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by epicureanideal 1112 days ago
> Physician salaries are the only ones that do not grow relative to inflation

Same has been happening to software engineers for the last 10 years at least. Salaries go up but not as fast as inflation.

I’ve gotten higher titles and more responsibility over the years but inflation is still winning compared to 5+ years ago.

> That said, is anyone hiring an ophthalmologist with CS and Math degrees?

As soon as the job market recovers I think you’ll have no problem finding a job in software.

2 comments

Last 10 years? You must be joking. Software engineer salaries have done much better than inflation over the past ten years. If yours personally hasn't, you should have been asking for a raise or looking for a new job.

Over the past one year, they've probably done worse.

Do you have some statistics for this? Also, most of the inflationary damage was done in the last 3 years.

Unless 10 years ago you started at a very low salary I don’t think they’ve gone up significantly after inflation. If you were already a senior engineer 10 years ago for example.

Use BLS. Compensation for the average employee profile of "Software Developer" has far exceeded inflation.

I can't remember the exact timeframe, but roughly 2016 - 2022, salary for the profile of Developer has gone from ~$86k to ~$130k mean. I think that beats inflation quite significantly.

Ok, so that fits with what I'm noticing among my peers. The lower and middle salary range of developers is continuing to increase, but not a lot ($86k in 2016 is equivalent to $110k now), whereas the high end is not increasing very much or is losing to inflation slightly (people who were already earning $150-200k or more base salary in 2016, the start of the reference range you mentioned).
Same has been happening to all labour. At least in Aus I think labour’s share has been going down since the 80s