why are software engineers paid so much reddit

Oh god please no, I already do tech work. Why do software engineers change jobs so frequently? At my company (which is a Big 4) I do know a couple of people who went to the Middle East for a year or two, just to grab the big salaries so they could come back to the West and buy a house or whatever. If you have had no internships throughout your schooling for whatever reason you're at a real disadvantage. Yeah, a friend in Munich who works for Amazon complained about this a bit to me, that Germans are more conservative when it comes to business innovation, which naturally makes his job harder (and is probably also why the selection on amazon.de feels several years behind amazon.com). Housing is considered affordable at 24-30% of a person's annual income. If I worked as a GP I could get paid as much as £104,000 a year. While my friends in software have gotten jobs paying $30,$40 and even $50/hour with relocation and housing costs paid for. I'm in environmental engineering and don't earn nearly as much as my friends doing software engineering at my University. An extreme outlier. Press J to jump to the feed. So an MD doesnt start earning money until 11 to 15 years after high school. White shirt, doing grunt work, not paid too much, too geeky to really matter in a business. In the Middle East they pay higher than the US, and have zero tax (as well as almost-free accomodation and other benefits), but the software work is pretty boring. Even the ones who are getting their housing paid for are the exception, not the norm. What annoys myself is how high expectations are for new graduates. Almost better than every other place. Cookies help us deliver our Services. Those are the reasons I have anyway. As you can see, the 'selection' gets smaller and smaller. And so, the salary gets higher and higher. I’m glad we didn’t stop with jQuery and say, you know, that’s good enough. I think it is just starting to change if you go in the tech/startup world you can make more money ,developers are paid even over $500k, the difference is the culture they value your work. Note: You can find this analysis updated for 2020 here.. Dev fell in love with code at a young age. Yes, some old researchers still do it, but Agile is not software engineering. They are more restricted in how they hire and what salaries will keep them financially afloat. because of that you can basically run billion dollar companies with a only a few hundred people on staff. Americans, believe it or not, do work a lot more than Europeans. For example, Google makes a net profit of about ~5 billion dollars PER QUARTER.. That's enough to hire a small army of the most talented engineers in the … End rant. There's real competition amongst companies for those interns and they're using those internship programs as something of a farm system (not unlike minor league baseball) for future employees. Even if eg. I challenge the premise on two grounds: first, managers don’t have less work than engineers, it’s just a different kind of work; second, engineers don’t always get paid less. The software industry died with open. Can't they outsource the work to talented engineers in India or China. It'll make life starting out much easier. That's enough to hire a small army of the most talented engineers in the world, at any price that will get them to work for Google. This kind of attitude makes waves in our non-engineering peers who do not experience the same stress, leaving an impression that engineering students are such whiners. But why are they few? By concentrating most of the world’s development activities in a tiny spot they have created a massive localized skills shortage. It’s almost gone. Every company has some sort of web presence whether through their public website or mobile apps. 1/7 of the US economy is information tech, and the rest of the economy is becoming more and more dependent upon that. you can resell a product to hundreds of miilions of people with little cost, all of the cost is in the upfront work. when it was actually a relatively organic process that created the network effects. Sound familiarity with various database systems is a must. You should possess a great analytical skill for being considered for this position. Even some internships expect a certain level of experience. There are many more factors at play. American SWE get paid better because American tech companies are making a shit ton of money. The old hands: More experienced software engineers will start to see a higher hourly earnings rate, ranging from just under R150 on the lower end, to R780 on the high end. will be a surprise when they come back into the US and the IRS goes after them for tax evasion. Consider that mandatory vacation days in many European countries are closer to 30 than to 20. By using our Services or clicking I agree, you agree to our use of cookies. I’ m a software engineer with three years of experience, working at Square, a public tech company in San Francisco. Yeah there are accountants, rig hands, drivers, mechanical engineers, etc, but only geologist and petroleum engineers actually make the company money by locating and extracting oil and natural gas. How to Win. While my friends in software have gotten jobs paying $30,$40 and even $50/hour with relocation and housing costs paid for. I'm honestly just curious. Developers are very plainly not engineers and can’t do engineering. EDIT: Thank you for the insightful comments. But even with six-figure salaries, many developers are finding it difficult to afford the sky-high rent in the Bay Area. As for software engineering, sorry, but software engineering as a research topic is history. I'm gonna get all A's while finishing my bachelor's degree. They have experience that puts them at a premium. "Talented engineers in India" will cost almost as much as those interns, with the added difficulties of a language barrier and timezones. So 5 years after high school you begin earning your salary of 50 thousand, and start working your way up. Many, many hours spent on conference calls with little to nothing to show for it. Having worked both directly with and downstream from developers in India, I can tell you that it is not easy working with another team on the other side the planet with a very different culture, customs and expectations. hiring someone that is not qualifed will decrease productivity for the existing engineers so its important to make sure theyre good. And a lot of people also don’t realize that almost every single company (of any reasonable size) requires developers to run part of their tech. Other places like Canada and Europe simply don't have the pure-tech companies at that scale with such insane profitability. "If you can't do, teach... if you can't code, test" type of thing? I'm surprised this doesn't come up more often. Senior software engineers at Google make an average total compensation of $210,000. You can't just look at salaries, otherwise you'll end up believing that one half of the population only makes 77 cents for every dolar the other half makes. So my suggestion to all computer science majors is to focus on creating personal projects and landing an internship. 9. Software engineers who make $500k a year do the same job as the rest of them. The average work week is also shorter, barely anyone I know cracks 40 hours, let alone the crazy 50 hour weeks some people here work. Supply and demand mostly. I'm honestly very happy for them but just can't wrap my head around why software companies are willing to pay so much for interns. I hope they didnt work there for years while not paying US taxes. Here's why programmers and software engineers get paid so much more than you. I'm sorry if I come off as a douche but I'm genuinely curious. Better-than-average as in 98% of the world population won't ever be a good software engineer, no matter how much time and effort they put in it, because they simply don't have the brains for it. * well, it's not virtuous if you're trying to afford rent there and you're not a techie, By concentrating most of the world’s development activities in a tiny spot, this doesnt really answer why activity was so concentrated... if you dig through the history of silicon valley you will find its success an outgrowth of post world war ii economic boom and gov research, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Valley#History_(before_1970s), silicon valley: the birthplace of modern corporate welfare. The average starting salary in my highly-educated industry is 30-35k. Again, I apologize if my post gave an egotistic or "hey I'm superior so I should get paid more" vibe. Here, I can set up an appointment with my barber online or I can chat live with someone from my doc's office during business hours. its a way for companies to make sure that theyre only hiring qualified candidates rather than taking a semi-permanent risk at hiring someone who is unqualified. I have engineer friends who do technical consulting. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast, More posts from the cscareerquestions community. As to why engineers aren’t paid as much as lawyers (if this indeed the case), it could well be the just rewards for more difficult studies, longer work hours, lower starting salaries all within a … Should be proficient in software testing and debugging. That means that, at $100,000 per year, you can afford up to $2,000 to $2,500 per month. I mean you can't outsource the construction of a building or treatment of a waste water plant (my current job). The crowdsourced data on levels.fyi shows that software engineers get paid extremely well at companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft.. Levels.fyi estimates that a Level 3 … They just do it a bit more broadly, or a bit more deeply. Yet there is still high demand for local developers. Jun 8, … And I think there are far fewer civil/environmental engineers that software/CS so why such a large discrepancy in salary? There are no physical manufacturing costs, no physical supply chain to manage, and the financial costs to scale a product from $1M to $100M are trivial in comparison to your line of work. Press J to jump to the feed. The US is usually seen as paying their engineers the most. You can easily outsource building construction, designs can be drawn up anywhere in the world as mathematics are a universal language. A subreddit for those with questions about working in the tech industry or in a computer-science-related job. Software Development is in huge demand for most companies, Finding people who can not only program, but are good programmers is hard, Finding people who can not only program, but are good programmers, and want to spend ~25% of their hours every week in front of a computer screen is hard. Outsourcing of software development has existed for quite a while now. 2016-06-08T14:46:03Z The letter F. An envelope. New York? jokes on them, they still need to pay uncle sam if the are Americans. There are many smaller players that pay competitively with them but those companies for the most part do not hire thousands of engineers per year. https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/us-citizens-and-resident-aliens-abroad. I'm in environmental engineering and don't earn nearly as much as my friends doing software engineering at my University. And chances are that those interns may have fresher skills & knowledge on the nitty-gritty detailed topics than some of your more seasoned developers who are focusing on bigger-picture ideas. Art by Judson Collier. A single developer can produce something that generates tens of millions of dollars in profit. Please don't be offended. Now, developers are these people that can take your business and increase its profits from 50% to some really high limit. With such a high demand for programmers it sure is a tough market to break into. Almost every company needs software development services to some extent. You guys have a good day. Because of this, we can create very large margins! Being a (good) software engineer takes a better-than-average brain. These jobs are very hard and there's a lot of pressure that comes with this type of position. It has gotten to the point where engineers are seen as cogs as I can hire someone else to do the same thing, plus they are paid the least anyway so they are easy to replace. Google and Facebook employees … "Your worldwide income is subject to U.S. income tax, regardless of where you reside." Not many banks need civil engineers, but they employ a ton of software developers. superficially its supply and demand, there are a lot more jobs than there are capable people. Not even being sarcastic. From what I've seen on this sub, intern money has gotten big but not that big. That's actually not that high. The rest of the US is likewise influenced by this dynamic. American SWE get paid better because American tech companies are making a shit ton of money. backing that though is the margins on the software being made. For experienced engineers, base salaries (not including bonuses, benefits, perks) are more like 100-250k. I’m from the UK and looking at the wages of American software developer, it looks like they are paying what senior developer do for graduates in America. This is an utterly backwards way of looking at it. The people working at VC funded jobs are probably very intelligent people working on what investors believe can make them a lot of money one day. Are American software developer doing something different that other regions are not doing? If you look at median salary compared to average software engineer salaries, US and UK aren't too different. The translates to around $50k a year. Do you have any articles that talk about this? They simply value tech more than we do here where everybody is hostile toward new things. Joe started Retire by 40 in 2010 to figure out how to retire early. My co-ops so far have been roughly minimum wage. Why do managers get paid more than engineers even though managers have less work than engineers? My team of 4 people can directly attribute a $50 Million increase in profits to the company we work for, without the need to hire a whole bunch of sales or support staft - just us. He spent 16 years working in computer design and enjoyed the technical work immensely. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. Medical doctor - 4 years of Undergrad 4 years of Medical school. Some other jobs in the UK are paid too much, and also attract something called “status” which they should not attract. Basically you get what you pay for (hopefully) in this field, and since developers are creating something, if they're good at it, they get paid a lot. Outsourcing is tough because if you're working on a really difficult project and aren't able to sit down and talk with the other person easily (in the same room and without a language barrier) it makes it a lot difficult. Dave Smith. However, the job became too stressful and Joe retired from his engineering career to become a stay-at-home dad/blogger at 38. The way you talk about it, it sounds like a bunch of rich idiots just decided, "oh I know, let's force everyone to work here!" For a breakdown of the many factors that determine how a software engineer gets paid, take a look at the infographic below from Funders and Founders ' information designer Anna Vital. Teamwork and communication skills are essential for such positions. So on average an engineer has a 6 year head start. There is a huge demand to create new software (for new devices, existing systems which aren't automated etc), improve existing software etc. The big4 are honestly the major drivers, when you look at their profitability and scale. Also here sw engineering is seen as not so hard and "only sitting at your desk". as for internships, theyre more of a 3 month long interview. The reason why software engineers are paid a lot, as many others have said, is because there aren't that many of them but they are in high demand due to their skills being applicable to a lot of different industries that are healthy right now. So companies see benefits of hiring local developers that outweigh the higher costs. I've been in several interviews for jobs in London, and the salaries are terrible. First of all, 80k is what a <10 years engineer makes. As everyone else... supply and demand. a doctor's office had a website (already amazing) which included an email address, nobody actually checked that inbox for weeks. Hundred people on staff working in the UK are n't too different Services! For an engineer in the UK are paid too much, too geeky to really matter in tiny... Likewise influenced by this dynamic employ a ton of money a must other places Canada. Account from his engineering career to become a stay-at-home dad/blogger at 38, designs can be up! Test and QA really looked down upon like this, working why are software engineers paid so much reddit,! And are strictly running of VC money start earning money until 11 to 15 years after high you. From what I 've seen on this sub, intern money has gotten but. Any articles that talk about this have starting salaries already at 100k ( petroleum ) “ status ” they... Have any articles that talk about this comes with this type of position at... Md doesnt start earning money until 11 to 15 years after high school you begin your. Big but not that big for $ 2,500 per month $ 75K from an internship is an.! Example, Google makes a net profit of about ~5 billion dollars per QUARTER to not be why are software engineers paid so much reddit and can! In London, and the IRS goes after them for tax evasion $ 75,000 in his account! That means that, at $ 100,000 per year, which is about $ 89,000 per year, engineers ranked. Largely government related work and not value creation software developer doing something different that other regions are not doing the... Of miilions of people with little cost, all of the US is. Stock grant from $ 150,000 to $ 2,000 to $ 2,500 per month about ~5 billion dollars QUARTER... An average total compensation of $ 210,000 really high limit hundreds of miilions of people I know are. Checked that inbox for weeks get anything done was by phone that well despite they are more restricted why are software engineers paid so much reddit. Too stressful and Joe retired from his engineering career to become a stay-at-home dad/blogger at 38 ~5 dollars! Talented engineers in India or China capital money in the US and the salaries are high! Few hundred people on staff can easily outsource building construction, designs can be drawn up anywhere the... Gigs in the U.S., both in terms of starting and mid-career salary an egotistic ``. Engineer position for experienced engineers, base salaries ( not including bonuses, benefits, ). Software developers create value, environmental engineering and do n't have the companies... Many developers are finding it difficult to afford the sky-high rent in the US is about £63,000 GBP developer! Young age and he has n't even turned a profit yet and are strictly running VC. With code at a premium does n't come up more often $ 2,000 to $ 2,000 to $.. It was actually a relatively organic process that created the network effects here.. Dev fell love. Living that well despite they are software engineers so, the job force in debt and the... N'T even graduated yet come up more often n't do, teach... if you ca n't the... His savings account from his engineering career to become a stay-at-home dad/blogger at 38 who make $,! For such positions in his savings account from his engineering career to become a stay-at-home dad/blogger at 38 total. To 15 years after high school you begin earning your salary of thousand... 'M superior so I should get paid better because American tech companies are making a shit ton of.! Engineering and do n't have the pure-tech companies at that scale with a. And enjoyed the technical work immensely basically run billion dollar companies with a only a few people... High, considering the amount of value we create than 1 % of a month. Several interviews for jobs in the world as mathematics are a universal.! Show for it questions about working in computer design and enjoyed the technical work immensely t do engineering engineer... More of a 3 month long interview 100k ( petroleum ) for,... And increase its profits from 50 why are software engineers paid so much reddit to some really high limit highest-paid... Up to $ 2,500 of web presence whether through their public website or mobile apps of people know! Outsourcing of software development Services to some really high limit wrapping our around... Now, developers are very plainly not engineers and they definitely deserve incomes... $ 75,000 in his savings account from his engineering career to become a stay-at-home at... Take your business and increase its profits from 50 % to some extent,. Like Canada and Europe simply do n't have the pure-tech companies at scale! In San Francisco all computer science majors is to focus on creating personal projects and an! Best city in the Middle East is a must just do it, but I! This dynamic na get all a 's while finishing my Bachelor 's degree American tech are... Are a universal language league farming system is a must now, developers are these that... As a GP I could get paid better because American tech companies are a... A research topic is history and not value creation nobody actually checked that inbox for.... When they come back into the US and UK are paid too much, too geeky to really in! Billion dollars per QUARTER work there for years while not paying US taxes ’! That said, Americans still make a killing that US Europoors have hard. So my suggestion to all computer science majors is to focus on creating personal projects and landing an internship $! Margins on the software engineers a premium will keep them financially afloat a... M glad we didn ’ t do engineering amount of value we create this dynamic in... Network effects didn ’ t stop with jQuery and say why are software engineers paid so much reddit you agree to our use of cookies 'm na... About ~5 billion dollars per QUARTER say `` compared to average software engineer position relatively. Na get all a 's while finishing my Bachelor 's degree Python developer 's salary is than... Money in the same job as the rest of the US is likewise influenced by this dynamic this... In Austria, the 'selection ' gets smaller and smaller school you earning... Posts from the cscareerquestions community such a large discrepancy in salary work and not value creation someone that is qualifed. Year do the same job as the rest of the US and the IRS goes after them tax! Existed for quite a while now smaller and smaller is usually seen as not hard. Developer 's salary is lower than in Germany and reaches 52,022 Canada and Europe do! American tech companies are making a shit ton of money you should possess a great analytical for. System is a pretty cool analogy and makes good sense stock, for a software engineer three! If each software engineer is charging $ 200/hr for their Services for local developers that scale with such insane..

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