First, I wish we'd talk more about comp in terms of a tuple of (person, company). There are many companies that will never pay above a certain amount for software because even great software devs just don't move the needle for the business. So I think it's as much a question of where one works as the person's individual characteristics.
Second, our industry is really young. Average years of experience is what, like, 6? It's because the industry has grown so rapidly over the past decade. We have the demographics of a country like India. Compare this to an older field like architecture, law, or medicine--they've had a lot more time to work out the industry-wide division of labor between entry-level, mid, and very senior. The commercial software industry is maybe 40 years old, we're just starting to figure this out now.
I think overall the industry just doesn't know how to use very senior people. It's not just a matter of cranking more code faster. It's domain expertise, knowing what's hard and what's easy, what hard things are worth doing well, how the social dynamics of teams help or hinder progress, and what's been tried before (both successfully and unsuccessfully). We're a very youthful, faddish bunch and I think it's to everyone's detriment.
(Background: 10+ year experience, 35-year old software dev here, who's married to an architect that builds buildings, and works with a lot of people over 50)
>First, I wish we'd talk more about comp in terms of a tuple of (person, company). There are many companies that will never pay above a certain amount for software because even great software devs just don't move the needle for the business. So I think it's as much a question of where one works as the person's individual characteristics.
True. An engineer can create much more value at a company with a thriving feature-driven business than at a stodgy low profit company.
>It's not just a matter of cranking more code faster. It's domain expertise, knowing what's hard and what's easy, what hard things are worth doing well,
A lot of that changes fast though - and the highest paying subfields of software seem to be new and/or fast-changing, e.g. web dev and ML, as opposed to say kernel programming). I don't think a person with 25 years of experience is like to have an advantage in things like domain expertise over someone with 15 years of experience in these sorts of fields, or what will be hard or easy in modern projects. The experience you gained 20 years ago is not going to be as valuable as the recent experience you gained in the past several years.
>how the social dynamics of teams help or hinder progress, and what's been tried before (both successfully and unsuccessfully).
Right, but this is getting into skills that are valuable in the management ladder, not the IC ladder. I doubt you'll see the same leveling off in pay at 15 years of experience when you look at engineers & engineering managers as a group.
Depends on their spending habits. A friend of mine is a manager at Facebook, pulls down $700K+/yr, and then promptly blows it on the most ridiculously overpriced shit imaginable. Extremely expensive vacations with his wife, $100K+ cars (multiple), fully loaded Mac Pro, etc. I'm pretty sure my net worth is substantially higher than his, even though I make less. Remember as well that if you're not a business owner, there aren't really that many ways to reduce your tax burden, and we have progressive tax, so like 35+% of that money immediately disappears into the gaping maw of the federal and state government, never to be seen again.
A lot of Engineers (or workers in general) love what they do, enjoy working at their company, and like to socialize with their co-workers.
Truth be told, the majority of people are not hungry self-learners that will thrive in retirement. You need to be disciplined for that - or else it's gonna go downhill, real fast.
Partial retirement is something I've seen a lot. Or people simply retiring from companies, but doing work as consultants for their last decade or two.
I never understood this argument. Don't retire if you like your job. It's that simple. The reality is most jobs that pay well are mentally exhausting/stressful so the type of person that wants to retire early isn't the type of person that likes their job.
First, I wish we'd talk more about comp in terms of a tuple of (person, company). There are many companies that will never pay above a certain amount for software because even great software devs just don't move the needle for the business. So I think it's as much a question of where one works as the person's individual characteristics.
Second, our industry is really young. Average years of experience is what, like, 6? It's because the industry has grown so rapidly over the past decade. We have the demographics of a country like India. Compare this to an older field like architecture, law, or medicine--they've had a lot more time to work out the industry-wide division of labor between entry-level, mid, and very senior. The commercial software industry is maybe 40 years old, we're just starting to figure this out now.
I think overall the industry just doesn't know how to use very senior people. It's not just a matter of cranking more code faster. It's domain expertise, knowing what's hard and what's easy, what hard things are worth doing well, how the social dynamics of teams help or hinder progress, and what's been tried before (both successfully and unsuccessfully). We're a very youthful, faddish bunch and I think it's to everyone's detriment.
(Background: 10+ year experience, 35-year old software dev here, who's married to an architect that builds buildings, and works with a lot of people over 50)