

Dr. Dobb's 2012 Salary Survey - CowboyRobot
http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/240002742

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Timothee
This data seems pretty useless for the most part. Median salary without taking
into account the location is meaningless. On page three, they try to separate
regions but "Pacific" is certainly way too wide a region to get anything from
it.

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flyinRyan
No, this is wrong. Location is meaningless. A position is worth the value it
creates, not "cost of living * N". Companies are capitalist entities and
understand fully how value works in a capitalist system but trick workers into
accepting some kind of Marxist "from him according to his ability, to him
according to his need" idea of salary value. Go tell BMW you only want to pay
40% of the sticker price because you only plan on driving in Nowhere, AR.

The only reason salaries would be depressed in backwoods places would be if
the cost of living was drawing in so many workers that it drove salaries down.
So is that the case? If you live in some low cost of living midwest spot in
the road, do you get a thousand CVs before you finish writing a job
description? If not, if you have _trouble_ hiring in these areas then _the
salaries are too low_.

Nearly everyone in the US is a firm believer in capitalism but they don't
generally practice it with their most valuable resource: their time.

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3pt14159
When you set up a company in Toronto or New York there are clients at every
corner, lots of industry meetings, and a large pool of developers to draw from
as you grow.

When you set up a company in Timbucktoo you get none of those things. That
means that a company at the margin is happier to pay for a developer out of
NY, so there is increased demand in NY than there is in Timbucktoo. This
drives up salaries in NY.

> The only reason salaries would be depressed in backwoods places would be if
> the cost of living was drawing in so many workers that it drove salaries
> down.

Remember there are two curves, supply AND demand, and they resolve
simultaneously. Workers could be _leaving_ the region and salaries could still
be going down, provided demand was decreasing as well.

~~~
flyinRyan
Well done, you spotted the only thing my post didn't address: immobile
workers. If the workers are so desperate to stay in a given area that they're
willing to work for those wages then that could cause salaries to drop in the
area. This is why I have no fear of a future of mostly online work: because we
all become instantly mobile. If Timbucktoo wants to pay low rates then they'll
simply not fill the positions at all. We'll all be working for NY companies
that pay better. At least that's how I want it to work out. :)

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jandrewrogers
Anecdotally, that seems correct. Wages for competent software engineers have
noticeably risen in the last year due largely to supply shortfalls. It is a
really good time to be a software engineer if you have some skills.

A caveat is that part of the perceived average pay increase is that the
minimum talent level required has also been increasing. Demand for generic,
average skill has not been where the growth is. I think we are in the early
stages of a bimodal job market.

~~~
maybird
What's creating this shortfall?

Too many openings?

Too many engineers working for themselves?

Too many engineers retiring?

Too many engineers going abroad?

Too many engineers interested in the same small number of niches that leaves
everyone else with too few applicants?

...?

~~~
aaronblohowiak
All except:

> Too many engineers going abroad?

I don't think this is a contributing factor. More software is getting
made/integrated than ever and the talent pool is inelastic; programming is
"hard" and "boring".

~~~
suresk
Also, after the dot-com crash and the first wave of offshoring, programming
was sort of seen as a dead end. CS enrollment dropped considerably, and I'm
not really sure that it has fully recovered.

I would argue that the talent pool isn't completely inelastic, but it does
take a number of years for the talent pool to respond - especially because the
most acute shortages appear to be in the market for senior-level developers.

~~~
tikhonj
At least at my school, I think CS enrollment has swelled in recent years.
However, it is not the same as it was back in the bubble (well before my
time): back then, the intro professors had various schemes for weeding out
potential majors; now they are still trying to get most people stick with it.

With that in mind, I think "recovered" is the wrong word: since enrollment
back there was inflated with people just interested in a good salary, nobody
_in_ CS really wants that to happen again. As one of my professors would say,
that's what the business school is for. These days there is quite a demand on
the major, but I think it's actually mostly from people genuinely interested
in the subject.

So, purely anecdotally, my observations echo yours: CS enrollment has
increased, but not to the levels of the dot-com bubble.

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xxpor
Anyone have a version that doesn't require 178 HTTP requests x 10 pages?

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suresk
Not to mention a few redirects randomly thrown in for every page. I haven't
seen a website outside of MySpace that is this pointlessly slow.

I wouldn't normally say anything, but Dr Dobbs is ostensibly targeted at
developers.

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xxpor
What's the difference between a Software Engineer and a Software Developer?

~~~
AYBABTME
What's the difference between an Electrical Engineer and an Electrical
Engineering Technician?

~~~
mjwalshe
The technician actually can remeber Ohms Law :-)

You may laugh but a few years ago my Father was then the technical director of
a small Electrical Engineering company (spun off from Eaton) told me that a
junior engineer could not correctly calulate the thinkness of cables for a
particular load.

~~~
gouranga
That doesn't surprise me.

Back when I was fresh out of uni and doing a junior EE position, I had a
design engineer rate an electrolytic for the wrong voltage in a switch mode
supply. When raised, the design engineer informed me that he didn't make
mistakes and that I should go and build a prototype of the circuit without
question. My condition was that only if he powered it up, which he did and
promptly spend half an hour removing bits of capacitor fluff off everything...

The result was eventually that we just bought COTS switch mode supplies and
the design engineer removed head from butthole.

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bbrizzi
The first graph doesn't mention units (thousands of US dollars assumed).

No mention of the methodology used.

No analysis of the results.

The article is split into 10 different pages.

Tab closed.

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ldite
Do people in the UK feel that these amounts (at current exchange rates)
reflect the situation over here? The numbers seem a lot higher than what I've
come across.

