The $200,000 Software Developer 473
itwbennett writes "You can make a decent living as a software developer, and if you were lucky enough to get hired at a pre-IPO tech phenom, you can even get rich at it. But set your sights above the average and below Scrooge McDuck and you won't find many developers in that salary range. In fact, the number of developers earning $200,000 and above is under 10%, writes blogger Phil Johnson who looked at salary data from Glassdoor, Salary.com and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. How does your salary rate? What's your advice for earning the big bucks?"
Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:2)
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you get started in that field?
1) Develop strong mathematics, physics, and software development skills.
2) Take away your sense of reason and accountability.
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Take away your sense of reason and accountability.
Also, make sure that you measure your moral worth in dollars. The ideal guy in finance thinks like this [youtube.com].
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:3)
.....or any hope of starting/spending time with your family.
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:5, Insightful)
They are sucking up brilliant people who are strong in modeling – so mathematicians, physicist, engineers, etc. Physicist tend to be good a modeling large complex natural system with math. It’s the right skill set. Heck, I even know a philosophy grad who got hired for big bucks. (Now, he specialized in formal logic, had a minor in math, and was a real renaissance man.)
Personally, the software people (note, I don’t know any developers) that I know that are in the field are lower down in the hierarchy. Great pay but they expect perform ace now.
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:3)
The OP was about financial engineering, not about HFC. They have different skill sets.
Financial engineering is about creating new structured products. Think swaps, CMOs, etc. The stuff that blew up during the financial crisis. You try to identify logical flaws in existing products that causes a mismatch in price. You then repackage them, squeezing out the inefficient caused by the flaw.
For HFT, how do you think battling bots work? How would you identify flaws in the market and exploited them? There are a lot of things that look like flaws but are just statistical flukes. There are others which work most of the time but when they don’t will blow you up. Gut instinct?
I am currently reading “The (Mis)behavior of Markets” by Mandelbrot (of chaos theory, the Mandelbrot sets). It is a popsci book and I am only 20% of the way through but that might be a place to start.
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:3)
Using a single income figure as a cutoff is kind of pointless. With $100K you can live like a king in Middle Of Nowhere, USA. With $100K in San Francisco or New York City you'll barely be able to afford rent.
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:3)
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:3)
To be precise, happiness correlates with money if you earn less than 60k USD. Above 60k it stops being correlated. The theory being that under 60k you have a lot of stress trying to pay your bills. Above 60k then other factors dominate, such as having a good marriage or being envious of your neighbor’s luxury car – things that money can’t directly address. Quality of life is not the exact same thing as happiness. I know people who work long hours because the work is something they enjoy or enjoy expensive hobbies (horses and charitable work.). For them more money does means more happiness.
Also, Why do you say it’s not useful? Society, collectively, says it is. (Now, I work in finance and I do think society overvalues this sector. But I also think society overvalues rappers and undervalues mimes.)
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:2)
physics?? physics... how does? why?
To grok system modelling and grasp the fact those damn'd schemes are just a model before it's too late (even when sound, they are as valid as the assumptions; like perfectly elastic spherical horses moving through vacuum [wikipedia.org] to predict the winner of a horse race).
Besides physics is to maths as sex is to masturbation [xkcd.com] (alt of the comic; hover the mouse over it)
The circle of knowledge (Score:5, Interesting)
As I've written before: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1847578&cid=34100224 [slashdot.org]
The circle of knowledge, a poem by Paul D. Fernhout
All philosophy is anthropology; :-)
All anthropology is psychology;
All psychology is biology;
All biology is chemistry;
All chemistry is physics;
All physics is math;
All math is philosophy.
See my website for lots about the future of economics. I passed on my change to work on Wall Street at J.P. Morgan Chase doing Smalltalk around 2000. Back then I didn't think it worth the commute there (which my wife had hated earlier), as well as the risk for a Japanese-style subway gassing. Little did I imagine someone attacking the WTC, but I guess otherwise it is possible I might have been at a meeting in the WTC as the group met over there sometimes.
Still, as imaginary as fiat dollars are, if enough people believe in the idea, that gives it a sort of reality. And, like most US Americans, I have to deal with that collective fantasy as a way to ration the fruits of production. But it is hard also to look past how the abstractions related to the fantasy of money often hurt so many people. "The Seven Laws of Money" by Michael Phillips is great down-to-Earth book on money by a creator of MasterCard, and reading it around age 15 was a formative experience in my life -- helping me avoid an early pursuit of fiat dollars and instead working towards ideals I cared about (with what limited success I've had).
But really, almost all financial engineering is pointless zero-sum gambling work, as interesting as it may still be as an abstract game. As it was explained to me by a friendly mathematician at IBM Research over lunch when I was in the speech group there (which was a group constantly being poached by Wall Street), it rally is picking up nickels before a streamroller (Buffet's analogy). You bet other people's money in such a way as you have a high chance at getting a small percentage increase on a big sum, and you (legally) skim some money off the top as a fee (or reward), while cleverly "managing" the risks, including those black swan events that most everyone ignores and you probably will too. If you are lucky, you do this for a bunch of years and then retire. If you are unlucky, you have a bad year (either badly managed risk or a black swan?) and maybe even lose your job as the company folds, but you don't generally have to give back previous years profits -- plus you get to learn "How to Speak Hedgie": :-) ... ..."
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2007/08/how_to_speak_hedgie.html [slate.com]
"In these days of market volatility, hedge-fund managers and executives at all types of money management firms have been forced to explain why their funds are shutting down, losing money hand over fist, and freezing investors' funds. When they do so, however, they frequently lapse into a strange euphemistic dialect. And so we thought it would be helpful to provide a handy Hedgie-English glossary.
Hedge-Fund Phrase: Unprecedented, unique circumstances
Translation: Stuff happens. But we had no clue.
But, and I only realized this much later, by indirectly raising issues about systemic risk in the 1980s around the Princeton University Operations Research group, I pretty much ensured I would not get a PhD, at least there. :-)
http://www.pdfernhout.net/princeton-graduate-school-plans.html [pdfernhout.net]
But, like hedge fund managers, do those professors have to give back decades of salary because they were in some sense
Sent to Bridgewater a couple years ago (Score:4, Informative)
I've been meaning to put up the comments I had on Ray Dalio's principles somewhere for a long time. I finally just put them up here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/sent-to-Bridgewater-on-Ray-Dalio-Principles.html [pdfernhout.net]
As I note there, obviously, writing stuff like that must not be the way to get a high paying (>$200K annual) job programming in the financial industry. :-) But this may be of interest to others looking at Ray Dalio's "Principles" or in Bridgewater Associates (the world's biggest hedge fund in 2011) as a place of employment. Or perhaps it may be of interest in trying to understand, from a psychological perspective, some of the potential limits of Bridgewater's financial models if they reflect only that version of "Principles"?
From what I sent: :-) I'm supplying some of the results of my having read widely for many years on a variety of topics related to evolution, technology, psychology, and social change. Maybe someone at Bridgewater will read this, maybe not, but it was also interesting to write it and try to get a message through the filters all organizations have. It's a first draft, and it could be a lot better, a lot shorter, and so on were I to spend a lot more time on it, or were I to have better tools with which to communicate it (which I can aspire to create someday, like supplying a semantic web to your inbox).
----
I guess one might say that from the outside, with this cover letter I'm trying to upgrade Bridgewater in my own way, even as Bridgewater would probably upgrade me in some sense if I worked there.
The key points here are that: ...
* "Evolution" does not mean "progress" as humans normally think of it (this from someone who was in a PhD program in Ecology and Evolution for a time),
* All reasoning depends on emotions (which give us reason to reason),
* Bridgewater has reached the size where it has a significant effect on the exchange economy that supports it and needs to consider the broader issues in its modeling and responsibilities to stakeholders;
* There can be many overlapping senses of "self" (body, family, philosophy, company, state, etc.) and models (including financial models) may need to take that in account, but that is not reflected in "Principles";
* There is a pressing need for sensemaking tools and I feel I can help create them (and have helped create some in the past);
* such tools might, through the FOSS gift economy, even be a way to take aspects of Bridgewater's self-improvement culture (like through structured arguments) and make that available to the general public, as if things like openness and rationality are true for Bridgewater, they must be true for the rest of the world, and maybe Bridgewater try to help the rest of the world achieve those things too (while also increasing its potential employee pool of people learning such tools);
* Bridgewater can probably better promote health among its community in terms of vitamin D, eating more vegetables, understanding the "Pleasure Trap", and having treadmill workstations;
---
Realistically, I'd have probably been a better match for the Dalio Family Foundation perhaps, directing time and money to open source sensemaking software efforts? :-)
Anyway, thankfully I found some other way to earn ration units (fiat dollars) that I can exchange for food and shelter, in the absence of a "basic income" and given pretty much all the land is enclosed and privatized, and even if it was not, it takes a village and lots of specific skills to live well in the wilderness...
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html [basicincome.org]
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:5, Interesting)
I interviewed at a hedge fund in Greenwich CT.. As soon as I walked in the door, I wanted to leave and knew I wouldn't take the job. The advertised money was 180k. I was a perfect fit.
I stayed through the interview just to see what I could see. Assholes as far as the eye could see. Every single person there, from the prostitute cum secretary that was at the front desk, to the manager I met to the mostly Asian guys who interviewed me just dripped arrogant asshole.
The interview mostly consisted of physics questions. I got the impression that they knew nothing about the advertised programming skill set they were looking for. The interview process amounted to what personalities like that do when they know they know they are in the presence of someone who just knows more than they do on a topic, and is therefore in THEIR eyes their "superior" .. they treated it like a form of ego combat and chose the field of combat to be the one they knew . Lots of physics questions..
Money makes people really ugly and people who just lust after money above all else can never be trusted, believed, or act as my employer. To see egos that inflated, you'd otherwise have to go to a martial arts exhibition or a bodybuilding contest or something. Perhaps people there were a little above average in intelligence but they literally walked and talked and postured as if they were simply from another planet and mere humans should not think they can understand what it is they do.
Reading the headlines, they still have that attitude. No small part of it is the coke and amphetamines that is an endemic part of that culture no doubt. Stimulants make people exactly that way.. I am superman... I am above everything- morality, other people's opinions, the law.....meanwhile they're killing brain cells by the tens of millions. ...
Some subcultures are so destructive any normal person could smell it on contact. This is one of them. You don't want that job at any price. Working with nothing but assholes coke fiends and sociopaths carries the potential to ruin your attitude towards not just work, but humanity itself.
It's what Sonya Sotomayor said in 60 Minutes this week,.. Until she was working as a prosecutor she didn't really grasp what evil was , that some people were just evil. She had to quit after some years lest she begin to lose a part of her humanity, her faith in the future and in other people.
This is a occupational hazard for cops also.
Life is short and you need to spend it doing constructive things that help humanity in ways whether large or small, personal or professional., creating that thing that only you will create or just being a good parent. THESE are the activities that keep civilization going and going forward, not the Foreign Exchange.
You have to fight in this world against the onslaught of assholes who hand you shitty experiences just to destroy your soul, because they're soulless ghouls and a part of being a soulless ghoul is to contemptuously and with pleasure destroy the things that are life affirming.
You have to guard your outlook and optimism , your vision of a better world and the belief that it can be realized from all attacks. That and time are your most precious assets.
A world in which good works from good-hearted people is freely flowing into it is the best defense, and by far the best offense against Wall Street / Hedge Fund scum. Don't let them even so much as brush up against your life, much less give them the position or leverage to make you think or feel anything on their account.
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:3, Funny)
Because, you know, it's everyone else, not you.
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:5, Insightful)
Lol, no, I don't think so. I took a job that pays $20K/yr less because there weren't assholes in the office. Having actually worked somewhere that was devastatingly dehumanizing* I realized the value of happiness.
-nbr
You know it's time to quit when you're in the dentist office, getting a root canal, not numbed because it's infected so badly the *caine's don't work, and that is preferable to being in the office. Moment of clarity.
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:4, Insightful)
Usually I'd say "if everyone you see is an asshole, look in the mirror", but finance (especially investment banking) is different. The odds of meeting 10 people all of whom are in the top 1% of asshole-ness are ... pretty good. Companies and sometimes industries have cultures.
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's what Sonya Sotomayor said in 60 Minutes this week,.. Until she was working as a prosecutor she didn't really grasp what evil was , that some people were just evil. She had to quit after some years lest she begin to lose a part of her humanity, her faith in the future and in other people.
This is a occupational hazard for cops also.
"Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster; and if you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes into you."
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:5, Funny)
That's all interesting and stuff, but I'd like to hear more about the hot secretary.
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:3)
That's a pretty straightforward application of the broken window fallacy.
The problem is not efficient application of capital. It's all about who enjoys the fruits of said efficiency (i.e. who is the owner of the capital in question).
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:5, Insightful)
The efficient application of capital is not a valuable service. It creates inflation and unemployment.
Incorrect. The efficient application of capital creates ... efficiencies. Banning ATMs because they take the jobs of bank tellers is no way to regulate an economy. And these advances create more time, more productivity, and in a natural economy it results in cheaper goods, not inflation.
Inflation is created by excessively increasing the supply of fiat currency, and that's done by the Federal Reserve.
Re:Reality check (Score:3)
I know a lot of very senior managers, including c-level execs, that don't do it "for the money".
The money's good, and they like it, and they don't turn it down, but most people do actually enjoy their work.
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:3)
Beyond a certain point, having more money doesn't really improve one's life all that much - at least, the motivation that money gives is lost. It's around $70k or so. After that point, you can toss more money at a guy, but they won't be motivated as much.
And given how much time one spends at work, making a few thousand more a year just being miserable over making a few thousand less but much happier is often well worth it.
Because once the soul gets sucked out, it's really hard to enjoy life outside work.
Hell, that higher-paying job can come with higher responsibilities and expectations of working long hours so you don't even have much time to enjoy outside work.
Generally speaking, one has to consider the holistic view - money is definitely a major factor, but there are other considerations as well - is it 40 hour workweeks versus 60, do the people there generally appreciative, how's the general area, etc. You're going to spend at least a third of your life there, getting your soul or raison d'etre sucked out of you by work may not be worth the extra few dollars. It's literally selling your soul to the devil.
Of course, as a fine 20-something, go right ahead and do that to get a few extra bucks, but after a decade you might want to reflect on what was accomplished. Made a lot of money, yes, but lost a lot of other stuff as well.
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:3)
It's a good point. I never said what they wanted. What they wanted was a GUI front end to an existing system. I wasn't inventing new equations to take down the Bank of England. Sure you can teach someone to program, but the very long list of nitpicking facts and relationships that you'd have to master, just the sheerest headcount of them- supposing they could be enumerated in the first place- would make it tough for someone with no experience to do what I do in anything like a reasonable time frame. Nevermind doing anything well which is mostly soft skills even I can't articulate.
Not that I'm a slouch at math.
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:5, Informative)
How do you get started in that field? Do most of them have a financial background with some computer science, or the reverse?
Well, it's a big field. A good place to start is wilmott.com [wilmott.com] and get into their forums. I have found the community there to be very helpful. I have seen postings with requirements for developing in C++ and C# and some places, if they can see that you have the programming ability, will teach you (or pay for your education) to take you further. It's a field where companies look SO much to get the edge that there are whole companies building straighter fibers (or microwave links) to the exchanges across the US to shave milliseconds off the time of a transaction.
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:2)
Anyone who has gotten started in that field, and is any good at it, isn't going to tell you how. :)
Sorry, that's part of the trade secret.
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:3)
So:
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:2)
How do you get started in that field? Do most of them have a financial background with some computer science, or the reverse?
Well, the Russian twins who were co-valedictorians at our STEM magnet school went to Harvard and Yale and were sucked into Wall Street during its heyday. So that's one way.
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:5, Insightful)
According to:
http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/ [cnn.com]
200K in Brooklyn is equivalent to $101K in Austin, TX.
Not that hard to make 100K in Austin, the only issue is that is surrounded by Texas.
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:4, Interesting)
This is an important point. I could make a lot more money elsewhere but I like the quality of life here.
Though I could be making some more money here but that's a different issue.
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:4, Interesting)
This is sort of a lie. I know people who claim to live in San Francisco because of good restaurants, good museums, good shows. And yet they don't participate in those activities even once a month, meanwhile if there is a good show or museum you can still attend even if you live 100 miles away.
And beautiful women are everywhere.
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:2)
Thanks for that. It showed me that my salary was effectively cut in half by moving to Manhattan.
Still, I think it's worth it.
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:2)
"the only issue is that is surrounded by Texas."
And lack of water.
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:2)
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:2)
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:2)
In other words; Wall Street is a great place to make a big impact with new (if carefully designed) systems, contemporary terminology, and excellent engineering.
ha.. hA. HA. HAHAHAHA!
Whoever told you this was either utterly ignorant, or just taking the piss, mate.
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:2)
or magazine subscriptions
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:3)
Ever read "Freakonomics"? The author spent some time with a gang (There's a story right there.) and found that economically the drug business resembles McDonalds. A few execs at the top make the big bucks, the rest have to live with their parents.
Re:Wanna earn $200K+? Two words... (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, the authors (Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner) didn't spend time with the gang, a graduate student named Sudhir Venkatesh was the one that figured that out.
As the story goes, Venkatesh was going around doing a sociological survey in Chicago, knocked on some apartment door, saw a bunch of drug dealers, and was thinking "well, that was a nice life" when to his surprise the drug dealers were happy to talk to him and eventually let him see the books.
Contractor (Score:3, Insightful)
You'll never make that much money as a salary. High annual rates are usually the exclusive province of contractual obligations and performance bonuses.
Re:Contractor (Score:5, Interesting)
I make 200+k a year working in Washington state, I'm a devops(aka a seriously good generalist).
To be blunt, I am better than most people and no I don't know everything. The problem with most people they have ZERO initiative in improving themselves. The fact is I'm a high school dropout which started coding for cash when I was rather young. I torched my childhood for education and experience, I regret nothing. I'm always in a state of learning, keeping up with new tech, OSs of all types, security and even find time for a personal/sex life.
TL;DR: stop playing video games and hit the books continuously.
Re:Contractor (Score:2)
Re:Contractor (Score:2)
I'm the same way. I'm always learning and trying to improve myself. Most people just stand still and rest on their laurels. I've picked up two new degrees and countless new skills over just the last 10 years.
Re:Contractor (Score:3)
But the other half is convincing potential employers that you're worth two or three times as much as they pay their average developers (or devops). How do you manage that? Being damn good is only step one, step two is making other people aware of your competence. I'm working on the first, and I think I'm making acceptable progress. The second... that's harder.
Me, I want to telecommute full time making maybe $100k, maybe $130k, somewhere in that range or better. But at my current job we just payed a contractor for some damn good work for $800 per month, and he's based inside the US. It's hard to justify a good paying remote job when someone surprisingly good is willing to work for almost nothing remotely.
Re:Contractor (Score:3)
You know what? I'm going to chime in here in this sea of ACs, even though I hate replying to ACs.
I "dropped out" of highschool (was there for a few days), was "homeschooled" after that (meh, I resisted that pretty well too -- it didn't last long). Eventually, I went on to have an easy time of getting excellent scores on a GED without any more prior study other than researching the most expedient way to take the test (which, it turns out, happens every Saturday in the state capitol. No appointment needed.).
How? I learn constantly. Always have. My hourly wage is far and beyond what most people my age make around here, irrespective of trade or education. And you know what? No meaningful employer has ever questioned my education: They hire me to do a job, I do it well and do it in short order, and then it's onto the next one.
That said, I'm not as busy as I might like at the moment. It would be good to have more work to accomplish on a daily basis, as that generally means more money. But I'm enjoying my time off in between little projects, and I know that I'll get more work from my clients in the future.
Last year was a bit different; I found myself being pulled thin, having lots of money, and little free time.
But nobody, anywhere, expects me to spend 8 (or 10 or 12 or 16) hours a day holding a desk down when things get slow. Nobody tells me what days I take off (if I want to go away for a week or two, I just don't schedule anything during that time). Nobody ever derisively says to me "We start work at 8:00AM here," when I pop in a few minutes late when my 40-minute commute turns into a 50-minute one day. And nobody ever kicks me out the door at 5, when I'm in the middle of a concentrated effort to get something done.
So even if my hourly wage is good, and my hours are limited: Fuck. I'm never going to go back to making 1/5th of what I make hourly, just to say I've put in 40 hours in a week.
It's not worth it. I'm happier now than I have been since I was a carefree teenager, though there were certainly times in the past where I was punching a clock and this wasn't the case.
Someone could say to me "I'll pay you ten times what you earn now, but you have to be at the office from 9 to 5, every day" and I'd tell them to get stuffed.
It doesn't matter how much money you earn in your particular subdivision or region vs. your peers. Happiness is key. Without it, there's no point in living -- let alone working.
What's your advice for earning the big bucks? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What's your advice for earning the big bucks? (Score:5, Funny)
I think step 2 is kind of unnecessary once you've developed time travel.
Re:What's your advice for earning the big bucks? (Score:2)
Yea, but it would be fun making a mess out of the company..... Oh wait.... Would that not cause a problem with your timeline?
I think I've seen this movie...
Step 1: Move to an expensive area (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Step 1: Move to an expensive area (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. I make significantly less than the industry average for my position, BUT I live in a six bedroom, 3 bath house on half an acre in the middle of a small/medium city. Work is 10 minutes from the house, the house is 5 minutes from shopping, and I'm 45 minutes from great fishing (and 2 hours from world-class fishing). My children go to great schools. My community has a low crime rate. There's a commuter airport ten minutes away and an international airport 3 hours away (by car). We have a nice theatre group in town and strong performing arts because of the local university. I work in a nice office with a door. I don't work for a publicly traded company and so I don't have to worry about the hellish nightmare called the quarterly report and all it entails. Oh...... and my bosses aren't Wall Street jerks with over-inflated egos and under-performing morals.
What's $200k compared to that? If I were to move to a large city I would have to command a salary of well over $200k to keep the same lifestyle. The money isn't really in the big companies unless you are a top-tier executive. It's in small to medium sized corporations where you can work in a smaller city for a comparatively higher standard of living.
Re:Step 1: Move to an expensive area (Score:3)
Care to tell where you live? Or is that against the first rule of fight club?
Re:Step 1: Move to an expensive area (Score:4, Interesting)
Working in a location that pays higher dollars makes perfect sense if you are also investing that money in a house/condo in the same area. Why? Because it is not a bad retirement plan. You sell your $1m condo in downtown whereever and buy a nice home in a country setting for less than half that and live off the rest. Risk the housing market will go down? Yes, but not as much risk as in less dense areas, and IMHO lower than the risk of investing in the stock/bonds/currencies/minerals/commodities markets.
You should still have some retirement savings, but living and working in a high standard of living area and then moving out later is a good idea. If you can stand it.
Re:Step 1: Move to an expensive area (Score:3)
Issue Is... (Score:4, Interesting)
I work in IT for a large multinational company and the issue I see with our approach to developers is better, faster, cheaper. In reality what this boils down to is cheaper and good enough. Projects tend to drag on for longer then they should but the development expense from a salary perspective is fairly minimal because the bulk of it is being done offshore.
I think if you want to earn the big dollars as a programmer either need to be the best in the field working for one of the big tech guys like Apple, Google, Etc... Or you need to go work for a start-up for bad starting wages but a percentage ownership in the company.
The only other option I see is going out on your own and starting your own development company but then if you earn big dollars it's because your business is doing well not because you are programming most of the time.
Re:Issue Is... (Score:5, Informative)
If you can get them, security clearances seem to be a popular way of not getting outsourced and competing with a rather smaller(if alarmingly large, on a per-capita basis) pool of applicants.
Re:Issue Is... (Score:3)
"Never" work for a BDC, "never" for a cost center (Score:5, Interesting)
I work in IT for a large multinational company...
Now you have n! problems as a developer.
$0.05 worth of free advice to anyone out there:
#1 - _NEVER_ do software development for a large company as an employee. There's too much bullshit, politics, and brain dead process to get anything done. Also, you're nothing but a replaceable part. Go small to mid size, or (better yet) be a contractor. Which brings me to my second point:
#2 - _NEVER_ do software development where your efforts do not generate revenue unless you're taking the job to try and learn something. If the project/organization/whatever isn't making a profit off of every line of code you write, GTFO. Otherwise, you are simply an expense to be fucking MBA'd and "managed" as opposed to a source of revenue. When those goddamned suits look at you, make sure they smile and see dollar signs & black ink.
#3 - Contracting let's you violate rule #1 & #2 for fun and profit. BDC's (Big Dumb Companies) are so fucked up, most competent hands-on developers don't want to touch them with a 10 foot pole. That's where contractors & contracting firms come in. When you're not an employee of BDC, Inc. you get to go work for HotShit consultants LLC. When some project is fucked and some idiot CIOs neck is on the line he'll shell out a metric ass-load of cash to get it fixed. Enter you and your friends as HotShit LLC to come in and do the dirty work. Since you work for HotShit LLC, you're of course not a direct employee of BDC Inc. (or directly involved with the politics and BS thereof ) which fixes rule #1 and most importantly, as a consultant you're putting money in the pocket of HotShit LLC thus fixing rule #2 at the same time. Fun. Profit.
The same advice in every profession (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The same advice in every profession (Score:5, Insightful)
Same message but with a more positive spin. (And yes, I'm in that 200K+ category).
This just in.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Only a few people make 2.5x the average...
Also news:
Only a few people have substantially higher than average intelligence,
Only a few cars have much higher maximum acceleration than the industry average,
Only a few people have substantially lower sprint or marathon times than average,
Only a few drisophila have curlier wings than average...
Only a few people have substantially more acute hearing perception than average,
I'm not sure if it's just the summary, but it seems the author may not understand the nature of the bell curve and why it's a decent model for population distributions.
Re:This just in.... (Score:2)
But set your sights above the average and below Scrooge McDuck and you won't find many developers in that salary range.
From that it seemed like the submitter was trying to imply that there's a dip in the curve between those two, with some average developers, some rich-like-McDuck developers, and few inbetween.
Re:This just in.... (Score:2)
And 50% of people are dumber than the average person.
Frightening, isn't it?
Re:This just in.... (Score:5, Informative)
except that is only true if intelligence is a purely straight line going from dumb to genius, which it is not.
Or any curve with half the area on each side of the midpoint.
So, it would be true if intelligence were a bell curve too, which it is generally considered to be the case.
there isn't a number 1 most average person, but a large group of people that would all fit in the group.
Yes, but no matter what test you devise, there will be a median, and half the people will be below it.
The people above and below that level are going to be much less than ~50%.
Have you seen a bell curve? Yes, the majority of the population is within a standard deviation of the midpoint, but half of them are still below it.
Parroting a saying without understanding I'd guess puts you in that group.
Where does that put you?
Re:This just in.... (Score:2)
Take a stats class or continue to expose your stupidity.
Re:This just in.... (Score:2)
funny, your math teacher didn't understand bell curves and accepted methodology of using standard deviations for grading then
I make a decent living as a Data Analyst (Score:4, Interesting)
Posting anonymously only because I know my employees read Slashdot but:
I make a very decent living (not 200k but well above the median income for the area) working managing data analysts using SAS and R. This field is rapidly growing and without enough graduates coming out of college with the appropriate mix of programming, math, and business skill we find ourselves looking for anyone with any relevant knowledge combination.
This void is being filled at a nearly alarming rate of high salaries for what amounts to somewhat limited skill. The average salary for someone with 3-5 years of related experience is just under $100,000/year + benefits, which is pretty impressive for an area which has a median income of about $53,000 a year.
Want to get money as a developer? Learn to write SQL, SAS and now especially R and be able to do simple statistics, generate explanatory charts on queried data, and have decent communication skill.
Just get out of debt and you'll be fine. (Score:4, Insightful)
Always strive to get the most you can, but honestly don't worry about not making over $200k. Doing something you can enjoy is more important.
I was making $50k/year or so, saved money, avoided credit card debt, but I also had a car payment, house payment, etc.
I then made it up to $100k/year or so, saved money, avoided credit card debt, but I also had a car payment, house payment, etc.
Which was ridiculous! I'm making double the money but my debt ratio is the same!
I now have no car payment, investing money into retirement, giving, and I'm on goal to have my house paid off this year - at age 30.
Yes I know cost of living varies, but if you budget your money, stay out of restaurants, and get out of debt you'll live great even earning well below Scrooge McDuck.
(Dave Ramsey's baby steps...)
From the obvious facts department (Score:3)
In fact, the number of developers earning $200,000 and above is under 10%,
In other news, water is wet.
Was anyone under the delusion that it was ever over 10%?
Re:From the obvious facts department (Score:3)
50K. 120K. Same work. (Score:5, Informative)
I made 50K doing IT for a department at MIT.
I made 120K for exactly the same work at a hedge fund.
THat's a 70K price to pay for the intense satisfaction that comes from helping scientists engage in science. Worth it IMO.
Re:50K. 120K. Same work. (Score:5, Interesting)
If it's in Minnesota he was right to flat turn them down. I would have hung-up as soon as they said where they were from.
3m recruited 100 California engineers and tracked them. After 2 winters they only had 1 left, he was originally from Wisconsin.
Depends on where you live (Score:3)
$200K is insane (Score:2)
$200K? That's crazy talk. Maybe in San Francisco but not back East...
Computer engineer working on Aerospace control system software: less than half of that. Much less than half.
Re:$200K is insane (Score:2)
That's because aerospace software is written in a very strictly controlled structured process. You write your object to a detailed spec, following well defined guidelines. A side effect of this is that anyone who can code and follow instructions can do the job. So they can pick you up and drop someone else in. And the development teams tend to be big enough that nobody has the leverage to demand more money.
I was in the aerospace business many years ago and I managed to find a niche inside a company with a product that only needed a few developers. It was an enterprise app that was very valuable (we replaced a failed $250 million s/w project in 6 months with 5 developers). At the time, I worked my way up to a salary well above $200K (in todays dollars).
But in the end, the company took our project and outsourced it for a price of close to $500 million. Because aerospace management has a fear of loss of control. Its worth half a billion dollars to cot a contract rather than risk 5 people walking out the door for more money. And with captive customers who will pay whatever it takes to buy aircraft, why worry about costs?
NSA (Score:5, Funny)
I hear an NSA contractor has an opening in Hawaii. Pays $200,000.
Re:NSA (Score:5, Funny)
Forget $200k... (Score:2)
I would be happy to have ANY job in Software Development. .NET or Oracle or J2EE or any number of other technologies and no-one is going to give you the experience.
But around here everyone wants 3-5 years experience in
Re:Forget $200k... (Score:4, Funny)
you know you can get free versions of all of those?
Contractor (Score:3)
Re:Contractor (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you need healthcare, then you can forget that route.
Contractors get no health coverage and many people can't get it without group policies.
Re:Contractor (Score:3)
Have you heard of a little thing called "The Affordable Care Act"? Anybody can buy their own health insurance now. Unless you have some very serious medical issues, it's only a few hundred bucks a month, which is much more than the pay difference between a "contractor" and a "full time" developer.
Re:Contractor (Score:2)
I tried pricing some out recently. A couple months ago, it was $700 a month. That is not what I would call a few hundred dollars.
Re:Contractor (Score:2)
I just tried again, $623/month is the lowest I can find. 30 year old male, non-smoker, NY state.
Re:Contractor (Score:2)
Re:Contractor (Score:2)
Re:Contractor (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, so move to a first world country (ie one with universal health care) and *then* become a contractor..
Location & Risk/Reward (Score:5, Insightful)
Two factors to consider: Location and risk/reward ratio.
The "$200,000" figure -- as mentioned earlier in the discussion -- is extremely location-dependent. Let's say you live in Salt Lake City, UT and make $100,000 per year. I'm from the area, and $90K-$110K seems to be a very typical pay rate for sysadmins and programmers with 10 or more years of experience in their field, if you include health and other benefits in the W-2 (all the employers do!). Then let's cross-reference that with the Cost Of Living calculator at http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/ [cnn.com] . To enjoy an equivalent quality of life, here's what that guy needs to make (these are all area averages, not the specific cities referenced):
San Francisco, CA: $171,987
Los Angeles, CA: $140,380
Seattle, WA: $123,784
Raleigh, NC: $99,154
Austin, TX: $97,991
Washington, DC:$151,479
New York, NY (Manhattan): $231,289
New York, NY (Queens): $162,684
Advice for earning the big bucks? If you want to earn a high-end "salary", move to one of the technology hubs. Get an education in finance and high-end mathematics. Or get a security clearance, shine up your resume and skills, and plan to have no life outside of work due to travel abroad. Get some solid experience, get in on some high-profile projects, and job-hop when you're at the apex of your visibility in your company for much better pay.
If you don't want to live in Silicon Valley or New York, then be your own boss. Write your own products. Innovate in a field that lacks innovation. Develop software nobody has really thought of before. Monetize it and make a living. Cash out by selling the company to a bigger fish, and start working on your next idea. My company, for instance, buys small companies who create innovative software a LOT and integrates that software into its other offerings. And that strategy works very well for continually expanding the customer base and revenue. Sometimes it works out well for the little guy, sometimes not. It's a risk of running your own business.
Working for someone in a "typical" IT or software engineering field is typically not gonna make you rich. It can make you a good living with solid pay and far less stress than running your own business or working in high-pressure financial and security markets, though. And you're less likely to lose several fortunes on your way to making a fortune if someone else takes the risk, and you get paid the salary. Risk/Reward.
For me, quality of life matters a lot. I've been on both sides of the fence (trying to make it in business for myself vs. drawing a salary), and right now in my life it makes more sense to draw a reasonable salary doing a job that I love in a great environment working with quality people and making a positive difference without feeling that my job is my life. But I know I'm probably not going to strike it rich doing so... and I'm OK with that.
Absolute salaries need adjusting... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you don't take into account geographical issues, saying "$200K" means very little.
I am a Mexican software developer. I consider myself well paid, and while I am far from living a life of luxury, I get enough to even set some aside to make some savings. My salary? Somehwere around US$25K a year. And I find I am a bit over the average in my country — Take as an example the study on salaries for 2012 published by Software Gurú [sg.com.mx], a national software development magazine.
(For reference sake, the US dollar is currently at ~MX$12, and we usually talk about our payment in monthly periods... so for your convenience, you can even read the numbers presented as if they were yearly salaries in US dollars ;-) )
Realize that salary isn't the most important thing (Score:2)
I make above $100K working 8x5x48. Been doing it since I was 40. Last two nights I worked 10 hours, but it really was needed. Rarely get called.
I'm smart, but not an expert in anything. I am a damn good trouble shooter and work on old software because new developers are too full of themselves to do it and I have a lot of experience working on code I know nothing about without finding excuses.
My salary gives me a very comfortable lifestyle. I drive a 2001 Blazer because I'm too cheap to trade in a truck that works. A truck I paid $12K for in 2003. I have a 1984 and 1989 Goldwing in the garage that get ridden over 15K miles a year because I see no reason to buy a new bike when I can get a used bike has less than 50K miles on it for $5K and will probably run over 200K miles instead buying an overpriced new bike because "it's cool". I have no debt except for the house, and pretty darn good 401K and savings accounts.
It's amazing how far a good $100K salary can go if you spend it on stuff you need instead of stuff you just want. I do buy things from time to time that I just 'want', I don't live like a pauper. But I've found that a $1000 audio system meets my needs, and 42" TV is actually big enough. So my wife and I spend our spare money enjoying life by traveling a few times a year on long weekend trips instead of stuff that just takes up space.
I have nothing against an extravagant lifestyle. If I could make $200K or more a year doing what I do now with the same level of stress, of course I'd do it. And I'd probably have a newer car and, nicer house. But not the bikes, I live my old Wings.
But I don't think I'm good enough make that much, and I don't think too many jobs like that exist. And I'm not willing to work harder to make it that far.
So I guess self-motivation is probably also a factor.....
Management, ownership, PhD but not "employees" (Score:3)
I would imagine that anyone wanting to earn over $200,000 per year (and not living in some of the super high cost of living cities like NYC or LA) would need to:
1) Have a PhD and a proven record in developing marketable, patentable technology. Basically advanced knowledge and experience that makes you extremely valuable AND very, very difficult to replace.
2) An ownership stake in whatever the business is beyond being a minor shareholder. This means partner or substantial investor in the business where you get to make decisions.
3) Management involvement, and this probably removes you from the programmer or "do-er" category.
I think salaries over $200k in most of the country would be extremely unusual for people who actually do work and aren't management, highly educated/professionally credentialed or owners.
I think senior management generally doesn't want to pay that kind of money for people who actually do work. I think it violates cultural norms in business by altering the status quo hierarchy. Pay is used to enforce the hierarchy and someone making that much money might feel a little too independent for his actual place in the system.
It's also an open question why you would need to spend so much money for someone in that role. I'm sure there are a small handful of "superstars" who might be that valuable, but there's only so many of those people, jobs and managers who recognize that.
And even if you found a job that would pay like that, I'm sure it would come with horrible deadlines, terrible travel, bad working conditions, etc.
Said best by Zig Ziglar (Score:5, Interesting)
Inspirational speak Zig Ziglar had a story that illustrates this point pretty well. I'm going to try to recall the details, but the gist is pretty simple.
Some railroad laborers were out working on a track one day when a luxurious single-car train pulled up. A voice called out from the car and said "Dave! Is that you?". One of the laborers looked up and said "Yea, I'm Dave. John, how are you?"
Dave was invited into the car and the two were in there for nearly an hour before Dave emerged and the two men embraced as old friends would do.
When Dave got back down and picked up his tools to begin working again, the luxury rail car pulled away. One of the other laborers asked Dave, "Was that John Abrams, president of the railroad?" Dave replied "Yes, sure is. He and I started on the same day in the same job 30 years ago." When the man pushed a little further and said "Well, if you two started on the same day in the same job, why is he running things and you're out here with a shovel?"
Dave thought for only a moment before answering.
"When I went to work for this company 30 years ago I went to work for $3.25 an hour. When John started, he went to work for the railroad."
Maybe a tad cheesy, but the point is pretty simple.
Re:Said best by Zig Ziglar (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe a tad cheesy, but the point is pretty simple.
The point is also almost completely mythical: Of the people who are thoroughly devoted employees, only a tiny fraction of them will ever come remotely close to being the president of a major corporation. For example, if you figure that 1 out of every 100 employees is working all-out in a large corporation, then that's a pool of about 1000 people. We'll assume that each of these people has a 50-year career with the company, and the average president is in charge for about 5 years, and that the company only promotes executives from within. So, mathematically speaking, of those 1000 people, under very favorable conditions, only 10 of them will be president, while 990 of them will have simply given up their family life, free time, potential earnings from switching jobs, etc for absolutely nothing.
Three words: "Booz" "Allen" "Hamilton" (Score:3)
I hear they even have an opening in Hawaii.
Lol (Score:3)
A $200K developer is $190K arrogance and $10k effectiveness.
Re:Don't be a developer. (Score:4, Insightful)
THIS
You're either the ho or the pimp. Pimps don't have bosses.