Ask HN: Quick and Dirty DevOps/SRE Salary?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20927552

18 29 7 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

There is a lot of data when it comes to SWE/software dev but not as much when it comes to DevOps/SRE.

This HN user is getting compensated so well that he doesn't look at jobs that pay under $350k. [1] This Reddit user is currently making $340k with 5 years of experience.[2]

$180k+ DevOps jobs are easy to find. What about things beyond that?

- Annual total TC - Location including work from home or travel

My current comp is $190k in Portland.

Is anyone else breaking $250k without living in NYC or SF? What's your experience with high-end DevOps/SRE jobs?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20848770

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/ITCareerQuestions/comments/cxiprc/experienced_200k_technical_jobs_nonmanagement_low/ez0hug9/

dijit• 7 years ago

Similar lamentation about EU salaries, since those are not often aggregated.

FWIW I was offered $200k in NYC in 2012 (with 5yrs XP at that point and they offered visa sponsorship) if it helps.

VeryHacker• 7 years ago

Cries with €30K in South Italy

highhedgehog• 7 years ago

Cries with 35K in North Italy

w0land• 7 years ago

In Milan things were bettter.

/me cries with 35k in Center Italy (Rome)

alt_f44• 7 years ago

yeah, the EU sucks for tech salaries

kim0• 7 years ago

Any ideas why though? I'm not eu based, but always wondered

msh4• 7 years ago

I think it's wrong to say that in general for EU. There is a huge difference on salaries depending on where in the EU you are.

cj2• 7 years ago

Question: are people really making $200k+ with 5 years experience?

Or is it simply that high-earner outliers are more vocal online about their salary than average earners, creating a false appearance that $200k+ salaries are more common than they actually are in real life?

beisner• 7 years ago

At FAANG companies, it's not unheard of for new SWE grads to command $200k+ starting compensation. For someone with 5 years experience at the company it would actually be unusual for them to make less than $200k, in the US at least.

This resource is pretty accurate for the lower levels, in my experience: https://www.levels.fyi/

cj2• 7 years ago

What percent of SWE grads are going to FAANG?

I wouldn’t be surprised if $200k is the top quartile (or higher), but I’d be really surprised if the median is anywhere near that.

mason552• 7 years ago

I wish levels.fyi did a better job with locations. You can filter individual salaries by location but it doesn't seem like you can do anything else by location (e.g. filtering the charts or the ranges or anything else). Even with the big tech companies location has a big impact. Google is not paying SF salaries to people in Pittsburgh.

PenguinCoder2• 7 years ago

Well, this is certainly depressing.

Tehchops• 7 years ago

My total comp is ~250k, in DevOps.

My HQ is in a tech hub, but I work remotely from the Midwest.

They are out there, you just have to find them. Truly talented DevOps engineers have a niche mix of skills, and are in high enough demand they can ask for(and get) these types of salaries and work arrangements.

peterloron• 7 years ago

If you are not in NYC, SF, SEA, etc you will have a much harder time getting those numbers. There are some remote roles at that level, but not too many. As above, the jobs are out there, but you need to be in the right location and have the right mix of skills and experience. Levels.fyi and Blind are useful resources for uncovering information on what companies are paying.

PenguinCoder2• 7 years ago

I work remotely from the Midwest as well. No company (including FANGs, or SF based startups) have ever offered even HALF that number to me. It was always sub 'market rate' for the midwest, even.

JacKTrocinskI• 7 years ago

How do you guys transition into newer technologies and gain enough experience to land a position in that new area?

zekethefreak• 7 years ago

Wow, i need to start charging more :(

Zaheer2• 7 years ago

We have some DevOps salary data at: https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html?track=Software%20Engineer&s...

Lmk if you have any questions or feedback!

gremlinsinc• 7 years ago

How hard would it be for a fullstack dev to transition to devops? 8+ years experience laravel, 3 years with vue/react, 4 with angular.

I've been using linux since 2012 as my dev machine. I can configure nginx by hand or build bash scripts to do it for me.

I can build cli applications using js, laravel-zero, and/or bash. I also know how to use docker, jenkins, etc...

I haven't really worked much on apps in scale, but I'm feeling a bit burned out in crud-development. Thinking of maybe giving devops a try. That or product manager or something.

Ask HN: Quick and Dirty DevOps/SRE Salary?

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