
Career Advice – Is $40K normal for Developer with 5 or 10 yrs experience? - mythrowaway2017
I work for a rural American wireless telecommunications company. Our service area covers half of the state. The company employs a little over 200 people. The IT department is small, but has a few System Admins who also are responsible for VMWare, ~200 Linux Servers, Windows and Exchange. As well as tasked with all internal development. This includes custom intranet tools, command line scripts, public websites, telco integrations ( SMSC integrations, Apple API integrations ), web applications for the customers, etc. We work with lots of technologies, Oracle, Postgres, MySQL, multiple API&#x27;s, PHP, Python, JS.
All of us make around $40k per year regardless if we have been here for 1 year or 15 years. Considering the amount of responsibility and the type of work involved, is this level of compensation standard ? We manage a fairly large infrastructure and continually work on new software projects. Does anyone have similar experiences ?
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kingbirdy
No, not at all. Your pay is definitely going to be lower than others here on
HN because you're in a lower CoL area (I imagine, rural generally is, compared
to Bay Area), as well as doing Sys Admin which is less lucrative than
development. But even considering both of those factors, that's quite low -
I'd check glassdoor for more info on salary ranges in your area, and start
shopping around for jobs, either to bring an offer to your boss for a raise,
or to take the new job.

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Taylor_OD
No. That's absurdly low and the company knows it. They also know they can get
away with it because you live in a rural area and the IT department is small.

I once met a developer who had been working for Accenture on the same project
somewhere in Indiana for ten years who was making 50k. That project ended and
last I heard he was making 110K+ at a large Chicago based .com company.

Take a couple interviews and see what other companies will throw your way if
you are unhappy with your situation.

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sharemywin
Maybe you should look at glassdoor or something for a near by city and see if
it's worth the move.

