10 ms·

I do not disagree with your take, but I think you may only be speaking for a subset of engineers that are already fairly well compensated. The article likewise

I do not disagree with your take, but I think you may only be speaking for a subset of engineers that are already fairly well compensated. The article likewise seems to discard the importance of money in favor of three other more immaterial factors, but I do not think this is representative of the situation of the global job market right now. I also think such a perspective can not fully explain the difficulties that many companies are having with regards to hiring engineers at the moment. If you look outside of coastal cities, there are plenty of job offers for engineering jobs that pay less than 6 figures. Over in Europe and East Asia, $50 to $60k salaries are the norm. And people job hop frequently for a few extra $k because that corresponds to a significant increase in quality of life for them. The difference between a 2 br and 3 or 4 br apartment, between another kid or not, etc... People will absolutely leave your company if they think they can get paid more elsewhere. People will absolutely pass over your job offer if they think they can get more elsewhere. You also see the reverse phenomenon which is that you'll find plenty of engineers doing soul-wrenching, boring jobs in toxic environment who still say because they are very generously compensated (hello FAANG).

louis___ 5y ago
It seems you are over-generalizing. Maybe people are not like you. > People will absolutely leave your company if they think they can get paid more elsewhere. Maybe you will. Maybe they won't. Everyone has his own bar for "enough" money. For some there is no such bar.
lhorie 5y ago
I would posit that the OP underestimates the impact of his second point: remote-first in a covid world opened up a large swath of opportunities to get very large total compensation bumps everywhere. I'm part of a slack group comprised of ex-employees of a company I used to work at and some folks there expressed that it is entirely feasible to land jobs today that pay a full 100-200k over their current or previous compensation, thanks to big tech companies expanding engineering operations outside of Silicon Valley. Considering that each of these tech companies are trying to hire in the order of hundreds of engineers, and willing to accommodate remote work from locations that they previously did not consider, is it really a surprise that other companies with less competitive compensation packages are struggling to find talent?
- richardfey 5y ago
  100k-200k on top of let's say 100k? So they would be making 250k per year? How common is this?
  - eyjafjallajokul 5y ago
    100k is below starting salary in the Bay Area or Seattle. Most senior folks make 300-450k with Staff level engineers making 600-800k.
    - exdsq 5y ago
      I don’t know if that’s true. I live in Palo Alto and know a fair few people at a fair few companies. Outside of a handful of companies they’ll only be hitting those with illiquid highly-valued stocks - not with base & bonus.
    - suifbwish 5y ago
      Sounds like someone who invested in property in the Bay Area or Seattle and is trying to get its value to go up. I would need to see numbers on that.
    - Wiseacre 5y ago
      Most? As in over 50% of all senior folk in the Seattle industry make 300-450k?
      - verst 5y ago
        Definitely not. Total comp of senior engineers at Microsoft in Seattle is nowhere near this. (I am one of those at this point in time)
        dastbe 5y ago
        It is an unfortunate truth that Microsoft's pay between entry level to somewhere around principal is not competitive with a substantial number of companies. That is not to say that Microsoft doesn't provide other benefits, but top tier compensation is not one of them.
judge2020 5y ago
None of your points are untrue, but "engineers that are already fairly well compensated" is exactly who OP and the article are referring to: > Read any publication that cares about business, from the NYT to the Wall Street Journal, and you’ll see a ton of hand wringing about The Quittening, and the accompanying talent shortage. These publications aren't talking about the workforce in general, they're pseudo-gossip articles about the wealthy top engineers and how well-off they are that they can focus on things other than how much they put into savings each paycheck.
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
> engineers doing soul-wrenching, boring jobs in toxic environment who still say because they are very generously compensated (hello FAANG). This is also what a lot of europeans do with FAANG jobs.. get a FAANG job, move to america, live there for 3-5 years in a 4 bedroom apartment with 12 roommates, eat ramen, come back home, and buy a house. There's also a question of how much more money do you get... 5% more to do something shitter than now... not worth it... but 50% more, is enough to think it through, if nothing else, how much sooner can you retire with that.
pjmlp 5y ago
> Over in Europe and East Asia, $50 to $60k salaries are the norm Yes, and we have plenty of nice stuff that goes along with it Healthcare, 30 paid holidays, unions, paid overtime, weekends and calls off work come extra (it is 40h week period, want more pay for it), retirement, flex time, ... Like the OP, my expenses are more than covered, getting more isn't worth the hassle to change. Ah, and in some countries having too many companies on the CV isn't well seen, it appears the candidate isn't able to fit-in anywhere.
- mcv 5y ago
  Despite all of that, I think engineers are underpaid in Europe (and presumably East Asia). I just left a job at a major bank where all the non-engineer roles got paid, or at least could be paid more than I got. There were 5 pay scales for engineers, the top 2 of which weren't even being used. I got there from a freelance contract, and I had to take a serious pay cut to continue working on the project. It was a really cool project, which I wrote the initial prototype for, and guided a growing team in its development, and I accepted the pay cut because I loved the project so much, but a year later I left to go back to freelancing. I think that's the only way to get paid your worth here. Meanwhile the company is wondering why they can't retain senior engineers. If I wanted to be paid more, I'd have to take on more organisational duties outside my team, and I just wasn't interested in that, so I left. For an interesting freelance project that pays even more than that bank paid me when I freelanced for them. It doesn't have to be 6 figures, but I think senior software engineers absolutely should be getting manager-level salaries, without having to dilute their technical focus by taking on other responsibilities.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - codethief 5y ago
    Slightly off-topic questions, because I've been thinking about freelancing lately: - Where/how do you (as a freelancer) find your clients? (Do you focus on clients from the financial industry?) - Where are those clients from (location-wise)? - Do you work remotely? If yes, does your timezone need to match your client's timezone? Put differently: How flexible are you when it comes to working hours?
bawolff 5y ago
> but I think you may only be speaking for a subset of engineers that are already fairly well compensated Didn't the parent directly say that? Money not matering after a certain point means that it still matters before that point.
andi999 5y ago
There is the proverb: The engineer is the mule, business people ride on towards (their) success.
KronisLV 5y ago
> If you look outside of coastal cities, there are plenty of job offers for engineering jobs that pay less than 6 figures. Over in Europe and East Asia, $50 to $60k salaries are the norm. And people job hop frequently for a few extra $k because that corresponds to a significant increase in quality of life for them. The difference between a 2 br and 3 or 4 br apartment, between another kid or not, etc... In my eyes, this is a good point. Currently working in Latvia and getting a net salary of around 2k euros a month now - staying at the same company makes it increase by a few hundred euros per year. Actually provided more information in another comment of mine, compared some of the public sources for software dev salaries in the adjacent countries too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29595158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29595158 Also wrote about my savings and financial circumstances on my blog a while ago as well: https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/on-finances-and-savings https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/on-finances-and-savings Thus, job hopping even for comparatively small increases is the smart thing to do, as well as looking for opportunities like side hustles and attempting to take advantage of a globalized economy that lends itself well to remote work (something that i'll inevitably need to explore once i'll have finished a pretty large enterprise migration and some pilot projects in my current place of work). Now, my salary is still liveable and certainly better than those of who work for the local government, who receive about half of what i do (according to https://www-visasalgas-com.translate.goog/valsts-iestades?_x_tr_sl=lv&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=lt https://www-visasalgas-com.translate.goog/valsts-iestades?_x... which is a site that displays the published data per government org) and many other seemingly essential jobs (like teachers, medics, firemen, policemen all of which are comparatively underpaid). Even as a software dev, buying my own house anytime soon is unlikely, as is buying a new car, or many other luxuries that others take for granted. In short: the original argument definitely holds true for those who are well compensated, but yours is also valid for those less so. Already, there is talk locally of not having enough engineers, especially in those aforementioned government jobs.
herbstein 5y ago
> $50 to $60k salaries are the norm As a newly graduated CS student in Denmark I got a job earning $74k a year. I got warned by my union that my salary was on the low side and, come the first negotiation round of the year, I should ask for a larger raise than simply a yearly adjustment. And based on my union's numbers I don't think almost any developer is working for $60k or under in this country.
TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
> If you look outside of coastal cities, there are plenty of job offers for engineering jobs that pay less than 6 figures. Over in Europe and East Asia, $50 to $60k salaries are the norm. Indeed, the population of people who post on this board are very binomial, and it often causes blanket statements to be confusing to one side or the other.

louis___ 5y ago

It seems you are over-generalizing. Maybe people are not like you. > People will absolutely leave your company if they think they can get paid more elsewhere. Maybe you will. Maybe they won't. Everyone has his own bar for "enough" money. For some there is no such bar.

lhorie 5y ago

I would posit that the OP underestimates the impact of his second point: remote-first in a covid world opened up a large swath of opportunities to get very large total compensation bumps everywhere. I'm part of a slack group comprised of ex-employees of a company I used to work at and some folks there expressed that it is entirely feasible to land jobs today that pay a full 100-200k over their current or previous compensation, thanks to big tech companies expanding engineering operations outside of Silicon Valley. Considering that each of these tech companies are trying to hire in the order of hundreds of engineers, and willing to accommodate remote work from locations that they previously did not consider, is it really a surprise that other companies with less competitive compensation packages are struggling to find talent?

richardfey 5y ago
100k-200k on top of let's say 100k? So they would be making 250k per year? How common is this?
- eyjafjallajokul 5y ago
  100k is below starting salary in the Bay Area or Seattle. Most senior folks make 300-450k with Staff level engineers making 600-800k.
  - exdsq 5y ago
    I don’t know if that’s true. I live in Palo Alto and know a fair few people at a fair few companies. Outside of a handful of companies they’ll only be hitting those with illiquid highly-valued stocks - not with base & bonus.
  - suifbwish 5y ago
    Sounds like someone who invested in property in the Bay Area or Seattle and is trying to get its value to go up. I would need to see numbers on that.
  - Wiseacre 5y ago
    Most? As in over 50% of all senior folk in the Seattle industry make 300-450k?
    - verst 5y ago
      Definitely not. Total comp of senior engineers at Microsoft in Seattle is nowhere near this. (I am one of those at this point in time)
      - dastbe 5y ago
        It is an unfortunate truth that Microsoft's pay between entry level to somewhere around principal is not competitive with a substantial number of companies. That is not to say that Microsoft doesn't provide other benefits, but top tier compensation is not one of them.

judge2020 5y ago

None of your points are untrue, but "engineers that are already fairly well compensated" is exactly who OP and the article are referring to: > Read any publication that cares about business, from the NYT to the Wall Street Journal, and you’ll see a ton of hand wringing about The Quittening, and the accompanying talent shortage. These publications aren't talking about the workforce in general, they're pseudo-gossip articles about the wealthy top engineers and how well-off they are that they can focus on things other than how much they put into savings each paycheck.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago

> engineers doing soul-wrenching, boring jobs in toxic environment who still say because they are very generously compensated (hello FAANG). This is also what a lot of europeans do with FAANG jobs.. get a FAANG job, move to america, live there for 3-5 years in a 4 bedroom apartment with 12 roommates, eat ramen, come back home, and buy a house. There's also a question of how much more money do you get... 5% more to do something shitter than now... not worth it... but 50% more, is enough to think it through, if nothing else, how much sooner can you retire with that.

pjmlp 5y ago

> Over in Europe and East Asia, $50 to $60k salaries are the norm Yes, and we have plenty of nice stuff that goes along with it Healthcare, 30 paid holidays, unions, paid overtime, weekends and calls off work come extra (it is 40h week period, want more pay for it), retirement, flex time, ... Like the OP, my expenses are more than covered, getting more isn't worth the hassle to change. Ah, and in some countries having too many companies on the CV isn't well seen, it appears the candidate isn't able to fit-in anywhere.

mcv 5y ago
Despite all of that, I think engineers are underpaid in Europe (and presumably East Asia). I just left a job at a major bank where all the non-engineer roles got paid, or at least could be paid more than I got. There were 5 pay scales for engineers, the top 2 of which weren't even being used. I got there from a freelance contract, and I had to take a serious pay cut to continue working on the project. It was a really cool project, which I wrote the initial prototype for, and guided a growing team in its development, and I accepted the pay cut because I loved the project so much, but a year later I left to go back to freelancing. I think that's the only way to get paid your worth here. Meanwhile the company is wondering why they can't retain senior engineers. If I wanted to be paid more, I'd have to take on more organisational duties outside my team, and I just wasn't interested in that, so I left. For an interesting freelance project that pays even more than that bank paid me when I freelanced for them. It doesn't have to be 6 figures, but I think senior software engineers absolutely should be getting manager-level salaries, without having to dilute their technical focus by taking on other responsibilities.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- codethief 5y ago
  Slightly off-topic questions, because I've been thinking about freelancing lately: - Where/how do you (as a freelancer) find your clients? (Do you focus on clients from the financial industry?) - Where are those clients from (location-wise)? - Do you work remotely? If yes, does your timezone need to match your client's timezone? Put differently: How flexible are you when it comes to working hours?

bawolff 5y ago

> but I think you may only be speaking for a subset of engineers that are already fairly well compensated Didn't the parent directly say that? Money not matering after a certain point means that it still matters before that point.

andi999 5y ago

There is the proverb: The engineer is the mule, business people ride on towards (their) success.

KronisLV 5y ago

> If you look outside of coastal cities, there are plenty of job offers for engineering jobs that pay less than 6 figures. Over in Europe and East Asia, $50 to $60k salaries are the norm. And people job hop frequently for a few extra $k because that corresponds to a significant increase in quality of life for them. The difference between a 2 br and 3 or 4 br apartment, between another kid or not, etc... In my eyes, this is a good point. Currently working in Latvia and getting a net salary of around 2k euros a month now - staying at the same company makes it increase by a few hundred euros per year. Actually provided more information in another comment of mine, compared some of the public sources for software dev salaries in the adjacent countries too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29595158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29595158 Also wrote about my savings and financial circumstances on my blog a while ago as well: https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/on-finances-and-savings https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/on-finances-and-savings Thus, job hopping even for comparatively small increases is the smart thing to do, as well as looking for opportunities like side hustles and attempting to take advantage of a globalized economy that lends itself well to remote work (something that i'll inevitably need to explore once i'll have finished a pretty large enterprise migration and some pilot projects in my current place of work). Now, my salary is still liveable and certainly better than those of who work for the local government, who receive about half of what i do (according to https://www-visasalgas-com.translate.goog/valsts-iestades?_x_tr_sl=lv&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=lt https://www-visasalgas-com.translate.goog/valsts-iestades?_x... which is a site that displays the published data per government org) and many other seemingly essential jobs (like teachers, medics, firemen, policemen all of which are comparatively underpaid). Even as a software dev, buying my own house anytime soon is unlikely, as is buying a new car, or many other luxuries that others take for granted. In short: the original argument definitely holds true for those who are well compensated, but yours is also valid for those less so. Already, there is talk locally of not having enough engineers, especially in those aforementioned government jobs.

herbstein 5y ago

> $50 to $60k salaries are the norm As a newly graduated CS student in Denmark I got a job earning $74k a year. I got warned by my union that my salary was on the low side and, come the first negotiation round of the year, I should ask for a larger raise than simply a yearly adjustment. And based on my union's numbers I don't think almost any developer is working for $60k or under in this country.

TheRealDunkirk 5y ago

> If you look outside of coastal cities, there are plenty of job offers for engineering jobs that pay less than 6 figures. Over in Europe and East Asia, $50 to $60k salaries are the norm. Indeed, the population of people who post on this board are very binomial, and it often causes blanket statements to be confusing to one side or the other.