Dr. Dobb's 2012 Salary Survey

http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/240002742

by CowboyRobot • 14 years ago

61 33 14 years ago

Anecdotally, that seems correct. Wages for competent software engineers have noticeably risen in the last year due largely to supply shortfalls. It is a really good time to be a software engineer if you have some skills.

A caveat is that part of the perceived average pay increase is that the minimum talent level required has also been increasing. Demand for generic, average skill has not been where the growth is. I think we are in the early stages of a bimodal job market.

maybird• 14 years ago

What's creating this shortfall?

Too many openings?

Too many engineers working for themselves?

Too many engineers retiring?

Too many engineers going abroad?

Too many engineers interested in the same small number of niches that leaves everyone else with too few applicants?

...?

aaronblohowiak• 14 years ago

All except:

> Too many engineers going abroad?

I don't think this is a contributing factor. More software is getting made/integrated than ever and the talent pool is inelastic; programming is "hard" and "boring".

Symmetry• 14 years ago

Less and less people graduating with engineering degrees, and increasing demand.

cageface• 14 years ago

Yep. Everybody wants a "rock star". I see the occasional job posting that indicates some willingness to train but most people claim they hire only the very best.

Of course this is not actually true of the vast majority of companies and most of them could bring a smart junior dev up to speed pretty quickly but that's not the prevailing mentality for some reason.

Timothee• 14 years ago

This data seems pretty useless for the most part. Median salary without taking into account the location is meaningless. On page three, they try to separate regions but "Pacific" is certainly way too wide a region to get anything from it.

joshsegall• 14 years ago

Agreed. And in the "what matters most" question they didn't include anything about making something useful for the customer, users, world, society, etc. Doing something meaningful is the most important factor to me.

west1737• 14 years ago

It's pretty useful if you're looking for an overview of the US; it's pretty useless if you're just looking for info about silicon valley.

flyinRyan3• 14 years ago

No, this is wrong. Location is meaningless. A position is worth the value it creates, not "cost of living * N". Companies are capitalist entities and understand fully how value works in a capitalist system but trick workers into accepting some kind of Marxist "from him according to his ability, to him according to his need" idea of salary value. Go tell BMW you only want to pay 40% of the sticker price because you only plan on driving in Nowhere, AR.

The only reason salaries would be depressed in backwoods places would be if the cost of living was drawing in so many workers that it drove salaries down. So is that the case? If you live in some low cost of living midwest spot in the road, do you get a thousand CVs before you finish writing a job description? If not, if you have trouble hiring in these areas then the salaries are too low.

Nearly everyone in the US is a firm believer in capitalism but they don't generally practice it with their most valuable resource: their time.

3pt14159• 14 years ago

When you set up a company in Toronto or New York there are clients at every corner, lots of industry meetings, and a large pool of developers to draw from as you grow.

When you set up a company in Timbucktoo you get none of those things. That means that a company at the margin is happier to pay for a developer out of NY, so there is increased demand in NY than there is in Timbucktoo. This drives up salaries in NY.

> The only reason salaries would be depressed in backwoods places would be if the cost of living was drawing in so many workers that it drove salaries down.

Remember there are two curves, supply AND demand, and they resolve simultaneously. Workers could be leaving the region and salaries could still be going down, provided demand was decreasing as well.

kabdib2• 14 years ago

Location is NOT meaningless. It is common practice for companies who have offices in many locations to vary salary by location (I used to get a 25 percent boost because I was working in Silly Valley).

Go the "we pay everyone the same, regardless of location" and you'll end up with either (a) a bunch of workers who are artificially dispersed, and less effective as a team, or (b) fewer good people, because your competitors are paying much more in desirable areas.

[A dispersed team is not necessarily bad, but it's a /skill set/ and it doesn't work for all types of projects, for all types of people].

xxpor2• 14 years ago

Anyone have a version that doesn't require 178 HTTP requests x 10 pages?

suresk2• 14 years ago

Not to mention a few redirects randomly thrown in for every page. I haven't seen a website outside of MySpace that is this pointlessly slow.

I wouldn't normally say anything, but Dr Dobbs is ostensibly targeted at developers.

xxpor2• 14 years ago

What's the difference between a Software Engineer and a Software Developer?

AaronBBrown• 14 years ago

Apparently, $11,000

onedev• 14 years ago

I don't think there is a difference?

z92• 14 years ago

Engineers design. Developers build.

pnathan2• 14 years ago

Tongue in cheek: how seriously they take themselves and negotiate.

guynamedloren• 14 years ago

only the title, which is why the breakdown is explicitly by "title" and not by "position"

AYBABTME• 14 years ago

What's the difference between an Electrical Engineer and an Electrical Engineering Technician?

mjwalshe• 14 years ago

The technician actually can remeber Ohms Law :-)

You may laugh but a few years ago my Father was then the technical director of a small Electrical Engineering company (spun off from Eaton) told me that a junior engineer could not correctly calulate the thinkness of cables for a particular load.

biotech• 14 years ago

A Bachelor's Degree.

bstewartnyc• 14 years ago

Good question: I've been one or the other for 19 years and I dont know what the difference is. When I tell non-tech people I am a "software developer" they think I'm some kind of "designer" rather than programmer - when I tell them I am a software "engineer" they think I pull cables for a living... Mostly I just tell them I am a programmer.

nvarsj• 14 years ago

It's a weird dichotomy. Some notable people (e.g. Bob Martin I believe) have pushed the usage of "Software Engineer" as an indication of professionalism.

It's also a way to tell if someone works at a BigCo. "Software Engineer" seems to be the standard HR-compliant title.

bbrizzi• 14 years ago

The first graph doesn't mention units (thousands of US dollars assumed).

No mention of the methodology used.

No analysis of the results.

The article is split into 10 different pages.

Tab closed.

ldite• 14 years ago

Do people in the UK feel that these amounts (at current exchange rates) reflect the situation over here? The numbers seem a lot higher than what I've come across.

Dr. Dobb's 2012 Salary Survey

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