
2013 Developer Salary Survey - ternaryoperator
http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/2013-developer-salary-survey/240163580
======
nirvanatikku
Out of everything in that survey the gender gap (page 6) strikes me the most.
It's sad that it even exists, honestly. To see the continual increase in male
salaries, and that fairly stagnant top end for females.. seriously!? For an
industry that is trying to employ more female engineers, the trend sucks.

As articulated in the synopsis at the bottom, 'This disgraceful disparity lays
bare the false — but cherished — belief that our profession is at its core a
meritocracy.'

~~~
zalzane
Putting aside the irony of this article sitting next to the "Statistics Done
Wrong" article, a cumulative average to detect a gender/race wage gap is
absolutely insane.

Here's a short list of factors that could contribute to the results the
article in OP has:

-Lower number of years working in the field due to taking time off for maternity leave, or going back to work after raising a child. I suspect this is probably the biggest single contributor to the pseudo-gap in the article's charts.

-Concentration of male/female developers in different subfields. Ex: men may be more inclined to work in security penetration, which may pay higher than other disciplines

-Male/female college degree/other pedigree rates

I'm no statistician, but I think these factors are more than important enough
would have to be taken into account when trying to figure out the size of the
gender wage gap.

Don't forget to leave a comment telling me why I'm wrong when you downvote my
comment for being unproductive.

~~~
reeses
On the surface, the points you cite are inflammatory and often used a priori
to _justify_ paying women less.

It's a bit irresponsible after that slide _not_ to put the rest of the results
into the context of gender.

Are women represented proportionally by age? The last table in the article
("What Matters Most") would blow the lid off of many of the arguments. Do
people who "could find seven attributes of their job more meaningful than base
salary" in general make less than others? Do women and men respond differently
to those questions? What is the disparity between men and women who value base
pay most?

The only value I can extract from this survey is that a) it's BS that female
compensation stagnated while male compensation rose (was there a mini-baby
boom during which a lot of women took unpaid maternity leave?) and b) Dr Dobbs
is getting less and less relevant, given that they consider "Company-paid
smartphone/wireless email" to be a form of _compensation_.

------
terramars
I would be HIGHLY cautious of using this data as the basis for any sort of
decision making process.. There is a lot of heterogenity in the engineering
world, and without any sort of statistical or methodological information it is
very hard to know what is real here. For example, the female salary
distribution smells fishily of small sample size and I don't believe their
results without a standard-deviation-of-the-mean at the very least.

All we can say for sure is that this measures the average salaries of people
who respond to drdobbs surveys. They are significantly less than the salaries
we are seeing on our platform at Hired. ( see: [https://hired.com/blog/late-
stage-companies-winning-the-war-...](https://hired.com/blog/late-stage-
companies-winning-the-war-for-talent/) )

~~~
Glyptodon
I have huge issues with these 'surveys' as they never seem to reflect market
realities in my geography. In the last three years I don't think I've seen
many engineer or developer jobs listed in the whole state of Arizona listing
salaries above 80k. I'd guess the average advertised openings range 50 - 80k,
with the majority of 80k-ish ones near Phoenix.

However, most AZ companies needing devs seem to be Java shops with government
ties hiring entry-level devs, which probably distorts the picture as most
developers would then logically be graded up every year or whatnot and
probably making above 80k after 3 years.

So maybe I'm not really saying the numbers are wrong, just that they seem
wrong for entry level and sub 25-year-olds in the AZ/NM region. Or that
there's a big disconnect between listed salaries in job openings and the
actual average salaries among those with established positions in most
markets.

------
bcbrown
I'm a little surprised to see such a differentiation between salaries for
Software Engineers and Software Developers. I've always treated the two as
synonyms.

~~~
NTDF9
Exactly. I would appreciate someone explaining the difference between software
developer and software engineer (and why this salary difference).

~~~
grecy
My degree is called "Software Engineering", and is accredited by the Australia
Institute of Engineers, of which I am a member.

So, in Australia at least, A Software Engineer is a "real" Engineer.

~~~
a-priori
The same is true in Canada. You can't call yourself any kind of engineer,
software or otherwise, unless you're a licensed and accredited engineer.

~~~
grecy
I'm in Canada these days, and my understanding is "Software" is not recognized
as a kind of "Engineering" here, so I actually can't call myself and Engineer.

Am I wrong on that?

------
pedalpete
As a software engineer who just turned 40 and starting a new position in the
coming weeks, I've been giving some thought lately to the future of our
profession, and I'm wondering if we're at the high-point in the salary scale,
and if we'll see average salaries decline from this point on.

The reason I suspect this might be the case is the combination of the
popularity of programming, along with the tools which are making programming
easier.

Every year a new framework/library is introduced which makes the challenging
and time consuming work easier and easier.

Are we reaching a point where we have a massive number of programmers doing a
job which takes a fraction of the time it took years ago?

~~~
morgante
New frameworks might make our work easier, but companies don't typically
respond by employing fewer developers. Instead, they ask for bigger and larger
projects.

As for people actually learning to code, I don't actually think there's much
risk of increased supply. The majority of people simply cannot think in the
logical manner programming requires. They might learn a couple bits here and
there, but they'll never be employed as engineers. (I've seen this myself with
people who've taken months of classes—ask them to compute a program and
they're still incapable.)

Put simply, CS is hard. That's why, despite the general awesomeness of our
careers, so few people major in it.
([http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/04/students-
majoring-i...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/04/students-majoring-in-
computer-science-trends_n_4213769.html?utm_hp_ref=college))

~~~
cgh
I know it's a cliche, but I do think there's a difference between the lone
high school weirdo who stayed up late learning Commodore 64/Apple
IIe/386/whatever internals and the person who learned how to program
adequately well at university in order to get a "good career". I hesitate to
use the word "passion" but you know what I mean.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is it's the weirdos who are in short
supply and I can't imagine why that would change anytime soon.

~~~
mirsadm
That really applies to most other fields. Some people are just bad at their
job. Some people are good and some are amazing.

------
ffrryuu
Silicon Valley salaries are way higher than that. 200k salaries seems to be
coming back.

~~~
benmathes
80k as a US Average translates to about 120k in San Francisco, adjusted for
cost of living. According to the startup jobs on angellist, SF is paying
average salaries (adjusted for cost of living):
[https://angel.co/salaries](https://angel.co/salaries)

PS: Where are these 200k salaries? I have 7 years of experience and would
happily switch for <redacted> more money each year.

~~~
k3n
> Where are these 200k salaries?

If I were to guess, they're most likely in the Wall Street-powered high-
frequency trading firms. That, and/or big pharma, big oil.

~~~
ffrryuu
Google/Facebook pays a lot. Also, make sure to STATE the salary you want.
Don't let them give you a salary number first. Welcome to the big league.

------
eliben
The website is absolutely atrocious :-/ 90% ads, incredibly inconvenient
navigation. DrDobbs keep living in the 90s.

~~~
k3n
I wasn't going to bring it up, but I'll definitely dogpile. While I generally
prefer the SPA (ajax) style site, I don't mind the old-fashioned "each click
renders a new page" so long as it's efficient, but navigating the different
pages on this site was an exercise in patience... pages seemed to take from
1-3s to render, reminding me of the old ASP classic sites.

------
quaffapint
I'm not sure where in the Northeast this is pertaining to, but around
midatlantic, it's never gotten better from the recession. Certainly salaries
are much worse now than they were prior to it.

------
pmorici
Does anyone know of a similar survey focusing on just the bay area?

~~~
Greenisus
Yeah I'd love to see that. This results in this survey sound nothing like what
I hear from my friends around here.

------
spencore
I was just recently awarded a Junior Developer position in my company. Does
anyone have any information related to salaries for this type of position?

I have a suspicion that this title can mean so many different things to
different people/companies and therefore can offer an extremely wide range of
salaries.

Anyone have any info they could share on the matter?

