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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."
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.
someone has to fix the offshore teams' fuckups.
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.
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.
$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.
Oh, don't be so harsh. There could be a negative correlation...
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.