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How Much Money do Programmers Really Make?
bigman2003 asks: "ADTmag.com recently released a list of average salaries for IT workers. Usually when I see these lists, I find out that I am grossly below the average salary. But this time I was very surprised to see that I am actually above the average! This is partly because of a recent raise, but it is also because the numbers quoted in this survey are lower than what I've seen the past from other surveys. This report quotes about $56,000 for the average application developer. I am a web developer (sure, laugh all you want) and I wanted to know specifically: How much are other web developers were making? And- How many hours a week does it take you to make it?"
It's not that easy. Where you live, standard of living costs, specialized training and abilities, years of experience, etc, all influence and alter this. Averages give you an idea, but you have to go on your abilities and what you can find. If you like your job, it often means more than an extra 5-10k per year. I think the real issue here is that people like to know how they rank compared to others, and reality is way to gray for that black & white approach.
Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
You could just post as an Anonymous Coward.
I am a web developer (sure, laugh all you want) I aint laughing on your salary or position, but you being a web developer should know to give a warning before linking to pdf files. It does annoy people.
How much you make is pretty meaningless without normalizing by cost of living. $50k in Idaho is effectively 2x as much as $50k in San Francisco.
-me
I don't know if this is true of every company, but it wouldn't surprise me, since global companies make the same profit from your work, no matter where you live.
So, as I see it, at least with my company, living in the heart of an urban area is something that comes straight out of employee's pockets, since it's primarily a benefit to the employee (we're a tech/manufacturing company, not a financial/investment firm or anything that might more reasonably REQUIRE you to live in the heart of a large city).
I'm a web developer, doing fine, but I'm not really conformable divulging what I make on Slashdot.
I don't mean this as a personal slam, but that exact attitude keeps salaries low. Why NOT talk about your salary? If you don't talk about it, you can't know how you compare. And although you might not care how you compare in a rat-race sense, you damned well should care that your employer treats you "fairly"...
Me, I make just a hair over $40k. Sound low, for someone with 10 years experience? In my area, I can afford a mortgage on that. And together with my SO, as a DINK couple, we do pretty damned well combined.
TALK about your salary! Don't brag about it, that just sounds obnoxious, but chat. Make sure that neither you nor your friends have gotten royally screwed.
I will never understand people who have this phobia of discussing how much they make. If you make something truly obscene (either minimum wage or seven figures), okay, you might have a reason to shy away from the topic - But within an order of magnitude of "average", help create a basis of comparison! It only hurts us, the workers, to remain tight-lipped about it.
A salary survey is nigh useless to begin with, and this one seems to be worse than normal. "Average salary" - what's that? Median or mean? Where's the standard deviation? What does 'broad spectrum of organizations' mean? Is it geographically diverse?
Here's another hint: a survey requires people who answer surveys. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that people making on the high end do not generally go out of their way to answer salary surveys, whereas people paid average or less than average might be a bit prone to worrying about their salary and therefore filling out surveys and looking them up.
Want to make more money? Instead of asking what other people make, ask yourself:
* What can I do that other people (or most other people) can't? What makes me good? What's my strength? How can I be better?
* How much is what I'm doing worth? How can I use my skills to create a larger value for a company or client?
* How can I leverage my work to produce more?
* What have I done that has exceeded expectations, that could not have been predicted and is a boon for whoever pays me?
If you have already come up with good answers for the questions above, you're probably making way more than the average already.
Be in good financial shape. People living paycheck to paycheck hurt themselves because they end up afraid to take risks. Save up a large cushion of living expenses - while 4-6 months is a normal financial planner's estimate, make sure you can get an additional 12 month's worth by the time that 6 is up. With the 18 month cushion you can afford to try a lot of other things.
Finally, if you don't like what you're making, consider doing something else. A friend of mine is making over $20/hr plus benefits reading gas meters. If I was getting paid a lousy $50k to program, I'd have taken a job at his place and spent my day walking around outside. If you find yourself on the low rung, maybe this is just not what you're meant to be doing.
I'm not a web developer, but as a general purpose code monkey for a university research position with 2 years on the job and 1-2 years previous computer work (and a BS from a good college), 40k$. It's low, but I usually like the work (good environment, low stress, crazy-flexible hours, etc), and, heck, it's employment.
Son, a woman is a lot like a refrigerator. They're six feet tall, 300 pounds... they make ice... umm...
You are making too much.
You are responsible for the design and implementation of the entire system, and yet you allow a huge, honking unreliable single point of failure that can bring the entire operation to its knees - you. That doesn't smack of good systems design to me.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I still can not understand why the average pay of a well-seasoned applications designer is still no match to that of a recently-graduated MBA. I mean, a company like Sun cannot exist without programmers and the like, right? And yet the survey indicates that a marketing droid gets paid better. What's the deal?
Or, think of your generic MBA graduate. They step in business they have no knowledge of and still get a better starting salary. Why? What is the contribution the make besides controlling the sprawling chaos that drives human activity?
This whole thing is messed up, value is being created from absolutely nowhere (what value marketing and business strategists bring to the individual collaborator of a company?) Maybe Marx is right.
The best way to find out what you should be making is to get some job offers from other employers. If you are underpaid, then you will probably not have too much difficulty getting a better offer. This will also give you the opportunity to negotiate, without fear, with your present employer.
On the other hand, if you are better-paid than average, it will be hard to find a better paying job.
One of the best bosses I ever had told me (among other people), "If you don't think you are being paid enough, look for another job that will pay you what you think you are worth. You will soon find out if you are right." I eventually took his advice, got another offer, and my employer countered.
And don't be shy about asking prospective employers for what you think you are worth. They won't hesitate to tell you if your expectations are out of line. If they say "OK" too quickly, you know you set your price too low.
Does anyone have any idea what someone like that should be making?
A request to hire a second IT guy. You can't do everything reliably, even if you were paid to do everything.
...you're only worth what somebody else is willing to pay you.
I've heard the same thing from my last employer and while it's hard to disagree with such hard-nosed economic logic, I think it breaks down for a lot of IT jobs because IT jobs tend to be pretty fluid -- they often flow around the rigid HR-type job descriptions. Developers admin systems, admins doing programming, DBAs doing admin tasks AND programming, guys (like the grandparent poster) doing it all. Immersively intellectually challenging work that involves taking calls once a week about spyware and why the Intraweb is down? Or repetitive tasks, but never suffering end-luzers?
The "other job" that may pay me more may or may not include more job responsibilities, but I can almost guarandamtee you that the other job will not end up being the "same" job.
And then there's the whole question of "pay". How much are some bennies worth? How much is it worth to have a job with a ton of flexibility with start-end times vs. one with real rigid work hours? And if the former is a 60 minute gauntlet of traffic and the other is a 10 minute walk?
A boss who's a dick but makes sure to hire a lot of sharp people? A boss who's a saint but tolerates nincompoops? A closed door office vs. a low-wall cube in a farm? 8 days off you can take whenever vs. 3 weeks that requires D-Day logistics to be able to take a single day?
All of these things jumble together to make the "someone who pays more" concept so untestable that it's hard to measure.
I completely agree. It's a little-believed sociologic fact that employers want people to keep their salaries secret (regardless of reason) for the specific fact that it allows them to pay the same workers different amounts. I've never heard a single phrase applied better since I was but a wee 20-something and was told (in passing) by a manager that "Hey, you know how it is, the squeaky wheel gets the grease..."
/always/ tailored to the current employees and never hold true to everyone in a specific position.
I get so frustrated when people balk at the idea of discussing their salaries - how are the majority of people supposed to truly know their worth. One of the other posters mentioned the better companies having defnied pay levels, but these are
I'm glad someone was modded-up for airing these opinions.
-volve
Salary amount is MOOT unless you consider STANDARDS OF LIVING where you get the job. $60,000 in DC is roughly equal to $35,000-40,000 where I was raised.
Are you kidding me? Let's see.... roads, emergency services, national defense, local schools, radio & TV (agencies oversee thos airwaves ya know), local law enforcement, national guard, grain subsidies to keep staples affordable, etc. I highly doubt you are as self-sufficient as you think, unless you live in a shack without electricity and eat what you hunt or grow.
Guess FEMA can just skip your house on the next flood, eh?
You say you don't use the services that the government provides for you, but that's bullshit. You like having a standing army to protect you? You like the fire dept? How about those really fucking cool sewer systems? I guess you don't use those. I bet you've never been to a library either. You walk on sidewalks? I bet you never use mail either, pay all your bills online huh? FDIC seems to help keep those banks in working order.
Fact is, your self-centered moron trying to justify your asinine statement. I own my own business, and the fact that you got owned by the IRS is proof that your an idiot. Do you know how many tax breaks there are for owning a small business? Probably not. I bet you had a sole proprietorship. Since you couldn't raise the whopping $250 to incorporate yourself, you most likely got screwed. You can write off almost everything you use daily if you have a home based business, but I bet you didn't know that either.In what way is posting on a tech forum that I don't pay income tax bad? Explain to me the exact repercussions you think that honesty is going to have?Also, I would lay $20 on the idea that "pissing off one metric shittonne worth of tech geeks" is going to have exactly zero effect on me.
That's expected coming from a person who honestly thinks they don't use any gonvernent services.Yes, 7 figures is obscene. The fact that you don't realize that it is highlights how out of touch you are with 99.99% of the planet. Hell about 99% of america. After just a couple of years making that you will make more money than most people in the world will during their entire lives. And you expect it.
That's obscene.
Note, I am not blaming you or your profession. It is something that we as a culture have encouraged and are now paying the price. The new ruling class will be the ones who make the laws.
I mod everyone down who says "I'll get modded down for this." I hate to disappoint.
I'm an Electronic Data Interchange consultant. It takes suprisesly little knowledge to call yourself that. It takes quite a bit to be good at it. I'm somewhere in between.
Mostly I use shell scripts and translation applications (gui to text-based formats) to move data from one propritary system/format to another.
Though I do use a lot of perl scripting to get my job done, I do not consider myself a programmer. I've never written a program that was speced out before-hand by someone else. All my perl scripts were my own invention to fill a void that needed filling or to analyze soemthing that was suspicious.
Mostly I do damage control beacause none of my predescessors had the time or foresight to design the system well. While I am documenting all the flaws, everything is not fixed yet.
I obviously made the most of my luck, but even with these limited skills I think my success is due to:
- superior communication and people skills
- picking simple, cheap solutions that meet requirements.
- being self-sufficient
- realizing that a ton of money can be made doing unexciting but high-accountability work.
More than anything though was just being nice to people when interacting with them. Treating people with kindness and meeting their needs goes a very long way.I realize that not everyone will see such an opportunity or even take it (my boss threatened to sue me). But if you work hard and look out for yourself you can find tremendous opportunities out there.
I saw my salary double between 1992 and 1997, and again between 1997 and 2001. Then the great tech implosion happened. My salary dropped to half in 2003, and right now I'm just coding "for free" letting the wife work as I watch the kids. Quite a rollercoaster ride, but honestly, I'm happier now than I have ever been. Here's why:
When you work in tech for someone else, you are creatively constrained. You look for creative outlets any way you can, but ultimately, someone else is in control of your destiny. You can tell yourself; hey, the creative, fun stuff I'll do in my free time! Yeah, right; your free time should be with your family and friends, not sitting in front of a computer, just like at work. Or maybe you think: my creative outlet is at work! Yeah, right...
Maybe you're the programmer; cool, someone else gets to decide the architecture. Maybe you are the architect; cool, someone else gets to decide your budget. Maybe you're the CIO, cool, someone else affects the architecture, and someone else actually build the sh*t, and if they do a sh*tty job, you're hosed. Yes, you can't do it all. You need to work on teams to tackle big things. But do you really get to decide, in any way, what those big things are? Or are you just being told to dig a ditch at a certain place, to a certain depth and width and breadth?
If you want to be truly happy, let go of the need for the material crap and focus on taking control of your own creative direction. WORK FOR LESS MONEY but take a greater stake in what you are doing. Freelance. Work on a small team. Work part time and free up time to follow your creative bliss. Or just live off the spouse for awhile. It's ok; 50 years ago it was *normal* for someone to stay at home.
Be proactive and choose who and what you rely on, keep things lean and mean, and INVENT; CREATE. Work hands-on at creating.
Remember this: in 20 years, when you look back, will you think "gosh, I'm glad I had a house with 2 more bedrooms, that extra car, those weekends at the cabin. I'm glad I had that extra TV in the bedroom, and took that trip to Florida every year!" Or will you think, "I made some cool stuff. We lived OK. I followed my dream."
If you're reading this, you're probably in tech. That means you're likely getting paid twice as much as everyone else anyways, simply because tech is still a valued commodity, no matter what the outsourcers or people stuck in dot-com-lala-land say. WORK HALF AS MUCH, and invest that extra time into an open source project that you care about... your karma will thank you.
$600k mortgage, no down payment, 7% interest rate (worst case for a jumbo loan--if you have more than this you are stupid).
Monthly expenses?
$4000 loan
$200 home owners insurance
$750 property tax (1.5% of $600k / 12)
$350 PMI (got 20% down? some loans let you out of this, usually at the cost of interest rate)
$250 Electric/Gas
$40 Water/Sewer
------
$5590
Only the interest paid against a mortgage is tax deductible (which in the beginning of a mortgage will be most of the payment, figure around $42k the first year). 2004 Income tax rates list $146,751 - $319,100 as 33% for single filers, $178,651 - $319,100 as 33% for joint.
$190k - $42k = $148k, or 33% income tax rate (assuming single), so:
$190k / 12 = 15800
15800 - 33% = 10586
10586 - $1000 = 9586 (estimating $1k for other federal taxes)
9586 - 5590 = 3996
$4k to spare every month after taking care of house and taxes? You should be doing fine.
I got "laid-off" (canned) in July of 2004 from my $45K job for a ad agency in Milwaukee where I worked as a web developer. I spent a couple months looking for work for another company before I hung out my shingle and started working for myself. Before I got paid about $20/hour, now I charge $80/hour and snap up the clients my former employer turns away because "they don't have the budget" that can afford their $120-160/hour.
I should hit $100k this year, and I only have to work about 3hours a day to make it work. I spend tons of time with my son, wife, and get to do all the home improvement projects I want. Take it from me, break the chains and go work for yourself. Getting "laid-off" was the best promotion I ever got.
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
I'm an experienced Java developer in a large US IT corporation. I'm a team lead for a group of developers that produce large, complex web applicaitons. I get paid an excellent salary (105k/yr), have great benefits, and 5 weeks vacation a year. I work from home, and no one cares what my schedule is. Just make it to required phone conferences, deliver high quality work on time, and keep ahead of the curve technically. However, the job is extremely stressful and it requires an average of 60 hours per week. Plus, turning out the next big enterprise app just doesn't interest me too much anymore. I'd be willing to take a big pay cut for a lot less stress, a big reduction in hours, and something I find compelling to work on. I'm saving my pennies, and I'll be making the leap to something else in a year that will pay a lot less, but be a lot more fulfilling and leave me with more time for life outside of work.
Ok economics boy, as I understand it the purpose of an efficient market is to drive the cost of goods down. As my labour is the product we happen to be discussing, why would I want to co-operate in creating an efficient market?
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'm a fresh software engineer and I get $36,000.
:P
This might sound too little, but I pay NO taxes what so ever, and I don't have concerns for medical insurance (it's free). Of course, I live in Kuwait and the system is vastly different from the US, but salary isn't just a number, it depends on the expenses you have to pay for a good style of living.
Since most services are subsidized here, $36,000 is probably equal to $80,000 is some midwestern states.
One more thing, I can never lose my job
"Building this taboo around salaries is a nice psychological means of keeping wages as low as possible."
Exactly. Why should a company pay any more than you're willing to accept? They know that most tech types don't counter-offer. Women in particular seem to think it's rude, but I've noticed techs in general seem not to want to mess with it.
Several years ago a female friend of mine (Masters degree in CS) was excited about an offer she got from a Fortune 500 company. I told her she should counter-offer. She hedged, she paused, she said it would feel uncomfortable. But I made her promise. A few days later she called me over, thrilled to report that they had accepted and she'd be making several thousand more than the original offer. In her mind it was like the Magic Money Fairy had just made an appearance, but it's just common business sense.
I just switched jobs - the new company made me a reasonable offer, but I thought I was worth more. So I made a counter-offer in good faith. The result? An extra $2.5K/yr plus a $3K signing bonus. Money that I never would have seen if I hadn't asked! The job I just left? Same deal, asked for a few thousand more than offered originally. They accepted.
You have to sell them on yourself, and then you have to deliver. Plus you need a set of marketable skills (I do C++/networking/GUI/DB in niche markets). With that in place, I think a counter-offer shows them that you've got some self-respect and ambition. If they don't budge, it's not like their original offer goes away. And in the rare instance they withdraw it, you really didn't want to work there in the first place. Trust me. Assuming you made a reasonable counter-offer, otherwise you come off sounding like a tool. Know your target company, know your perceived value to them.
Switching jobs every 3-5 years is key as well (with some exceptions). At least 3 years shows that you stick around to get things done, and your salary will grow much faster with each jump between companies than by staying on and hoping for those COLA + 1% raises.
The company I'm going back to? Several years have passed, I've expanded my skills, and I'll be making about 40% more than when I left. There's no way I could have gotten 40% in raises in the same time period had I stuck around. But I left with a good reputation and came back in with solid interviews, good reputation and personal references from my latest employer.
Tend that career garden well. Any broken chain of good references/reputation can cost you jobs and tens of thousands of dollars in unrealized salary boosts. Never burn bridges. Let me say that again - NEVER burn bridges.
I'll get off my soapbox now and get back in my rocking chair by the back porch. :-)
Ever flown on a plane? Ever wonder who paid for that pilot to be trained? Because it was probably tax money...
Same thing with airline pilots (aka glorified bus drivers)..
When it comes to landing time, I want the best glorified bus driver there is in the cockpit.
you missed off this:
#!/usr/bin/env perl
While I agree with your main premise, I think it requires further clarification. The reason the MBAs make more is because they are typically in administration. Administrators will always make more because they make the decisions (opposed to doing the work). What salary to pay someone is just another decision.
Of course the downside is that you're working for the government.
I worked for the DoD as a summer job when I started college, and one of the consulting companies I worked for had a large number of government clients. I could never live with the amount of politics and beauracracy involved in a government job for any amount of money.
You are right about the benefits, though. Can't beat government work for good benefits, except maybe by joining the military. The fact that you don't seem to have to know anything or be capable of anything at all in order to get or keep most government jobs is probably a real plus for many people, too.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?