U.S. Software developer wages fall 2% as workforce expands

https://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9239308/Software_developer_wages_fall_2_as_workforce_expands

by biotech_anon • 13 years ago

77 55 13 years ago

jebblue• 13 years ago

The Dice salary survey says salaries went up. I wonder which is right: http://media.dice.com/report/2013-2012-dice-salary-survey/

ISL• 13 years ago

To compare, you'd need to know the statistical and systematic uncertainties of each measurement.

shaggyfrog• 13 years ago

Ugh. Those data visualizations are unclear at best, misleading at worst.

hristov• 13 years ago

This does not necessarily mean that wages are falling. It could be that a lot of the new jobs created are "beginner" jobs with lower wages that pull the average down, but the existing jobs still pay what they used to or more.

zanny2• 13 years ago

What is / will drive wages down is making the process of becoming an (experienced) programmer easier, by lowering the per case work needing done and lowering the barrier to entry (compare writing C++ in 2002 to 2012), and the resources available) and that most use cases are best suited by high level dynamic languages like Python or Ruby, which have significantly less work investment to get results compared to old favorites like Java or C.

Most people don't need a tech savant. As that becomes more apparent as it becomes a game of legos putting blocks together rather than having to plastic cast mold every block yourself, I expect mean salary to drop.

andrewvc• 13 years ago

Possibly, however the better you are the faster you work the higher your value per hour. If I can be 3x as efficient as a junior dev I'm still worth more.

jiggy20112• 13 years ago

This is somewhat offset by higher expectations. Every app better have 9 trillion features and social network integration etc.

The complexities of twiddling with memory have been replaced with the complexities of making a ton of different systems work together in a sane way.

iyulaev• 13 years ago

Wasn't the same thing said when we went from hard-wiring programs to writing machine code, then from machine code to assembly, then to 3rd generation programming languages, and so on?

guard-of-terra3• 13 years ago

What's up with C++ in 2002 and today? If you knew C with classes in 2002 (MFC style) you were good, if you knew GoF patterns you were elite.

Today you have to know STL, auto/smart/shared pointers, all kinds of right casts, you have to know boost (a huge code base) and on top of that you are expected to know C++0x (or how is it called?) with its lambdas, autos and stuff, while still understanding the whole "classic" C++.

(But at least nobody cares about MFC and ATL anyway)

And don't forget templates of templates of templates which crept into many code bases. And 64-bit (or ARM) is now reality which you should account for.

If anything, you have to know ten times more in C++ in 2012 compared to 2002.

bdcravens2• 13 years ago

I'd also point out that the expansion of SaaS, open source, and mobile app marketplaces impacts this.

Look at services like FreshBooks and Basecamp. The engineering effort to implement comparable solutions used to be immense; now you can buy into online services for less than the price of lunch, with no long-term contracts.

Similarly, look at open source solutions like WordPress. An afternoon with a $5 hosting account and a few plugins will get a site that would have cost you $100K+ in 1998 feature-wise.

I'm also amazed at how often a few minutes searching for an app will get me something that fits the need perfectly - and costs less than $4.

bermanoid• 13 years ago

Which, to be fair, the article points out right at the top:

"There are multiple theories for the decline in pay, but a common one cited by analysts is simply that the new people being hired are paid less than those already on the job."

greenyoda• 13 years ago

But these are not necessarily "beginner" jobs: these unemployed people may have been hired back for the same types of jobs they had before, but at lower salaries. If you've been unemployed for a couple of years, you're probably willing to settle for less money just so you could have a job again.

ryguytilidie• 13 years ago

"new people being hired are paid less than those already on the job."

Is this surprising at all?

grdvnl3• 13 years ago

I think even in the Silicon Valley the salaries other than the selective big guys has not even kept up with inflation. A 2 year-experience developer still gets between 80-100k or less. This is what was being paid in 2000 as well. The situation is probably the same elsewhere.

Of course, my numbers above are from my own poor sampling.

inovator• 13 years ago

And without consideration of inflation.

nknighthb5• 13 years ago

I'm not sure what part of 2000 you're talking about, but the middle of 2000 was the beginning of the bust. I don't think that's a good place to take the sample.

JOnAgain• 13 years ago

I really hate DOL stats. They have a menu of jobs, and you have to slot people into them. Often you have jobs that are halfway between 2 and you don't know which is "better", so you just pick one (e.g. I write a lof of excel macros, does that make me a programmer or an analyst? To me, it's obviously not a programmer, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's not applied universally). Also, categorizing people is often left to the discretion of the employer, and sometimes they have an incentive to lie (R&D tax credit anyone?). These stats include tech support and also capture a wide range from "Web Developers" to "Computer and Information Research Scientists".

http://www.bls.gov/soc/2010/soc151130.htm

charlesjshort• 13 years ago

So does this mean the U.S. needs to issue more work visas?

skylan_q• 13 years ago

Yes, because there is a shortage of X workers until wages hit the federally mandated minimum.

nandemo3• 13 years ago

Two related thoughts that always occur to me in these discussions:

* Many (I wouldn't say most but at least a sizeable minority) American programmers and IT workers display reservations regarding the policy of issuing visas such as H1Bs for a large number of foreign workers, because it's perceived as unnecessary or perceived as catering purely to the interests of megacorps. I wonder, do those software developers elsewhere) have a problem with buying products manufactured in China or other countries with low wages? Buying stuff made in China, including from American companies that outsourcing to China, effectively lowers American blue collar wages below the mandated minimum.

* It seems a lot of people on HN are favourable to policies allowing working from home. Most companies still don't have such policies, but I suspect that if telecommuting ever becomes commonplace (e.g. due to software development process or technological changes), it will depress salaries far more than the measly 60~80k H1Bs per year have ever done. For every H1B holder there are certainly many others who are skillful enough programmers and speak English, but cannot work in the US due to the limited number of visas, or don't have a degree, or don't want to take the risk of working under the constraints of H1B, or simply don't want to move to the US for any old reason.

arasmussen• 13 years ago

This title seems very misleading. There's a difference between "U.S. Software developer wages [falling] 2%" and the average falling by 2%. Since the demand for software engineers is so high, perhaps companies have been lowering the bar for how qualified an engineer needs to be in order to be hired. Less qualified generally means paid less. That's just a theory but it's what I think is happening.

I've heard from industry sources that the same engineer is worth as much as 7% more than he was last year (not including the experience he gained since last year). I'd believe it. I think the qualification bar is just lowered because the demand is so high and supply so low.

ardit33• 13 years ago

I think this has due to an expansion of entry level jobs. ie. Code/App Academy, people learning Ruby on Rails and going to entry level jobs. Since tools are getting better and better, there is an expansion on the lower level of engineering. They should have been measuring people with the same level of experience (e.g. 5 years or experience), and see how they stack up.

My personal experience, and from what I have seen around for experienced devs, expect a 5%-6% increases annually (few percentage points above inflation). It is never linear though. You usually you might see this increase as a modest early 3%-4% on your current job, and then if you switch jobs every 3 years or so, get another 10% or sometimes more from your new employer. This is for experienced engineers (5+ years). If you are very early in your career you probably will see higher jumps on your early years.

camus• 13 years ago

oh yeah , blame it on Rails , Like JEE garbage makes you look smart ...

riggins• 13 years ago

Code/App Academy, people learning Ruby on Rails and going to entry level jobs

I kind of doubt it's Code Academy.

This article as of Jan 2013 said Udacity (which IMO is more rigorous than Code Academy) has only placed 20 people and Coursera only a 'handful'.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732433920457817...

About 350 companies have signed up to access Udacity's job portal in recent months, though it has placed just about 20 students so far.

But the company (Coursera) matched only a handful of students in its months-long pilot

brown9-2• 13 years ago

What is the margin of error for a statistic like this? Seems like 2% could be within measurement error, unless the DOL data is counting every single software job in the US.

textminer• 13 years ago

Am I the only one driven crazy by reporting that states an ambiguous "average" for something asymmetric like salary, when the choice between median and mean as a measure of centrality makes all the difference in the world?

elchief• 13 years ago

You are not alone, amigo.

guest• 13 years ago

U.S. Software productivity falls 200% as legions of the technically illiterate conspire to make it look like they are doing work they can't actually do.

mkumm• 13 years ago

I wonder how much of the $2k decrease could be contributed to geography? I think we are seeing more opportunities for technical jobs throughout the US, lowering the percentage of developers that need to be paid a Silicon Valley wage.

bicx• 13 years ago

I really wish they would weigh geographic location into their stats. I live in TN where around half that $99k average wage is the norm for CS grads, and that's considered a good salary. Cost of living is much lower here than in Silicon Valley, so it partially evens out. A country-wide average is really no help to anyone with such disparity.

gexla• 13 years ago

I was wondering the same. You can't talk about average wages without adding location information in with those wages as that's a big part of it.

A good indicator of use usefulness of this info is that nobody can explain why these wages have dropped. Sounds like they need more info.

TheCoelacanth• 13 years ago

Yes, this could be an instance of Simpson's paradox. If more jobs were created in low paying areas, the salaries could rise in every single geographic area, but still decrease overall.

U.S. Software developer wages fall 2% as workforce expands

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