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Trade Group: US Software Developer Wages Fell 2% Last Year
First time accepted submitter russotto points out the claim of industry group TechAmerican Foundation (reported by Computerworld) that "wages for the software industry are falling, not rising. Wages fell 2% to $99,000 in 2012." Averages are one thing; the article points out though that wages vary vastly within the industry, and that some jobs are harder to fill (thus, better paid) than others. An excerpt: "Victor Janulaitis, CEO of Janco Associates, a research firm that also analyzes IT wage and employment trends, cited a number of reason for the decline in wages for software professionals. First, technology is becoming easier to implement without having an IT professional, he said. Also, the option of turning to outsourcing creates less pressure to increase wages.
As the recession continues, companies continue 'to look at productivity and will often look to hire individuals who are lower cost employees,' said Janulaitis. That could include displaced baby boomer workers who have been out of work for some time and 'will take a lower paying job just to get back into the workforce.'"
From my own personal experience, you get what you pay for. Yes, you can overpay, but that is true for any employee. A few good programmers will outperform 100 mediocre "code-monkeys", and that holds true even if there are 1 or 2 good leads / architects. Why? Because a good design doesn't overcome bad code. I'll also note that there are some companies that just fill seats. The jobs here are not the kind that appeal to good programmers, unless they just want to pull a paycheck while working on something they care about. There are lots of these jobs, and most holding them are overpaid.
I personally know of several where the "programmers' don't know how to even configure their own tools, nor build their software locally (this would be on both .NET and Java platforms btw, and multiple cases for both). Sadly, these "engineers" are paid near the average, and barely can converse about basic language concepts. They've been employed for years, in some cases a decade or more, at a single company. These are the type of folks that make outsourcing seem viable, because you'll get about the same quality of people there, and sometimes, if you're lucky, better. It doesn't mean you'll succeed with either set.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Worker was a fool for starting the conversation without an offer in hand.
Then next line should be:
WORKER: Hire those programmers, I quit. Best of luck to you.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Here's a link to the original study. It's not clear where they are getting the "wages fell 2%" statistic, but in California, the average annual wage was $123,900.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
That's nonsense. What the union negotiates for depends on what the union members vote for, so you don't have to put things like "can't promote people to management" into the contract if you don't want it.
A example of the kinds of things a union could organize for programmers if one existed:
- Limits on and payment for overtime, after-hours and weekend work.
- Office conditions. Usually that isn't an issue, but if it is and your choices are "deal with it" or "quit", you may want a third option.
- Hiring standards that prevent a true idiot from ever working at the company.
- And yes, minimum pay agreements.
I am officially gone from
lower cost employees ... could include displaced baby boomer workers who have been out of work for some time and 'will take a lower paying job just to get back into the workforce.'
Maybe when pigs fly. If you've been out of work for some time or are old enough to be a boomer, you'll have a hard time getting a job. Put 'em together and you're probably toast. Hiring boomers who've been out of work for a while at lower pay would be a rational and probably a desirable response (not the lower pay part, but in a market economy that's how it works). In reality employers are horribly prejudiced against such people and will just scream that we need more H-1B's.
Might work once, and not really all that well.
If you want a good raise you need to change jobs or be ready to.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
No, you need to change jobs, period.
According to this site: http://www.westportone.com/candidate/counteroffer.htm :
"According to national surveys of employees that accept counter-offers, 50-80 percent voluntarily leave their employer within six months of accepting the counter-offer because of unkept promises. The majority of the balance of employees that accept counter-offers involuntarily leave their current employers within twelve months of accepting the counter-offer (terminated, fired, laid off, etc.)."
So, basically, if you go to your boss with another offer in hand and accept a counteroffer, he or she is going to screw you over simply because they can. And that's how the big sharks swim in the deep end of the pool. If you want better working conditions and/or more money, change jobs. The only exception is if you work in academia, where you have the protections of tenure.
See also:
http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/outside-voices-careers/2012/03/26/why-you-shouldnt-take-a-counteroffer
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/02/06/13/0615238/is-it-wrong-to-accept-an-employment-counter-offer
winning the day. Didn't work our so well for Corel did it? Or Novel? Or Sun?
Good enough is always good enough. Yeah, you're few good programmers will make better code, but my 100 code monkeys will make more of it. I'll have 10 products to market in the time you have 1, and I'll do it for less $. I'll take those savings and spend them winning bids in backroom deals. Eventually I'll buy up your company just to shut it down. Well, not unless Microsoft beats me to it.
Also, What's with this thing in America where we always, always blame the worker? Did it ever occur to you that you really can't compete in a global race to the bottom? Like clean air & water? Like health care? A steady food supply? Too bad. Somewhere in the world is a worker willing to live without it. You'll have to give up those 'luxuries' to compete.
As the saying goes: If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?
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Because the attitudes are:
1. "you wouldn't be unemployed if you were any good." 2 ."If you got the skills then you can get a job." What if you do have the skills but have been out of work? Then back to #1.
It is very telling how employers who claim that they can't find "qualified" people never state exactly what qualifications they are looking for. They just make vague statements about "not having skills". That's the same as saying as giving a product review and just saying "it sucks".
Aren't prejudices wonderful? My favorite examples of how a tight labor market can force employers to overlook their prejudices are the World Wars. In WWI factories started hiring black people, and in WWII they added women. Neither group could get the time of day before that, and as you may have heard, they did just fine providing labor for the Arsenal of Democracy (historical note: we won both wars).
Your boss was always going to screw you over. His plan didn't change when he was forced to pay you more. They will play some sort of face saving game, give you a new title and claim they are paying you more for the additional responsibility. The end game for you is to take his job outright, then move on to greener pastures.
You certainly can't afford to relax. If you don't more or less have the employer by the short and curlies they wouldn't have counter offered. As long as that doesn't change, nothing has changed.
When you next go looking for a job, your current compensation will be higher and you will have a bigger war chest (unless you spend it all like a moron).
However, if after accepting a counteroffer, they start a new person as your 'understudy', they are already planning on firing you. Some companies are like that, others aren't. If your company is like that then you should truly _extort_ them while you've got them by the balls.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
So we're told. Yet, the distribution of good and bad managers is almost exactly the same as good and bad line workers.
Share value increases most when jobs are cut. Any idiot can cut salaries and jobs to get a quarterly bump in share price. The success of US corporations has more to do with corporate consolidation increasing pricing power than it does brilliant management.
We have a system where management success means the failure of everyone else who works for the company. Instead of an economy that is based on widespread prosperity, we have one based on prosperity for a very small group who succeed in a system whose rules they set, and misery for everyone else.
We actually have some historical experience with these situations, and it never, ever ends well for elite.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It is very telling how employers who claim that they can't find "qualified" people never state exactly what qualifications they are looking for. They just make vague statements about "not having skills".
"To qualify in the US, you must have a minimum of 10 years' experience with Windows Server 2008, 30 years of experience with Windows as a whole; You must know C, C++, C#, Java, PHP, ASP, .NET, JavaScript, Python, Perl, ASM, Objective C, HTML, CSS, and at least five other languages of your choice, all at a guru level and never -ever- need to use any reference material; You must be able to code a full working 100,000 lines of code with no bugs within 40 work hours; You must be able to QA test the whole thing in another 40 work hours; You must be able to take every single feature request coming from marketing and implement it within that week of coding - even the features that are requested the day after the week ends; You must have a doctorate in Computer Sciences; And you must be willing to work for no more than $41K/year."
@Whee
A few years ago, a coworker in another department accepted an offer from another company in town. He turned in his notice the next day. Lo and behold, they gave him a counter offer. Seems that they really did think his specialty was worth more than they were paying him and it was just the economy limiting what they could do. After a bit of negotiation, he accepted the counter offer and told the other company he wasn't coming to work for them.
Well, three years later he was complaining about how he wasn't getting a pay raise that year like the rest of us. Turns out he hadn't gotten a pay raise since accepting the counter offer. He'd gotten so upset with it that he'd started looking for another job. But guess what? He couldn't even get interviews - especially at the company that he'd turned down (I wonder why...) which had two job postings that looked exactly like his experience. Seems the word had gotten out around town that he couldn't be trusted and other companies were treating him like poison.
Having accepted then changed his mind, he didn't realize what the other company had put into the process. They had spent hours screening candidates, performing phone interviews, calling people in for personal interview, etc. And then when they had offered him a job that he'd accepted, they had needed to call up the other candidates (some of whom were just as qualified) and tell them "thanks, but no thanks, we have someone else". That had left the company in a lurch as well as hurting their reputation with the other people involved - of course they were upset. And the people involved can carry long memories even as they go to new companies, talk to their friends down the street, talk to recruiters, and so on.
I left there over 2 years ago and still keep in touch with some of my former coworkers. Last I heard, this guy was still complaining about no pay raises and no interviews.
Moral of the story: be careful not to burn any bridges, you might need to cross them someday.
Let me add one thing that has actually worked for me. Before going to 'ask' for a raise mention to the office snitch that you have a better offer. Only works if the office snitch isn't generally known.
That way they think they are outsmarting you by paying you more.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I can afford 10, maybe 20 failures for the 1 project that succeeds
yeah, but not everyone can work for Google.
I am a programmer, and I work in a union. It's actually quite nice, and it floors me that so many people have convinced themselves it's a bad thing. Here's what we get.
1) Overtime pay. It's not as good as regular overtime pay, but it is greater than your base hourly rate, and it does discourage your employer from working you overtime unless they honestly need it. I have currently negotiated with my manager a base schedule of only 35 hours a week; not common but I have known several people working similar schedules.
2) Scheduled annual pay raises. Not huge raises, usually in the ballpark of 2%-7%, but very respectable raises and everyone in the union gets them.
3) Protections with regard to leave. E.g. things like parental leave and other leave of absences.
4) Above average health insurance. My wife works for the state, and my insurance is better than hers. Take that for what you want.
What we don't get. Our offices generally suck. This is probably more an issue of this being an older company with older office buildings, rather than having anything to do with the union. The union could negotiate working conditions, but as our union is spread out among a great number of building sites, it's not a uniform concern. Also, the union doesn't negotiate for hiring standards.
$99,000 makes the developer a demi-god.
I'm not sure what kind of methods used to calculate this 99,000 number comes from anyways. Maybe stock grants for developers involved in startups? Or maybe it's a geographic thing.
I've been professional in this field for 6 years; I have a bachelor of science in CS, 8 programming languages, and I don't see nearly half of that.
Admittedly i'm the only developer in my organization, and I get hit with system engineering tasks and working with IT technicians as well, to provide them the help they need to understand what actions they need to be taking.
But I think the 99,000 number is a fiction.
Compensation probably varies from company to company... so where appreciation from stock option grants is considered in some companies 99,000 may be Demo-God status... in other companies 99,000 might be feh...
Companies are unlikely to pay programmers more than their CEO though; furthermore, pay decreases down the chain of managers, and the more managers there are above the developer.... probably, the more people there are that the programmers' definitely won't get paid more than.