Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid(toolbox.com)
toolbox.com
Tech Salaries in 2022: Why the Six Figure Pay Makes Techies Feel Underpaid
https://www.toolbox.com/tech/it-careers-skills/articles/tech-salaries-why-techies-feel-underpaid/
595 comments
A solid article, but it should have commented on single family home prices. If you use the 3x salary rule, a $120k a year techie couldn't afford the median home price in America ($374k). A software engineer in San Francisco would have to make $526k a year in cold hard cash to reasonably afford the median single family home ($1.58 million).
Talking about six figure salaries as if they are unquestionably upper-middle class should take housing prices into account.
Talking about six figure salaries as if they are unquestionably upper-middle class should take housing prices into account.
I personally wish there is a healthier supply of modern housing in these attractive workplaces. Places like SF/NY/LA has atrocious rent and that’s okay if housing quality on average is okay but a lot of these buildings are 100+ years old, barely maintained or a new cash grab apartment complex that’s marketed as luxurious but look an inch deeper and you could tell these developers hardly spent time nor money knowing they get away with shoddy quality apartments. What’s the point of getting paid six figures when your office is higher quality and aesthetically pleasing than your own house.
The solution to all of this is a simpler zoning law at the federal / state level that allows competent developers to win in all markets. City level zoning laws prohibits the best developer from scaling and artificially creates cost for developers that care. How come there isn’t a household name akin to Apple for apartment development? I want to be able to stick to one amazing developer for a consistent experience across multiple markets especially now that remote work is becoming a permanent option for multiple developers.
I have a sibling that lives in Japan. They live 10 min away from downtown Osaka by train, their rent is $1100 a month, it’s not large but the apartment is extremely functional, space efficiently utilized for plenty of storage and rooms. There’s also a giant green park in the middle of the complex with a foot bath. They also talk about the developer and boasts about their brand. Their family makes 1/5 my salary but I still feel like they’re living the wealthier life.
Please we could start in California: More housing supply, Let the best developer win and scale, normalize old building tear downs.
The solution to all of this is a simpler zoning law at the federal / state level that allows competent developers to win in all markets. City level zoning laws prohibits the best developer from scaling and artificially creates cost for developers that care. How come there isn’t a household name akin to Apple for apartment development? I want to be able to stick to one amazing developer for a consistent experience across multiple markets especially now that remote work is becoming a permanent option for multiple developers.
I have a sibling that lives in Japan. They live 10 min away from downtown Osaka by train, their rent is $1100 a month, it’s not large but the apartment is extremely functional, space efficiently utilized for plenty of storage and rooms. There’s also a giant green park in the middle of the complex with a foot bath. They also talk about the developer and boasts about their brand. Their family makes 1/5 my salary but I still feel like they’re living the wealthier life.
Please we could start in California: More housing supply, Let the best developer win and scale, normalize old building tear downs.
It also makes us Europeans feel underpaid :) I have 20 years of experience and don't even make six figures. $350000 base pay sounds like a different world.
It's subtle, but the headline feels a bit like low-key class warfare clickbait. No one feels underpaid because their salary is six figures, it's because of what they're paid relative to their peers and workload. The article actually covers this decently well, but the headlines makes it sound like techies are a bunch of entitled brats.
There's this dynamic of pay tending to be pegged to your job title. An engineer is an engineer is an engineer.
In SF bay area, entry level jobs at big tech are skewing high and experienced roles are skewing low. This doesn't come close to mapping to impact level usually and we just accept that because it's socially easy.
I've worked at startups where there were clearly >10x impact differences between two engineers and at most there was a 2x salary difference. As a startup, it's basically not worth it to hire junior talent anymore because they are not close to being worth the cost in most cases.
In SF bay area, entry level jobs at big tech are skewing high and experienced roles are skewing low. This doesn't come close to mapping to impact level usually and we just accept that because it's socially easy.
I've worked at startups where there were clearly >10x impact differences between two engineers and at most there was a 2x salary difference. As a startup, it's basically not worth it to hire junior talent anymore because they are not close to being worth the cost in most cases.
Working in tech is not exactly easy, even if you love computers. You have to move to some awfully expensive part of the country and interact with some extremely thin skinned people all day, and spend hours upon hours examining minute details of systems supporting systems supporting systems that you never even knew existed.
I don’t feel underpaid. But I do feel undervalued.
I have bemusedly imagined a future discussion where when a prospective employer asks what salary I’m hoping to make I say the following:
“We’ll, that’s an interesting question. I want you to pay me X or 1.2X. If you’ll point me towards value and let me contribute towards that, and act like you trust me and include me in decision making processes, in short some form of equanimity, I’ll do this job excitedly for X. But if you’re going to treat me like a horse, micromanage me, overprocess me, basically devalue me, then that is going to cost you an extra 20%.”
I have bemusedly imagined a future discussion where when a prospective employer asks what salary I’m hoping to make I say the following:
“We’ll, that’s an interesting question. I want you to pay me X or 1.2X. If you’ll point me towards value and let me contribute towards that, and act like you trust me and include me in decision making processes, in short some form of equanimity, I’ll do this job excitedly for X. But if you’re going to treat me like a horse, micromanage me, overprocess me, basically devalue me, then that is going to cost you an extra 20%.”
Are six figure salaries an american thing? I see people saying "Entry level jobs are paying up to 60k" which is just crazy money!
I have worked for the past 7 years as IT within the UK education sector and expect my salary to be lower than that of industry but I am not even making half that!
I have worked for the past 7 years as IT within the UK education sector and expect my salary to be lower than that of industry but I am not even making half that!
I'd guess a lot of people, regardless of industry, feel underpaid. Simply for the reason that they are. Growing inequality is real, over the last few decades an ever increasing portion of the productivity gain of the economy goes to a smaller portion of the people. We do the work, others get the profit.
complains about six-figure pay while sitting at home at computer eating a snack while waiting for someone to review their pull request
We europeans are underpaid and taxed to death. The US could easily fill its worker shortage by offering easy visas for EU engineers. Many of us would like to move but it's a real PITA to apply to companies that are even willing to consider visa sponsorship.
I actually have no idea why this is not the case already. It's basically 1st world to 1st world transition and the one losing would be EU.
I actually have no idea why this is not the case already. It's basically 1st world to 1st world transition and the one losing would be EU.
Meanwhile I'm making ~1/10th of the average. Been applying but looks like companies are looking for folks with +4yr experience. US and UK companies are no go since most aren't hiring people located outside of the US, and the few that do, it's for 1/10th of the average pay again.
Making +100k USD would be nice but I'm looking for 20k or maybe 30k, that would be way more than what I'm making currently. Can anyone share some tips? Should I just grind it out until I have enough yrs of experience to compete/be eligible for higher paying jobs?
Making +100k USD would be nice but I'm looking for 20k or maybe 30k, that would be way more than what I'm making currently. Can anyone share some tips? Should I just grind it out until I have enough yrs of experience to compete/be eligible for higher paying jobs?
I was recently laid off along with >30% of the company.
I really liked the job, I had full autonomy to do whatever I wanted. Research new tech, optimize our existing infrastructure, etc. I was the sole SysAdmin and I ran the operations very well. The problem: Pay was stagnate. The pay was decent for my region, but a far cry from larger metro areas and others with my skills.
So I started looking online and found a great opportunity. As a bonus: The pay is $50k+ MORE then what I was making before.
And I still work from home.
So, yes I did feel underpaid; now I don't.
I really liked the job, I had full autonomy to do whatever I wanted. Research new tech, optimize our existing infrastructure, etc. I was the sole SysAdmin and I ran the operations very well. The problem: Pay was stagnate. The pay was decent for my region, but a far cry from larger metro areas and others with my skills.
So I started looking online and found a great opportunity. As a bonus: The pay is $50k+ MORE then what I was making before.
And I still work from home.
So, yes I did feel underpaid; now I don't.
Tech work doesn’t feel like something you can have a life long career in. It’s stressful and there’s ageism. Tech workers are mentally amortizing their productive tech life-span over their whole life and then comp doesn’t look as high.
> Despite the average salary for tech workers breaking six figures in 2022, many IT and tech professionals still feel underpaid.
> According to hiring experts, the most significant factor contributing to this feeling is likely the long and extra work hours of the existing IT staff, which makes them feel burdened.
This is great point. I'm sure we all know someone in this field who has experienced burnout from their job, or indeed you may have experienced it yourself.
In the end, by understaffing and piling on more and more work onto their tech workers, managers are stealing not just time from their employees, but their health too.
I personally realized far too late in my career that I'd wasted vast amounts of time working late to meet arbitrary deadlines for projects that, in the end, didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
I wish I'd pushed back and just worked my contracted hours, to spend more time with the ones I love, doing things I enjoyed, rather than forcing myself to endure further work stress.
That is much more important than getting extra money on top of a salary that is already well above the average earner, in my opinion. Though more and larger pay increases would have welcome too, of course.
> According to hiring experts, the most significant factor contributing to this feeling is likely the long and extra work hours of the existing IT staff, which makes them feel burdened.
This is great point. I'm sure we all know someone in this field who has experienced burnout from their job, or indeed you may have experienced it yourself.
In the end, by understaffing and piling on more and more work onto their tech workers, managers are stealing not just time from their employees, but their health too.
I personally realized far too late in my career that I'd wasted vast amounts of time working late to meet arbitrary deadlines for projects that, in the end, didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
I wish I'd pushed back and just worked my contracted hours, to spend more time with the ones I love, doing things I enjoyed, rather than forcing myself to endure further work stress.
That is much more important than getting extra money on top of a salary that is already well above the average earner, in my opinion. Though more and larger pay increases would have welcome too, of course.
Every time a customer's big whatever grinds to a complete halt and they try to melt down my phone because I'm the only one that can dig them out of whatever hole they've put themselves in, I feel like I'm not paid enough.
What a title. Americans are so, so lucky, and don't even recognise their privilege.
Honestly I've been asking for more pay to come into the office from companies I'm interviewing at because rent is skyrocketing and my competition when trying to buy a home even within an hour of most of these offices is on the order of $100k-$300k + appraisal. My rent should be 1/3 of what I take home.
I believe software engineers should be getting residuals from the products they help build. Like the way writers and actors get residuals for shows and movies they have worked on and are not a part of anymore. The company that owns that show or movie is still making money from licensing that and the actors and writers helped make that happen. Same with developers. Long after you leave a company that software product you helped create is still making money for its owner. Yes the structure would have to be hashed out. Ground floor developers would get more than maintainers. After some time OG creators would get less and the revisionists would get more. But at least developers could live off that money to take sabbaticals and not get burned out.
If true, noting that just shy of 50% of tech folk feel underpaid seems surprising… for how low the number is, not how high. Everyone I know (judges, attorneys, law clerks, doctors, administrative staff, teachers, baristas…) thinks that they are underpaid. The fact that less-than-half of tech workers feel underpaid seems like a great sign to me for the industry.
I’d also be curious who the survey data was gathered from - the cited to studies are from a recruiting agency and have no source citations.
Edit, to add: here’s a survey of 26,000 people indicating that almost everyone feels underpaid - https://www.payscale.com/research-and-insights/pay-satisfact...
I’d also be curious who the survey data was gathered from - the cited to studies are from a recruiting agency and have no source citations.
Edit, to add: here’s a survey of 26,000 people indicating that almost everyone feels underpaid - https://www.payscale.com/research-and-insights/pay-satisfact...
I'm in that group. Reading HN everyday (and not living in the Bay Area) probably doesn't help.
Don't forget that 100k in 2022 is equivalent to 75k 2010. That was considered to be a good salary for students fresh out of graduate school
I wonder how much of the effect is average vs. median. If you have a team of 10 people and you give a big raise to one of them, then the average will go up. But 9 out of 10 people will feel underpaid, because you did not give them a raise like their 1 teammate.
The salaries definitely did not keep up with inflation so if techies were feeling underpaid in 2020 they are feeling even more underpaid in 2022…
A little strange article… it seems like they assume people who read these articles do not know math.
A little strange article… it seems like they assume people who read these articles do not know math.
It’s because we generate millions in revenue per person and manage projects with enormous complexity that are not fungible. (Whereas most corporate functions just require a warm body.) We are vastly underpaid.
Whenever I see salary discussions on HN I’m reminded of a saying about military medals: “There are some who deserved more that got less, and some who deserved less and got more.”
No mention of current market conditions, namely record inflation? I suspect that may have something to do with why many people - "technies" are no exception - feel underpaid (because they are relative to blown-up monetary supply).
As an academic post-doc, I still dream of even making a slightly higher five-figure salary.
The average cost of a home in the Bay Area is also somewhere between ~1.5 million dollars as well. So it’s effectively impossible to reasonably buy a home unless you have a salary >300k without going into massive debt.
But inflation is over 11% since 2020. This isn't an increase. The average tech worker is making less than they were 2 years ago according to the Dice salary report.
Why do tech workers feel underpaid? Many companies posted record growth and profits over the pandemic, but still give out paltry 3-5% raises every year. The cost savings of work from home must have been enormous for these companies, yet none of that savings or record profits trickled down to the people writing code.
Meanwhile for those that have the time and willpower to grind leetcode, they know they can command a 20-40% raise every few years. It's not a secret that tech companies underpay their employees and bank on them being too complacent to go through the interview gauntlet yet again. Most devs will admit that they couldn't readily pass the interview at even their own company without many hours of studying and practicing algorithms.