

Are you an underpaid developer? - sherm8n
http://blog.goodsense.io/2013/04/02/are-you-an-underpaid-developer

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itkina
I'm part of a project to try and solve this exact issue. How do you compare in
the marketplace with your skills, salary, experience? We haven't launched yet
but if you'd like to be in the beta testing group, that would be great.

<http://engage.gild.com/>

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cwilterdink1207
One thing the authors forgot to mention is that Freelance Developers are
responsible for paying for their own benefits, unemployment insurance, social
security and other taxes. So yes the folks at GoodSense are correct: you're
probably going to make more $ each paycheck as a freelancer. But you will also
be shelling out more $ for these taxes and benefits. At year end your income
as a freelancer could be exactly the same as a full time employee. Good
resource to learn the legal bits involved with freelancing is
[http://www.sba.gov/content/self-employed-independent-
contrac...](http://www.sba.gov/content/self-employed-independent-contractors)

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sherm8n
You realize you have to pay for all that stuff as full time employee too
right? Sure you might get free health insurance at a really good company. But
most you have to pay a percentage of the premium. For freelancers, there are a
lot of private health insurance plans they can sign up for that are comparable
to the ones companies offer.

As a freelancer, you can also write off a lot of your expenses to reduce your
taxable income. Bought a new Macbook Pro with retina display? Well, that's a
business expense.

A lot of benefits at companies are just fluff to make you feel good about
working there.

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kellros
This made me cry a little inside. I make slightly less than a third monetary
wise of the lowest Average Salary by Speciality with 4 1/2 years commercial
dev. Most of the 'high' paying jobs in South Africa is around the $66K a year
mark.

~~~
recursive
I wouldn't worry too much. I'm not sure what demographics these figures are
included, but these numbers are higher than anything I've seen in the real
world.

~~~
sherm8n
That's the whole point. Employers don't want you to know about the real
numbers. They want to pay you as little as possible. Even your manager doesn't
make that much money. So they don't want their direct reports to have a higher
salary. If you've ever asked for a raise you clearly see signs that they're
trying to manage a budget.

