12 ms·

The Programmer Salary Taboo

• rick888 15y ago
  I believe this is exactly what happens in Sweden, Denmark, and Finland. Salaries aren't public directly, but tax returns are...so you can easily see what everyone makes.
  • jamaicahest 15y ago
    Just fyi. this is not the case in Denmark, tax returns are private here.
• jrockway 15y ago
  I've always wanted to write exactly this blog post. Keeping your salary confidential is great for big companies, but it benefits you in no way. You should be making what your coworkers make. If you make less, you're being fucked, plain and simple. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you can remedy the situation. Sadly, some people go their whole careers without doing so. FWIW, my first programming job only paid $45,000 a year. What a ripoff.
  • drndown2007 15y ago
    So did mine, but that was 1994 so it didn't seem so bad :) (which is another way of saying that context is _very_ important, like year, what part of the country, web programming vs kernel drivers, DBA, etc)
  • gte910h 15y ago
    If you're making less, you're possibly being fucked. You're possibly avoiding a layoff. If you're making more, I'm not sure how showing your salary data can help you personally.
    • michaelochurch 15y ago
      If you're making more, I'm not sure how showing your salary data can help you personally. Status, at least when you transition. In investment banking, people would quickly discover what the top bonus was for their year and report it when they moved on to jobs in, for example, private equity. The banks saw it as symbiotic and would confirm inflated compensation. It made the ex-analysts get better jobs but it also made the firms look more generous, so it was seen as win-win. It becomes an issue when next year's class expects the middle bonus to be last year's top bonus.
  • xnxn 15y ago
    > only paid $45,000 a year Reading this kind of thing on HN makes me feel ill; my W-2 says $47k. Maybe I need to make some changes.
    • viggity 15y ago
      Try contracting. Seriously. Go to a local user group and talk with people who contract and see what the going rate is in your area. Its probably 2x to 2.5x of what you're getting now.
      • AretNCarlsen 15y ago
        Though you have to pay your own taxes -- probably 30%, in the end -- and your own medical.
        • ewams 15y ago
          You pay your own taxes now.
          • kragen 15y ago
            In the US, there's a Social Security payroll tax (previously 12.4%, now 10.4%) that's split between employer and employee. Self-employed people pay it themselves; their clients don't.
          • christonog 15y ago
            I think what he meant was that you have to consider a hefty tax burden come April 15 because, as a contractor, you don't get taxes taken out of your paycheck. This is where having a good accountant and knowing what expenses you can deduct comes in (to reduce your taxable income). If for nothing else, you should have a business just so you can claim more expenses and reduce the amount you have to pay Uncle Sam (from my understanding, all you need to have is a profit motive -- not necessarily profits).
          • aacook 15y ago
            Yes... the key is sending in the estimated payments. If you fall behind or (worse) wait until the end of the year, you'll be stuck with a huge tax liability.
  • benihana 15y ago
    >FWIW, my first programming job only paid $45,000 a year. What a ripoff. How is that a ripoff? That seems right at about average for starting salary programming.
    • jessedhillon 15y ago
      My first programming job paid $75k in 2007. It was not at some big name firm but a run-of-the-mill ad agency and I was doing PHP web dev. It was in SF and I had just graduated from UC Berkeley about six months prior to hire. Unless he (or she) is working as a game dev, he is grossly underpaid. (Even if he is doing game dev he'd be underpaid, just the standard for pay would be much lower for his industry.)
      • jamesteow 15y ago
        To be absolutely fair, SF/NY have much higher starting rates than other places.
    • jrockway 15y ago
      If people are getting $100,000 right out of college, then $45,000 is not very good.
      • tedunangst 15y ago
        Well, we'd need to know when that was. $45k in 1980 would be pretty awesome.
        • jrockway 15y ago
          I'm 25, so this was probably 4 years ago at the most. (Fun fact: jrockway was once a PHP programmer. And, we did not use source control there. And a web developer did a "push" and overwrote my weeks worth of programming. Then I knew it was time to find a new job :)
  • nostrademons 15y ago
    But it does benefit you, personally: by not having your information out there in public, you can claim whatever you want when you go into salary negotiations, and the hiring company has no way of knowing that you'd be perfectly happy with a significantly lower salary. Generally, whichever side has less information public about them is at an advantage in negotiations. Unfortunately, this leads to a prisoner's dilemma situation where each individual worker would be better off if everyone shared their salaries, but each individual worker is slightly better off if they don't share their salaries. FWIW, my first programming job only paid me $32k a year. But I was straight out of high school (no college), and I thought it was a princely sum because I was getting paid more than my Ivy-League grad high school teachers were getting.
    • mcantor 15y ago
      This argument is circular: "Keeping your salary private benefits you when negotiating a new salary"... which is difficult mainly because everyone's salary is private.
      • nostrademons 15y ago
        ...which is the case with most game theoretical situations. You don't get to choose the world you live in, you only get to choose the choices you make. If you want to move from one world to another, you have to figure out how to get the rest of the world to make those choices.
        • autarch 15y ago
          Start your own company, and use a radically open compensation system, perhaps? That's my plan, at least.
    • dopkew 15y ago
      When salary information is private, the employee has advantage while negotiating a new job, whereas, if the salary information is public, he has advantage while he is within the company.
  • clistctrl 15y ago
    My first year programming job I made ~50k though I was a contractor, and did a bunch of overtime so it was likely quite a bit more. I think it was pretty good considering I had not graduated college... so I was getting paid to learn. I started at $25 an hour. I quickly learned the business, and realized I could make it better. So i spent my nights building an app to do it better. They loved it, became the new thing we used. 6 months later my contract ended. I asked for more... and oh yeah did I mention I was a junior programmer (the code was exactly what you would expect, so I had some good leverage) to me $27 an hour was pretty good. I was 19, and making more than my Dad (he always said this is the benchmark I'm supposed to pass). about 4 years later I'm now making $77k with about 5k or 6k bonus. I moved to Boston, so I think without a degree, its reasonable but I would definitely be making quite a bit more had I finished college. I'm Hoping to quit my job soon, and start off on my own. The project I did for a $2/hr raise after 6 months could've been worth millions... and I'm sure I could do it again, seeing better ways to do things is kind of my thing.
  • Tycho 15y ago
    Hmmm... when I graduate I'd definitely take a £18000 p/a job. I mean it seems at this age getting your foot in the door, getting started and putting some 'commercial experience' on your CV is far more important than the actual salary. On the other hand, if I could make a living doing freelance web development, then I could build that up until I have an income that employers would need to match (rather than just throwing me the low end of the offered salary-range).
    • swombat 15y ago
      Tip: When asked about my salary expectations for my first job, I said "£20-24k". I got £22k. Many of the other people who started alongside said lower figures - and that's what they got. Don't quote something way out of the range of the company you want to work for, but don't undersell yourself either. You'll probably get what you asked for... £15-25k is dirt cheap anyway, for any large corporation, but that £10k makes a whole lot of difference to your life.
      • danenania 15y ago
        I think freelancing is a quicker way to get established and reach a high value if you can swing the social and project management aspects. Especially early on, your value increases enormously with each deliverable product you produce. Freelancing allows you to build a portfolio quickly, and you'll be able to point others to jobs you've completed. Successful jobs also inevitably lead to referrals and you can raise your rate on every new contract as your portfolio improves and you become more valuable. Working for a salary, you can easily get stuck on projects that aren't portfolio-worthy, don't teach you anything that useful, and which you only have a small hand in anyway. And naturally it's comparatively much harder to get pay increases. One solid project that impresses people can take you from charging $50 to $100 an hour as a freelancer overnight. Try convincing your boss to double your salary after 3 months just because you've been shipping good code. As for breaking in, talk to as many people as you can. Go to meetups, talks, events, whatever is happening, in both the programming AND (very importantly) business/entrepreneurship categories. Just chat and share ideas. If you're confident and you've got brains, people will recognize it, and you'll soon need to beat offers away with a stick. The first gig is the hardest to get because you have nothing to point to in your portfolio. Do this one for free if you have to, or build things on your own. Whatever it takes to get something finished that you can use to prove your competence.
  • Hovertruck 15y ago
    Depends on your situation. I got my first job at a mid-late stage startup in DC when I was 18 and that was about $35k as a strictly-frontend developer, which was definitely good enough for me.
  • arghnoname 15y ago
    For my first programming job I asked for $50k and got $40,000. I always resented that, as I thought I was giving them a break in the first place, but I had just moved to the area (DC) and didn't have time to look very hard. So 6 months later I got them to raise it to 50, and a few months later they they fired the other programmer (my boss, who was making $85k) and expected me to do the work of both he and I, which I was capable of doing. They told me they just gave me a raise so I shouldn't be greedy. I left of course. They hired my replacement at $90k after having a consultant do the job for three months at typically high rates. I would have accepted $60k! I just didn't want complete disrespect. A year or so later I was making $80k and found out another guy at this company was making $40k. What the hell? I don't thing anyone should be so royally fucked. Companies that do this deserve no loyalty. Salary information should be public as long as they persist in such behaviors.
    • danssig 15y ago
      >Companies that do this deserve no loyalty. No company deserves "loyalty". You need to get that dinosaur of a concept out of your thought process. We're free market entities now. We act completely within our own interest and the "invisible hand" makes sure everything turns out alright in the end. [1] Loyalty is for family and friends. [1] Of course your own interest isn't a simple amount question. If another company offers me 5k/yr more I wouldn't drop what I'm doing at the current company and move for that. My reputation is part of my market value so I have to avoid angering my "customers" as much as possible (within reason, but the best choice is to just not take customers that will likely end up hating you later). Ideally, when I leave they'll all hope I come back some day.
  • nixy 15y ago
    My first was, in 2007, $46k. I'm still at the same company, now making $70k nearly four years later. (I'm 25, doing web programming, in Sweden)
• olalonde 15y ago
  Anyone has figures for IBM?
  • bricestacey 15y ago
    See glassdoor: http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/IBM-Salaries-E354.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/IBM-Salaries-E354.htm
• marklabedz 15y ago
  On one hand, being able to compare yourself to others is very valuable. The challenges arise though in how to square two different numbers. What is the value of each individual skill? If 2 people have differing abilities in 3 different skills, are all skills valued equally?
• michaelochurch 15y ago
  I actually think full transparency on salary could make this nasty issue go away. Post what everyone is making and let people negotiate a fair package. There would be some transitional pain in the first 2 months, and payroll costs might go up 10 percent, but people would be happier in the long run. Why use inaccurate gossip instead of full transparency? What drove up compensation in banking in the 2000s was inaccurate compensation reporting. Pay in banking is one's status, so everyone would claim to have received top bonus when applying to private equity jobs or trying to make a lateral move. This meant that whatever bonus was paid to the top 5% of each year would be claimed by everyone in that year. That ratcheted up pay expectations over time. Banks actually liked this, because the high pay enabled them to make entry-level conditions and hours even worse, but most companies wouldn't be able to afford that process. In the long run, I think that salary discovery by inaccurate gossip is more expensive and volatile than full transparency, and I can't think of a good reason why, in any company, everyone shouldn't have access to everyone else's base compensation (performance bonuses can be private; the range should be public but not the amount.)
  • RyanMcGreal 15y ago
    I rather suspect that full salary transparency would result in a race-to-the-top.
    • jseliger 15y ago
      I was just going to say something like this. In The Logic of Life, Tim Harford writes about how CEO pay reformers thought that making CEO pay public would cause companies to reduce pay because high pay was so outrageous. The opposite happened. Why? Because who wants to be in the bottom 50%? Practically no one. If you open up salary information, everyone is going to want to be "above average," even in companies that pride themselves on hiring exceptional people--like Google. This year, the median is $90K, so everyone will want $95K. Next year, it'll be 95K, so everyone will want $100K, and so on.
      • michaelochurch 15y ago
        Fog Creek has a "ladder" system based on some fairly objective criteria. Based on years of experience and certain assessments of project scope and skill level, each employee gets a number between 8 and 16 that determines pay. This means that compensation is based on performance. Now, the only point of controversy is whether the employee and employer agree on performance. If there's a discrepancy there, at least there's something meaningful to discuss and, if the difference is irresolvable, then they should separate. This isn't perfect, but the gossip-driven salary-discovery system is even more imperfect and has the same problems.
• droz 15y ago
  Not sure how much value this gives existing employees. If you go up and see that you are making less than your coworkers, then it's a moral destroyer. If you are making average but feel like you are doing more work than everyone else, again moral destroyer. If you are making bank, all the sudden you are now in everyone's cross-hairs- boom! moral destroyer (depending on the kind of person you are).
  • trustfundbaby 15y ago
    It hurts your morale in the short term, but it should give you the impetus you need to a. work harder b. negotiate harder when it comes to that yearly performance review and/or possibly c. leave if you feel you're being underpaid and the company isn't willing to pay you what you think you're worth. I don't think full salary disclosure will ever happen, but I'm just saying, it wouldn't be bad if it did. I for one would just like to know, for example, what a iphone/ipad developer makes on average (then a high and low end) in ... say ... Austin Tx vs New York or something like that.
• kwantam 15y ago
  http://www.glassdoor.com http://www.glassdoor.com can be a helpful resource in this regard. It needs a bunch more critical mass before it's truly useful, but some information is usually better than no information.
  • cpeterso 15y ago
    +1 I've found glassdoor.com to have pretty accurate (though anonymous) reports of employers' salary ranges and employee satisfaction.
• joezydeco 15y ago
  My teeth always grind when I read articles like this. Yes, you can make $100K at Google. In Mountain View, California. How does that correlate to someone doing the same job in Austin, Seattle, Chicago, or Cleveland? The cost of living swings greatly when you depart the west coast. Decent wage databases will add another variable to the position and experience axes: the geographic area where the job is offered. (Example: http://www.erieri.com/ http://www.erieri.com/)
  • teej 15y ago
    A cost of living adjustment is one of the easiest calculations to do. Is it as simple as this (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=cost+of+living+in+mountain+view,+austin,+seattle,+chicago,+and+Cleveland http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=cost+of+living+in+mount...), or did I misunderstand your point? It doesn't seem that complicated to take a $100k salary point and normalize for cost of living.
    • smokinn 15y ago
      Seems like a good idea but I doubt the data is very accurate. I live in Montreal which is well known to be one of the cheapest places to live in North America (very cheap housing, very cheap energy, etc.) but WA puts Montreal as the most expensive? http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=cost+of+living+in+mountain+view%2C+austin%2C+seattle%2C+chicago%2C+toronto+and+montreal+ http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=cost+of+living+in+mount...
      • elai 15y ago
        Higher Taxes. Quebec has generally higher taxes vs. the rest of canada, and places like washington have no state income tax. Also the locations it could be comparing could be downtown metro area's and their costs. 3km away from the downtown core and you get a huge drop in price.
        • afterburner 15y ago
          The taxes aren't that much higher. And the rent is cheaper than Toronto.
• dbjacobs 15y ago
  When working for the federal government everyone knows everyone else's salary. So it can be done, and is generally less corrosive than hidden salaries.
  • ig1 15y ago
    Are government salaries merit based or tenure based?
    • kenjackson 15y ago
      Both. Often times in places like the military merit is only achievable as a function of seniority. So after x number of years after getting a grade you qualify to be promoted to the next. Whether or not the promotion happens at that point in time is a function of merit (and social skills).
    • megamark16 15y ago
      They're grade based, and moving up a grade can depend on both merit and tenure, although I think it's mostly about tenure.
  • michaelochurch 15y ago
    When working for the federal government everyone knows everyone else's salary. So it can be done, and is generally less corrosive than hidden salaries. As long as people are happy with their own pay, they really don't care what anyone else is making. In a large company, an incompetent making $5k/year more (because he's been there longer, or does some task no one else wants to learn how to do) isn't going to turn a happy employee into someone who wants to get out immediately.
  • hugh3 15y ago
    Would you say that the Federal Government is a hotbed of competence and hard work, though?
    • danssig 15y ago
      Would you say that the private sector is free of labor exploitation, though?
• impendia 15y ago
  In academia, it is common for professors' salaries to be listed in public databases that are searchable by anyone. I don't particularly draw any conclusion from this; indeed, there is some debate as to whether this is a good thing overall. My impression is that it doesn't make much difference one way or another. In any case, it may be interesting to HN readers to know that this is the norm in the public sector.
  • ender7 15y ago
    Incentives in academia can get pretty complex, however. In terms of bragging rights, salary tends to factor in way below publications, tenure, chaired position, etc. Plenty of academics are still lured away to other institutions with the promise of a better salary, but it's less socially acceptable to admit that that's the reason you're switching jobs (instead of, say "I would get to be head of a program/department"). Also, unlike most tech jobs, most academic jobs are not located in the most exciting places to live, which adds yet another confounding factor.
  • RK 15y ago
    I was recently came across a list of the salaries of everyone employed by my university, including students. It was an interesting read. I seems I make just about the average for graduate research assistants in science/engineering, though I'm still trying to extract the data to make nice plots. More interesting was to see the relative salaries of professors and administrators. Some professors are clearly able to demand much higher than average salaries, but nothing like head sports coaches...
• harryh 15y ago
  Consider a hypothetical scenario for the person on the other side of the table: You are hiring up an engineering team and hope to hire up a team of 10 engineers paying 100k/yr each. So far you've hired 9 people at 100k and are working on filling that last slot. You find someone perfect but he has a competing job offer and is asking for 110k/yr instead of just 100. He's no better than the other 9 people you have already hired. In a situation with relatively secret salaries it might make sense to go ahead and pay the 110k. It's only a 1% increase in your yearly budget which probably isn't a deal breaker. But in a situation with relatively public salaries you're in a bad spot. You can either not hire him thus prolonging your search, or you can hire him and face potential moral/teamwork problems. Maybe you can hire him and bump everyone else's salaries up to 110k but a 10% budget increase might not be feasible. So the company is a bit screwed in this situation. And to the extent that the companies success is also the success of individual employees the individual employees might be a little screwed too. I've made this scenario simpler than what reality would generally look like but the same principal holds. In nearly every situation in which I've had insight into engineer's compensation I know for a fact that fairness has always been a top priority. But it's worthwhile to see that it sometimes can't be the only priority and to understand how the salary taboo fits into this.
  • psadauskas 15y ago
    Keep the offer at 100K. If he's no better than the others, you can find another one. If you keep missing out on hiring because other companies pay more, then you need to raise your standard salary, because all your other engineers will jump ship within a year or two.
    • jhamburger 15y ago
      Well these engineers weren't savvy enough to figure out that they could make 110K right now. Who's to say they will in two years? Or maybe you just give them a raise to 110K in two years and they'll be happy with that and never figure out they're worth 125K now.
      • danssig 15y ago
• ig1 15y ago
  Or you can look at actual data: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151031.htm http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151031.htm Average salary for a software engineer is $90k, for California $103k (this excludes "programmers" who just implement fully spec'd code).
  • kenjackson 15y ago
    who just implement fully spec'd code Fully spec'd code? I hope the PMs are getting a raise, as I've yet to see such a thing!
    • Shamiq 15y ago
      Ouch... edit maybe if you implemented to spec...
  • jcdreads 15y ago
    > who just implement fully spec'd code If the spec is really complete then why don't they just compile and run that? Put another way: Is there such a thing anymore as a programmer who just implements fully specced code?
    • danenania 15y ago
      Has there ever been?
• lukev 15y ago
  As a developer who, admittedly, has never had trouble finding a salary I'm satisfied with, and who is comfortable negotiating, I'm not a fan of transparency. It seems like it would cause more problems than it solves. If salaries are private, then salary is purely a function of negotiation between employer and employee. Presumably both are happy, or at least happy enough not to terminate the relationship. If salaries are public, however, then a ton of other variables get thrown into the mix. For example, it's possible to end up in a situation where I'd be happy to stay for a certain salary, and my employer would be happy to give me that salary to keep me, but because they can't offer all my peers the same salary, it doesn't work out, and nobody is happy. And that doesn't even take into account all the extra interpersonal conflict and rivalry that transparent salaries could cause. The mitigation for both of these issues is, of course, is to base compensation on objective performance rankings. But that's a nontrivial problem. How do you compare a sales guy to a developer to a DBA? Even if you did come up with a mostly fair solution, it would still invite endless discussion and dissatisfaction from people who feel the system wasn't evaluating them properly.
  • michaelochurch 15y ago
    I disagree. First of all, workplace social conflicts develop very fast and are often irrational in nature. If salaries are public knowledge, then people have time to accept that there's just that one incompetent guy making 20% more than he should and within a few hours they forget about it. It's mildly annoying, but as long as people are happy with what they're making and with their own job security, they aren't going to risk their jobs or reputations over it. It's when secrets are discovered that people become irrational, angry, and vindictive. Othello teaches this lesson. Dude discovers a scarf in the wrong place and loses all sense of reason, and kills his innocent wife in the process. People would get angry and leave in a public-salary system. My contention is that people discover a lot of this information anyway and get more angry in a private-salary system. Annual performance bonuses should probably be secret. The ranges or "buckets" for each year/class/job description should be public; who fell into what bucket should be private.
    • lukev 15y ago
• tzs 15y ago
  Wait...Google starts at $100k/year for people fresh out of college with an undergraduate degree? So what do they go up to for people with experience?
  • jhamburger 15y ago
    A lot. http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/06/google-said-to-have-high-level-mole-at-twitter-makes-massive-counteroffers-to-retain-employees/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/06/google-said-to-have-high-le...
  • hack_edu 15y ago
    Bear in mind they're not hiring just any old graduate. Google loves to claim they are only interested in candidates from the Top Schools.
    • wh-uws 15y ago
      Its not just about "Top Schools"(TM) Have you ever even read the gamut of knowledge they send you to prepare for one of those interviews? These are some of the best coders alive. And the people are Google are not stupid so they know they need to defray people from poaching as best they can.
  • nvarsj 15y ago
    I think the best, non-hearsay source for this is anonymous data at glassdoor.com. Google has quite a lot of data there as well (over 500 reports from San Jose/Mountain View). http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Software-Engineer-San-Jose-Salaries-EJI_IE9079.0,6_KO7,24_IL.25,33_IM761.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Software-Engineer-San... 533 Salaries - Mean is 107,174, with a range of [70, 133]. Median is about 100K. Bonuses are underreported in comparison. But of 24 reports, the bonus is 18K on average. This includes experienced engineers as well. So I think the original link's claim of 100K starting salary is probably an over-estimate.
    • gibybo 15y ago
      Their reporting is a little weird, for example: Google Software Engineer, 1-3 years of experience: Salary: 90k Cash bonus: 16.7k Stock bonus: 8.5k Together it comes to 115k, but the average total pay is listed as 102.6k.
• krosaen 15y ago
  Interesting that all of the examples provided, google, amazon, facebook, MSFT all apparently provide units of stock with a predictable initial value; with stock options, all you can do is guess whether the company will grow and by how much, but if the company didn't grow at all they would be worthless. In fact, are we sure facebook doesn't grant options? Seems like they are still in the growth phase to the point where they could offer options instead, whereas MSFT would have a hard time keeping a straight face offering options at this point.
• thmzlt 15y ago
  How are startup salaries compared to the big companies?
• nostromo 15y ago
  Here's a trick I once heard to share salary with your coworkers without the uncomfortableness of finding out you are over or under-paid. Over beers with several of your coworkers, each write down your salary on a piece of paper and then mix them up. Randomly draw them out of a hat and then read them to each other. If you're all roughly peers, then you get all the benefit of knowing the salary range of the group, with none of the downside of feeling embarrassed about making much more or less than your peers.
  • jfong 15y ago
    Good idea! Although for the most part if you don't work with people you consider friends this subject would never come up.
    • deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
  • madcaptenor 15y ago
    Another method I've heard: person 1 picks a large random number, adds their salary to it, writes down the resulting number, and passes it on to person 2. Person 2 adds their salary to the number, writes down the new sum, and passes it on to person 3. This continues until the result gets back to person 1. You end up with the large random number plus the sum of everyone's salary. Person 1 then subtracts the large random number and reports the sum of all the salaries. This depends on people being able to do arithmetic after a few beers, though.
    • michaelochurch 15y ago
      This is better because it determines the average but not distribution. Imagine what would happen if there were five $70k salaries and one $165k salary for six people doing the same work. People would suddenly get very uncomfortable. One technical gripe: you forgot that the arithmetic needs to be modular to guarantee anonymity. Let's just say the large random number is chosen between 0 and 9,999,999. (You need a range because there's no such thing as a "random uniform" integer.) Now let's say that Person 1's salary is 100,000 and that large random number is 9,999,935. Now Person 2 gets handed 10,099,935 and knows that Person 1 makes at least $99,936, because the "large random number" couldn't have been any higher than 9,999,999. If modular arithmetic is used, with the modulus being the upper bound on the "large random number", then nothing like this is ever given away. Person 2 gets handed 99,935... which could be 9,999,935 + 100,000, or 4,935 + 95,000, or 9,099,935 + 1,000,000, or 99,934 + 1. (Of course, the modulus needs to be big enough that there's no doubt that it's going to be larger than the sum of the salaries.)
• nathanb 15y ago
  It would be extremely interesting to see whether or not having these data publicly available (especially in such a context-free fashion as in this article) is truly helpful or not. It reminds me of another HN story which saw the front page today: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/entdev/article.php/3930466/That-Developers-Salary-is-Bigger-than-Mine.htm http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/entdev/article.php/3930466/... Full transparency could lead to a more equitable distribution of salary, or it could mean that companies are less able to pay top dollar for great talent because they know that there will then be a hundred wannabes who are demanding the same salary.
  • abeppu 15y ago
    The state of California releases salary info for all kinds of state employees (which has shown up on HN before : http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/ http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/). When I first found out, I spent 30 minutes looking up the salaries of all my old UC Berkeley professors, and comparing them to prison doctors and state troopers. I was saddened to see that salaries and talent/research output/prestige are often very unrelated, even in the presence of total transparency. George Smoot, who's a Nobel laureate only around 150k! I also wondered whether (for example) Martin Wainwright and Michael I. Jordan, who've collaborated on papers, classes and a book on my to-read list, ever experience friction as a consequence of salary, given that Jordan appears to earn roughly 85% more than Wainwright. I know that state employees and academic salaries are subject to a lot of forces that aren't present in tech companies -- but this makes me doubt that transparency is enough to bring about reasonable, equitable salaries.
• MrFoof 15y ago
  Salaries never stay secrets forever. Hiding them only delays the inevitable. Last year we were having a discussion at lunch. Coworker was building a new house, and when it came to the numbers it was let loose that it was going to cost about $700K. This didn't seem like much, except to a young guy that joined the previous year and had done nothing but kick ass and take names. The new guy was arguably the most talented guy in the company by a considerable margin, so he thought someone building a $700K home might've been overextending themselves. The person buying the home retorted that it was reasonable and asked the new guy why he wouldn't buy the Porsche Boxster he considered his dream car. The new guy responded that would never be prudent. That didn't seem right, as several of us at the table could've nearly swung a Boxster with just our bonus. The conversation ended up in numbers. Coworker building the house pulled about $140K base (median for a programmer was probably $125K), and his bonus nearly matched the new guy's salary, which was an insulting $60K -- and got cut out of the bonus and raise in January for not being there a full year, only 11 months. Turns out he was a doormat in negotiating, though his salary history was cringeworthy. It pained everyone to hear it, considering how nice of a guy he was. In all honestly, $60K was a big step up for him. Worst of all, this wasn't a cheap market (Boston). The guy probably shortchanged himself well over a half-million dollars in the past decade. This was someone who voluntarily put in long hours and went out of his way to teach others, and did everything he could to help other departments like operations and other teams. On top, he was beyond frugal. Supposedly he saved something around 40% of his take home pay, despite living alone in Boston. He grew up in a trailer park. He spent the next day in non-stop meetings with HR, his manager and the CTO. That Friday he simply handed in his badge without a word, walked out and never came back. Until 3 months later. As a consultant. At $175/hour.
  • wging 15y ago
    $175/hour * 40 hours/week * 50 weeks/year = $350,000/year, for anyone else (like me) who can't immediately estimate equivalent yearly rates.
    • slashcom 15y ago
      $x/hour * 40 hr/wk * 50 wk/yr = 2n1000 The general rule is always "times 2, add 3 zeros" to do it in your head.
• anon-e-moose 15y ago
  I graduated with a CS degree and am making about $32k a year, before paying for insurance, at an IT job. Where can I sign up for one of these horribly low paying $45-75k/year programming jobs?
  • Tangaroa 15y ago
    You need to buy insurance for your IT job? Please describe. I've never heard of this before. Are there different standards for employee fault in different states? Are there any notable court cases? I did once work at a place where employees were financially liable for the cost to the company of any mistakes they made, but I assumed that was legally along the same lines as the company's policy of not sending employees 1099s until we threatened to report them to the IRS. We were all hourly, scheduled "independent contractors" too. (And I hear you on the salaries since I'm making $0 a year and looking for one of those $32k a year jobs. I can understand kick-ass coders with experience making $80k and up, but to imply that I should expect that amount with my degree but no talent or experience? I'm not seeing it in the market.)
    • krakensden 15y ago
      He probably means health insurance.
      • anon-e-moose 15y ago
        Correct.
        • potatolicious 15y ago
          You're going to have to tell us more about your situation - where are you, what sort of company is it, and what is your general experience in software?
          • nvarsj 15y ago
            I'm not the OP, but I have had some experience with this when looking for my last job. I made the mistake of posting my resume on a popular tech job site, and the vast majority of contacts were from shady recruiters trying to get me to work 2 hours away in a "contract to hire" position where I would have to pay my own insurance. Making less than I was currently making, still employed at the time. Perhaps this is similar to the OP. It was a complete ripoff - I think they were trying to take advantage of the massive layoffs going on in the tech industry in my area. The arrogance of these guys was unbelievable.
• glhaynes 15y ago
  Are there parts of the world where it's customary for salaries to be known?
  • tonfa 15y ago
    There are parts of the world (Scandinavia) where the tax filling is public, from that you can have a good guess.
  • rweba 15y ago
    In Norway all tax returns are public: http://skattelister.no/ http://skattelister.no/ In fact I just looked up an old high school classmate and was initially surprised at how much she was making - until I realized 280,000 Kronor is only about 50,000 USD.
    • michael_dorfman 15y ago
      FYI: 280.000 is a pretty poor salary in Norway. Gasoline here just topped $10/gal, if that gives you an idea of the cost-of-living-adjustment necessary. In other words, your friend is not living the life that a $50k salary in the US would buy (in terms of disposible income.) On the other hand, she gets 5 weeks of paid vacation a year, full health care, and a year's paid maternity leave with each child.
      • InnocentB 15y ago
        Gasoline prices aren't a good indicator of cost of living. They are a factor to be sure, but their prices are too overwhelmed by political policy (ie gasoline taxes) compared with other expenses, which introduces too much noise into the data.
        • michael_dorfman 15y ago
          It was just an example; food is equally expensive, and many consumer goods are roughly double the US equivalent price.
  • 15y ago
• chrislomax 15y ago
  I'm at a company as a senior developer. I know the other senior developer is on more money than me but it doesn't bother me. He is more experienced than me and brings a lot to the table. I have been at the company longer and got the development team going, I even hired the guy. I will continue to be "above" him in a respect as I am part of the decision making team about which routes to go down. I value the development work more than the decision making though so I stand by the fact that it doesn't bother me he is on more. You wouldn't accept a job if you were not happy with the conditions, its a two way street. If they offer you a job then you decide whether you want to take it or not, they don't force your hand. I know I could get 10k more than I am on now if I moved to another company but I'm not in my MD's office telling him I'm leaving because I know this fact. I believe in company values, I am helping a company grow. We are relatively small and I have a chance to make a big difference. When your work is your life (If you are a dev then your work IS your life), then it's more about the experience than the cash. But if someone came along and offered me £100k to do my job, I would take it. I'm loyal enough to stay but I'm not stupid enough not to go. I once worked for a company where I bragged about a massive pay rise, I was young and stupid. It led to a lot of hard feelings. I had been promoted to manager and given some great responsibilities. I ended up losing a lot of friends short term (they got over it) but I learnt a valuable lesson, even if they money you were offered comes from a position above you, you are condemed for taking it. A lot of people hate to see other people do well for themselves, all the people who say that they should openly discuss their wages are either on a decent package or they genuinely do not care what other people are on. All the people that want to keep it private understand that it only leads to upset and arguments. If you can be close enough to a work colleague for them not to take it personally then go for it, I would not say an open forum of discussing wages is a good idea though.
• jinushaun 15y ago
  Reading all the replies on HN reminds me why companies like to outsource. Americans are expensive and have a strong sense of entitlement. This race to make more money for the sake of money just leads to accelerating inflation across the board. As far as I am concerned, salary is just a number and people can live just fine on $50,000 if they we weren't such a consumerist society.
  • wh-uws 15y ago
    And you must be in the class of "money isn't that important to me" programmer who will work 100 hours a week for $40,000 a year and years down the road wonder why you feel so slighted. Its not about entitlement its about worth. If a company makes billions of dollars(or generates that much value for the pedantic) off of a fraction of that many people its stands to reason that at least some of those people are worth a substantial amount more than $50,000
  • icedpulleys 15y ago
    There's a considerable difference between having a sense of entitlement and being rational.
    • masterzora 15y ago
      Clearly. And this difference is exactly what we're seeing a lot of here. Rational: "I am unhappy with $60,000 because it does not meet my needs." Entitlement: "I was happy with $60,000 until I found out Fred was making $61,000."
      • danssig 15y ago
        Wrong. Irrational: "I'm working in a free market world but I should just take what ever the company offers me and be happy" Rational: "I'm working in a free market, selling my time so my time is also subject to market rates. I just found out a guy who has, IMO, lower market value makes more than me. This means something is out of whack. I view my market value higher than it really is, his lower than it really is, or I'm not earning my market rate even though my company (and CEO!) are" The only entitlement in this picture is you two giving proxy entitlement to the companies to make even more money by underpaying everyone.
• hugh3 15y ago
  As an academic, this thread makes me feel bad.
  • gaius 15y ago
    Why? It's a matter of the total package. What's the value of your job-for-life and your final salary pension and your summers off? Now are you really worse off?
• gaustin 15y ago
  I avoid all of the fuss.* I work for a State agency in a low population state. There's a published ceiling and floor on salaries (based on pay band). All salaries are public record. * Tongue firmly in cheek.
• olalonde 15y ago
  You know what would really solve the problem? If employers publicly announced the salary they are aiming for in job ads. That way, you wouldn't feel like you got ripped off because of bad negotiation skills.
• olalonde 15y ago
  I used to be very good at salary negotiation and being confident in my skills... until I discovered HN.
• obiefernandez 15y ago
  One of my earliest memories of the Salary Taboo was at the first Java One I attended as a freshly-minted Silverstream "Field Application Engineer" (must have been '99) Four of us in equivalent positions, including one woman got together in my room and started pounding down screwdrivers. After the fourth of fifth, we started talking salaries. All of the guys were making around $120k and the girl... (wait for it...) $80k !!! Despite having more education and arguably better qualifications. We had a big problem on our hands. I'll never forget we were in a room near the top of the tall St. Francis hotel tower and she was angrily threatening to jump out the window.
  • shamrock 15y ago
    So did she ever end up making 120k?
• rch 15y ago
  I've found that talking about grossing a figure up to cover taxes can be a good way to get your feet wet with negotiating.
• joerobot 15y ago
  Wow, this article comes in perfect timing for me. Hopefully, you, the HN community could help me. I am currently being offered a software engineering job at Apple through a recruiting company. What I want to know is, how much should I be asking for? I am 4 months out of college (no Ivy league, just a state college) with little professional experience. So far, I have said $50k, but is that low-balling it? Should I be asking for more? From what I gather, Apple won't be paying me directly; it will be the recruiting company that will be issuing my checks. edit: Forgot to mention that I would be moving from Louisiana to California if I get the job.
  • acgourley 15y ago
    That is very low for a junior software engineer. I would ask for 75k but be OK with taking less for a "trial" period of 3-6 months.
  • patr1ck 15y ago
    I'm confused – Why wouldn't Apple pay you directly? You shouldn't have to ask for anything, they should present you with an offer. Meanwhile, you should do appropriate due diligence and interview with other companies that interest you and see what other offers you get. If Apple is interested in hiring you, no doubt other companies will be too. Also: keep in mind that relocating will incur at least a few thousand dollars in expenses (which your future employer should cover as part of the comp package) and that living in the bay area is very expensive. 50k is do-able, but won't take you very far.
    • joerobot 15y ago
      Thanks, I'll be talking to the recruiter about an offer. Part of the problem is that when I was asked about it, I was basing the salary off of what someone in South Louisiana would make as a junior developer. At the time, I did not have any knowledge of what the salary of someone similar in the Bay Area would be. I was told that the recruiting company (TekSystems) would be paying me. However, I will ask the recruiter for further clarification. The job is a contract job and located at the Cupertino campus. So far, I have not had an interview with Apple and have only completed an assessment for the recruiting company. The recruiter has been the middle-man between anyone at Apple and I so far. When I asked if relocation assistance would be provided, I was given an answer of no. Any suggestions as to negotiating a way to get assistance?
• zenocon 15y ago
  many years ago, i was a fresh grad with an ms in comp sci working at a bay area startup. i sucked at negotiations too, and my starting salary was 75k, which actually wasn't too shabby (or so i thought). long story short: the company imploded, but i was one of the few people kept around until they turned off the lights. most of my friends had been laid off, and we had all revealed our salaries. they made closer to 95-125k, and i was the guy in the OP's story: they guy that worked tirelessly, did the work of 2.5 of my co-workers, was well liked, and had a grad degree. i was pretty annoyed, so i went into the ceo's office and said i was due a salary bump. it was the least he could do seeing as how the company would be gone in a month, and i could use that as leverage in negotiations for next time. he complied, and bumped my salary to 90k. i got a new job about a month later and i negotiated 98k. usually, you will get some incremental improvement when you move to a new position.
• deleted 15y ago
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• lukejduncan 15y ago
  HN needs anon comments. I have specific questions, but not ones I want my name on =)
  • mhansen 15y ago
    Make a sockpuppet account.
    • yuhong 15y ago
      Yea, people often make throwaways for Ask HN. I'd prefer people doing it less whatever possible, though I know sometimes they are needed (I am not expecting questions about acquisitions to be made non-anonymously at this point for example).
• lukejduncan 15y ago
  In Silicon Valley, is it expected that you'll negotiate an offer? If so, by how much? In general in Detroit, offers are final (clearly a generalization, but true of big co's).
  • danssig 15y ago
    This is a strange question. Of course most any company hopes you won't negotiate. What they expect is that you'll value yourself more than their initial offer and will negotiate. I'm sorry, but I don't believe you about Detroit. I believe that you believe that, I believe companies tell you that but I unless all big Detroit companies only have very junior people I don't believe for one second that this is actually the case.
    • lukejduncan 15y ago
      Maybe I should rephrase the question: In Silicon Valley do most people negotiate? Is it just part of the culture?
• plus2 15y ago
  We need to remember "you are not your salary". Comments like "an insulting $60,000" or "only $100,000" makes me shake my head. Your salary is not something you have to brag about.Your worth is not determined by your salary. A developer can create millions of dollars in value. Think how much value DHH created with Rails or Linus with Git and Linux. Or Damien with CouchDB. Remember Steve Jobs salary is $1 a year. Our goal as hackers is to create value, millions of dollars worth of value. This salary talk makes us look like programmers not hackers.
  • daemin 15y ago
    That is if you have some sort of interest in what you are doing. Either shares in or ownership of the company, enjoying the project you are working on (and hence it can be considered a hobby), or just doing the job for the money so that you can follow your passion outside of work. Salary isn't everything but it may be key thing keeping you at your job.
  • Saavedro 15y ago
    Which is all well and good, but to say that salary doesn't matter is bupkis. If you're creating significant value and getting little for it, you're getting the short end of the stick. If you notice you're getting the short end of the stick, you're probably going to feel like crap. Mind that lots of developers, if working for a company, don't own what they create. "Our goal as hackers is to create value, millions of dollars worth of value." Screw that. My goal is to enjoy life, have fun, work on interesting stuff and not feel like I'm getting screwed over in the process.
    • bcaulf 15y ago
      Forgive me, but I think you meant that to say that salary doesn't matter is mishuggeneh. Bupkis is what you'll have in your bank account if you go on thinking this way. I'm not even Jewish. This is just from years in New York.
  • deleted 15y ago
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  • 15y ago
• sceaj 15y ago
  So, I'm most certain that I'm being given the shaft by my employer. A coworker recently quit, because he felt underpaid (his previous job paid him over 10% more). Negotiations with HR got him nowhere, so he left. The coworker and I had identical jobs, and we did them in the same capacity, with very similar skill levels. When he left, he disclosed everything to me. Despite being underpaid, he was still being paid significantly higher than I am (almost 25% more). Of course, I'm no longer happy with my pay, but don't really know what to do about it. I don't have the flexibility to just leave town, and I'm in a town that just isn't hiring developers right now ("metro"=200k). I've applied to places far away, but just without much luck. I thought if I got an offer, I'd have some arguing room. But I don't; I don't have anything. Besides, if my employer doesn't budge, I'm not prepared to take the leap. I can't leave town because my wife is in school here, now. I started at a lower pay rate, because they hired me without a college degree. I've been working for them for three years now, and have been moving up in pay, but I started so low that it hasn't amounted to much. I think a huge part of my problem is that I don't have a college degree. I think that I've obviously shown that I'm capable of doing the job, regardless, though. How much should the degree really matter? I've seriously been considering applying to a lower tier school (I mean low tier state school, not U of Phoenix, etc.) for a degree completion program, just so I can pad my resume up some. I don't know if that hurts more than it helps, though. I did already finish up the handful of courses I needed for the A.S. from the local community college.
  • danssig 15y ago
    If you have no other options then that decreases your market value. The good news is: you now know of the problem and you know what is standing in the way of fixing it. I've always heard that a degree is worth 5 years experience.
  • teamonkey 15y ago
    You could try asking them. "What do I need to do to earn X?" If it's something reasonable, get them to give you a timescale and an action plan so it's in writing that if you hit these targets you'll get your salary raised to X.
• dezwald 15y ago
  I find that in canada (toronto, ontario) programmers are not paid near the amounts of programmers in the US. 5 years ago i started at 40K (working in Hamilton). Now living in toronto, and i find that newly graduate programmers start around 50K-60K, and senior programmers make anywhere between 80K-100K. I feel that living toronto/ontario, programmers are utilized as tradesmen, where they service the industry (corporations, banks, publications, marketing firms etc...) I just wish there was more of a tech/startup industry in toronto, like there is in California, Boston, New York, etc..
  • iqster 15y ago
    Absolutely correct. I ended up leaving Toronto after I realized this. I'm not sure if it was a good decision or bad. I ended up getting fantastic work experience and a higher number salary. However, my quality of life wasn't the same (because I left behind family and friends, and miss Canada in general). Also, I realized that the salary number doesn't mean much when you live in ridiculously expensive places.
  • danssig 15y ago
    Your health care is a lot cheaper. You have to consider these kinds of issues. The market rates must be as they are for a reason.
  • nchlswu 15y ago
    You're not considering regional standards and cost of living, though. Even if you consider that, I think what you described is hardly specific to the Toronto Area. Any company without their own "dev shop" or tech culture, regardless of area will consider programmers as tradesmen. Toronto may be on the low end, but I'm pretty sure the "true" tech companies in the area are much closer to the higher end than you think.
• yuhong 15y ago
  As it happens, there was this Ask HN about salary. Guess why it had to be created using a anonymous throwaway: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2440956 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2440956
• fsipie 15y ago
  How does this translate into UK salaries? I'm working at a medium sized company (approx £200 million turnover) and am a senior developer with 15 years experience in stuff like c++/c#/iphone/asp.net mostly MS stack and I'm getting paid £34k. I know I can go contracting for £40/hr but it's alot more hassle. What are other people getting paid here in Blighty?
  • smiler 15y ago
    With 15 years experience, you are underpaid.
  • akronim 15y ago
    http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/ http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/ is an excellent resource for the UK for this.
  • acodingdude19 15y ago
    Depends where you live, apparently that is normal if you are out in the sticks. I was 22 and contracting as a c# developer @ £40/hour in 2004/5. That grew over time so that i had 2 month holiday and still made 80k for the year. I did have a dud job though with oracle where it was almost impossible to earn anymore. Left Oracle as I didnt believe in the technology. Now on 100k a year, no degree and foreign. Plus I recieve a bonus on top of that.
• pilib 15y ago
  While not being a programmer, I did work as a sysadmin for a hosting company. Since I quit around 2 years ago, I was asked by my ex-colleagues on several occasions would I consider returning there. Now, these questions were raised by my coworkers and not my boss, but nevertheless, my answer was the same. Yeah, sure, if they double my salary from 2 years ago, assign me to a higher tier support level so I don't have to deal with customers in any way. Simple reason for this was that knowing my peers salary, both those of lower, equal and higher position, I knew how much I was worth to them, and how much others were slacking. So, with public salaries, you get that. With them being private, I would probably ask for a small raise based on economic situation. I'm not saying I wouldn't work for the same money as before, It's just that I'd feel like a jerk toward my self in that case.