The median income in the US is $52k. The average tech salary is 3-7 times that. How long do you think this party will last?
why do you think tech salaries are crazy? what about bankers, doctors, and lawyers? certain jobs give higher salary and tech is one of them. i don't think techies are overpaid, compared to people of similar talent in other high paying professions.
I'll leave lawyers and Finance aside. Doctors spend 8 years in school to earn $45k for 2 years, then start their careers. CS under grads walk into $150k+ salaries at the mature age of 22. Anyone attached to developers makes double what they would anywhere else? Do you really think we aren't all over paid?
Yeah, but not all developers make six figures out of college. Only the ones that can make it into large tech companies and well-financed start-ups. I know entry level software engineers making 50k.
highly paid techies are at least moderately successful ones. doctors are overpaid, even with a lot of education, because they take zero risk.
it is not crazy at all. if you check gov employee salary you will have better context that tech pay is not ridiculous
Wait what? Government employees commonly make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year? That doesn't sound right at all lol. I don't think the GS pay schedule tops out very high, and not even the POTUS makes that much in salary.
I certainly didn't when I worked in government. I was at the top of the pay schedule too BECAUSE I left tech for it. Federal jobs are mostly based on GS schedules, which are all published. https://www.federalpay.org/gs/2017/GS-15
I'm just so lost at how this subject keeps coming up... the companies we work for make 10s or hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars. And create probably trillions in value. It stands to reason we are all at least worth 120k+ doing basic math of how much our compaines are make/ are worth vs how many developers they employ. Does that mean it lasts forever? Not for sure but as long as that basic math holds true our salaries will be deservedly high. What is hard to get about this?
employees salary and value crated are not the same. salary is the minimum an employer can pay to get work done. if the startup market crashes FB, Google, Microsoft etc would all lower comp
Success is easily measured in small time intervals, software products require very little capital expenditure, and there's a seemingly infinite supply of unsolved problems that are worth billions of dollars. If anything the top tech workers are underpaid.
Tech is actually one of the most underpaid professions if you consider the revenue, profits, market value and scale that you generate. A single app can be worth tens of billions but employees just barely make anything unless you joined really early
First post I've seen that mentions scale. Engineers have the ability to provide so much value. In comparison to other well paying positions our ability to improve the lives of others is much more abundant and achievable.
Yup no other profession can dream of coming close to the scale that tech provides. One copy of windows or iOS s/w can be used by 1 billion people for example
It's supply and demand. Nothing about fairness. The picture might change in the future. Less demand or more supply and our salaries will tank. I don't see it happening any time soon though
It's because tech has monopolies/oligopolies on ads, server software, and personal hardware right now. Wait until there's more competition. The firms that pay the most are always the ones with near monopolies in some business sector. I wouldn't be surprised if we get a few more "tech" giants that will pay better than the ones we know today 20 to 30 years later just because they took monopoly in some new business. Nanotech, 3D printing, self driving vehicles, IOT, etc. There are a ton of fields that can become very profitable really quickly.
More the competition, more the crunch for good programmers!
Yeah that's like saying restaurants will pay cooks more with more restaurants on the street to compete with. Only when everyone on the street is going to a single restaurant can that restaurant justify to spend so much more money on the cook to preserve their market share.
How does it work for bankers/wall street? They seem to have been receiving big salaries for quite a while.
True.
Good point. They have direct access to regulations and government policies so direct access to taxpayer money. Maybe Tech will be in the same boat one day but till then we're not really comparable to Wall Street at this point.