75th Percentile for Sr. Developers with a strong framework experience in the valley is $150K right now. Plus the options upside (Which should hopefully come through every third or fourth company you work for).
Yes, during a death march, you do tend to stay working after 5:00 PM, and possibly even work on weekends.
But, once you get into year three or four, a properly managed software shop should see those pushes for just three or four weeks a year, and it's not uncommon to see engineers putting in 30 hour work weeks the rest of the year.
Of course the whole roller coaster of layoffs is still pretty valid - but if you are a good developer, jobs are pretty easy to come by once you've built up your network, and you can treat the off time as vacation. There is a reason why recruiters make $20K-25K (minimum) for tracking down high performance developers - they are hard to find.
If you are an average developer, having to deal with 6 month to 2 year sabbaticals might suck, and I can see why the government job approach might make sense.
My conclusion: Rock stars should look to being principal developers for private concerns, others should consider all their options based on their needs.
Yes, during a death march, you do tend to stay working after 5:00 PM, and possibly even work on weekends.
But, once you get into year three or four, a properly managed software shop should see those pushes for just three or four weeks a year, and it's not uncommon to see engineers putting in 30 hour work weeks the rest of the year.
Of course the whole roller coaster of layoffs is still pretty valid - but if you are a good developer, jobs are pretty easy to come by once you've built up your network, and you can treat the off time as vacation. There is a reason why recruiters make $20K-25K (minimum) for tracking down high performance developers - they are hard to find.
If you are an average developer, having to deal with 6 month to 2 year sabbaticals might suck, and I can see why the government job approach might make sense.
My conclusion: Rock stars should look to being principal developers for private concerns, others should consider all their options based on their needs.