Slashdot Mirror
Survey: 56 Percent of US Developers Expect To Become Millionaires
msmoriarty writes: "According to a recent survey of 1,000 U.S.-based software developers, 56 percent expect to become millionaires in their lifetime. 66 percent also said they expect to get raises in the next year, despite the current state of the economy. Note that some of the other findings of the study (scroll to bulleted list) seem overly positive: 84 percent said they believe they are paid what they're worth, 95 percent report they feel they are 'one of the most valued employees at their organization,' and 80 percent said that 'outsourcing has been a positive factor in the quality of work at their organization.'"
80 percent think outsourcing has been positive? They must not be working with the resources we do... They lie, lie and lie some more. Shirk responsibility and ignore questions.
I just enjoy fixing broken code, and making something better. I guess I'm doing it wrong.
Where do 56% of you guys work? Need a Java developer?
And how could one become one of those 1000? Even if just 56% of them become rich that's good enough a chance for me.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I want the drugs those developers are on.
All the developers I know smoke 2+ packs a day and take weeks off to go to gaming/comic conventions. Maybe if they didn't do that, they could put away a bit more money.
I think I have a good shot at becoming a millionaire in my lifetime - not from hitting it big, just from saving more than I spend (especially into my 401k, with company matching).
And what *about* the current state of the economy? It seems to me that it's mostly recovered at this point. And it's not unreasonable for white-collar workers to expect *some* kind of raise at least every couple years, even if it's just a raise on par with inflation.
I fully expected the source of this post to be TheOnion.com.
How is this remarkable? Becoming a millionaire during your lifetime isn't remarkable at all. To have 1 million dollars at retirement, all you need to do is save $5,000 per year into any normal savings account. If you're a college educated software developer, you should be able to manage this easily.
I'm more worried about the other 44% that don't think they can manage that.
If these developers are fairly young, expect to retire and desire to not eat cat food, they'd better become millionaires. That's the minimum savings needed to retain a decent standard of living for many people that are not immediately close to retirement currently. We live fairly long lives after what many consider retirement age, but cost of living continues to increase (alongside cost of care), and inflation is a very real thing.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/lawrencelight/2012/10/04/how-much-money-will-you-need-to-retire/
Then again, I too have been guilty of riding the startup dream.
It has an annual safe return of $40k to $50K. For younger developers who may not retire until 2050, that is not much after several decades of inflation.
With what developers make in my city (Nashville, TN), yeah. They should be able to accumulate enough money to have a net worth over $1 million dollars, over their career. It comes down to do they have the discipline it takes to direct that nice income in a way that they don't waste it on things like mortgages, car debt, credit cards, and other bad habits that keep people at "average" and "normal" net worth.
--fatboy
And 99% of those asked said they were just making s*&% up.
That is, unless we abolish the federal reserve and re-establish sound money.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Although if they'd interviewed someone outside of Silicon Valley they'd find that developers aren't all sociopathic narcissists.
Just wait until they realize that 50% of them are below average.
In case y'all hadn't noticed, our community is rife with hazardously inflated egos. This is a natural extension thereof.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
That sounds about right to me. I think the top-half-earning programmers will likely get to one or two million dollars in total net worth by retirement. A million dollars isn't a hell of a lot of money.
I've got a rather dumpy house in a nice urban neighborhood. It's paid for and worth a bit over $200,000. Looking at long term trends and the increasing popularity of urban living, it will most likely appreciate a fair amount before I retire.
That alone will get me a good chunk of the way towards being a millionaire in terms of net worth.
Now add in the gobs of money that they recommend you save for retirement and by the time you do retire... well, you've got a lot of money. This assumes of course that you can navigate yourself past the agism that's also part of being a developer and remain a well paid part of the workforce until you retire.
Outsourcing is GREAT for menial gruntwork. It is horrible if you try to outsource any real design.
Interesting. I know zero developers who smoke OR go to nerd conventions, with the exception of maker fair.
Maybe if it wasn't an IT or crappy gaming shop you'd experience something different.
I do work in a very different industry than most "developers" though.
Can we really expect 1000 people to be a representative sample? Were the ages properly distributed? I would assume a younger developer would be more likely to expect to be a millionaire, for example.
I am a software developer with 9+ years experience. I bought a house at the end of 2011 for $570K and zillow says it's worth $695K now. In 27 years, I think it's pretty likely I will be a millionaire due to inflation and paying off my house.
If you can't find a way to get to a million by retirement, something is wrong.
Here is a simple way to do it. Put $16,000 in your 401k and $5,000 in your IRA every year. Investing in a good S&P500 index fund which will return about 10%. In 18 years, you will be a millionaire.
Now getting to $10 million is tough.
Being a millionaire in "our lifetime" probably won't mean much. With inflation and medical costs of growing old, you'll need a few million just to retire. Unless they think they'll earn that million in the next 5 years or so, it's not going to get them what they think.
Sounds more like the interview happened in some management circles.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is certainly achievable for a technical professional. I've done it. I'm close to the million dollar threshold at age 40, and have done it while working solely at "competitive pay" (HR-speak), non-management, no-stock-option jobs. The secret? Save 20% or more of my income and start saving on day one out of college. My first job paid $50k but I treated it like $40k. I don't have cable. I don't drive a fancy car. I don't take out loans to buy things. Barring a major life calamity, I can now coast the rest of the way if needed.
Where did they get the 1000 responses? Did some management magazine offer free subscriptions to managers who stood over their employees as they filled in their responses to the survey? The data suggests this happened at least 98% of the time.
It certainly seems that way judging from the comments on this site.
The infrastructure guys always get fucked over, always! Without infrastructure, what will your whiz bang application run on? Software Engineers, developers, you guys have it made whereas the lowly systems and network admins only get recognition when something takes a shit.
How many (%) excpect to go to heaven (or equivalent, based on believe-system)?
Much higher than those puny 56 %, and millenia older as well...
Developers are white collar workers, who can do math. If you ask any white collar worker in america "Do you expect to become a millionaire?" If they answer no, they are either bad at math or bad at retirement planning, or both.
Now I am not saying "everyone will be a millionaire" but I am saying that if you asked the same thing of a Nurse, pharmacist, professor, regional manager at Jack-in-the-Box, or a School Administrator... they should have the same answer, as they have similar salary levels to a "Developer."
Any young-ish person in the $75k+ salary level should answer yes to that question... or should seriously downsize their spending.
After retirement age, you also receive social security payments (in addition to your retirement income).
1 million dollars invested in a conservative bond fund will yield $40,000 a year, with no hit to principle. Most of America lives (comfortably) on that (or less) today. In addition to that, you will have social security.
This income puts you in the top 10 percent of the world's wealthy. If you can't live comfortably on that, you are absolutely doing it wrong.
Everyone in Zimbabwe is a millionaire too. Your cost of living will be astronomical and you'll be working harder than previous generations to get less. But don't forget how productive you are! Produce, produce, produce, produce, produce! Oh yes! Produce some more!
>> 56 percent expect to become millionaires in their lifetime.
yeah and 99% of software engineers also seriously believe their initial time estimate to have that feature implemented by was actually realistic.
Just publish an app. And monetize it. Problem solved.[1]
[1] Note that for many programmers who try this technique, the universe may opt to substitute an equivalent product, such as gained knowledge about how the world works and reduction of personal naivete.
but a million bucks doesn't go as far as it used to
Becoming a millionaire in a person's lifetime is very simple and most people can do it. Contribute 10% of your income to your retirement accounts over the course of your lifetime into a diversified portfolio, and you will become a millionaire. Time and discipline are the keys, not generating a large income. Unfortunately, most people are missing one of those two attributes.
Seriously, did they pay slashdot to run this garbage? "IT consulting company produces colourful but unattributed info-graphic saying developers are important but IT is to slow." would be a better summary.
1. Buy a million dollar house
2. Spend the next 30 years paying off the mortgage
3. Poof. Instant millionaire.
On the page it says "Download the Study". That is not a study, those are results of a study.
I'm thinking the respondents were all fresh out of school, and haven't had their absurd expectations ground down by the real world yet...
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
Work hard, save as much as you can, invest wisely. Should be easy to accumulate $1M.
Unfortunately that's not really all that much money these days...
G.
I remember when I was younger and management would send out employee opinion surveys. I'd answer them, be truthful and feel like my opinion actually mattered. I felt it was proper to express exactly how happy or unhappy I was and that the survey was some mechanism for improving things.
Then I became part of management and I realized how completely wrong I was.
The employee opinion survey mostly serves as a crutch for manager's to pat themselves on the back and the do a very good job curve fitting the results to their preconceived notions of how things are. It also serves to weed out people with bad attitudes - I've overheard more than one discussion of trying to locate an employee based on the comment they made on the survey.
So, if you say you're happy with the wage you're getting, you won't be getting a raise. In fact, it's even seen as a sign that pay cuts should be happening. Likewise, if you feel like you're a valued employee, good luck getting any more benefits. It's more likely management will use that as an excuse to strip away that one little perk, like free soda or something, just because they'll decrease the amount of HR budget dedicated to keeping employees happy. Don't ever be happy on paper.
Unfortunately, it's not enough for just you to express your desire for a raise. If 40% of your colleagues think they get paid enough, that's probably enough for management to little to no wage increase. You really want less than 5 - 10% say they're happy - in other words, 90% of the employees in your department need to express displeasure with their wages in order for the survey to have any meaningful effect on wages. (There's plenty of other ways to get a raise though - an employee survey is probably one of the least likely ways for it to happen.)
PS. If you think your company is one of those awesome companies that cares, you're probably wrong. If you sat in the room with the CEO, COO, and HR Director and heard that private conversation about the survey, you'd be horrified.
----- obSig
If it was 10 years ago, then they are more likely to have seen mass layoffs and departments shutting down due to outsourcing.
2 benefits that I've seen of outsourcing is that the menial tasks/ busy work can be passed off to someone else (so my job satisfaction and engagement tends to be higher) and poor quallty code coming from outsourced teams will keep me employed for years.
I hate to break the bad news to them. The only people that will be making a million developing s/w will be making a million rupees.
Have gnu, will travel.
Being out of work for a couple of years, while still paying mortgage and COBRA and kids expenses, really takes a chunk out of your savings. That's not even counting what could happen when (not if) the banks or S&Ls or whatever other financial institution does a number on the economy and your stocks tank. (And like a few folks I know, I have a drawerful of stock options in companies which no longer exist.)
If you're an older software developer prepare to be out of work for a long time if the economy turns sour. (I was out for 18 months when things went south in 2001/2002. I came back into the industry as a sys admin. Doesn't matter how good you are -- I still routinely learn new languages/packages/frameworks since I'm now in devops -- there's definitely an age bias especially in start-ups. The exceptions are those managers who are smart enough to recognize that the real skill in development is knowing what to do with a tool, not just how to use it. Any monkey can learn to code in a new language. Too many places don't want to pay you what you're worth, and don't want to hire you for what you're willing to take because "you'll just leave when something else comes along".)
I imagine a lot of people here are software developers and in a similar position to myself. I made $70k my first year out of college, then $110k at my second job, and now I'm at my third job earning just under $150k. I definitely believe I will be a millionaire by 35. I was lucky to get in at a good time and have been living below my means while investing my money wisely.
if it was less then 10 years ago, then outsourcing has always been part of the job market. So they are less likely to have seen the massive negative impact of entire departments losing their jobs.
if it was more then 10 years ago, then they are more likely to have seen mass layoffs and departments shutting down due to outsourcing.
I looked it up the other day. Answer is 8x final salary is the suggested number.
Being a millionaire is nothing.
Lets assume the average age of a developer is young 30's. by the time they retire, a million won't buy much at all.
Given inflation if someone currently aged 30 starts a mortgage on an average house now, they will probably be a millionaire in property assets alone by the time they retire.
One could say the same thing about high school athletes expecting to go pro.
On the Internet nobody knows that you're unemployed.
----- In Your Cubicle No One Can Hear You Scream...
... that developers are no less short-sighted, ignorant, or stupid than the rest of the US population.
Mudge
In theory, theory and practice are the same.
In practice, they're not.
By the time I become a millionaire, a million dollars will be enough to buy a mid-sized sedan.
You will have to be a millionaire in order to have anything close to a decent retirement. Even today, In order to retire on $60K a year right now and live another 40 years, you would need in the $1.6M range. People talk about teachers, soldiers and other public servants having low pay, but if you were to value their retirements as annuities you would see that they largely become millionaires when they retire. Being a millionaire isn't what it used to be. Upper middle class will in the near future translate to millionaire.
I expect by the time I die, McDonald's workers in the US will be able to become millionaires pretty quickly. Zimbabwe is full of millionaires, if you're talking Zim dollars. Of course, they burn their currency in the street to stay warm because it's cheaper than newspaper.
A developer can make $100k easy and have a career that lasts for more than 4 decades.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Start working at 25. Work until you're 60. Put $800/month, every month, into an account that earns 4% nominal interest (i.e. counting inflation) annually. Buy a home worth about $300,000 and pay it off over 30 years. Assume the value of your home increases at about the same rate as inflation, so 1.5% annually. This is probably a low estimate. When you retire your savings account should have about $550,000. Your home should be worth about $450,000. Voila, millionaire.
I suppose next you'll expect us to believe that Nokia had a production ready web tablet 13 years ago! HAHAHAHA! Hogwash!
I am in the Empire Business!
At least, won't everyone who's paid a middle to upper middle class wage, buys a house and saves for retirement eventually be a millionaire?
If you want to retire at 65 and have enough money to live a decent life for 30 years after that, you need pretty close to a million dollars plus a paid-off house. And, frankly, it's not that hard to accumulate a million dollars of net worth over a ~40-year career, assuming reasonable returns on your retirement account and modest appreciation on your home. I'm actually targeting net assets of two million for retirement, given that it's still 20 years away and I expect that inflation will roughly halve the value of the dollar between now and then.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
During the housing boom, a friends father was surprised when we reasoned that he was a millionaire. All it took was his house, which was almost paid off (and probably worth north of $600k at the time) and a decent 401k since he was at or near retirement. Easy millionaire. I'd go so far as to say that if you don't expect to become a millionaire, it simply means you've landed on the wrong side of our increasingly bifurcated economy.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Being a "millionaire" is basically middle class in most major US cities.
Shortly after starting my first job I calculated I would need 4 Million to retire, and pretty much the day I got there I could retire regardless of how old I was (conversely, I really can't retire till I get there). A dozen years later I re-ran numbers with new assumptions (having forgotten my old ones), and came up with 3.5 Million. At the pace I am at I might be able to retire in my early 60's at best. Sadly, even if I crank up my contributions I make little change in that date, thanks to compounding interest.
My goal now needs to be to start saving more into things that can be cashed out before 59.5 without penalties to hedge my bet.
YMMV.
If you are 25, earn a decent wage (+60k $ a year) and are able to save 20% of your income, which you invest in stocks that pay dividends of 3% on average, which you reinvest, and assuming that you get a moderate wage increases of 3% a year, being a millionaire at 65 is doable.
At least that's what my financial planning Excel sheet says.
given compound interest and the average inflation rate of around 3% a year a fairly average mid level engineer can happily make $60k a year assuming a decent developer is going to be ending their career on closer to 100k (possibly more) in todays money, that actually works out to 331k a year in 2055 dollars assuming you were able to save 10% of this at a rate that matched inflation that would be three quarters of a million dollars (assuming somewhat steady salary growth). add on the value of the house you've probably bought and the value of inheritances it adds up to well more than a million dollars. Though given the house prices in the UK i would have to work pretty dam hard not to be a millionaire off the value of one of my parents houses (average house price in the area i was born is $500k for a decent sized 3 bed in todays money) This is not atypical.
My wife and I did it in 13 years and she has a regular non-software job making 1/2 my salary. I also never hit it big, just regular job over time. The half of it is maximizing the 401k every working year and contributing to Roth IRA and saving 90% of any performance bonuses in addition to regular non-retirement savings of 15% salary. We felt horrible 2008 - 2011 but we cruised our way to a mil in 2013. Our salary during those years hardly made any difference.
Yeah, if you continue to make 50k for 18 years straight, especially as a developer, you've done something very wrong. Living off of 29k pre-tax isn't difficult. Just difficult if you try and live like you have 50k to spend and only really have 29k. Getting ahead isn't easy if you have no self control, but it's really easy if you plan ahead and stick to it.
If we're talking "has a net worth of over US$1M", that's not too crazy, especially given how inflation will affect salaries in the coming years. Heck, even though they called Thurston Howell III a "millionaire", he was probably a multi-millionaire, since $1M in 1964 would be just about $7.5M today*.
But if we're using millionaire figuratively, as in, "will be in the top 1%", well... not likely. You'd have to have a net income of around $1M to make it into the top 1%, and a net worth of about $16M. A net worth of $1M (and a net income of $250K) barely gets you into the top 20% ( http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesa... )
* Yes, "Gilligan's Island" is 50 years old come this September. Half a century. I have just made some of you feel incredibly old.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
Yes, your home will be worth that much quite easily, I bet. But, the "new-age" definition of a "millionaire" is having $1M investible... *NOT INCLUDING* your home. But these days, being a millionaire at retirement is just middle-class - nothing exceptional, but you should be comfortable. It's a great aim-point.
20 years at $50k is pretty reasonable. Now just quit charging things and you might actually have some money in 20 years.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Programming is the new factory work, and software patents have ruined the industry so badly that anything that is slightly innovative is murdered by assholes with patents.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
We had a decade of high inflation in the 1970s that contribute almost half of the dollar depreciation since my birth. I think my 'birth million" would feel like a real million, i.e. a decent retirement at any age. A millionaire in all those silly 1960s sitcoms was a real millionaire! conversely my fathers coworkers felt OK if they retired with a $100K or two.
I really don't even hear people use the term millionaire anymore. Plus I could just sell my home and I would have $1 million not including my home. Do I really need a million dollar home AND a $1 million in a bank account for this weird new age definition? Why not just require $2 million net worth? Or better yet how about a relative term like "the 1%". I assume that the richest 1% of people will always be considered rich.
I'm a software engineer and my net worth is > $1 million, and most of it came from developing software.
How I did it:
1. Got a BS in engineering and an MS in math -- qualified me for good salaries right from the start of my career.
2. Taught myself FORTRAN, then assembly language, then Pascal, then C and C++. Switched focus from traditional engineering to software engineering (in technical application areas, like aerospace and communication)
3. Worked for first rate firms that paid well and offered good benefits.
4. Lived comfortably but beneath my means. Paid mostly cash and saved consistently, with max contributions to 401k. Invested carefully, most notably in MSFT in the late 80's, and later in solid companies and S&P 500 Index funds. Always re-invested dividends.
5. Got lucky in the California real estate boom of the late 90's and early 00's. Took my profits and left SoCal and its expensive real estate.
6. Switched to lucrative contract work in recent years and endured motels and modest apartments while on the road;
Did this mostly on one salary, after a divorce and paying *big* alimony for ten years (or I would have reached 1 mil sooner).
Money invested grows. First, the money you put in grows, then the growth grows.
Then that "free" money you got from growth itself grows some more money.
This is the magic of compounding. With average returns, $500 per month for 32 years will grow to $1 million.
Let me use my trust worthy excel (oh no) to calculate the future value of savings of $5K per year for 50 years at 5% interest rate, guess what, it is +$1M.
> (and to the GP, you threw away that 100/mo TV subscription, that is only $1200 - where does the 5k come from?)
Starbucks. Making a pot of coffee at home instead of buying Starbucks is another $1,200 / year. The point is ditch the stuff, LIKE THE $100 / MONTH TV, that is less important than a comfortable retirement.
Just be sure to hide the money you're saving by giving up the deluxe cable package and the Starbucks. In a few years, you'll have enough money to pay your bills for 25 years of retirement. At that point, there will be millions of people who spent their money on crap screaming "he's a greedy millionaire! Tax that away from him and give it to me, because I don't have squat!"
56 Percent of US Developers Expect To Become Millionaires
I downloaded the study by Chef (which amounted to a 3-page PDF), and there was no breakdown of the sample population by age, race/ethnic make-up, gender, marital status, location, degree and primary/secondary software skills. So, one has to wonder how much of a self-selection bias took place in this so-called study.
For instance, I cannot see a way by which a sample population of single men in their late 20s working as developers (or founders) at start-ups in Silicon Valley will respond the questionnaire in a manner comparable to, say, a mixed gender sample population of developers in their mid-30s or 40s working at established companies out of, say, Austin.
Also, regarding age, someone starting up today should not find it impossible to become, literally, a millionaire as in "having earned a million" by the time of retirement. To effectively be a millionaire - meaning having net assets worth a million or more (at current purchasing power) counting inflation, that is another thing.
The thing that made me scratch my head the most is that 2/3 of the sampled population believed their profession to be recession-proof. That strikes me as naivete (or stupidity) of youth/inexperience/arrogance.
The software industry is not recession-proof. It is recession-resilient for those who actively cultivate their professional network.
But recession-proof? Not. A. Chance.
Either this study is seriously affected by the Dunning-Krugger Effect, or it is an exercise in intellectual self-pleasure, or somehow Chef managed to sample a population composed by truly elite multi-discipline engineers, owners of very hard-to-get skills (like building software for radar systems or something.)
My dad was a small-town banker and my father-in-law was a box factory floor manager.
Both managed to save over half a million before they retired through no particular brilliance, just hard work and saving.
If you're a developer younger than 35 and don't save a million before you retire, there's a good chance that you're either not going to retire or you're going to be poor when you do.
Retiring at 65 and living to 85 gets you 50k per year with a million dollars of savings. Investment and interest could extend that another 5 to 10 years. On the other hand, medical technology advancing gives you a pretty good chance of living that long. Save now. Spend later.
If you earn $80k+ a year, you need to be a double millionaire just in retirement savings to maintain your income when you retire. I guess this means 44% of developers don't expect to retire at age 65?
We are the 198 proof..
Becoming a millionaire over the course of a working lifetime isn't too challenging. Stay employed and put 15-20% of your income into broad-market index funds every year without fail. Don't throw it away on booze, drugs, or houses in a housing bubble. That said, a million bucks isn't a lot of money - it is maybe just barely retirement money at the same standard of living you had while employed.
Becoming a multimillionaire over the course of a few years is pretty challenging, and if that's what the survey really means, those people are mostly going to be disappointed.
Only 56% expect to become millionaires?
What is wrong with the other 44%?
You do realize the 50% of developers are below average performers.
So, no different to the peculiarly American trait of considering poor people "temporarily embarrassed millionaires". No thanks to the self-serving ideology peddled by the rich, that we'd all be better off if we all worked harder, never mind the fact that the rich get rich by capturing the surplus value of your labour.
There's a degree of this everywhere (e.g. the hundreds of millions of retards out there who consider themselves "middle class", despite needing a paycheck each week/month to survive), but nowhere is this stronger, than in the US.
Oh no you Did-ent!
Well, at a salary of $80,000 US dollars a year and working for 30-35 years, yes you will earn well over $2.4 million.
So what's the point?
Yeah as a developer at Intel in 2000 I was looking out 6yrs forward at about $850,000 in stock options based on all things remaining more or less equal stock price wise. Well that got burned when the tech bubble blew-up. And even more folks got burned in 2007 -2008. Good luck with our boom-bust cycle that only favors the 1%.
When I saw "The average developer expects to stay at his or her job for nine years." I lost a lot of faith in the study.
Lies, damned lies and statistics, TFA links to an executive summary only. I tried my best to find a full report with the methodology they used, but came up with nothing. Slashdot, I expect better of you before posting this garbage.
Do the math here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/perso...
Saving 10% of your salary is going to give you a lot more than a million dollars over 30 years, even in constant dollars.
This part is hilarious, "95 percent report they feel they are 'one of the most valued employees at their organization" What that says to me is - those people's managers need a raise! Clearly they're making everyone feel like the unique special super outputting flower they aren't, keeping them with the organisation by feeding their ego, that's absolutely awesome - I need to learn their tricks of the trade to use on my wife!
Every day, it is becoming easier to reach that target. To 'retire' on rental income, you need to own 4 or more apartments and that is already over a million bucks.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Apparently they are all from Lake Woebegone, where the children are all above average.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
With inflation and continued erosion of social security and other retirement income sources other than assets, my calculations say that I simply can't retire with a middle class income if I don't have quite a bit more than $1 million in 2040 when I retire. Real returns are below 5% these days, and $1million kicks off less than $50,000 per year which will likely be well below median in 2040. As others have noted, it is not all that hard to reach $1 million with regular investing and modest real returns (and assuming we don't have a market collapse which is not an entirely justified assumption). But it is a system that a large number of numerically handicapped Americans seem not to be able to plan for or cope with. I would translate the headline: "44% of US developers don't think they are going to be able to retire (or simply have never done the math)".
..you get hosed. In the late '90s, I was a millionaire (on paper) for about 4 days, a month or so before our dotcom was purchased by a bunch of wackjobs from the friendly north-lands. By the time I could exercise any of my options, they were worth about $400K. A year and a half later when I walked out the door for the last time, they were worth $1200. Hosers.
1. Don't drink or smoke or do anything unnecessary that costs $. (There's your IRA contrib.)
2. Don't have any kids. (There's your 401K contrib.)
3. Move very far from your parents and family so that you are the last person considered when someone needs money or care.
4. Living in a van down by the river helps, too. (I wish!)
5. Don't work for a University, where salaries are about 40% of what you'd be making at a real company. (A personal problem.)
1) A typical well-diversified index fund delivers returns over the long-term well over the interest charged on mortgages or car loans if you took out those loans when you have decent credit. It makes utterly no sense to lose the ability to take advantage of tax-advantaged investments in order to pay off low-interest loans at a vastly accelerated pace. It's a worthy goal to have your house paid off by the time you retire, but no need to be crazy about it. (Yeah, credit cards do suck and you should pay those off ASAP after you get your max 401(k) match, if offered.)
2) You should be taking advantage of every tax-advantaged investment you have available. That means dumping the max into an IRA, and if your employer has one available, also dumping the max into their 401(k) program.
3) Even if your employer has a lousy 401(k) program, once you've maxed out your individual IRA limit (which doesn't take much if your employer offers a 401(k)) it still makes sense to dump as much money as you can into it. The next time you switch employers, you can roll over your 401(k) into your IRA. (My employer's 401(k) is quite good, with expenses of only 0.12%/yr, so there's no reason ever to take my money out.)
5) If your employer offers a 401(k) match (even 50 cents on the dollar), you'd have to be a complete blithering idiot to not take advantage of it.
6) Seriously? You claim your investing acumen is SO good, that you can routinely achieve 20-50% returns in a month in a practice portfolio, but you don't invest because a five-page Schedule D is your idea of too much work? (Especially since most of the "work" is nothing more than copying the data from your statements into a tax program.) I call B.S. That kind of return would make Warren Buffet look like an amateur and the finest hedge fund kingpin look like he was running a lemonade stand.
We can all be millionaires! (And spend several deciduous forests for one peanut.)
Thank you, Douglas Adams!
Seriously, why do a majority of people think each can live "the good life" and not have to do some kind of labor for a living?
All the idiot 20-somethings and 30-somethings who are *SURE* they're going to be millionaires, and so want to make sure millionaires pay lower taxes than they are now. And they'll never need to worry 'bout healthcare, and of *course* they'll retire at 40.....
Allow me to reiterate: there are two kinds of Republicans, Libertarians, and neoConfederate "Tea Partiers": millionaires, and suckers.
mark
Guess this explains the conservative / libertarian tone of so many slashdot posts & replies. Voting for tax cuts for rich and food stamp cuts for poor is OK, because they're planning on joining the rich! Incredible! How about expanding your world view outside the edges of your screen.
Most live in San Francisco, after all.
This will just encourage my wife to keep asking when I'm gonna write an app that makes us rich so we can retire on the beach.
It probably also says that developers want to spend time writing documentation, creating project plans, and attending "mandatory, all hands" meetings rather than coding.
This raises red flags that it represents an effort by the owner of Slashdot, dice.com, a major recruitment firm, to spread prejudicial opinion to support its interests, and that brings into question the wisdom of posting to slashdot that the headlines are mostly plants by biased individuals working for the special interest of the parent company.
On the face of it the expectation cited by the OP doesn't square with reality. I would rather see what the real earning power of developers is, statistics, a distribution of income, rather than some pollyanna wish, some pumped up and self-serving propaganda. I expect that the percentage of developers who have made $1 million is far less than this hoped for amount. That most are not successful to that extant.
And besides, why choose that amount of money? $1 Million is not a huge amount of money, by today's standards. Maybe it is for a couple of people to live off the fat of the lamb, but really not that much. If you estimate 10X inflation of prices over 40 years, or so. $100 K in 1974 would be the same amount of money.
I don't understand why people don't want to pay taxes *now* and have money immediately available, versus locking that money up and paying much larger taxes later. It should be obvious to everyone taxes are not going any lower, ever. So I'm not exactly sure what the advantage is. Unless you're one of the lucky ones where your company matches your contribution 100%.
That's not difficult if you're earning 6-fixgures, aren't staying in a very expensive area, and are just good with money.
<Insert joke about nerds being single>
I personally expect to get a raise every-single-year. Inflation stays around 3% every year. If my company doesn't give me AT-LEAST a 3% increase in salary each year, I consider it a slap-in-the-face. A pay cut by another name. And worse, a pay cut after a sterling annual review, and a year of hard work.
Inflation/cost-of-living year-over-year was only at zero for ONE year, during the depths of the recession. It's not an ongoing excuse to withhold annual raises.
There's little that pisses me off more than hearing that "company policy" limits raises to no more than 3% (or 2%, or 1%). That's institutionalizing yearly pay-cuts for all employees, including top-performers. Even when I make a stink and get more than that, it makes me look at that company with utter disgust, as they show how much they HATE and want to be at war with their (good, long-term reliable) employees. Nothing makes a company better than the few long-timers, who have everything about the company and all the systems in their head. "Company policy" that punishes them for staying instead of job-hopping is the most utterly moronic thing I could imagine... But this rant is getting off the rails, quickly...
Well, obviously people don't stay at a company where they feel ignored and undervalued (see above). And when your work will determine whether the company hits or misses a deadline, you speak to CxOs on a regular basis, or you're responsible for many millions of dollars of equipment, it's easy to feel highly valued, even if perhaps you are not.
I know I've occasionally been the highest paid person in some medium-sized companies. With the higher contractor rates, and overhead of contracting firms, it's not too difficult to end up costing the company more than the CEO's salary, even if not all of it goes into your pocket, and some of it is government taxes/fees/programs that get stuffed into salary for contractors but not regular staff.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
>>According to a recent survey of 1,000 U.S.-based software developers, 56 percent expect to become millionaires in their lifetime.
But that is so 1990's.. Aim higher, try Billionaire.