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Developers, IT Still Racking Up (Mostly) High Salaries
Nerval's Lobster (2598977) writes Software development and IT remain common jobs among those in the higher brackets, although not the topmost one, according to a new study (with graph) commissioned by NPR. Among those earning between $58,000 and $72,000, IT was the sixth-most-popular job, while software developers came in tenth place. In the next bracket up (earning between $72,000 and $103,000), IT rose to third, with software development just behind in fourth place. As incomes increased another level ($103,000 to $207,000), software developers did even better, coming in second behind managers, although IT dropped off the list entirely. In the top percentile ($207,000 and above), neither software developers nor IT staff managed to place; this is a segment chiefly occupied by physicians (in first place), managers, chief executives, lawyers, and salespeople who are really good at their jobs. In other words, it seems like a good time to be in IT, provided you have a particular skillset. If those high salaries are in Silicon Valley or New York, though, they might not seem as high as half the same rate would in Omaha, or Houston, or Raleigh.
How does this fit into my worldview where H1-B Visa holders are taking all of our jobs and lowering all of our wages? I'm just lucky I am easily able to ignore evidence that I don't like, or else this article would be troubling.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
It seems like there are a slew of jobs for people making $80 - $120k with a small sprinkling of jobs between $120 and $140k for very senior and skilled people. But how many true "developers" make more than $140k?
Seems the entire chart is not displayed.
$39,000 per year as a Computer Programmer/Analyst here. If you were ever thinking of going into local government just to "get your foot in the door", DON'T. You might not have a leg to stand on.
One information I'd be most interested in is "What did the those managers do before managing, by salary range."
To answer questions like:
- Is it "better"* to become a manager after already having a high IT salary? Or to start from the bottom as a manager who's studied essentially management.
*: "Better" in monetary terms, of course. Obviously being a manager after having been in IT makes one a better human being; morally and intellectually superior to other kinds of manager.
That's not really the point though. $100k+ for an undergraduate degree (if that) is no pittance. In fact, it puts you in the top 3% in the United States. Not the vaunted 1%, for sure, but certainly no reason to complain.
...I'm employed at a bargain then. My salary of 40k w/benefits and company car must not measure up to their standards.
"Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me." - Pastor Niemller
It's precisely because of that fact that you see some silicon valley companies open up show in middle america, when they can get the senior people for the $120-$130 range
I'm in systems, not in dev, but the two groups have similar payscales. Dev tends to get paid a little more, especially in positions that require a high level of skill. However, I've seen huge variations in salaries, quality of work environment and skill level of employee that contribute to some of the trends in the data. Offshoring and visa programs also do really cut into the low end of IT and development...we're having trouble finding good junior sysadmins simply because ITIL and stuff has killed any real learning that can be done on a helpdesk job in a large company.
I would think that the fact that devs are better represented in the higher bracket is due to a couple factors:
- If you're some "rockstar developer" working in a niche specialty doing stuff that only a few people know, you're going to be paid well. We're talking stuff like embedded systems, fields with crazy business requirements that only a few people understand, etc., not necessarily the latest buzzwords and fads.
- If you work in investment banking as a quant, you're going to be paid very well. Your life will most likely suck because you'll be working all the time.
- Companies who have outsourced a lot of their basic devs are going to keep their most valuable ones in house, so average pay will go up for them.
- Also, it's not popular to mention, but there is a HUGE market for consultants to parachute in and fix the messes that outsourcers and offshore dev teams have made. Those guys get paid very well indeed.
My advice to anyone who wants to work in IT is this -- there will ALWAYS be downward pressure on salaries. People who live within their means and save aren't going to be as badly affected by the shifts we're seeing. In systems, we're seeing this in the form of cloud computing taking away routine admin jobs or making them less lucrative. The solution for those who can make the shift is to move into a systems engineering and architecture job where you can tell the developers what's not going to work with their cloud implementation. I don't know what the answer is for development, but in both "career tracks" the bottom rungs are getting hollowed out and it's not good for long term succession planning!
Also, don't forget that those high salaries are offset by California and New York cost of living. I live outside of NYC, and my salary would be considered amazing in, say, upstate NY or the Midwest, but it's just comfortable here.
I had no idea nurses were so well compensated
Telling me the composition by career of the top earners is as useful as telling me their composition by handedness - you're telling the story backwards.
Career-wise, it would be useful to tell us the likelihood of making each earning bracket *by career*.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Working as a FTE of Megacorp and making 140k+? Zero to few
????
At most tier 1 companies in Silicon Valley (Apple/Google/Facebook/Intel/etc.), pretty much every dev with more than 5 years experience will be making over 140K in salary + bonus + equity (likely far more, actually).
That depends heavily on where you live. $100k on the East or West coast is considered poverty level by the entitled masses in those locations whereas that same $100k on the 3rd coast (AKA Houston, TX) makes for comfortable if not copious living.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
If those high salaries are in Silicon Valley or New York, though, they might not seem as high as half the same rate would in Omaha, or Houston, or Raleigh.
Confirmed - as a Nebraskan $207,000 appears high and desirable.
"In other words, it seems like a good time to be in IT, provided you have a particular skillset."
Oh, I have a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career...
If you consider that poverty level then there is something wrong with you. I don't care where you live, $100k is enough money that you don't have to worry about your day to day life. Maybe you can't buy a second sports car or live in that sweet downtown loft, but you won't have the kind of financial insecurity that the majority of people in the US do.
Baloney. Most senior Silicon Valley engineers make 140k+. You can see this for yourself at Glassdoor.
The developers I see making $140k are basically PMs with some ability to toss in their secret sauce in to make stuff work. They are not the guys in the trenches, nor do they have any competition from H-1Bs.
Nursing courses at any common state school are rigid and tough as hell, because the industry is highly regulated and fuck ups can literally kill someone.
My wife is going though it, it seems tougher than most tech programs.
I am in the midwest earning slight below $100k working 40-45 hours a week as a team lead for software developers. I am not sure what this translates to in NY or California, but $200k will buy you a nice house on a quarter acre of land.
WOW! The fact that you missed the whole point of my comment (entitled E/W coast Millennials who think posting selfies on Twitter is worth 1/2 mil) and the insightful ranking means reading comprehension here is at an all time low. My post totally agreed with yours you just failed to grasp its true content.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Ever looked at the way former H-1b visa holders vote once they traverse "the path to citizenship"?
I'll put it this way: They certainly aren't going to vote for a candidate who will cut funds to NPR.
Seastead this.
Anyone looking for a $150K range senior developer/CTO with a specialization in TCP/IP routing and filtering technologies?
. . . In Davenport Iowa?
If you have ties to the area, and have the skill and experience for a high paying job, there aren't a whole lot of options available to you.
On the flip side, getting highly skilled professionals to move out to the middle of cornsville is also a little tough.
I know a guy who made so much money as a software developer that the accounting department had to call him every quarter to remind him to deposit his paychecks so they can close the books. (This was before direct deposit became widespread.) He lived a modest lifestyle that was a step up from his college days, bought few toys and invested his spare cash.
Hmm, I actually felt bad for the guy who ran the NYC office at my previous employer, he made $115k a year and to be able to afford a three bedroom with a yard he had a two+ hour each way commute to work. He was driving a ten+ year old car and barely managing to save enough to put his kids through school, his own retirement fund was essentially nonexistent. He wasn't wanting for food, but the same salary here in Cleveland has you living fairly well with much more wiggle room.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Would be nice to see how many software engineers are unemployed compared to the other groups.
I earn 72,000 as a regional truck truck driver and I have SO much less stress and NO on-call. I'm home on weekends and if my girlfriend's son has a school event, I can literally ask for one of my routes to take me by the school so I just park the truck and attend. If we want to do a family dinner during the week, I can also get routed to stop by the house. I think my girlfriend and her son like me more now that they see me less ;-) Leaving IT was one of the best life's decisions I've ever made. IT turned me into a monster. My girlfriend says I'm like a totally new and better person.
That's the way it is in DC, too; at $98K, With a 2-bed apartment in a mediocre neighborhood with an hour commute to work, a 7 year old car, and a minimal 401(k) (7.5%), I'm just barely in the black.
I'm basically a Linux admin (technically DevOps) and I'm billing $75 an hour, which comes out to be $150,000 a year w/ two weeks vacation factored in. I'm working for a startup in the healthcare space in Chicago. I left a crappy job at a large investment bank where I was making about six figures doing app support for electronic trading systems. I'm actually working for one of the guys whose software I used to support.
I thought I was paid well, but I didn't think it was that unusual. To hear that people in Silicon Valley are making the same, or less, than I am is quite surprising. I know the cost of living is much higher out West.
Which state?
Any that contract for 70 ot more an hour.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
...where subsidized "low income housing" can still easily cost $3,500 per month. A one-way public transit commute from KSFO to downtown costs almost $9. Throughout the US, health insurance that actually covers common accidents and/or illnesses throughout the year with a minimal deductible can cost more than $20,000 per year for a family of three.
Cost of living is the sole determinant of whether a salary is poverty-level or not, and a few of the major cities have that figure in a runaway ascent right now.
It's not below the "poverty level", but $100k isn't exactly "rolling in it" if you're living in NYC. It's enough for a single person to live in a good apartment in a pretty good neighborhood, but you're not talking about a second sports car for a "sweet downtown loft". $100k is still in the range where you're probably just hoping your tiny Brooklyn apartment's rent doesn't go up, because if it does, you don't know where you're going to be able to move to.
He's probably modded up, in part, because people disagree with your charicature of all young people as "entitled masses". Another part of his modding could be the obvious internal conflict in your post.
While the "entitled masses" on the E/W coast might find $100K to be poverty level, somehow that's comparable to $100K in Houston makes a comfortable living. Despite the fact that $100K is a comfortable living in all locations and those with a sense of entitlement will think it not enough in all locations.
In short, you can take your agism and tribe-ism and go fuck yourself.
There's been a real shortage of RNs for over a decade now (there are various skill levels in nursing, but an RN is as much work as a non-specialist doctor, really). Supply and demand.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
As a developer who practiced law for 4 years on top of developing for 10 (currently developing again since Jan 2013) I can tell you that:
-the legal profession is mostly a wasteland. Getting a law degree and passing the bar guarantees you nothing but a pile of debt. Even if you're successful and lucky enough to land a rare biglaw job, the burnout rate is extremely high. And even if you excel, most firms are generally done with you after 10 years unless you're a rainmaker. But that isn't a problem for the vast majority of attorneys who didn't make biglaw are barely scraping by (doing the aptly named "shitlaw"). A lot of them end up working as public defenders and other low level government positions for 40-50k a year. And the competition for these positions is extremely stiff.
-there is extremely high demand for developers in the 80-120k range, even in places that are relatively far removed from the big cities. I'm rarely out of work for long and I have little difficulty bouncing around as much as I wish. And the salaries are always good.
You can made decent money outside the big tech areas, in the smaller cities where quality of life tends to be higher. The trade-off is that you have to be willing to uproot and move to a completely different small city to chase other job opportunities. The demand for tech workers (and the commensurate pay) exists -- they just are not concentrated in a small area. But if you are unwilling to move (and your potential employer knows this), then they have a huge advantage when its comes to negotiating salary.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
Hah - try house hunting on that budget in silicon valley. You'll either get a dump or will be forced to rent. Or, need a second household income.
Simple. IT has proven to be highly cyclical based on past events. Good times today don't necessarily mean good times tomorrow. The H1-B program has no guarantees that the visa workers will go home if bad times hit.
The H1-B program is not based on any objective measurement of "shortage" and does not significantly respond to changes in demand. (I've personally lived through this after the "dot-com" crash.)
Further, it has harmed those trying to get into higher-demand IT specialties from glut IT specialties. Companies typically prefer younger visa workers to older citizen vying for glut transfers.
Table-ized A.I.
The truth is IT skills are less valued in the corporate world than in the non-corporate world(small businesses). Even someone working in Marketing department with not much skill but gets paid higher and respective more than any IT person. Does not matter if you work 12 - 16 hours a day you as an IT person are still seen as someone who does not contribute as much as the rest of the employees. It's especially relevant here in NYC they have something against IT workers.
In NYC, all it's boroughs, you were able to survive easily with $55k a year salary, but now, not so much since apartment rentals in all these boroughs have risen from $1200 to $2400 in the past 4 years. Even those crappy 1980's railroad room type apartments that i used to live in as a kid would cost $400 a month rent but now it's $2200 in areas like Wyckoff(crime ridden area in the 80's and early 90's). Food going up, gas still expensive, you have state and local taxes, you are being ticketed left and right, etc...
The problem is not the 1 - 2% dollar(monthly, and no it has not lost 95% of value) inflation, it's idiots on wall street, banking industry, real eastate assholes, increasing product prices based on speculation and home increases based on the popularity of it's location bullshit. I't just feels like this country is in a deflation phase while there is no shortage of the dollar, it's just weird.
When someone says "Megacorp", they typically mean this. There are a few companies on that list that will pay that (GS, INTC, JPM, MSFT), depending on where you work. But the majority will not.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
100K is just fine if you don't mind the 1 hours commute and occasional gun fire. Heck we call the exhilerating.
Hah - try house hunting on that budget in silicon valley. You'll either get a dump or will be forced to rent. Or, need a second household income.
Where do your fry cooks, hair dressers, carpenters and cab drivers live? Or are you telling me that a fry cook in Silicon Valley is making that kind of money? Or are you entitled to a much nicer place than they are?
Honestly, I was surprised at two things when I went from the public sector to the "private" sector. One, the pay is quite a bit higher. Two, the skill level is, if you can believe it, much lower. I can almost understand going with H1Bs. If your "developers" are going to dither over retarded camel-casing rules while churning out code full of SQL injection, unchecked exceptions, and VBisms by the truckload, why not buy the cheaper brand of turds? And organizations that retarded quite frankly deserve the misery inflicted by Dynamics and SAP consultants.
I'm a developer in San Francisco and I'll make just shy of $190k this year. I'm senior, sure, but good jobs do exist.
PS: I work for a great company and like what I do. I'm not schlepping COBOL or anything legacy-oriented at all. We're doing some cutting-edge research stuff and I get to pick my technologies.
PPS: Bachelor's in Comp Sci from a state school you haven't heard of. You don't have to be top of your class in Stanford to make it here.
I remember when I told my gf that I got an offer of $100k+ in the valley and it's barely enough to survive, and she said I am greedy. Lol.
People just don't open their eyes to try to understand. I can barely get a car (Civic) with that salary in that area.
It's not poverty level but $100k will leave you with very little in Washington, DC...you probably couldn't even buy a first sports car and the high cost of living means being out of work for even a few weeks could pull you under and force you out of the area.
That's a bad metric.. $20k of that would immediately get eaten by health insurance and other things companies usually provide.
HAHAHAHAHA, you are so sheltered....$100K barely gets you by if you wife, 2 kids, a mortgage, insane property taxes, insane state income tax, insane heating expenses. Try living in the NYC tri-state area with $100 and a family. You must be joking.
It's precisely because of that fact that you see some silicon valley companies open up show in middle america, when they can get the senior people for the $120-$130 range
Can you cite any examples? I know people in San Jose who have been looking for years, and found nothing that pays half as much, even with the cost of living adjustment.
I've worked in many companies where IT is separate from R&D. The distinction is that IT is mainly about corporate computer infrastructure (how information technology is applied to support a business) and R&D is about contributing to the business' bottom-line. In cases where the company is a technology/software company, IT and R&D are most certainly separate departments. IT is usually considered a liability on the balance sheets whereas the latter is considered a profit center. Sure, some IT professionals dabble in writing software, but it's quite different from a company whose business is technology/software. I wonder whether the underlying data in the charts can be stratified further to reflect such a distinction. I would suspect that IT (liability side) salaries are on the lower end of the scale with some overlap in the middle, depending upon what kind of business it supports. Businesses in software/technology are more likely to pay a premium, thus filling out the higher end of the scale.
So why doesn't your wife have a job? I didn't say $100k as a household income for four was a lot, I said for one person's salary it was a lot.
True $140K is not poverty... it's slap dab in the middle of the average middle class for households according to President Obama. And this is slashdot, so you can't argue with that since it has to be true.
Entitlement is irrelevant. I simply have a certain living standard that I would like to uphold and it is not attainable in Silicon Valley on a 100k/year salary. That means I either live in a city with a lower cost of living or lower my standards. A fry cook can make the same choice.
I guess you don't have kids. I make about $80k, well away from either coast, and support a family on a single income. I have week-to-week financial security, but little else. I spend more on part-time nursery school than I would on a Hummer.
First off, glassdoor isn't a representative set. Secondly, it counts salary only, not bonuses and equity that can be half of your take home. Third, it does averaging but doesn't drop out old days points- days points from 09 are horribly outdated, but included in their averages. Glassdoor is good for reviews, but it's salary numbers are junk.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Not the same guy, but my wife stays home with the kid and wouldn't dream of putting him in daycare. 100k really isn't that great for NY. It isn't poor, but you would be in a small apartment. You could make half that somewhere cheaper and have a better standard of living. My point of contention with your original statement was "I don't care where you live, $100k is enough money that you don't have to worry about your day to day life." It's really not.
I make almost 100k in a state with 3% income tax. I have a mortgage in the upper 1600s, two (normal) car payments, and one kid. Many things add up, especially with a family. I am careful with money, but I really don't save much. I wouldn't dream of moving to NY on this salary.
Nobody said anything about a family on a single income. I was talking about one person's income. It's still not poverty, but yes, as a household income that is not very extravagant. .
Silicon Valley and surrounding areas are too expensive as are New York and Boston and parts of Seattle metro.
Where would you [Slashdot readers] want to live if they pumped more tech jobs into the area? Is decentralizing the only way to get tech jobs in areas that don't have a crazy cost of living?
No, it counts bonuses and equity when you enter in the total income. Sorry. Most senior guys are $140k
You have to compare cost of living at the location of work. Sure you can commute but if part of getting that 140k is a 1.5hr commute each way then it really is more like 90k with overtime pay. So if I'm working downtown Manhattan and an 3 bedroom apartment goes for $4000 a month that is $48000 a year. Same thing in the middle of no where is maybe $12000 a year that is a $36000 after tax salary difference you need. Then comes food prices (usually higher) etc. There are exceptions but generally IT provides a nice comfortable lifestyle: you probably can have a corvette if you really want it but you'll have to sacrifice somewhere else, dido the extra nice house/appartment/alimony payments. We aren't rich because we can't have all 4 at the same time without worrying about it but we can get a comfortable mix of what we want and generally doing have to worry about how we are going to pay for that new gadget or night out at the pub.
Quality of life tends to be higher?
Wait, those other places have *weather* and I can't wear shorts all year round.. That's supposed to be higher?
I had the same experience in Canada. Lived in Vancouver was making 10% more but renting a 10x10 bedroom in a shared house was about $100 less than I'm paying for my mortgage in a suburb of Toronto. West coast living is just crazy expensive. The lady I was living with was sharing a mattress on the floor of the basement with her 10 year old son. Probably not legal and how much longer could she do that before it would get really creepy for the both of them? I asked her why she didn't move out east were she'd make a decent living: "oh but the weather is so nice". It is like you are on vacation and you live like it (ie spend every dime you have and are constantly checking to see if you still have any money left before buying that coffee). At the time ~5 years back a one bedroom condo was going for over $1M. Even at 100k a year you'll have a hard time living like a toy factory worker in Ontario.
I don't care where you live, $100k is enough money that you don't have to worry about your day to day life.
I agree if you're not married with kids, but if you are, then $100k could be a little tight in a few areas of the country (it'd be fine in most of the country, though).
To work through an example in a high-ish cost of living area, let's say you live in a $650k house, have one $35k car per adult, and a few kids. Figure a $3k/mo mortgage, $1000/mo car payment+insurance+maintenance x 2, $2500/yr for a dog, $400/mo utilities, $500 groceries (several mouths to feed), $1000/mo for kids' activities. Say you get to keep $70k of your salary after taxes, and you're already in the hole $10k per year.
But yeah, if you're just trying to support 1 person, then $100k/yr is plenty.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
I dunno bro, I had to wait a whole extra paycheque to buy my Lego Super Star Destroyer after I'd bought an XBox One, a PS4 and a bunch of games already that month. It's pretty harsh having to live like this.
That's so entitled it is ridiculous. Oh no, I can't live in a $650k house, I am so poor. You realize that a $100k household salary puts you in the top 20% of households in the US, ignoring any money your spouse might make. What are the other 80% of people doing to live? Yeah, yeah, some places are more expensive than others. But your Starbucks barista in your super-expensive city still lives somewhere. Your barber lives somewhere. And they have kids too.
That's so entitled it is ridiculous.
I had a feeling that you might say something like this, but realize that you are directly contradicting yourself.
You first said:
I don't care where you live, $100k is enough money that you don't have to worry about your day to day life.
I'm sorry. You can't just say, "If you make 100k then you can live anywhere in the US and not have to worry about money," but when someone points out that there are certain places where 100k doesn't put you on Easy Street, you can't then scold, "Oh, don't need to live somewhere where 650k buys you a modest rowhouse, then."
No shit I don't need to live somewhere that expensive. That wasn't the point. The point is that 100k isn't enough for certain places. That's all I'm saying. That you're wrong that 100k is enough for every square inch of the country. It's not. It's enough for 95+% of the country, but not absolutely everywhere.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
I simply have a certain living standard that I would like to uphold
And with your education, experience, and contribution to society, would you say you're entitled to that certain living standard?
Realize that you can take your statement, and substitute $10,000 or $1,000,000 and it can still hold true. It's more of a reflection of your own tastes than Silicon Valley.
Any big tech area where you can wear shorts year round is a hell hole.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
"I wanna be the CEO of some company that sells stuff I know nothing about," said no kid ever. If you work in IT, chances are you're just money-making livestock for some CEO who couldn't do your job is the fate of the world depended on it. This is an upside-down economy, and I wonder how long it can possibly last.
I didn't read your original comment but if it was similar to your follow-up, he may have failed to grasp its true content because your sentences are quite long. Just as with computer networking, if a message is transmitted and the receiver doesn't know what to do with it or any other problem with the message, the responsibility for fixing the situation lies with the sender.
The average home price in LA is over $500K. In San Francisco it is over $650K. In NY the median home price is over $350K. A nicer home in a better neighborhood in Houston is less than $300K. You can take your pathetic condescending attitude and shove it up your ass.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
To work through an example in a high-ish cost of living area, let's say you live in a $650k house, have one $35k car per adult, and a few kids. Figure a $3k/mo mortgage, $1000/mo car payment+insurance+maintenance x 2, $2500/yr for a dog, $400/mo utilities, $500 groceries (several mouths to feed), $1000/mo for kids' activities. Say you get to keep $70k of your salary after taxes, and you're already in the hole $10k per year.
I agree with your basic point, but I'd like to nitpick. What the heck are you feeding your dog? Or are the annual dog license and vet visit insanely high where you are? And what are two kids doing that costs $6000/kid/year? Maybe polo or fox hunting? OTOH, relative to the other costs, food seems a little low, but perhaps having only one spouse working allows for more prep time with less expensive foodstuffs.
- T
Since you feel that way, great, stay away..
I looked into a law degree a couple years back. You either get a Big Law job (starting at 125-135, with raises depending on what business you bring in, with many lawyers getting very infrequent raises), or you work for yourself (average was in the mid-70s).
A lot of things about the graph are misleading. There are *plenty* of people with law degrees who either cant find work as an attorney, scrape by in bottom-feeder roles (real estate and probate law), or work contract-to-contract.
Also, 103-200 is a huge range.
What the heck are you feeding your dog? Or are the annual dog license and vet visit insanely high where you are? And what are two kids doing that costs $6000/kid/year?
I'll say to you the same thing that I said to the other commenter: the basic premise is that if I make 100k/yr, I shouldn't have to compromise. It shouldn't matter what I feed my dog, and it shouldn't matter what activities my kids do. I shouldn't have to think about money, in the eyes of cryptizard, but clearly, if I made 100k and lived where I live, I would have to think about money. Maybe I wouldn't have a dog. Maybe my kids wouldn't do three activities, each. Maybe we'd economize somewhere else. But none of this matters.
To answer your question, my dog is old, and she has some health problems. She eats probably $20 worth of food per month and another $40 or so in medicines. Her annual vet exam is like $700 now, and when we leave town, we board her. And she's had some big vet bills in her lifetime, which I averaged out and included in my annual figure. It adds up. Dogs aren't cheap unless you put them down if they get a big health problem.
For activities, they each do a sport, an instrument, and a foreign language class. Nothing extravagant, but again, it adds up. Stuff is expensive.
And I'm not complaining. But... well... I also make more than $100k/yr, so I don't have to worry so much about money. But I'm just sayin', if you "only" make 100k/yr, and you live in one of the few really high-cost areas in the country, you're not going to be able to live worry-free, financially. You're going to have to make some compromises.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Holy shit, you're saying the AVERAGE home price is high in LA? Where hollywood actors live? And then you compare that to the median NY price? And then take a specific (yet generalized) example in Houston?
And somehow these values lend weight to the argument that a $100K is considered poverty level. Jesus christ dude, I don't think anyone is saying that there is variance in housing prices. It's the straw-man attitude to those prices and expected income that is making you look like a douche.
But seriously, if you're going to compare areas, at least use a consistent metric.
Why would he be that stupid?
I live 2 hours from NYC. I live in a 3 bedroom, two bath w/ garage. I earn a lot less than $115k/yr. My commute to work is 35 minutes. I have two kids. I have enough wiggle room.
If you can't afford to live near NYC, then why in hell would you work there? Just so you can say you earn a six-figure salary?
I make more than that. At times way more than that. Not because I'm some uber guru language genius propeller head but because of my domain knowledge and my ability to just get shit done in tight timeframes, whatever that shit may be. That, in my opinion, is where my value and hence my remuneration stems from.
No, it doesn't. Math just doesn't work out. I don't even know startups out here that offer that little.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I'm a manager at a Mc D's but Im not making boo koo bucks. Not even close to the 200000.00 thousand. I am a Manager though and I can put that on my Facebook without telling everyone its fo a MC D position. I be gettin all the women. PEACE!! OUT!