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.

Comments

Hold on a minute

[ranton]

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.

Re:Hold on a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

It fits just fine, the question now becomes, "What would the wages be without them there as a controlling factor to suppress them?"

Nice attempt to sound smart while acting like a shill though. Unless you think companies like Infosys don't exist though, then enjoy living the dream.

Re:Hold on a minute

[mc6809e]

And if the numbers for lawyers and physicians are any indication, the highest software developers are probably making their money in medical software or regulatory compliance software.

Re:Hold on a minute

[asliarun]

I find more amusing that some software developers are making $104,000, and there are more of them than managers making $200,000, therefor there are more software developers in the $103,000-$203,000 range than there are managers in said range.

Software development, like (i guess) medicine, law, finance, etc., values expertise, skills, experience, and deep analytical ability. More so than many others where analytical ability is less valued. Besides, this leadership skills, client management skills, and project management skills are also valued, but they are equally valued in other industries as well.

That is, IMHO, we see the pattern we see. Highly skilled software developers, like highly skilled financial analysts/traders - transcend traditional salary and "perceived value" bands, and can often make far more money than even very senior counterparts in their company. However, conversely, other counterparts - i.e. software development managers with well rounded analytical and managerial skills are also very well regarded and paid accordingly.

There really is no reason why one has to feel snarky about either of these options. One can feel snobbish about individual skills (and being a non-manager), just as one can feel snooty about being high up in the corporate chain. And both positions are boorish, IMHO. Pride about individual skills is fine, and good, but do remember, there are very highly skilled craftsmen and blue collared workers and armed forces personnel by the thousands who get paid diddly squat compared to what software and financial guys get paid. We just got lucky and are enjoying the ride in the gravy train - and all because of the completely messed up way in which the market works (and assigns relative value to skills).

Re:Hold on a minute

[Thanshin]

I knew I should have been a cyborg lawyer programmer. But I was afraid of ending up just doing cyborg lawyer maintenance.

Re:Hold on a minute

[cyberchondriac]

1) Why do teachers always rank as an all important metric? There are good teachers and bad teachers.. even lousy teachers, there's nothing that special about their profession compared to many others. They are not beneficent deities, shaping our future via our children, though the rhetoric would have you believe that. It's just another angle for the whole, "think of the children" routine.
2) My sister-in-law is a teacher for a high school in NJ, and makes over $80k a year. And that's for 9 months out of the year. I just don't see public school teachers who belong to the NJEA doing all that badly. Private catholic school teachers maybe, but public teachers in a union have it pretty good around here.

Re:Hold on a minute

[bluefoxlucid]

I was more interested in the wide and volatile range chosen. $100k is considered a big line to cross; to cross it twice is an immense step. It is as if we compared people making $20,000-$60,000 and found that more McDonalds workers are in that range than small business accountants--with McDonalds workers making $22k on average, and accountants making $58k.

Re:Hold on a minute

[cryptizard]

I didn't say that were that important, just that being a teacher requires an advanced degree and they are paid a lot less than programmers. And they make a good example because no one can say that their jobs are pointless or don't contribute to society like they would if I had said, "what about the MFAs/liberal arts PhDs". In fact, what I was trying to say that there is nothing special about programmers. Why do they deserve to make 3-4 times what other professions that require similar hours, and equivalent or higher education, make? And your sister might make that, but the average salary for a teacher in the US (across all levels of experience) is close to $50k.

Re:Hold on a minute

[mooingyak]

And your sister might make that, but the average salary for a teacher in the US (across all levels of experience) is close to $50k.

Going to quote a bit selectively from various spots for a second here...

My sister-in-law is a teacher for a high school in NJ, and makes over $80k a year.

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.

Emphasis mine.

If the highly paid programmers are skewed towards certain high cost of living markets, then it's fairer to compare salaries against other professions in those same markets, and not nationwide averages.

Re:Hold on a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

There certainly is something special about programmers - market demand. Every business in the world is becoming more and more dependent on using computers in their never-ending quest for productivity gains. Who is it who knows how to make those computers do what businesses want them to do? Programmers. Should the people who know how to provide those productivity gains be compensated with a share of said gains? Absolutely. Or did you think that businesses have some special dispensation from God that should give them this thing they want (e.g. more profits) without paying for it?
You seem to have the idea in your head that people should make what they "deserve", as if there were some almighty agent who says, "This person should make this much and no more but give that person a raise". If there is such a thing then it is called "the free market" - suck it up.

Re:Hold on a minute

[cryptizard]

Anyone who got an A in the course in question is qualified to teach it.

That's the kind of attitude that leads to terrible teachers. It really is not that easy. What do you think they do for two years in graduate school? Pedagogy is not a simple subject, and just because you know the material does not, in any way, mean that you can be an effective teacher. Also, if you think passing the course, or even excelling at the course, gives you the necessary content knowledge to effectively teach it, you are terribly mistaken. To be a really good teacher you need to have mastery of the entire discipline so that you understand where every class fits into the overall tableau. Not to mention the simple case of a student asking you a question that's not in the textbook (which is most of them).

Re:Hold on a minute

[mooingyak]

In rural Illinois you'd pay $500/month mortgage on a reasonable 3 bedroom home in a safe middle class neighborhood, in Dallas you'd pay maybe $700, in Albuquerque you'd pay $800, in Miami you'd pay $1200. So, the biggest gap there is $700/mo. That's $8,400 a year.

I paid around $1300 / month to rent a 2 bedroom apartment roughly 30 miles east of Manhattan. Was a decent but not great neighborhood. And this was 10 years ago. Mortgage + taxes for a decent sized house in NYC suburbs can easily run you over $3k / month. Now your biggest gap is $2500 / month, or over $30k a year. Other expenses add up as well. I've often joked that the nice thing about being a tourist from the NYC area is you barely notice how much you're getting gouged for food at tourist traps. It's a comparatively small markup.

Re:Hold on a minute

[aztracker1]

It's even more broad than that... if you look at housing, even renting in/near LA, San Francisco, New York, etc... it can be much more than that to live there. Just the difference in rent between where I am in Phoenix, and the area in SF I was looking at is about 25-30k/year difference in rent alone. Let alone restaurants and the like. Sure, large chains will be very similar in pricing for common goods, but the cost of food and housing are a lions share of expenses, and can vary dramatically.

Re:Hold on a minute

[wrook]

There is a big difference between teachers and programmers. I know because I've done both jobs. Teaching is the more difficult one to do well. Good programming requires rare skills and an ability to concentrate more than most people can imagine. Good teaching does not need any unusual technical skill. The material you are teaching is really quite easy compared to what programmers have to contend with. The tricky bit is turning around lives that have been destroyed by circumstance and incompetent parents. Excellent programming requires a top notch mind and a devotion to learning. Excellent teaching requires a damn near miracle of people skills and good judgement.

Here's the kicker. If you staff your programming team with poor performers, chances are (sooner or later) your business will die because of them. The complexity that bad programmers add to a problem when they are coding eventually becomes so heavy that you just can't move forward. If you staff your school with poor performers, the students still graduate. The schools still operate. In fact, you can cut the budget of a school just about as far as you want, driving out any teacher that cares about money. The students still graduate. The school suffers in that it becomes a center for incarcerating delinquents, but the students still graduate. You just keep lowering the standards and society pays the hidden price.

A gifted programmer can name his price. A gifted teacher? Gets lost in the shuffle. His only reward is what he makes of it.

Re:Hold on a minute

[luis_a_espinal]

The guys getting 250k a year from Google are basically the SF version of high-end guys making 120-140 a year here in FL. Same take home and everything.

Bingo. This was my #1 reason I forego the idea of relocating from SoFla to the Valley. One thing that I would add is that said programmer in Tampa can buy a *real* house in a decent school district as a head-of -household with with a stay-at-home spouse. In San Francisco, forget it. The equivalent programmer could only afford a whole in a wall, or have to have his/her spouse work in the same field just to be able to buy a *real* house in a good school district.

Denver, Dallas or Seattle are much better options to relocate, money-wise.

How many really make $140k ?

[Rigel47]

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?

Where should I apply?

[Anonymous Coward]

$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.

Re:Where should I apply?

[MightyYar]

Depending on where you are employed, government jobs also give you a pension that would be worth around $1 million if you had to buy it as an annuity.

I assumed a retirement age of 55 after working for 30 years to get your full pension. I assumed your salary would not increase over time and that the annuity would track cost-of-living. I assumed half-salary upon retirement, for life, with a spousal benefit upon your death. These assumptions are very conservative and probably seriously understate the real value of the pension, especially if it includes a health benefit.

Re:How many really make $140k ?

[cryptizard]

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.

Re: How many really make $140k ?

[hibiki_r]

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

Uneven distribution of talent?

[ErichTheRed]

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.

Bad statistics

[arielCo]

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*.

Confirmed..

[modi123]

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.

Particular Skillset?

[HideyoshiJP]

"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...

Re:How many really make $140k ?

[cryptizard]

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.

Re:Clearly....

[lgw]

If you develop software for $40k, you should be looking. If you're willing to relocate and aren't fresh out of school, you'll certainly double, maybe triple that. All the big companies are hiring now. Make sure your resume is visible on LinkedIn (and maybe that Dice site, I guess) - I know my team is searching the nation for anyone qualified and willing to relocate, and we're not alone in that!

Re:How many really make $140k ?

[HeckRuler]

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.

Re:hum

[King_TJ]

I haven't ever lived or worked in NYC, but I'm not that surprised by what you're saying.

NYC is ground zero for brokers and bankers .... people who believe they essentially rule the world because they control the flow of the money. One of my best friends did I.T. for a large firm that supplies those Wall Street traders with some of their computer software tools. You'd think if they respected any I.T. folks, it would be guys like him. (Heck, his own DAD was a stock broker, so he had some experience in their world.) But no.... they treated him like dirt.

Re:How many really make $140k ?

[Slashdot Parent]

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.