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Let me Google that for you. In the Bay Area, the average salary for a software engineer is $103K [1] - $110K [2], so below the cap.

1: http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Sa...

2: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software-en...




The median salary for all "Computer and Mathematical Occupations" for San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara for 2015 was $128,850, for Software Developers the medians were $147,220 (Applications -- there were 42,650 of these) and $142,950 (Systems Software -- there were 27,260). Of the programming-related occupations, Computer Programmers and Web Developers were lower than the cap, but very small numbers of people (6,510 @ $93,940 and 2,930 @ $107,500, respectively.) From 2015 BLS data, which is more comprehensive and representative than whatever payscale and glassdoor are using. [0]

San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward is a little lower, but both kinds of Software Developers still average over $120K. [1]

[0] http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41940.htm#15-0000

[1] http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41860.htm#15-0000


Those use self-reported data which is unreliable and only San Francisco, which is only a small portion of the Bay Area.

Using BLS data, which should be more reliable, for the San Francisco[1] and San Jose[2] metro areas, the average weighted by number of people in the job of annual mean wages for the job categories of "Computer Programmer", "Software Developer, Applications", "Software Developer, Systems" and "Web Developer" is $129,730.54.

[1] http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41860.htm#15-0000 [2] http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41940.htm#15-0000


Thanks to you and dragonwriter for the links.. informative. So let's compromise on "It's right around the cap" :) Interesting that self-reported data is actually lower than the BLS figures--I'd have guessed it would be the opposite. A lot of people here like to humblebrag about how they "only" make $150K and how their stock options make their taxes so painful.


> A lot of people here like to humblebrag about how they "only" make $150K and how their stock options make their taxes so painful.

To be fair, as well as regional there is also industry variation, and a lot of people here work in the "Other Information Services" sector -- most online services would seem to be in that category -- which is (at least nationally) significantly above average pay for programming occupations. If that industry-based trend is also true for the region, then $150K for a developer could well be a below-median salary for region/occupation/industry combination.


I looked at the Glassdoor data as well. Remember that they're looking narrowly at job titles. If you add "senior software engineers," their average is around $118k. If you add "software architects," their average is around $140k. And so forth.

So if we're not talking about people with the job title "software engineer," but instead talking about people who are software engineers, including people who have a more advanced title, the average salary moves up.




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