Ask HN: How much do you pay software engineers? What type of compensation is fair for a technical first hire? What about subsequent technical hires? Please give a range. |
Ask HN: How much do you pay software engineers? What type of compensation is fair for a technical first hire? What about subsequent technical hires? Please give a range. |
2. It depends on what stage the company is at. Have you raised capital or not (and do you intend to) or are you planning on scaling without capital. Equity, if any, is directly tied to this which can influence pay.
3. Depends on the experience.
Without knowing the above factors, the range can be anywhere between $20k and $250k (albeit, the $250k side is usually not going to happen)
Anywhere from $30,000 to $70,000 for someone fresh out of school might be normal. For 10 years experience the range could be $50,000 to $250,000.
It's similar to the fact that the price of manufactured goods don't vary linearly with the cost of producing them. They are related, in the sense that if the cost goes up, supply tends to go down and so the price goes up. But not always.
In Silicon Valley, Seattle area and NYC there's intense competition for qualified information-technology labour. So the price of labour (wages) goes up. They pay more not because the living cost there is high, but rather because they can afford to pay more and still turn a profit. In turn, lots of well-paid employees in an area tend to raise its living cost.
There are major European and Asian cities with living cost comparable to the above areas, but I don't know of any that pays IT salaries as high as SV/NYC. There are probably many reasons for that, but I guess one of them is that highly profitable software companies are very concentrated in the US. In Tokyo, for instance, the only companies that pay as well as US companies are foreign financial companies. These are just a handful. In average, salaries are much lower.
in 2008 when the GBPUSD rate was around 2 (versus the 1.6 it is now), salaries in the UK were substantially higher than those in the US.
It's mostly down to currency fluctuations more than any real perception of the worth of software developers.
What's wrong with talking about what you earn? I can understand if it was pride/ego preventing people from talking about it. But from the workers' perspective wouldn't it be better to know what the going rates are to make sure you aren't getting ripped off for your work.
"In past discussions on HN, it has been pointed out that salaries aren't directly related to local cost of living. "
If anything, the argument was in support of the original statement you made here:
"This totally depends on location". I have no clue where you got the idea I was putting words into your mouth when the argument I was presenting was in support of your very first sentence.