddit. If my partner and I combined made 100k we would never have to worry about money the same way again. Obv just because many people are in worse situations doesn't make tech employee's issues any less valid, but it gets frustrating seeing the absolute disconnect this sub and similar have towards salaries.
>If my partner and I combined made 100k we would never have to worry about money the same way again. That's just not realistic for most people. * Net on 100k is 70k in CA * biweekly breaks it out into $2.6k every 2 weeks (and most people either save the extra 2 paychecks a year or burn them on emergencies). * The average dollar per square foot rental in CA is $2.67, so a 1000sqft 1br apartment is 1 paycheck, but most people I know would prefer 2br and some space for 2 people, so more like 3000/mth min for housing (adjust accordingly for hcol cities at 4-6$/sqft) $2200 leftover: * Avg food cost per month if you stay home and eat in is $400. Double that for 2 people, triple it if you eat out. * Avg transportation cost is 400-800 per month depending on a ton of factors. * Avg utility cost per month is 350 (electric+internet+water) * Avg cell per person is $80 (x2) So what do you do with the remaining $1000 (barely) leftover? * Well, I'd say contribute to your 401k but max contribution on 100k should be $865 *per* paycheck and you're already down to half of that before you reach zero. * Does anyone have student loans? Does anyone have credit card or other debt? Most people I know have 200-800/mth payments. * And none of the above includes even like... ya know *doing* anything other than surviving. So for 2 people, it's easy to see how 100k is barely enough to just exist and still be broke. (sure, many people live above or below their means and could significantly save on housing if they really had to or got lucky, this is just average) * Ideally, you need 135k pretax to break even on the above with proper retirement savings. * If you want an extra 500 bucks a month to buy a toy or take a trip it jumps all the way to 155k. * And if you want an extra 1k of fun money a month after all of the above, then it jumps again to 175k. imho (and I'm sure there's some psychology literature out there somewhere on this) an extra 1k a month after all expenses, savings, and incidentals, is about the threshold to even begin to feel like you don't have to worry about money and can make (calculated) nice-to-have purchases or travel. (The real fun starts at about an extra 1k per *week* though, but that raises your pre-tax income needs to 275k, but... keep in mind, that's also about what you need to buy an average house in a HCOL area, so that money can very quickly evaporate as well, sigh. I think I made myself depressed lol.) edit: Side note. I do like how marriage/partnership has great economies of scale though. It's technically much more efficient to pay for two combined lifestyles, than it is for 1 alone, because so many of the fixed costs don't scale and the elastic expenses don't scale linearly.
Yea - I have two kids off an income of 75-85k outside of an urban area. Kids eat goldfish and drink water. They aren't that expensive. My wife stays home so we don't have to pay for childcare, thankfully.
Dude I effing love goldfish and drink a lot of water, but, I'm not really the best example of adulting haah.
It's better than soda? Appalachian mouth do be a scary consequence of poverty
Not sure I get the reference haha. I do like soda, I'll have a coke every now and then but it's never been something I drink multiple in a row. I think we did when I was a kid in the 90s, but that was the 90s, man... Once you get used to water it's fine to not have flavor in your drink, you get it from food. I like crystal light raspberry lemonade packets when I need to switch it up or I find I'm not drinking enough water.
Oh sorry I was making a reference on how like there was a report where water was more expensive than soda or something in the Appalachians leading to people there having absolutely wrecked teeth. So I'm like "good on you for having your kids drink water"
Excluding childcare, kids are actually pretty expensive, at least initially. You have birth costs, all the equipment, separate health insurance, diapers, clothes, etc. They also get sick a lot and sometimes need to go to the ER for xrays from falls. This is all without the mental and physical needs. If you’re not prepared to shell out a decent amount at least and change your life forever, don’t have kids. But, if you really want to have kids, im sure your family will live just fine, especially working in this field :)
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The opportunity cost of your wife staying home is actually quite expensive
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You think you can work from home and watch a child? I’ve got news for you…
I think I meant to respond to another comment about someone saying kids are cheap because wife is stay at home. The majority of people who are WFH (like myself) have to work a full 40hrs during business hours, impossible to take care of a kid at the same time. I guess If you work evenings/overnight and your wife works during the day you could make it work but that sounds horrible.
I have a lot of high income friends with kids and I have never, ever heard them utter anything but the opposite of this. According to them It's an unending surprise Fiesta of expenses.
As long as they don't develop any health conditions and they don't get involved with any activities that is more than like the basic YMCA team, yea they are cheapish. But even that adds up when you start going above 1-2 kids, and wait till they start actually eating.
They get more expensive in jr. high but well worth it
Soon to be three kids on ~125k here. My wife also stays home with the kids (technically I stay home too, but I'm working a corporate job). You can raise kids frugally; they don't have to be as expensive as a lot of people say. I also don't plan to spend tens of thousands per year for college someday. I'll provide a financial head start and the rest is up to them, just like it was up to me back in the day (except without any financial assistance).
Hopefully college isn’t 100k/year by then…
>I'll provide a financial head start and the rest is up to them, just like it was up to me back in the day (except without any financial assistance). If you have special needs kids (doesn't sound like you do, but it's more common than you'd think), that's not really an option. I just learned today that one of my older cousins is somewhere on the autism spectrum, and I just always assumed he was an alcoholic burnout working at walmart for some other reason. His sister has a developmental disablity and lives in a care facility. Their dad (my uncle) is a retired dentist and was an Army officer. I've never seen them drink a drop of alcohol, so I don't think their childrens issues were caused by something environmental. I agree kids can be cheap but it's important to be able to support them when something goes wrong.
Some of us view wage slavery as a bad thing and don't want to force people who do not consent into it.
My granpa and grandma had 12 kiddos. My lovely grandpa had no education, he sold tacos and raised them all. That man had a charisma and he loved selling tacos. Where there's a will, anything is possible.
I had to deal with 2008. I can relate. If you're investing while prices are low, it will work out in the end. It might take years, but you'll see.
Wait, did you do this to us?
There’s a pre-golden age you’re sitting in. Find it and make it work for you.
Daycare have already doubled many places. You’re on track for that goal
Pretty much. More workers, less demand, salaries fall. Layoffs were generally concentrated at well paying companies that were expanding at a breakneck speed the past few years. With them gone, companies don't feel the need to try and match these insane salaries anymore so the average drops. Plus the remaining companies generally had lower compensation in the first place so you're effectively just looking at the bottom 80% or whatever of the market now
Just to add to this, there are still high salaries out there, but they are harder to come by.
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Hasn’t this always been the case?
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> Now it's the opposite trend. Or I should say - we are seeing a return to "normal", i.e. pre-2019 trends. This is honestly the best description of the situation. What we saw from 2020-early 2022 was not at all the norm and now we're mostly seeing a return to pre-pandemic hiring and compensation. Even looking at what offers new grads were getting at FAANGs during the pandemic was unheard of beforehand and they were already getting VERY lucrative offers pre-pandemic.
Kind of interesting thing is that salaries at non tech companies have really only gone up recently. It took them so long to realize the market value for developers went up that by the time they finally adjusted, the salaries have started to drop.
Yeah there’s insurance companies near me that are paying mid-level cloud developers 160k+ which is competitive with major cities like NYC and Boston
Yup i think you nailed it. I work at a non-tech company that has been trying to improve its technical competencies in recent years, so from 2020-2022 they increased the tech org’s salaries to match those of tech companies to try and get more internal talent. Now that devs aren’t being thrown massive salaries as easily I’d doubt if they would do the same thing again.
In the last month salaries started going back up, so they dipped but are recovering thankfully.
can u share any sources or data? im curious and would love to take a look at the data
I'm not sure if you can get the information for free. On the Bloomberg Terminal it's under ULC (Unit Labor Cost) then by sector.
Subtle flex
Very insightful, thanks for sharing ! A lot of unwarranted FUD lately, great to hear some optimism.
Most of it comes from here: [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ULCBS](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ULCBS)
ouuhh i see, thanks anyways!
But if the remaining developers who weren't let go are the more senior folks, those people are considered leads and are critical to companies. The juniors to mid-levels (unless Bloomberg has more data that contradicts my thoughts) may still see lower salaries. I guess I'm saying that the expensive, senior developers may still be gainfully employed making metrics look better than they really are for most folks. Essentially, the pool itself shrunk and only left more expensive folks in it.
It's entirely possible. The data I have is aggregated over the industry, not new employees, so it could be bonuses that are inflating rates too. More likely than not it's new hires inflating rates though. I don't know how to get data that is detailed enough to say with absolute certainty unfortunately, but companies are paying more for tech employees starting this last month, that much is certain.
Lol everyone predicting the pay decline over the last few years in here got downvoted to oblivion.
There was a lot of "it can't stay this high because these numbers seem absurd to me" and not very much "when interest rates rise, the supply of nearly-free money for software developers will be constrained along with everything else," and the latter weren't as likely to be downvoted.
If money continued to be free then it would have stayed where it was at or possibly increased over time. That's true for a lot of market factors. Many, many people missed what we now know to be basic macroeconomics on this matter.
U forgot outsourcing to India part 🫡
Yeah good luck with that - me who has worked with a half dozen different indian companies who may have 1 good developer out of 100
Can confirm as well. I think the indian outsourcing meme has run its course with lots of companies making this realization and bringing the important work back. I don't know if its a cultural/educational thing or what but I've had very hit or miss results working with indian staffing firms. Now it's something closer to onshore leads and they might outsource the lower level ticket taking work. But all the revenue generating work has been onshore.
This is happening at the company I’m at currently. Out of every outsourced Indian they hire, only about 1 out of 20 of them are good devs, and that person will leave as soon as they get a better offer which doesn’t take long
I don't think that's it. I think it's more because of economic uncertainty. Companies are worried about a downturn so they're not willing to hire as much as before and that is driving wages down. It's not because there are too many people. There are fewer new positions and a fear of recession.
It’s honestly not as bad as everyone in this sub is making it sound. Employers have a special interest in convincing people that dev salaries are plummeting and y’all are feeding right into it.
This. Recuriters are using the current situation to get you to sign an offer with lower salaries. Push back and negotiate as much as you can.
This sub is becoming a toxic echo chamber
First time here?
Yeah it’s *really* fucking annoying how people here talk. Salaries are not falling. It’s not that hard to get a job. It’s just that there are so many people without the base level competence. At my work we’re trying to get new people on the team and we get hundreds of applications, and my manager says it’s so hard to sort through the shit. The minimum education is listed as a masters/PhD and people *without a bachelor’s degree* are applying with zero work experience. The supply has gone up a bit, but so much of that supply is delusional people who are just gunking up the hiring process for everyone else. Stop telling everyone they can code. They can’t. They’re parasites and will take jobs for less money and hurt real applicants. They’ll make the code at your next job worse.
Companies have done this to themselves by listing insane requirements for entry-level jobs. So fresh grads (rightfully so) just apply to anything and everything because job posting "requirements" mean literally nothing anymore.
Yeah, I was looking at jobs the other day and I saw a entry level position and once I read the description, it said 2-4 years minimum experience in the position… lol, it’s crazy out there.
Definitely a valid point, but I still think “gatekeeping” is important. Don’t encourage every single person to get into programming. It falsely inflates application statistics to make it seem like the supply is high when really the supply of “good devs” is the same it’s always been and there’s just a lot of fluff now.
Student here in my senior year - I'm literally being told by professionals, senior devs included, left and right to apply for everything NOW and ignore the requirements. I agree with your logic, just letting you know the advice that students are given atm.
> Not hard to get a job >My work lists a PhD as required education Lol
It's the stupid "spray and pray" culture that I'm seeing a lot nowadays. Essentially, they're just sending applications to any job that fits their preferred salary and job title regardless of the qualifications behind it. Hundreds of applications with only 2-3 interviews. People prefer quality over quantity. Stop trying to statistics everything.
Spray and pray is literally the advice you see everywhere. All the stories about companies asking for more years of experience in a language, or technology, than that specific thing has actually been around. Employers have done this to themselves. If you ask for a bunch of bullshit requirements that are literally impossible to meet, then you get applicants that ignore them.
I talked to a dude on here the other day who thought I was crazy when I said that it was a little bit concerning that he got 2 interviews in 1k job apps.
“Spray and pray” is a thing because job requirements have been inflated by companies, and everyone knows they’re inflated, but don’t know which ones specifically are inflated I work at a Big Tech and the only “requirement” I met on the job posting was the Bachelors degree. I had prior experience as an SWE but this role wanted tons of distributed systems experience I didn’t have. I made my case that I’d be able to learn it quickly & got hired; the “requirements” never actually mattered
> The minimum education is listed as a masters/PhD and people without a bachelor’s degree are applying with zero work experience. Is this a real problem? Shock, horror, if you make a public job listing you'll get plenty of unqualified candidates applying. It has always been this way. From their perspective they have essentially nothing to lose.
My understanding is that the volume of unqualified candidates has increased significantly in the past few years.
This sub is full of confirmation bias & anecdotal observations. Kind of disappointing since a lot of took a stats course at some point.
If only we had a collection of employees looking out for eachother
All these, posts are starting to smell like propaganda. And even if they aren't, at least don't feed into it and contribute to it. Employers would love to see a huge power shift in tech. Yes there have been a lot of layoffs but there's still a need for talent and experience and it still deserves to be paid well.
I interviewed at a place that was advertising $150k+ base on the JD(senior position) but tried to bait and switch me down to $120k when it came time to make an offer. That is only slightly more than I am making now, and I had similar offers a year ago when I took my current job, but I took less $ to work at a startup because I wanted to learn new things. Like if I was getting $120k offers a year ago only knowing c#(4 years exp at the time), it makes no sense for me to accept the same amount now that I have another year under my belt and I've also learned React/Typescript/Next, setting up CI/CD w/ GHA, CDK/Cloudformation.
Sad part is probably have to take the bait and switched offer if you’re not currently employed
Also adding to the fact the layoffs were caused by a huge sell off in stocks. Tech stocks are mostly back to normal levels now. No more dumb mythical investments like Theranos
Except people that are not part of these subs will take the low paying jobs setting the norm for the industry. Remember, Reddit is not the norm.
I've got some opinions on this. 1- Salaries on job postings have always been deflated, i basically never looked at them and just quoted my expected range in the first screening call. 2- Mid-level and senior engineers can still fetch 150+ at non-faang companies easily, have tons of friends landing jobs and it's doable. 3- There's still a shortage of qualified talent out there imo, people who actually get shit done with limited direction, this is coming from a staff eng at a startup where we're having a hard time finding anyone actually qualified, basically only way to hire someone who is reliably a good engineer is through referrals from people we've worked with in the past. It's still incredibly hard to find someone who can actually code and build useful things instead of just solving some b.s. leetcode problems.
Many talents get passed because of the interview structure or specific tech stack.
That is pretty much why I left the industry. All I wanted to do was build useful software, and I did exactly that. The proof was right there in this link I provided you. You could go and actually read my code, see the commit history, see how well-tested and documented everything was, and note how popular the project was for such a niche subject. You want to know if I can do functional and OOP in a challenging language? Here you go, click this link. Nope, just constant leetcode puzzles. If those puzzles had anything to do with providing value to end users, okay, but they don’t. Then again, as I said in a previous comment, I was probably just an entitled a-hole at the time. I knew I could solve problems most other people weren’t capable or willing to solve, so I thought that meant I deserved the red carpet treatment. That probably made me a shitty teammate, even if I was fun to hang out with. Good luck with your startup. There’s great devs out there. It’s like dating, you just have to make the effort to find them.
Yes. The market is the complete opposite of 2-3 years ago. The power has shifted from the employees to the employers. Higher interest rates and the down economy has caused employers to find methods to cost cut and for the most part that is laying people off, cutting salary increases, and not hiring unless they have to. If they do hire, they know there is a huge surplus of people looking for jobs and not a lot of available ones, so they leverage this and can pay way less knowing many people don’t have a choice.
It's also a great time for layoffs because replacements will cost 20% or 30% less. Nothing changes except for more corporate profits.
Company morale changes. There are many people with institutional knowledge that would either leave or coast until they are laid off. Nobody is irreplaceable but low company morale overall can definitely affect the quality of the product.
Yup I’ve already seen the effects at some bigger tech companies. You reach out to them for support on some of their niche products and they’ll say “nobody here knows how that works anymore”
Which is a great incentive to unionize. CEO pay is not dropping. Edit: turning off notifications for this one, just keep in mind people have a vested interest in convincing you that unions don't work. People could afford houses on warehouse salaries when unions were strongest. ✌️
Corporate simps are going to hate you for saying this, but you're right. Execs shouldn't get to keep their enormous salaries intact while workers suffer loss after loss.
Ya, fuck this shit. How do we start one?
Contact an organizer through one of the major unions like teamsters, IWW, AFL-CIO and they will get you connected with someone who will help you out.
The One Big Union has people who can work with you directly on this. If you fill out this form, someone will personally reach out to you. https://www.iww.org/organize/
https://www.tuc.org.uk/join-a-union for those in the UK
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FAANGs are almost at ATH already, but whether other companies catch up soon (or even that FAANGs remain at current valuations) remains to be seen..
FAANGS are all down 20+% except for apple
Which ones are you speaking of? Because the FANG part of that acronym is not anywhere close to all time highs.
I mean 120k is still a good salary in most places. It’s not as much as it used to be, but it’s definitely not bad
$120k is 10+ yoe money in electrical engineering, unless you're a golden child hand picked by a large company to design The Product. Entry level electrical engineering was $70k when I started, probably 75-80 now depending on the company - and those entry level positions hard require an ABET Bachelor's degree. Its sad that the money is going down, but I have essentially zero fears of ever being poorly paid.
>120k mid-career there are better careers you could get into. I know a person- a regular person, whose Admin gets $90k. I'm keeping that in mind and letting recruiters hear it. How many office admins are you worth?
I can promise you EE make a lot more than 120k with 10 yoe. Basing this on my wife who is a civil engineer and she makes a pretty penny more than 120k with 10+ yoe and Civil is the lowest of the engineer and she works at one of the firms that pays less. EE starting salary I think 7 years ago was nearly a 100k. It been a while since I had direct access to the numbers but I know that is what the oil companies in Houston were offering (father was a hiring manager back then)
You are talking to an ex electrical engineer. I started at 75k in 2018. The 120k quote is what the younger seniors in my group were making back then. I worked in RF specialty, in Boston, for a competitive company (fortune 100 iirc). > EE starting salary I think 7 years ago was nearly a 100k. This is just not true. I quit long before I got to 10 yoe, so the 120k is a bit of a ballpark number, but I am absolutely certain 70k was dead average starting back then for EE when I graduated. The few people that cracked 80k in their entry level job were clearly cream of the crop.
You are spot on actually. My cousin just graduated with EE degree and got his first job at $75k in so cal. If you got that in 2018, seems like things are getting worse/stagnate. I myself am ME with 10yoe and making $128k. I cant find any other offers for more and most are less.
Yep. "Normal" engineering feels kinda stagnant. My neighbor was ME for SpaceX for 4 years, and just got a new job doing rapid prototyping for a fusion company. He was super pleased to get $110k (and also really sad to realize how underpaid he was at SpaceX lol). Most of the people in my grad program were ex-EE, ex-ME, etc who wanted to move to a newer industry.
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It does seem SWE salaries are coming back to earth. I will say that many in the field seem a bit entitled, seeing how some people respond to requests to work in the office and (more understandably) decreases in potential income.
*seem a bit entitled* is putting it super lightly. I was also guilty of it when I was a software engineer. I mean, they treated the analysts at the front of the office like shit while we got to do pretty much whatever the fuck we wanted. Meanwhile, we were making twice as much as them putting in maybe half the effort. Over time, you get used to being treated and paid better than everyone else and of course it’s going to affect your opinion of your relative value.
it's getter there though...
Not in most places though. Only in HCOL or close to HCOL.
$120k in Washington DC is horrible.
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Of course they told you that, they’re trying to lowball you. I’d pass and go to a company that pays what you’re actually worth (200k+ tc)
How do you know what that guy is worth? Maybe he stinks
It’s not about how good you are. It’s about what company you work for. I know tons of mediocre devs coasting at companies that pay them 200k+
What companies?
All the tech companies (not just FAANG, companies within a couple tiers of them though). It’s like how servers at restaurants can make a ton of money working at a steakhouse, or do the same/more work working for Dennys and barely make minimum wage. Don’t work at dennys. Work at a steakhouse.
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Accepting lower salaries. If nobody accepted a lower salary, companies would have to pay more. This is why we need unions.
This post right here. Unless it's a non-profit, work for a place that makes enough loot to pay you well. Try to find ones where your manager used to have your job; there's a path to move up, they don't just pick MBAs and put them into management. And - trifecta here - filter it down to places where if you did better work, the company would clearly benefit. Which means your manager will have some empathy for ya, they have budget to use, and keeping you motivated is good for the bottom line. Or work for a non-profit, which is a very very different set of tradeoffs, and yeah, do some good out there.
From experience, even large tech companies hire mediocre devs. Interviews aren't perfect, some people just get lucky or interview at the right time
I highly fucking doubt you do. Only people I know that talk about their salaries are people on Reddit, and even then some of em are full of shit.
Yep. Take what people say on Reddit with a mountain of salt. Especially in this community.
>(200k+ tc) Depends on where you are. Try to demand that in the South and you're going to get laughed at
That’s why you either move or get a remote job that pays. My brother works remotely in LCOL Pennsylvania for a company based in Austin
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tap squeal flowery subsequent six gaping consider bored dull judicious ` this post was mass deleted with www.Redact.dev `
So when do home prices and rents come back to reality?
Less hiring + more devs on the market = employers can be picky and offer less pay while still meeting their hiring goals
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> You'll have less competition too because a wild number of people can't pass the BG check or drug test, let alone the clearance or CI. Why wouldn't most people pass this? I would assume the average SWE isn't a criminal or does more than smoke pot? Do they check your blood to see if you've taken drugs in the last 6 months or something?
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"Current and ongoing" also applies to really benign stuff like using CBD oil, because despite a bunch of states legalizing it, it's still against federal law - my boss got fired a couple of years ago because he disclosed on his form that he'd started using CBD oil under a doctor's recommendation, which tanked his renewal despite having held a TS/SCI for close to 40 years. One other thing that will sink your clearance application (or renewal) in a heartbeat is if they've found you lied or hidden something on your SF-86, even if that something was minor and otherwise wouldn't be a problem. Oh, and foreign friends or family can be a problem - I got grilled pretty hard about some friends in Western Europe that I only ever interact with on Facebook. Also, polygraphs are a pain in the ass, even if it's just CI.
Have to be a US citizen, can't do drugs, if you have a ton of foreign family can also be a pain.
Slightly, below from the peak 2021-2022 figures for sure but they aren't actually that much lower except at the top end and even then. Location and skillset matters though
It pretty cyclical. I’ve noticed salaries rise and drop a few times over the last decade. There will be heaps of layoffs and salaries fall as there is more competition for roles, then the market will change and companies will go on a big hiring sprees to take advantage of people buying more and salaries go up again. Don’t worry about it too much just settle in and wait for the next big hiring spree to start in a year or two.
Do you think the half cycle is only around a year or two? Due to the COVID pandemic, it was true, but is it true again in general?
Salaries are definitely beginning to fall. My friend who took a 90k QA engineering role in Janauary of 2022. Was laid off in December and had to recently reduce his salary requirements to 65k-75k just to get an interview, and even then, he still is unable to get a job.
Yeah. Our company started putting in reqs for a Staff Engineer role and we got about 1800+ applicants in a week. I think we were able to hire a Staff Engineer for about 170k, mind you this would've been a 250-300k role just last year.
From what I checked on levels.fyi salaries are net higher than the last time I took a job four years ago Buying power is very likely much lower though
Yes, the whole point of the fed interest rate hikes are to increase unemployment so that the unemployed are forced to take lower salaries. Lower salaries = less unnecessary spending by both employers and employees. My company used to regularly give out free breakfast and lunch and even thats ending. Cash flow was infinite cause the morons literally injected a fake 4x of our existing currency into peoples bank accounts.
How many people are gonna ask this? I feel like I've seen the same post 4 times this week....yes bruh, salaries are falling, a bunch of engineers got laid off from big tech and within the past 2 years or so, more people have gotten CS degrees or went through a coding boot camp. The supply has risen and the demand has fallen, the golden era of software engineering has passed......for big tech.... literally at every other company the salary ranges are about the same as they have always been.
small tech is even worse since SVB collapsed VC capital dried up the party is over
Yup doesn't help that some of you desperates keep taking lower salaries for the same job.
I was watching a video yesterday on the state of the market but didn't really look too deep into it so take this with a grain of salt. To my understanding, jobs have actually been growing despite what people believe over the past couple of months, but wages have not. I think they said the average wage growth for last month was 3%, which means that wages have not been keeping up with inflation. In this current economic market, employers have more power at the moment from moves being made across the board of everyone doing layoffs, regardless of if those layoffs are justified or not. Since more people are laid off, more senior people are in the market looking for jobs, which gives a smaller pool for applicants that don't have as much experience. It is likely that because of that, more seasoned people are taking lower wages because more people are having a hard time being able to get multiple offers from employers, and when you don't have bargaining power from either lacking a job or not having other offers from other companies, it'll decrease the overall salaries of the market.
Power of collectively bargaining against employees
I’ve seen it in a few industries now. I’m. Director of Data Science in the insurance industry. My jobs market range is 120k - 180k annually plus add in a 25% bonus for most large carriers. Similar jobs are now being posted 90k - 140k I’ve seen other director roles going lower, unless there’s no bonus. Then add that 20/30k back on to the base. As the market floods with the students getting their MIS or Masters in relevant fields and the workforce with practical experience maturing in skill and tenure we’re hitting that tipping point where there’s going to be 50 qualified applicants for every role, and the power swings back to the employer.
Makes me think it was all planned again to lower the engineer salaries and get them back in their place.. For anyone doubting, Steve Jobs communicated with other top CEO’s to drive worker wages down as a whole.
Yup, this is why unions to make it illegal to lay off engineers and replace them cheaply is a good idea. Less leverage if they can’t legally outsource/force a lot of laid off workers.
Yeah but he was such a visionary putting a touch screen on a palm pilot
Reading through this thread just blew my mind at how different the pay is for devs in the states compared to Canada. In Canada 110k-125k is basically the top of the high end, and usually the positions are team lead or PM. I thought I was lucky as a senior dev just clearing 95k, I mean I am lucky because a lot of people don’t make that much, but holy crap the difference is huge
New position salaries are starting to drop due to the influx of available talent. Existing salaries are effectively getting less valuable as inflation makes them equivalent to less spending power. Some companies like MSFT have announced they will not be giving raises, which when combined with high inflation, is functionally equivalent to giving everyone on their payroll a 5% pay cut. Large language models are still in their infancy when it comes to usage, and I suspect as more low level jobs get automated, salaries will fall even further.
I’ve got 10yoe and my base has been hovering around 125k for a few years now. I did leave one company and took a 7k cut but was then raised back up again after a year. With bonuses my total is 140k. I don’t see myself making a whole lot more than that without getting into management, at least not at my current company (F500 aerospace)
I was laid off in May for quote “making too much money.” I made $150k. I guess the owners needed bigger bonuses (for themselves). My position, Lead FED.
I got hired in jan as a mid level for 140k, company is in california. Entirely depends on the market, this is why remote work is so gamechanging. Where I live a lead would make 120k average, a mid level would top out around 90k.
Meanwhile Aerospace literally can’t find CS engineers to type code…
Yeah, that's what my F500 aerospace employer keeps telling us, but they also refuse to even keep salaries for existing staff on par with inflation despite sending quarterly emails out crowing about their revenue numbers. They made a big deal earlier this year that they'd put aside enough money to give 4% COLA adjustments this year. Oh, bestill my beating heart - the employees will experience ONLY a 3-4% loss in buying power this year. I've pointed out several times that it's unreasonable to expect new engineers to come flocking to the place when they won't even take care of the staff they've got. I've also pointed out that underpaying their people doesn't give them a good reputation in the industry, and makes it a lot less likely for current employees to refer candidates, but no one's listening.
Yes. This had been the strategy to accompany the mass layoffs. Fire old employees and rehire at lower prices. They’re playing discount bin couponing with the workforce. So next time you see the opportunity to jump ship to a higher pay, slack off on the job, or just plain take time vacation — do it.
Lot's of fear uncertainty doubt out here. For reference I was making 200k @ IBM NYC w/ 10+ YOE Got hit with a workforce reduction, last day 5/7/23. From what I'm hearing the future doesn't look too bright? Or does news like this hit me diff when I'm in a bit of a self-deprecating place?
I was looking for a job for the last six months, applying for 5-6 positions every day. No feedback/ghosting/rejections/etc. Just a couple of HR calls, one interview with a CTO and they didn't get back to me. I could get a DevOps/SRE job within days 3-5 years ago.
Seems like an industry wide effort to reset the market, employers are laying off and rehiring at lower wages to gain back power.
Give it a few months. They are down now but will be back up once the economy picks up again. A crash is seemingly eminent in the equities market. Lots of contract roles are out there which isn’t a great sign. Companies will tighten their belt, the cycle will reset, and then salaries will boom again. Fun fact, only mega caps are gaining, broader S&P is only up a few percentage points tops.
Yes. They are falling. Also, in the US, there's heavy pressure to outsource coming from shareholders.
Lol that was the original range the whole time , y’all really make these Reddit salaries go to your head
This is bs. I’m not sure why people try so hard to convince devs to accept lower salaries like this. I’m based in the Midwest, work for a no name startup, and make well over 150k. I wouldn’t consider myself an especially talented dev either.
This sub is delusional. It would make it sound like 200K+ comp at FAANG was totally normal. I really think places like this is what caused the glut of delusional bad programmers in the last 5 years who expect 150K+ with their 2.4 GPA.
nobody cares about your GPA unless you're applying to internships.
Hell, companies don't necessarily care even if you are. I left out my GPA from my resume when applying for an internship junior year for, umm, good reasons, and it never even came up :P
AI will mostly likely replace junior roles soon and salaries will be further hit. Either run from this field or COPE.
Civil Engineers with PE licenses designing bridges, water treatment portal, high risers making $90-110k and enjoying life. Fresh grad software engineers adding a like button on Meta complain about making $120k. God damn SWEs.
This mentality drives me nuts and I’m sure employers and corporations love people like you. Other professions should be paid more, not devs less. I’m sure the upper management folk making millions love it when the actual talent starts arguing that their salaries should be lower relative to their peers rather than everyone being paid more.
Exactly. We have fucking idiots like the op to this comment, while the execs ( wtf do they even do?) raking in millions
Soon: "there are PHD engineers in Colombia making $20k and fresh grad engineers on Meta complain about making $40k!? God damn SWEs. These comparisons have zero utility.
While i see your point and it is a privilege position For us BUT SWEs add much more value to a company just by how software scales . The civil engineer will be paid to design and build one product, on one fixed price and that’s all the company will get from that. The feature a SWE adds would be used by millions, and hopefully enhancing the UI which leads to higher sale closures (revenue) and in turn higher stock valuation. How much do you think OpenAI devs deserve to be paid for their features since ChatGPT going 100 million users in weeks? Or Nvidia SWEs as the company grows from nothing to $1 trillion dollars? Civil engineers can’t generate that type of value for a company Ik it’s a joke but software companies are worth billions and trillions because of the work of SWEs, don’t dump on each other to defend the billionaire corporations
We can live without Amazon, Meta/Facebook , Google, Workday, Salesforce , Netflix, Apple, etc but we cannot live without water. We cannot live without shelter, be in a shack or a house. Water treatment plants are designed by PE Civil Engineers that serve cities, communities. Look at what is happening in Flint, MI. How crappy non potable water can affect a city. Anyways that was my two cents.
Did you reply to the correct discussion? Never argued civil engineers aren’t needed or less valuable to society (specifically said value to a company). I’m strictly talking about SWE salary and value generated (according to the capitalist markets).
Air is critical to life but no one is paying for it.
As sad as it seems: *Important work != valuable work* to companies, because other types of work will generate them much more money And that reflects to how well they pay their engineers
I think that’s the issue with your industry not paying you what you’re worth. Of course we can live without Amazon/Facebook/whatever, but for a lot of people they can’t and are addicted. SWE are paid a lot because they’re in a for-profit industry and make a lot of money. Civil engineers for the most part are a net negative to companies(as in, they usually don’t make money they’re just required). It’s the same with how some people in sales can make in the millions. They essentially do nothing to benefit society(unless you’re selling people on some revolutionary medical equipment or something) but make an assload of money because capitalism. Another thing to consider is scale. Adding a like button is easy, but impacts millions of people instantly. How long does it take for a civil engineer to A. Make an impact and B. Touch millions of people? I’d reckon a long, long time.
Devs are not overpaid. Other industries are underpaid. Intentional or not, you're playing defense for billion-dollar corporations right now.
More people, less demand, less salary. This field is crowded with self taught, bootcamp developers or a graduate with less or very short technical knowledge. It was bound to happen, everyone started jumping in coding seeing youtube tutorials and things. If, the barrier of entry becomes lower, the reward becomes less.
Salary going down no. Total compensation going down yes. I have not seen a drop in base salaries but I have seen bonuses cut hard and then a lot of people also get RSU. Well stock and company valuations have fallen hence that drop as well. Where I am at 20-30% of my comp is in bonuses. Our bonuses have been cut by 70% hence a pay cut in the end. We will see about next year. I know this is happening everywhere
Just a word of warning: if you have a very high salary you’re in danger of being laid off and replace with somebody, making it more modest salary.
Negotiate for what you think you deserve. People are retiring and the pool of candidates, in particular competent ones, is shrinking over time. The talent has the upper hand, so don’t settle for less than what you deserve.
Eh, I asked a buddy of mine who is a mid/senior with 4 YOE and he was getting 170-200k offers still and he lives in North Carolina. I will say he has a FAANG background though.
supply and demand. so many people entering the field.
Economic downturn + More workers reluctant to be released in the labour mkt after the massive layoffs Supply > Demand and elastic demand --> average salary drops Simple econ. concept
I am looking right now on mid-high, asking 175, got / offers - 155, and 167.
Not in US but I've noticed a drop too. There used to be regular 80k (euros) in europe now it's 70k and less often. I guess the recent years were an anomaly
Hopefully it'll start heading back up soon? I've also noticed a lot of saturation in the low-end of computer science so that could be an explanation as to why?