8 ms·

What area are you in? 75k in NY or SF for an inexperienced developer seems high.

cairo140 11y ago
Just sharing my experience here: I've been hiring in SF and found some boot camp grads, usually stronger but still far from mid-career, with expectations around 90-115k. Most of these folks got hired (some of them to us/away from us with offers all in that range). These were folks who were months to years away from hitting the ground running, and the value of the offer was entirely on their future potential. I found great difficulty finding a mid-career developer for the 130-150k range that it started making an "investment hire" feel like a viable alternative.
- bcassedy 11y ago
  Just curious, how do you define "hitting the ground running"
  - cairo140 11y ago
    Roughly, someone who at the start can work independently on an existing business-critical[1], medium-sized[2] app to first fix bugs without adding major tech debt[3] and then take features from planning to deployment/maintenance, and then ultimately (6-12 months, since we were a very small shop), independently steer architecture and be solo on call. [1] hundreds of thousands in sales a day [2] around 10-50k LOC, but a far cry from the greenfield toy apps that bootcamp devs spend 90% of their time with [3] position: relative and z-index: 100 fixes many UI bugs, but if a dev has that as a main piece of their toolkit, you take on UI code debt or drag down the team to steer solutions in the right direction.
    - bcassedy 11y ago
      That certainly sounds like a more senior role. My take on bootcamp grads (I am one), is that the purpose is to make them a competitive or superior option to a fresh CS grad. How does that expectation compare to your experience?
      - cairo140 11y ago
        Yeah "hit the ground running" was decidedly not the standard for bootcamp grads. This was our more senior unicorn hire. Like any shop though we did have simpler more isolated work that was still needing doing, so we pared those off for grads.
- 7Figures2Commas 11y ago
  > I've been hiring in SF and found some boot camp grads, usually stronger but still far from mid-career, with expectations around 90-115k. Most of these folks got hired (some of them to us/away from us with offers all in that range). When the current cycle ends, the funding dries up and companies start running out of money, more folks will recognize this as the insanity it is.
  - hifier 11y ago
    Do you honestly think the demand for software engineers will go down in the next 10-20 years?
    - 7Figures2Commas 11y ago
      Do you honestly think the demand for "software engineers" with little to no practical experience and modest training at $90,000 to $115,000/year, seen almost exclusively in a few overheated markets, will be sustained? Companies like Google and Facebook, large, profitable enterprises that can cherry-pick the best college graduates from the best schools and invest in long-term development, are one thing. But unprofitable, angel and venture-backed startups that are pressured to grow (and that includes headcount) are another thing. A lot of the salary froth at the entry-level end of the market is being driven by the latter, not the former. This has nothing to do with the long-term demand for skilled, experienced software engineers.
      - hifier 11y ago
        While this particular solution may be a failure, it is a reflection of the demand, which I don't see changing direction anytime soon. This is an attempt to cache in on the fact that competent engineers cannot be found at this price, which only drives the point home. If these experiments fail, it will only drive he price higher.
- winter_blue 11y ago
  > I found great difficulty finding a mid-career developer for the 130-150k range that it started making an "investment hire" feel like a viable alternative. Wow, are talented developer really that hard to find? (Especially, considering you're offering 130-150k.) Are you insistent on a developer being "mid-career" (I interpret that as having "years of experience") -- or would you accept a highly talented who has just begun career (e.g. a recent CS grad)?
  - duderific 11y ago
    Yes, it is really hard to find talented developers. I am a developer who interviews developer candidates at my company, and we only end up giving an offer to maybe one in five candidates. Our standards are fairly high but not ridiculously so. We are desperate for developers, but not to the point where we want to hire someone who we feel like would be dragging us down.
    - ryandrake 11y ago
      Instead of hiring a developer that would drag you down, did you consider offering more money? When people say there's a shortage of developers, or that they find it really hard to find developers, my guess is that they have to add "at the salary I'm offering" to the end of the statement. I was car shopping a few months ago, and I found there's a dire shortage of brand new $10K BMWs.
      - mycelium 11y ago
        Is $150k for a strong full-stack midcareer developer really like trying to get a $10k BMW? What compensation range would you shoot for? We're shopping in that compensation range and my experience has been exactly like cairo140's above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9964934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9964934
        ryandrake 11y ago
        Keep going up until the candidate pool improves? Just a personal anecdote: Even though I loved writing software, I moved up and away from development (after 12+ years) mostly because of the salary ceiling we all inevitably eventually hit. But I keep my skills sharp and would always go back for the right price. $150K would definitely not be the right price, at least not in the Bay Area. My guess is there are tons of guys like this out there.
- fweespeech 11y ago
  If they are that expensive and you are having that kind of trouble...maybe try remote hires? $100k for a remote hire mid-career developer shouldn't be hard to find.
  - mooreds 11y ago
    Some companies just aren't set up to handle remote developers. Based on my experience, it takes a certain mindset and tooling to make remote development work. I don't know about the GP's situation, however.
    - fweespeech 11y ago
      Yeah, it was just a suggestion. Remote work at 6 figures is still worth it and widens the pool alot.
warfangle 11y ago
75k in NY for an inexperienced developer isn't all that high. My first full time tech gig was for 37.5k at a shady-as-hell direct marketing company. HTML and CSS, a very little bit of javascript for form validation that I learned at my desk. They let me go about eight months in (thank god). I failed a phone interview with NYT because I didn't know edge side includes. I was devastated. Prepared to move back in with my dad with hat in hand, the literal prodigal son. I passed a phone interview a week later with an ad company. After a three hour on-site interview, they offered me a job on the spot as a front-end developer - at 70k/year. This was in '07. I would definitely say that I qualified as inexperienced. I knew enough CSS to take just about any design and slice it into something that worked, and I knew enough HTML to lay it out. I knew a smattering of JS, but the language frustrated me. I had probably about a sophomore level understanding of computer science. I was an academic failure and community college dropout. They took a huge gamble on me. (edit: since this is getting a couple upvotes, PSA: I was undiagnosed/treated ADHD until I was nearly 30. If you think you might have it, talk to a professional. I thought I was strong enough to cope without help, and I was wrong) I came out of that job knowing ASP.net, some C#, and a lot more Javascript. But 75k for an inexperienced developer in NYC? Not that high at all. I was probably making only a little more than half of what the other developers on the team were. But damn it felt good to have a career.
Nicholas_C 11y ago
I was actually going to say that $75k for a competent developer with two years of experience seemed low, especially if you're in NYC or SF. You can swing that in Dallas with a finance/accounting degree and 2 years of work experience if you're competent and have good work experience. Just my perspective, I am not a developer.
hifier 11y ago
75 is not high in NY and SF for entry level. Probably low for even average candidates.

Just sharing my experience here: I've been hiring in SF and found some boot camp grads, usually stronger but still far from mid-career, with expectations around 90-115k. Most of these folks got hired (some of them to us/away from us with offers all in that range). These were folks who were months to years away from hitting the ground running, and the value of the offer was entirely on their future potential. I found great difficulty finding a mid-career developer for the 130-150k range that it started making an "investment hire" feel like a viable alternative.

bcassedy 11y ago
Just curious, how do you define "hitting the ground running"
- cairo140 11y ago
  Roughly, someone who at the start can work independently on an existing business-critical[1], medium-sized[2] app to first fix bugs without adding major tech debt[3] and then take features from planning to deployment/maintenance, and then ultimately (6-12 months, since we were a very small shop), independently steer architecture and be solo on call. [1] hundreds of thousands in sales a day [2] around 10-50k LOC, but a far cry from the greenfield toy apps that bootcamp devs spend 90% of their time with [3] position: relative and z-index: 100 fixes many UI bugs, but if a dev has that as a main piece of their toolkit, you take on UI code debt or drag down the team to steer solutions in the right direction.
  - bcassedy 11y ago
    That certainly sounds like a more senior role. My take on bootcamp grads (I am one), is that the purpose is to make them a competitive or superior option to a fresh CS grad. How does that expectation compare to your experience?
    - cairo140 11y ago
      Yeah "hit the ground running" was decidedly not the standard for bootcamp grads. This was our more senior unicorn hire. Like any shop though we did have simpler more isolated work that was still needing doing, so we pared those off for grads.
7Figures2Commas 11y ago
> I've been hiring in SF and found some boot camp grads, usually stronger but still far from mid-career, with expectations around 90-115k. Most of these folks got hired (some of them to us/away from us with offers all in that range). When the current cycle ends, the funding dries up and companies start running out of money, more folks will recognize this as the insanity it is.
- hifier 11y ago
  Do you honestly think the demand for software engineers will go down in the next 10-20 years?
  - 7Figures2Commas 11y ago
    Do you honestly think the demand for "software engineers" with little to no practical experience and modest training at $90,000 to $115,000/year, seen almost exclusively in a few overheated markets, will be sustained? Companies like Google and Facebook, large, profitable enterprises that can cherry-pick the best college graduates from the best schools and invest in long-term development, are one thing. But unprofitable, angel and venture-backed startups that are pressured to grow (and that includes headcount) are another thing. A lot of the salary froth at the entry-level end of the market is being driven by the latter, not the former. This has nothing to do with the long-term demand for skilled, experienced software engineers.
    - hifier 11y ago
      While this particular solution may be a failure, it is a reflection of the demand, which I don't see changing direction anytime soon. This is an attempt to cache in on the fact that competent engineers cannot be found at this price, which only drives the point home. If these experiments fail, it will only drive he price higher.
winter_blue 11y ago
> I found great difficulty finding a mid-career developer for the 130-150k range that it started making an "investment hire" feel like a viable alternative. Wow, are talented developer really that hard to find? (Especially, considering you're offering 130-150k.) Are you insistent on a developer being "mid-career" (I interpret that as having "years of experience") -- or would you accept a highly talented who has just begun career (e.g. a recent CS grad)?
- duderific 11y ago
  Yes, it is really hard to find talented developers. I am a developer who interviews developer candidates at my company, and we only end up giving an offer to maybe one in five candidates. Our standards are fairly high but not ridiculously so. We are desperate for developers, but not to the point where we want to hire someone who we feel like would be dragging us down.
  - ryandrake 11y ago
    Instead of hiring a developer that would drag you down, did you consider offering more money? When people say there's a shortage of developers, or that they find it really hard to find developers, my guess is that they have to add "at the salary I'm offering" to the end of the statement. I was car shopping a few months ago, and I found there's a dire shortage of brand new $10K BMWs.
    - mycelium 11y ago
      Is $150k for a strong full-stack midcareer developer really like trying to get a $10k BMW? What compensation range would you shoot for? We're shopping in that compensation range and my experience has been exactly like cairo140's above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9964934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9964934
      - ryandrake 11y ago
        Keep going up until the candidate pool improves? Just a personal anecdote: Even though I loved writing software, I moved up and away from development (after 12+ years) mostly because of the salary ceiling we all inevitably eventually hit. But I keep my skills sharp and would always go back for the right price. $150K would definitely not be the right price, at least not in the Bay Area. My guess is there are tons of guys like this out there.
fweespeech 11y ago
If they are that expensive and you are having that kind of trouble...maybe try remote hires? $100k for a remote hire mid-career developer shouldn't be hard to find.
- mooreds 11y ago
  Some companies just aren't set up to handle remote developers. Based on my experience, it takes a certain mindset and tooling to make remote development work. I don't know about the GP's situation, however.
  - fweespeech 11y ago
    Yeah, it was just a suggestion. Remote work at 6 figures is still worth it and widens the pool alot.

warfangle 11y ago

75k in NY for an inexperienced developer isn't all that high. My first full time tech gig was for 37.5k at a shady-as-hell direct marketing company. HTML and CSS, a very little bit of javascript for form validation that I learned at my desk. They let me go about eight months in (thank god). I failed a phone interview with NYT because I didn't know edge side includes. I was devastated. Prepared to move back in with my dad with hat in hand, the literal prodigal son. I passed a phone interview a week later with an ad company. After a three hour on-site interview, they offered me a job on the spot as a front-end developer - at 70k/year. This was in '07. I would definitely say that I qualified as inexperienced. I knew enough CSS to take just about any design and slice it into something that worked, and I knew enough HTML to lay it out. I knew a smattering of JS, but the language frustrated me. I had probably about a sophomore level understanding of computer science. I was an academic failure and community college dropout. They took a huge gamble on me. (edit: since this is getting a couple upvotes, PSA: I was undiagnosed/treated ADHD until I was nearly 30. If you think you might have it, talk to a professional. I thought I was strong enough to cope without help, and I was wrong) I came out of that job knowing ASP.net, some C#, and a lot more Javascript. But 75k for an inexperienced developer in NYC? Not that high at all. I was probably making only a little more than half of what the other developers on the team were. But damn it felt good to have a career.

Nicholas_C 11y ago

I was actually going to say that $75k for a competent developer with two years of experience seemed low, especially if you're in NYC or SF. You can swing that in Dallas with a finance/accounting degree and 2 years of work experience if you're competent and have good work experience. Just my perspective, I am not a developer.

hifier 11y ago

75 is not high in NY and SF for entry level. Probably low for even average candidates.