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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.
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.
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. :/
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.
Well in that case I'm sure Grand Island, NE. would love to have you.
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.
Come to seattle - we have a different sort of religion, but not so much with the enviroweenies. Oh, and you'll learn to hate guys on bicycles. Sadly, the weather is a bit gray, but the flip side is good skiing an hour or two away.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
European here. After a few years in London and then some time in Australia where things didn't pan out so great, I decided to head back to the old country, south of France.
Turns out I only lost about 10% on the salary, when really, I expected the cut to be more something like 30-40%. Turns out that if you find the right employer, they will go the extra mile if they've estimated your worth correctly.
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.
Ah, there he is...the ubiquitous blowhard "complaining" that the >$125k he's paid (well over twice the national average) is still too low for his glorious talent.
Hey, why not try your hand in sub-Saharan Africa? Almost no competion at all! Just think how much money you'll make! Hahahahahahhaahaa!!!
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.
Don't scout other areas, apply to better companies. Senior engineers at Netflix are paid much better than that. http://netflix.com/jobs
No, definitely not -- Bay Area has relatively hot job market; and while there are more expensive areas (northeast?) most states have much lower salaries. At least my experience between pacific northerwest and CA suggests that latter has significantly higher salaries, and is confirmed by sites that compare cost of living & compensation.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
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?
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.
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.
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.
The national average doesn't mean squat when housing prices are insane, as they are in Sillycon Valley. $125k in that area really isn't much money, because after your apartment rent, you won't have much left (and you can forget about buying a house on that salary).
Most other parts of the country, that's a nice salary. But not in the Bay Area. Why do you think so many employers are moving out, or setting up satellite offices in lower-cost areas?
My last job had a lot of those traits: great pay for local COL, no physical labor, not terribly difficult work. I almost never had to talk on the phone either. However, the work environment was horrible: I had to sit in a bull-pen environment, with all kinds of noise and distractions around me. I finally quit because of that. I simply couldn't concentrate with people interrupting me and having to listen to conversations around me. I also was fed up with never knowing what was going on, as the company had a policy against having meetings to disseminate information. The last straw was when I was told that I was expected to learn about the company direction, what's going on with the project, etc. by overhearing it.
I love Seattle, I used to live there. I was a DJ at some gothy clubs and lived on Cap Hill right across from the Funeral Home and Bauhaus Cafe. But I make well over 200k in SF and I left Seattle to have that.
I do OSS Development for webdev, there's some, but not a lot of that in Seattle. But maybe I should put my resume up there.
I have a lot to come back to and much (10yrs arch/dev) experience that I did not have before. Besides, a lot can change in 10 years.
I know that from life ... I've turned my back on about all my club friends in Seattle who looked me up on FB.
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.
No, it's that on my own, I make well over 200k CA$H and that to take a job, I'd make far far less, and for what?
Medical + Dental + 401k and stock OPTIONS?
I'd have to move out of where I live and adopt a much more frugal lifestyle.
WHY?
So I just keep on doing what I do best. Consult start-ups, take only cash and little or no equity. It's a treadmill, but one I can live with.
No, actually I've had over the years 3 devs each call me well after I've left, via my contact info in the DOCS and let me know how much they APPRECIATE my very well thought out and easy to understand way of doing things.
Who's ever called you out of the blue to compliment you in such a manner?
I dont apply at companies. Companies approach me.
I do consulting and have no shortage of clients (I am no temp worker -- direct to client only, no manager or agent)
The fact that I pull in about 300k a year as an independent is a hurdle to me wanting to take a FTE position. However, I would consider 180-200k a year quite strongly. The best offer in the Bay Area so far? $160k.
Dunno man. I get unsolicited offers all the time.
HIGH offers seem to be about 140k.
I make about 300k contracting on my own to startups. I enjoy that, do well at it and to take less than say 180k to do in-house FTE what I do as a gun for hire seems like a losing proposition.
Funny, I'm going to a gothy club in cap hill in about an hour. It's pretty nice here, and there are lots of startups in pioneer square. Take a look at the rubicon project if you like - it's a good place, and there are a number of good places besides that. I'm a year away from getting a MS at the local university, at which point, I may look at SF, although maybe not - social connections are strong things.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
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
Sorry, I guess I should have been more clear about what it is I do and make for income.
I make about $300k a year and live 1/4 mile from the Golden Gate Bridge on Federal Land and essentially pay my rent to the US Congress.
I consult and prototype for sparsely funded startups and DO NOT take equity. This brings me in about 300k a year.
I do well in SF and immediately found a niche here in 2001 that I have continued to fill for about 10 years now and quite successfully.
However, seeing the rates these blowhards have been offering falling far short of WHAT I KNOW I should be paid for such a role only makes me more disdainful. I would like to take a FTE position, but the salaries offered vs what I make do in fact make it a losing proposition.
I would however consider any FTE senior architect position offering 180-200k.
My email inbox in the last 36 hours?
1 on staff recruiter seeking middle-tier + UI Architect FTE
1 Established CEO with some funds from VC interests seeking my middle-tier + UI architect services
Both of these soliciting me, no prior contact.
Who will I most likely take?
The Established CEO
It's what I do.
via my contact info in the DOCS
You're doing it wrong.
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.
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_
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.
If $125k isn't that much, how do the people survive on much lower incomes, like the toilet cleaners, road sweepers etc?
I've had a pretty good experience with USAA. Maybe they are the one honest insurance company out there. ;-)
At night I drink myself to sleep and pretend I don't care that you're not here with me
1) They don't have a very high standard of living. Someone who goes to college for 4-8 years and goes to work for some big company in the Bay Area isn't going to settle for living in the ghetto; he's going to expect his salary to pay for a nice lifestyle. Otherwise, what's the point? People who have shit jobs don't have this expectation, and are OK with living in the ghetto.
2) They live with 10+ people per apartment. That brings down your living costs significantly. College-educated Americans aren't willing to live like that.
3) Many of them live farther out, and commute by train. However, this sucks because it takes another 2-4 hours out of your day. But if you're an hourly worker, and will only be working 8 hours (no unexpected overtime like a high-level salaried position frequently requires), that's doable, plus they put up with it. Again, the expectations are lower. People with higher expectations are usually going to want a shorter commute.
ooh, do you know a short blond (now redhead) girl that moved the other way in 2009? I mentioned you to her last night and I think she knows you.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Right, all I am saying is just that it'd be even lower in most other states. In WA 140k$ would be kind of high, for example. Not that offers in CA might be stellar per se; and from what I have heard, 140k$ does sound bit low And yes, there are tons of unsolicited contacts currently... job market for s/w engineers is rather hot these days. At least experienced ones.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
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.