Meanwhile, Vancouver BC boasted about the famously low salaries of its software engineers and people with similar skill sets, in a failed bid to attract Amazon HQ2:
In my opinion a pretty stupid thing to do, considering the low probability of Amazon choosing either Portland or Vancouver as second headquarters. Too close to Seattle and still within the same regional talent pool, and regional market demand.
I really wanted to work in Vancouver, but I simply could not justify taking the ~$80k CAD offer I had in Vancouver over an ~$140k USD offer from a company in SF.
Even when taking into account the cost of living difference, which worked out to be about the same as the ratio between the salaries, the higher salary in SF wins out because given similar savings rates, the higher your salary, the larger your raw savings in dollars will be (unless you have a savings rate of 0% or lower, which is a rarity among well-paid software engineers). This is before even taking into account the difference in purchasing power between the two currencies.
Collectively, the tech industry in Canada would reap great long-term benefits from offering salaries that are competitive with those in the US. But companies acting in short-term self-interest only try to pay their employees the bare minimum they can get away with in order to be able to claim to offer these pathetic, so-called "market-rate" Canadian salaries, with little regard to the fact that so much of the higher end of this talent pool that they could have competed for have already been brain-drained away.
This then inevitably leads to the industry generally undercompeting as a whole, which results in poorer revenues and lower interest from potential investors, which then means there's less available capital to invest in the workforce, and so the whole vicious cycle repeats itself. So many once prominent Canadian tech companies have already fallen prey to this sorry state of affairs. I wonder what kind of wake-up call the industry will need to finally break out of this pattern.
I felt exactly the same way about Singapore. Penny pinching, MBA-ish types who don't get tech running everything, a confucianist predilection towards authoritarian managerial styles and nobody rocking the boat makes it something of a tech wasteland.
Ironic cos the government has Silicon Valley envy and they've got it real bad - spraying cash liberally at everyone except actual developers in an attempt to clone the magic.
Interesting perspective! As an engineer contemplating SG, I would love to hear your Singapore story - what did you find there, and what did you eventually do?
I found it was 98% companies like ^^ that. The companies I actually worked in were bad.
I found two companies that seemed more or less sane (ok, but neither blew me away). One of them was receptive to hiring me but I got a different offer before we worked things out which I took and regretted. The other deliberated for, I think, two months before giving me an offer. That was more or less the last straw.
I turned them down, returned to London after that and doubled my take home pay.
Not long after I returned I discovered that not one but both of these companies were acquihired by Google when they opened an office in SG. I had a good chuckle at that.
Yeah, I'd avoid it. There are pockets of good stuff as there are anywhere, but I think they're fewer and further between.
> Collectively, the tech industry in Canada would reap great long-term benefits from offering salaries that are competitive with those in the US. But companies acting in short-term self-interest only try to pay their employees the bare minimum they can get away with
What is the benefit (other than, like most people, wishing that you could make more money)? The only thing I can think of is that you believe people who bring something extra special to a business expect more, but those specific people are already paid more than the typical tech worker because they bring something special that is worth paying more for.
For tech people in general, the pay is low, relatively speaking, because the market is saying that Canada does not need more tech people. That is, compared to the US which has a much greater need for more tech professionals; we're still a long way from sales clerk-level overabundance of labour.
In Canada there are fewer tech jobs overall, while being a society that puts intense social pressure on its youth to focus on getting jobs like these. There's a reason Canada is named the most educated nation on earth and it's precisely why the pay is comparatively low for these types of jobs.
If we want higher pay we either need a lot more tech work, or fewer people willing and able to work in the tech industry.
In case I wasn't being clear enough, by benefits, I meant benefits from the perspective of the Canadian tech industry, not necessarily from the perspective of Canadian society as a whole (that's a much more complex and nuanced subject, one that I haven't made up my mind on myself, and your points certainly seem valid).
And the most obvious such benefit I can think of is slowing and/or reversing the longstanding trend of the Canadian tech industry losing some of its best talent to the US because of salary disparity.
> And the most obvious benefit I can think of is slowing and/or reversing the longstanding trend of the Canadian tech industry losing some of its best talent to the US because of salary disparity.
The best talent that offers something special has no trouble attracting far more than $80,000/year in Canada. The people being offered $80,000/year are not the top talent that you speak of. That is an average, representing the average.
And for average people, that's a feature to see them leave the country for places that need them more. Again, we simply don't have enough work in Canada for all the tech people Canada is producing. We, as a society, put intense pressure on our youth to strive for careers like these and as a result we are pumping them out at rate that is well beyond the actual need for them (domestically).
If everyone who is capable of tech work that came up in Canada remained in Canada, the job would be quickly approaching minimum wage for an average worker. The fact that we have so many leaving for the US is the only thing that has allowed us to maintain something as a high as $80,000 average tech salaries.
> The best talent has no trouble attracting far more than $80,000/year. I'm mediocre at best and have had no trouble attracting far more than that amount, in rural Canada no less. The people being offered $80,000/year are not the top talent that you speak of.
I was simply giving my own past offers as an anecdote to illustrate the cost-benefit analysis of why someone in that situation might choose to leave Canada. I was decidedly junior at the time, having just graduated, and by no means was I trying to claim anything about my own level of talent.
It seems like you may have read too much into that part of my post. Similarly, the quoted piece of your post above reads to me a lot like a thinly veiled ad-hominem, but I digress.
It sounds like there's at least one part of my chain of reasoning that you disagree with: that the size of the tech job market in Canada can potentially grow in concert with the Canadian tech industry's competitiveness relative to the US, and that the Canadian tech industry's competitiveness can improve relatively as a result of keeping more of its talent from leaking into the US.
If that's the case I think it's best if we can agree to disagree and leave it at that.
> and by no means was I trying to claim anything about my own level of talent.
I did not realize we were talking about you? It is simply that the average figure of $80,000 given earlier represents average. The nature of average means that there will be values that are higher. That is where your top talent lies, mathematically. Average tech people lie at the average.
> Similarly, the quoted piece of your post above reads to me a lot like a thinly veiled ad-hominem
I feel that you may have read too much into my comment. I have no animosity towards you for sharing your point of view, and I am not sure why I ever would. My comment wasn't directed at anyone, especially not you. I was only looking at the situation mathematically, as described above. But, it is the undeniable reality that not all people are equal. Even you recognized that top talent exists. I'm not sure why we would change our tune at this point?
> that the size of the tech job market in Canada can potentially grow in concert with the Canadian tech industry's competitiveness relative to the US, and that the Canadian tech industry's competitiveness can improve relatively as a result of keeping more of its talent from leaking into the US.
I'm just not clear how "if you build it, they will come" applies here. We've built the workforce and the work hasn't come. As a result, people are opting to leave for the US where the work is needed. If the tech industry utilized the top talent, and even the not so top talent, these people would have never left. You might have a good point here, and I am interested in learning about it, but I'm afraid I still haven't quite grasped how you think this would actually play out in the real world.
It remains that Canada produces more tech people than it needs. What else can they do but find work where it is needed? Should they sit around and do nothing while the Canada tech industry someday eventually finds work for them to do?
I re-read my original comment again and still think it was pretty clear, but I realize how easy it may be to gloss over things like that in reading, and in hindsight it was definitely in bad taste on my part to assume malice and respond with a snarky comment like I did, so I apologize.
> I'm just not clear how "if you build it, they will come" applies here. We've built the workforce and the work hasn't come. As a result, people are opting to leave for the US where the work is needed. If the tech industry utilized the top talent, and even the not so top talent, these people would have never left. You might have a good point here, and I am interested in learning about it, but I'm afraid I still haven't quite grasped how you think this would actually play out in the real world.
It sounds like we're at two different sides of the same chicken and egg problem.
My view is that if we had more competitive salaries, those who have left Canada may have chosen to stay and help build more successful Canadian tech companies, which would then make the tech industry as a whole more competitive relative to the US, and therefore our job market would become less saturated and we'd be able to afford to pay for better salaries and employ more talent.
You seem to have started at the other end of that chain of reasoning and worked backwards, i.e. our job market is saturated, and thus we can't employ more talent without deflating salaries further, etc, etc.
I don't think either view is more or less valid than the other. Like any other chicken and egg problem it really depends on your starting point.
How does stock compensation factor further into the realistic comparison?
Given there are vastly more and far larger public tech companies in the US & California than in Canada. Companies like Google, Oracle, Salesforce, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, et al. can drown their employees in additional compensation via stock, which very few companies in Canada can compete with. That $140k salary should become $200k+ with stock compensation over time. Most California tech employees don't work for start-ups that fail to realize equity value, so the additional compensation from stock is a very real, very substantial factor on top.
sadly, the people who either can't or won't leave vancouver don't have a lot to choose from. I'm from there and it's really hilarious when people say something like Hootsuite is a "world class" place to work in some IT-related field.
Meanwhile Seattle has things like SpaceX in Redmond developing satellites, Boeing jobs, Blue Origin, a number of tech companies that are not amazon, XKL (run by one of the founders of Cisco, over in the east side making cutting edge networking hardware), significant datacenter and telecom infrastructure that doesn't exist in BC, etc.
Why must every tech job be SpaceX or Amazon or Boeing?
No, really. Most tech jobs are not super sexy, and I’m a little irritated that the prevailing opinion seems to be one of looking down your nose at every tech job that isn’t “prestigious”.
it depends on whether you believe VC money is driving the salary change or the overall profitability of the industry reflected by salary is driving VC's investment decisions.
> salaries are the number one thing venture funding is spent on.
Are you sure? I think that's possible, but my first guess would be rent (anywhere, not just in SF--unless you're all remote, even tiny corporate real estate is expensive), followed by salaries/benefits.
Regardless, it would be interesting to see some data explaining how VC funding is spent. Even better to see how the spending percentages change over time/stage.
Well, if you take the WeWork style co-working spaces as a real estate cost baseline, each employee in a private office will cost somewhere around $1,000 a month for the space. In contrast, an employee making a salary of a mere $120,000 will cost the company somewhere north of $13,000 a month (salary + taxes + benefits).
I live in Canada and its quite upsetting to see salaries just a skip over the border that are 120K USD for remote positions but they won't even entertain hiring a Canadian, meaning in Canada the remoting range is 55-70 CAD USD. Going above 70K is possible but in my experience those jobs can only be acquired through personal networking in the GTA which is self-defeating because it keeps you tethered to the GTA.
Imagine if I could live somewhere like Thunder Bay and make a 120K remote. The only possibility has been freelancing and I was successful for a while remoting though running your own company came with downsides which led to my eventual decision to work back full time for a company.
Hiring someone across a national border adds a lot of complexity and cost to the employment process. A few companies I have worked for which did have foreign employees ended up with an umbrella company paradigm, with individual corporations in each country to help ease the complications and reduce the costs.
You have different tax withholding procedures, differences in labor law and what sort of employment contracts are allowed, differences in mandated benefits (e.g. parental leave).
This is an issue even if you want to hire in more than one US state.
The question is whether all that adds up to "a lot", which is a value judgment.
One way to "hacking" the location issue is to move to SV, get hired in a big company, then convince them over the years to set up a presence in your home country which you will gladly spearhead with no increased salary demands. Worked for my friend from an African country
As someone who hasn’t even worked in the US, let alone SF, is this a typical wage for that area?
I live in a small European city, earning around half this, but my outgoings are a lot less (under €1k/mo) than what I would be paying in SF, so I’m probably saving more at the end of the day. I’d argue my lifestyle is a lot better too.
If anything it might be a little low. For example, "senior" engineer at Google (a rank you can hit in less than five years if you are competent) pays 250k according to GlassDoor[1]. The other competitive BigCos are similar, some paying more, and some paying less.
Looks like the majority of the European "better lifestyle" involves convincing people on the internet that making a fraction of a Bay Area salary is somehow a good thing.
It depends very much on life stage. I make about 2/3 of these figures in Amsterdam now, and have declined recent opportunities to move to the Bay Area. If I were single and 10 years younger, I would have jumped at the chance. But now at 40 with two young kids in nice schools, a comfy house with a 15 minute commute and a partner with a good income, it takes a lot more to make me move.
I moved from CA to Europe. Don't regret it. I get a month and a half of vacation, a nice walkable city, and don't feel like I live in a dying democracy.
Two days ago my infant was sick. Made one phone call and thirty minutes later a qualified gp showed up at my apartment and made sure everything was fine. At 2 AM. For free.
In the US I could make more money but would spend it all on rent and cars (and private school tuition in a few years), and my time on commuting and explaining to colleagues that I never check email on vacation. Ever.
I'll keep what I've got. Also, lower eu salaries should make it easier to start a business if the mood strikes.
Nothing in life is "free". Europeans pay way higher taxes than Americans.
"would spend it all on rent and cars"
Excuses. If you don't want to make it work that's fine. But there are tens of thousands of people making it work in the Bay Area.
#1 Don't have a car and live in SF, or buy a used cheap Honda or Toyota.
#2 Look at Rooms on craigslist, you can easily find a room or in-law room w/ own private bathroom IN San Francisco for under $1600/mo.
All this for a <30min commute to your tech company of choice in SF.
The media and everyone else likes to talk about how expensive it is to live in SF saying it costs $4k/mo for a 1bed room apartment...except these people are cherrypicking the most expensive and nicest places to live in SF. You can easily find cheaper on craigslist.
Excuses??? Excuses are for when you've done something wrong. Why the hostility? I decided to give europe a try and liked it, so I stayed. sheesh.
Anyway I had a good time in the bay, in Berkeley. But at this stage in my life I like it here.
Also, even though I could have gotten "unlimited" time off in the US (note the huge scare quotes), my wife couldn't have, and here she gets ample holidays too.
It's hard to say. I came to europe as a technical account manager and transitioned to data engineer here (lately, shoving stuff around with redis/celery and reporting on it with redshift and superset). I doubled my income after six months here, but that was due to a new job. I'm around the 90th percentile for incomes of full time workers in my country (Ireland).
My best guess is I'd make around 50k more (usd) in the bay. Hard to say though.
I came here on a working holiday visa; check the website of your country's Irish embassy for more info. I got a bit lucky in that my old company had an office here (though I came under my own steam) but honestly got my best gig through a guy I met in a pub after overhearing a discussion about the pronunciation of JSON. That was in 2013 with a crap economy; now it's much easier. Hell, if you're decent with python (bonus if you've experience with Celery) drop me a line. Look in my profile.
I dont think anyone who has a well rounded view on life thinks that the main import of your time here on earth is how large your salary is.
Then again, if you are living in SF on your own volution, I bet there are a lot of things that you have convinced yourself are normal, to feel that you are part of the crowd there - and of course know that salary is the most important thing there is in life!
It depends on what you'd like to do with your life.
I'm originally from a small European island and I'm making a reasonable amount working in a city. I'm really missing the significantly lower stress, fewer and more friendly people, lack of traffic, different kinds of (political or otherwise) discussions, etcetera. I have friends who have sacrificed a large percentage of their salary to return to a "happier" life in that aspect.
You can choose which type of "unit" you want to have more value in your life.
I think we (Europeans) generally argue that paying taxes and universal healthcare is great not that earning less is. Also while some professions pay less others pay more (like working in a grocery store) so it’s not that clear cut.
That's a pretty broad statement about Europe. The majority of Europe is poor compared to Sweden or Germany.
If you're making ~$60,000 or more in the US, you are overwhelmingly going to have good health insurance. If you're making $140,000, you're going to have great health insurance. I fail to see how universal healthcare is a lure in this case.
The US has a far more progressive income tax system than most of the developed European nations (Scandinavian nations for example have a highly regressive income tax system compared to the US [1]). In the US the rich pay nearly all income taxes (the top 25% pay ~90% of all income taxes). If you're poor in the US you get free healthcare.
Grocery stores in Europe do not pay better than in the US. The majority of Europe has a median income that doesn't reach the US average minimum wage (state blended). A cashier in Germany makes a similar wage as a cashier in the US (the median in the US is around $21k). The US has considerably higher wages than all nations in Europe except for four (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland). The EU's median income is 60% that of the US. So if you're going to compare, it doesn't make sense to ever say "Europe" - you can't reasonably compare Russia, Poland or Spain to the US on income. It's about as useful as saying "Asia" in an income comparison.
> The majority of Europe is poor compared to Sweden or Germany.
There are some poor countries like Bulgaria and Romania. Most of Europe is doing just fine. Like you have poor Europe you also have poor US cities and countries and if you compare the poor parts you will find them not all too different.
> If you're making ~$60,000 or more in the US, you are overwhelmingly going to have good health insurance. If you're making $140,000, you're going to have great health insurance. I fail to see how universal healthcare is a lure in this case.
Even if you have great insurance the knowledge that whatever happens to you, you are fine is an amazing feeling. Also knowing that everybody (with exceptions like people who are there illegally and not entitled to healthcare) having coverage adds to your personal quality of life tremendously.
> The US has a far more progressive income tax system than most of the developed European nations
It’s not about how progressive the system is but how much you pay and get for it. In the US you need disposable income to get qualitatively high services and most of those are individual things. Eg: public transit and things like that are hard to get and underfunded.
> Grocery stores in Europe do not pay better than in the US.
A grocery store worker in central Europe earning minimum wage or equivalent gets social security, child support, maternity leave of a year, a guaranteed job after returning and a dystem that supports their children and partner. It’s not the money that matters but what you get.
In Austria for instance someone working in a grocery store has a minimum wage of 21000 eur a year minimum, guaranteed increases every year. A 38 euro work week with guaranteed overtime pay, a guaranteed weekend (and at least every secon saturday off), one year of maternity/paternity money and time off, 5 weeks of holiday, two months of notice, unemployment insurance, guaranteed salaries in case of bancruptcy and much more.
For balance: in Ukraine, a population approximately five times larger than Austria - a grocery store worker would be considered lucky to make 4000 EUR per year.
Further - for tens (hundreds?) of millions of people in Europe, in countries such as Hungary, Serbia, Poland, Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Moldova, Russia, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia - even parts of Greece and Italy - earning 21000 EUR per year is an unobtainable dream for working in a grocery store.
The numbers within the EU and EEA are PPP adjusted not that badly off. Ukraine is an extreme example where part of ones salary often bypasses the state and taxation so is Greece which has a dysfunctional government and evonomic slump. With extremes like that you might as well compare it with Detroit or if we don’t stick to the EU might as well compare with Mexico.
As I tried to explain above the wages alone do not matter. Detroit is a dysfunctional city with severe lack of basic services. I strongly doubt any EU citizen no matter how disadvantaged would see an improvement by a hypothetical move to Detroit.
Mexico and Ukraine I cannot comment because I know little about it.
> If you're making ~$60,000 or more in the US, you are overwhelmingly going to have good health insurance. If you're making $140,000, you're going to have great health insurance. I fail to see how universal healthcare is a lure in this case.
If you get insured.
I think most Europeans are proud to pay taxes to make sure a random fellow living down the street who got cancer can afford his treatments. At least that has been my mentality around taxes for as long as I've lived there.
Sure, taxes don't all go towards nice things :) but at the end of the day I'm proud to be helpful to those who are in need.
Never understood the healthcare system in the US, it just sounds "wrong" to me.
Due to the housing meltdown, many people have underwater realty of negative value, yet this asset disqualifies many low cost programs.
The asset limits are very low on Medicaid ($2k individual, $3k couple)
Even medicare is quite low ($7.5k, $11.5k). To qualify, you must effectively divest all your assets and it becomes an insurance bet with the state that you'll die quickly. (@ $7k/month for a nursing home, its not a very good bet)
If you can't pay hospitals and nursing homes kick you out, just happened to a friend. Medicare wouldn't pay for more than two months of care -> on the street.
For most people, the value of selling their house (say $100k, would pay for only 1 year of senior care in the US)
Even better, the care is often lackluster for the cost. (Admittedly at $7k/month I would be expecting marble floors and gold faucets)
"If you're making $140,000, you're going to have great health insurance."
I am and I'm not. This depends on your employer. Otherwise, one can spend tens of thousands on health insurance to maintain coverage. And it could be terminated by an act of Congress at any time. Worker's compensation is also a thing. Try waiting 8 months to see a doctor for repetitive stress injuries because you've changed states and no one wants to take your case.
Well, you get good healthcare and pension in most european countries. You can live a lot cheaper than in the big cities in the us and there is no gangs and not as many drug addicts
Compare housing costs in London, Paris etc vs SV - yes health care Is nice but that is used as an excuse by employers who also benefit from the European health systems.
Agreed. And the "perfect weather" is also debatable. I was there twice, in August and in December. Both times it was too cold.
I wouldn't want to move there, but I'd love to stay for a month or two. Too bad that's not possible for me yet (neither rich nor able to work while staying in the US).
Maybe this global work permit thing that the UN supposedly looked into a while ago actually does happen one day...
I don't think so. If he didn't go into management and the working level was a GS-13, he'd eventually max out at a GS-13, Step 10, which is $133,967 a year in San Francisco.
His pension, under the current system, would be his "high three" average times 1% times years of service ($133,967 * .01 * 21) = $28,133.
Also worth noting that retirement after 21 years in industry isn't a financially sensible consideration for most federal civilians: assuming 27 years old in 1997, minimum retirement age would be 57 (9 years shy after 21 years), and even 2 years short of satisfying early retirement age requirement of 50[1].
Why is this, if true, discouraging? Do you think government workers (a pretty broad term which can encompass a wide range of positions and levels of expertise) should not be well paid?
I don't know how true it is, but my understanding is that Federal workers often work fewer hours and enjoy better job security than their private counterparts. If so, wouldn't you expect these benefits to be offset by lower compensation? On an hourly basis it could net out to be similar and simply appeal to folks who want a different type of career or work life balance.
No, I would expect private sector workers to organize over receiving less compensation for more work. The problem isn’t government worker compensation.
Certainly it isn't the same in absolute terms? You can get a two-bedroom apartment in Copenhagen for $300,000 or so. I haven't heard of any place in Europe where you can expect to make anything close to this for any normal software engineering role.
(I earn around, maybe less than half the average in this graph, in Norway).
The thing about Copenhagen property (and I expect this is true for all the Nordic countries) is that is closed to foreign investors - you can only buy if you're a permanent resident, and even if you come from EU, you can get the status after 5 years of living there. So not an easy market to get into as a buyer, but it helps having sane prices for locals, which IMHO is the way to go.
85-90k is the upper bound on senior dev salaries, but companies can and will go above that if you have specific skills they need and can't easily recruit for.
(I make 6 figures in London, and that's full time and at a software company.)
40k, 50k, 60k possibly. Medium-level is pretty nebulous though. It could be a talented coder without much experience, or a journeyman with many years and without something extra like domain expertise. Smart money would pay more for the first, but people like a bargain too.
Head out of finance and tech (funded or profitable) and those numbers start to look more like senior salaries.
In 2012, I was looking for mid level work (Gaming, but not entirely dependent on it) and yeah that was exactly the figure I seen. In London 40k is like 20k outside London meaning you have a bunch of Mid Level developers picking up a street sweepers wage without a pension attached.
I just don't believe I somehow missed all the decent jobs during a lul either.
Wow, in the last 4-5 years the economy has really picked up. I moved back to Scotland after working in Berlin and Amsterdam and work remotely today for a Paris based agency.
Until I read your comment, I had guaranteed myself never to work for a UK company. Will need to do some more research at some point.
Note that none of the newspapers or media will talk about the low end of the market (which isn't actually very low), and focus on the houses/apartments that very few people can afford, which is odd.
This is very low compensation for experienced work in the Bay Area if it's total compensation. Yes, new graduates do regularly make ~200k/yr total compensation.
I'm French, I'm not a software engineer because I don't have the degree, but I can read every language out there, I speak English pretty well, I know how to do proper research to fix things, and as I saw in the comments, the situation here is very weird.
I have been unemployed my whole life, my medical condition might have something to do with it, but when I hear that French companies put a lot of faith in a degree I'm still disappointed. There might be some hr failure somewhere.
Job markets are weird. I'm still curious about working remotely for an American company. Can it be achieved? How is that done?
Try applying through triplebyte. Their goal is a candidate blind, pure merit application process.
I used them in my last job search, and was super impressed with every step along the way. Low stress, and lots of constant feedback on how to make myself a better candidate.
Thanks for the heads up! Never heard of them before.
I actually just went through the quiz and it said I did "a good job". Is that actually true or is it just a morale booster? Note: I suffer from a bit of imposter syndrome since my background is not CS and I don't have much professional experience.
But it's good to know that the process is well-structured!
We're currently able to work with applicants from a small number of countries outside of the US: see https://triplebyte.com/candidate_faq#question-8 for details. (I'm an engineer at Triplebyte.)
So far really liking everything you're doing. Is there a mailing list for when you guys expand into other metro areas or add remote opportunities? I am a little surprised I can't set my work location preferences in my profile such that it might show up on a report somewhere.
Being a software engineer should be about what you do, not which degree you have. In the (French) company I work in, one of the lead devs doesn’t even have his baccalauréat; that doesn’t make him any less 1- talented and 2- a software engineer.
Focus on a particularly in-demand specialty (versus being broad). Just as an example, the demand for React developers is extremely high right now. If front-end isn't your thing, the demand for Python engineers seems to have caught the industry by surprise, thanks to the AI boom. It has drained the available Python programmer supply. I'd expect that demand to continue.
There are a bunch of other specialties that can pay very well, such as ecommerce platforms. Ecommerce in the US will double over the next ten years. And given the sum involved, that's a pretty massive economic opportunity, there are not anywhere near enough engineers & developers to go around for that change. If you acquire an expertise with Shopify, Magento, Bigcommerce, etc. you can do very well in the space.
I think the core point to understand about the hiring process, is that it is one of the hardest, most time consuming processes that any manager has to do. Typically it means scanning tons of resumes (typically this means stacks of 100s of applicants). In the aggregate, while there are exceptions, if it “looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is probably a duck”.
So how does this translate to searching for candidates?
Well, in general when you are scanning resumes you are looking for “proxies” for quality (remember you are devoting maybe 30 - 60 seconds to each resume initially, and even at that rate it will take you 30+ minutes to get through the resume dump you have been given that day. This doesn’t count the extra time you spend on the most promising candidates.
So, what are good proxies?
The best proxies are competing companies for your industry, where they are currently working at. It shows they both 1. Are able to do an equivalent job, and 2. They know the specifics of your industry.
Next best proxy: A similar job that they have done at any company (preferably at a company which you have heard of, and know hires good quality).
The next “goodness” proxy I use is “have they done anything I heard about, or can infer their competence from? An example is a project that I know is non trivial.
The final proxy you can use of course is a degree. Since it is known quantity of “work” that was needed to successfully complete that degree.
This is to say, if you don’t have a degree you need to “stand out” in some way. Show that you can “do” something valuable.
Remember at the end of the day the employer has to get “value” out of you. You need to provide some multiple of what you cost for it to be “worth” hiring you. Some numbers for context:
For 100k job, that usually translates to 160k all in cost for the employer (benefits, taxes, overhead, etc). Add in the risk you may not work out (if they are 90% certain, then they have to expect 177k of value just to break even).
If you are less solid of a candidate, say 50% chance of working out, then the number is 320k.
Either way, you need to give the expectation that you will give way more value then your cost given your risk profile.
So to circle back, how do you get these jobs? Find a way to demonstrate your “value” in the context of the employers needs or find ways of reducing your “risk” profile for them hiring you.
Hey, i use to have the same situation 5 years ago. Sign up on all remote job sites, and not remove either. Apply for a job like a crazy, one i was doing for 5-6 interviews per day. I think in a 3-4 month you will understand what people are looking for and you will be able to take a job you like, just try no get upset after first few weeks.
I was in a meeting with some French folks a while back and they interrupted the meeting because they had to leave, as some "police" was asking them to go home.
Businesses in America cannot deal with that [law/culture/laziness/freedom/whateveryouwanttocallit]
It's true that a lot of places rate a degree highly, and some won't look at you without one, but it's perfectly possible to get a job as a software engineer in Europe without a degree. I started as a developer 15 years ago, without a degree. I'm an architect now, and only did my degree a few years ago (did it for myself, not because it was a requirement for my job).
I imagine getting a visa to work in the US without a degree is all but impossible; for work immigrants, most countries require you to have a degree, unless you have some incredible, sought after skills.
Inflation is a very broad trend to adjust for. Maybe a dollar was worth 2% more in some part of the country while it bought you 5% less elsewhere. The ups and downs in local cost of living are probably extreme in SF, so adjusting with a nation-wide trend (which is probably nowhere near representative for SF) might be a bit arbitrary.
This is quite shocking and I am sure it’s not a pattern. My compensation has doubled roughly 6 years over similar period in inflation adjusted dollars and I have considered it as slow growth. Note that most of this is without climbing up management ladder. Most of my friends have also experienced doubling every 5-7 years as far as I can. There are few folks who haven’t moved much but that’s usually because they didn’t kept up with tech or kept chasing next startup or find non dev roles where they can excel. Living in SF/bay below $200K is quite unimaginable these days.
Pay net of deductions (401k, taxes, etc) for a married person with no tax exemptions (e.g. because the spouse works) is going to be about $10k/mo for a $200k/year salary. Rent in the city varies wildly and could eat anywhere from 30% to well over 50% of that.
When my salary was around there, it was 9k/month after tax and rent was 2600 (shared 2 bedroom apt which I paid more for bigger room). You’re looking at around 6k.
You can go on sites like Zillow or PadMapper and see rental listings. $4,000 seems typical now days for a 1 bedroom or studio. If you really want to slum it or have roommates you can find situations for less but for someone who has grown out of the roommates and frat house life style those options probably aren't appealing.
$150k in 1997 would be a little higher than 150K today.
Sharing on average dollars of income available to save after taxes per year would be interesting. At the end of the day it's not just what you make, but what you are in a position to save.
https://www.google.com/search?q=vancouver+amazon+hq+bid+sala...
In my opinion a pretty stupid thing to do, considering the low probability of Amazon choosing either Portland or Vancouver as second headquarters. Too close to Seattle and still within the same regional talent pool, and regional market demand.