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Dr. Dobb's 2012 Salary Survey
CowboyRobot writes "It's that time of year again, and Dr. Dobb's has posted the results of their survey of salaries of 3,500 developers and managers. 'While many salaries are flat, they are increasing overall, except for some heavily disfavored niches.'"
Call me stupid, but I don't get it. Software developers earn $90... per what?
The results are spread on a gazillion ad-littered pages whose content are shorter than this text field. Even the print page has ads on it and only includes the current page you're viewing. How do I mod article -1?
Dr. Dobb's Journal (DDJ) was a monthly journal published in the United States by CMP Technology. It covered topics aimed at computer programmers. DDJ was the first regular periodical focused on microcomputer software, rather than hardware. It later became a monthly section within the periodical InformationWeek called Dr. Dobb's Report and is now a news website published by United Business Media
Dr. Dobb's Journal of Tiny BASIC Calisthenics & Orthodontia
Running Light Without Overbyte
How sad is it that such a great resource for us programmers way back in the day is now just a news aggregator. :(
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Those salaries are the same (if not lower) as here in Munich (DE).
And we don't have to pay for a private health insurance or a decent pension.
Keep your "dream" and "freedom" guys, I thought your salaries were far higher.
I disagree with the author's take on 'ageism' - I bet that if skill sets were taken into account, the apparent ageism would disappear.
There are two kinds of 'old fart' in this biz - ones that doggedly refuse to learn new skills, and those that actively seek out and embrace new skills but have the hindsight and experience to see them in their proper place among the existing tried-and-true solutions. Too often I see young, inexperienced developers grab on to the latest thing, declaring it the be-all and end-all of programming. I've seen it a million times - their fervor eventually gets tempered by seeing that their shiny new toy isn't perfect and has more rough edges that advertised. I went thru it in my 20's, as did everyone else, I suspect. I'm old enough now to have seen the "Thin Client! No, Thick client! No, Thin Client!" pendulum swing a few times. :-( (For those of you too young, that would be "thin=Mainframe+terminal, thick=Borland Delphi, thin=web app, thick=phone app).
The consulting company I work for respects the type II old fart and values their experience. Apparently our clients do as well, since we're in high demand.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Speaking as a fellow old fart, I remember being in a constant state of panic when ever a new technology came out because it meant that if I didn't somehow get on the job experience with the technology, I would be left in the dust (unemployed). And back in the 90s, if you didn't learn something new and switch jobs, you were considered unwilling to learn new things and grow - now you're considered a "job hopper".
And back in the early 90s, employers wanted the "shiny new toys" because they thought they could throw out the very expensive mainframes and go all client server - and many did.
Anyway, you have to chase all the new tech. It is a must in this industry. I wish I did it more!
Here's an example: when the whole iOS/iPhone thing was first kicked off by Apple, I poo-pooed it. "Here we go again. Another handheld failure!" The folks who latched on at the beginning - jumping on that shiny new toy - go their first and built up the experience and some of very profitable businesses now.
This time, my experience led me astray and I missed out on getting a big slice of the pie - there are just crumbs left.
Then again, I bet there are some RIM developers that are shaking their heads now and thinking, "Wait and see."
This industry is so volatile and capricious that it's impossible to know what's going to be worth while and what isn't. I mean back in the 90s, I used to laugh at the Mac developers for chasing Windmills. I used to laugh at mainframer COBOL guys but there's quite a few still making a living - a nice one at that.
I thought I was hot shit for being a UNix/client server/C/C++ programmer - then Java came.
Soylent Green is people!
You are welcome on my lawn.
Despite having so many categories, "Software Engineers" and "Software Developers" seem to be the bucket that catches all the people making a living creating software, but belong the category of "software skills are necessary but sufficient". In almost all branches of science, the "numerical simulation" has become very very important. We are graduating some 100,000 Masters in engineering and may be 25000 Ph Ds in engineering and a majority of them write code. Some very well, some very poorly but their programming skills is secondary to their knowledge of physics, chemistry and math. They all are likely to be paid way above this reported mean and clubbing them with "software kills alone are enough" group distorts the data.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
FTFA (page 4): "This chart also shows that the average wage differential between staff and managers in software development remains constant at approximately 27%. "
Did you read the article? Or just post your prejudiced opinion without bothering to look at the data?
The useful information lies in the summary at the bottom of each page.
"Software engineers, however, saw an almost 3% increase â" slightly higher than inflation." "project leaders, and analysts all enjoyed raises that outpaced inflation" "the southern states and the mountain time zone saw the biggest percentage increases in salary" "Additional bonuses were inversely proportional to the size of the group"
In other words, MOST positions are NOT keeping up with inflation, and bonuses are given out to only a few people (no way to track who deserves them.) But we knew that already, because the CEOs get most of the bonus money.
Salary survey reveals: We're still fucked
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And then any assets they do have are taken as they are forced into bankruptcy, and then the government is left footing the bill. Because the government is insuring these visits there is a layer of socialized medicine happening, except that the hospitals and governments then fight over how much money should be paid and so on.
The thing is, if you're poor in the US, or old, you get medicare or medicaid which are both, on the scale of things decent enough. It's the people who are not quite poor and not quite old, or not fully employed or that have to rely on an insurance company actually paying that are screwed. It's a weird system.
What's the difference between a Software Developer and a Software Engineer?
A software developer will be primarily concerned with writing code from the given requirements. A software engineer is concerned with the entire process of producing high quality code, how that code fits into the business, how the requirements are established, how bugs are tracked over time, ensuring code reviews are effective, that testing coverage is appropriate without costing too much, how projects are managed, creating and using metrics, and of course writing high quality code.
See the SWEBOK for a good description of software engineering.
John
You're an idiot for comparing "Feasible" with "Free", he's saying- It's a birth right, you're saying if you work yourself to death doing odd work during the years of your life you're supposed to spend studying to become more intelligent and an eventual net gain to your family and country you might just get one.
Studying doesn't make you more intelligent, it makes you more educated. This is fundamental attribution error often seen in highly educated people who like to believe themselves more intelligent for it.
You tell me which one's better- yes yours works, but it doesn't even compare. So don't compare them. People always bring up your point when the free things other countries provide are mentioned, and it's just stupid.
I agree that education up to a certain level should be considered a birthright, but you quickly hit a point of diminishing returns when you attempt to educate everyone to the same level. Some people are in fact not educable -- this is the major legitimate complaint about the "No Child Left Behind" policies of recent decades. Not everyone is capable of having differential calculus crammed between their ears.
You also hit that point when you start educating people in fields which were self-selected based on their expectation of income. Does the U.S. seriously need more lawyers per capita than all other countries (25% higher than Brazil, the next most lawyer-heavy country)? Probably not. Does it need deeply unhappy brain surgeons who are only in it because of the money? That's probably counter-productive as well.
Frankly, we don't need the number of people we have in order to maintain society at the current level, and we will likely need to come to terms with finding some way of giving them money not to steal our stuff at the point we realize cable television is no longer cutting it.