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Reasonable Salary for Entry Level Programmers?
An anonymous reader asks: "I will be graduating from college in May with a degree in computer science. I have begun the job search and gone on a few interviews. So far I have gotten two job offers which I am thankful for, but the salary seems low. I am not saying that I am too good to pay my dues and work my way up, but I could make more waiting tables. It is somewhat distressing that I have spent 4 years of college and years before that developing my programming skills. I am not trying to get rich, but I was hoping that the high level of skill required would account for something(no offense intended to waiters). Can anyone give me any insight about what a reasonable starting salary would be, for an entry level software engineer?"
...but it'll probably be paid in rupees.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Ill be graduating in May as well and the range Ive seen is 45k to 55k
You found a programming job in America?
Approximately 3 outsourced India worker salaries per year.
The coolest voice ever.
Salary Wizard.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps this sort of data, though possibly with some significant lag time.
Try looking at: http://www.bls.gov/bls/blswage.htm.
(Average Indian Wage) + (25% outsourcing overhead) + (25% less-likely-to-die-from-unstable-political-climate premium) + (25% understands lame jokes from upper mgmt premium)
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Seriously...anything you can get is enough. It's an employer's market right now, and they know it. What you need to look for is the experience. A year or two down the road when a better job comes along, who's going to get hired? The kid who coded for peanuts but got two years of experience, or the kid who waited tables and got zero relevant professional experience?
Only take the table-waiting job if you can accomplish more worthwhile projects on your own time, and have excellent documentation skills to prove what you did.
...
"...It proves you can learn,"
I know a lot of college grads that prove you wrong Sir.
Note to self: No more arguing with the faithful.
I've been programming etc for over 20 years and I could probably make more money by driving a truck; various trades such as plumbing, electrician, ...
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I was hoping that the high level of skill required would account for something
A college degree does not confer skill. Skill must be demonstrated before it can be rewarded.
.@.
If you're starting out, I have bad news - given the decreases in salaries for people who've had 10 years experience, I hate to say this but the timing of your graduation is QUITE BAD. Offshoring fueling the latter along with the economic downturn and I don't expect things to improve much.
I have over 10+ years in tech, worked at a major software company and left for the dot bomb craze. I gave up lots of salary for equity and while the company was profitable and public, the market tanked a mere few weeks before my first vesting period. Even if it hadn't the AMT tax would have probably screwed me over anyway.
Since then I've worked some side stuff, waited tables, had the stupidity to try to sell cars and only in the last few months have things returned to what I call "normal."
Never mind that I worked on shrink wrapped products, developed a source level debugger, have had lots of experience on both Windows and UNIX. It all didn't matter to anyone.
I have to say, despite returning to a salary level that bests my previous best. I'm a changed person. Save, save, save.
IT blows. That's my 2 cents. HR people simply care about the last six months and are clueless if you are well ahead of your peers. They don't have the capacity to make this judgement.
You could tell them you architected (as an example) SSH and Kerberos have encryption patents and they might ask some stupid arse question like "Do you know JavaScript?"
Anyone starting school today... my advice is forget tech. If you feel it in your soul (like you should do it), fine, go to a tech school like DeVry, start making money and save it. Going to traditional 4 year programs for CS is an utter waste of time. Way too much change and like I said it's always about what you did in the last six months.
How many people graduated with you? How many other schools graduated as many, or more people at the same time? How many programming jobs do you think exist? Granted, this number is growing, but still. As an electrical engineering major, I can tell that at least half the people that graduate aren't worth having in a company. They just don't retain knowledge and apply it well. Why should a company assume you're worth more money? You're going to have to prove yourself to them. For all they know, you're the guy like my lab partner, who did no design on a major project, built none of it, and wrote 4 of a final report when I asked him to write six. Of his four pages, I totally rewrote one, made him rewrite one, and had to correct all his others. One of the mechanical engineers that I work with has a resume that would impress people at NASA and JPL, but in reality, he knows very little. Considering the number of graduates who know very little these days, I think you should be happy for a job. Besides, you ought to take one based on what you'll be doing, not so much how much money you'll make. With a CS degree, those dreams of high salaries you had going into college faded while you were there. Work your way, and be happy with it.
1) Where are the offers, and more specifically what is the cost of living there? I would expect a job to pay around 1.5-2x as much in the Bay Area as in Tucson for the simle reason you'll need the extra money to have the same quality of life. Consider what it costs to get a house, go out to eat, etc where the job is. If it's cheap, don't expect to make as much. I mean in Tucson, you can get a 2000 square foot house for under $150k which works out to payments of under $1000/month. It's hard to impossible to get even a studio apartment in some cities for that price.
2) What will the workload be like? If this is a company that believes in supporting it's employee, a 40 hour work week, and low stress, that is a factor. Don't sell yourself short on quality of life, but realise that less work makes you less valuable and thus will pay less.
3) Benefits. Look at what the company offers you in other benefits, those all factor in too. If they pay your health insurance for you, that's something to factor in, it's not cheap. Same with other kinds of insurance. Make sure you are comparing the total amount you are compansated (as in how much they pay you and how much you'd have to pay for the benefits if they didn't) not just the amount you take home.
4) Vacation. What's their policy on that? If the company offers good amounts of off time, that's something that's nice. Also generally reduces your pay though.
5) Public or private? If you work a government job, it'll generally pay less than the private sector. The compensation is that most tend to have excellent benefits, plenty of vacation time, and little to no overtime.
So look at the area you'd be living in, what kind of buying power you'd have with your paycheck, and what they offer in additonal benefits that you'd need to purchase yourself if they didn't. Then decide if what they are offering you is reasonable.
Also consider what kind of learning experience it will be, what kind of industry connections it will give you, and what kind of advancement oppertunities you'll have. If a job pays less, but puts you in the position to advance quickly and to a high level, while learning valuable skills, it's probably worth it.
So don't sell yourself short, but don't get caught up in the dollar amount you take home.
I made 28K on my first job as Jr. Programmer.
In 1995, I was making 55K
2001, I was making $60 per hour
2002 60K per year
2004, 400 a week with unemployment.
The look on my wifes face when I told her we were going to have to move into one of her moms houses, priceless.
For everything else, there's Bahnglor express.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
while it seems like the dotcom craze is over, we are really still at the dawn of what the internet and personal computers can do... it will be decades before this tech has realized it's full potential and the arc of innovation wanes and computers/ internet become just another commodity like the cotton gin or the radio
therefore, within the span of your lifetime, there is much impact you can make on this world, personally, and of course, financially
so after you come home from your thankless soul-sucking underpaid 9-5 existence, don't forget to tinker with the very sparks of imagination which got you interested in computers in the first place
someone reading slashdot right now, either you, me, or someone else, will probably be making a contribution to mankind in the field of computer science which will forever alter humanity, and perhaps make that person fabulously rich... but that's an afterthought
your prime motivation should be happiness, not money
no six figure slary is worth self-hatred
don't give up on any of the things that got you interested in computers in the first place just because you can't seem to find your happiness in a cubicle
you will never be happy working for someone else, you will only be happy pursuing your own interests
so think of your job as something to keep your brain cells well-exercised, and something that keeps food in the refridgerator, and therefore you won't look to your salary as some end-all justification for your existence
your job will forever be little more than just a means to an ends, unless you yourself are deadset on making your life little more than what your employer decides you are worth, and that would be a sad day indeed
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
While you could make more waiting tables, as you say, you won't be gathering experince in the process. I'm a sysadmin... have been for 10+ years. It was around year 2 or 3 of experience that I was able to make a salary jump... actually, right after year 3 of experience, my salary doubled. Before being a sysadmin, I drove two trucks. Driving tow trucks paid better. But had I kept driving tow trucks and not moved to computers, I'd be making roughly 25% more now than when I started. And therw wouldn't have been a "3 year, double my salary" opportunity. Sometimes the temporary sacrafice has the long term payoff.
BTW and FYI: you're in a very competitive market right now. Many development jobs are going overseas and there are a lot of developers with a lot more experience than you have that are looking for work right now. Many have been out of work so long, they'd gladly take the meager offers you're getting. Consider yourself lucky and take an offer. If a better one comes along within 3 months, take it.
Assuming you are single, and just out of collge, and still willing to share an apartment to keep costs down, take any job offering $30k or more, AND is something you are interested in or could see a future in. In other words don't get hung up on salary alone, but consider what you want to do with your career and what you want to do. If you don't know exactly what you want to do with your skills, consider jobs that might offer a variety of opportunity. Remember, like any job, there will be pluses and minuses and you might have to reall look to see what the opportunities are.
As for the money, remember the dot com days are over, and paying your bills while getting your career going is not a bad way to start in the "real world".
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
do you have any openings*?
*A curse on the first person who replies with a link that has the letter c and x anywhere near the word goat.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They can suck you into the 80 hour week at any salary. Likewise, many $50k plus people are adept at avoiding the 80 hour work week. You only get 45 hours of work done in an 80 hour week anyway.
I really would be looking more at the company and projects than the salary. If the company is full of people making good money, then you will likely get good raises.
Employers look for progression in your salary. Going in low and getting a good raise in the first year can really jump start a resume. Leaving without a good raise makes you look bad.
So, if it looks like a company pays well, then going in low is a wise choice.
In short, as long as the salary offer isn't an obvious attempt to screw you (look at both your offers and also ask classmates with offers from other companies and see if they're within, say, a 10% margin), you should be OK. Dive in on your first job, learn everything you can, get started on that graduate degree. In two years take a look around and see if your salary isn't up to par. Go to your manager, make a case on all the fine work you've done, and see what they can do. If you get no action by the tiem you get the graduate degree, start shopping around.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
I've been out of school for 2 yrs, so some might disagree.....
Hold out for a job in an industry you want to be in. Pay is secondary unless you have kids and stuff - it's better to get your foot in the door somewhere that does interesting development on projects you want to work on.
If you take some job admin'ing windows boxes for the Arkansas Bureau of Indian Relations, it's easy to get pigeon-holed. Along comes a wifester, and suddenly its hard to uproot everything and take a risk with a cool startup or consulting firm.
My advice: don't worry about a few dollars, go out there and get the most interesting job you can, regardless of location. Go balls to the wall for a few years, learn your trade, and have a good time.
Interesting/hard jobs in technical fields generally pay good, but you will never be the best or make the best money unless you are excited and interested in getting out there and writing code.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
Considering that professors can often get grad students to work for free, it looks like someone in that university is pulling strings and doing one of their friends a favor by hiring you (a HS student) for pay. Take full advantage of the opportunity.
As for the original poster talking about entry level programming jobs: "Whatever the market will bear is fair".
Jobs are like relationships. It's always easier to get a new job offer when you've already got an existing job -- even a crappy one.
If you're working at Foocorp, a hiring manager at Barcorp knows you must be worth something (or Foocorp wouldn't have hired you) - and he also knows that you must be interested in Barcorp (because you've already got a job at Foocorp, so you're interviewing for reasons that go beyond "I'm unemployed and need food").
Same thing applies in relationships -- ChickFoo obviously digs your stuff, and that makes your stuff more interesting to ChickBar. (No, I'm not gonna let myself write that as "BarChick" :)
Oh please. Unless you are Ivy League, nobody bumps your salary because you graduated from a certain college. IT Managers aren't THAT dumb anymore....quit fooling yourself.
"I threw up my hands in disgust and wondered if it had been such a good idea to have eaten my hands in the first place."
I am also persuing a degree in ComputerScience. I am working on a combined Honours with Computer Science and Philosophy, but am planning on getting a Master's or PhD. I was wondering about how much does having OSS development on your resumé improve your chances? Does it count for anything in the 'real world'? Do employers look at it as 'real experience' like as if I had been been employed? Really what is it all worth? For anyone hiring what are you looking for? Would say that a Philosophy degree brings a little something more to the table (I'm taking philosohy because I enjoy it and find it more intellectually demanding than under-grad CompSci, not for monetary gain, but I do figure it should at least show that I am a flexible thinker)? How about non-CS job experience?
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
I've had this problem in my recent recruiting adventures. What I found to be the most correct assumption is that if you are looking for a simple programming job, it won't pay much.
If you search for a job as a software engineer (which you should be prepared for given a 4 year cs degree), the starting salary should be much higher.
I've recently interviewed for two positions at the same company. The software engineering position paid signifigantly better than the programmer and one of the recruiters and I joked about the likelyhood that the programmer would eventually get outsourced.
This seems to be a pretty common thread in American companies. Programmers, in the view of corporate America, add lines of code. Software engineers add value, and are much harder to repalce and ofter make much more. Who are you going to replace? Someone who writes codes ``head-down'' all day, or someone who designs the product, meets with customers, documents and eventually programmes?
Not to be too much of a downer, but here's one for $70 a week - and you will find lower salaries than that posted on this site here
Here's some job advice for the recent computer graduate in today's economy.
1. Join the military and get into an intelligence specialty. If you plan on working with computers after you get out, I suggest Navy or Air Force though I know a great sys admin who was a Marine.
2. Get and keep a security clearance. Don't let it lapse. Don't do drugs or, God forbid, marry a non-U.S. citizen. Always pretend that you agree with everything George says and repeat after me: "Hanging is too good for anyone from France".
3. Earn 35% more (at least) once you get out and you don't even need to have any skills or a degree. Your job will be safe from outsourcing, there's a thousand Beltway Bandits begging for your resume, and headhunters are tracking down kids straight out of the military (as long as they have a ticket). It's like the dot com bubble!
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Exactly, it's not like they are THAT hard to find...
l larssense,00.html
For instance, in Australia:
Here's an EXCELLENT resource at... gee... the most popular job search site in Australia, took me all of 5 minutes to track down:
http://careerone.com.au/resources/index/0,8526,do
If you can't be bothered to look up these things, then I don't think you deserve to know... or get paid much.
If you actually studied hard, and know your way around, you should consider working up a portfolio. Most of the traditional creative arts require a portfolio. For years people saw computer science as an engineering-like process, and assumed a degree alone meant something. Actually, nowadays, a traditional engineering degree without a masters or PhD thesis doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot either.
But I digress. The point is it is extremely hard to tell how proficient a programmer is by simply talking to them. OTOH, five minutes browsing their source code tells you exactly what they know, and how they use that knowledge. Beware though; if you didn't actually learn anything in school, that too will show through like a sore thumb - if this is the case, avoid the source code and try to get the interviewer to talk about his kids.
Pick something random, peculiar, or fun. Try to do something that exercises all the areas you feel you are proficient in. Then write a simple program - a couple thousand lines is more than enough. If you're writing OO and use UML, consider adding that to the package. Same with unit tests, flowcharts, build scripts, or whatever else are the artifacts of your development process.
It has worked in my favour on job interviews, and I always appreciate when a candidate that I'm interviewing has something to show.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
So, as one who has hired (and been hired) at a number of startups and medium size companies, I have a bit on insight into the dynamics of what salaries have been doing in the valley since 1996 (when I started at Netscape). I'm not so sure how the specific analysis applies elsewhere, but the general advice applies.
:-)
Basically things got out of control between 98 and 2001 as venture capital flowed into companies that were required to grow quickly by the venture capital. All of the good talent was hired quickly, and then some of the average talent was hired. All that was left was the basic low-no skill talent.
So, there was a situation in which it became difficult to find low-average talent, and our standard economic models tell us that when demand goes up and supply stays relatively stable (it takes a little bit of time to supply new IT/Developers) that the price per unit will go up.
And that's what happened. The market tried to correct, everybody came flooding into the valley (as evidenced by Traffic Jams, zero rental inventory and huge monthly rentals) and, in order to have any chance of holding onto employees, companies started increasing salaries.
Good employees had great salaries and average employees had salaries that they would never normally be able to earn as companies scrambled to bring on staff. Salary inversions happened all of the time as an employee who started at $50K/year doing desktop support was making $20K/year less than a guy who started a year later. Most companies leveled these off, bringing up the $50K/year employee to $70K which created even more pricing pressure on employees.....
And then the Bust in 2001 when Venture capital dried up, the stock market basically collapsed. Public companies could no longer do secondaries to raise capital and Private companies, well, they grew very, very slowly if at all.
Companies laid off employees by the thousands and people fled the valley. (As evidenced by vast rental inventories, much lower traffic on 880 and 101 and a 30-40% drop in the cost of rental housing). Salaries in some cases dropped (HP/Microsoft dropped by approx 10% in the valley) and in almost every case froze for several years for existing employees.
For new employees, it was (and still is) a totally different situation - Basically for every IT job there are about 100-200 applicants. Only the good ones get hired and their salaries are at a competitive level. A solid IT Desktop Support employee at a mid-level company can expect to make 96-97 salaries in the valley ($50K-$60K). Sysadmins with 8-10 years experience are making $70-$90K. Everything has cooled off and the employer is in the drivers seat again.
The good news is that Great Engineers (IT/Software Developers) are _always_ impossible to find in the valley, good/bad/otherwise. You basically have to steal them from another company in order to hire them as they don't typically come directly out of school. Their salaries haven't dropped at all (as their companies held onto them - Great employees are always the last to be laid off) at their current salary, or they made a lateral move (equal salary) to a new company if their previous company went out of business.
What this means for you - If you love the business ignore the salary - it means nothing in the first 3-4 years of your career. Absolutely nothing. Work for free if you have to. Focus only on three things:
o The Quality of the Job - What will you be doing, will you have the resources to do it, will you be given lots of authority and opportunity to do new things.
o The Quality of the Company. Does it treat it employees ethically, Is it well financed (!!!), does it have great management, do you have highly skilled coworkers who will cross train you/develop you.
o The Quality of the Opportunity - Is this company in a hot space, are they developing a great product, are they first movers in a cool new technology that will become a standard.
Everything else will take care of itself if you are passionate, skilled and focussed. Don't worry about negotiating/looking for a great wage/etc... That will take care of itself. I promise you.
Even if you do make less than a waiter for the first 18 months or so.
- Any Day above Ground is a good Day (Michael Rich, 1997)
Sounds like every jackass liberal arts professor I had while attending Uni. I think they were bitter that they needed to get a PhD to get anywhere with their worthless area of study.
Wow! Who's bitter now?
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
Stock options...
Yahoo's Neighborhood Profiles section, searchable by zip code, has lots of nice data if you're pricing a job.
So what you're saying is that women are like evil hiring managers?
Grrr.
Without the Amazon-referer whoring:
If your just starting your job search now, you're already way behind. The people who are making good money right out of school are the ones who worked full time during school. People wonder why they can't find a job after graduating college. You know what, there are thousands of people just like you with the same experience competing for a handful of jobs. You need to be different than the rest, and to be different that means skills and experience. If your a college freshman reading this, start looking for a job this summer, instead of drinking beer and partying. Get an internship or co-op and you'll be the one laughing at graduation time... (I speak from experience)
"entry level software engineer" is not the right title. try "entry level programmer". at the entry level, i doubt you would do any engineering of software. you will most likely be on a team of programmers with specific requirements for the programming project.
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
Most of the Jobs that I have found require minimum work experience along with a degree. That level of work experience is typically 3-5 years. Please do not confuse learning to code on your own or any other such nonsense as work experience. Yes, it helps to learn on your own, but its much better to get away from the computer and get work experience, even if it's a 7 dollar an hour internship at the university.
Well, since you are already graduating, I hope you have work experience otherwise, it's going to be another 3-5 years before you can even hope of getting a job that makes those 4-5 years in school worth it.
I've got a year and a half left (till my BS) and I already have 3 years of experience in computational software development and 5 years for systems administration (mostly parallel development and design and deployment of beowulf systems). I got lucky in high school and grabbed an intership at a local manufacturer. Worked for their IT department doing piddly things, however, the entry on my resume and some dumb luck made future Jobs come to me.
I feel bad if you are getting this news too late. A friend of mine already graduated last semester and had little to no work experience. The best offer he got was an internship (internship??? the guy already graduated!) with IBM for around 12 bucks an hour to audit web code.
To answer your question: If you have no work experience, CNN claims that the average out-of-college CS degree holder will get a starting pay of around $48,000 a year. I call bullshit on that one and have a more conservative estimate of around $35,000 if you get lucky (it greatly depends on your location). At this point, you should just take what you can get and keep your eyes open for better opportunities. At this point, someone else is probably right behind you in the H.R. line, with his/her CS degree, drooling for that $10 an hour job.
If you have good work experience and have worked in a specialized field (not systems administration), the salary possibilities are endless if you know where to look. Accept nothing less than $50,000 or $60,000 if you know you're good, you have the experience to back it up, and you have sufficient funds to go a month or two without a job.
I advise that you look strongly at contract-to-hire type work, or just straight contract work, if you're good. If you were better than your peers in school, are more into what you do, etc, then this will likely pay off. Talent, skill, and ability pay. So take a contract job to make yourself low-risk for your employer, and you'll likely find yourself being reeled in as a permanent. Negotiate up.
If you're not good, say under the 75th percentile in skill, this will not work well, and it will be best at the 90th+. But if you're good, think about this.
Sometime around the end of June, when my first performance review was due, a memo went out. The bonus plan was becoming an annual payout at the fiscal year-end, instead of quarterly, and it was going to be half cash, half stock options. Much grumbling, but in the economy of late 2001, having a job was better than not having one.
Then right after September 11 (October 2, in fact), a bunch of us got laid off. The bonus-payout issue was raised. We were told (this is priceless) that a memo had gone out the day before, but our team hadn't gotten it because our project manager had forgotten to distribute it to us. The alleged memo said that effective with the last quarter (the first one where the deferred-bonus plan was in effect), all bonus payout was to be annual, at the end of the fiscal year, but now it would be all stock options.
Essentially what they did was, in stages and retroactive to the previous two quarters, convert a quarterly cash bonus retroactively to an annual stock-option award. That didn't sit well with me, and with the "keeping my job" incentive removed, I decided to see what my options were.
To make a long story short, the Virginia Department of Labor & Industry agreed with my interpretation, that since no employee signed any paperwork acknowledging the change in the bonus plan, the original offer letter's terms should stand. That I know of I'm the only person who fought them on this, but they didn't make me sign a confidentiality agreement so I made sure my co-workers knew. By the last day of December 2001 I had in my hand a check for 10% of my salary (6 months' worth of bonus) minus my relocation expenses. I probably could have quibbled over the meaning of "leave" versus "involuntarily terminated without cause", but by then I needed the money rather badly.
Get all the terms of your employment up front, in writing, and keep that paperwork safe!
-- Old Man Kensey
I've worked for the past 8 months as the tech for a bank, having graduated nearly a year ago with a degree in Computer Science and every damn honor my college was allowed to bestow on me. I have written many many thousands of lines of code for 'fun', although I haven't kept track so it could just as well be millions. I started at $33k and got a raise to $36k after 6 months. With the hours I end up working, though, that averages out to about $12/hour.
But the sun is shining through - I am currently tendering more than one offer in the $45/hour range, and the contract is short enough that I can still get more education starting in the fall if the sun isn't still shining.
Moral of the story: Take what you can get. You need a paycheck so you can get situated and out of the college lifestyle. Eventually, a real opportunity will knock.
Programmers are the production line workers of the 21 Century. It's not programmers that are needed but software engineers and the two terms are not synonyms. Software engineers analyse the problem, create designs and document them, create models (e.g. UML), use patterns, define APIs, integrate existing software components and the like. Once you've done all that properly the rest is just a mechanical process that any reasonably competant individual should be able to undertake. You need some management skills, design skill and a good general knowledge of technologies and software engineering concepts.
The company I work for has outsourced some of it's programming requirement. This has indirectly sorted the software engineers from the programmers in house. For a typical project we now carry out requirements analysis, an iterative design approach resulting in a detailed model and documentation and often framework code. The then whole thing goes to our outsources so they can do the boring bit, filling in the blanks.
"Also, buy the most expensive house you can afford"
This is the most common advice I hear given to first time home buyers and it is among the worst financial advice to receive. DO NOT buy the most expensive house you can afford.
I know a lot of people who followed this advice and ended up house poor because their financial circumstances changed and yet they're still locked into an investment that's not liquid.
Most of these people found themselves screwed because they bought as big as house as they could afford and then suddenly realized that when they wanted to have children their house payment was holding them hostage: one of you want to stay home with the kids? sorry, got the mortage to pay.
Also due to the dip in the economy many of these people found themselves without a job. Whoops. Again, their high house payments meant they ability to respond financially (say by taking a lower paying job for a while) was compromised because they couldn't or didn't want to sell their house and at the same time they couldn't afford to take a job that wouldn't allow them to make payments!
When you're looking for a house location is more important than the current price or the square footage. Ideally you should be looking for a house in the lower range of a nice neighborhood; some place where you're not going to find a gas station or a fast food joint across from your back yard some morning.
As for the folks claiming the only advantage in having a house is the tax deduction, don't forget that:
1) You're not paying rent
2) Your house may appreciate in value as well.
Jared
I just wanted to say that if I had Mod Points, I'd mod that Underrated. But for a different reason.
:P. I am amazed by it as a science, enthralled with the study of complexity in general. And I am enormously satisfied by solving problems the *right* way; this is how I imagine most other programmers feel about their jobs, but I've met a few for whom this is very much not the case.
"Not to say at all that $20/hr would be bad, just by comparison. I'm actually quite happy with my wage."
Myself -- I'm making, quite literally, $10 per hour -- and coding at a very high level, database-to-business objects-to-presentation level, and am even occasionally (read: when I have the time) asked to write and create visual content for the end-user documentation. I only have a 2-year AS degree, from a small technical college. (I got it when I was 18, but it's still just an A.S.)
I'm surprisingly happy with this job, despite the fact that when I work long enough hours, my actual hourly wage has gotten as low as $7.50. I think that the reason for it is two-fold:
1) I live in an area with a fairly low cost of living, in semi-rural Minnesota. More importantly, I have a lot of friends and family in the area -- and it's not that easy of an area to find a job in!
2) Because I am such a good value, I am afforded a lot more freedom in the way that I do my job, and in how I get to solve problems. This is a must, particularly when you occasionally have to work with procedural programmers (who are your superiors) that still feel that OOP (or functional programming, yadda yadda -- no elitism) is not "real work".
And I should probably add to that list a third reason:
3) I love programming. I respect programming as a real engineering profession, not as something that you can just *do*. Even with visual development tools
When these sort of things work out in your favor, and you aren't tied down, and the work that you're doing is actually more satisfying the harder you work on it -- then as far as I'm concerned, you've got it made. Regardless of what you're making per hour.