[malvosenior]

> In Hired’s findings, tech pros were never offered more than $149,000 annually.

I don't know where they are getting their data but that's a lot lower than good developers of all ages make. You can see on https://levels.fyi that large tech companies will pay senior developers 200-400k routinely.

I don't necessarily doubt the analysis but the data is very incomplete if they didn't see a single offer over $150k.

[chipotle_coyote]

Alternative reading: folks in Silicon Valley who've gotten used to FANG-level compensation have inadvertently developed a very skewed view of what average salaries in their industry are, because FANG compensation has climbed dramatically in the last decade. Anecdotally, $120–130K was a reasonable mid-level engineering salary in the valley in 2009 (I had more than a few friends at that level, which I admittedly hadn't reached myself); if that wage had increased more in line with inflation, we'd expect it to be $145-160K in 2019 -- and that $120K would have been hard to match for tech talent in most other parts of the country a decade ago. (Not impossible, just not easy.) The soaring valuations of tech companies, especially in the Bay Area, led to a loop of equally soaring costs of living and frenzied talent competition which just hasn't been reflected in most other places in the country.

It does seem strange that they wouldn't see a single offer over $150K, but I wouldn't at all be surprised if the median level was considerably lower.

[SketchySeaBeast]

What percent of people are employed by the large tech companies, and what percent are employed in the rest of the world?

[pantalaimon]

Those numbers are already pretty outrageous outside the US.

[LyndsySimon]

They're also very high for most of the US outside large urban areas.

I'm approximately on par for my age cohort based on the article, and that's about 500% of the average yearly family income where I live.

[harimau777]

Keep in mind that cost of living is very high in the places where many of these jobs are located. For example, $120K in SF would be equivalent to $56K where I used to live in the Midwest.

[ddgflorida]

Googling "Senior Developer Salary" you'll see 120K +- 10K on average.

[jknoepfler]

https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google&track=Software%20Engi...

(the data in the actual link you're responding to, with actual level information)

$120k/year is what I'd expect someone with 2-3 years experience to be making at Google as a base, with anywhere from $35k-$80k additional in signing bonus and stock offerings. "Senior Software Engineer" means different things at different companies, but to me it indicates someone who is expected to lead IC for a team, who has at least 5-7 years of experience building software.

source: work at FANG company, have had exactly that offer with that experience level

[SketchySeaBeast]

Despite what everyone would like to believe, FANG isn't the industry.

[spacemanmatt]

I had to job-hop and watch my industry and my city inflate like crazy to see 120. Though...I did start some time ago.

[hinkley]

Nor is San Francisco. Which probably explains the downvotes.

[hinkley]

Are you seeing over $150k anywhere other than SF?

[Jach]

Seattle area also. And I've seen increasing numbers of remote offers that are close ($170k base was the most recent I saw), you could live in a cornfield for all they care.

It's not a difference of FANG vs. non-FANG, and not even necessarily of location, it's a difference of tech company (or trying-to-act-like a tech company, "tech-like") and not. A lot of words could be spent trying to define exactly what I mean by "tech company" and certainly some non-tech-companies might have tech sub-departments that are given enough autonomy to be sufficiently "tech-like". But mostly it's just a mindset. Tech companies are full of people who understand it's the tech workers who are responsible for the lion's share of the company's success, and so they're often run by technical people too. They understand it so well that some of them had to be sued in order for salaries to rise proportional to contribution again (even if still too low) since the socially low rung of individual contributors even at tech companies often fail to see it well enough to complain, which puts the sibling comment about 2009's "reasonable salary" in another light. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...)

[hinkley]

I can tell you that a lot of older companies in Seattle have not yet caught up with that change of conditions. Plenty of places are still 20% below that, and they aren't looking for junior people.

[souprock]

It's possible, even doing 40-hour weeks in cheap places like east-central Florida. For example, my "Who is hiring?" post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19797601

To get an offer at that level you would need to be quite good. For example you might have a couple decades of experience working on boot loaders, compilers, hypervisors, OS kernels, and similar things. You'd be comfortable working with assembly language.

[ch4s3]

This is pretty normal in NYC/NJ

[mi100hael]

Yes - St. Louis. Mostly in the local consulting market. Probably tougher in the corporate market.

[kod]

Absolutely yes. (Austin, TX)

[aidenn0]

In context, I read that as "At no age is the mean pay more than $149k" which is much more believable.