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Taking a Look At High-End Programmer Salaries

Posted by timothy on from the today-let's-take-the-gold-robot dept.

msmoriarty writes "Our reporter decided to try to document the high end of programmer salaries (at least in the US). It seems that $300,000 to $400,000 and up is not unheard of in the financial industry, but the highest salary we could document was apx. $1.2 million, earned by Sergey Aleynikov, who was later convicted of stealing proprietary source code from a previous employer, Goldman Sachs."

2 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. Gotta be careful when. by Sir_Sri · · Score: 4, Informative

    I know a few guys who a decade ago were in the million a year range, and are now in the 250-300k.

    If you're working with people databases, financials, or just on a product that happens to do crazy awesome (minecraft) you can make a pile of money. But expect 100-200k range if you're really good these days it seems like.

    That's not to say you can't make money in direct offshoots of programming, for example becoming a producer on a project, where you may touch some programming still but are now more managerial, or design.

  2. Testing? by TheLink · · Score: 4, Informative

    If your bosses know the right people you don't need testing.

    They just cancel the transactions if you screw up:
    http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/07/markets/explaining_wall_street_turmoil/

    Or prosecute the humans who beat your algo:
    http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/security/3244186/norwegian-traders-convicted-for-outsmarting-us-stock-broker-algorithm/

    Technical know-who trumps technical know-how.

    --