[cj]

As a hiring manager for a relatively small company, a major problem is misaligned salary expectations.

Real world example: I recently interviewed an engineer hit by layoffs at Shopify/UPS. The candidate had 4 years of total work experience, and was making $175k in the role that she was let go from, and they won’t accept anything less when looking for a new role. With 4 years of total experience in the workforce.

I would have loved to hire them at $120-140k, but for $175k I can easily find people with 5x more years of experience.

It’s a tough pill to swallow but it is possible to get offers, but they might not be at the salary levels from 2-3 years ago.

Edit: Above anecdote is for 100% remote in US. Full stack node/react/mongo.

Edit 2: Another anecdote to share. The recruiter our company works with (who sources all our candidates) used to only work on a 25% commission of first year salary. About a year ago we were able to negotiate that down to 20%. And a couple months ago we negotiated it down to $90/hr with 0% commission (which comes to roughly 10% or less of first year salary on average). The market for engaging recruiters is a good proxy for the overall supply/demand of the job market.

[mathgeek]

> It’s a tough pill to swallow but it is possible to get offers, but they might not be at the salary levels from 2-3 years ago.

This goes both ways. People teams will prefer to pay less than they have before, and engineers should usually ask for more than they currently make.

Anecdotally as a hiring manager, I would always encourage folks to have savings to cover the time it takes to avoid settling for lower salaries if they lose their role. The folks not making that much already should be moving up to those “lower paying” positions.

[scarface_74]

This isn’t mathematically logical. Every month that you are out of a job, you need to make 8% more once you are hired to make up the difference in loss pay.

While I wouldn’t have taken just any bullshit low paying full time job after getting Amazoned (full time in the cloud consulting division), I was more than willing to take a contract job and just to keep interviewing while I’m working - especially now that jobs and interviews are remote.

[dangus]

Well, not quite.

Laid off people do get paid unemployment benefits, and they also get the non-monetary benefit of not working. I don’t really consider that lost money to be 1:1 in value when considering you aren’t beholden to a work schedule.

If you have a working partner I would say it’s a no brainer to take your time. Jump on their healthcare and chill.

Oh yeah, if you have kids, you can put childcare costs on hold so you aren’t really losing 100% of your salary when you’re put out of work.

[scarface_74]

In my previous state of residency GA, unemployment maxes out at $375 a week. In Florida my current state, it’s $275 a week

To put that in context, the day I found out I was being Amazoned and a week before my last day, I reached out to a former CTO that couldn’t afford to hire me. But he did need some work/troubleshooting done in my area of specialty and I billed at $135 an hour and that was cheap. Trust me, I know how much AWS ProServe charges for consulting.

Even run of the mill enterprise dev staff augmentation W2 contracts pay $70/hour.

[selimthegrim]

Wait until you hear about Louisiana.

[mathgeek]

Apologies, but can you clarify what “this” is when you say something isn’t logical? Unclear to me if you mean taking a lower paying job, choosing to stay unemployed, using savings to cover income while unemployed, something around contracting, something else perhaps.

Contracting between full time positions can certainly replace the need for savings, if that ties into what you were arguing for.

[scarface_74]

“This” is holding out for the perfect paying job instead of taking the first thing that comes along temporarily and keep looking.

Say I’m looking for a job paying $200K and it takes me 3 months to find it. Now just to make $200K over the year, I need to have a job paying $266K.

Why hold out for the job, go through savings, and then when I finally get the job need to replenish my savings instead of just sucking up my pride taking a lower paying job and keep looking?

In my case, when I got Amazoned with a more than $40K severance package. My goal was to have some money coming in before I had to touch it.

I was willing to accept any old enterprise dev remote contract to keep the money flowing. I said in a previous reply that I did spam jobs left and right as a backup plan.

I ended up getting two offers with the type of job I wanted and my desired compensation target before even my 10 days of paid PTO (on top of the severance) was depleted. But that was dumb luck and having contributed to a few official open source “AWS solutions”

[lylejantzi3rd]

> But that was dumb luck and having contributed to a few official open source “AWS solutions”

Was it dumb luck, though? Your situation reminds me of the concept of "luck surface area." You contributed to "a few" open source AWS solutions. You've said in the past that you network well, so I imagine you have lots of other little things you do that get your name out there.

This is something I've been horribly negligent of this far in my career. I thought it would be enough just to do good work and that I would be recognized for that work via osmosis or something.

[scarface_74]

Maybe?

I knew the reputation of Amazon before I started working there and did start laying the groundwork from day one for my next job.

It’s just part of what I do to always be prepared to look for another jobs

[lolinder]

That this is a remote position makes a huge difference that most people seem to be missing—by going remote you're able to draw talent that would otherwise be looking at earning a very respectable $80k from a local company. In those areas (which represent most of the US), $140k is a solidly upper-middle-class salary that enables a very comfortable lifestyle. If coastal residents won't take it, there are plenty of people in the middle of America who will.

[flandish]

I don’t understand some of the dynamics sometimes. For instance, I am 44, been coding professionally since 18. Zero college.

I make 106k in CT in a position focused 75% with Java/Spring for modbus/motion control. (Industrial automation) My other 25% is in what I could label “big data” but is really ETL for a crap ton of near real time transactions.

I enjoy it. I would love to make more money; 106 is hard with a family and such.

But when I look and align my skills, history, and ability to speak in front of anyone - I see listings for 150k+ - and I totally don’t feel “worth” that at all.

Not just because I’m self taught, or have a history doing almost all “it roles”, it’s because I’ve spent 90% of my time in the gloriously underpaid healthcare sector. (Still there.)

What is it like making an offer to someone for 150k for a fully remote position? I could never imagine.

[klipklop]

You don’t earn what you are worth, you earn what you negotiate. Unless you are unusually terrible, you are worth more than $106k even in CT.

[seanmcdirmid]

> I would have loved to hire them at $120-140k, but for $175k I can easily find people with 5x more years of experience.

Where are you easily finding someone with 20 years experience for 175k?

[CoastalCoder]

> Where are you easily finding someone with 20 years experience for 175k?

This actually matches my recent job-search experience.

More specifically: The number of job postings advertising > $200k seems way down from a few years ago. (At least for U.S. remote who's not an expert in distributed systems development.)

Especially after the recent mass layoffs from Google, Meta, etc., there are a lot of very senior devs competing for those sub-$200k positions.

[scarface_74]

Outside of the bubble, that’s what most ICs are making if not less working “enterprise Dev” in most metro areas.

“20 years of experience” is meaningless. The difference in 7-8 years and 20 is meaningless. This is coming from someone who has 25+ years

[seanmcdirmid]

Inflation alone in the last few years has made $100k achievable by janitors. $175k today is just $48,800 in 1980 dollars. It doesn’t seem like a lot of money anymore, an experienced SWE could do better changing fields if that is a top end salary.

[scarface_74]

No janitors are not routinely making $100K. Again, look at the facts. Go to either salary.com or levels.fyi and look at salaries for software developers in most major cities.

Look at salaries for well known non tech companies like Delta, Coke, Home Depot, or UPS. I know those off the top of my head because they have a heavy presence in my former hometown (Atlanta). Also look at insurance companies.

Please tell me all of these fields where you can on average make more with just a four year degree.

[seanmcdirmid]

I’m not sure where you live, but it’s a standard easy to archive salary here in Seattle. It also isn’t very much money, even in the rest of the country.

[scarface_74]

Wow, so your entire worldview is based on Seattle?

Let me put it this way. I had a friend who worked in Finance at Amazon and his $1.2 million dollar 2400 square foot home that was 20 years old was relatively shitty compared to the $350K home I had built in the burbs of Atlanta in 2016 that was 1000 square feet larger than his.

Yes I know about Seattle salaries - I turned down a chance to interview for a role at Amazon Retail as an SDE because there was no way in hell I was going to relocate to Seattle and deal with the high prices and shitty weather.

However, I did get a remote role working (full time) at AWS ProServe.

BTW, I had my 3200 square foot house built in the “good school system” in 2016 making $135K.

People making $150K (which puts you in the top 20% of earners) are not going around homeless

[CapricornNoble]

Recently-retired military veterans with STEM educations, especially if they were in a communications/signal/intel field. They won't have 20 years of direct SWE experience hacking on codebases, but they have tons of practical real-world knowledge and probably know their way around Python or JS as well as any bootcamp graduate.

[ckdarby]

While they put 5x I think they meant to put 5

[danwee]

Europe probably.

[cj]

US remote node/react. I updated the original comment

[altdataseller]

Did you post a salary range in the job posting?

[greatpostman]

120k is bottom of the barrel wages.

[lolinder]

These conversations make no sense without talking about location. OP is talking about a remote (US) position. $120k is a 90th percentile salary in much of the country, and there are tons of people who would be willing to take that salary if it means not having to move to the coasts.

[lokar]

I guess your POV is influenced by your surroundings. I know plenty of people getting 7 figures either remote or they could easily switch to remote if they preferred it.

[CoastalCoder]

Yeah, you'd think. I've seen a handful of job advertisements via Google Jobs or LinkedIn that are closer to $60-80k, in the U.S.

I have no idea if they're real positions, or if / when / by whom they'll get filled.

[lylejantzi3rd]

It's nowhere near.

[scarface_74]

Even on the enterprise dev side, I would expect at least $150K after 5-7 years for your standard full stack dev

[cj]

You’d think that. But a few weeks ago I interviewed a full stack dev working for IBM who was making $110k with 8+ years experience.

I was a bit floored. I know IBM isn’t FAANG, but I was expecting them to be making a lot more based on their resume and working at a big co.

[scarface_74]

The issue is that they worked there for 8 years. You have to be an aggressive job hopper . Salary compression and inversion are real.

[garlandkey]

4 years experience at 140k is an insult IMHO. You claim you can easily find ppl w 5+ years experience, but I find that claim dubious. What you're willing to pay and what value we add seem to be vastly different.

[gustavus]

Wow that's quite the high and mighty response. I have about 10 years experience across multiple domains and can program across a dozen languages. You know what my salary sits around 150k.

You're attitude reflects part of the problem. There are a bunch of still relatively new people or especially boot camp grads that were sold on the always unrealistic expectation of making $150k right out of the gate. That was always a bubble that wasn't sustainable, but now a bunch of tech workers feel entitled to it rather than being willing to adjust to reality and be grateful for the fact that most of us can make over $100k relatively quickly. Compared to most other jobs in the US tech is still one of the best places to get into, I have a friend who has her master's degree and has been teaching for close to 15 years who is estatic about recently getting a raise to $75k. I have another friend that works as a project and procurement manager in the construction field and after 4 years and with a degree he was still making < $80k.

When all that is considered some new "full stack developer" (which really means "I can do JS so I can do full stack if you're backend is mongo your app server is Node and your fronted is React, no I can't do jQuery that was never covered in our 2 weeks on frontend") acting insulted at $140k sounds spoiled, whiney and entitled.

[lokar]

These discussions are always the same, two sides of a bi-modal distribution talking past each other.

There is not just one “tech” industry that hire software engineers.

[lolinder]

Right, and the point of this whole thread is that one end of that bimodal distribution just got a lot smaller than it was 3 years ago, while the other end sits where it always has. There are a lot of people who the FAANG end of the spectrum doesn't have room for anymore who are disappointed to find themselves back on the more sustainable modality.

[lokar]

I agree a lot of people got pulled over into the right hand side during the weird boom and now things are adjusting. But neither side is more "sustainable" than the other (just some individuals expectations). The work is different, the skills are different, the expectations are different. FAANG are not wrong to pay what they pay.

[lolinder]

This whole thread serves as evidence that the upper modality wasn't sustainable at the levels it was operating at, while the lower modality is still going relatively strong. That strongly suggests that one is more sustainable than the other.

FAANG employees like to tell themselves that their salaries are/were well deserved and not merely the result of a bubble, but a lot of them are finding out the hard way that that isn't the case.

[and0]

The market is the market, for better or worse. I do think SWE are overvalued socially/monetarily, but I don't see why you're so emotional over someone saying they deserve what they can get. Or if they make more than you if they can swing it.

[jmye]

Accusing someone you disagree with of being “so emotional” is some bottom-of-the-barrel kindergarten crap.

[analognoise]

A lot of people are actually anti-worker but don't realize it explicitly as such; it's also the "Crab effect" (pull down those trying to escape the pot).

[fallat]

Thank you.

[cj]

I can’t argue with your viewpoint.

All I can say is there are a lot of people with 10-15 yrs experience who will happily accept $140-150k with 10+ yrs experience in the US remote market (more specifically full stack node/react)

[garlandkey]

I will change my opinion if you can provide evidence beyond anecdotes. Honestly, it helpful information if it's backed up my facts.

[BeetleB]

> I will change my opinion if you can provide evidence beyond anecdotes.

It is noteworthy that you did not provide any.

Adding to the anecdotes: Plenty of people in my company with 5+ years of experience make less than $150K.

[zdware]

I think it's unrealistic for someone to post "evidence" in this case. Not worth the risk of doxing/etc. Think all we can do is take people at their word, or explore the market ourselves and get data from our own experiences.

[scarface_74]

Go to salary.com and look for software engineering salaries in most major cities.

You don’t even have to do that. Go to levels.fyi and look at the compensation for places like Delta, Walmart or one of the insurance companies

[hn_throwaway_99]

I mean, your response basically proves the point of the comment you are responding to.

First, salaries are still local, so 140k may be an "insult" in some places, but not in others.

But more importantly, this is the market at work. If the recruiter can get talent for what she's willing to pay, more power to her. If the ex-shopify person can get a comparable job for 175k, more power to them.

But there is an adjustment to be had. The free money spigot has dried up for many companies, and so the salaries of the past 5ish years are in for a reckoning.

[kcplate]

> What you're willing to pay and what value we add seem to be vastly different

Wow…I think you have that mixed up. You have a very inflated view of the value you add at only 4 years of experience. I am nearing 4 decades in tech and I can count on one hand the number of devs (out of hundreds) have met in my career that when they were at 4 years of experience brought enough value to justify a $140k salary in 2023 dollars.

[scarface_74]

It doesn’t take much. Since software has close to 0 marginal cost. You could easily develop a feature that by itself bring in more than that over the lifetime of the feature if your company is large enough.

[kcplate]

That’s “lottery ticket = possible jackpot” mentality and doesn’t scale. The flip side and obvious counter argument is that a relatively inexperienced SWE is more likely to be responsible for a bug that could cost a company a lot of money—frankly it’s more likely than the jackpot.

[scarface_74]

My contention is that any show stopping bug makes it to production, it was a problem with the system and process not one individual.

And it’s not a lottery ticket. Have you seen the stats of developer/revenue for Google, Microsoft and Facebook?

It’s a lot lower for Amazon because of the warehouse workers, drivers etc and Apple because of Apple retail

[kcplate]

So the “system or process” that spreads the blame of a bug, can also allow a junior dev full autonomy to release a feature of their invention solely and on their own and deserving of all the credit?

Those are incompatible in my experience.

[CoastalCoder]

I think sometimes when people call a salary offer "insulting", they really mean the offer is disappointing, worrying, and/or a threat to their sense of value vs. other professionals.

So I think there's value in reflecting why some job offer felt insulting. It may help the person recognize some thoughts or worries that were lurking in his mind.

On a less touchy-feely level, getting an "insulting" job offer can be a useful data point regarding the state of the job market, and/or that particular employer.

[scarface_74]

You have no idea what enterprise dev salaries are

[anonreeeeplor]

My opinion is DEI hires are way out of whack with the market.

Low skilled / low talent in many cases and lower competence but in a ZIRP environment I saw so many situations where women and minorities were hired and given leadership roles, with massively streamlined hiring processes.

When the bottom line doesn’t matter these kinds of hires really proliferated.

I wonder if we will see a hard reset back to competence as the most in demand quality.

And yes I am assuming she is a DEI hire, $180K for four years of experience unless she was like a backend or ai engineer is crazy.

[cj]

I don’t think the salary level was due to diversity.

I think it was due to the person being hired by a hyper growth VC backed startup which was acquired by UPS/Shopify (who then went on a cost cutting campaign post-acquisition)

[and0]

$180k within four years is more than reasonable if you get into FAANG. I've had plenty of kids right out of college asking for $140k and getting it from other companies, and this was 5 years ago, so within four years of typical ZIRP job hoping I'd say that's relatively normal.

Please don't assume anyone is hired for diversity reasons. That's really awful.

[lylejantzi3rd]

> this was 5 years ago

That was then. This is now. Salaries fluctuate, both up AND down. Just ask anybody who was around in 2001 or 2008.

[ahahahahah]

Four years?!? $180k is pretty typical first year new grad compensation in faang.

[CoastalCoder]

I haven't checked the statistics, but I suspect you're mistaken about the DEI angle here.

Until about 1 year ago, I think many companies were paying new-ish software developers well north of $150k. Especially VC-funded companies.

[ofcourseyoudo]

Cringeworthy dichotomy between "women and minorities" and "competence" you established there.