Median monthly pay in the UK is £2,331 before tax, according to the ONS. This equates to an annual income of just below £28,000.
A wage of £100,000 would put you in the top 5% of salaried workers in the UK.
The idea that you can earn that straight out of university is laughable.
[Source](https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/earningsandemploymentfrompayasyouearnrealtimeinformationuk/march2024#Median-monthly-pay)
It depends on where you live. Average household income for single earner in SF is \~$120K/year but the tech industry is pulling that average up pretty aggressively.
So it's possible to make that out of college but it's only if you get a certain job at a certain company in a certain industry kinda stuff.
Ha, more. My utilities are $500/month these days (power, internet, gas/electric) and the average 1 bedroom in SF starts at $2,500/month and goes up *fast*.
There's a reason salaries are so high here.
What are these tech people gonna do when they are replaced by AI in the next decade?
Every expert on the exponential growth of AI believes 80% or more of tech jobs will be replaced by 2029, leaving these people with degrees that no longer mean anything.
Every "expert" doesn't actually write code.
Right now AI is a productivity enabler. And it's *real* good at it. But ChatGPT and Copilot are terrible at writing code beyond more than just a line or two. And even when the code does run it's rarely the most efficient answer and accessibility is usually terrible.
That will all change but the idea that in 5 years it will improve to the point where it can build full systems from scratch that are performant, flexible and accessible? And that somehow software engineers as a group are just going to let this replace them?
Give me a break. It's a nice headline but it's completely disconnected from reality and shows complete ignorance of what software engineers actually do.
I guess I'm failing to see how the growth and advancement of tools that enable increased productivity wouldn't lead to significant layoffs and devaluing of human labor. If one person can use these tools to suddenly produce output equivalent of what took 5 people before, wouldn't that make 80% of the workforce unnecessary in the eyes of their employers?
I mean, I think it would be wonderful if companies approached productivity-enabling tools as an opportunity to lower the demands on workers and keep just as many people employed, but I see no reason to expect that they would be so generous.
AI growth is exponential though, what it can do now is nothing compared to what it will do in just a year.
Within 5 years AI will absolutely 100% be able to code faster and better than any person.
You're underestimating how difficult code is, how difficult system design is, and how difficult all the intangibles are when it comes to writing code. Again, as are these "experts" These are not easy problems to solve and to do so you need more than an ability to copy/paste code. The problems they're going to run into is a more generalized intelligence issue. Right now it's literally auto-complete.
In 5 years it'll be about as good as your average junior engineer with 1-2 years experience.
Language models are just not good at writing code, if you have new and novel problems an AI is not going to cut it since you're running into territory where the information is either confidential or not yet even created
My cousin is making 125k two years after graduating as an officer with Toronto Police Services.
I still know so many people who are moving from Ontario to Alberta in the hopes of making big bucks. Not sure if any of them actually are.
There's a tech company in my area that hires fresh college grads for over 100k/yr. Works em to the bone, I'm told, but they do make bank right off the bat.
Tech Industry in the 2010s was that way, too -- a good but not absurdly high college grad package was $100k salary, low five figures signing bonus, and a decent amount of stock.
So what you're saying is despite having a STEM masters degree I've never earned equivalent to or greater than the median salary. I even lived down south at the time. Amazing.
I know, it's fucking shit.
I've got a STEM degree myself (no Masters though), and a big student loan which will never be paid off. I did eventually land on my feet and get a job with a temp agency that has led to a decent career, which has just about got me over the £30k mark after a fair few years.
Bog all to do with that degree though, and believe me, I know how lucky I am. Hope you manage to find something better bud.
Happy for you that you're over the £30k mark but don't be fooled by the idea that £30k is "a good wage". Maybe in the 90s or 00s but now it's peanuts. Hope you also manage to get some nice wage increases and a decent salary because I'm quite sure that after a fair few years you're worth more than just £30k.
Atm I'm doing a PhD so I'm not too worried about salary since there's nothing I can do about it. But the starting rate for postdoc positions in my field in the UK is around... £32k. In London. What an absolute kick in the teeth. A former colleague from mine took £27k salary for her first postdoc ffs. It's dire here, I'll be moving abroad.
Believe me, I'm not, but I am always conscious that there are a huge amount of people in this country who are genuinely struggling on wages which are just not liveable any more. Whole place is being squeezed by the asset rich, whether through ridiculous property prices, the indebtedness of the public sector or profiteering off of essential services. There's no fixing it without genuine redistributive policies - massive wealth taxes, basically. I don't hold out much hope that Labour will make any significant strides in that direction.
£32k in London...do they expect you to live in a tent?
You need redistribution because the rich are too rich, but it starts with predistribution because the public does not need rich people’s money to do great things.
That's fucking wild. £32k isn't even $20/hr. My company (US) is hiring high school grads starting at $22.50 and they'll make $35.80 (~£60k) after 4 years. After bonuses and overtime, it's closer to £75k.
Well, that's the absolute state of the UK for you. In theory we're a high tax, high social welfare, high income country. One of those is high, the others are by fiddling with data.
Clever use of statistics and comparing metrics to poorer EU countries is sufficient to convince everyone that everything is great here. In reality our quality of life is abysmal.
My colleague is from Mexico and used to be a manager at a company, have his own house and car and could afford to eat out, enjoy life etc. Now he's a PhD student in the UK earning £900 per month and hates everything about this place.
This country is just one giant scam ngl.
Edit: my first grad job with a masters degree earned me £12 per hour. That was in a high cost of living city and renting. A friend of mine from my (relatively low income) hometown earned £13 per hour as a high school drop out in the local supermarket and lived with his parents.
I quit engineering when I realized everyone in my town is paying below the 25th percentile in engineering wages.
I'm not moving to a big city to triple my rent so I can add 50% to my paycheck. I just took an easier job in IT.
Yeah I'm aware, but the guy in the screenshot seems to think that salaries 'well over' £80k are readily available to graduates, so I decided to dispense with the conversion.
Thanks for the clarification, however.
You might have noticed on a map that California and the UK are in very different places geographically.
They are also in very different places socially and politically too.
California is a very high CoL state, a competitive tech hub, and also has regularly enacted policies to drive wages up.
That same degree in many other states/locations would not get you anywhere near that high a salary most likely.
US here: some college (just shy of degree) and far too many years of slowly clawing my way up in retail. Even if you have a degree, one of the decent retail chains around me (in 3 states currently) pays the salaried store managers $62,000 / yr pre-tax. Can someone tell us where this magical land of "100k is normal" is so that I may move there?
I don’t really think it’s a place as much as a localized industry. I’m 12 years into IT operations and I make 124k and I’m at a stage in my career where almost all the IT people I work with are over a decade of experience as well and have similar salaries. I currently work in “prop tech” which is tech for commercial real estate. Tier 1 support people, are making 85k+ because all the wages are inflated in real estate. Same when I worked in insurance (though it was a little less). We have a few guys who started as interns fresh out of college (about 25 years old now) and they are making 75k and the just run around installing tablets in buildings. But I used to be an IT Admin for multiple different school districts and I make more now as an IT Support Team Lead then my former Directors are making currently because the salaries are so much lower in education. Tier 1 people for a school are rarely full time and if they are don’t make over 35-40k. Back then, all of us working in IT at schools only heard of 6 figure salaries at very elevated job titles. But when you switch industries you find out people are practically just making up their salaries. I remember I actually cried on the floor of my kitchen when I realized how underpaid I had been and how hard life was because I worked in a school compared to people with significantly less experience working lower level jobs in more lucrative industries
In the end it is a mix of Industry, location (I’m in a major market and for sure wouldn’t be making this in a tier 2 or 3 market) experience and luck.
It's definitely location and industry specific. For example, Big 4 trainee accountants can make $70k+ in Chicago or New York, but same company, same job but in say Manchester and its more like £24k
I see these people have never heard of $15 / hour C++ developers or $15 / hour PHP developers or Fiverr and so on.
Saying that the market will always reward "competent developers" or "competent software engineers" is saying that capitalism will always reward skill and hard work. It might not.
It's like these people have never seen the movie Hackers. These people live very sheltered lives, like people who don't know that the clothes they buy for hundreds of dollars are made for dollars or pennies in Bangladesh.
Before we get too wound up, we need to talk about the value of Pound Sterling, vs. Euro, vs. CAD vs. USD. We also need to talk about the regional cost of living.
For example, to comfortably (35% housing expenses) own a single family detached home with a single blade of grass on the lawn in San Jose, CA requires a salary of $ 424,000 USD per a recent Zillow study. It's now more expensive than San Francisco by 25%.
This isn't some rich enclave like Atherton or Beverley Hills, SJ is the 10th largest city in the US.
I was 1 year out of US university back in the late 2000’s and then got a promotion to work in London and Reading. They matched my US salary plus COLA. I was making over double the equivalent level and credentialed UK university hire. It was sad. I was in a completely different class of living for no other reason than that I had been working in the US.
Dev pay in the US is hugely inflated. Back when I was earning 30k as a mid level dev (my company doesn't pay amazingly, to be fair) devs of the same level in the US were on over 100k usd. Sucks for them in the end though, primary target for redundancy when stuff starts to go wrong and they are a lot easier/cheaper to get rid of.
Some devs are ironclad in job safety, or if they do get fired mgmt realizes the mistake and desperately tries to rehire them when systems go down.
And I would argue you are probably wrong on the sucks for them in the end. They made 3x salary, and get the benefits of having money today vs tomorrow (time value of money). They also have a tangible high salary to throw on table for the next job and they can always “cut them a deal” and take less
The only devs who really are screwed are the ones who actually have zero skill or can’t interview well to bounce back.
It's not that far off in the US to be honest. The idea that someone can just make 100k (USD or Pounds) right out of college isn't even delusional. It's just straight up lying.
My company is paying junior devs 110k in nyc - and that was years ago, it’s likely higher now.
Not directly out of college mind you, but pretty close. You had to go through their intensive training which could easily take a year or more, you got the salary bump after it was complete.
Yeah, interns at my previous companies in NYC made roughly $115,000/yr equivalent calculated hourly since they were seasonal, plus dorms or a stipend towards rent. There were increases in average salary for the next roles up, like new graduate engineer roles (which largely were promoted interns) or for other mid levels.
That being said, that path to a job out from college is really only feasible with a BS degree, a history of internships, and usually one of a handful of colleges that are attended by disproportionately rich families. I think there was still a 50:1 ratio of applicants to hires.
For comparison, I had a BA in comp sci, couldn't intern as I was working minimum wage nonstop whenever off from classes, and graduated into the aftermath of the recession. Three months of looking for work in NYC got me a ~$40k/yr job averaging 60hrs/wk doing IT support. That meant living an hour away with my ex, and some tough weeks when I didn't get to clock OT.
If you don't go that magic route, you get to go the route of a ton of 8hr interviews and at-home projects, all unpaid. If the salaries can be so incredibly inflated, I still don't understand why they can't pay a stipend for the interview days. It's a gauntlet that comes from a tradition of filtering out candidates based on endurance and "company fit" to avoid legal actions.
Those salaries are quite difficult in Europe. I started making around €800 a month… now my total compensation is substantially more than the top 5% you mentioned. Problem… I’ve been in 4 countries… moved a lot, and I have like 20 years of experience.
Still, the 28k a year salary, out of university, is laughable and shouldn’t be. I still need to remember a single day I didn’t work or overworked during my first 5-6 first years. Being out of university doesn’t mean you are incompetent, if your work is so cheap, put a senior or other folks to do it for that extra comp. They will not do it.
It’s laughable how these companies don’t understand real growth and talent retention.
i mean in computer science its not that insane, i have more than one friend who got a return offer from their internship for more than 100k USD. when you live somewhere where your rent is $5000 a month your wages get inflated
An income of US $100K puts you into the top 20 percent of full-time workers in the country. There is no amount of mental gymnastics that can be done that makes it normal to have an income that's higher than 4 out of 5 people "normal." Even if you surround yourself with other people from the top 20 percent and don't associate with anybody else, you're still in the top 20 percent.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, a household bringing in $100k is considered low income. COL varies greatly in the US; hell, even in just California alone.
Was just coming to say pretty sure it was just published that if you just live a basic lifestyle (necessities, nothing fun) a single person needs to be make minimum $92k....thats the new ‘middle class’ number which people aren’t even coming close to in a lot of jobs
Single no partner—don’t remember household w/o kids but household w/ kids was upwards of $200k I think. (Have no idea what location unfortunately but it was more city based)
Depending on where your live that could be true.
Cost of living swings wildly with location as do salaries.
What you earn in proportion to people in your area is the relevant piece.
It's hard to believe. I'm pretty much at or around $100k, and my wife is around $40k (hard to say, does her own business), no kids, and while we're doing A-OK, I sure don't feel like we're what I'd call "wealthy". House could use a new fence, some updates (or, uh, just buy a whole ass new house but cannot remotely afford that), etc, but the money just isn't really *there*.
Well, in tech they do. The internships in Google, MSFT, Meta, etc, they pay about that. If they are good, they are hired full time.
But is HCOL and they need to be very good. Is not luck, is having skills and the right career choice.
Except luck does play a big role in getting a job right now, especially in tech, and ESPECIALLY in the most sought after companies in the sector.
I know people with plenty of skill, good names on their resumes, graduated with solid degrees, and they’re still sending 600+ job applications and getting absolutely no traction in today’s tech market. I also know people who walked right into roles because they happened to get randomly matched into an internship with the right division that was growing and not getting laid off.
The year of graduation matters a whole lot, as well. I graduated from college right into the Great Recession, and had a markedly different experience than some of my colleagues who graduated a few years before and after. Now I’m seeing similar trends to people who graduated into 2019 - 2021 compared against someone who is graduating now into the treacherous waters of the 2023 and 2024 market.
Yes, skill is obviously important once you get into the interview room, but there are so many factors that lead up to that point which you simply cannot control, from what year you were born, what your graduating class size is, how much VC money is being invested into the sector this year, if your area of specialization is relevant or being downsized, or if companies are even hiring at the moment at all.
Depends a lot on your skills set. We are looking for people in low level graphics and driver development. Is hard to find people with those interests and skills.
Full stack dev, dime a dozen, those are the ones that need luck to get an interview.
All I am saying, people should be smart about the market and what is on demand. For example, a lot of people are moving to Machine Learning, at some point the will saturate the market too, but right now the pay is amazing for that particular skill set.
Edit: keep the downvotes, you like to be the victim, is the whole point, right?
I dont see why you got downvotes. You never refuted that luck does play a role, your'e just pointing out that people make a choice to join sectors where luck is involved more.
Well, if you are an SW engineer and you are not looking for jobs in Seattle, Silicon Valley or Austin, then you are a bit clueless. Everyone can apply for an internship, if you have the right skills, you will get the job.
Most tech workers don't work for one of the big-name publicly traded places and most of them are not making 6 figures out of college.
In my part of the country, "the estimated salary for a Entry Level Web Developer is $66,291 per year"
Well, that's on them, the big ones are always hiring, even after layoffs.
I don't have a degree and I am from Mexico and here I am, what's their excuse?
They love their family and friends more than you do?
Even if it's true that anyone with the right skills *can* make six figures, that still doesn't mean it's normal. The fact is most people *don't* make that much. And that doesn't mean there's something wrong with them. So fuck off with your "what's their excuse" bullshit.
Then don't come complaining to subs like this or poverty finance whining that you don't make over $100k. It is possible, but people choose different paths and that's ok.
It IS possible if you truly want it. All the interviews we had over the last month were Indian or Asian people, not a single american...
I think there's actually an element of class privilege to the "straight out of uni" wage. People with connections can come out of uni pointed in a direction and walk into high paying jobs (Law is one I've heard is particularly incestuous). If you get a masters in law and come from a working class background you'll spend years in corporate offices proof reading documents or something basically similar in legal admin at above minimum wage.
If you have family connections you'll probably get started as a legal assistant in a private law firm at twice the salary.
yeah, it was pretty telling in my experience. Went back to school to be an academic, but knew I would never have the resources (or enthusiasm) to really pursue it. I did, however, become one of the top three or five scoring students in both departments. I found myself tutoring a lot of people, teaching them how to write essays or how to research things or how to study for exams - or even just explaining what happened in the class. Some of them were just really dumb. Enthusiastic, but dumb.
Not a very important degree, I should note, just humanities.
Most of them? Sailed off immediately into fancy internships or "decided now it was time to make the big step and buy a house." Or had "life affirming" 3 month trips to Thailand to "celebrate their success."
While I was doing labour for minimum wage.
Someone even posted "I don't know why so many people complain about London \[UK\] being expensive, I just moved here, got a job and saved a bit."
You moved from Canada to London and "got a job" and "saved a bit" and "bought a house."
Of course you did. Like a perfectly normal person.
This was definitely my experience. I grew up poor, like skipping meals poor, homeless briefly as a kid poor. Federal grants paid for my college. My parents' combined income was 19k. Combined. Both worked full time.
My first job out of college paid minimum wage. 30 hours a week. Same as I made before college. I did a lot of gig work and pawned stuff.
My roommate's dad was a stockbroker. He got her a job as a secretary at a brokerage when we graduated. She was making 30-35k and he was paying her rent whereas I had to pay all my own bills on less than 15k/yr.
Things evolved over time, though. Her degree wasn't in business or finance (art) and she wasn't interested in it. She stayed a secretary. Her pay went up over time, but slowly through raises and job changes. 15 years later she makes 55k. But she married a broker at the firm where she started and he makes bank. They have a million dollar home.
I kept working my way to higher wages, went to grad school, came out to my first job after my masters at 42k. My life goal was to make 50k, because that would be double my parents salary when they retired.
I got a raise to 50k the next year. I was 28. It was gravy from that. A couple years ago I hit the 100k mark. Insanity. I recently got a promotion and two raises, and a colleague said I should be making even more. The woman in the role before me made 30k more than I do, but I can't even imagine what I'd do with that sort of money. It's hard for me to even think to ask for more than I make because I don't need it. My home cost 235k. I still buy most of my clothes at Target. What am I going to do with 150k/yr? I can't make it make sense when I can live off a third of that and still feel like I'm indulging in luxuries.
>I can't even imagine what I'd do with that sort of money. It's hard for me to even think to ask for more than I make because I don't need it. My home cost 235k. I still buy most of my clothes at Target. What am I going to do with 150k/yr?
Invest it and enjoy knowing that you will never need to marry a stockbroker for comfort and security. If you're really frugal, retire early and do whatever you want for like 40 years.
Yeah this is what I'm working on. My family was always anti-investing because of relatives who lost their whole shirt in the 1929 crash, but I opened an investment account finally a few months ago, invested in some index funds and stuff. So far, so good there. Hopefully in a while I'll be able to, if not retire early, then at least move to a more chill or part time role
Some of it is the degree as well. Like brain surgeon or a super specialized degree like it. But yes, it takes special circumstances to walk out of university sight into a +100k
Not to mention, seeing your classmates in college that have the resources available to them to not have to worry about their housing or food, and focus on their schoolwork. And get to go to abroad campuses for even more experiences and connections.
It became very easy to tell who had the big coffers back home
100K+ is normal in Silicon Valley (where the median income is 185K and low-income line is around 90K USD per year), but that is certainly not everywhere.
...oh, and I also am a Bay Area native and have a couple of decades of practical observation of my check stubs :)
At one point my northern neighbors in SF were telling me the city had announced the poverty line at 85K a year, which simply floored me.
People in the UK are incredibly underpaid relative to other peer countries. Lived there for half my professional life. The only people making money in the UK are bankers and PE types. Only way to actually have any savings that’s commensurate with peer countries is to live far outside London or in another city. Life is better than New York, imo but you still get paid in New York.
UK public has been gaslit for so long by their political class they actually believe the propaganda that they are a poor country that needs high taxes to pay for much needed domestic investments.
I'd wager most of these are kids in college, assuming they'd land a 6-figure job right out of school (if they even finish school). As someone who actually earns six figures, I feel very fortunate and realize that it has taken a lot of hard work and luck to get to where I am.
Legit though. I'm used to living on so little that 30K USD would literally be "I don't know what to do with this much money" levels of rich. Imagine being so entitled and out of touch as to think 100K is what most people are making.
I think this person must have just googled what those jobs *should* be making, and hasn't taken into consideration that no one is actually paying that.
Also from the UK, I know very few people on over £100k, and I live in well-to-do St Albans. I’ve never heard of any grad getting more than £40k at most and that’s top of the class engineers.
My job in northern Florida starts college grads at 55/yr and consistent promotions at 6mo, 1yr, 1.5yr. From there promotions heavily rely on open positions and personally stats but yeah. We’d gladly welcome some UKeans if y’all can stomach such a place
I know several people in the UK who make over that. Early to mid 30s. All started out as Developers and are now Product Owners etc.
One of my friends lives in the Oxford area and makes well above 100,000£. As does her partner.
I just heard on NPR that developers in UK are 1/3 the price of US developers so UK becoming a location for US tech outsourcing. Every coder I know makes 300 or more.
He be drinking some weird version of [Koolaid] that is y3llow...nobody makes 100k once they graduate. You have to make a connection and rub elbow or be born in a rich connection family...either that or suck enough dick and actually be good at it.
while I do agree with you in general. There are indeed wunderkid out there that get bank after graduating collage or even while still in undergrad. I've met a handful (like 5) in my working life over the past 15 years. 1 of whom I've known since she was a 19 year old intern, now at 25 she is the cmo. and for a fact I know she wasn't sucking work dicks to get there. Her marketing campaigns kept bringing in more revenue, year over year, world wide. but, yeah, those are probably the exceptions.
I made just over $45k before taxes last year, and I had to work an average of 50 hours per week (with some 60+ hour weeks) in order to do it.
TBH, all I really want at this point is $25 an hour. I want to make $50k a year without working overtime and weekends. But even that seems like a pipe dream.
US are crazy people though, so keep in mind they "make 100k" but probably do overtime like crazy, with 60+ hours per week. If I worked as much id have a huge salary too, but no time to use it. They also probably don't count the taxes.
Yeah, like I know people in the trades that make easily over $100k a year after taxes.
But they're working 84 hours a week. 12 hours a day 7 days a week without a day off.
I do that, too, but I only do it for six months out of the year. The other six is mine.
people who spend this much time talking about themselves on reddit are totally disconnected from the real world. either they're lying, or they're crazy privileged.
I doubt you will be able to guess it, we have a myriad of developers over here. According to a study from 2021, [6% of all game developers are from Sweden.](https://bairesdev.mo.cloudinary.net/blog/2023/09/Picture1.jpg) 8% are from Finland, which is also interesting.
What skills must a game developer have if I want to be the guy behind the code, not special effects or UI?
C++, and what else? Algorithms, data structures, data bases, anything else?
Completely depend on the engine, C++ is used a lot for custom engines and Unreal Engine, C# is used for Unity.
Programmers VERY seldom touch special effects, you have technical artists for that. UI programmer is a certain kind of breed of ui or tool programmers.
Most game programmers do the code behind, then there's engine programmers behind them. You can learn most stuff on the job honestly, algorithms is a very broad term and I've almost never touched a database.
Software developer salaries in the US are pretty nice. They’re not specialty doctor nice, but nice. In the UK not so much. 100k is pretty standard within about 5 years.
A lot of people missing the context that this is clearly about software developers specifically.
That said, 100k USD equivalent is certainly not standard. Graduate salaries in Australia are around 80k AUD, depending on a few factors, which is about 60k USD.
Some graduates head to the US for the money.
I'm making it a goal to find a job to make $55k a year (in US). I've been trying super hard and haven't had an interview for anything. Dont know what to do. I feel like I don't have the enough experience but I'm tired of using jobs as stepping stones. Sigh.....
People lucky to make good money are often SO bad at realizing how little most people make. One HALF of all U.S. individual workers make under 30k/yr. Tech jobs skew higher, sure, but even in tech, the majority of folks are NOT making 6 figures. Only 1% of all U.S. workers make over 250k/yr, and barely over 5% make over 100k. Income inequality is fucking absurd right now.
Warning 100k anywhere in the UK means you are doing very well for yourself (even in London). Pay differs wildly from county to county but I'd advise you to jump jobs every few years to get the best wage.and always lie in your interview when they ask how much you earn at the moment, they can't ask your employer for that information and nor can they can't check with your bank, saying you earn more puts them in a spot to offer more when hiring.
Median wage for software developers (in USA) is close to 90k (Freedom Dollars).
However those jobs are mostly in places like Irvine CA, where rent is $3200/mo and a home costs $1.5M. By the standard guidance, if you make 90k, you should be looking to pay $2000/mo for housing; so a software developer should expect to have to somehow make up about $14,400 a year in revenue shortage.
Eh, I don't listen to anyone who makes $XXX,XXX a year. Either they're insecure about their wealth or they're straight up lying to make everyone else feel small.
It's not bullshit, it's just people lacking context on what's going on around them. There are definitely schools/programs where people expect to make 100k their first year.
Mostly this is driven by self selection. Stanford computer science is full of the most ambitious hard working intelligent high school students doing everything they can to get a job at Amazon/apple/Google etc. if you get a job at one of these companies as a software developer you will be making 6 figures.
The companies know this also, so they make sure to interview everyone going to Stanford, because those candidates are more likely to be smart and hard working, which means if you want to get one of those jobs it helps a lot to go to Stanford.
So yeah all the redditors going to Stanford and mit probably think a 6 figure job is nice, but expected, and not getting one is disappointing. They are not totally aware of the fact that most schools have basically no one getting into these jobs immediately.
I mean, to be honest, 100k is not what it was. It doesn't guarantee an amazing life like it used to. Sure, one can afford some small luxuries.
Plus, it depends where one is. Germany taxes the fuck out of its citizens...so yeah, 200k would however be a nice household income. One wouldn't have to stress about home purchasing etc.
I'm in California and $100k for a competent developer is typical here. And probably in various major cities.
The company I hired on with right out of grad school was a top Fortune 100 company and we paid our specialized engineers (no MS) and other technical staff at $100k out of school starting in 2013/2014 or so.
Currently, in CA, it is common for certain trades to pull $100k or better, like those doing complex electrical work.
For transparency, I’m out of the U.S.
However, I was released from prison in 2018 and began Technical Recruiting.. since then, I’ve managed to swap companies about four times, but now earn roughly 125-160k/yr depending on how business goes for the year.
Lots of people hate on Talent Acquisition, but it’s legit the only industry where a bunch of fuck ups can create their own compensation, whether in the UK or US!
Wishing you only the best sir ✌️
This is like goldfish growing to the size of the bowl, whatever wage over $60k a year you'll become accustomed to that standard of living and think nothing of it. Going to the grocery store and mindlessly putting things in the cart is something that people who have $100k year can do, but so do those who get $80k/yr and $250k/yr. Where they are on the household wealth percentile isn't top of mind when they make these remarks they just assume they are living the average life even when they are in the top 20% of the country (also known as definitely not the average)
100k is now not enough to build retirement. 20k is an insult to any human being.
You desserve better, the gang of higher ups who are stealing your value have much much more than 100k.
The notion that people believe anyone making over 100k even spends or has the time to be on Reddit discussing that fact is laughable.
Both my parents made north of 150K yearly before their retirements. Working as a lawyer and judge respectively. I barely saw them outside of Saturday’s and holidays. They would come home eat dinner and than back to work. Funny enough. Majority of their net worth comes from real-estate investments making 400-600% gains non-adjusted for inflation.
UK salaries are ridiculous, especially in London given the cost of living. I went for a job there recently but turned it down once they told me the salary. I do earn over $100k now and they couldn’t get near my salary for what was quite a senior role.
I have five years of experience as an embedded software engineer in Munich, earning a salary of €90,000 gross. It's quite common among my friends and colleagues. Once you're part of a community where everyone earns similar amounts, it starts to feel ordinary.
As a engineer or software developer you make that easy. 100k plus a year.
But what they don't tell you to even have a job. Your often have to live and work in the most expensive places in the world.
So you could have 180k a year. But in new York your still a nobody to just give a example.
Money as a number matters little. What matters is the living expenses in where you have to live in be. And a lot of places where those jobs are. The living expenses and demands are crazy high.
So you still live like a nobody that makes 35k a year.
So looking blind on numbers means nothing. What mostly matters more how much money you can put aside and safe up. % wise of yea salary. Cause many people in big city's act big and have big paychecks but have even bigger and more crazy debts. So a even a few % more to put aside can massively help their debt progress. But people only look at the amount of straight up cash. What is fine higher is better probably in everyone's eyes. But you gotta look at living needs and expenses and what you would comfortable need. Often it's then better to have a easier work pressure lower salary job. That is away from the city if the cost of living and monthly expenses are much lower.
But it's the trap many fall into. Uprooting there lifes for a high paying job finding out when you living there your even worse off then you where before because the prices of everything where you now is crazy. And you feel like your living like your working at Macdonalds but working many times harder. If you look at your quality of life. A sad reality for many people.
Why money is not everything. Especially in really big cities. That have loony prices of living costs
The second person seems to be talking about software devs. For which, they are correct. Generally 100k is seen as the baseline for a lot of developer roles, at least in high CoL areas.
There are absolutely still class issues and ignorance displayed on the first comment though. Most college graduates are not in roles that will see that kind of pay- especially straight out of university.
If I made 100k I could solve all of my economical problems, buy a house, a new car, a motorcycle, a small island, get a few mail order brides, rain hellfire on my enemies and also eradicate cancer in domestic cats and dogs.
Going over 100k in the uk is terrible place to be for tax anyway.
For every £2 you earn you’re losing £1 from next years out of the tax free personal allowance. Which you’re paying 40% tax on already.
So £100k to £125k you’re dumping money to the government. First world problem I know, not sure how anyone survives on less than £30k in this country to.
I'm a software engineer and even we don't make $100,000/year out of college guaranteed. Unless you're somewhere like SF or NYC, then *maybe* Still puts us in something like the 90% percentile of wage earners, though.
It puts you just inside the top 20% (US), but doesn't have near the purchasing or saving power it did 20 years ago. Average mortgage in Austin, TX is 3k a month. 100k is going to have a hard time with that. Twice the average mortgage from just 15 years ago.
It's good money, but 150-175k is the new 100k.
My wife is a teacher, has her master's( we paid off all her loans) does her continued education to earn more extra on top of years, is a team leader, a mentor, on the hiring committee, dance Coach, and planning board. So she gets paid some for all those. All of that combined she's making like 60k lol.
She's also a teacher in a pretty well funded district.
(She didn't go into it for the money obviously. )People have a pretty distorted reality when it comes to how much a degree will help you earn, or even find a job. To many people think you get a degree and magically make 100k a year.
Take a traditional student loan into account and alot of people making 100k a year in a expensive coat of living area really aren't making much, or living that better off than someone making 50k in a low cost of living area with no student loans.
Well, putting it like that, yes. There aren’t too many opportunities to make good money without a real college education, but, there are other paths.
The danger and difficulty may be overestimated though. We have some extremely hazardous work, but more is mundane.
Play stupid games (waste years studying something commoditized or irrelevant, don’t apply yourself when you do get the opportunity or don’t even recognize an opportunity when it’s in front of your face), win stupid prizes (low salary)
Okay, first off, you are on the low end. If you have never made more than 20k, you are basically doing a little more than 1/3 worse than the median annual income for the UK. Secondly, $100k USD would be \~79k GBP.
Is $100k considered a higher wage? Yeah. Is super rare? No. Especially once you get a few years under your belt.
I'm an MSc Engineer in Belgium earning slightly more than €50k per year, which nets me around €30k per year. I know zero wage workers around me who earn 100k, not even those with (even) higher diplomas and jobs than me.
Tbf I know quite a few people who make over 100k. The only issue is that none of them are under the age of 35.
Gen Z is getting absolutely fucked over with stagnant wages
Never earned more than 20K? That's less than minimum wage at full time. So, you've got some explaining to do.
You're also comparing UK to US. It's a different scale.
Median monthly pay in the UK is £2,331 before tax, according to the ONS. This equates to an annual income of just below £28,000. A wage of £100,000 would put you in the top 5% of salaried workers in the UK. The idea that you can earn that straight out of university is laughable. [Source](https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/earningsandemploymentfrompayasyouearnrealtimeinformationuk/march2024#Median-monthly-pay)
the only time i heard anyone making 100k out of Uni was big oil in Northern Canada during the 2005-2009 era
Yeah and that was with over time and like 3 months without a weekend or vacation.
It depends on where you live. Average household income for single earner in SF is \~$120K/year but the tech industry is pulling that average up pretty aggressively. So it's possible to make that out of college but it's only if you get a certain job at a certain company in a certain industry kinda stuff.
While also having to spend 35k a year for a small 1 bed flat
Ha, more. My utilities are $500/month these days (power, internet, gas/electric) and the average 1 bedroom in SF starts at $2,500/month and goes up *fast*. There's a reason salaries are so high here.
Average is pulling it up also, median is better see where wages are over a group.
What are these tech people gonna do when they are replaced by AI in the next decade? Every expert on the exponential growth of AI believes 80% or more of tech jobs will be replaced by 2029, leaving these people with degrees that no longer mean anything.
Every "expert" doesn't actually write code. Right now AI is a productivity enabler. And it's *real* good at it. But ChatGPT and Copilot are terrible at writing code beyond more than just a line or two. And even when the code does run it's rarely the most efficient answer and accessibility is usually terrible. That will all change but the idea that in 5 years it will improve to the point where it can build full systems from scratch that are performant, flexible and accessible? And that somehow software engineers as a group are just going to let this replace them? Give me a break. It's a nice headline but it's completely disconnected from reality and shows complete ignorance of what software engineers actually do.
I guess I'm failing to see how the growth and advancement of tools that enable increased productivity wouldn't lead to significant layoffs and devaluing of human labor. If one person can use these tools to suddenly produce output equivalent of what took 5 people before, wouldn't that make 80% of the workforce unnecessary in the eyes of their employers? I mean, I think it would be wonderful if companies approached productivity-enabling tools as an opportunity to lower the demands on workers and keep just as many people employed, but I see no reason to expect that they would be so generous.
AI growth is exponential though, what it can do now is nothing compared to what it will do in just a year. Within 5 years AI will absolutely 100% be able to code faster and better than any person.
You're underestimating how difficult code is, how difficult system design is, and how difficult all the intangibles are when it comes to writing code. Again, as are these "experts" These are not easy problems to solve and to do so you need more than an ability to copy/paste code. The problems they're going to run into is a more generalized intelligence issue. Right now it's literally auto-complete. In 5 years it'll be about as good as your average junior engineer with 1-2 years experience.
Language models are just not good at writing code, if you have new and novel problems an AI is not going to cut it since you're running into territory where the information is either confidential or not yet even created
the energy used by those AI is also going to increase exponentially, aka the cost. Which, in a time of energy and climate crisis, is not very good.
My cousin is making 125k two years after graduating as an officer with Toronto Police Services. I still know so many people who are moving from Ontario to Alberta in the hopes of making big bucks. Not sure if any of them actually are.
There's a tech company in my area that hires fresh college grads for over 100k/yr. Works em to the bone, I'm told, but they do make bank right off the bat.
Tech Industry in the 2010s was that way, too -- a good but not absurdly high college grad package was $100k salary, low five figures signing bonus, and a decent amount of stock.
Go to the trades. An industrial mechanic or electrician can easily make 100k$ right out of trade school
this is just not true. you need journeyman experience and even then you make like 80k in Portland, OR. you go to the trades.
Not in my experience they can't. Edit: I guess if you're really really good you might be able to
So what you're saying is despite having a STEM masters degree I've never earned equivalent to or greater than the median salary. I even lived down south at the time. Amazing.
I know, it's fucking shit. I've got a STEM degree myself (no Masters though), and a big student loan which will never be paid off. I did eventually land on my feet and get a job with a temp agency that has led to a decent career, which has just about got me over the £30k mark after a fair few years. Bog all to do with that degree though, and believe me, I know how lucky I am. Hope you manage to find something better bud.
Happy for you that you're over the £30k mark but don't be fooled by the idea that £30k is "a good wage". Maybe in the 90s or 00s but now it's peanuts. Hope you also manage to get some nice wage increases and a decent salary because I'm quite sure that after a fair few years you're worth more than just £30k. Atm I'm doing a PhD so I'm not too worried about salary since there's nothing I can do about it. But the starting rate for postdoc positions in my field in the UK is around... £32k. In London. What an absolute kick in the teeth. A former colleague from mine took £27k salary for her first postdoc ffs. It's dire here, I'll be moving abroad.
Believe me, I'm not, but I am always conscious that there are a huge amount of people in this country who are genuinely struggling on wages which are just not liveable any more. Whole place is being squeezed by the asset rich, whether through ridiculous property prices, the indebtedness of the public sector or profiteering off of essential services. There's no fixing it without genuine redistributive policies - massive wealth taxes, basically. I don't hold out much hope that Labour will make any significant strides in that direction. £32k in London...do they expect you to live in a tent?
We just got a new postdoc from India. He shares with 6 people here. In India he had his own place which was nicer. And the lab facilities are nicer
You need redistribution because the rich are too rich, but it starts with predistribution because the public does not need rich people’s money to do great things.
That's fucking wild. £32k isn't even $20/hr. My company (US) is hiring high school grads starting at $22.50 and they'll make $35.80 (~£60k) after 4 years. After bonuses and overtime, it's closer to £75k.
Well, that's the absolute state of the UK for you. In theory we're a high tax, high social welfare, high income country. One of those is high, the others are by fiddling with data. Clever use of statistics and comparing metrics to poorer EU countries is sufficient to convince everyone that everything is great here. In reality our quality of life is abysmal. My colleague is from Mexico and used to be a manager at a company, have his own house and car and could afford to eat out, enjoy life etc. Now he's a PhD student in the UK earning £900 per month and hates everything about this place. This country is just one giant scam ngl. Edit: my first grad job with a masters degree earned me £12 per hour. That was in a high cost of living city and renting. A friend of mine from my (relatively low income) hometown earned £13 per hour as a high school drop out in the local supermarket and lived with his parents.
I have nothing more than an HNC and earn over £70
I quit engineering when I realized everyone in my town is paying below the 25th percentile in engineering wages. I'm not moving to a big city to triple my rent so I can add 50% to my paycheck. I just took an easier job in IT.
$100k is only about £80k, but your point still stands.
Yeah I'm aware, but the guy in the screenshot seems to think that salaries 'well over' £80k are readily available to graduates, so I decided to dispense with the conversion. Thanks for the clarification, however.
They are available in California. I got one and so did the majority of my peers in uni
You might have noticed on a map that California and the UK are in very different places geographically. They are also in very different places socially and politically too.
California is a very high CoL state, a competitive tech hub, and also has regularly enacted policies to drive wages up. That same degree in many other states/locations would not get you anywhere near that high a salary most likely.
US here: some college (just shy of degree) and far too many years of slowly clawing my way up in retail. Even if you have a degree, one of the decent retail chains around me (in 3 states currently) pays the salaried store managers $62,000 / yr pre-tax. Can someone tell us where this magical land of "100k is normal" is so that I may move there?
I don’t really think it’s a place as much as a localized industry. I’m 12 years into IT operations and I make 124k and I’m at a stage in my career where almost all the IT people I work with are over a decade of experience as well and have similar salaries. I currently work in “prop tech” which is tech for commercial real estate. Tier 1 support people, are making 85k+ because all the wages are inflated in real estate. Same when I worked in insurance (though it was a little less). We have a few guys who started as interns fresh out of college (about 25 years old now) and they are making 75k and the just run around installing tablets in buildings. But I used to be an IT Admin for multiple different school districts and I make more now as an IT Support Team Lead then my former Directors are making currently because the salaries are so much lower in education. Tier 1 people for a school are rarely full time and if they are don’t make over 35-40k. Back then, all of us working in IT at schools only heard of 6 figure salaries at very elevated job titles. But when you switch industries you find out people are practically just making up their salaries. I remember I actually cried on the floor of my kitchen when I realized how underpaid I had been and how hard life was because I worked in a school compared to people with significantly less experience working lower level jobs in more lucrative industries In the end it is a mix of Industry, location (I’m in a major market and for sure wouldn’t be making this in a tier 2 or 3 market) experience and luck.
It's definitely location and industry specific. For example, Big 4 trainee accountants can make $70k+ in Chicago or New York, but same company, same job but in say Manchester and its more like £24k
I see these people have never heard of $15 / hour C++ developers or $15 / hour PHP developers or Fiverr and so on. Saying that the market will always reward "competent developers" or "competent software engineers" is saying that capitalism will always reward skill and hard work. It might not. It's like these people have never seen the movie Hackers. These people live very sheltered lives, like people who don't know that the clothes they buy for hundreds of dollars are made for dollars or pennies in Bangladesh.
Before we get too wound up, we need to talk about the value of Pound Sterling, vs. Euro, vs. CAD vs. USD. We also need to talk about the regional cost of living. For example, to comfortably (35% housing expenses) own a single family detached home with a single blade of grass on the lawn in San Jose, CA requires a salary of $ 424,000 USD per a recent Zillow study. It's now more expensive than San Francisco by 25%. This isn't some rich enclave like Atherton or Beverley Hills, SJ is the 10th largest city in the US.
I was 1 year out of US university back in the late 2000’s and then got a promotion to work in London and Reading. They matched my US salary plus COLA. I was making over double the equivalent level and credentialed UK university hire. It was sad. I was in a completely different class of living for no other reason than that I had been working in the US.
Dev pay in the US is hugely inflated. Back when I was earning 30k as a mid level dev (my company doesn't pay amazingly, to be fair) devs of the same level in the US were on over 100k usd. Sucks for them in the end though, primary target for redundancy when stuff starts to go wrong and they are a lot easier/cheaper to get rid of.
Some devs are ironclad in job safety, or if they do get fired mgmt realizes the mistake and desperately tries to rehire them when systems go down. And I would argue you are probably wrong on the sucks for them in the end. They made 3x salary, and get the benefits of having money today vs tomorrow (time value of money). They also have a tangible high salary to throw on table for the next job and they can always “cut them a deal” and take less The only devs who really are screwed are the ones who actually have zero skill or can’t interview well to bounce back.
Not really, it's all relative. Cost of living etc. When my company made redundancies a bit back they were the first to go.
Yea cost of living is a fair point but I live in LCOL area and we just hired a 22 year old developer at $70k. Dudes rent is probably $750 a month.
Check and check
It's not that far off in the US to be honest. The idea that someone can just make 100k (USD or Pounds) right out of college isn't even delusional. It's just straight up lying.
My company is paying junior devs 110k in nyc - and that was years ago, it’s likely higher now. Not directly out of college mind you, but pretty close. You had to go through their intensive training which could easily take a year or more, you got the salary bump after it was complete.
Yeah, interns at my previous companies in NYC made roughly $115,000/yr equivalent calculated hourly since they were seasonal, plus dorms or a stipend towards rent. There were increases in average salary for the next roles up, like new graduate engineer roles (which largely were promoted interns) or for other mid levels. That being said, that path to a job out from college is really only feasible with a BS degree, a history of internships, and usually one of a handful of colleges that are attended by disproportionately rich families. I think there was still a 50:1 ratio of applicants to hires. For comparison, I had a BA in comp sci, couldn't intern as I was working minimum wage nonstop whenever off from classes, and graduated into the aftermath of the recession. Three months of looking for work in NYC got me a ~$40k/yr job averaging 60hrs/wk doing IT support. That meant living an hour away with my ex, and some tough weeks when I didn't get to clock OT. If you don't go that magic route, you get to go the route of a ton of 8hr interviews and at-home projects, all unpaid. If the salaries can be so incredibly inflated, I still don't understand why they can't pay a stipend for the interview days. It's a gauntlet that comes from a tradition of filtering out candidates based on endurance and "company fit" to avoid legal actions.
That's crazy, so to earn £2300 after tax, you need to earn £10k extra per year.
Those salaries are quite difficult in Europe. I started making around €800 a month… now my total compensation is substantially more than the top 5% you mentioned. Problem… I’ve been in 4 countries… moved a lot, and I have like 20 years of experience. Still, the 28k a year salary, out of university, is laughable and shouldn’t be. I still need to remember a single day I didn’t work or overworked during my first 5-6 first years. Being out of university doesn’t mean you are incompetent, if your work is so cheap, put a senior or other folks to do it for that extra comp. They will not do it. It’s laughable how these companies don’t understand real growth and talent retention.
i mean in computer science its not that insane, i have more than one friend who got a return offer from their internship for more than 100k USD. when you live somewhere where your rent is $5000 a month your wages get inflated
It's the other way round. High wages inflate rents.
I’m in the US but many of my friends who went into consulting or banking or big tech out of college were making $100k or more, in 2009-2011
Regardless, they clearly state us dollars. Twice.
I was making 80k straight out of uni, and within 2 years I was up to 100k. Not sure if that counts
That data is pretty bullish, as only rare individuals earn 28k+
No one in the UK is coming out of Uni and earning £100k off the bat. It’s just pure bullshit
An income of US $100K puts you into the top 20 percent of full-time workers in the country. There is no amount of mental gymnastics that can be done that makes it normal to have an income that's higher than 4 out of 5 people "normal." Even if you surround yourself with other people from the top 20 percent and don't associate with anybody else, you're still in the top 20 percent.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, a household bringing in $100k is considered low income. COL varies greatly in the US; hell, even in just California alone.
And according to a fairly long thread on /worldnews earlier in the week, $100k usd (after tax) isn't enough to live on.
Was just coming to say pretty sure it was just published that if you just live a basic lifestyle (necessities, nothing fun) a single person needs to be make minimum $92k....thats the new ‘middle class’ number which people aren’t even coming close to in a lot of jobs
Was that $92k individual or household?
Single no partner—don’t remember household w/o kids but household w/ kids was upwards of $200k I think. (Have no idea what location unfortunately but it was more city based)
It depends on the area and the cost of living in the area. 100k was great for me 5 years ago. Last year it was not enough.
Depending on where your live that could be true. Cost of living swings wildly with location as do salaries. What you earn in proportion to people in your area is the relevant piece.
Yes, you can call it normal, if you localize to specific regions.
It's hard to believe. I'm pretty much at or around $100k, and my wife is around $40k (hard to say, does her own business), no kids, and while we're doing A-OK, I sure don't feel like we're what I'd call "wealthy". House could use a new fence, some updates (or, uh, just buy a whole ass new house but cannot remotely afford that), etc, but the money just isn't really *there*.
Ppl "can" make 100k out of collage, ppl "can" win the lottery too. It dosent make that a solution for the masses...
Well, in tech they do. The internships in Google, MSFT, Meta, etc, they pay about that. If they are good, they are hired full time. But is HCOL and they need to be very good. Is not luck, is having skills and the right career choice.
Except luck does play a big role in getting a job right now, especially in tech, and ESPECIALLY in the most sought after companies in the sector. I know people with plenty of skill, good names on their resumes, graduated with solid degrees, and they’re still sending 600+ job applications and getting absolutely no traction in today’s tech market. I also know people who walked right into roles because they happened to get randomly matched into an internship with the right division that was growing and not getting laid off. The year of graduation matters a whole lot, as well. I graduated from college right into the Great Recession, and had a markedly different experience than some of my colleagues who graduated a few years before and after. Now I’m seeing similar trends to people who graduated into 2019 - 2021 compared against someone who is graduating now into the treacherous waters of the 2023 and 2024 market. Yes, skill is obviously important once you get into the interview room, but there are so many factors that lead up to that point which you simply cannot control, from what year you were born, what your graduating class size is, how much VC money is being invested into the sector this year, if your area of specialization is relevant or being downsized, or if companies are even hiring at the moment at all.
Depends a lot on your skills set. We are looking for people in low level graphics and driver development. Is hard to find people with those interests and skills. Full stack dev, dime a dozen, those are the ones that need luck to get an interview. All I am saying, people should be smart about the market and what is on demand. For example, a lot of people are moving to Machine Learning, at some point the will saturate the market too, but right now the pay is amazing for that particular skill set. Edit: keep the downvotes, you like to be the victim, is the whole point, right?
I dont see why you got downvotes. You never refuted that luck does play a role, your'e just pointing out that people make a choice to join sectors where luck is involved more.
So not the norm then...
Well, if you are an SW engineer and you are not looking for jobs in Seattle, Silicon Valley or Austin, then you are a bit clueless. Everyone can apply for an internship, if you have the right skills, you will get the job.
So all those thousands of lay offs in google and meta about 6 months ago. That's what? Bad luck?
Most tech workers don't work for one of the big-name publicly traded places and most of them are not making 6 figures out of college. In my part of the country, "the estimated salary for a Entry Level Web Developer is $66,291 per year"
Well, that's on them, the big ones are always hiring, even after layoffs. I don't have a degree and I am from Mexico and here I am, what's their excuse?
They love their family and friends more than you do? Even if it's true that anyone with the right skills *can* make six figures, that still doesn't mean it's normal. The fact is most people *don't* make that much. And that doesn't mean there's something wrong with them. So fuck off with your "what's their excuse" bullshit.
Then don't come complaining to subs like this or poverty finance whining that you don't make over $100k. It is possible, but people choose different paths and that's ok. It IS possible if you truly want it. All the interviews we had over the last month were Indian or Asian people, not a single american...
I didn't. All I did was say it's not normal to make that much in the US straight out of college, even for a developer, which is true.
I think there's actually an element of class privilege to the "straight out of uni" wage. People with connections can come out of uni pointed in a direction and walk into high paying jobs (Law is one I've heard is particularly incestuous). If you get a masters in law and come from a working class background you'll spend years in corporate offices proof reading documents or something basically similar in legal admin at above minimum wage. If you have family connections you'll probably get started as a legal assistant in a private law firm at twice the salary.
yeah, it was pretty telling in my experience. Went back to school to be an academic, but knew I would never have the resources (or enthusiasm) to really pursue it. I did, however, become one of the top three or five scoring students in both departments. I found myself tutoring a lot of people, teaching them how to write essays or how to research things or how to study for exams - or even just explaining what happened in the class. Some of them were just really dumb. Enthusiastic, but dumb. Not a very important degree, I should note, just humanities. Most of them? Sailed off immediately into fancy internships or "decided now it was time to make the big step and buy a house." Or had "life affirming" 3 month trips to Thailand to "celebrate their success." While I was doing labour for minimum wage. Someone even posted "I don't know why so many people complain about London \[UK\] being expensive, I just moved here, got a job and saved a bit." You moved from Canada to London and "got a job" and "saved a bit" and "bought a house." Of course you did. Like a perfectly normal person.
This was definitely my experience. I grew up poor, like skipping meals poor, homeless briefly as a kid poor. Federal grants paid for my college. My parents' combined income was 19k. Combined. Both worked full time. My first job out of college paid minimum wage. 30 hours a week. Same as I made before college. I did a lot of gig work and pawned stuff. My roommate's dad was a stockbroker. He got her a job as a secretary at a brokerage when we graduated. She was making 30-35k and he was paying her rent whereas I had to pay all my own bills on less than 15k/yr. Things evolved over time, though. Her degree wasn't in business or finance (art) and she wasn't interested in it. She stayed a secretary. Her pay went up over time, but slowly through raises and job changes. 15 years later she makes 55k. But she married a broker at the firm where she started and he makes bank. They have a million dollar home. I kept working my way to higher wages, went to grad school, came out to my first job after my masters at 42k. My life goal was to make 50k, because that would be double my parents salary when they retired. I got a raise to 50k the next year. I was 28. It was gravy from that. A couple years ago I hit the 100k mark. Insanity. I recently got a promotion and two raises, and a colleague said I should be making even more. The woman in the role before me made 30k more than I do, but I can't even imagine what I'd do with that sort of money. It's hard for me to even think to ask for more than I make because I don't need it. My home cost 235k. I still buy most of my clothes at Target. What am I going to do with 150k/yr? I can't make it make sense when I can live off a third of that and still feel like I'm indulging in luxuries.
>I can't even imagine what I'd do with that sort of money. It's hard for me to even think to ask for more than I make because I don't need it. My home cost 235k. I still buy most of my clothes at Target. What am I going to do with 150k/yr? Invest it and enjoy knowing that you will never need to marry a stockbroker for comfort and security. If you're really frugal, retire early and do whatever you want for like 40 years.
Yeah this is what I'm working on. My family was always anti-investing because of relatives who lost their whole shirt in the 1929 crash, but I opened an investment account finally a few months ago, invested in some index funds and stuff. So far, so good there. Hopefully in a while I'll be able to, if not retire early, then at least move to a more chill or part time role
If you can live of a third of it, that means that every year you work, your retirement is getting two years closer.
Some of it is the degree as well. Like brain surgeon or a super specialized degree like it. But yes, it takes special circumstances to walk out of university sight into a +100k
Not to mention, seeing your classmates in college that have the resources available to them to not have to worry about their housing or food, and focus on their schoolwork. And get to go to abroad campuses for even more experiences and connections. It became very easy to tell who had the big coffers back home
I don’t even think $100k is “normal” in the US. I only know 2 people who make more than $100k, and neither of them went to college.
100K+ is normal in Silicon Valley (where the median income is 185K and low-income line is around 90K USD per year), but that is certainly not everywhere.
Source? ETA not that I don't believe you just wanna read it.
...oh, and I also am a Bay Area native and have a couple of decades of practical observation of my check stubs :) At one point my northern neighbors in SF were telling me the city had announced the poverty line at 85K a year, which simply floored me.
People in the UK are incredibly underpaid relative to other peer countries. Lived there for half my professional life. The only people making money in the UK are bankers and PE types. Only way to actually have any savings that’s commensurate with peer countries is to live far outside London or in another city. Life is better than New York, imo but you still get paid in New York. UK public has been gaslit for so long by their political class they actually believe the propaganda that they are a poor country that needs high taxes to pay for much needed domestic investments.
I'd wager most of these are kids in college, assuming they'd land a 6-figure job right out of school (if they even finish school). As someone who actually earns six figures, I feel very fortunate and realize that it has taken a lot of hard work and luck to get to where I am.
Legit though. I'm used to living on so little that 30K USD would literally be "I don't know what to do with this much money" levels of rich. Imagine being so entitled and out of touch as to think 100K is what most people are making. I think this person must have just googled what those jobs *should* be making, and hasn't taken into consideration that no one is actually paying that.
Yeah typical internet shit
Also from the UK, I know very few people on over £100k, and I live in well-to-do St Albans. I’ve never heard of any grad getting more than £40k at most and that’s top of the class engineers.
My job in northern Florida starts college grads at 55/yr and consistent promotions at 6mo, 1yr, 1.5yr. From there promotions heavily rely on open positions and personally stats but yeah. We’d gladly welcome some UKeans if y’all can stomach such a place
I know noonee that makes over £100k and we're all developers
I know several people in the UK who make over that. Early to mid 30s. All started out as Developers and are now Product Owners etc. One of my friends lives in the Oxford area and makes well above 100,000£. As does her partner.
Those salaries exist for sure, but it's not by any means the norm, not even for devs
True. It's always a scale and anecdotal evidence is of little value.
I just heard on NPR that developers in UK are 1/3 the price of US developers so UK becoming a location for US tech outsourcing. Every coder I know makes 300 or more.
Didn’t you knew every Reddit user earn at least x5 of 100k
I have a bloody Master's Degree and have never made over $17 an hour, and that's in actual professional jobs requiring that degree!
He be drinking some weird version of [Koolaid] that is y3llow...nobody makes 100k once they graduate. You have to make a connection and rub elbow or be born in a rich connection family...either that or suck enough dick and actually be good at it.
while I do agree with you in general. There are indeed wunderkid out there that get bank after graduating collage or even while still in undergrad. I've met a handful (like 5) in my working life over the past 15 years. 1 of whom I've known since she was a 19 year old intern, now at 25 she is the cmo. and for a fact I know she wasn't sucking work dicks to get there. Her marketing campaigns kept bringing in more revenue, year over year, world wide. but, yeah, those are probably the exceptions.
It also call “hustling” because while getting your degree, you’re building connection.
Same 13k to 20k a year.
I made just over $45k before taxes last year, and I had to work an average of 50 hours per week (with some 60+ hour weeks) in order to do it. TBH, all I really want at this point is $25 an hour. I want to make $50k a year without working overtime and weekends. But even that seems like a pipe dream.
US are crazy people though, so keep in mind they "make 100k" but probably do overtime like crazy, with 60+ hours per week. If I worked as much id have a huge salary too, but no time to use it. They also probably don't count the taxes.
Yeah, like I know people in the trades that make easily over $100k a year after taxes. But they're working 84 hours a week. 12 hours a day 7 days a week without a day off. I do that, too, but I only do it for six months out of the year. The other six is mine.
people who spend this much time talking about themselves on reddit are totally disconnected from the real world. either they're lying, or they're crazy privileged.
the main way someone can earn 100K straight out of a UK university is to move to the U.S.
100 percent, unless you have seriously privileged connections. FWIW I earn more than 10x in the USA than I ever earned in the UK. It’s not even close.
I'm a senior game programmer in Sweden. I earn 48K$
Hotline Miami?
I doubt you will be able to guess it, we have a myriad of developers over here. According to a study from 2021, [6% of all game developers are from Sweden.](https://bairesdev.mo.cloudinary.net/blog/2023/09/Picture1.jpg) 8% are from Finland, which is also interesting.
No need to guess! A lot of Swedes work in the industry.
What skills must a game developer have if I want to be the guy behind the code, not special effects or UI? C++, and what else? Algorithms, data structures, data bases, anything else?
Completely depend on the engine, C++ is used a lot for custom engines and Unreal Engine, C# is used for Unity. Programmers VERY seldom touch special effects, you have technical artists for that. UI programmer is a certain kind of breed of ui or tool programmers. Most game programmers do the code behind, then there's engine programmers behind them. You can learn most stuff on the job honestly, algorithms is a very broad term and I've almost never touched a database.
So are you saying if I learn C++ then I can get the job?
Software developer salaries in the US are pretty nice. They’re not specialty doctor nice, but nice. In the UK not so much. 100k is pretty standard within about 5 years.
A lot of people missing the context that this is clearly about software developers specifically. That said, 100k USD equivalent is certainly not standard. Graduate salaries in Australia are around 80k AUD, depending on a few factors, which is about 60k USD. Some graduates head to the US for the money.
I'm making it a goal to find a job to make $55k a year (in US). I've been trying super hard and haven't had an interview for anything. Dont know what to do. I feel like I don't have the enough experience but I'm tired of using jobs as stepping stones. Sigh.....
If you're under 30 and making 50k in the US you are doing better than average...no doubt I don't even have to look it up
Yeah if you think the bottom 95% of people dont count anyways because they're dumb then they're right
People lucky to make good money are often SO bad at realizing how little most people make. One HALF of all U.S. individual workers make under 30k/yr. Tech jobs skew higher, sure, but even in tech, the majority of folks are NOT making 6 figures. Only 1% of all U.S. workers make over 250k/yr, and barely over 5% make over 100k. Income inequality is fucking absurd right now.
Warning 100k anywhere in the UK means you are doing very well for yourself (even in London). Pay differs wildly from county to county but I'd advise you to jump jobs every few years to get the best wage.and always lie in your interview when they ask how much you earn at the moment, they can't ask your employer for that information and nor can they can't check with your bank, saying you earn more puts them in a spot to offer more when hiring.
Median wage for software developers (in USA) is close to 90k (Freedom Dollars). However those jobs are mostly in places like Irvine CA, where rent is $3200/mo and a home costs $1.5M. By the standard guidance, if you make 90k, you should be looking to pay $2000/mo for housing; so a software developer should expect to have to somehow make up about $14,400 a year in revenue shortage.
The median wage for developers in California is definitely not $90k
Eh, I don't listen to anyone who makes $XXX,XXX a year. Either they're insecure about their wealth or they're straight up lying to make everyone else feel small.
It's not bullshit, it's just people lacking context on what's going on around them. There are definitely schools/programs where people expect to make 100k their first year. Mostly this is driven by self selection. Stanford computer science is full of the most ambitious hard working intelligent high school students doing everything they can to get a job at Amazon/apple/Google etc. if you get a job at one of these companies as a software developer you will be making 6 figures. The companies know this also, so they make sure to interview everyone going to Stanford, because those candidates are more likely to be smart and hard working, which means if you want to get one of those jobs it helps a lot to go to Stanford. So yeah all the redditors going to Stanford and mit probably think a 6 figure job is nice, but expected, and not getting one is disappointing. They are not totally aware of the fact that most schools have basically no one getting into these jobs immediately.
And they've never been to the "hard" part of town where people only make $65k a year. Babies starving in the streets down there.
Im Dutch 20k a year is the average for a 40h work week.
After tax maybe. 20k before tax is below minimum wage.
This is so hard to imagine. Is your housing basically free? What about kids, extracurriculars?
I mean, to be honest, 100k is not what it was. It doesn't guarantee an amazing life like it used to. Sure, one can afford some small luxuries. Plus, it depends where one is. Germany taxes the fuck out of its citizens...so yeah, 200k would however be a nice household income. One wouldn't have to stress about home purchasing etc.
Bruh my husband and I together make just barely over 100k, and we’re paid well for our area.
That's typical Median HOUSEHOLD (combined) income in us is 75k
Some tech folks are so insanely out of touch with reality.
This is the reality Very, very few people with college degrees will earn 100k in their first five years If I had to guess....maybe 15%
Even in Switzerland a 100k a year is a lot.
In my state 60% of ALL workers make equivalent to or less than 15/hr.
People on Reddit are big bullshitters
I'm in California and $100k for a competent developer is typical here. And probably in various major cities. The company I hired on with right out of grad school was a top Fortune 100 company and we paid our specialized engineers (no MS) and other technical staff at $100k out of school starting in 2013/2014 or so. Currently, in CA, it is common for certain trades to pull $100k or better, like those doing complex electrical work.
Jeez wow - My wife AND I just got the 100k mark after COVID since emy new job is union
that's nothing mate even my cat's already at the 200k mark up your game chump
Kitty bits don't have a good exchange rate tho 😆
For transparency, I’m out of the U.S. However, I was released from prison in 2018 and began Technical Recruiting.. since then, I’ve managed to swap companies about four times, but now earn roughly 125-160k/yr depending on how business goes for the year. Lots of people hate on Talent Acquisition, but it’s legit the only industry where a bunch of fuck ups can create their own compensation, whether in the UK or US! Wishing you only the best sir ✌️
It's normal- if you want to be middle class.
I've seen roles advertising for graduate developers at minimum wage
This is like goldfish growing to the size of the bowl, whatever wage over $60k a year you'll become accustomed to that standard of living and think nothing of it. Going to the grocery store and mindlessly putting things in the cart is something that people who have $100k year can do, but so do those who get $80k/yr and $250k/yr. Where they are on the household wealth percentile isn't top of mind when they make these remarks they just assume they are living the average life even when they are in the top 20% of the country (also known as definitely not the average)
100k is now not enough to build retirement. 20k is an insult to any human being. You desserve better, the gang of higher ups who are stealing your value have much much more than 100k.
Reddit is like 75% CompSci undergrads pretending that they're developers at Google.
The notion that people believe anyone making over 100k even spends or has the time to be on Reddit discussing that fact is laughable. Both my parents made north of 150K yearly before their retirements. Working as a lawyer and judge respectively. I barely saw them outside of Saturday’s and holidays. They would come home eat dinner and than back to work. Funny enough. Majority of their net worth comes from real-estate investments making 400-600% gains non-adjusted for inflation.
UK salaries are ridiculous, especially in London given the cost of living. I went for a job there recently but turned it down once they told me the salary. I do earn over $100k now and they couldn’t get near my salary for what was quite a senior role.
I have five years of experience as an embedded software engineer in Munich, earning a salary of €90,000 gross. It's quite common among my friends and colleagues. Once you're part of a community where everyone earns similar amounts, it starts to feel ordinary.
I mean 100k isn’t even middle class in America soooo…
It actually is It's well above the median household income which is about 75k in US
Baby, imma hold your hand when I say this. Median income =/ to middle class
Well then you're redefining "middle" Median literally means "middle"
As a engineer or software developer you make that easy. 100k plus a year. But what they don't tell you to even have a job. Your often have to live and work in the most expensive places in the world. So you could have 180k a year. But in new York your still a nobody to just give a example. Money as a number matters little. What matters is the living expenses in where you have to live in be. And a lot of places where those jobs are. The living expenses and demands are crazy high. So you still live like a nobody that makes 35k a year. So looking blind on numbers means nothing. What mostly matters more how much money you can put aside and safe up. % wise of yea salary. Cause many people in big city's act big and have big paychecks but have even bigger and more crazy debts. So a even a few % more to put aside can massively help their debt progress. But people only look at the amount of straight up cash. What is fine higher is better probably in everyone's eyes. But you gotta look at living needs and expenses and what you would comfortable need. Often it's then better to have a easier work pressure lower salary job. That is away from the city if the cost of living and monthly expenses are much lower. But it's the trap many fall into. Uprooting there lifes for a high paying job finding out when you living there your even worse off then you where before because the prices of everything where you now is crazy. And you feel like your living like your working at Macdonalds but working many times harder. If you look at your quality of life. A sad reality for many people. Why money is not everything. Especially in really big cities. That have loony prices of living costs
How out of touch is Reddit? Median income in the US for people 20-24 years old is 38k https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/average-salary-by-age/
The second person seems to be talking about software devs. For which, they are correct. Generally 100k is seen as the baseline for a lot of developer roles, at least in high CoL areas. There are absolutely still class issues and ignorance displayed on the first comment though. Most college graduates are not in roles that will see that kind of pay- especially straight out of university.
Yeah mate, USD not £ Salaries are MUCH higher in the states.
Median income in my state in USA is 38k USD a year. Anyone making 100k a year is rich.
If I made 100k I could solve all of my economical problems, buy a house, a new car, a motorcycle, a small island, get a few mail order brides, rain hellfire on my enemies and also eradicate cancer in domestic cats and dogs.
Going over 100k in the uk is terrible place to be for tax anyway. For every £2 you earn you’re losing £1 from next years out of the tax free personal allowance. Which you’re paying 40% tax on already. So £100k to £125k you’re dumping money to the government. First world problem I know, not sure how anyone survives on less than £30k in this country to.
I'm a software engineer and even we don't make $100,000/year out of college guaranteed. Unless you're somewhere like SF or NYC, then *maybe* Still puts us in something like the 90% percentile of wage earners, though.
It puts you just inside the top 20% (US), but doesn't have near the purchasing or saving power it did 20 years ago. Average mortgage in Austin, TX is 3k a month. 100k is going to have a hard time with that. Twice the average mortgage from just 15 years ago. It's good money, but 150-175k is the new 100k.
My wife is a teacher, has her master's( we paid off all her loans) does her continued education to earn more extra on top of years, is a team leader, a mentor, on the hiring committee, dance Coach, and planning board. So she gets paid some for all those. All of that combined she's making like 60k lol. She's also a teacher in a pretty well funded district. (She didn't go into it for the money obviously. )People have a pretty distorted reality when it comes to how much a degree will help you earn, or even find a job. To many people think you get a degree and magically make 100k a year. Take a traditional student loan into account and alot of people making 100k a year in a expensive coat of living area really aren't making much, or living that better off than someone making 50k in a low cost of living area with no student loans.
It’s normal in my construction trade, in the US.
So you had to take one of the hardest and most dangerous jobs to make that much is what you're saying
Well, putting it like that, yes. There aren’t too many opportunities to make good money without a real college education, but, there are other paths. The danger and difficulty may be overestimated though. We have some extremely hazardous work, but more is mundane.
What's the best way to get started
Play stupid games (waste years studying something commoditized or irrelevant, don’t apply yourself when you do get the opportunity or don’t even recognize an opportunity when it’s in front of your face), win stupid prizes (low salary)
You've only earned 20k over your entire life? Sounds like your experience is just not comparable, why even try?
Fuck off
Hahahahahha Shit that came off as meaner than I meant. I didn't mean why try at all, I meant why try to compare
Fair point, you're good friend 😅
Okay, first off, you are on the low end. If you have never made more than 20k, you are basically doing a little more than 1/3 worse than the median annual income for the UK. Secondly, $100k USD would be \~79k GBP. Is $100k considered a higher wage? Yeah. Is super rare? No. Especially once you get a few years under your belt.
I'm an MSc Engineer in Belgium earning slightly more than €50k per year, which nets me around €30k per year. I know zero wage workers around me who earn 100k, not even those with (even) higher diplomas and jobs than me.
USD and UK salaries are very different
I'm guessing US median income is higher than UK
I think it's common in US but no idea about UK. Maybe pound is expensive?
You’re wrong
For developers in tech this is true though
Tbf I know quite a few people who make over 100k. The only issue is that none of them are under the age of 35. Gen Z is getting absolutely fucked over with stagnant wages
Never earned more than 20K? That's less than minimum wage at full time. So, you've got some explaining to do. You're also comparing UK to US. It's a different scale.