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By the Numbers: The Highest-Paying States For Tech Professionals
Nerval's Lobster writes The average technology professional made $89,450 in 2014, according to Dice's latest salary survey. When it comes to salaries, however, not all states and cities are created equal. Those tech pros living and working in Silicon Valley are the highest-paid in the country, with an average annual salary of $112,610—but that salary grew only 4 percent year-over-year, lagging behind cities such as Portland and Seattle. Dice has built an interactive map that shows where people are making the most (and least). As you click around, note how salary growth is particularly strong in parts of the West, the Northeast, and the South, while remaining stagnant (and even regressing) in some middle states. If anything, the map reinforces what many tech pros have known for years: that more cities and regions are becoming hubs of innovation.
How 2005, guess I dont need to see it anyway.
Salary means nothing unless you can compare it to the cost of living in each city. I would suggest a high wage in Silicon Valley is actually lower than many other areas due the the high cost of rent and real estate.
I went from $107K just outside Los Angeles to $124K in silicon valley and lost in the deal
I mean really that thing doesn't present information so much as hide it.
The average salary is much much lower if you include tech professionals who earn exactly ZERO.
Slashdot is owned by Dice Holdings, so a story about a survey by Dice without disclosing that fact is quite shady.
Missing some states there...
$80K here in Metro Atlanta is like $250K out there - and that's not even including lifestyle.
Meaning, commute times, being able to own a house, health club member ship to swim and play tennis, free time (Those SV jobs seem to want you there 24/7.) and a bunch of other things.
After looking at rents and whatnot, for me to do a one to one move, I would demand no less than $400K/year, - NO stock options. And that's at an established company like Google.
Those flaky startups that will be out of business in 6 months? NFW! Been there done that, got ripped off.
And those people wonder why they can't find any qualified people. Geeze bozos! It's because the word is out that you pay shit.
No Dice...
Minor rant aside, where I live in the mid-west we are rich with tech companies but the cost of living here is oh so very cozy that ~$70,000 here probably equates to ~$140,000 in Silicon Valley and other parts of the country where the cost of living is high.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
The Boston table starts at 2005 with $79,211, and ends in 2014 with $97,288.
This site shows relative dollar values, comparing one year to another. I put in the above starting values (it only goes to 2013 as the data for 2014 hasn't been collated yet; 2013 in the table was $94,531), and it said in 2013 that value would range from $91,400 to $101,000. More of the result's range is to the higher side of the 2013 number, so I would conclude that the value of money is going up faster than the value of the dollar, per this site.
Additionally I've heard colloquially that if you're not making 7% a year, the Federal Reserve is doing better than you. (Their founding paperwork says the US Government gives them a 6% profit every year, regardless of business conditions -- somewhat like Duke and Duke, they always get their commission.)
Calculating 7% annually, it would go from $79,211 in 2005 to, in 2013, $136,100.
So, tech jobs in Boston are actually doing much worse than they were in 2005.
One cannot build a house with a flexible ruler.
Got a car, since the cost of living is lower here. Actually, a few vehicles (car, truck, boat). Don't need a bike anymore. I've bicycled for recreation all around the USA. Road across Nebraska a few times - have done many MS-150s in Texas, Georgia, NC. Cost of living matters.
Also have a 3600 sqft McMansion on a small 1 acre estate - thanks to a lower cost of living here.
Don't have many crazies living nearby either.
I can surf and ski in the same day too. That is hardly a reason to live somewhere with 30% higher cost of living for the same salary.
My $130K/yr in Atlanta goes a long way.
Fortunately, I can visit Cali for a day or so to help me remember why I never want to live there. Don't get me wrong, it is a nice place to visit, sorta like Omaha, but I don't want to live there anymore.
I have friends who lived/worked in SF for a few years. They didn't like it and moved back to Houston, Tx. I lived in Houston for 8 yrs and thought it was an armpit. To me, it was. I didn't enjoy the weather, but many folks do. I did like the people in Houston. I like most people around the world, provided they aren't small-minded.
Happy that you like it in Cali. Finding happines in our lives is important. Just because it isn't right for me, doesn't mean it isn't right for everyone. Plus if everyone moved to where I lived, traffic would get worse. Don't need that.
What an impossible to use clickie-map.
A test list would have been WAY easier to use.
.. but I found this useful. At least I can see what salary averages are in my area so that I know where I stand. If I'm looking for work, this knowledge puts me in a better position. The year over year increases (and decreases in some previous years) aren't that surprising to me, they tend to follow the economy.
Yes, I get that this is a dice slashvertisement, but I appreciate it anyway.
I've been an EE for 15 years and I've never gotten a raise that outpaced inflation. The standard 2%/year that everyone gets is designed simply to deflate salaries over time. Sure, I make quite a bit more than I did my first year out of school, but in real-world terms I'm really making quite a bit less.
Maybe some of the programmers who worked on that page could fix this mess? Yeah it's far from the greatest page in the history of the interwebs but it is more functional than this one. I'll bet its administrators are more responsive to user feedback as well.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Based on this post, you sound like such a nice, friendly person. I want to live around people like you.
We've actually had conversations before, so I know you're not normally a complete jerk. Maybe your constipated this morning or something. If I didn't know you, though, your current post would be an example indicating that people from the coasts are ignorant, arrogant assholes.
The truth is, Ward Cleaver would fit in better in the Midwest, Marilyn Manson in California. If your lifestyle is more like Marilyn Manson than Ward Cleaver you might prefer California, New York, or Austin. If you want a more "wholesome" Ward Cleaver lifestyle, head west a few miles from Austin to College Station, Tx. I've lived in each city for a number of years. Both are nice in their own way. When I was young and partying, I liked Austin, where the piercings outnumber the people by six to one. Now that I'm a little older and I think about things like savings for retirement and where my kids go to school, College Station is a better fit.
I'm a tech professional living in KC... income last year was $157,566. Fuck Dice. My income, coupled with the low cost of living, means that I don't have to spend all of my hard earned money on taxes, inflated goods and services, and I don't have to live around a bunch of pajama boi liberal retards. Plus, I can hit up the shooting range 10 minutes from my house whenever I want and I don't have any loser liberals en masse congregating to ruin freedom. I'll keep my salary, cost of living, standard of living, and freedom and stay in the fly over. You can have your liberal cesspools and Dice.
Its for reasons like this that my frequency coming back to /. is decreasing.
Most companies in SV are hip to the remote worker, and your pay will be granted or reduced appropriately to your geographic location.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Else I'm not looking at your content anymore.
Re. salary analysis: Wouldn't medians as well as averages, or distributions, be useful? If Bill Gates sat down with three Bubba-six-pack feiends for a hand of poker, the average net worth at the table is ~10 billion, the median is maybe 10K.) Remember the tax cut promised to "save an average of $1700? The median saving was only a couple hundred dollars. (That tax cut was almost totally financed by excessive Social Security collections - the largest holder of federal debt is the Social Security system.)
Re. the Dice salary map: while the zoom-in is obvious – click on a state or city, zoom-out is not. Clicking outside a city takes you to the state level, but how do you get back to the entire map? (Scroll to outside the US and click on the water or on Canada!) Wouldn’t a “back to entire US button” save a lot of futzing, if not so artsy-fartsy?
Have fun with 'This map requires Flash Player 8.0 or higher'
-miah
Baseball has "weighted runs created plus" to measure the value a player adds to a team. 100 means you're a replacement-level player. Anything under 100, you're a liability. Anything over, you're adding to the team.
Salaries need the same type of stat that takes into account the cost of living of an area versus the salary. Do programmers actually make more money in Silicon Valley, or are they just being compensated more because it's one of the highest cost of living areas?
So I propose that we don't discuss salaries again until someone comes up with wCOL+, the weighted cost of living plus statistic, which normalizes salaries across the nation. 100 would mean you're breaking even - you make enough to subsist with nothing left over. Under 100, and you're losing money. Over 100, you're adding enough value to have money left over.
The map leaves off Hawaii (and Alaska). Guess we don't count or don't exist.
shut up....dude, SHUT UP. Do you want Atlanta (or random BFE) flooded with douchbag codemonkey brogrammers fucking up your local labor market? I don't. So don't let on how good we have it!
You can surf and (snow) ski on the same day where near Atlanta?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
As someone who was born and raised in St. Louis, MO -- I can tell you it really depends. In the last decade or so, my opinion is that it's time to get out of St. Louis if you're trying to make a living there doing I.T.
It has several "big players" who hire for tech positions and pay well, but the problem is what's available outside of those options. Enterprise Leasing, for example, has their corporate HQ in St. Louis and employs a lot of I.T. workers. (Some of my best friends worked for them for years.) You've also got options like Boeing, Energizer or the A.B. brewery.
But take a closer look and you can see a trend of Boeing scaling things back over the years in St. Louis. (Ever since they bought out McDonnell Douglas, they've been shrinking the size of that campus.) A.B. hasn't been the same ever since they sold out to InBev, either. And the once well regarded A.G. Edwards Company is now Wells Fargo Advisors, a company not exactly known for being a "great place to work" in I.T.
Don't forget the auto makers who used to have plants in St. Louis and are now gone.
The cost of living is reasonable (especially housing prices), but crime is pretty bad these days (just look at the insanity ever since the Ferugson riots), and the once amazing riverfront area is pretty much gone too.
These days, you find the occasional good I.T. position open in STL working for the Federal Reserve or maybe a contract with the Post Office. As in all cities, I.T. jobs are available with the school districts and hospitals too -- but you won't hear a whole lot of stories of high job satisfaction with many of those. I guess there are some openings at Emerson Corp. too, but that puts your workplace right in the middle of where all the Ferguson fallout lies.
After living there for around 40 years, I had enough ... saw the writing on the wall, and got out. Working in the DC area now, I was initially unhappy with the cost of living making my salary increase an actual pay cut. But you learn how to live cheaper out here, in trade for a longer commute - and eventually settle into something that's effective. (Or don't, and accept the higher cost of living as an acceptable trade for being in the heart of the DC night life, etc.) By using public transportation, I literally went from putting over 1,000 miles per month on my vehicle to only putting 2,000 on it in 5 months. That requires a change in habits but makes it cheaper to live here than it first seemed.
At $120k, you're in a much higher fed income tax bracket. 30%. Ouch. Then Cali adds.....IIRC it was 10%, probably higher now. Then SF adds what, 4%? Lets not forget the SS,...........another 10%.......you're over 50% now, LOL. How are you going to save $60k a year again? Live on nothing?
Apartment = 3k/month which is 36,000 a year......were down to 24k for everything else --- electricity (twice as expensive than where I am), Gas (much more expensive) or transport, etc etc.
Oh, and lets not forget the fact that the SV job is going to work you like a dog at 80+ hours a week, so you really need to compare it to working a full time AND a part time job in the midsouth where I am, LOL!!
Proof that I can save more than cali brogrammer douches: I already own my property (house and acerage) outright, at a younger age than most of these brogrammers land their first slave job LOL!!!
captcha: western --- lol the west was never what it was cracked up to be
If you're surprised to see Mississippi taking a leap in salary, don't be. The reason is because tech salaries in Mississippi have been atrociously low.
It is changing. But not fast enough.
I don't know about SV, but I live in the northwest suburbs of Chicago and have a significantly higher cost of living than most of northern Illinois. For instance my parents live an hour southwest of Chicago and have a 50% larger house for 75% of the cost.
But I am not just paying the extra money to be closer to higher paying jobs. I get better schools, better restaurants, better entertainment options, and of course better career options. I also live next to more affluent neighbors, which means my daughter will have more affluent friends, have better internship opportunities, etc. That makes a big difference. My high school techie friends from the same small farm town my parents still live in mostly have jobs as satellite dish repair men or something similar. My wife's high school techie friends from the northwest suburbs build robots for Microsoft Research or other similar jobs. Part of my high cost of living is paying so my daughter has the same head start in the "who you know" category that my wife did.
When you look at "self-made" millionaires and other outstanding success stories, you will almost always notice they came from highly affluent upper middle class families in areas that would give them more opportunities than your average person. The creators of the next Microsoft, Facebook, etc. are mostly likely already born in a place like New York City, Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, Denver, etc, not the rural Midwest. And in a similar fashion, the next generation of C-level executives, big shot lawyers, etc. are probably also going to be mostly from these high COL areas.
Paying for that high COL in part helps increase the chance that your next generation has a chance of sitting at that table. And even if my children are not that ambitious, at least I enjoyed better food options and a better theater scene for my money.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
After 25 years in Chicago, took an opportunity in San Diego. Yes, the salary increase matched the cost of living change, otherwise I would not have done it.
Within 3 months, California jacked income taxes by 1% across the board, making it nearly 10% for my bracket. I moved into a house with a small yard (50'x60') so my daughter could play outside, similar to what we had in NW Chicagoland.
The house price doubled, my water bill went from less than $50/month to nearly $400. SDG&E has progressively increasing Electric rates, which peak at $0.39/Kwhr, The school quality is really bad (and we were in Poway Unified, supposedly the best district in SoCal). So much so, that the Teacher and the Principal agreed that it was best to send my daughter to private school (another $15K/yr). The kicker? I was being killed by Federal AMT taxes, and there was no way to avoid it.
My COL calculations were woefully inadequate, and it was time to get out.
I left for SE Michigan, which is rising lately. Lower unemployment than San Diego, half the income tax rate, similar sized house, but no mortgage.
My living costs are about $60K/yr cheaper, people are friendlier, there are 4 ski resorts within an hour drive, and boating is 15 minutes away.. Besides, $60K can buy a lot of plane tickets.
So the title of the article is "The Highest-Paying States for Tech Pros" and the label on the graph says "Average U.S. Tech Salaries". But the graph actually shows change in average tech salary. I think I'm going to stop paying attention to Dice entirely.
There are options to one's lifestyle that matter vis a vis cost of living. If you live frugally in a high cost of living area, you may still be spending more than if you live frugally in a low cost of living area, but you can probably save/invest more money from that high salary, so it may pay off as part of a long term plan to build up capital.
I also realize that inflation can wipe out savings. Any long term plan is something of a gamble. My point is, that one shouldn't be too simplistic about weighing the alternatives.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
Neither the article nor the dice survey article to say whether these numbers include stock, bonus and perks. The size of the numbers suggests that this is before bonus and stock. That makes these numbers completely meaningless. My base salary is around $140k but my total compensation is more like $230k for doing software development in Silicon Valley. So it really matters whether you include something beyond base salary and if you're showing me a "study" and then don't tell me what you included, well, that's just useless.
Whitewater and Stone Mountain. Yes, stone mountain has snow http://www.stonemountainpark.c... a few times yearly AND in the middle of summer for a few days.
Or in 3 hrs - there's mountain skiing: http://blog.allstate.com/5-ski...
Or at the beach: http://www.surfing-waves.com/f...
Or I can spend a week in Cali and do it for $2K (airfare/hotel included). Hardly worth living there all the time over that. The cost of living in Cali is obscene.
BTW, people in Dubai can surf and ski in the same morning if they like too.
* http://www.skidxb.com/
* http://www.surfshoparabia.com/...
Contrary to popular beleif, there are mountains on the east coast. I live in Charlotte and a ski trip is two hours with a beach trip three hours. From ATL its the opposite. There are ski resorts in the North Carolina and Virginia mountains. The skiing isn't as good as utah, but the more enjoyable beaches (warmer water, less turbulent) make up for the difference.
I live in Atlanta, and am well aware that the mountains exist. However, having mountains and beach 5 hours apart (making a 10-hour round trip) does not realistically count as "skiing and surfing on the same day."
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz