Yes - the 5% of elite devs have seen a dramatic increase in salary recently. You're one of them.
The rest of us do not make that and haven't seen much change in wages in the last 5-10 years. At most in the midwest I'd top out at $150k as a Senior dev and that's if I busted my ass. The exception is if I worked for FANG but just like me, 95% of devs couldn't pass a FANG interview even if they put in some real effort.
Personally my dream is to have a side-business anyway, so I put up with my $100k salary because it's low-stress and I have energy for my own projects. If there was a real shortage I would be paid more. But there isn't a shortage for average devs who get shit done. Google just wants the top 5%.
Google's hiring is like if Google visited a homeless dog shelter and said to the employee (Federal Gov) that there's not enough cute puppies. "We need to import some dogs from Asia. There's a cute-puppy shortage here, let's get some Visas for more dogs."
You're just f-ing picky Google. Those dogs in the shelter are good dogs.
Pay scale for programmers at large organizations I'm aware of starts around $55K and tops out around $100K. And non-profits or small businesses pay even less.
I browse job ads on indeed frequently and see offerings in the $40-50K range for IT positions in the NYC area.
What do people think that offshore employees of an American IT company are paid? I haven't any definite figures for places I've worked, but I have gotten the impression from Indian job ads that $10K/year is in the ballpark. Why would a typical company pay more than five times that for US-based employees?
I’m nowhere near the west coast - I’m on the opposite coast. In most major cities in the US outside of the west coast your bog standard enterprise developers make $110K - $170K. This also excludes NYC.
Well in the US, look at the top 20 cities for developers - a simple Google search and then go to salary.com. That range is average.
As far “bog standard”, I’m referring to a CRUD developer doing “enterprise software” that may never see the light of day outside of the company or your yet another software as a service developer. They don’t spend all day worrying about “computer science” and algorithms and they don’t spend time worrying about the complexity of reversing a b-tree on a whiteboard.
Look at it this way, what I think you're talking about requires roughly the same level of talent as being a decent mechanic, electrician, or whatever, and clients get billed about the same per hour, like $100-150. So, if we pretend we don't have preconceptions, and with the knowledge that the programmers are competing with people who are paid $5/hr, whereas my other examples aren't, does it make sense that they would be paid much more than $50-100K on average?
TL;DR (in advance): I think you are correct in your estimate, though household income is higher than that. $100K household income is still considerably higher than most Americans make.
Just to give some real numbers, the median household income in the US is $63,688. Unfortunately I couldn't find reliable numbers for dual income families in the US, but it appears to be over 60% (I saw numbers anywhere between 60-69%, but unfortunately no authoritative references).
Rough histogram of income distribution is:
10th percentile: < $15K
20th percentile: $15K <=> $25K
30th percentile: $25K <=> $35K
40th percentile: $35K <=> $50K
50th percentile: $50K <=> $65K
60th percentile: $65K <=> $80K
70th percentile: $80K <=> $130K
80th percentile: $130K <=> $160K
90th percentile: > $160K
I constructed this from a variety of different sources since I couldn't find anything that stated it explicitly. It is not entirely accurate, but it should give you a rough idea of the distribution. Would be nice if someone could find better data.
You're more than likely the exception so enjoy it while you're still a youngster as the next generation to replace you will be along shortly. I hope with that amount of finance behind you that you are self-sufficient if it suddenly vanished. It will.
I have wondered what my secret sauce is. Mid 50s, worked my way through a series of jobs with several faangs, now doing the latest of several 2 year stints at startups. You can make well over 200k in cash comp at startups in west cost cities. I guess I have good exp by this point.
You actually make way more than that if you are reasonably experienced. If you have 20 years experience your goal should be 400-500k+ total comp (ie actual valuable stock like you get from amazon or microsoft, not worthless future vapor startup stock). I like living here, but no place is perfect for everyone. My house tripled in value, my kids are getting a good education. I wish there was less growth though.
I've done a fair amount of hiring. It's usually pretty easy. The managers complaining about it are just bad at their jobs or work for employers with bad reputations. Don't take their whining too seriously.
The rest of us do not make that and haven't seen much change in wages in the last 5-10 years. At most in the midwest I'd top out at $150k as a Senior dev and that's if I busted my ass. The exception is if I worked for FANG but just like me, 95% of devs couldn't pass a FANG interview even if they put in some real effort.
Personally my dream is to have a side-business anyway, so I put up with my $100k salary because it's low-stress and I have energy for my own projects. If there was a real shortage I would be paid more. But there isn't a shortage for average devs who get shit done. Google just wants the top 5%.
Google's hiring is like if Google visited a homeless dog shelter and said to the employee (Federal Gov) that there's not enough cute puppies. "We need to import some dogs from Asia. There's a cute-puppy shortage here, let's get some Visas for more dogs."
You're just f-ing picky Google. Those dogs in the shelter are good dogs.