Slashdot Mirror
Study Says Software Engineers Have the Best US Jobs
D H NG writes "According to a new study by CareerCast.com, software engineers have the best jobs of 2011 in the United States, based on factors such as income, working environment, stress, physical demands and job outlook, using Labor Department and Census data. Mid-level software engineers make between $87,000 and $132,000 a year, putting them in the top 25% of the 200 professions studied by income. Software engineers beat out last year's number one job, actuary, which came in third, behind mathematician."
Software engineer: $87,000; Computer programmer: $71,000. It is weird that they break those two up.
Best Slashdot comment ever
This study covers competent software engineers which might explain why your outcomes are so different.
I'm astonished that would be the top job last year. Personally, I'd rather shoot myself than be an actuary. But of course, a good actuary would already know that...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Being a software engineer can mean a lot of thing. You can work in a big company churning out DAO's all day or working at a little company architecting your own projects. You might make a lot of money. You might have a lot of time to look at slashdot and try to get one of the first five posts.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
Assuming you can actually find a Software Engineering job that will stay in the U.S., yeah, they're the "best."
You'll notice that the criteria don't include "intellectual fulfillment." Actuaries rate pretty highly in all the criteria the study considers, but perhaps their job is not as interesting as some others.
Where else can you get paid $100k+ a year to gripe all day on Slashdot about how crappy your job is?
The 132k figure is not for mid-level engineers (although maybe it is in a big city). The actual quote from the article is "Most earn a typical mid-level income of about $87,000 and top out at $132,000". Makes me feel a little better and it's maybe the first time I RTFA in over a decade of visiting here.
Who let the word out?!?
Thanks editors, now I can justify my choice of a mathematics BS with a compsci minor to my parents!
On a more serious note, upper div math is no joke. The 1800's and 1900's had some serious brain power.
Eat sleep die
I'd rather have the Dude's job.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
I'm 10 years out of college and make at the low end of that range, though I live somewhere that's relatively cheap compared to most hotbeds of software development. I work 40 hours a week (sometimes a few less) and probably spend 25% of that not doing anything productive in a work-related sense. So from a "money per unit effort" sense I'm pretty well off. From a "doing something that is intrinsically rewarding and gives me a sense of pride and accomplishment"...not so much.
Do you think they, or monster.com, are going to publish a story with more realistic salaries? They want more people using their site for job searching.
I have a mathematician friend from a top tier university who would be very interested to know that mathematicians make >$90k/yr. Heh. He's not the lame-weirdo type mathematician either, fyi.
... that so much of the perception of how good a job is would be derived from how much money one makes doing it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
You'll notice that the criteria don't include "intellectual fulfillment." Actuaries rate pretty highly in all the criteria the study considers, but perhaps their job is not as interesting as some others.
I know some actuaries, and they find their jobs very intellectually stimulating and fulfilling. For people who really like math and statistics, doing it professionally is enjoyable and challenging. It's not like actuaries spend their days adding up big columns of numbers -- we have computers for that. Actuaries figure out how to use sophisticated statistics to tease out subtle patterns from large masses of information. It's challenging and the results are often surprising.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Manager: "Why do you need a pay raise?"
Me: "Um, because my job makes me feel like I'm in the asshole of he world."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Actuaries are people who didn't have enough personality to be accountants.
What's the difference between a mathematician and a large pizza?
A large pizza can feed a family of four.
Maybe I need to leave the Bay Area. I'm most definitely senior level and I'm constantly offered architecture positions, but seems most want to pay $125k (hahahahaha), which I consider LOW (and it is) for that sort of work on a FT basis, so I stick to contracting. It seems the Bay Area pays lower because there's more supply of IT professionals here, driving down the price. This article makes me consider wanting to scout for other areas where there's growing demand, but less of a talent pool to draw from. I know I sure wouldn't miss living in SF, talk about a den of over-educated idiots. It's ok if you're into political correctness to the point of religion and "progressive liberalism" to the point where it's an environmentally-friendly form of fascism. So yeah I'd be happy to leave.
I have carried the title "Software Engineer" for 13 years. I'm of mixed opinion about how great the job is. It pays pretty well, but much of that is relative to what you're comparing to.
There are worse jobs out there, no doubt, but we're not just coders at least in my experience and many people I know in Silicon Valley. You have to read a lot of boring documents. You have to know how to write. There are meetings. There are customers to talk with. For me what makes it "not the greatest job in the world" is that it's stressful in a way that people don't understand.
Deadlines always loom, and they are always too short. A good SE has to constantly decide where to unit test, design, explain to management, or just hack to get it done. There's no worse feeling when management decides that a project is taking too long and asks "who can we add to the project?" like we and our code is just plug-n-play factory work.
That is stressful and few people understand the kind of stress created on the job. I'm not asking for pity. It's a good gig overall, but sometimes I wish I would have stuck with my original, lower paying pursuit of teaching junior college mathematics.
As a software engineer, this makes sense to me. I haven't met many other engineers who don't like their jobs. Those who do, quit and do something else. I suspect it helps that before you get called "engineer" you build some widely usable skills, and we get paid pretty well even early in the career. So if you don't like it, you have some flexibility in finding something else. Try that in a field with highly specialized (or no) skill, or less ability to save money.
$132K as an upper bound sounds about right for mid-level engineers but is a bit low as an upper bound for senior software engineers at large corporations. Principal software engineers at Microsoft are paid at around $160K with fairly huge bonuses that push their yearly pay to nearly $200K. Staff software engineers at Google and others are in the neighbourhood. Note that these are cream-of-the-crop engineers who have chosen to stay as ICs rather than go into management. Source: personal knowledge and glassdoor.com.
Does "best job" mean "most easily replaced" for budget reasons? Must be why my job was "outsourced"
As an astronomer/astrophysicist, I find it hilarious that "physicist" rated higher than "astronomer" due to stress level. Apparently working with real data is much more stressful than with just theory.
And mathematicians are even higher, the hippie bastards...
It is roughly the same distinction between an electrical engineer and an electrician. Sorry, I didn't have a good car analogy.
The notion of an objectively "best" job is absurd on the face of it. I have a job that, on the face of it, is pretty good. The pay is great for the local cost of living, the work environment is comfortable, the physical labor is minimal, it's not especially difficult work, I like most of my co-workers, and it's for an organization that's doing work I believe in. But I fucking hate it, because it's a terrible match for my personality. It's 75% of the time on the phone (no, not telemarketing), which I'm sure would be fine for a "people person" who likes smalltalk and chit-chat, but I absolutely despise talking on the phone. I don't even phone with my friends, instead either meeting them in person or e-mailing or texting them. So my every working day is a living hell, even though this survey would conclude it was a "good" job. And I seriously think I'd rather be assembling refrigerators or delivering pizzas.
is presented here
We hardware engineers are your gods. :-) Without us, what would you run your software on? Hey, I tease. Mostly. :-D
If you are a software engineer and you make over a million dollars per year, do you think you would want people to know this? I'd rather just file a W-2 and say I made $20K/year and write the rest off through my corporation as an expense. I think once you get above a few hundred K per year, it really behooves you to adjust what you report as personal income accordingly, otherwise you're just going to be giving away all your money towards taxes. I think most people in this position are already doing this tho, so I'm preaching to the choir I'm sure. :/
Software engineering beat out porn star? Really?
Also pension actuaries have to learn a lot about the Internal Revenue Code and ERISA, both extremely challenging, extremely convoluted bodies of law; it's not all just numbers.
Attorney is ranked 82nd? There is no way that job should be ranked that high, calls their methodology into question.
You offer this as evidence FOR that job being intellectually fulfilling?
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
Obligatory MP reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdEVWlnWc7s Gratuitous boobies ~:50s
So... A major dataset is what people doing those jobs told them? Most people have performed few different roles and for few employers. Most people have no idea, except that the grass is always greener elsewhere.
True this is my impression based on anecdotal evidence, but since I work as an accountant and most of my time is out at a client, I get to observe and interact with lots of different people at work and see their payroll. And for some reason people have a habit of confiding in me, I think they're looking for some independent assurance on just how overworked and underpaid they are.
Or aren't. I can recount stories, but it just ends in a muddle because none of them really have any clue whether they're being overworked or underpaid. There is some kind of masochistic humour to be had though when (and this happens so often it's a standing office joke) you have to sympathise with someone saying they wished they make close to what you do, only to later do the payroll section and find they make 25-50% more.
You'll notice that the criteria don't include "intellectual fulfillment." Actuaries rate pretty highly in all the criteria the study considers, but perhaps their job is not as interesting as some others.
I know some actuaries, and they find their jobs very intellectually stimulating and fulfilling.
However, at least in the US, the results the actuaries come up with are invariably used to screw people out of money. No insurance rates have ever gone down as a result of an actuary's work - the results are used only to decide which group of people a company can justify screwing just a little bit harder.
Hence those of us who don't find that kind of work to be interesting or fulfilling then also find that the work is on ethically shaky ground as well. And those of us who would find the work to be interesting or fulfilling would still find the work to be ethically questionable.
Frankly from my vantage point pimps and drug dealers are more honest than insurance company employees. Insurance companies I place on the same level ethically as politicians and used car salesman.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Actuaries are people who didn't have enough personality to be accountants.
Or strong enough ethics to sell hookers and drugs on the street corner.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
You'll notice that the criteria don't include "intellectual fulfillment." Actuaries rate pretty highly in all the criteria the study considers, but perhaps their job is not as interesting as some others.
To play the devil's advocate I can think of one reason why someone might want to become an actuary rather than any of the other highly-rated jobs from the survey.
That reason is one of the key things that sets that job apart - nobody ever (possibly in the history of all humankind) calls an actuary beyond business hours. You might need a software engineer in the very wee hours of the morning (perhaps because the attached project has foreign clients) but you can't say the same for actuaries. Hell I'm a graduate student in the biological sciences and I bet I've had more off-hours calls related to my work while working on my PhD than most actuaries will receive in their entire lifetimes.
That said, I still wouldn't want that career path for myself. I suspect I'd find 24hour on-call plumbing more rewarding.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Code Monkey: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Wy7gRGgeA
Brought some tears to my eyes for the truths there about submission to authority to earn a living -- even, and especially, when you are a good developer...
How to build a world that works for everyone, even would-be code monkeys:
http://knol.google.com/k/paul-d-fernhout/beyond-a-jobless-recovery#Four_long(2D)term_heterodox_alternatives
That's what I've been doing with my "spare" time instead of building the "The Future Soon" and perfecting a warrior robot race: :-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDiDK_yBCw0
On creating and using killer robots, btw:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I seem to remember a guy named Steve saying that there's better money selling magazines door-to-door.
I don't get it, why the hostility? All they do is calculate risk for insurance purposes.
I have a buddy who is an actuary. He's got great job security, insurance on his everything as a benefit, really high salary, and he gets to have long lunches around the City of London all the time. In which he can drink. I don't know why you wouldn't do it. It's even intellectually interesting, with lots of mathematical models (from early statistics to things like extreme value models). And the field itself has a history worthy of a few books (spice trade insurance, Lloyds names, suicides, asbestos, natural disasters).
I don't get the hostility...
I thought developer jobs were being offshored, and inshored, out of existence. Maybe they don't mean good jobs for US workers?
Or strong enough ethics to sell hookers and drugs on the street corner.
All they do is calculate risk for insurance purposes.
Which is inevitably used to justify rate increases. Never in recorded history has an actuary's new work been used to reduce insurance rates.
I don't get it, why the hostility?
Sorry for taking this out of order this time, but I despise all insurance industry workers. I see that industry as being morally bankrupt to an almost unfathomable level. Actuaries can do all they want to make themselves feel good at night, but in the end they are just aiding a machine that exists to make money off of making us miserable.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Because they are ignoring exponential technological change and breakthroughs in nutrition.
"Eating for Health"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPiR9VcuVWw
"[unrev-II] Singularity in twenty to forty years?"
http://www.dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/discussion/0126.html
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
in US, a guy making $100k a year would probably end up with $60k to $70k in spendable money in his pocket, depending on which state he's in (some states have higher income tax than others)
You don't find any use in insuring yourself against unlikely events, such as your house burning down? Surely it takes some of the fickleness out of life.
And why wouldn't rates go down? Insurers need to compete to get the business, like everyone else.
Or the lack of integrity to work in HR.
You offer this as evidence FOR that job being intellectually fulfilling?
You would be surprised how excited some pension actuaries I've met get over this stuff.
nobody ever (possibly in the history of all humankind) calls an actuary beyond business hours.
I have.
Um... Really? Last time I checked Firefighter was still a job.
If you don't find that you are getting a good deal with insurance, then why buy it? Except in cases where you are required to (minimal car insurance, or full coverage if you have a loan). For example, I never buy extended warranties on electronics (I consider that a form of insurance), because in my experience it would cost more than it pays back in the long run. Another example, if you are a teenager driving a $8000 car, it doesn't make sense to pay $4000 a year for comprehensive collision insurance.
Frankly from my vantage point pimps and drug dealers are more honest than insurance company employees. Insurance companies I place on the same level ethically as politicians and used car salesman.
I think your post is extremely offensive to used-car salesmen.
You don't find any use in insuring yourself against unlikely events, such as your house burning down? Surely it takes some of the fickleness out of life.
I am not opposed to the concept of insurance. I am, however, opposed to the way insurance companies operate. Every last one of them is, from my vantage point, legalized extortion. They are the slimiest of con artists, getting away with their crimes because they have all of our politicians of every stripe and color on their books.
And why wouldn't rates go down? Insurers need to compete to get the business, like everyone else.
Except for when they co-conspire against the consumers. Sure they can find that their rates are a bit high and driving customers elsewhere, but then they'll just do some more mathematical mumbo jumbo to bring the customers back (or use scare tactics), or just cheat (as they often prefer) and share a cut with their buddies in the other insurance companies. Morality left the insurance industry a long, long time ago, regardless of how clean cut their commercial spokespeople are.
So to answer your question, the rates don't go down because that would cut into their profit. They "reduce" rates by raising all the other ones and saying "look how your rates are lower [after we raised all the other ones]!"
While the actuaries themselves might be the most morally sound folks in the industry, that is like saying that chicken pox is less dangerous than small pox - they can both be extremely dangerous depending on your health state and either way you'll be ill for at least a while. Insurance, on the other hand, will make me ill until the day I die (at which point it will make everyone who knew me ill).
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
As someone who spends $1,400 a month on private health insurance, I spend it because the risk of someone in the family needing a 6 figure treatment is worse. Since the risk is actually low, I don't consider it a good deal. A child's health has a different weight than that $8000 car.
www.joking.net
The job better be best as long as we have it. In this profession, the older you become, the useless you become. An advice to young guys, there is no Banking 2.0, Human 2.0 or Constitution 2.0 coming anytime soon so the longer you are in banking and health care law the more expert and consequently more valuable you become. In software they have anew version every six month so unless you work your butt off to learn new technology you are considered dead meat. And please don't try to go into any technology that is "cool", there are guys in Ukraine and Russia who would work free in those technologies because its cool and believe me, once you are 40+, it is impossible to compete with free.
Where are these high paying jobs they speak of? And how much do they really make after you take into account all the high paying jobs are in places with a high cost of living to go with it, and the lower paying ones.. well you get the idea. Everyone in California makes ridiculous amounts of money even though their job is usually perfectly transplantable elsewhere. With so many tech jobs in that state it really skews the numbers. How much does a "software engineer" make in a humble small town in a red state? Usually not so much...
Like any good risk analysis, you have a Likelihood and a Severity generating your RPN.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
You obviously know nothing about the industry. Many insurance lines (especially liability) are in a "soft market", and effective rates have been decreasing for several years, often by 5%+ a year.
If you don't buy liability insurance you may not get that example. But you probably know something about car insurance. On a loss ratio basis, companies like Progressive and Geico attacked the auto market and won market share from companies like State Farm and Allstate. Their secret? More sophisticated and efficient pricing algorithms, which enabled lower prices for many drivers.
Your whole post doesn't make any sense anyway—insurance is a competitive market; if they were really screwing their customers, new companies could just enter and take their profits. It only takes a few guys to start an insurance company and there are about 1000 registered in the US.
Where's the entry for "corrupt politician"?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
This is provably false. In most states, insurance levels are a matter of public record, so you can walk into the office of your state's Department of Insurance and look at ratefilings (some put theirs online, like Florida. There you fill find many, many filing for rate decreases.
In fact, for entire industries, rates have been going down.
Uh huh, every single one of the thousand insurance companies in the US is crooked. Also, you know this for a fact. Why do people keep buying from them? Why doesn't a single honest company get started? Why doesn't anyone know this except you? It's all a mystery.
However, at least in the US, the results the actuaries come up with are invariably used to screw people out of money.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
Z8 already covered the rest, but I had to at least say that.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
You have to think about more than your own car's value. "Comprehensive collision insurance" would cover damage to your vehicle, the other vehicle, and the squishies inside both of them. The squishies can be by far the most expensive. Still, yeah, $4000 seems a lot higher than you should be paying.
You obviously don't know much about what actuaries do or how insurance companies work, but I give you kudos for your use of truthiness. Did you even know that the profit margins of insurance companies are regulated?
> based on factors such as income, working environment, stress, physical demands and job outlook
If they had also factored in shagablity-of-profession then Software Engineer would have crashed down the ratings :-(
About how known bugs get shipped. For $87 grand, I can get almost that laid back.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
I am a software engineer at a huge corporation and have been looking for jobs at other companies and interviewing, so I have a good amount of data here. And top of the line engineers are rarely paid more than $95,000, usually start at $80,000 for someone with 10 years experience running global programs that have about 10 transactions per second and make millions of dollars. Mid-level engineers often get $40,000-$90,000 at most. So the numbers appear to be pulled out of thin air. These numbers are more closer to reality. But yes it is the best job there is, because you impact everyone on the planet. Much better than being a actuary... but the numbers that management is allocating for actuaries are now much higher so I am thinking of switching.
I'm sure all the other programmers are aware of this as well. Salaries used to be higher, but they have dropped rapidly due to poor management. A few years ago they were much higher. Maybe the salaries used are based on people locked in at the old hiring salaries and are thus way out of date.
I looked at the article and comments....... yeah and the article compared a software engineer to a weatherman (which is is much less demand)!
You would never pay "away all your money towards taxes" - and contrary to popular belief, we have lower taxes now than we had for most of the 20th century. It always pays you to make more money, you always retain most of it. Except in the case of tax credits, spending money just to write it off costs you money - since it only reduces your taxable income dollar for dollar but not taxes are only reduced to a lesser amount according to your effective tax rate. What the write-off does is exclude your business expenses fro your taxable income.
The article doesn't cite any documents describing its methodology.
It is very likely worthless.
Seastead this.
I've had a pretty good experience with USAA. Maybe they are the one honest insurance company out there. ;-)
At night I drink myself to sleep and pretend I don't care that you're not here with me
From first hand experience, when I shift software work one of the 5 cities above, my costs drop by 80%. Key staff remain in the US, and the other 80% go global. And don't assume a good degree will make you immune to this. I've had NYU grads outsourced because they couldn't cut it.
Those making $170K/year are at the top, and are immune to this. Anyone below ~$120K (NY metro area) is right in the cross-hairs.
This fails to consider the growing segment of software development: the component contractor, making $500-$1000 per job. What they earn annually, and how that impacts existing project staffing, has yet to fully play out. My assumption is that piece-part work pays less than salary, but we need a real study to see the impact.
Beware: I believe all are created equal, and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.