from Hacker News

My salary as a full-stack developer

by misterremote on 5/12/21, 6:12 PM with 117 comments

• by paxys on 5/12/21, 7:07 PM

  To put things in perspective, based on recent experience my company has had getting specialists with 15-20 years of technical experience to work on a fixed-term contract (anything from 6 weeks to 6+ months), $250/hr would be considered a steal.

• by dreyfan on 5/12/21, 6:49 PM

  If they're suddenly asking you to log your hours, they're looking for a reason to terminate/replace you.

• by ameister14 on 5/12/21, 7:04 PM

  I don't employ full-stack developers much so I'm not speaking from wide experience but that seems extremely low to me.

  I think you should double what you're charging. I'd shoot for $100 and not go below $50, probably end up with 70-80.

• by bluefirebrand on 5/12/21, 7:18 PM

  Are those pre-tax and post-tax numbers correct? That's a tax rate of almost 50%, which sounds nuts.

  You should definitely be getting more than 37 USD/hour as a contractor. That's wildly low.

• by the_only_law on 5/12/21, 7:11 PM

  FWIW I make similar, less pre-tax but more post-tax, though with maybe a third of the experience.

  I’ve seen the comments about “just go to FAANG” and it’s one of those odd dualities I see on HN. On some threads, I see comments full of how their interviews are IQ proxies and how FAANG only hires the best or top X% so it’s not viable for most devs. On the other hand there are plenty of comments that just suggest casually walking into a FAANG job. So which is it?

• by the_jeremy on 5/12/21, 7:19 PM

  You are paid a pittance (assuming US). I have 4 YOE and earn 1.5x your hourly rate, and I don't live in a coastal state. (disclaimer: I'm only backend; I don't know which way that should sway things).

• by sudhirj on 5/12/21, 6:49 PM

  Work for a company in the US via an agency, company pays agency $70/hr for my time, I get $50/hr.

• by valbaca on 5/13/21, 6:57 AM

  I'll share mine.

  2011 - Graduated with double degree B.S. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from Texas Tech University

  Software Engineer @ Raytheon II&S in Garland, TX

  2011 $61k/year (all # values are in $k)

  2012 $63

  Software Development Engineer I (SDE1) @ Amazon in Seattle

  2013 $90 salary + $20 signing bonus + $53 stock bonus (vested over the next 4 years)

  2014 $117 Total Compensation (TC) = $92 base salary + $13 2nd year bonus + $11 stocks value

  Promoted to SDE2

  2015 $138 TC = $105 + $33 stocks

  2016 $171 TC = $108 + $63 stocks

  2017 $195 TC = $110 + $84 stocks

  19% bump after switching teams within Amazon and getting a new manager

  2018 $251 TC = $131 + $119 stocks

  2019 $245 TC = $150 + $96

  2020 $255 TC = $157 + $97

  Promoted to SDE3 (Senior Software Engineer)

  2021 $309 TC = $160 + 149

  I'm currently a full-stack engineer, as in I've worked with or currently work with:

  - Backend service development: Java, Scala, & C++

  - Front-end development: CSS, JavaScript & Typescript

  - Server-side rendering: Perl & Java

  - App Development in Android (Java & Kotlin) & iOS (Objective-C & Swift)

  - Script development in Java, Ruby, Python, & SQL

  - System design, design reviews, AWS, etc.

  - DevOps (Oncall, CD/CI, Integration testing, Chaos testing, Agile process improvements etc.)

  - Interview candidates, mentor new hires & teammates, promotion recommendations & reviews

• by nicolas_t on 5/13/21, 11:58 AM

  When I first started I charged $40/hour and met a developer who was working for a new client who told me I was crazy, that I was underpaying myself and that by charging too little I was giving reasons to clients not to take me seriously.

  I then started charging 100$/hour and I got better results when looking for clients, ended up being more respected by those same clients and was less overworked so happier overall.

  Over the last 10 years, I've steadily increased that rate until it's now 300$/hour. I don't charge that all clients, in some cases I worked for a lot less in exchange for equity (which has proven to be a very good idea) but having a high rate allows me to have the flexibility to offer that with some clients.

• by 4by4by4 on 5/12/21, 7:09 PM

  I agree with others that your salary is low. Another important question is: how much would you like to make?

• by terminalserver on 5/12/21, 7:26 PM

  This feels like a somewhat disingenuous promotion for the remote hunt website. Is it real or not?

• by ahD5zae7 on 5/13/21, 9:46 AM

  I'll go on a tangent to most of the comments I read here. In my opinion it's mostly based on your location. Some would say it shouldn't and I tend to agree, unfortunately it usually is. In the US your rates are (no offence) laughable, and not even taking SV rates into account. For some parts of Europe they would be far too low (e.g. Scandinavia). For some parts of Europe (eastern mostly, e.g. Poland where I work) they would be okay-ish, that's about what I get (senior-ish position) but in a stable situation, not as a contractor. In Belarus or Ukraine I believe this might be quite good money (e.g. Belarus in 2019 I found around $1500 to be the average pay in this industry, as far as I could google this). tl;dr: it depends.

• by misterremote on 5/12/21, 6:12 PM

  Is my salary fine or should I ask more? I feel like I should ask more.

  Would be helpful to hear about your salary and hourly price?

• by nerbert on 5/12/21, 7:23 PM

  It does not answer the question he asks but if he’s as good as he says, he can just refuse to log his hours.

• by notyourday on 5/12/21, 7:20 PM

  If you are paid hourly and it is that low why on earth would you want to be a contractor?

• by eruci on 5/12/21, 7:12 PM

  50% tax? Where do you file taxes?

• by mensetmanusman on 5/12/21, 7:00 PM

  $57 so you can negotiate down to $53/hr.

• by RobRivera on 5/12/21, 7:09 PM

  >I hadn't really thought about my price

  fascinating

• by pm90 on 5/12/21, 6:52 PM

  Check out blind and levels.fyi to get a sense for where the industry is at.

  Location seems to be a factor for some companies but not for others. It’s best to have multiple offers on hand when deciding.

• by oh_sigh on 5/12/21, 7:06 PM

  I bet OP could get a job at a FAANG maybe a level lower than they are expecting, and then just coast while making $200k+/yr with little chance of burn out.

  I'm not recommending it but it works for me.

• by jowdones on 5/12/21, 7:22 PM

  I think it's pathetic to moan about your salary in some Hacker News plea for sympathy.

  It's a free market, there's a million job ads, recruiters and what else. If you are worth $500k/year, you'll get $500k/year. If you can't take $500k/year either coze you're incapable of putting up with the job requirements or you're just incompetent in general, that's entirely on you.

  You're not starving. Just penible.