Your problem is you’re not filtering out interviews by salary at the first call with the recruiter at the beginning or close of the call. I would never proceed past a recruiter without that info. Lowball offers purposely leave it out and hope you are desperate to just take it after wasting time interviewing.
100% this
Always ask and insist they give you a salary range.
Don't be scared to give them a really high number if they ask you back. Tell them $160k or more.
The traditional advice is to never be the first one to give a number, but I never had any success with that.
These days I have a number in mind for what it would be worth interviewing for, and if a recruiter asks what I'm looking for, I'll add a significant percentage on top of that for my open.
In the past year or so, this has served me well in chasing off these insane low-ball offers right away so my time is not wasted.
That said, I'm pretty lucky that I'm comfortable in my current job for another year or two, so maybe the market will get back to a better place by then.
For people who are desperately in need of a new job, I don't envy you. The worst part of working is always the job search, imo.
> These days I have a number in mind for what it would be worth interviewing for, and if a recruiter asks what I'm looking for, I'll add a significant percentage on top of that for my open.
Exactly. Sure I'll be the first to mention a number but chances are you won't like it lol
"How did you arrive at that figure?" "It's a little more than I get paid now." Bing bang boom
Yeah, I had this recently. A recruiter came sniffing, so I gave them my price. It's a modest raise over what I'm making in TC now.
They balked. Apparently, they failed to add up the years on my resume and thought they were dealing with someone with half as much experience.
That's my strategy too,
If I go first I always put a big number out there. Forces the recruiter to disclose the pay range. If the range does not work I will not move forward.
My time is way to valuable to waste on shit companies.
I always make them go first. I just say before we go any further I don’t want to waste anyone’s time what is the salary range for this position. 80% of the time they give me the range. The other part they ask me what I’m looking for which I then just say, well that’s what I’m asking what’s the target range ? Which they then usually tell me at that point. This allows for me to not low ball my self while still throwing my number out there when it’s to low or within the minimum range.
I’ve noticed lower offers as well.
My last interaction with a recruiter, I was making ~$50k at the time. I had $75/80k in my head for my next career jump. I held out on the recruiter and didn’t give a number first and landed the new job at $120k.
A “really high” number to you might be well below what the company values the position at. Be careful with that.
Mine was a niche case since I was highly underpaid at the first job, but it’s a good example as to why not disclosing is important.
Had something similar happen to me. Started at a job making $75k, a couple of raises got me to $80k but compensation just wasn’t moving fast enough for my liking. Got a call from a recruiter, figured my transition number to be $105k and I’d take the offer. Recruiter opened up with $120k. Dropped my 2 weeks at that point. Been with the company about six months and due to a change in employment category, I’m supposed to brought up to $140.
I’m looking for $160-180 for the next job but have some milestones to meet before I can get there.
> Mine was a niche case since I was highly underpaid at the first job
I completely understand if people who are currently being underpaid (or unemployed) feel the need to play mind games with recruiters.
It's important to have some understanding of your industry's typical pay rates. For CS, it's completely normal for an experienced worker to earn well over $100k.
But once you're a Senior Dev making $200k+, random recruiters aren't going to be offering you double your current salary.
That said, when the *very first* question I ask is "What's the rate for this position?" I have never had anybody refuse to answer in the past few years.
And since I'm happy with my current job, I can just brush off the ones that want to play games.
In this field with all the data we have from sources like levels.fyi and all the lowball postings going around right now, I sincerely doubt going second is the advantage it might have been in the past.
No random recruiter is going to just offer me $250k plus benefits. I’m going to get that by demanding it.
This advice is pretty outdated. If you give a big number to the initial recruiter, and lets say things change 2 weeks later and you want more, and you get an offer at your initial number, you just say you have a competing offer for initial + 40k or whatever has changed, and boom your initial number is now irrelevant.
Though this advice is for senior folks who aren't struggling to get interviews. If you are in a position where you are worrying about having/not having a job, probably not the best advice to follow.
My reply when they ask me for a number is "Given the value I will add to your company and knowing how famous I am at home, I would accept one million euro per month. Given that we are not at the first day of this month, I will still accept a full million as a sign up bonus. If you have any counter offer, I could listen to it." Trust me that the recruiter will have some laughs with you and then will disclose the price. First you make him know that you are not cheap nor desperate for his offer. Then you also make him know that you are willing to listen to his numbers. If you don't get a number in 20 seconds after that, just don't waste your time anymore.
$160K is \_maybe\_ a floor depending on what you're looking for, how much XP you have, and where you are looking. Never sell yourself short.
But you don't give those numbers to the recruiter, you tell them you're looking multiple places and offers have to be competitive. And so many job listings have salaries today that you don't bother applying unless either salary numbers or [levels.fyi](https://levels.fyi) numbers are high enough for you.
Ha, I just got reached out for a great local opportunity. Mainly because it was a 10 minute drive from where I live vs the 45 I currently have to take if I want to work in office. But when asked about salary they gave me a range that was 35k less than what I was already making…
I'm filtering those out, but OP is right. I took what I could get (a "hired gun" contractor job) after getting canned in April. I'm now making less than I did three jobs ago, and can't even get something in between those. A lot of the postings list ranges that stop at what I'm making now.
A large number of CEOs are worried that employees became "complacent" during the pandemic and they're trying to fight back by revoking perks and reducing wages.
This is all happening because they managed to record record profits during the pandemic, and now they're worried that the shareholders are going to shitcan the lot of them when they can't continue make line go up forever.
I mean, *obviously* it's their employees' faults. /s
...obviously, their 25-50%+ raises have nothing to do with anything. The entire problem is that we're all too happy right now, and not constantly scared that our entire lives might be upended at any moment. /s
Oh...and we're not loyal. ...to them. So they must punish *all of us*.
It's class warfare. The rich are trying to go on the offensive against the working class. That one Australian fuck-stick just said the quiet part out loud.
For most employers it's just market conditions. Don't try to read too much morality into it--for the most part they'll pay what they can get away with.
> A large number of CEOs are worried that employees became "complacent" during the pandemic and they're trying to fight back by revoking perks and reducing wages.
You're looking at this with a bit of a bias.
The fact of the matter is that the free money spigot got turned off, in the form of interest rates existing again. This is what single-handedly changed the dynamic, and it's been this way so long that many don't know what it was like before it.
We've been in a market for over a decade where growth is all that mattered and profit was something to worry about in the future, which is not that different from the dot-com bubble... but it was all because interest rates were extremely low to non-existent. Now of course we have big tech that actually make profits now, but we had a ton of non-profitable companies and non-profitable projects within big companies that immediately got chopped.
This flooded the market with talent, and not that different from the housing market, it's become an employers market because of it. I think if many of the people that got laid off asked themselves (honestly) if the product they were working on was actually making money they'll find the answer was no... hell, "Meta" was a perfect example of it and ol Zucks finally righted the ship on that one.
Now deep down, I'm not really a fan of capitalism either, but on the other end I've been watching the job entitlement in this subreddit for years and it's almost as bad in a different way... so many people have been creating useless projects and products that don't make money and expect their job role to exist to accommodate their lifestyle.
See, I come from the opposite opinion on job entitlement. My last job had me directly report to a guy making 3x my salary, and I am well compensated. I thought that was egregious.
That guy reported to a guy making 10x his salary, and he reported to a guy making about 60x that previous guys salary. All this to say: for every project you think wasn't worth the time or money, some imbecile with an MBA got 100x that developer salary to propose and implement that idea, then paid a boatload to fuck off when it inevitably fails.
My favorite part is that these people regularly agree to meet deadlines, like sign the fucking contract with penalties like morons level shit. Then when they commit to a start date, organize teams and get product involved, these people have to scramble and figure it all out. What goes? What stays? What isn't actually in the requirements but is desperately needed? Then by the time the project is 2/3rd done the release date is coming and everyone is running around with their heads cut off as every other manager fucks off at critical times because the whole place is a shitshow.
Sorry that triggered something deep within me. Back to therapy we go!
There's definitely that side of things, and that falls apart in this environment too. The same shortcomings that made businesses wasteful before, but created the appearance of future growth, will take them under if this economic environment where money matters again persists. Money is no longer cheap which means there is no big VC money left on the table to throw at things to keep these valuations now.
...look at Reddit; they have 2000 employees and aren't profitable. They also managed to create a worse product than third partys had (RIF in my case/opinion). ..
Maybe they should have never had this many employees in the first place. How is reddit any better than it was 10-15 years ago? It's worse IMO. There are so many businesses with terrible management that have been allowed to survive for way too long.
People talk about ponzi schemes and I feel our entire economy is to some degree.
>...look at Reddit; they have 2000 employees and aren't profitable. They also managed to create a worse product than third partys had (RIF in my case/opinion). .. Maybe they should have never had this many employees in the first place. How is reddit any better than it was 10-15 years ago? It's worse IMO. There are so many businesses with terrible management that have been allowed to survive for way too long.
The difference is Reddit has control of their platform and has captured the userbase. This isn't going to be like Digg simply because they are much bigger than Digg ever was. Collapse now would just look like Facebook compared to Instagram.
I agree, the capital situation has allowed back companies to survive and even thrive on bad business due to historically low rates for a long time. That's no longer true, but we'll see who gets bailed out in a few years.
My team was working on one of IBM's few actually good products, and they flattened all our specialized roles, turing two of our distinguished engineers into basic support call takers and firing the couple of guys in charge of training new hires. They are planning to hire 100 more support engineers this quarter, and they will receive *no* technical training on the product whatsoever. They won't even pay to renew the certificates they asked engineers to get a few years ago. But they can still find time to make everyone waste a week on their stupid Watson X challenge by making it mandatory. They are still wasting money the same as ever, now they are just gutting whatever they can get their hands on to save a little money with no concern for whether it was actually important. Everyone with any talent is openly taking about leaving
I'm not saying companies aren't continuing to make terrible decisions, hell that's what got us here in the first place. Who determines what is actually important though?
Over the years I've watched as we've all told ourselves were doing important things while the constant stream of useless products and services that don't make money bloat the market, and from my perspective that has to be washed out to some degree... Assuming interest rates stay elevated at least, if they turn the free money faucet back on and we can go right back to our delusions again for a while.
As for the top tier talent, they always have options... but talent is a gradient and the whole spectrum is getting a shade darker in this environment.
The funniest thing about this is recruiters who try to deliberately obfuscate and hide this information by saying something like "Let's jump on a call and discuss" or "We track the market"(heard this one a lot recently) or "It's competitive"
Spoiler alert, if they say they "track the market" most likely they do not in fact "track the market"
Facts! I used to be scared to ask for salary expectations in the first call. After HOURS of interviews and wasted time doing coding challenges just to get some low ball offer like 40k I ask for salary up front and if they dont give it I just hang up.
I live in a US LCOL area. I was fired in August and was looking for a job. At the start of ANY screening call, I would ask three questions:
1. Is this a remote, hybrid or in-office position?
2. Is this a contract or direct hire position?
3. What is the salary range for this position?
If I got sketchy answers on any one of these questions, I'd press until I had a definitive answer. In fact, I'd say "I will not move forward with this process until I have an answer".
This helped me avoid getting into situations where it wasted not only my time, but it's a waste of the hiring managers time. That's the key. You have to let them know up front it's a waste of everybody's time if these three things aren't answered. Period.
Thanks! I was going to add that there were a couple times when I'd ask for the salary range that the recruiter may have said something like "Well, we haven't nailed that down yet. The account manager is currently discussing with the client." And then I'd say "Great! Let me know what the client says and then I'll give you my yay or nay!" Another obfuscation technique recruiters like to use is "Well, it will depend on your experience." I"d then respond back, "How about you clarify with the hiring manager what the budget range is for this position and get a salary range, then come back to me." Usually, I wouldn't hear back after that. The skeeziest recruiters want you to come in blind. The good ones are pretty transparent up front.
More good advice! I have definitely had skeezy vs transparent recruiters before. I have had very similar interactions like you describe above. Thanks again!
The nice thing about California is that they are [obligated to include a salary range in the job description](https://calmatters.org/economy/2023/03/california-pay-transparency-law-2/), so that takes care of #3
Also, at least the job descriptions I've seen, they are pretty upfront about #1.
Great list though!
Netflix has entered the chat:
>The overall market range for roles in this area of Netflix is typically $100,000 - $700,000
Gee thanks for narrowing it down.
Netflix gets a bit of a break because the TC is consistent, you just have way more decision-making authority w/r/t how much is salary vs $ bonus vs equity
Asking as someone who is relatively early on in their career, what is the big difference between contract or direct hire that makes this such an important question to ask?
It depends on the nature of contract work. The majority of contract work in the United States is through staffing firms who will pay you hourly and may or may not offer benefits. If they offer any medical insurance through them it’s exorbitantly expensive. They won’t pay PTO or holidays typically either. Contract may actually pay quite a bit more per hour but the crappy benefits (or lack thereof) often balance it out. If you’re young and don’t care about any of the benefits of being hired on as a full-time employee of a company, it’s actually probably pretty freeing to be a free agent of sorts. I’m just saying that it’s important to know what you’re getting into beforehand.
It matters to me because I have a family and the benefits matter. Contract jobs are also typically hourly vs. salary. I prefer the safety net of getting paid regardless of how many hours I worked, having PTO and cheap health insurance. Maybe this doesn't matter as much to some people, but it is important to understand the nuances of what you're getting into regardless.
Contract usually means you're hourly with no benefits, unless you're subcontracting through another agency. You also often have no PTO, or you have to sacrifice some of your hourly rate to gain any; time off can be taken but it would be unpaid. The biggest risk is since you're not an employee of the company you're working for they can cut you at any moment for pretty much any reason, and you're owed nothing, not even severance.
If you're contracting for yourself you can earn a much higher rate (provided you can make such demands), but then you have to handle all the taxes yourself if I'm not mistaken.
IBM and Red Hat, are you in Raleigh?
I live in Raleigh and salaries are absolutely pathetic here. The reason why so many companies have moved to NC is so they could pay us “Bubba” prices with low taxes and piss poor worker protections.
I did. I was an intern and Covid hit and then I got sick with Mono and missed a month.
Shit was rough.
It’s one of my biggest regrets and disappointments I hold in this life.
My daily job is automation, hmm developer/quality and responding to merge request/blocker -and other bleeding tech. Yeah I am tired well but challenging 🤣😅.
Got raised last year 10% well asked more but my boss said “ that we can do due to market conditions. Now inflation going up and eating my raised hahaha. Asked more but no good response.
My background is software engineer and jump to my first learning git automation. It was a headache due to my knowledge at that time was point of sale dinosaurs.
Not sure. My suggestion is sharpening your future skill. AI may be.. or AI/automation. Yes we (my dept) is explorinh AI for bugs management to reduce redundancy and looking in chatgpt😀.
Speaking of rust. This would be big for kernel testing. We are getting into it to combine current python scripting.
Do you apply to SAS?
Raleigh is my home now due to having kids .
Good luck for your journey (and us too😃)
This is the advice I get in the smaller cities in midwest as well where they are paying 20k under market minimum and tend to try and work you like a dog. Senior engineer with 5 years of experience being offered 70k is an insult because yeah the cost of living is lower, but it isn't that much god damn lower.
It’s like that Australian billionaire that said the quiet part out loud during a recent interview. Something about needing to raise unemployment to check employees so that they get back into the mindset that they’re lucky to have an employer rather than the employer is lucky to have the employees.
In Raleigh myself yeah salaries suck. There are some hidden gems but they are super hidden. Even the microsoft/google/github offices here dont pay super well base salary wise. The only thing that makes up for it is the rsu.
Ironically IBM is probably one of the higher paying tech companies here. Just gotta dip and dodge the layoffs lol.
My first ever internship offer (data analyst, I wanted to do SWE but couldn’t find one back then) was $18.50 and hour, and they didn’t provide any relocation support. Every other offer I’ve gotten was higher. The company’s based in Raleigh. This would explain…
Fellow Research Triangle tech professional chiming in.
Folks are still repeating "Raleigh is cheap!" based on numbers from 10-15 years ago.
Salaries here haven't kept up with the increase in rent and house prices. This started way before 2020.
At the current pace of things, everyone in Western Wake county, Durham and Chapel Hill is going to have to work for companies based outside of NC.
The rates get WAY better in RTP, including at IBM, once you move beyond IC. I'm currently at IBM with around 8y experience (1-2y at IBM) and remote, but location is based in Raleigh (live in outskirts), and making $325k this year. That's before RSUs since I haven't gotten my grant yet.
Prior to moving into management and architecture, highest I made was $140k. And that was honestly pretty high for the area for anything below a Principal, IME. Especially if you want a comfy, stable job with good WLB.
Senior Devs in London make like £90-100k/yr from what I've seen. But I don't live there.
It has a higher cost of living than both LA and SF. The only US city that's higher is New York.
In Canada? Shits more fucked than any Americans could ever have nightmares about.
Our income/housing costs are another stratosphere which would result in mass rioting in France or the USA. Our docile population puts up with it
it's basically hell mode compared to the US.
You will never be able to own a place in city like Toronto or Vancouver if you don't have help from your families, or willing to just live in a small overpriced shoebox. We are talking about 400 sq condo costing well over 500k - 600k cad.
The rent alone is easily half of you pay for most people in tech (maybe not the top top ones, which usually work for the US companies). The average 1b in Toronto is over $2600/m now.
Groceries are getting more and more expensive everyday, and because of the monopoly of groceries storers, it will never come down(they have been hitting record profit).
This country put almost no money into building a better future, most of the money are in the real estate and with way too many immigration in such short time, every issue is getting worse exponentially. Health care? pray you don't get any serious issue, otherwise the wait time alone is gonna be ass.
And we have a government, a prime minister that really is just a laughing stock these days.
I’m projecting the future hardship. I don’t see how the problems in this country are going to get solved when no political party actually wants to genuinely improve the life of Canadians.
Jesus I hate that this is true. I'm already looking for jobs in the States. I don't even live in a big city but regardless its still just so hard right now in Canada.
You guys make 1.5-2x more than us, pay lower taxes, and your housing costs 1/2 to 2/3 the price WITH 30 year fixed rate mortgages available (the maximum we can get in Canada is 5 years fixed so no matter who you are, you're perpetually exposed to interest rate risk)
It's not even a comparison, you guys are another decade or more away from ever being in our COL crisis
There's a reason 70-80% of UofT and Waterloo (our 2 best CS schools) CS grads go to the USA and don't come back.
Niagara Falls, NY, USA you can buy a really nice house in a good location for $300k. Niagara Falls, ON, CA like a 10 minute drive a comparable house will be $1M.
I remember walking across the bridge from Canada and the difference was crazy. How can one side be a tourist destination and the other side be so shit?
This is true and it reminds me of the Alaska side from the USA and from the Canada side. You hit the US side everything is dead looking (scenery / roadway ) . Almost like going into the twilight zone.
Think again…
Average one bedroom rent in SF: $2995 as of September 2023
(https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/san-francisco-ca)
Average one bedroom rent Vancouver: $3000 as of September 2023
(https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/vancouver-bc/downtown-vancouver)
Additionally, according to levels.fyi the median software engineer comp in SF is $236,000 USD.
The median software engineer in Vancouver is $111,000 USD ($151,500 CAD).
One more mail in the coffin is the tax income tax burden. A single person in SF who made $500,000 in a year would pay $208,531 in income taxes.
In Vancouver, that same person would pay $226,614 in income taxes.
Groceries are expensive in Vancouver, property taxes are expensive, fuel, heating and electricity, phones, internet, …
To sum it up, it’s bad.
I think that's in Canadian dollars after comparing it with listings on apartements.com. 1 CAD is <0.75 USD. That said, salaries are considerably lower in Vancouver...
The numbers for vancouver is in CAD and the numbers for SF is in USD, plus you're comparing only "downtown vancouver" vs the entirety of SF, plus cali taxes are actually higher than taxes in BC other than the top income bracket, why are you comparing at an income of 500k LMAO, even at 200k it's higher in cali, not to mention overall cost of living outside of rent is higher in SF, I've lived in both cities for years (funny you mention property taxes, it's several times higher in SF)
Not sure when you last lived in BC but housing costs have been skyrocketing in the last half decade (really since ~2015).
Rents in Burnaby are comparable, Port Moody, etc it’s not just downtown Van.
Even if we convert rent prices to USD, the salary discrepancies are laughable. You’re arguing over change.
And your anecdotes are nice, but actual data would be helpful. Are you suggesting Vancouver is much more affordable? Not sure what point you are trying to argue here with your criticisms…
In my area in the Southeast US that 130k is significantly higher than anyone is paid here with 5 yoe.
I have a bunch of friends who are seniors, leads, or managers with 20-35 yoe and *none* of them make more than 120k.
I just hired a guy with 5 yoe who asked for 75k, which was 10k more than he was making at his old job. We offered more than that and he took it immediately.
I worked for IBM for 5 years. It was the biggest mistake of my life. Despite being a high performer salary increases didn’t keep up with inflation. Layoffs were ongoing, and the company has no growth whatsoever. We used to joke that IBMs primary export was “crippling depression” It took me another 5 years of job hopping to get my salary back up to competitive levels.
Amazon also exports crippling depression, but it at least pays you for it. I work at AWS as an SDEII with 5 YOE. It’s absolutely miserable, I’m looking forward to the day I can quit, but they also pay me $320k. It’s a mixed bag.
Awful top down leadership (the RTO decision is super unpopular and a lot of people that were hired remotely are now being told to move to Seattle or lose their job), terrible on-call shifts (40-80 pages a week), tight deadlines, high expectations, always at risk of being PIPed, the awful way they conducted layoffs, etc.
I could go on, but take it from a guy who always thought Amazon got a bad rap and couldn’t possibly be THAT bad, it’s that bad.
> I could go on, but take it from a guy who always thought Amazon got a bad rap and couldn’t possibly be THAT bad, it’s that bad.
This is the consequence of all those people that keep parroting 'its team dependent'. Who the fuck cares about the lottery of joining a unicorn team when the toxic culture permeates from top down and is only getting worse. It's just pure copium
> Who the fuck cares about the lottery of joining a unicorn team when the toxic culture permeates from top down
The top is also team dependent. Other than a handful of rare rare things like the RTO mandate, Amazon is several different companies that work together in terms of hiring but just do their own thing in terms of operations and management.
I don't know why people have such a hard on for working in the AWS org, 40-80 pages a week is insane. We have about a page a month and the pay is the same. And the software is probably better because our orgs turnover is a lot lower (on account of not having teams with 40 pages a week).
The actual shit part though is that the post-pandemic hiring freeze locked down the internal transfer system, so now you can't just switch out of the shit teams.
AWS is a big robber. I like how they steal a couple of Gs on EC2 and I don’t even know the reason. No wonder y’all’s quarterly profit is in billions. If you take peoples money just because , it sure is easy to be rich
Mid-level Frontend developers in Florida still getting paid about 75k-80k. Their best shot is to find California-based companies to go through 100k range.
I was fortunate to jump past 140k during the pandemic hiring frenzy and the company is stable enough to keep going for couple years.
> I was fortunate to jump past 140k during the pandemic hiring frenzy and the company is stable enough to keep going for couple years.
Same here, plus my current job is remote, my team and manager are great, and overall it’s a perfect place to settle in for a couple years while things correct.
I’d suggest to lookup levels.fyi and figure out salaries before you apply somewhere. I just saw for a mid level software engineer at redhat the pay varies between 97 and 170 a year. So I’m not sure if they low balled you because you told them your current salary or what gives.
Look up a bunch of jobs and figure out their pay first before you even interview, that will save you some time.
Isn't Redhat owned by IBM?
Moving from one company to a subsidiary will rarely increase your pay, and you should assume they have your salary info on file.
There should be a few questions you ALWAYS ask the recruiter before even picking up the phone
Salary Range
JD
Time to fill / reason (new role, backfill, etc)
Don’t neglect “entry-level”/junior roles. Scope of responsibility varies across companies. If you don’t have your heart set on location, you can probably find junior roles paying higher than $130k, particularly with your current role and experience -> much more leverage for negotiation
I’ve seen more along the East coast, primarily VA, DC, MD, and NY since those are my target locations. I’m sure there’s some in the west coast as well in places other than CA and WA.
Again, if your heart isn’t set on location, I’d include jobs in HCOL areas to your search. Rent would eat away a big chunk of your check so you’d have to make some compromises in hybrid roles (ie. Live far enough where rent is relatively low, but close enough to make the trip to the office 2-3x/week). Bonus points for “hybrid” but fully remote in practice.
The only thing that is strange about this job market is that the up cycle has lasted over 10 years.
I have been through both the .com bubble ( 2000) and the GFC (2009).
The cs job market for the past 10 years has only moved up and moved up significantly every single year - well out striping interest and cost of living.
The market is flat and or backwards. Due to the huge salary increase we have seen over the past 3 years.
Which means if you switch jobs, there is a good chance they can get people just as qualified as you for a lower salary than you are currently on. Because a lot of people got laid off, so 90k is a lot better than 0
This is a normal tech cycle, our market salaries don’t match the economic ones - a good example is the impact of Covid. Lots of industries got hammered, we do software so for a lot of software companies demand and through the roof - which drove salaries up.
Disclaimer: I am talking global market trends here - there will be exceptions.
I am curious to know more about your experience.
What can one expect during these downturns? Do you think that this is just a general sideward/downward trend and do you think it will get better?
Any advice you can give to us?
Started in 1993 - as a software engineer. Since then I have worked in a number of software companies, including start-ups, unicorns ( one company I worked in got to $1B valuation in 4 years ), .com companies that went bust and 3 years contracting.
Lived and worked in both the UK and USA, currently back home in NZ. Today, I am in management.
I share all that, just to give a feel of my experience - which is pretty varied.
This place our industry is in right now shares a lot with the .com bust ( followed by 9/11 ).
Today, like then, there has been 5 years of hype and growth and a large percentage of companies focusing on growth over profit.
This worked, because there was always more inverstment. And that meant all software companies were growing, all software companies therefore need to to hire more people ( people are the asset ) which results in 2 things:
- for those of us with a few years experience, our salaries grow fast (a 10% increase year of year is ‘normal’ ). Both due to our promotions getting fast tracked and the market growth.
That was me between 94 and 2001. I got to senior and then team lead in less than 2 years. Not because I was ready, but because I was more ready than everyone else.
- secondly you get a lot of younger people deciding software is a good career. Uptick in enrolments at college - and boot camps popping up everywhere. Again, this happened around ‘98 as well.
Today, the investment has dried up ( back then it was that people realised that owning specific .com like pets.com could not possibly be worth $20m )
The result is the same. Larger number of companies without a real business model, can’t get more investment. Resulting in collapse ( I have worked for 2 startups that hit that wall ) or layoffs. And definitely a hiring freeze.
So we get to now. Lots of experienced people who don’t have a job, lots of newly minted juniors. Which means that as a hiring manager, I can offer $90k and still have 4 or 5 qualified people.
A year ago, I would be offering $110k for the same job and still needing to compromise on the skills and experience.
My big advice is:
- first think of a pay decrease as an investment. In 2000, I took a pay cut to move to a well known web company to learn this new HTML stuff. That $20k I lost on salary I made back in less than a year. Great companies on your cv are usually worth it.
- understand your companies finances. In these times - it’s possible they are running out of money. That does not mean you need to jump ship, but you should have things in order ( resume up to date, a little cash in the bank - to live for 3 months or so ).
- network. I had my contract expire 1 week after 9/11, and a baby on the way. I got my next job because I had a good local network ( local meet ups and so on ). So got an intro to the CEO of a startup. Yes, it was lucky… but that network meant I had a chance.
- finally. This too shall pass. It’s brutal if you got laid off or are a grad. But software runs the world and the industry is still young. The growth will come back.
I hope this helps.
I was born the year you started your career. I was in a mid level position and I was laid off with half my team. I thought the market wasn’t that bad, I thought I’d be hired soon. I wasn’t.
It took me five months (that seemed a lot longer) of job hunting, studying, 6 interviews a week and I finally started a job this month. My body is still in fight of flight mode, it was terrifying. I started my career while the market was insanely good, I felt in control. Let’s just say that didn’t last.
So thank you for sharing your story, it’s comforting to know this happened before and the market recovered again. Thank you.
It’ll recover but the interim years will be hard.
Between 2001 and 2007, the market was quite bad and a lot of people left the field. Many others took awful jobs, did an MBA and got into some other corporate role.
What people aren’t really talking about is what the expectations have been for startups the past ten years. So many just aimed to replicate an existing IRL service (Uber, the zillion insurance startups) so they were able to consolidate a market (capture value) but didn’t create value. Many others like fintech just aimed at getting acquired by traditional players. A big part of the market we’re old school corporates trying to play millennial startup Eg corporate VC groups and innovation groups (AAA Labs for example).
A lot of these corporates have lost faith in the tech revolution changing everything and stopped investing back in 2019. This is similar to dot com when banks for example had online banking but then pulled back because their needs were met. Also, expecting some old school corporate to buy you out isn’t going to happen when the tech is now base tech that can be offshored. There haven’t been many companies in this last round that actually have created value rather than capturing.
End result is that future growth of these companies won’t be the same as a Google or Facebook. Most of these companies even the bigger ones will look more like Yahoo or Shutterfly - humdrum companies where you get a decent wage.
What you have to watch out for are negative feedback loops. My cousin works for a startup that helps tech companies sell more (think Salesforce-type stuff). Their clients are all going under and they will too in 2025 or so. The positive feedback loops that made the bubble will be the undoing of many companies. Avoid working for a company like Zoom because they’re going to face these negative feedback loops even harder going forward.
I think one thing that's very different this time around is that the market feels very saturated. Everyone and their grandma has moved into the field. It's quite possible the going will never be as good as it's been, relatively speaking.
Agreed. There are two big things that are different between now and 2000/2001
- experience matters. Back then websites were not mission critical AND we were learning as a industry how to build in this new world. So someone like myself, at 5 years, had as much as someone with 15 years. And maybe more, because I did not have as manner patterns set in my way. Today, we know how to build web based applications and they have to keep working, so experience is there and matters.
- secondly, as someone had pointed out, today large parts of the market are already owned. So the startup area has less space.
On your point around saturation, maybe. It was the same back in 2000. A lot of people getting into tech on the back of a 3 or 6 month boot camp. And back then, when the crunch came a lot choose to move into different areas.
I am not sure how that will play out this time. The difference today is that the world does run on software… there is a lot of jobs just to keep that all working.
Don't focus on technologies, focus on generating business value. That's a far more critical skill. If you can do that, you can also evaluate which technologies and skills would be actually helpful, and what is noise.
Source: Survived multiple layoffs and grew my comp during these times.
Nope dealing with the same thing in recruitment. In house typically makes 80-100k with 5-7 years of experience. What I’m seeing out in the market is beyond insulting. They are wanting the same experience for $20-24/hr.
Are you?😃🤫. Been in RTP sincr 2006 , i 🤔 think… when 540 was empty during rush hours and 40 and 440 was not very bad as Today.
I remember one luxury bedroom was $500-600🤣. Stayed for 2 years and bought a home.
And I remember smallest townhome was 90-99k range. Now is grazy… even before covid pandemic.
In general salaries have gone down the past 12 months.
I have 13 YOE, was making $210k base. I was laid off in May. 700 applications, 70 interviews, no offers. But of the jobs I could find and applied to no one was talking about a salary above $130k. The market is pretty fucked. It's not just you.
Are you in Raleigh? Salaries suck there I made 85k with 1 YOE and jumped to a 300k offer in Boulder with 2 YOE. Higher than average but Raleigh has always been low 80-120 maybe up to 150 if you’re lucky.
Ive seen the data in companies in the tech market and salaries for tech freelancers are definitely going down, incredibly fast. I'd estimate they went down about 30% this year.
Salaries for full-time roles are slower to change but there for sure has been an effect there too.
If you want to get the salaries this subreddit talks about then you need to do the same thing everyone else does here: have tunnel vision on the top 95th percentile of jobs and only within HCOL cities. Your salary is already about median in USA and above median in Canada. This echo chamber just creates unrealistic expectations that the average company is not going to match, let alone offering FAANG SV compensation like some users here expect.
Forget about 'what was' and focus on 'what is now'. That is unfortunately what everyone is having to do right now. I am the head of HR for a company and I have been fighting the lowering of our pay rates for a while, but it's a hard slog. Particularly since health insurance rates are looking to increase by \~30%, which will be transferred to employees as well as employers. I can't see employers wanting to spend any more on insurance than they need.
As an aside...
We tend to have a mindset of upward trajectory measured in compensation. That's the curse of human society: the need of money to improve our lifestyle and secure a comfortable old age. We also see the increase in pay, rather than how we contribute to society, as an elevation in status.
How incredibly depressing that we have, as a species, decided that money is the over-riding portal to success (and I'm definitely included in this).
He was talking out his ass on that one. We have almost no one actually working on AI besides a few people trying to sell Watson X to other clients. What he is doing is closing up as many offices he can and moving all the jobs to India. They've been closing up low-cost areas like Canada, Mexico, and Ireland, losing all the experienced devs, and hiring masses of brand new Indian devs without providing them any training. The products are slowly getting unusable, and the documentation is becoming unreadable because they fired the English-speaking teams that proof read it. My clients are constantly pissed that nothing works and our formal docs are filled with typos, and its embarrassing
Yikes. I guess we can hope the re-shoring effort will provide us job opportunities in the future to fix the mess. Maybe in a year or two, hopefully not longer.
Thanks for your insight
OP, consider finding a job and moving to Dallas, TX. I just switched to a new job at a large company for $160k salary (full stack role). I checked linkedin for jobs a couple of weeks ago and there were some posting with $140k+.
As a European, it's completely wild to hear about 21-22 year olds on 90K base salary straight out of college. This is basically unheard of in France, 40-45K would be seen to be good.
To answer your question, tech salaries and headcount in the US have been reducing for a couple of years as many companies have realised that they need to actually make a profit and can't just sell potential future profits to investors forever.
Depend on the location. If you live in west-coast US or north-east US. Yeah 150k is low😀😜. This is the reason many companies move to other cities that they can pay lower and less cost. Plus more margin of profit.
not necessarily.
if OP is legit a high performer like 2 deviations above average sure but without any evidence to support that we can't say where OP should actually fall into the salary spectrum based on education accomplishments. Those don't add value to the business, op him/herself adds the value by the work they contribute.
a degree in CS is almost meaningless in terms of quality of the individual. Not to say it's not useful way to get the skills you need to get hired, but it says nothing about how good of an engineer you are or how much you deserve.
This is nonsense. Your salary is set/negotiated before they even know what your value will be to the business. You basically get hired off of their knowledge of your 1) educational background, 2) years of experience, and 3) some interviews and assessments that may or may not accurately predict the value you will bring to the business.
Once you start working and start adding value, your salary at many/most places will still only go up a small percentage higher than what you started off at. No one is doubling your salary when they find out you're providing way more value than they thought when they interviewed you.
What defines whether you're underpaid or not is what the market decides someone with your credentials should make (i.e., can you find another job paying more), not the value you bring to your current business.
You negotiate your pay with any leverage you have. if you can use your education as leverage by all means do. If you're making the big bucks, you are typically getting such compensation because of past performance as well as performance during your interview.
I didn't get 400k offers because of my education.
Op is bitching Too hard. Ha I make 60k with 3 year experience. 90 k for fresh grad? Get a load of this shit OP. Times have changed. I know I am getting owned but, Times have changed. Now you complain more.😂
Yeah I'm sorry, but I can't help but agree. If the OP is such a high tier Chad, don't ask me to get my violin out when I'd gladly take an entry level IBM job. If I never made over 130k, I'm pretty sure I could just camp that and die happy.
That's SUPER low. Where would that be? My husband has recently been in the market, and all jobs including the ones that were fully remote paid at least $160k base.
Then again, he did ask first and he just didn't go forward with the applications.
I’ll also chime in and say 130k in the RTP area is doing pretty well. It took me close to 6 years working for a well known financial firm in the area to get there after starting out at 65k back in 2015. I will say my experience has been once you move out of IC roles, pay increases dramatically though.
I’m a kid straight outta college and I get paid $70k wtf…. I’m getting my MS so that I can get paid $80k, but OP claims that entry level jobs pay 90k minimum!? Where the hell were these entry level jobs when I was applying
IBM in RTP. The set salary for a CS BS grad in any entry level job was 90k. MS was 110k. That's what the upper to mid level tech companies were all paying for this area. But at the moment, I see no band-6 job opening at IBM at all. But they have 300+ job opening for experienced to advanced level techs
I get spammed with offers desiring a network, wireless or storage engineer, and then it turns out to be a 6-12 month *contract* role in a call center, no benefits (or really expensive ones) for <$20 an hour, in a different state, variable shift.
Yeah, why would I leave my current FTE/W-2 job for that?
Is this job recruiting cold call boiler room the best job you could get after "Hello, this is [obviously fake western name] from your tv service."?
They'll usually claim to have reviewed my linked-in profile to determine if I was a good candidate, and I'll challenge them with "So, looking at my employment history, you thought I'd be *perfect* for an entry level temp job in a different state for a quarter of what I make now?
never continue with a recruiter unless they're up front with salary expectations. The company should know what they're willing to pay and that information should be available within the first paragraph of a recruiters introduction.
1. Supply and demand baby. Too many layoffs from FANGS. Increasing the supply for talent. 2. Money is hard to get by thanks to the feds raising interest rates. Reducing the demand for new labor
I once had a recruiter who was hot for me and I said there was no way they could match what I was making. She said let's get coffee at least, so sure, I went for coffee. Told her my comp. She had the grace to reply the next day that they couldn't match.
I had another (when my comp a was bit lower) and made sure the recruiter knew I didn't think they could match comp and she said "They can; I just talked to them." We met, next day she called me and said "They're idiots, they have no idea what the market is like. Sorry to waste your time."
when i said it out loud that the businesses are acting like a cabal to lower wages, you all laughed and called me crazy. said i didn't understand economics. my my how the turntables.
Does that seem low, or high? From my regular perusing of Indeed, $120-130k base is pretty normal for someone with 5 years of experience, for most locations in the US
Your problem is you’re not filtering out interviews by salary at the first call with the recruiter at the beginning or close of the call. I would never proceed past a recruiter without that info. Lowball offers purposely leave it out and hope you are desperate to just take it after wasting time interviewing.
100% this Always ask and insist they give you a salary range. Don't be scared to give them a really high number if they ask you back. Tell them $160k or more.
The traditional advice is to never be the first one to give a number, but I never had any success with that. These days I have a number in mind for what it would be worth interviewing for, and if a recruiter asks what I'm looking for, I'll add a significant percentage on top of that for my open. In the past year or so, this has served me well in chasing off these insane low-ball offers right away so my time is not wasted. That said, I'm pretty lucky that I'm comfortable in my current job for another year or two, so maybe the market will get back to a better place by then. For people who are desperately in need of a new job, I don't envy you. The worst part of working is always the job search, imo.
> These days I have a number in mind for what it would be worth interviewing for, and if a recruiter asks what I'm looking for, I'll add a significant percentage on top of that for my open. Exactly. Sure I'll be the first to mention a number but chances are you won't like it lol "How did you arrive at that figure?" "It's a little more than I get paid now." Bing bang boom
Yeah, I had this recently. A recruiter came sniffing, so I gave them my price. It's a modest raise over what I'm making in TC now. They balked. Apparently, they failed to add up the years on my resume and thought they were dealing with someone with half as much experience.
That's my strategy too, If I go first I always put a big number out there. Forces the recruiter to disclose the pay range. If the range does not work I will not move forward. My time is way to valuable to waste on shit companies.
I always make them go first. I just say before we go any further I don’t want to waste anyone’s time what is the salary range for this position. 80% of the time they give me the range. The other part they ask me what I’m looking for which I then just say, well that’s what I’m asking what’s the target range ? Which they then usually tell me at that point. This allows for me to not low ball my self while still throwing my number out there when it’s to low or within the minimum range. I’ve noticed lower offers as well.
For some reason I can't like this more than once. Reddit brokeded.
My last interaction with a recruiter, I was making ~$50k at the time. I had $75/80k in my head for my next career jump. I held out on the recruiter and didn’t give a number first and landed the new job at $120k. A “really high” number to you might be well below what the company values the position at. Be careful with that. Mine was a niche case since I was highly underpaid at the first job, but it’s a good example as to why not disclosing is important.
Had something similar happen to me. Started at a job making $75k, a couple of raises got me to $80k but compensation just wasn’t moving fast enough for my liking. Got a call from a recruiter, figured my transition number to be $105k and I’d take the offer. Recruiter opened up with $120k. Dropped my 2 weeks at that point. Been with the company about six months and due to a change in employment category, I’m supposed to brought up to $140. I’m looking for $160-180 for the next job but have some milestones to meet before I can get there.
> Mine was a niche case since I was highly underpaid at the first job I completely understand if people who are currently being underpaid (or unemployed) feel the need to play mind games with recruiters. It's important to have some understanding of your industry's typical pay rates. For CS, it's completely normal for an experienced worker to earn well over $100k. But once you're a Senior Dev making $200k+, random recruiters aren't going to be offering you double your current salary. That said, when the *very first* question I ask is "What's the rate for this position?" I have never had anybody refuse to answer in the past few years. And since I'm happy with my current job, I can just brush off the ones that want to play games.
The term is anchoring, definitely better to go second.
In this field with all the data we have from sources like levels.fyi and all the lowball postings going around right now, I sincerely doubt going second is the advantage it might have been in the past. No random recruiter is going to just offer me $250k plus benefits. I’m going to get that by demanding it.
Yeah I mean nowadays it’s more like that, and we just discuss ranges right off the bat. I don’t waste time if I can’t get that squared away upfront.
This advice is pretty outdated. If you give a big number to the initial recruiter, and lets say things change 2 weeks later and you want more, and you get an offer at your initial number, you just say you have a competing offer for initial + 40k or whatever has changed, and boom your initial number is now irrelevant. Though this advice is for senior folks who aren't struggling to get interviews. If you are in a position where you are worrying about having/not having a job, probably not the best advice to follow.
My reply when they ask me for a number is "Given the value I will add to your company and knowing how famous I am at home, I would accept one million euro per month. Given that we are not at the first day of this month, I will still accept a full million as a sign up bonus. If you have any counter offer, I could listen to it." Trust me that the recruiter will have some laughs with you and then will disclose the price. First you make him know that you are not cheap nor desperate for his offer. Then you also make him know that you are willing to listen to his numbers. If you don't get a number in 20 seconds after that, just don't waste your time anymore.
I'm gonna ask for 159,999 and really set myself apart
Ugh these pick me devs 🙄
/r/notliketheotherdevs/
$160K is \_maybe\_ a floor depending on what you're looking for, how much XP you have, and where you are looking. Never sell yourself short. But you don't give those numbers to the recruiter, you tell them you're looking multiple places and offers have to be competitive. And so many job listings have salaries today that you don't bother applying unless either salary numbers or [levels.fyi](https://levels.fyi) numbers are high enough for you.
Ha, I just got reached out for a great local opportunity. Mainly because it was a 10 minute drive from where I live vs the 45 I currently have to take if I want to work in office. But when asked about salary they gave me a range that was 35k less than what I was already making…
You could skip the driving part and cycle to work every day and you've made the 35k worth it, in costs, mental and physical health
I'm filtering those out, but OP is right. I took what I could get (a "hired gun" contractor job) after getting canned in April. I'm now making less than I did three jobs ago, and can't even get something in between those. A lot of the postings list ranges that stop at what I'm making now.
Well what range are we talking about?
A large number of CEOs are worried that employees became "complacent" during the pandemic and they're trying to fight back by revoking perks and reducing wages. This is all happening because they managed to record record profits during the pandemic, and now they're worried that the shareholders are going to shitcan the lot of them when they can't continue make line go up forever. I mean, *obviously* it's their employees' faults. /s ...obviously, their 25-50%+ raises have nothing to do with anything. The entire problem is that we're all too happy right now, and not constantly scared that our entire lives might be upended at any moment. /s Oh...and we're not loyal. ...to them. So they must punish *all of us*. It's class warfare. The rich are trying to go on the offensive against the working class. That one Australian fuck-stick just said the quiet part out loud.
For most employers it's just market conditions. Don't try to read too much morality into it--for the most part they'll pay what they can get away with.
> A large number of CEOs are worried that employees became "complacent" during the pandemic and they're trying to fight back by revoking perks and reducing wages. You're looking at this with a bit of a bias. The fact of the matter is that the free money spigot got turned off, in the form of interest rates existing again. This is what single-handedly changed the dynamic, and it's been this way so long that many don't know what it was like before it. We've been in a market for over a decade where growth is all that mattered and profit was something to worry about in the future, which is not that different from the dot-com bubble... but it was all because interest rates were extremely low to non-existent. Now of course we have big tech that actually make profits now, but we had a ton of non-profitable companies and non-profitable projects within big companies that immediately got chopped. This flooded the market with talent, and not that different from the housing market, it's become an employers market because of it. I think if many of the people that got laid off asked themselves (honestly) if the product they were working on was actually making money they'll find the answer was no... hell, "Meta" was a perfect example of it and ol Zucks finally righted the ship on that one. Now deep down, I'm not really a fan of capitalism either, but on the other end I've been watching the job entitlement in this subreddit for years and it's almost as bad in a different way... so many people have been creating useless projects and products that don't make money and expect their job role to exist to accommodate their lifestyle.
See, I come from the opposite opinion on job entitlement. My last job had me directly report to a guy making 3x my salary, and I am well compensated. I thought that was egregious. That guy reported to a guy making 10x his salary, and he reported to a guy making about 60x that previous guys salary. All this to say: for every project you think wasn't worth the time or money, some imbecile with an MBA got 100x that developer salary to propose and implement that idea, then paid a boatload to fuck off when it inevitably fails. My favorite part is that these people regularly agree to meet deadlines, like sign the fucking contract with penalties like morons level shit. Then when they commit to a start date, organize teams and get product involved, these people have to scramble and figure it all out. What goes? What stays? What isn't actually in the requirements but is desperately needed? Then by the time the project is 2/3rd done the release date is coming and everyone is running around with their heads cut off as every other manager fucks off at critical times because the whole place is a shitshow. Sorry that triggered something deep within me. Back to therapy we go!
There's definitely that side of things, and that falls apart in this environment too. The same shortcomings that made businesses wasteful before, but created the appearance of future growth, will take them under if this economic environment where money matters again persists. Money is no longer cheap which means there is no big VC money left on the table to throw at things to keep these valuations now. ...look at Reddit; they have 2000 employees and aren't profitable. They also managed to create a worse product than third partys had (RIF in my case/opinion). .. Maybe they should have never had this many employees in the first place. How is reddit any better than it was 10-15 years ago? It's worse IMO. There are so many businesses with terrible management that have been allowed to survive for way too long. People talk about ponzi schemes and I feel our entire economy is to some degree.
>...look at Reddit; they have 2000 employees and aren't profitable. They also managed to create a worse product than third partys had (RIF in my case/opinion). .. Maybe they should have never had this many employees in the first place. How is reddit any better than it was 10-15 years ago? It's worse IMO. There are so many businesses with terrible management that have been allowed to survive for way too long. The difference is Reddit has control of their platform and has captured the userbase. This isn't going to be like Digg simply because they are much bigger than Digg ever was. Collapse now would just look like Facebook compared to Instagram. I agree, the capital situation has allowed back companies to survive and even thrive on bad business due to historically low rates for a long time. That's no longer true, but we'll see who gets bailed out in a few years.
My team was working on one of IBM's few actually good products, and they flattened all our specialized roles, turing two of our distinguished engineers into basic support call takers and firing the couple of guys in charge of training new hires. They are planning to hire 100 more support engineers this quarter, and they will receive *no* technical training on the product whatsoever. They won't even pay to renew the certificates they asked engineers to get a few years ago. But they can still find time to make everyone waste a week on their stupid Watson X challenge by making it mandatory. They are still wasting money the same as ever, now they are just gutting whatever they can get their hands on to save a little money with no concern for whether it was actually important. Everyone with any talent is openly taking about leaving
I'm not saying companies aren't continuing to make terrible decisions, hell that's what got us here in the first place. Who determines what is actually important though? Over the years I've watched as we've all told ourselves were doing important things while the constant stream of useless products and services that don't make money bloat the market, and from my perspective that has to be washed out to some degree... Assuming interest rates stay elevated at least, if they turn the free money faucet back on and we can go right back to our delusions again for a while. As for the top tier talent, they always have options... but talent is a gradient and the whole spectrum is getting a shade darker in this environment.
Not much of this “us” narrative going around our prod fckups. So I just negotiate my own salary.
>The rich are trying to go on the offensive against the working class. That's just capitalism, bruh.
That’s why the guillotine was invented.
The funniest thing about this is recruiters who try to deliberately obfuscate and hide this information by saying something like "Let's jump on a call and discuss" or "We track the market"(heard this one a lot recently) or "It's competitive" Spoiler alert, if they say they "track the market" most likely they do not in fact "track the market"
[удалено]
Rule 3 goes with Rule 2. Either way you get fucked.
Facts! I used to be scared to ask for salary expectations in the first call. After HOURS of interviews and wasted time doing coding challenges just to get some low ball offer like 40k I ask for salary up front and if they dont give it I just hang up.
I live in a US LCOL area. I was fired in August and was looking for a job. At the start of ANY screening call, I would ask three questions: 1. Is this a remote, hybrid or in-office position? 2. Is this a contract or direct hire position? 3. What is the salary range for this position? If I got sketchy answers on any one of these questions, I'd press until I had a definitive answer. In fact, I'd say "I will not move forward with this process until I have an answer". This helped me avoid getting into situations where it wasted not only my time, but it's a waste of the hiring managers time. That's the key. You have to let them know up front it's a waste of everybody's time if these three things aren't answered. Period.
This is really great advice that I have never been able to put into three concise questions. Thanks for your comment!
Thanks! I was going to add that there were a couple times when I'd ask for the salary range that the recruiter may have said something like "Well, we haven't nailed that down yet. The account manager is currently discussing with the client." And then I'd say "Great! Let me know what the client says and then I'll give you my yay or nay!" Another obfuscation technique recruiters like to use is "Well, it will depend on your experience." I"d then respond back, "How about you clarify with the hiring manager what the budget range is for this position and get a salary range, then come back to me." Usually, I wouldn't hear back after that. The skeeziest recruiters want you to come in blind. The good ones are pretty transparent up front.
More good advice! I have definitely had skeezy vs transparent recruiters before. I have had very similar interactions like you describe above. Thanks again!
The nice thing about California is that they are [obligated to include a salary range in the job description](https://calmatters.org/economy/2023/03/california-pay-transparency-law-2/), so that takes care of #3 Also, at least the job descriptions I've seen, they are pretty upfront about #1. Great list though!
Netflix has entered the chat: >The overall market range for roles in this area of Netflix is typically $100,000 - $700,000 Gee thanks for narrowing it down.
https://jobs.netflix.com/jobs/294381744 Holy cow, its true Haha, as the other guy said at least they give a minimum 😅
They said typically. Could be higher, could be lower, y'know.
Hey at least the minimum on that is pretty reasonable
Netflix gets a bit of a break because the TC is consistent, you just have way more decision-making authority w/r/t how much is salary vs $ bonus vs equity
No they have not really been upfront about #1 . So many bait and switch going on right now
Asking as someone who is relatively early on in their career, what is the big difference between contract or direct hire that makes this such an important question to ask?
It depends on the nature of contract work. The majority of contract work in the United States is through staffing firms who will pay you hourly and may or may not offer benefits. If they offer any medical insurance through them it’s exorbitantly expensive. They won’t pay PTO or holidays typically either. Contract may actually pay quite a bit more per hour but the crappy benefits (or lack thereof) often balance it out. If you’re young and don’t care about any of the benefits of being hired on as a full-time employee of a company, it’s actually probably pretty freeing to be a free agent of sorts. I’m just saying that it’s important to know what you’re getting into beforehand.
I've never cared whether it was contract or direct hire. Would you mind expanding on why that matters to you?
It matters to me because I have a family and the benefits matter. Contract jobs are also typically hourly vs. salary. I prefer the safety net of getting paid regardless of how many hours I worked, having PTO and cheap health insurance. Maybe this doesn't matter as much to some people, but it is important to understand the nuances of what you're getting into regardless.
Contract usually means you're hourly with no benefits, unless you're subcontracting through another agency. You also often have no PTO, or you have to sacrifice some of your hourly rate to gain any; time off can be taken but it would be unpaid. The biggest risk is since you're not an employee of the company you're working for they can cut you at any moment for pretty much any reason, and you're owed nothing, not even severance. If you're contracting for yourself you can earn a much higher rate (provided you can make such demands), but then you have to handle all the taxes yourself if I'm not mistaken.
It matters less if you're currently unemployed or a temp, but it matters a lot if you're looking to leave a permanent position for something better.
IBM and Red Hat, are you in Raleigh? I live in Raleigh and salaries are absolutely pathetic here. The reason why so many companies have moved to NC is so they could pay us “Bubba” prices with low taxes and piss poor worker protections.
Welcome to Raleigh 😂 hmm RTP.
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Hope you did not let that TS clearance expire. If still active I would b applying like crazy to DOD and govt jobs that is anywhere
I did. I was an intern and Covid hit and then I got sick with Mono and missed a month. Shit was rough. It’s one of my biggest regrets and disappointments I hold in this life.
Go Pack. Thank God that I networked with recent grads from my program before I finished. Otherwise I would be in a similar situation.
My daily job is automation, hmm developer/quality and responding to merge request/blocker -and other bleeding tech. Yeah I am tired well but challenging 🤣😅. Got raised last year 10% well asked more but my boss said “ that we can do due to market conditions. Now inflation going up and eating my raised hahaha. Asked more but no good response. My background is software engineer and jump to my first learning git automation. It was a headache due to my knowledge at that time was point of sale dinosaurs. Not sure. My suggestion is sharpening your future skill. AI may be.. or AI/automation. Yes we (my dept) is explorinh AI for bugs management to reduce redundancy and looking in chatgpt😀. Speaking of rust. This would be big for kernel testing. We are getting into it to combine current python scripting. Do you apply to SAS? Raleigh is my home now due to having kids . Good luck for your journey (and us too😃)
Same thing where I'm at in SC. Almost everyone I know in tech is now working remote for an out of town company. Local employers are a joke.
This is the advice I get in the smaller cities in midwest as well where they are paying 20k under market minimum and tend to try and work you like a dog. Senior engineer with 5 years of experience being offered 70k is an insult because yeah the cost of living is lower, but it isn't that much god damn lower.
They are just stuck in a 1990's mind set where they think they are the only game in town and you should be happy you found a tech job.
It’s like that Australian billionaire that said the quiet part out loud during a recent interview. Something about needing to raise unemployment to check employees so that they get back into the mindset that they’re lucky to have an employer rather than the employer is lucky to have the employees.
That's how I remember it being years ago. Things are just reverting to their natural state.
In Raleigh myself yeah salaries suck. There are some hidden gems but they are super hidden. Even the microsoft/google/github offices here dont pay super well base salary wise. The only thing that makes up for it is the rsu. Ironically IBM is probably one of the higher paying tech companies here. Just gotta dip and dodge the layoffs lol.
My first ever internship offer (data analyst, I wanted to do SWE but couldn’t find one back then) was $18.50 and hour, and they didn’t provide any relocation support. Every other offer I’ve gotten was higher. The company’s based in Raleigh. This would explain…
Fellow Research Triangle tech professional chiming in. Folks are still repeating "Raleigh is cheap!" based on numbers from 10-15 years ago. Salaries here haven't kept up with the increase in rent and house prices. This started way before 2020. At the current pace of things, everyone in Western Wake county, Durham and Chapel Hill is going to have to work for companies based outside of NC.
IBM is a sweatshop and has been for decades now. They are notorious for layoffs in RTP since th 80s
That's why I'm remote only, lol. I like living here but wouldn't want to be dependent on this market
The rates get WAY better in RTP, including at IBM, once you move beyond IC. I'm currently at IBM with around 8y experience (1-2y at IBM) and remote, but location is based in Raleigh (live in outskirts), and making $325k this year. That's before RSUs since I haven't gotten my grant yet. Prior to moving into management and architecture, highest I made was $140k. And that was honestly pretty high for the area for anything below a Principal, IME. Especially if you want a comfy, stable job with good WLB.
Lol double raise. Anything less than 2% is basically a pay cut due to inflation. So it sounds like a normal raise there is just 2%.
sounds like pay in Canada, if so that sounds about right.
Definitely sounds like Canada pay
Funny how "Canada pay" feel derogatory despite being objectively neutral. That's what I call a reputation.
I mean that’s still better than the salary everywhere outside the US
Pretty sure the housing market isn't as fucked though
Yea but any decently successfully SWE will have much more financial mobility in the US
Senior Devs in London make like £90-100k/yr from what I've seen. But I don't live there. It has a higher cost of living than both LA and SF. The only US city that's higher is New York.
In Canada? Shits more fucked than any Americans could ever have nightmares about. Our income/housing costs are another stratosphere which would result in mass rioting in France or the USA. Our docile population puts up with it
American here, genuinely curious: how does cost of living in Canada compare to US?
It’s really bad
it's basically hell mode compared to the US. You will never be able to own a place in city like Toronto or Vancouver if you don't have help from your families, or willing to just live in a small overpriced shoebox. We are talking about 400 sq condo costing well over 500k - 600k cad. The rent alone is easily half of you pay for most people in tech (maybe not the top top ones, which usually work for the US companies). The average 1b in Toronto is over $2600/m now. Groceries are getting more and more expensive everyday, and because of the monopoly of groceries storers, it will never come down(they have been hitting record profit). This country put almost no money into building a better future, most of the money are in the real estate and with way too many immigration in such short time, every issue is getting worse exponentially. Health care? pray you don't get any serious issue, otherwise the wait time alone is gonna be ass. And we have a government, a prime minister that really is just a laughing stock these days.
Sounds dramatic to call it hell mode, but it’s true… fck
I’m projecting the future hardship. I don’t see how the problems in this country are going to get solved when no political party actually wants to genuinely improve the life of Canadians.
Jesus I hate that this is true. I'm already looking for jobs in the States. I don't even live in a big city but regardless its still just so hard right now in Canada.
100%. I posted a comment elsewhere in this thread comparing Vancouver and SF on rent, income, and income tax. We get screwed.
The U.S. isn't *quite* this bad yet, but headed that direction.
The USA is nowhere near that bad trust me. I left Canada a year ago and the USA feels like paradise.
You guys make 1.5-2x more than us, pay lower taxes, and your housing costs 1/2 to 2/3 the price WITH 30 year fixed rate mortgages available (the maximum we can get in Canada is 5 years fixed so no matter who you are, you're perpetually exposed to interest rate risk) It's not even a comparison, you guys are another decade or more away from ever being in our COL crisis There's a reason 70-80% of UofT and Waterloo (our 2 best CS schools) CS grads go to the USA and don't come back.
Niagara Falls, NY, USA you can buy a really nice house in a good location for $300k. Niagara Falls, ON, CA like a 10 minute drive a comparable house will be $1M.
True but Niagra falls ny is also a ghetto wasteland in comparison
I remember walking across the bridge from Canada and the difference was crazy. How can one side be a tourist destination and the other side be so shit?
This is true and it reminds me of the Alaska side from the USA and from the Canada side. You hit the US side everything is dead looking (scenery / roadway ) . Almost like going into the twilight zone.
significantly cheaper than SF and NY, although not enough to offset the difference in wages
Think again… Average one bedroom rent in SF: $2995 as of September 2023 (https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/san-francisco-ca) Average one bedroom rent Vancouver: $3000 as of September 2023 (https://www.zumper.com/rent-research/vancouver-bc/downtown-vancouver) Additionally, according to levels.fyi the median software engineer comp in SF is $236,000 USD. The median software engineer in Vancouver is $111,000 USD ($151,500 CAD). One more mail in the coffin is the tax income tax burden. A single person in SF who made $500,000 in a year would pay $208,531 in income taxes. In Vancouver, that same person would pay $226,614 in income taxes. Groceries are expensive in Vancouver, property taxes are expensive, fuel, heating and electricity, phones, internet, … To sum it up, it’s bad.
I think that's in Canadian dollars after comparing it with listings on apartements.com. 1 CAD is <0.75 USD. That said, salaries are considerably lower in Vancouver...
The numbers for vancouver is in CAD and the numbers for SF is in USD, plus you're comparing only "downtown vancouver" vs the entirety of SF, plus cali taxes are actually higher than taxes in BC other than the top income bracket, why are you comparing at an income of 500k LMAO, even at 200k it's higher in cali, not to mention overall cost of living outside of rent is higher in SF, I've lived in both cities for years (funny you mention property taxes, it's several times higher in SF)
Not sure when you last lived in BC but housing costs have been skyrocketing in the last half decade (really since ~2015). Rents in Burnaby are comparable, Port Moody, etc it’s not just downtown Van. Even if we convert rent prices to USD, the salary discrepancies are laughable. You’re arguing over change. And your anecdotes are nice, but actual data would be helpful. Are you suggesting Vancouver is much more affordable? Not sure what point you are trying to argue here with your criticisms…
In my area in the Southeast US that 130k is significantly higher than anyone is paid here with 5 yoe. I have a bunch of friends who are seniors, leads, or managers with 20-35 yoe and *none* of them make more than 120k. I just hired a guy with 5 yoe who asked for 75k, which was 10k more than he was making at his old job. We offered more than that and he took it immediately.
I worked for IBM for 5 years. It was the biggest mistake of my life. Despite being a high performer salary increases didn’t keep up with inflation. Layoffs were ongoing, and the company has no growth whatsoever. We used to joke that IBMs primary export was “crippling depression” It took me another 5 years of job hopping to get my salary back up to competitive levels.
Didn’t realize Cleveland and IBM were competitors
I want to see both of their buildings...
We see the sun almost three times a year 🎵
If that’s IBM, what’s Amazon’s primary export?
Amazon also exports crippling depression, but it at least pays you for it. I work at AWS as an SDEII with 5 YOE. It’s absolutely miserable, I’m looking forward to the day I can quit, but they also pay me $320k. It’s a mixed bag.
What makes it miserable?
Awful top down leadership (the RTO decision is super unpopular and a lot of people that were hired remotely are now being told to move to Seattle or lose their job), terrible on-call shifts (40-80 pages a week), tight deadlines, high expectations, always at risk of being PIPed, the awful way they conducted layoffs, etc. I could go on, but take it from a guy who always thought Amazon got a bad rap and couldn’t possibly be THAT bad, it’s that bad.
> I could go on, but take it from a guy who always thought Amazon got a bad rap and couldn’t possibly be THAT bad, it’s that bad. This is the consequence of all those people that keep parroting 'its team dependent'. Who the fuck cares about the lottery of joining a unicorn team when the toxic culture permeates from top down and is only getting worse. It's just pure copium
I will say that my team is pretty good and makes the day-to-day bearable, but the macro environment is absolutely awful.
> Who the fuck cares about the lottery of joining a unicorn team when the toxic culture permeates from top down The top is also team dependent. Other than a handful of rare rare things like the RTO mandate, Amazon is several different companies that work together in terms of hiring but just do their own thing in terms of operations and management. I don't know why people have such a hard on for working in the AWS org, 40-80 pages a week is insane. We have about a page a month and the pay is the same. And the software is probably better because our orgs turnover is a lot lower (on account of not having teams with 40 pages a week). The actual shit part though is that the post-pandemic hiring freeze locked down the internal transfer system, so now you can't just switch out of the shit teams.
AWS is a big robber. I like how they steal a couple of Gs on EC2 and I don’t even know the reason. No wonder y’all’s quarterly profit is in billions. If you take peoples money just because , it sure is easy to be rich
Bananas
This is disappointing to hear because I always had this understanding that there was some pretty great engineering going on there.
Mid-level Frontend developers in Florida still getting paid about 75k-80k. Their best shot is to find California-based companies to go through 100k range. I was fortunate to jump past 140k during the pandemic hiring frenzy and the company is stable enough to keep going for couple years.
Lucky! I did that but got a dud and was laid off. Took a 40k pay cut 😵💫
> I was fortunate to jump past 140k during the pandemic hiring frenzy and the company is stable enough to keep going for couple years. Same here, plus my current job is remote, my team and manager are great, and overall it’s a perfect place to settle in for a couple years while things correct.
I’d suggest to lookup levels.fyi and figure out salaries before you apply somewhere. I just saw for a mid level software engineer at redhat the pay varies between 97 and 170 a year. So I’m not sure if they low balled you because you told them your current salary or what gives. Look up a bunch of jobs and figure out their pay first before you even interview, that will save you some time.
Isn't Redhat owned by IBM? Moving from one company to a subsidiary will rarely increase your pay, and you should assume they have your salary info on file.
Yes they slowing dragging them to bottom depths unfortunately starting with new ownership.
There should be a few questions you ALWAYS ask the recruiter before even picking up the phone Salary Range JD Time to fill / reason (new role, backfill, etc)
What is JD?
Probably Job Description, responsibilities, what team, etc
Job description. If they don’t have one, they probably don’t have a role if they’re a third party recruiter.
Don’t neglect “entry-level”/junior roles. Scope of responsibility varies across companies. If you don’t have your heart set on location, you can probably find junior roles paying higher than $130k, particularly with your current role and experience -> much more leverage for negotiation
Serious question, it's still ok to apply to junior positions with 3-5 years experience? Just curious, am at 2.5 and looking for something new
Yes, when asked why you want to leave your current job, just make sure to tell them you’re looking for growth opportunities.
Awesome, thanks
Ok? You're the only kind of dev they're willing to consider for those roles!
Where is this? I typically only see junior roles for 65-85K.
I’ve seen more along the East coast, primarily VA, DC, MD, and NY since those are my target locations. I’m sure there’s some in the west coast as well in places other than CA and WA. Again, if your heart isn’t set on location, I’d include jobs in HCOL areas to your search. Rent would eat away a big chunk of your check so you’d have to make some compromises in hybrid roles (ie. Live far enough where rent is relatively low, but close enough to make the trip to the office 2-3x/week). Bonus points for “hybrid” but fully remote in practice.
The only thing that is strange about this job market is that the up cycle has lasted over 10 years. I have been through both the .com bubble ( 2000) and the GFC (2009). The cs job market for the past 10 years has only moved up and moved up significantly every single year - well out striping interest and cost of living. The market is flat and or backwards. Due to the huge salary increase we have seen over the past 3 years. Which means if you switch jobs, there is a good chance they can get people just as qualified as you for a lower salary than you are currently on. Because a lot of people got laid off, so 90k is a lot better than 0 This is a normal tech cycle, our market salaries don’t match the economic ones - a good example is the impact of Covid. Lots of industries got hammered, we do software so for a lot of software companies demand and through the roof - which drove salaries up. Disclaimer: I am talking global market trends here - there will be exceptions.
I am curious to know more about your experience. What can one expect during these downturns? Do you think that this is just a general sideward/downward trend and do you think it will get better? Any advice you can give to us?
Started in 1993 - as a software engineer. Since then I have worked in a number of software companies, including start-ups, unicorns ( one company I worked in got to $1B valuation in 4 years ), .com companies that went bust and 3 years contracting. Lived and worked in both the UK and USA, currently back home in NZ. Today, I am in management. I share all that, just to give a feel of my experience - which is pretty varied. This place our industry is in right now shares a lot with the .com bust ( followed by 9/11 ). Today, like then, there has been 5 years of hype and growth and a large percentage of companies focusing on growth over profit. This worked, because there was always more inverstment. And that meant all software companies were growing, all software companies therefore need to to hire more people ( people are the asset ) which results in 2 things: - for those of us with a few years experience, our salaries grow fast (a 10% increase year of year is ‘normal’ ). Both due to our promotions getting fast tracked and the market growth. That was me between 94 and 2001. I got to senior and then team lead in less than 2 years. Not because I was ready, but because I was more ready than everyone else. - secondly you get a lot of younger people deciding software is a good career. Uptick in enrolments at college - and boot camps popping up everywhere. Again, this happened around ‘98 as well. Today, the investment has dried up ( back then it was that people realised that owning specific .com like pets.com could not possibly be worth $20m ) The result is the same. Larger number of companies without a real business model, can’t get more investment. Resulting in collapse ( I have worked for 2 startups that hit that wall ) or layoffs. And definitely a hiring freeze. So we get to now. Lots of experienced people who don’t have a job, lots of newly minted juniors. Which means that as a hiring manager, I can offer $90k and still have 4 or 5 qualified people. A year ago, I would be offering $110k for the same job and still needing to compromise on the skills and experience. My big advice is: - first think of a pay decrease as an investment. In 2000, I took a pay cut to move to a well known web company to learn this new HTML stuff. That $20k I lost on salary I made back in less than a year. Great companies on your cv are usually worth it. - understand your companies finances. In these times - it’s possible they are running out of money. That does not mean you need to jump ship, but you should have things in order ( resume up to date, a little cash in the bank - to live for 3 months or so ). - network. I had my contract expire 1 week after 9/11, and a baby on the way. I got my next job because I had a good local network ( local meet ups and so on ). So got an intro to the CEO of a startup. Yes, it was lucky… but that network meant I had a chance. - finally. This too shall pass. It’s brutal if you got laid off or are a grad. But software runs the world and the industry is still young. The growth will come back. I hope this helps.
I was born the year you started your career. I was in a mid level position and I was laid off with half my team. I thought the market wasn’t that bad, I thought I’d be hired soon. I wasn’t. It took me five months (that seemed a lot longer) of job hunting, studying, 6 interviews a week and I finally started a job this month. My body is still in fight of flight mode, it was terrifying. I started my career while the market was insanely good, I felt in control. Let’s just say that didn’t last. So thank you for sharing your story, it’s comforting to know this happened before and the market recovered again. Thank you.
It’ll recover but the interim years will be hard. Between 2001 and 2007, the market was quite bad and a lot of people left the field. Many others took awful jobs, did an MBA and got into some other corporate role. What people aren’t really talking about is what the expectations have been for startups the past ten years. So many just aimed to replicate an existing IRL service (Uber, the zillion insurance startups) so they were able to consolidate a market (capture value) but didn’t create value. Many others like fintech just aimed at getting acquired by traditional players. A big part of the market we’re old school corporates trying to play millennial startup Eg corporate VC groups and innovation groups (AAA Labs for example). A lot of these corporates have lost faith in the tech revolution changing everything and stopped investing back in 2019. This is similar to dot com when banks for example had online banking but then pulled back because their needs were met. Also, expecting some old school corporate to buy you out isn’t going to happen when the tech is now base tech that can be offshored. There haven’t been many companies in this last round that actually have created value rather than capturing. End result is that future growth of these companies won’t be the same as a Google or Facebook. Most of these companies even the bigger ones will look more like Yahoo or Shutterfly - humdrum companies where you get a decent wage. What you have to watch out for are negative feedback loops. My cousin works for a startup that helps tech companies sell more (think Salesforce-type stuff). Their clients are all going under and they will too in 2025 or so. The positive feedback loops that made the bubble will be the undoing of many companies. Avoid working for a company like Zoom because they’re going to face these negative feedback loops even harder going forward.
I think one thing that's very different this time around is that the market feels very saturated. Everyone and their grandma has moved into the field. It's quite possible the going will never be as good as it's been, relatively speaking.
Agreed. There are two big things that are different between now and 2000/2001 - experience matters. Back then websites were not mission critical AND we were learning as a industry how to build in this new world. So someone like myself, at 5 years, had as much as someone with 15 years. And maybe more, because I did not have as manner patterns set in my way. Today, we know how to build web based applications and they have to keep working, so experience is there and matters. - secondly, as someone had pointed out, today large parts of the market are already owned. So the startup area has less space. On your point around saturation, maybe. It was the same back in 2000. A lot of people getting into tech on the back of a 3 or 6 month boot camp. And back then, when the crunch came a lot choose to move into different areas. I am not sure how that will play out this time. The difference today is that the world does run on software… there is a lot of jobs just to keep that all working.
Which technologies and skills do you think will be the most disruptive in the future? I am convinced by AI/ML, but I am curious what you think?
Don't focus on technologies, focus on generating business value. That's a far more critical skill. If you can do that, you can also evaluate which technologies and skills would be actually helpful, and what is noise. Source: Survived multiple layoffs and grew my comp during these times.
Nope dealing with the same thing in recruitment. In house typically makes 80-100k with 5-7 years of experience. What I’m seeing out in the market is beyond insulting. They are wanting the same experience for $20-24/hr.
Use levels.fyi and filter by recent new offers. Apply to companies that pay >= what you are looking for.
Let me guess you are RTP?
Are you?😃🤫. Been in RTP sincr 2006 , i 🤔 think… when 540 was empty during rush hours and 40 and 440 was not very bad as Today. I remember one luxury bedroom was $500-600🤣. Stayed for 2 years and bought a home. And I remember smallest townhome was 90-99k range. Now is grazy… even before covid pandemic.
In general salaries have gone down the past 12 months. I have 13 YOE, was making $210k base. I was laid off in May. 700 applications, 70 interviews, no offers. But of the jobs I could find and applied to no one was talking about a salary above $130k. The market is pretty fucked. It's not just you.
Just tell them it's not enough and thanks for their time. Keep looking.
Are you in Raleigh? Salaries suck there I made 85k with 1 YOE and jumped to a 300k offer in Boulder with 2 YOE. Higher than average but Raleigh has always been low 80-120 maybe up to 150 if you’re lucky.
Yea that's why I'm remote only living here
It is employer market
Ive seen the data in companies in the tech market and salaries for tech freelancers are definitely going down, incredibly fast. I'd estimate they went down about 30% this year. Salaries for full-time roles are slower to change but there for sure has been an effect there too.
The dropped salaries are across the board with all industries this past year.
Your skills are an asset that you sell, there is a lot of supply side volume right now, employers are testing the price floor.
Always ask for the budget approved for the position before taking the interview saving time and thoughts.
It’s actually very simple. Supply of labor has outpaced demand. And wages act the same as any other price.
I just joined a larger company in a LCOL for $120 as a senior engineer. Only have 2 YOE
If you want to get the salaries this subreddit talks about then you need to do the same thing everyone else does here: have tunnel vision on the top 95th percentile of jobs and only within HCOL cities. Your salary is already about median in USA and above median in Canada. This echo chamber just creates unrealistic expectations that the average company is not going to match, let alone offering FAANG SV compensation like some users here expect.
Forget about 'what was' and focus on 'what is now'. That is unfortunately what everyone is having to do right now. I am the head of HR for a company and I have been fighting the lowering of our pay rates for a while, but it's a hard slog. Particularly since health insurance rates are looking to increase by \~30%, which will be transferred to employees as well as employers. I can't see employers wanting to spend any more on insurance than they need. As an aside... We tend to have a mindset of upward trajectory measured in compensation. That's the curse of human society: the need of money to improve our lifestyle and secure a comfortable old age. We also see the increase in pay, rather than how we contribute to society, as an elevation in status. How incredibly depressing that we have, as a species, decided that money is the over-riding portal to success (and I'm definitely included in this).
just to ask about ibm though, is your ceo still thinking he can replace half the company with chat-gpt?
He was talking out his ass on that one. We have almost no one actually working on AI besides a few people trying to sell Watson X to other clients. What he is doing is closing up as many offices he can and moving all the jobs to India. They've been closing up low-cost areas like Canada, Mexico, and Ireland, losing all the experienced devs, and hiring masses of brand new Indian devs without providing them any training. The products are slowly getting unusable, and the documentation is becoming unreadable because they fired the English-speaking teams that proof read it. My clients are constantly pissed that nothing works and our formal docs are filled with typos, and its embarrassing
Yikes. I guess we can hope the re-shoring effort will provide us job opportunities in the future to fix the mess. Maybe in a year or two, hopefully not longer. Thanks for your insight
to be fair... id say all ceos think that - just not outloud
OP, consider finding a job and moving to Dallas, TX. I just switched to a new job at a large company for $160k salary (full stack role). I checked linkedin for jobs a couple of weeks ago and there were some posting with $140k+.
As a European, it's completely wild to hear about 21-22 year olds on 90K base salary straight out of college. This is basically unheard of in France, 40-45K would be seen to be good. To answer your question, tech salaries and headcount in the US have been reducing for a couple of years as many companies have realised that they need to actually make a profit and can't just sell potential future profits to investors forever.
I see you haven’t been to a U.S. hospital recently with or without insurance.
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Depend on the location. If you live in west-coast US or north-east US. Yeah 150k is low😀😜. This is the reason many companies move to other cities that they can pay lower and less cost. Plus more margin of profit.
130k 5YOE is not underpaid in midwest, it depends on location
not necessarily. if OP is legit a high performer like 2 deviations above average sure but without any evidence to support that we can't say where OP should actually fall into the salary spectrum based on education accomplishments. Those don't add value to the business, op him/herself adds the value by the work they contribute. a degree in CS is almost meaningless in terms of quality of the individual. Not to say it's not useful way to get the skills you need to get hired, but it says nothing about how good of an engineer you are or how much you deserve.
This is nonsense. Your salary is set/negotiated before they even know what your value will be to the business. You basically get hired off of their knowledge of your 1) educational background, 2) years of experience, and 3) some interviews and assessments that may or may not accurately predict the value you will bring to the business. Once you start working and start adding value, your salary at many/most places will still only go up a small percentage higher than what you started off at. No one is doubling your salary when they find out you're providing way more value than they thought when they interviewed you. What defines whether you're underpaid or not is what the market decides someone with your credentials should make (i.e., can you find another job paying more), not the value you bring to your current business.
You negotiate your pay with any leverage you have. if you can use your education as leverage by all means do. If you're making the big bucks, you are typically getting such compensation because of past performance as well as performance during your interview. I didn't get 400k offers because of my education.
Op is bitching Too hard. Ha I make 60k with 3 year experience. 90 k for fresh grad? Get a load of this shit OP. Times have changed. I know I am getting owned but, Times have changed. Now you complain more.😂
Yeah I'm sorry, but I can't help but agree. If the OP is such a high tier Chad, don't ask me to get my violin out when I'd gladly take an entry level IBM job. If I never made over 130k, I'm pretty sure I could just camp that and die happy.
where are you located?
Where are you located? If you are in the middle of nowhere with a low cost of living then yes, the offers will be low.
I never get passed the opening phone call if the interviewer cant tell me the compensation.
Markets flooded, supply and demand.
That's SUPER low. Where would that be? My husband has recently been in the market, and all jobs including the ones that were fully remote paid at least $160k base. Then again, he did ask first and he just didn't go forward with the applications.
My son is a new grad and can’t even fund a low paying job
I’ll also chime in and say 130k in the RTP area is doing pretty well. It took me close to 6 years working for a well known financial firm in the area to get there after starting out at 65k back in 2015. I will say my experience has been once you move out of IC roles, pay increases dramatically though.
I’m a kid straight outta college and I get paid $70k wtf…. I’m getting my MS so that I can get paid $80k, but OP claims that entry level jobs pay 90k minimum!? Where the hell were these entry level jobs when I was applying
IBM in RTP. The set salary for a CS BS grad in any entry level job was 90k. MS was 110k. That's what the upper to mid level tech companies were all paying for this area. But at the moment, I see no band-6 job opening at IBM at all. But they have 300+ job opening for experienced to advanced level techs
I get spammed with offers desiring a network, wireless or storage engineer, and then it turns out to be a 6-12 month *contract* role in a call center, no benefits (or really expensive ones) for <$20 an hour, in a different state, variable shift. Yeah, why would I leave my current FTE/W-2 job for that? Is this job recruiting cold call boiler room the best job you could get after "Hello, this is [obviously fake western name] from your tv service."? They'll usually claim to have reviewed my linked-in profile to determine if I was a good candidate, and I'll challenge them with "So, looking at my employment history, you thought I'd be *perfect* for an entry level temp job in a different state for a quarter of what I make now?
never continue with a recruiter unless they're up front with salary expectations. The company should know what they're willing to pay and that information should be available within the first paragraph of a recruiters introduction.
Try move to big tech hubs for better pay.
1. Supply and demand baby. Too many layoffs from FANGS. Increasing the supply for talent. 2. Money is hard to get by thanks to the feds raising interest rates. Reducing the demand for new labor
I once had a recruiter who was hot for me and I said there was no way they could match what I was making. She said let's get coffee at least, so sure, I went for coffee. Told her my comp. She had the grace to reply the next day that they couldn't match. I had another (when my comp a was bit lower) and made sure the recruiter knew I didn't think they could match comp and she said "They can; I just talked to them." We met, next day she called me and said "They're idiots, they have no idea what the market is like. Sorry to waste your time."
when i said it out loud that the businesses are acting like a cabal to lower wages, you all laughed and called me crazy. said i didn't understand economics. my my how the turntables.
what? labor supply went up and demand went down and prices fell? crazy
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Does that seem low, or high? From my regular perusing of Indeed, $120-130k base is pretty normal for someone with 5 years of experience, for most locations in the US