Good positions fill quickly, just like good developers find jobs quickly. What's left is bad developers and bad jobs.

So what you're seeing is not hundreds of employers who don't know what the market rate is. It's dozens of employers who refuse to believe the market rate is where it is, and therefore continue advertising for the same position over and over. There will always be that $50k Senior Dev position available in Hillsboro because they're never going to fill it.

Slightly longer answer: It almost always pays to go to the center of your field. You get paid less at a relatively small company in Portland because they get paid less. Firms in Silicon Valley focus on eliminating whole industries; when they succeed at that, they capture basically all the value that the incumbents in that industry had. That gives them large quantities of cash, and since there are so many other companies in the region competing for the same talent pool, a lot of that cash goes to employees.

BTW, $80-100K/year is quite low in Silicon Valley. That might be a starting salary at Microsoft for someone fresh out of school.

Silicon Valley has really, really nice weather, almost to the point of monotony. It rained something like 3 times last summer, and the rest of the time it was 75-85 degrees without being too humid. There's a lot of asian cuisine available, and some of the best restaurants (of many varieties) in the world to the North in Napa. Nature is extremely accessible, and some of the best skiing in the US is a relatively short drive (the Rockies are much, much better than the Appalachians). It's a day-tripper's heaven.

As for downsides, Houses tend to be smaller, and even those are absurdly expensive. Rents in the better parts are just a cut below low-end NYC rents. The atmosphere could be described as "Irrational Exuberance" or more commonly as an echo chamber, which can be great encouragement if you're trying to do something crazy, but it can also severely weaken your BS filter if you're not careful. Silicon Valley itself is better-than-average suburban sprawl, but it's still suburban sprawl. The public transit system is lackluster compared to NYC, but it is an option, at least. Access to a car is generally necessary (ZipCar might work, though).

There are a bunch of other upsides and downsides, but those are the impressions off the top of my head from having lived there a bit less than a year. Overall, I really like it.

It is not a dollar-for-dollar match when you move to Silicon Valley. The pay disparity between living in SV and not living in SV is disproportionate to the cost of living. (In no way do I intend that to sound negative.)

Live in Midwest: Job 1: Make 65,000. Job 2: Make 70,000.

Live in the Valley: Job 1: Make 120,000. Move to Midwest. Job 2: Probably keep making 120,000.

I'm genuinely curious:

What whole industries have been eliminated? Also what value do you refer to? Are you saying that all profit that used to go to industry X now goes to a silicon valley company?

Independent bookstores. Catalog retailers. Much of general retail. Antique & collectible shops. Classified ads. Yellow pages. Newspapers & magazines. Books. The music cartel. Travel agents. Realtors and education are probably next.

And yes, all (or most) of the profit that used to go to those industries now goes to Amazon/EBay/Craigslist/Google/Apple/Kayak etc.

amazon and local booksellers or borders

netflix and blockbuster

google and {altavista, yahoo (on their way), excite, ask, infoseek, inktomi}

oracle and a long list of competitors

This would be a fun list to really spend some time on

Also, I've heard that companies prefer to pay what a job (they think) is worth, regardless of location. Just something I've heard.

And of course, they will think that whatever they pay is whatever it is worth, because they have no other indicator of fair prices.

In a place like Silicon Valley, it's impossible to not meet somebody that's better than you.

Either that, or I'm seriously underestimating your programming ability!

If you only make around 60k now, don't expect to get a 100% raise once you move over to a tech hub, unless you are an amazing negotiator. Shoot for 85-90 (plus some stocks). Don't waste time at a company that doesn't have a lot of growth potential. Work harder and output more than the rest of your team does. Stay visible, make sure they know the value of your contributions. A few 10% raises/promotions later and you could be up to 120k+ in no time.

And this one is no other. And I live in the Bay Area… my internship was nowhere the $8k mentioned at some point for Google and my first salary was pretty far from the $100k that are floating around here once again.

That being said, I actually checked salaries of H1b (I was one too) at my current and previous companies and mine looked decent in comparison. So, I'm not sure if it's matter of me picking the wrong/cheap companies (and being bad at negotiating, but I know that) or that there is some selection bias going on.

1) Becoming a Top 5% coder will end up being a much better thing to focus on than how much money you can earn by leaving grad school.

2) I got a 48% pay increase once. An article at Quintessential Careers - you never name a price/desired salary and never disclose your past salary. There are a TON of little things like this that programmers just don't realize.

Most companies are losers - they would rather pay you $50K for $100K of work and have you miserable than pay you $100K and have you happy and contribute $1 million worth of work. You have to get them to pay you a lot.

3) Do you really want to leave grad school for an offer like this? Is it the money - because if you like grad school but would leave for a job that you don't like just for money then it would be a colossal failure.

4) Eastern Wa and Portland. Waste of your life if you're a developer.

Ideal - Silicon Valley, NYC. Very Good - Seattle, Austin, Boston, perhaps places like Colorado etc.

Portland people are cool and girls are amazing. However, if you want to be the best you have to go where the best are.

5) Your post about 'Let down by School' etc. Get out of that thinking - You are responsible 100%. You were let down only by yourself.

6) You have to figure out what markets out of the ones you like are hot.

iPhone and Android App developers are charging $100 per hour or more. So 470 hours (10 weeks) for what you are saying average salary ($47K). It's going to become even more. I'm not even talking about the best. This is top 15% of mobile app developers.

7) Why exactly do you care whether you make $50K a year or $100K?

3.) I do enjoy grad school, but I'm at a mediocre school and I've learned that I enjoy coding much more than research.

4.) I'm in Eastern WA temporarily due to personal reasons, my next stop is either Seattle or the Valley.

5.) That post was more in response to what I hear from other people, trying to encourage them to get out of that thinking. If that's how I came across I'd better look it over again though. I'm quite happy with where I'm at and I do try to take responsibility for my actions.

7.)Main reason I can think of is companies that value software pay those kind of salaries vs. companies looking for code zombies. I've been in a shop nearly like that and I don't want to repeat it.

There's a huge race for talent right now. You've got a peculiar background compared to most startup hires, but if you've got the chops to make it thru an interview, I imagine you'd get snatched up in the Valley (or Seattle) for $100-110k, easy. In the Valley, probably more.

I know a great company in Seattle that'd give you a $12k signing bonus, give ME $12k for referring you, and give you an iPad just for making it to the interview process.

Disclaimer: No idea if you can ship software, how broad your skills are (web dev front end to backend? Sysadmin chops? iOS?), etc.

Now if you are just using the words average and median as substitutes and are seeing figures talking about $80K _median_ salaries, then the "location/experience" are likely to be the explanation, but if you really are hearing about average salaries, you have to factor in that, in systems with the characteristic imbalance of wages, something like 85% of programmers will get below-average salaries.

My friend says that he isn't able to get people to join his present company even at those rates and the only people attending interviews are clueless Indian developers who are waiting for their Green Cards[1] but hardly know how to create a table in MySQL. The good people who do join soon leave for better companies or startups.

[1] I am Indian myself fwiw. I am not saying all Indian devs are clueless, just that those applying at my friend's company are.

$75-$100k represents 0-5 year engineer in the vast majority of cases. Most mid-career folks earn between $130-$160k.

n.b. There are definitely exceptions. Difficult and specific hires will generally command market rate + 50%.

It'd be great to compare for those of us based in the UK.

Incidentally I also noticed a comment here that mentioned that everyone is hiring, presumably in the Valley, and suggested you brush up your resume and go to networking events and look for a better offer. If you do decide to dust off your resume then you may be interested in my new startup http://www.mightycv.com/. You can sign up for the beta with this code: 22MARCH2011. It's a resume builder aimed at developers/hackers and integrates with HN, StackOverflow and Github. It imports from LinkedIn too. Here's my MightyCV by way of an example: http://robeastham.mightycv.com .

First I think it is 180k gross salary, not really "base". Second, as I said, all I know is that he is working on some kind of CRUD Rails Insurance App that makes its company millions of dollars. He is just a competent Rails dev. No genius of any kind or any extraordinary skills like, say Linus Torvalds. Maybe he is being paid a premium because he is the only capable dev in the company. Maybe he just got lucky. He has a dozen years or so of experience. I really don't know any details hence the "anecdote" prefix.

If it helps, I knew middle managers at Intuit were drawing well above 200k US$ at nowhere near "Senior Director" level. My immediate boss in India was drawing around that much. And his boss about 300k. Another "dotted line"/ matrix org( heh!) immediate superior was getting >250k as well. This guy was a "Chief Architect" and not manager at all. (well in Intuit all these positions are very political and not really about tech at all, still) And he had a 3-4 layers above him before he reached the boardroom players at Intuit. I don't consider GlassDoor to be authoritative but here is a report for a position (plain jane "architect") that would be one level below my "Chief Architect" boss.

http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Intuit-Software-Architect-Mo...

Seems to bear out my thesis that these kind of salaries aren't all that rare. To repeat, I am not saying GlassDoor estimates are accurate, just that in this case, it bears out my personal experience.

Another anecdote: My title at Intuit (India) had an additional (and empty) "Senior Program Manager" tacked onto "Architect" and I was getting > 100k in India. (In Intuit, when I was there, Indian salaries were roughly half US salaries for the same position.) They still find it very hard to hire senior technical people. Go figure.

My personal hypothesis on such things is that salaries follow perceived (vs actual) value add. I had nothing to do at Intuit except attend endless meetings about meetings and write the occasional email. I quit in 6 months.(It helped that I really didn't need the money and I could make an equivalent amount but actually working for it (which I am doing now touch wood)). My former division at Intuit has delivered nothing (except PowerPoint) in the last couple of years but everyone who is still there keeps drawing their salaries. Some even got raises.

So, yes. Intuit is a cash flush/high paying company, but I still wouldn't really blink at someone getting 200 k in San Fransisco, without being anything like a VP, but hey I don't live there. What do I know? I am glad to concede to people "on the ground".

PS : I also have friends, who are really good developers working on very cutting edge projects in Google (Mountain View) who don't make anything near 250 k. They are very fulfilled by their work and don't seem to care. So it seems to be all over the place. But there certainly are very normal devs getting >200k in SV. (and of course many more at WallStreet companies but that is probably a separate discussion).

In my experience "chief architects" do tend to get paid a lot, regardless of direct reports.

By the way - this discussion is very confusing since most people in this thread are talking about base salary, yet you seem to consistently talk about entire package.

Isn't USD100k a ridiculously large salary in Bangalore for any job that has 'Developer' in the title. I'm actually completely blown that a person at a software company in Bangalore could be making that much.

Salaries in Bangalore are heavily dependent on "years of experience". The way the HR folks calculate expected salary is something like 2-2.5 lakhs Indian rupees(about 4-5k US $ depending on the exchange rate) * number of years of experience. So with about 12 years of experience[1] you should be getting about 48-60k$ if you are still coding and are at least somewhat good at your job. This is the average* though and falls precipitously as you move towards the bodyshopping end of the bell curve. (You can still make this kind of money as a manager though, even at the most cheapskate bodyshopper)

The really good folks get better salaries than that. The interesting thing about Bangalore is that the range of salaries is wide. You have barely literate "coding bodies" (who the "outsourcers" encounter) drawing puny salaries and also very senior devs who can pick and choose where and what they work on and get close to US salaries(and often have spent a few years in the USA before heading home for good).

So yes 100k is high but not ridiculously so, (If by "ridiculous" you mean someone getting such a salary is some kind of absolute rarity, and an object of wonder when spotted). Otoh I've never heard of any kind of dev/tech person getting say 200k $ or more, though I know people in the US who do. (they are pretty rare too)

"I'm actually completely blown that a person at a software company in Bangalore could be making that much."

You really should talk to some senior devs in Google's (say) Bangalore office ;-). Twenty years from when outsourcing took off,things have changed, even in Bangalore although that change is still unevenly distributed. Not every dev in India is grubbing for the crumbs from the outsourcer's table any more.

That said, this is just my viewpoint based on what I see. Consume with appropriate dosages of salt. Even better talk to some world class Indian devs who chose to stay on in or come back to India and find out for yourself.

[0] Of course some "architects" are just people who got old and never got promoted, just is in the USA.

[1] Title Inflation is a real problem due to differing social expectations etc which is a subject that would take pages to explain.

[2]there is heavy pressure to move into management (see [1]) and it is only the really committed devs who stay coding for 10 years +. Which makes their supply all that much rarer for when you really need them.

Also, while a few make $100k, $50k is common for people with over a decade of good experience - but do remember that there are relatively very few folks (<5-10% of the industry) in India with over a decade of experience.

So what you can do with 45k year? Well this is 3750 euro per month, it's enough to pay for a decent house, to pay your bills, to go for vacation a few times per year. If you have sons better your wife to work as well, otherwise life it is still feasible but with restrictions.

What you can do with $100k in US and how much of this are spent in taxes?

Edit: btw a difference is that in UE you don't have to think too much about putting money in the bank in order to retire, the government will provide you with a post-work salary that is proportional to your past income (at least this is how it works in Italy, France, Germany, ...). Also medical stuff are mostly free.

You have social security, medicare, state and federal income tax.

You should take into account that some parts of the US are more expensive than others, and that state income tax is not the same for every state. Also, 401k (pension plans) and some other types of savings, investments are deductible from the taxes.

It all depends on who you live with, do you have children, etc.

Relatively few personal purchases are deductible. The most heavily used personal deduction is mortgage interest (interest, not principal). Otherwise most personal deductions are things like tuition, major healthcare expenses, tax paid elsewhere (sales, property), and alimony payments.

And for a majority of Americans, none of these things actually appear on their tax return. Only 41% of American taxpayers file a return listing the deductions above ("itemize"), usually because they carry a mortgage.

The other 59% just take a single deduction ("standard deduction") of about $5800 per adult (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deduction).

Finally, if someone found legitimate ways to deduct the things you listed (for example, they were unreimbursed business expenses), they would run into the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). AMT is a floor on the percent of income which must be paid as tax. In calculating AMT, most deductions get ignored (and it ignores one's effective tax rate in other years).

The American Opportunity/Hope and Lifetime Learning Credits can be applied when using the standard deduction. Also, many cars have significant tax credits though it seems the bar has been raised.

100k US$ bruto is equivalent to a bruto pay (100k * 0.7 euros/dollar / 1.20 (increased costs) = 60k euro (equivalent cost for employer).

In the US, that 100k employee can spend 66000 dollars. In the EU an employee can spend, on that exact same salary the equivalent of 32000 dollars (VAT deducted so as to reflect that most US doesn't have any significant VAT or sales tax).

Yes medical stuff is mostly free, and retirement benefits are included. But you're paying > 50% tax (some of it's hidden : your employer pays directly and it doesn't count to bruto wages, but obviously it still counts on the balance sheet)

And this is ignoring VAT, which is another 20% on any amount of money you actually spend.

Oh, and, at least where I'm from, nobody's happy with their retirement benefits. It's about 80% from your average wage during your career. The killer is, of course, in inflation. Suppose you ended your career at 4000 net, after 45 years of working, at an average inflation rate of 4%. How much retirement do you get for those 60% taxes you paid ?

1532 euros/month

The best deal is simple : work in the US, retain EU citizenship and have a US private sector pension (or, say, a Swiss or Australian one, but it must be outside of the EU) + minimum pension in the EU (minimum pension is about 750 euros/month). If you own a house, of course, that 750 euros is quite comfortable. If you don't, it's basically impossible to survive on it.

Secondly just out of school should get significantly below average salaries. You don't realize it until you've been out in the working world for a bit. But people learn a lot in their first few years of being in the real world.

Thirdly I wonder whether your figures are accurate. My experience is that people's impressions of other people's salaries are often out of sync with reality. In part because companies push people who make more to never let on that they do, so that other people don't push to make more money. (I've had the experience at multiple jobs of being told directly that letting people know my salary is a fireable offense.)

I doubt that enforcement would be a problem if they wished to enforce it.

Please don't make this an argument about what language is better, blah blah blah, but the language you specialize in makes a difference -- at least in terms of salary.

From my limited experience, Ruby/Rails pays significantly more than PHP or .NET . I hear Java pays even more... Just sayin...

Edit: This is why I love these salary threads. We could have just potentially changed the OP's life (for the better I hope), even if to most people its just an annoying topic that keeps coming up on HN.

1. Switch Jobs

2. Ask for at least $10K more money each time.

1: Companies are aren't going to just give you money. They don't have much incentive to do that. Most people take their 3% cost of living increase (plus bonus and a few % if you are lucky).

Most of my contemporaries agree. You have to switch jobs.

2: If you don't ask for it, you aren't going to get it. HR depts have more flexibility on hiring than raises. So coming in, make sure you get the salary/bonus/vacation/etc you want right off the bat.

So the salaries are higher, but the standards for hiring are also that much higher. If you are that good at programming, come to the Bay Area and you'll find a job. There are always people hiring...

A few Seattle companies I know of have hired portland telecommuters because they've had trouble finding good talent up here. I have no idea how much that is happening outside of my experience.

[1] http://www.bestplaces.net/col/?salary=55000&city1=541590...

Also, tech companies or companies started by or run by tech people may pay at a higher rate because they know the value of the skills and want to attract and invest in top quality employees.

I examined the repositories you have on github, looked at your linked-in registry, and then followed a link to your blog at http://solarmist.blogspot.com

There wasn't a lot to go on, but the main thing which I noticed was I didn't see any evidence of great depth in your skills. You have breadth pretty well covered. Your Linked-in page shows C, C++, Java, Perl, JavaScript, Python, SQL, Scheme, Lisp. But then when I looked at your github page, I saw a SICP repository, where you had been recently working on the exercises from SICP. Great! I commend you on that! But I only saw exercises from the first 3 exercises in Chapter 1, dated from about two weeks ago. Maybe you do know Scheme really well --- it could be that you simply haven't uploaded them, or I couldn't find it while Googling you. But the impression I got of the seven projects which you uploaded to Github, was that you're a bit of a dilettante. You've started a lot of projects, enough to upload them to github or fork them so you would have your own repo on github.... but then I didn't see a whole lot of sustained effort by you.

Your resume also shows that at different jobs you've had to use many different languages and technologies. This is not unusual, but what you need to do is to find a way to make yourself become a top-notch expert in one or two areas. Breadth is good, and you'll get some points for that. But if you go and compete to get a job at companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, who want to accept only the very best, you'll need one or two areas where you are quite deep in your expertise.

Fortunately, that's not _that_ hard. While there's a lot of Malcolm Gladwell's work that I don't really agree with, his claim from his book Outliers that 10,000 hours (5 years of full-time sustained effort) is what it takes to become an expert in a field sounds right to me. Focus is key.

Ten years of experience, if it's a few years doing PL/SQL, a few years doing Javascript, a few years doing ML, and a few years doing Java, isn't as impressive as ten years working in a single area, where people are asking you to present at conferences and people recognize you as a leader in a particular area. This may be obvious, but someone who has done the latter will easily be getting far, far more than $100k, trust me. :-)

Something that I would suggest is that even if you have a pretty low interest in changing employers, try to get in some interviews. As long as you would be at least open to accepting a job offer, it's fair game to try getting an interview at companies like Intel, Facebook, Amazon, Google, etc. Most of them will ask you to code on a whiteboard. Getting good at that is a skill like any other. So practice is good. Based on the questions that they ask you, it might also help to calibrate yourself about how good you really are.

The other thing I'd suggest is that you try examining what languages and technologies these companies are most interested in, and then use that as a filter to the languages and technologies which really interest you. For example, it looks like you are at least half-way decent at being a Java programmer. OK, that's pretty marketable. But maybe your research will show that a number of companies want both C++ and Machine Learning. If that's what you find, then you better check --- and be ruthlessly honest with yourself --- how good your C++ chops really are. And if you are going to using github as your portfolio, maybe you should have some demonstration code of significant C++ and ML projects that you have worked on. (And I don't mean forking a ML code base and then making a few changes; if you're not going to start from scratch, you should have at least created a significant module or plug-in from scratch, and then make sure it's clear what is yours and what you grabbed from elsewhere.)

SICP is my current side project, but having four main projects to work on eats up a large portion of my time unfortunately.

So my recommendation is you need to have at least one tech stack -- and I'd avoid .net, but some companies do use it -- where you're an expert and you're the person in your company that people come ask questions of.

I assumed that anyone who spent five years in an area would inevitably get to that point, but upon further reflection, it takes five years plus a passion for excellence and not being satisfied with "good enough". And that's something else companies look for --- they want 'A' players that are always looking to see how they can improve themselves, their environment, and help improve the people around them.

The good news is that in my experience there are many people who have come out of the military do have that ethos. So although I don't know you (Joshua) beyond looking at your electronic presence, I think you have a pretty good shot at becoming a world class expert. I definitely would encourage you to go for it!

Some of it seems excessive. I've been developing in C and Java for 11 years now. I make a tad under $100k and live in Atlanta, Ga. I have yet to need to know or discuss failure modes of the GC by heart, how to detect them and work around them by heart, how the JVM team did generics and possible alternatives, nor to know keyboard shortcuts by heart. I have however come across these things in my career and had to takle them. Guess what I did? Googled. Then I got back to writing code, what my job soley exists for.

It seems absurd that any company would require these things. If I was interviewed at a company asking me to talk about these things in the interview, I would walk out simply because I would feel it was completely irrelevant to how good of a software engineer I am. I really hate being interviewed by people who are more interested in asking obscure questions that just want to prove how smart they are (when we all know they probably just looked up that question/answer before the interview), rather than talk to me about coding and problem solving.

Things like memory use, basic algorithms, what design patterns are, collections, code quality, software development life cycle, unit testing, general coding problems, maybe some things about hibernate (if you use it), basic database knowledge, their favorite language and why and let's not forget overall personality and how they will fit into your team are far more important areas to cover. Not some obscure questions that will be used maybe once in your lifetime or on extremely rare occasions at the new job that can also be looked up on google when you need an answer for that rare occasion.

I even shutter when I think about design patterns being discussed because they're so over used and bad developers focus way too much on putting well known ones into their code base even when it may not be called for and just create so much more bloat for no good reason other than to feel like they're smart. An understanding of design patterns is great, but forcing people to describe any of them but the well known basics is just dumb.

The interviews my team gives exist around these things and I can honestly say we have yet to hire someone that didn't know their stuff very well and fit into the team nicely from the start.

I have only been without a job for a max of 3 months when I was laid off once and I have job hopped a lot, especially in my early career (which, there is a dirty secret there... That's how you make more money when you're staring off!). I have walked out in the middle of interviews before when it was clear that the person was asking obscure questions just to feel superior. I don't want to work with people like that...

Interviewers need to focus more on asking questions that software engineers face on a daily basis and less on odd and obscure things that can easily be researched in a short amount of time online when and if the problem ever presents itself.

I apologize if I got off topic or missed your point entirely. I was just having a conversation with someone about this very thing and it seemed relevant based on what I read.

Knowing - and having experience of - the failure modes of your platform is one of those things that is invaluable.

Knowledge of GC issues in the JVM is something that indicates (a) you've worked on applications that tax the JVM, and (b) you are the person who people turn to when the shit hits the fan.

Sure, Googling will help here, but you need to have a pretty good understanding of the problem space in order to understand what to Google for. For example, how do you get from "the application is slow" to a query for "sizing the New Generation in the JVM garbage collector" unless you already know when to suspect GC issues, how to use jvmstat etc etc?

I expect particularly people whose strongest languages are java or c++ to know about design patterns. Saying you hate them and giving a good reason (I agree) is fine. But you ought to know what some of the common ones are.

Similarly for generics -- most good java engineers have probably wondered at some point why eg if AA is a subclass of A, why ArrayList<AA> is not a subclass of ArrayList<A>. There are lots of different designs for generics, with different strengths and limitations, and I would be surprised if a great candidate hadn't been exposed to more than one design and spent some thought or an afternoon reading language blogs.

Etc etc for gc.

tl;dr -- knowing basic data structures doesn't impress me; if you don't, we'll just end the interview early and have a discussion with our internal recruiters into how the fuck such a bad candidate got brought in. And my description above is what it takes if you want me to go over to the vp of engineering or cto and say do whatever it takes to hire this person.

Read this before doing every interview:

Game Theory, Salary Negotiation, and Programmers http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=67

    When the company is the first to give a number, you always get the job, and you have a 50% chance of getting a high salary.

I believe what he means to say is this:

    No employer is going to lower their offer because you've asked for more.

Today, I hear from friends who still live out there that not much has changed, but I would be looking at 70K in salary with 2 years experience.

If you can, hold out for better opportunities and please, please, please, don't sell yourself short. A 15K would not make a difference to these companies. It will make a difference to you. I went to silicon valley from mid-west with a 30K jump in salary back in the day. I shared an apartment in the bay area and living costs didn't matter that much. The money did.

Seriously, brush up your resume and apply to the major firms.

By the way, I should note that cost of living and taxes are much higher here. Standard rent is >$2k (which is nothing compared to some parts of NYC, I guess...)

I've always used a rule of thumb that rent is $1k/month/bedroom around Palo Alto, a bit less in Mountain View / Sunnyvale / Redwood City, and a bit more in SF. >$2k/month/bedroom sounds extraordinarily high - where were you seeing that?

> Salary offers ranged from $65,000 to $95,000. The average salary offer was $79,333. The median salary offer was $ 80,000.

Granted (heh), this doesn't include stock options.

http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-San-Jose-Salaries-EI_...

http://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/cupertino-apple-salary-SRC...

http://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-jose-microsoft-salary-...

* The average personal income is about $40K. * The average household income is about $50K. * About 20% of households make over $100K. * But only about 6% of individuals have personal incomes over $100K.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_S...

Also, we're considering using a location that would offer our team a live/work option in a new complex close to the beach (in So. Cal) rather than just traditional commercial space. Would having free housing in a pretty sweet new pad be an incentive to take a bit less cash? It saves the company a bit of money that first year and saves the team in cost of living expenses at the same time. Anyone care to share their opinions/advice/experiences?

For Software Developers, the average was 80-100k in lower cost of living area's. In higher, 90-120k.

"Senior" meaning 4-15 years. The four year folks were deemed "above average" in their technical fly-out interviews (with other programmers). Edit: the average length of experience was 5-7 years (a "sweet spot" for technical hiring managers).

I never worked on 50-70k Software developer positions.

These were top-3 finance firms (NYC and SLC) as well as 4/5 top e-Retailler firms as well as a few local funded startups.

I was never able to pull a Googler or FaceBooker :)

Netflix as an individual contributor made $160k or so, the highest I saw as pulling candidates from competing top 3 eCommerce / finance firms.

Note, in the finance firms, "Architect" or "Leads" were on a much higher magnitude (120-180k base, bonuses were sometimes 20%-200%).

Before I say why I say this, can you please reply with your age? I want to test a theory which I will reveal in full if you dont mind answering..

EDIT: typo

If you really want to know how you stack up with devs in SV, come out here for a hackathon or SF Startup Weekend.

Decide for yourself who's smarter and ask them what they think is a fair offer for your skills. If you've figured out they're smart, they will probably already have an idea.

But look at housing costs, etc. You'll find depending on what you want (big house/short commute/etc) SF may not be the right place.

It's based on a WSJ article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870343950457611...

I've seen this number several other places as well, varing from 96k to 104.

I live in Atlanta. I get articles from Georgia Tech about the tech job scene here as well as averages for different majors, etc. If you really really really want me to find an email from Tech, and stick it on the web I will.

I get Austin numbers talking to people I know there...

I have housing market comparisons for all three cities and Vancouver due to talking to friends in all three areas.

Of course, the reports become even more accurate when more people participate. So please sign up! :)

Salary depends on

1) Previous salary

2) New title/rank

3) The industry (and how well it's doing)

4) Years of experience

5) Previous salary

6) Negotiation skills

7) Education

8) How well you interview

9) Skills (if the interviewer cares)

10) Your age and gender (sad but true)

11) References

12) How hot the market is (if there's a lack of developers in your area of expertise, you can get some crazy raises every year by switching jobs)

> All in all I consider myself a very good programmer (Honestly I'd guess in the top 80% of programmers, I haven't met one that's better than myself, but I don't consider myself nearly as experienced as a lot of the people here)

There are many horrible developers out there. Being the top 20% is really not a big deal. If you want to make real money, try to be the top 1%.

Yes, someone could lie. People lie all of the time. One of my jobs is to feel that out. I screen for integrity. I look for any hint of lying, even if they are joking. You can always tell someone with integrity from someone without it. And we want to work with people of integrity.

What's being tested is not 'how did your previous employer value you?', it's 'how good at negotiating were you when you started your last job?'

Additionally, the value of less numerical benefits gets substantially ignored in such calculations - I worked for two years at a job that paid 40k, but the flexibility, atmosphere, and environment were worth the 30k drop to me. There's no normal way to explain that in an interview without it sounding like an excuse.

Next time somebody asks that question, I'm going to tell them '15k and a few thousand bananas'.

and "how little can we get away with paying you?"

I worked for a medium sized private software company and managements goal was to hire people as cheaply as possible, no exceptions regardless of experience or education. They routinely offered developers 30k to start, many were highly offended and some just laughed at it, but they would always get a few developers who were down and out to accept. Yes turnover was high and most people didn't last longer than a year or two, but they viewed developers as disposable assets due to the local economic climate. This was in a medium sized US city with high unemployment and few tech opportunities, managements attitude was ruthlessly honest "we're the only ones hiring in the area, what other choice do they have?"

Some people's skills/value increase at a rate greater than most employers are willing to match in compensation. These fast learners are the exact people you want to hire, aren't they? Yet the metric of previous salary is pushing you in the opposite direction, toward undervaluing them. Why even check the number if it gives you the wrong signal? Some other employer may not bother to ask, form a more accurate judgment of the person's value, and snatch them up at a rate you were unwilling to offer.

At every place that I've worked, compensation has been considered company confidential and I've signed an agreement not to release company confidential information without their express approval.

> And we want to work with people of integrity.

Do you hire folks who violate their previous employer's confidential information agreement?

Confidential in that they, the company, will not disclose it but to those they are required by law?

Or confidential as in you may not disclose it to anyone, but by law?

I can't imagine how a piece of information which belongs to you can be controlled by a company. I mean, you cannot possibly mean you are not allowed to inform the IRS how much you earned, right?

Employee acknowledges that all Confidential Information, whether or not in writing and whether or not identified as confidential or proprietary, is and shall remain the exclusive property of the Company ... Confidential Information includes information relating to ... compensation structure (including equity grants), performance evaluations and termination arrangements

Seriously, to my non-lawyer ears, that sounds more like CYA/intimidation than enforceable contract. (more or less like those signs at parking garages where they absolve themselves of liability with a sign saying so).

You also have to compare the offer to what other employees in the same position in the company are making. If the offer is too different it will also require further justification.

1. Inflation. Laggard companies haven't kept up, but leading companies are pushing forward. As for the laggards, they probably set their developer salaries back in 1995 when $45k, out of college, was decent for a software engineer. They never revised that number, instead suffering a very gradual (and probably imperceptible, from a day-to-day perspective) decline in the people they could get.

2. Correction. Talent has been underpriced for a long time, except in finance, where the hours and work sucked. For a long time, rising tech companies could low-ball their offers and say, "Yes, but we're a fun company, and if we get big, you'll get rich." At this point, that strategy doesn't work as well, because new startups have filled that niche (risky, low pay, might make you very rich). Google and Amazon are still great companies, but they're not likely to triple their stock value in the next 3 years.

What's also happening is that the US is becoming less of a destination country for foreign talent, due to post-2001 immigration hassles and our health care situation, which scares the hell out of people. This change is good and bad, but it does improve salaries.

3. Location + industry. Engineer-driven companies, which are very selective and desirable places to work, but treat engineers very well, are offering $90-110k in New York, Boston and the Valley, and $70-90k in the Midwest. On the other hand, programmers at oil and health insurance companies are not making that much; they're still in the $45-60k range, because programmers are second- and third-class citizens in those companies. For example, a friend of mine works in fashion as a programmer (entry-level/novice) and makes about $28k. If she did the same work in a real software shop, she'd make $70k easily.

a) Shitty jobs will offer shitty salaries

b) Employers who have shitty employees will feel a senior is worth 50k. Why? Because their "seniors" are juniors at best and are doing the recruiting.

c) Location. If they are the only game in town then guess what. The offers are obviously not from tech companies.

d) 100k is a mid-level position (at least in nyc). All depends on how well you do on the interview or how much you can show off of your work.