

Ask YC: Has the economy changed the going rate for programmers? - thinkcomp

The going rate for good salaried programmers used to be 80K - 120K per year, with some stock option grants varying company to company. Has the economic crisis affected that at all? Does it depend on what part of the country (or what part of the world) you're in?
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patio11
Salaries are _very_ dependent on what part of the world you're in, obviously.

Here in central Japan many companies have seen bonus cuts. Typical
compensation for a 20-something Japanese programmer might be:

$2,500 a month salary

\+ $200 single's living allowance

\+ $200 commute allowance

\+ overtime

So call their base monthly pay $3,000, plus overtime. Now twice a year they
get a bonus, which is calculated as "X months of your base monthly pay", where
X is determined by how well the company is doing. In good times, that might be
X = 2.5 or X = 3. In leaner times, it can scale down or be eliminated.

If you assume that you earn 12 months pay from work and 5 months pay from
bonuses, then a quick contraction in bonuses amounts to a substantial pay cut.

Bonuses at my company are down this year, by essentially rounding error, but
some of my professional colleagues in the city have been cut all the way to
zero.

These are not slouchy engineers, they just work for companies that supply a
certain large automobile manufacturer, and that large automobile manufacturer
has laid down the law: cut costs to us or find yourselves another large
automobile manufacturer to give you 60% of your orders.

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jacquesm
i think that greatly depends on the way you define the word 'programmer'.

If programmer to you means someone that can code php and maybe do a bit of css
work to help build web applications then yes, the economy has changed that,
there are quite a few people like that looking for work right now so the going
rate is down (my estimation about 20..30%).

If by programmer you mean somebody that can take a complex problem or
specification and solve it or realize that spec then I think the market is
unchanged, mostly because there always was - and probably always will be - a
shortage of such people.

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tonystubblebine
I love this as a definition of a strong programmer: "somebody that can take a
complex problem or specification and solve it or realize that spec"

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randallsquared
My previous job was at a company that ended recently, with the last paychecks
in Dec. It's not yet the end of February, and three out of the four
programmers employed there are working elsewhere, for the same or higher pay.
Everyone keeps talking about the economy, but here in the metro DC area there
hasn't been much effect.

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tjic
Economics blogger Megan McArdle over at the Atlantic made the point a while
back that politicians love recessions - their power grows, while that of the
folks in the free market (their rivals) shrink.

 _Of course_ things in the metro DC area are good.

The flow of cash into the metro DC economy is larger than it's ever been.

The problems are out in the productive sectors of the economy.

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randallsquared
No argument there. I didn't pay enough attention when we discussed it to find
out if they're all working for govt or govt contractors, though I'm not.

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ardit33
not me. i got a good offer in late nov. right in the middle of the financial
turmoil, but i also do mobile dev. and really good mobile devs. are rarely in
the market. They either have already a job, or they are doing their own apps +
some contracting on the side.

But the market is affecting some people. My previous company is having about
2% raises achross the board (last year was about the same), and they are
underpaying most developers, and they can pull it off, as the market has
cooled off, and there are less options out there.

The funny thing, is that the company is thinking that is gaining by having
little raises, but i know from a fact that a lot of people are just working
less, and are in a don't care mode/will do just enough not to get fired mode.

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narag
I got fired and then found a better job. It seems I'm not alone in this.
Strange crisis.

May I ask what environment do you use for mobile? I accidentally did some J2ME
three years ago and it was funny.

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jkent
For a UK view of salaries (based on job postings) look at
<http://www.jobstats.co.uk/jobstats.d/Rates.html>

It indicates that 75% of postings are 23% cheaper than a year ago.

There is a big change in postings, as per the front page of the same site.
Down from 18,000 to 5,000.

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dshah
I don't think it's really impacted the market for _great_ developers much at
all.

People that can develop working, maintainable software that makes users happy
seem to always be in demand.

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cellis
_People that can develop working, maintainable software that makes users happy
seem to always be in demand._

Omit "working,maintainable" and we're good. It needn't be either, but it must
make someone happy. Whether this is a pointy haired boss or an end user is
irrelevant to how much the developer is paid.

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ggruschow
The consensus so far seems to be "no, not for _good_ developers, but it's
affected everything else." Does that imply that good developers were accepting
pay too low before?

Or is it just the way people are measuring? A good programmer should get
better over time, so their work should be more valuable each year. Taking a
new job is often similar to a salary renegotiation, so do the people reporting
the same pay imply that either they're not a good developer (because they
didn't get better), or that the economy has in fact affected the going rate of
good programmers?

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gojomo
_good developers were accepting pay too low before?_

Yes, or rather: good programmers aren't always going for top dollar, but for
interesting work. That prior behavior gives them two kinds of insulation from
downward salary pressures:

\- at an established job, they are already recognized as especially valuable,
so less likely to be affected by compensation or job cuts

\- if seeking new employment, they can marginally maintain income by
sacrificing interestingness, if desired

On the other hand, a mercenary whose only criteria for accepting work was that
it pays top dollar is especially vulnerable to economic pressure. Because of
the winner's curse in auction processes, such mercenaries are likely to have
been overpaid even before a downturn (and the companies overpaying them,
likely to have been bubble creatures).

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icey
The curve has changed, but the overall range appears to have remained the
same. For the people at the low and top ends of the spectrum, its basically
business as usual.

It does seem as though the middle has fallen out some though. We recently had
an opening for a short-term junior level position and we got a ton of
responses from overqualified people who would ordinarily fall in the mid-range
classification.

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bjclark
Depends more on language than on anything, I think.

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jacquesm
Do you mean programming language or native language of the programmer ?

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bjclark
Programming language.

