Ask HN: How much do you pay software engineers?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2741207

by baconface • 15 years ago

16 18 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

What type of compensation is fair for a technical first hire?

What about subsequent technical hires?

Please give a range.

donniefitz2• 15 years ago

This kind of question tends to be a bit taboo.

dazzer• 15 years ago

That's a taboo I don't understand.

What's wrong with talking about what you earn? I can understand if it was pride/ego preventing people from talking about it. But from the workers' perspective wouldn't it be better to know what the going rates are to make sure you aren't getting ripped off for your work.

rawsyntax• 15 years ago

It's more about negotiation tactics than being taboo. Employers don't list salaries on job ads.

dasil0034• 15 years ago

This totally depends on the location. Within the US it seems somewhat tied to cost of living, but across the pond in Europe they pay significantly less even when rents are much higher (I'm looking at you London).

Anywhere from $30,000 to $70,000 for someone fresh out of school might be normal. For 10 years experience the range could be $50,000 to $250,000.

spooneybarger• 15 years ago

in nyc, 30,000 a year will get you an untrained monkey with no skills at all... or someone with no concept at all of what they can get paid.

dasil0034• 15 years ago

hence the range.

kls• 15 years ago

Right I would say that is the same for most of the US. If I had to venture to guess, I would imagine the national average for entry level is around 50-60k and senior developers are north of 100k in most major metros.

baconface2• 15 years ago

Oops, meant to specify the bay area.

nandemo2• 15 years ago

In past discussions on HN, it has been pointed out that salaries aren't directly related to local cost of living.

It's similar to the fact that the price of manufactured goods don't vary linearly with the cost of producing them. They are related, in the sense that if the cost goes up, supply tends to go down and so the price goes up. But not always.

In Silicon Valley, Seattle area and NYC there's intense competition for qualified information-technology labour. So the price of labour (wages) goes up. They pay more not because the living cost there is high, but rather because they can afford to pay more and still turn a profit. In turn, lots of well-paid employees in an area tend to raise its living cost.

There are major European and Asian cities with living cost comparable to the above areas, but I don't know of any that pays IT salaries as high as SV/NYC. There are probably many reasons for that, but I guess one of them is that highly profitable software companies are very concentrated in the US. In Tokyo, for instance, the only companies that pay as well as US companies are foreign financial companies. These are just a handful. In average, salaries are much lower.

steventruong3• 15 years ago

I'm not sure he was arguing there had to be a specific correlation. But as you said, in major cities such as the one you've listed, it tends to be higher. No matter how you look at that, location does influence pay to a strong degree whether its direct or indirect influence.

ig1• 15 years ago

There's not actually that much difference, once you take into account factors like holiday allowance (in the UK you typically get 25 days vs 10 in the the US) the difference is only about 10% - well with the yearly variance of the exchange rate.

in 2008 when the GBPUSD rate was around 2 (versus the 1.6 it is now), salaries in the UK were substantially higher than those in the US.

It's mostly down to currency fluctuations more than any real perception of the worth of software developers.

steventruong3• 15 years ago

1. It depends heavily on location.

2. It depends on what stage the company is at. Have you raised capital or not (and do you intend to) or are you planning on scaling without capital. Equity, if any, is directly tied to this which can influence pay.

3. Depends on the experience.

Without knowing the above factors, the range can be anywhere between $20k and $250k (albeit, the $250k side is usually not going to happen)

pbreit• 15 years ago

In the Bay Area, pre-funded: $0-30k; seed-funded: $30-70k; series A: $60-140k. All: plus equity.

baconface2• 15 years ago

What are the equity ranges for seed and series A? I've heard up to 4% for seed, but not sure if that was correlated with a high-end salary or not.

Ask HN: How much do you pay software engineers?

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