
2018 UtahJS Pay, Education, Job-title Survey - mdjasper
https://mdjasper.github.io/utah-js-pay-data-2018/
======
mdjasper
For the last couple years, I've conducted a survey of software engineers in my
region about their pay, education, and other career related things. I believe
strongly that opening up discussions about pay will help everyone overcome
some of that information asymmetry especially early in their careers. 2017
Survey info for comparison [https://mdjasper.github.io/utah-js-pay-
data/](https://mdjasper.github.io/utah-js-pay-data/)

~~~
imglorp
It's interesting to speak directly to someone taking a survey, thank you for
posting.

My question isn't about your surveys themselves, but rather if you have
observed any bias in other surveys compared to your results.

A pessimist might believe that most compensation surveys are used by peer HR
departments to set compensation bands and, naturally, they have incentive to
systematically report those surveys low. Then they can point to these as
"Market Rate" to cover their asses if challenged.

So is that intentional under-reporting happening, or do independent surveys
mostly agree?

~~~
mdjasper
That's a great question. I haven't directly seen any other surveys performed
by "the other side" so to speak. But in looking at comparative data online
([https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/utah-computer-
programmer-...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/utah-computer-programmer-
salary-SRCH_IL.0,4_IS255_KO5,24.htm) for example), our dataset seems to show a
more broad range of pay (both lower and higher).

Anecdotally, I have been told by a couple former managers something along the
lines of "the highest payed engineers in Utah are in the 120k range," which
this survey shows is not the case.

~~~
suresk
Reports on Glassdoor have always felt kind of on the low-end, not sure why.

> Anecdotally, I have been told by a couple former managers something along
> the lines of "the highest payed engineers in Utah are in the 120k range,"
> which this survey shows is not the case.

I think part of the problem is that the range can be so huge. I've seen senior
developer postings in the last year that range anywhere from $85k to $160k.
I'm guessing a lot of managers have limited experience and knowledge about
salaries outside of their company, rather than intentionally trying to
downplay salaries.

I would personally guess that the 95% for senior/principal devs in Utah is in
the $140-160k range. The only people I know above $200k would be people doing
1099 work and maybe some one-offs from stock options.

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paddy_m
Side Note: Who would be interested in a Hacker News SLC meetup?

My email is in my profile, get in touch.

I moved to Salt Lake City From NYC in January 2017.

~~~
paulie_a
That must have been a culture shock.

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bsimpson
Salaries in Utah are a lot healthier than I expected. Maybe moving away from
SF wouldn't be as big of a salary cut as I thought...

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fooey
In my experience Northern Utah is good, Southern Utah is not very good

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nybblesio
My thoughts on "good" vs "not very good":

I live in Saint George (very far Southern Utah). It's beautiful, the weather
is great (if you like hot and dry), and Washington County is very small
compared to Utah County and surrounding areas. Traffic is becoming something
of a problem and the area is going to be under constant road construction for
the next 20 years if growth continues.

There are very few software companies in the area: PrinterLogic, BusyBusy,
Mango Voice, and perhaps a few others. If you do move to the area, make sure
you have plenty of remote opportunities or are willing to commute to Las Vegas
daily (about 90-ish minutes one way).

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dsnuh
An interesting data point is that the highest salary ($206,000) also reports
as"self-taught".

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dahart
More interesting is that the “self-taught” group as a whole has the highest
average salary of all the education levels. That is one of the two big
surprises for me in this survey. The other is the leadership roles having a
narrower range and lower top end than dev positions.

~~~
paulie_a
Personally I don't think that is at all surprising. A college education
doesn't mean you know what you are doing. The self taught group learned by
doing something. My guess is they had a problem to solve and found out to
solve it. That's a better education than the towers of Hanoi, some useless
sorting algorithm that will never be relevant or the misc crap that is taught
in CS.

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rukittenme
I don't want to draw too many conclusions from this but I did find it
interesting that men and women are paid similarly. There exists a large
experience gap which skews total pay but for the most part it seems things are
pretty equal.

~~~
swalsh
I had to go back and look after looking at your comment. It does seem to track
pretty consistently.

I've always speculated that a part of the pay gap might be explained by
willingness to negotiate. I wonder if recruiters being more normal in this
industry helps. In my own experience the recruiter I've worked with has helped
a lot in salary negotiations.

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cglee
This is great and more salary transparency is important. I'm wondering if
these numbers jive with your hunch about the local market? I'm asking because
I've noticed that when asking for salary numbers, those who make "decent"
wages tend to reply more often and this can lead to sampling bias.

~~~
nouseforaname
When I wasn't working remote, informally the ceiling seemed to me to be around
$120k. That was a few years ago and these days I would have guessed more
around $140k. Obviously I didn't have all the data points so good to see
people who are at $175k-$200k.

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dgellow
Are colleges and bootcamps the only options in the US? Don’t you have
apprenticeships (with and without school at the same time), technical schools
(with and without working at a company at the same time), etc? I lived in
Switzerland and Germany and in both country apprenticeships and technical
schools are a good way to learn a technical job and directly start to be part
of the industry. Surprised to not see these kind of thing mentioned here.

~~~
bdcravens
There are often opportunities with smaller companies, but they're not
formulaic. My current employer has done that (no we're not currently hiring)
and my start (albeit almost 20 years ago) came at a tiny ISP, making barely
above minimum wage at the time, where I started writing code and worked my way
into bigger and better jobs (I did have the fortune of starting on that path
before the first dot-com bubble) However, bootcamps weren't a thing, and I had
no degree at the time (I've picked up a couple of associate degrees along the
way, but nothing CS)

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phaedryx
the slack group mentioned:
[https://slack.utahjs.com/](https://slack.utahjs.com/)

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marcusarmstrong
I spent a year in SLC (funemployed) considering staying there long term but
was scared off by long-term earning potential from what I had read online (vs.
Boston area, where I previously and currently live[d]). These numbers are much
more positive than others I had read. Congrats to those of you who’ve found
broader-market-level roles in the area!

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stevejboyer
Thanks for putting the survey together. Another interesting thing to note is
that these developers are (at least by association?) javascript devs. In my
experience, the backend developers playing with C#, Java, SQL are usually
earning another 25-50% more than the javascript devs. Have others seen the
same?

~~~
freedomben
From what I've seen, backend devs are often making either the same or slightly
less.

Also worth saying tho, that many companies view their devs as "full stack,"
that JS != frontend only anymore. Node backends are becoming very common.

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web-cowboy
I can't tell if this data means Utah got better at welcoming females to JS
engineering or there's a point where they stop trying around five years. :) As
a member of the JS community I hope it's the former.

There's also someone killing it that's only been working in JS for three
years.

~~~
nouseforaname
Just by people I know on twitter, there's alot of great women from accounting
and project management that have done bootcamps and made the switch recently.

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stochastic_monk
The text states “Genders reported were "Male", "Female", "Not Sure", and
"Transgender Woman“”, while the graph lists Male, Female, Prefer not to
answer, and unknown. How do these labels correspond?

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awat
Thank you for this, I live in this region and work on the IT side of house.
I've been surprised by some employers perception of salary offers in Utah so
this is really interesting to see some quantification.

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chrisco255
There is a typo on the chart data for gender breakdown. The pie chart shows
68.6% male, but based on the table data above (168 out of 194 respondents),
the figure should be 86.6% male.

~~~
mdjasper
Thank you for the correction, yes that was a typo

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siavosh
Anyone able to share their experience who moved from tech in SF to Portland,
OR?

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swalsh
Why does salary and experience stop correlating after 9 years?

~~~
mdjasper
It's my intuition that salary increases with experience for that time until
you have basically "capped out" what the market will pay for your skills.
After 9 or 10 years, talent and skill are probably a more a factor than
experience.

Another way of saying that would be the difference in pay between a 1 and 3
year developer would be pretty easy to explain on experience alone. But, the
difference in pay between a 12 and 18 year developer would be more explained
by their skills and specific experiences (not time).

~~~
pmilla1606
Is there a hard ceiling for salaries for developers? Does one need to move
into management/consulting/something in order for ones salary to keep
increasing?

Lately I've been feeling like I've hit my ceiling and I need to start
investigating where to go from here but that may just be my
perception/pessimism.

~~~
necubi
There's no ceiling for developer pay (or at least, you're likely nowhere close
to it). Large companies with technical tracks pay 1MM+/year for high-level
engineers. Mid-level ("Senior" in title) engineers can easily clear half that.

A few things to note:

* Salaries like that are basically only possible at large public, engineering-driven companies, or finance firms (possibly also high-end consultancies, but I have little knowledge there)

* As you get more senior, a larger and larger percent of your take-home pay will be in the form of stock and bonuses; base salary rises much more slowly

* At the highest levels, you're unlikely to be writing much code. Mostly you'll be leading projects, reviewing technical designs, working with execs, etc.

~~~
suresk
I think it's important to note that this is very location-dependent.

In Utah, where this survey was taken, I'd be willing to bet the number of
people with developer-like titles consistently bringing home > $250k take-home
probably is less than 0.1% of the dev population, whereas in a place like
SF/Seattle/NYC, it is a lot more common.

~~~
necubi
It's definitely location-dependent. My experience is primarily Bay
Area/NYC/Seattle, and salaries will likely be lower outside those hubs.
However for very skilled or in-demand specialists, it's definitely possible to
get SF salaries while working remote in a cheap CoL area.

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twtw
Why is JS removed from the HN title?

